The Winners Are . . .

Congratulations to Jane and Irish! If you will email me at jangarho at gmail dot com, I will send you your books.

Tuesday Review: The Perks of Being a Beauty

The Perks of Being a Beauty

(An enovella)

By Manda Collins

Publisher: St. Martin’s

Release Date: 

June 18, 2013

At three and twenty, Miss Amelia Snowe, once the most dazzling of the diamonds on display in London ballrooms and other social settings, is now the companion of a wealthy mill owner’s daughter. Her mother’s death left Amelia with nothing but debts, and her years as a mean-spirited beauty meant that friends who were willing to help were few. Ironically, only the Ugly Ducklings, once the targets of Amelia’s cruelties, are willing to stand her friends now, thanks to a change of heart Amelia experienced before her change of circumstances (How to Entice an Earl). But even the combined efforts of a duchess, a countess, and a viscountess aren’t enough to save Amelia from those eager to see her frozen out of the circle where she once reigned.

The young woman who once flaunted her beauty now works to subdue it. Mrs. Smithson, Amelia’s employer, reminds the beauty at every opportunity that she is now a nonentity, scarcely more than a servant. And Amelia, who once used her tongue to wound those she viewed as her inferiors, now endures in silence the cuts Mrs. Smithson inflicts. Amelia’s only consolations are that her employment allows her to earn a living and to repay slowly the money Cecily, Duchess of Winterson, gave her when Amelia’s very survival was in jeopardy and she is able to be of real help to Harriet Smithson, a sweet natured but not very confident young lady.

The last person Lord Quentin Fortescue expected to meet when he paid a visit to Smithson to discuss business was the woman who rejected his proposal nearly six years earlier. Amelia Snowe thought her beauty would hook a husband with a more impressive title than the honorific one bestowed upon a duke’s younger son. At first, Quentin feels a certain sense of satisfaction to see that Amelia’s failed to find the titled gentleman of whom she was so certain, but that feeling quickly gives way to an awareness of her beauty and an urge to protect her from her employer’s snubs.

When the addition of Quentin to the house party guest leaves Mrs. Smithson with uneven numbers, she reluctantly compels Amelia to join the company. Amelia finds herself partnered with Quentin for a scavenger hunt, and as the two spend time together, the friendship they shared is renewed and the chemistry between them reignited. Can Quentin forgive the rejection that was a blow to his pride and his heart? Will Amelia have a second chance with the man she has never forgotten?

Romance readers are notoriously tough in their judgment of female characters, and so redeemed heroines are much rarer than redeemed heroes. I admit that I was a scoffer when I first heard that Manda Collins was going to write Amelia Snowe’s story. I don’t have much forgiveness to offer mean girls, and I already thought Cecily, Juliet, and Maddie were too quick to accept Amelia’s apologies in How to Entice an Earl. I should have trusted this author.

Collins shows her readers a truly repentant heroine, one whose present circumstances are more than payback for her offenses. She also reveals Amelia’s history, so that the reader understands the forces that shaped her into the jealous, spiteful beauty whose venom spilled out in the Ugly Ducklings books. In this case, to understand is to forgive, and I wasn’t very far into The Perks of Being a Beauty before I found Amelia a sympathetic character whose HEA I was anticipating.

It doesn’t hurt that Quentin is a delicious beta hero, my favorite type, and that the two are involved in a reunion romance, my favorite trope. I really liked that he was not content to be merely the younger son of a duke but was actively engaged in building his fortune in a socially enlightened manner. I thought the time he spent in America as the son-in-law of a wealthy industrialist made both his interest in trade and his more egalitarian ways credible.

If you read the Ugly Ducklings books, you will find that The Perks of Being a Beauty is the perfect after dinner cordial—sweet and intoxicating. If you haven’t read the Ugly Ducklings series, I have three novels and a novella to recommend to you.

Do you think you judge female characters by a stricter standard? Are you a fan of redeemed heroines? Who is your favorite?

To celebrate new releases by two of my favorite writers and dear friends, I’ll give one digital copy of The Perks of Being a Beauty to the author of a randomly selected comment (on release day) and one digital copy of Meant to Be by Terri Osburn to the author of a randomly selected comment. (Sorry--limited to comments from U. S. only)

RITA Season, Part Two: Historical Romance

The posts that I’ll be sharing on alternate Saturdays between now and July 6 will be self-indulgent, romance-fan posts.  I’m going to be looking only at the categories in which I have read most of the finalists and talking about the books I have read with a nostalgic glance at some favorite winners from the past and a few gripes about treasured books not included among the current finalists. I hope you’ll join me and share your own totally authentic, equally subjective views.

Historical Romance: The Past

RWA could have just called the Golden Medallion (as the awards were called for their first eight years, 1982-1989) for Best Historical Romance the LaVyrle Spencer Award in the early years. She won half of the Golden Medallion given in this category. The Endearment (1983), Hummingbird (1984), Twice Loved (1985), and The Gamble (1988) were all winners, and Morning Glory won the overall award, Best Romance of 1989, in 1990.

Today when we think of historical romance, we equate the term most often with European historicals, most of them set in the Regency period. But for much of RITA history, Americana and Western romances ruled. All of Spencer’s RITA winners were American-set historicals, as were the winners in 1986 (Not So Wild a Dream by Francine Rivers), 1989 (Sunflower by Jill Marie Landis), 1992 (Courting Miss Hattie by Pamela Morsi), 1996 (Something Shady, also by Morsi), 1997 (Conor’s Way by Laura Lee Guhrke), and 1998 (Promise of Jenny Jones by Maggie Osbourne). In addition to these other Americana and Western titles won RITAs as Best Short Historical. Among these were To Tame a Texan’s Heart (1995) by Jodi Thomas, Always to Remember (1997) by Lorraine Heath, The Mistress (2001) by Susan Wiggs, and The Texan’s Reward (2006) by Jodi Thomas. Westerns have enjoyed something of a resurgence recently, but I miss the Americana novels. A great essay by Stephanie Mittman, who wrote some wonderful Americana novels, on the appeal of that subgenre can be found at All About Romance. 

 

In addition to the American-set winners, there are also some unforgettable medievals on the list of RITA winners in historical romance.  I’ve reminded people several times recently that I was reading Robyn Carr when she wrote historicals, long before the Virgin River series. Carr won the Golden Medallion for Best Historical Romance in 1987 for By Right of Arms, a medieval set in France. Julie Garwood’s The Bride, the 1990 winner, is set in 12^th-century Scotland, the 1993 winner, Penelope Williamson’s Keeper of the Dream in 12^th-century Wales, and Barbara Samuel’s Heart of a Knight, 1998’s Best Short Historical, is set in 14^th-century Britain.

It wasn’t until 1999 when Connie Brockway’s My Dearest Enemy was proclaimed Best Long Historical Romance that European historicals began to dominate this award. Two classics in the genre won earlier—Mary Jo Putney’s Dancing on the Wind in 1995 and Loretta Chase’s Lord of Scoundrels (Best Short Historical) in 1996, but every winner since My Dearest Enemy has been set at least partially in England; most of them in the 19^th century. These winners include 2000-- Silken Threads by Patricia Ryan (12^th-century England), 2001--Devilish by Jo Beverley (Georgian England), 2002--The Bridal Season by Connie Brockway (Victorian England), 2003-- Stealing Heaven by Madeline Hunter (14^th-century England and Wales), 2004--The Destiny by Kathleen Givens (17^th-century Scotland), 2005--Shadowheart by Laura Kinsale (14^th-century England and Italy), 2006--The Devil to Pay by Liz Carlyle (Regency England), 2007--On the Way To the Wedding by Julia Quinn (Regency England), 2008--Lessons of Desire by Madeline Hunter (Regency England), 2009--The Edge of Impropriety by Pam Rosenthal (Regency England), 2010--Not Quite a Husband by Sherry Thomas (1890s India and England), 2011--His at Night by Sherry Thomas (Victorian England), and 2012--The Black Hawk by Joanna
Bourne (1794 and 1818 Paris and London).

Historical Romance: The Present

I keep hearing that the historical romance is in trouble, but new additions to my keepers and the number of historicals in my TBR stack don’t suggest any shortage of great historical romances. When I considered my favorites in this category, I realized that I have a weakness for stories that use a conventional trope but give it a twist, strong heroines, characters that are not high-ranking aristocrats, and novels that are part of a series. I can see at least one of these qualities in the five finalists that I have read in this category. 

 

Bride by Mistake by Anne Gracie is a marriage of convenience tale with a difference: Lieutenant Luke Ripton is an idealistic nineteen-year-old when he comes upon a girl, hardly more than a child, being attacked. To protect her from a greedy relative determined to force the thirteen-year-old Isabella into marriage, Luke married her himself and leaves her in a Spanish convent. Eight years later, Luke, irrevocably changed by the war and with a newly inherited title, arrives at the convent to take his bride back to England. He expects to find what he imagines is a typical convent-trained wife—demure, silent, and obedient. Isabella is none of these things, as Luke will discover during their journey across Spain, tangling with danger, building a friendship, and falling in love. Gracie with her gift for crafting stories that move me to tears and laughter is a never-fail author for me. This is the fifth book in her Devil Riders series, which I love.

A Lady Never Surrenders by Sabrina Jeffries is the conclusion to The Hellions of Halstead Hall. It’s not my favorite of the series, in large part because I don’t like the person Grandmother Hetty becomes in this one, but I do like Celia and Jackson, individually and as a couple. I like the romance across classes, and I really like that Celia is not a girly-girl heroine. I’m happy to see Sabrina Jeffries, an autobuy author for me, on this list. I still wonder why How to Woo a Reluctant Lady wasn’t a finalist in 2010.

When an author creates characters so real that I talk to them, I consider the book a winner. Sarah MacLean does exactly this in A Rogue by Any Other Name. Even though I wanted to strike Bourne at times for being so obsessed with revenge that he hurt Penelope, he was always deeply, multi-dimensionally human to me. And I loved the strength and grace of Penelope. She is one of the best examples I know of an appealing secondary character in one book who becomes even better than expected when she gets her own story.

Too Dangerous to Desire by Cara Elliott, book #3 in her Lords of Midnight series, is a good girl-bad boy romance, and it is a reunion romance, my favorite trope. Elliott is particularly good a balancing the mystery/adventure plot with the romance, and the former is especially intriguing because Sophie, vicar’s daughter, is an unpredictable choice for a blackmailer’s victim.

Jade Lee gives her readers a pair of wonderfully unusual characters in Wedded in Sin, the second book in her Bridal Favors series. Samuel Morrison, second son of a baron, is a supremely rational, highly intelligent man who assumes the role of a jokester. Penny Shoemaker is a pragmatic, middle-class heroine, who is forced to design shoes secretly because she is female. Like Samuel, she hides behind a façade. Part of the joy of this book is that these two atypical characters are able to see beyond the created personae by which their worlds identify them.

Finalists in this category that I have not read are Beauty and the Bounty Hunter by Lori Austin, Defiant by Pamela Clare, and The Recruit by Monica McCarty. I’ve heard good things about all three of them. But not even the most voracious reader can read all the good books available, and I am not a candidate for that title. For now, these are on my Maybe Sometime list.

Historical Romance: The Missing

I read more historicals than any other subgenre of romance. I could easily compile a top 25 list of historicals I have loved in any given year. I though 2012 was a particularly strong year because there were so many excellent debut authors. Since this post is super long already, I will mention only six historicals that I think deserve to be on this list. These are books to which I gave highest marks, and I know from reviews, conversations, and best of lists that they are books that are beloved by many other readers.

        

A Week to Be Wicked, Tessa Dare

This road romance featuring a bespectacled bluestocking, Minerva Highwood, and a charming rogue, Lord Colin Payne, is a delight, showcasing Dare’s undervalued humor and giving readers another reason to make the Spindle Cover series a favorite. I think it’s the best book Dare has written, including RITA winner A Night to Surrender, and I count all Dare’s books keepers.  Both Publishers Weekly and Library Journal included it in their Best Romances of 2012 list.

A Gentleman Undone, Cecilia Grant

At times, an almost painfully dark story, Grant’s second novel takes two characters whose lives have been shaped by the guilt they bear and pairs them in a story that operates with the genre’s conventions while twisting them at every turn. There is nothing unusual in a hero who is a veteran psychically scarred by war or a courtesan heroine, but there is nothing predictable about the real guilt Will bears and his commitment to atone for his error in the only way he can. Nor is there anything predictable in a heroine who sells herself as a means of self-destruction. And Grant’s prose places her among the best in the business. A Gentleman Undone was on Library Journal’s Best of 2012 list.

The Ugly Duchess, Eloisa James

A brilliantly written take on the Ugly Duckling fairy tale, The Ugly Duchess features an ugly duckling who transforms herself into a swan with still tender scars underneath her glorious feathers and, in a reverse move, a handsome, popular swan who transforms himself into a scarred ruffian shorn of his feathers. I loved the reverse transformation, loved that Theo was the architect of her makeover, and loved that however the world saw her, James never saw Theo as anything but beautiful. The Ugly Duchess was named one of Booklist’s Best of 2012.

  

 A Notorious Countess Confesses, Julie Anne Long

This seventh book in Long’s Pennyroyal Green series may take the prize for the most unusual couple of the year. Adam Sylvaine, the hero, is a vicar who not only quotes Biblical passages but also writes sermons, prays privately, and feels privileged to serve his parishioners. Yet he is also a man, with a man’s passions and flaws and vanities. The heroine, Evie Duggan, Countess of Wareham, is an Irish lass who loves her family fiercely, who knows how to talk to a child terrified of a drunken father and to an uncertain young woman who longs to know the secret of inspiring love in a man. She is also an actress, a courtesan, and a countess by virtue—or rather the lack of virtue—of being won in a card game. This is Long at her best—and her best is amazing.

His Very Own Girl, Carrie Lofty

That this is a romance set in World War II makes this book stand out from the thousands of historicals published in 2012. That its heroine is a pilot for the English Air Transport Auxiliary, its hero a medic in the American Infantry makes it more extraordinary. From the music to the clothing to the food to the emotions the characters experience, this novel pulls the reader into the 1940s. As I read this book I hummed, I wept, I smiled, I wept again, and I wished passionately that this book would find the audience it deserved. A RITA nod would have helped.

Ravishing the Heiress, Sherry Thomas

I’m not even going to pretend to be objective on this. Sherry Thomas published three romances in 2012, each of them compelling stories with characters who came to life, each of them written in staggeringly beautiful prose. All of them deserve highest honors, but Ravishing the Heiress is my favorite and Millie one of my all-time favorite heroines. My favorite line in the novel is a comment Venetia, Fitz’s sister and heroine of Beguiling the Beauty makes to Millie, who has paraphrased with some bitterness Byron’s claim that “Friendship is Love without his wings.” Venetia answers her: “No, my dear Millie, you are wrong. Love without friendship is like a kite, aloft only when the winds are favorable. Friendship is what gives love its wings.” Millie and Fitz discover that truth.

Now it’s your turn. How many of these finalists have you read? Do you have a favorite in the category? What missing historical titles would you have included?

  

A Baker's Dozen of Reviews: Day Thirteen--His Uptown Girl

His Uptown Girl

By Liz Talley

Publisher: 

Harlequin Superromance

Release Date: June 4, 2013

Eleanor Theriot, owner of the Queen’s Box, an antiques shop, in New Orleans, has spent much of her life trying to be what other people expected her to be. Five years after she was widowed when her husband was murdered by his mistress, Eleanor is ready not just to get on with her life but to create a different, freer life, one that allows her to be who she is—just as soon as she discovers who that is. With forty just around the corner, she needs to begin the journey, and the hot, multiracial pianist Dez Batiste who can increase her heart rate with a look may be just the companion she needs.

Once a jazz pianist and composer on the cusp of fame, Dez Batiste has lost his music since Katrina. After trying and failing at a “normal” life, he has returned to New Orleans to open an upscale jazz club. The owners of businesses surrounding the site he has chosen aren’t sure a jazz club like the Blue Rondo is a good fit for their family-friendly neighborhood. Dez needs to convince them they are wrong, but he’d like to convince elegant Eleanor Theriot, president of the Magazine Street Merchants Association of much more. All the signs tell him she is interested if only she can move past her hang-ups over her being nearly nine years older than he and their vastly different lifestyles.

With a mix of eagerness and trepidation, and over the objections of her college-freshman daughter, her conservative parents, and her snobby bitch former mother-in-law, Eleanor welcomes Dez into her bed and into her life. Their mutually exclusive friends with benefits relationship is soon complicated by feelings they are both reluctant to put a name to. Relationships are not static, and Eleanor will have to decide whether the love she can have with Dez really can cast out her fears.

Liz Talley gives readers a look at post-Katrina New Orleans and the cultural mix of that colorful city. In addition to the complicated and sizzling romance between Eleanor and Dez, secondary threads point to the sharp contrast between the city’s privileged young whose greatest concern is owning another designer bag and the kids who grow up amid poverty and violence struggling to survive and dreaming of escape. The issues are large ones, perhaps too large for a romance with a word limit, but it’s exciting to see an author pushing boundaries. I might have wished for more depth at times, but I always found these characters and their story fully engaging. Talley goes back to New Orleans with her October 2013 Harlequin Superromance, His Brown-Eyed Girl. It’s on my TBR list.

Talley adds religion and politics to the ingredients that make up His Uptown Girl, topics some consider have no place in romance? Where do you stand on this issue?

A Baker's Dozen of Reviews: Day Twelve--Jean Brashear's Texas Heroes

 I love family series, I love cowboys, and I love Jean Brashear’s writing. How could I not fall in love with the Gallaghers? I first encountered Boone Gallagher in the original book, A Family Secret (1999), when I was glomming Brashear’s backlist. Boone can act like a jerk, but he has his reasons to be moody, angry, and difficult—a bad relationship with a father who never recovered from his wife’s death, memories of his years as a Navy SEAL, his father’s leaving the home Boone loves to a stranger, and the guilt Boone feels over the death of his wife in an accident. The reader is never in doubt that the appealing Maddie Rose Collins, city girl though she be, is going to melt Boone’s reserve and win his heart. I found in this Texas tale the same kind of character-driven story with rich emotional contexts that had set me glomming Brashear’s books in the first place. Of course, I was eager to read the story of Boone’s brother Mitch.

Mitch’s story, Lonesome No More (2000), is literally a cabin romance. Mitch is a loner and has been since he left Morning Star, Texas, at sixteen. His only friend, Cy Blackburn, left him his wilderness cabin. When Cy’s granddaughter, Perrie Matheson, shows up, ill and vulnerable, with her five-year-old son, Mitch reluctantly shares the cabin with them until Perrie is well enough to leave. Suspicious of Perrie, who, Mitch believed, abandoned the grandfather who loved her, even solitary Mitch is not immune to the charms of young Davey. Soon Davey is not the only one capturing Mitch’s heart, and Mitch and Perrie discover that love can give them the strength to reveal their secrets and deal with their pasts. The second book tugs at the heart with an emotional power even stronger than the first.

The third book in the Gallaghers of Morning Star trilogy, Texas Royalty (2000), is the story of Lacey DeMille, a child of privilege and power, whose teenage love affair with Devlin Marlowe, a bad boy her father hates, ends in heartbreak for both young lovers.  Nineteen years later, private investigator Devlin is back in Houston, on a mission for his friends and clients, the Gallaghers of Morning Star, with information that is about to explode everything Lacey DeMille thinks she knows about herself.

Lacey may find the life of a blue-blooded DeMille stultifying at times and struggle to avoid her mother’s attempts to see Lacey married to a man like the plastic surgeon she is dating, a man whose bloodlines are pure and whose social status is unassailable. She may know her parents are less than pleased with Lacey’s work with the Child Advocacy Center, but her certainty of her place as a DeMille and her parents’ love for her is the cornerstone of her identity. 

Reunion stories are my favorites, and this is one with a twist that wraps up the loose ends in the Gallagher family story is a satisfying manner with a triple HEA bow. The three book were originally Silhouette Special Editions. In 2011, Brashear revised the trilogy and made them available in digital format as Texas Secrets, Texas Lonely, and Texas Bad Boy.

In 2012, Brashear added two more ebooks to her Texas Heroes collection. Texas Refuge combines a touch of paranormal with a generous helping of thriller mixed well with romance in the story of Quinn Marshall, a former Houston homicide detective looking for peace and a way to deal with the guilt over his failure to save his sister on the Texas ranch he now calls home. He has no desire to get involved in another case involving a woman and child in jeopardy, but the beauty and vulnerability of Lorie Chandler, best friend and co-star of his brother Josh, exert a strong pull. Before Quinn knows it, Lorie and her son Grant are finding a safe place to hide in Texas on Quinn’s ranch. Lorie finds on Quinn’s ranch and in his arms not just a refuge but a life for herself and her son far different and more fulfilling than her role as a soap opera star.

Josh Marshall gets the lead role in Texas Star. The Sexiest Man Alive is suddenly finding the Hollywood scene empty and unsatisfying, and a visit to his brother’s ranch sounds like just what he needs. On the way, he encounters Elena Navarro, a woman on the run from an abusive husband after seven years of terror. It would be difficult to imagine a more unlikely pair than the rising Hollywood and the terrified runaway, but the love that flares between them promises a reality better than any dream. First, however, the evil that threatens all they want must be conquered.

Texas Roots (February 2013) introduces another Gallagher series. The Gallaghers of Sweetgrass Springs, Texas, are cousins to the Gallaghers of Morning Star. When chef Scarlett Ross, a descendant of Sweetwater Springs founder Josiah Gallagher, leaves her suddenly messy and dangerous life in New York behind, she finds a history, a family, and a place she never knew where her roots run deep. She also finds a hero in hunky rancher Ian McLaren if only she can ler her heart trust him. Based on Texas Roots and the legend of Sweetgrass Springs, I think the new Gallagher series is going to offer the same heart-twisting complications and sigh-worthy romances as the first.

I recommend you sample Jean Brashear’s Texas heroes. I’m betting you’ll fall for them too. I know of no better way to start than to buy today a box set of five novels entitled Love Me Some Cowboy, available at most book outlets right now. In addition to Texas Secrets by Jean Brashear, the first of her sexy, sigh-worthy Texas Heroes, the anthology includes Nothing But Trouble by Lisa Mondello, Crazy About a Cowboy by Barbara McMahon, Once Upon a Cowboy by Day Leclaire, and Love, Texas by Ginger Chambers.  It’s a steal at $.99, and if your heroes have always been cowboys—or even if your heroes have only sometimes been cowboys, you are sure to lose your heart a time or five.

Buy Love Me Some Cowboy at these sites:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

iTunes

Smashwords

I grew up watching Roy Rogers, King of the Cowboys, and Dale Evans, Queen of the West, and Gene Autry, the Singing Cowboy, and Lash LaRue, King of the Bullwhip, ride across the big screen during Saturday matinees. I was only a little older when I started reading my dad’s Zane Gray books. Who were your first cowboy heroes?

A Baker's Dozen of Reviews: Day Eleven--It Happened One Midnight

It Happened One Midnight

By Julie Anne Long

Publisher: Avon

Release Date: June 25, 2013

Thomasina de Bellestros is a woman in the business of survival—her own and those of the innocents for whom she risks everything. The bastard daughter of a famous courtesan who died too young and a duke who ignores her existence, from an early age, Tommy was dependent upon the kindness of an aging countess who owed her mother a favor and her own resources. Her beauty and charm mesmerize the men who attend the countess’s salons, but it is the image they adore. Only one man knows the heart and soul of Thomasina de Bellestros, and he is the son of a powerful family, at home in a world where Tommy is a misfit and a question mark.

Jonathan Redmond is the youngest of Isaiah and Fanchette Redmond’s children, a light-hearted charmer with rakish proclivities whom no one, not even his family and closest friends, takes seriously. No one is aware that it is Jonathan who has inherited his father’s gift and interest in investment; no one knows the man whose heart is stirred by the plight of the defenseless. His father not only refuses Jonathan’s request to sponsor his membership in an elite investment group; he also cuts his allowance and gives him an ultimatum—marry a young woman of acceptable breeding and wealth within six months or have funds cut permanently.

A chance meeting one night outside the home of a duke from whom they both want something makes Tommy and Jonathan newly aware of one another. The weapons they display that night will prove far less dangerous than the other means with which they will challenge one another. The genuine liking they feel for one another will be the seed of a rare friendship that soon encompasses desire, understanding, and a love neither Tommy nor Jonathan ever expected to find. They will have obstacles to overcome, some of their own making, but together they will change each other. Together they will even change their world.  

Long began her Pennyroyal Green series over five years ago with The Perils of Pleasure (2008). Sometimes I read the first book in a series, and I almost sense a force field around it so convinced am I that I have read the beginning of something truly extraordinary. That was the feeling I had after reading The Perils of Pleasure the first time. Each book in the series has reaffirmed my initial response.  It Happened One Midnight joins What I Did for a Duke and The Notorious Countess Confesses on my all-time top 100 list (or about the top one percent of the romances I’ve read).

In this eighth Pennyroyal Green book, Long weaves a story that pairs two people who should never be a match and makes me believe they are perfect for each other. She makes the impossible seem destined and the unexpected seem ideal. Tommy sees in Jonathan all that he is and all that he is capable of becoming. If ever a heroine deserved a hero to cherish her, Tommy does. And Jonathan’s heart is large enough to cherish all the pieces of who she is. Theirs is a story that, from the opening scene through the epilogue, never makes a misstep. Once again Long gives readers a book in which true love is characterized by the ability to see the essential self of the beloved that lies beyond the masks created to protect and conceal.

As always with Long, part of the joy of reading the book comes from her prose. The opening description with its pickax moon and diamond smithereens of stars sings, and there are dozens of other passages that are lovely and lyrical. My favorite comes from the scene where the Earl of Ardmay is waiting with Jonathan and the other Redmond males (except for Lyon, of course) are waiting for Violet to give birth. Violet is having a difficult time, and the scene is a fraught one. Amid his fear for his sister, Jonathan thinks of Tommy:

And in his weariness, only one word came to Jonathan, like a prayer. Tommy, he thought, invoking what was good and real. Tommy. The word for love in his world right now. Tommy. And he supposed that the word that occurred to you in your darkest moments . . . well, that word meant love. That was how you knew. And perhaps that was the purpose of dark moments.

Earlier Tommy has distinguished between love and romance. She, like Jonathan, has come to understand that love ennobles the giver and renders meaningful small, daily expressions.  It Happened One Midnight is deeply romantic, but even better, it is a heart-shatteringly beautiful love story with a sigh-evoking HEA. I highly recommend this book.

I bought digital copies of this JAL series when they were on sale, and I am in the process of rereading all eight Pennyroyal Green books. I am discovering new reasons to love the series. Are you a rereader? Do you buy digital copies of books you already own in print, or vice versa?

A Baker's Dozen of Reviews: Day Ten--The Newcomer

The Newcomer

By Robyn Carr

Publisher: Harlequin Mira

Release Date: June 25, 2013

The second book in Robyn Carr’s Thunder Point series could be subtitled “The Book of Complications.” All the lives that seemed moving toward happily ever after in The Wanderer are shaken up and the love affairs are tested.

Longtime friends Mac McCain and Gina James are still basking in the glow of their new romantic relationship when Cecilia Jayne, Mac’s ex-wife, shows up after ten years of no contact at all with Mac or with her three children. Even after Mac reassures Gina that the beautiful Cee Jay poses no threat to their relationship, concerns about the effects of her reappearance on the children remain, especially given the explosive anger of sixteen-year-old Eve.

Ashley, Gina’s sixteen-year-old daughter, is having problems too. The effects of a bad break-up with her boyfriend Downey are compounded when Downey’s new girlfriend sends a fake semi-nude photo of Ashley to all Downey’s phone contacts and posts a copy on Facebook. The combination sends the usually stable, upbeat Ashley spiraling into a frightening depression and sets Gina looking for information from Ashley’s father who disappeared before Ashley’s birth.

Mac and Gina are not the only ones dealing with surprises from their pasts. Hank Cooper receives a phone call summoning him across the country to hear some news from his former fiancée that will change his life forever. The contact from Coop’s past sets Sarah Dupre questioning whether or not she can really trust his commitment to her. Meanwhile, a promotion and a move for her are in the pipeline, and she’s faced with the choice of leaving the Coast Guard, or leaving Coop and Thunder Point and uprooting her brother Landon from a place where he is happy and anticipating a successful, potentially scholarship-producing senior year as quarterback for the high school team. And Sarah can’t bring herself to share her news with either of the males who will be affected by her decision.

Carr’s Thunder Point series is proving every bit as addictive as her beloved Virgin River books. It has the same strengths as the earlier series: a cast of characters of varying ages who capture the reader’s interest and affection; multiple storylines that sometimes run parallel to one another, sometimes intersect with one another but complement one another either way; and a sense of place strong enough to leave the reader feeling as if she’s spent time in a real town that she looks forward to visiting again.

While I wanted Coop and Sarah to resolve their problems, it was Mac and Gina’s story in which I was most invested. The friends-to-lovers trope is one of my favorites, and Carr’s treatment of their relationship rings true on so many levels. The slow pace at which it develops because of their concern about how their becoming a couple will affect their kids, the way family steps up to do the job when a support system is needed (Gina’s mother and Mac’s Aunt Lou), and the way that their friendship remains central to who they are even after they become lovers. I love that they keep the same small rituals in place and maintain their easy communication. Even their joy in a weekend escape for the two of them gives them an extra dimension of reality because when money is tight and kids are needy, it’s not easy for single parents to find time to be together without intrusions.

Carr gives the reader just enough information about new characters to make her eager to return for the next story. In this case, the next story is The Hero, the story of Spencer Lawson, single father and Thunder Point’s new football coach. I’ve already pre-ordered it for my Kindle.

I know many of you are Robyn Carr fans. Have you started the Thunder Point series? How do you think it compares to the Virgin River books?