Celebrating March 27, Part VII

Six Books to Celebrate: Day Seven

Tomorrow is the official release day of all the books I’ve celebrated over the past week. I’m listing them below in order of the reviews at this site:

The Art of Duke Hunting by Sophia Nash

Barefoot Season by Susan Mallery

Master of Sin by Maggie Robinson

Woodrose Mountain by RaeAnne Thayne

The Cowboy Takes a Bride by Lori Wilde

A Week to Be Wicked by Tessa Dare

At Your Pleasure by Meredith Duran

Confessions from an Arranged Marriage by Miranda Neville  

 I enjoyed all the March 27 releases that I’ve reviewed, and I hope you will enjoy them too.  I have another six March 27 releases that will be downloaded to my kindle at midnight. I know I have some great reading ahead. Over the next week or so, I’ll be reading and posting reviews at GoodReads for these books (in alphabetical order by author).

Hot Under Pressure

By Louisa Edwards

Publisher: St. Martin’s

Release Date: March 27, 2012

The final book in Edwards’s Rising Star Chef Challenge trilogy, this one is a reunion story between almost-exes. I love reunion stories, and I love sexy chefs.

      Taming an Impossible Rogue

      By Suzanne Enoch

      Publisher: St. Martin’s

Release Date: March 27, 2012

Enoch takes her readers back to the Tantalus Club in the second book in the Scandalous Brides series. It’s a runaway bride story with an unexpected hero. And it’s Suzanne Enoch! I can’t wait to read this one.

      Imperial Scandal

      By Teresa Grant

      Publisher: Kensington

      Release Date: March 27, 2012

      I’m not big on novels with spies—unless they are written by Tracy Grant. British Intelligence agents Malcolm Rannoch (Charles Fraser) and his wife Suzanne (Mélanie Fraser) return for another adventure, this one set in Brussels before and during Waterloo. I’m a big Tracy Grant/Teresa Grant fan.

       

       The Seduction of Lady X

       By Julia London

       Publisher: Pocket

       Release Date: March 27, 2012

This third Secrets of Hadley Green book comes fast on the heels of The Revenge of Lord Eberlin. I can’t wait to see how the HEA is achieved in this story of a seemingly impossible, forbidden love. 

     Trouble Me

     By Laura Moore

     Publisher: Ballantine

     Release Date: March 27, 2012

Moore is a relatively new author for me, but I loved the first two Rosewood books.  I’m eager to return to the Radcliffe family estate and horse farm in Virginia to learn what happens to wild child Jade, the third of the Radcliffe sisters. 

    Elegy for Eddie

    By Jacqueline Winspear

    Publisher: Harper

    Release Date: March 27, 2012

If you like historical mysteries and haven’t read the Maisie Dobbs books, you are missing one of the best series around. This is #9, and I’ve been anticipating it since I closed the final page of A Lesson in Secrets (#8).

You’ve heard all about the March 27 releases I have read or will be reading, but these fourteen books (one more that I included in my intro to the week) are only some of the new titles available this week. What book are you most looking forward to reading this week or next month or in May?

The Randomizer selected Quantum to receive the free book. Q, please contact me a jangarho at gmail dot com, and we will work out the details for you to receive the book of your choice among the fourteen featured March 20-26 at Just Janga.

Celebrating March 27, Part VI

Three Books to Celebrate: Day Six

Earlier this month, I reviewed three of the March 27 releases that I’m celebrating this week. I’ve linked to the full reviews in my excerpts below.

A Week to Be Wicked

By Tessa Dare

Publisher: Avon

Release Date: March 27, 2012

(review posted at Just Janga)

I’ve been a Tessa Dare fan since I read and gave top scores to her entries in Avon’s Fan Lit competition. I’ve read and loved the eight novels and two novellas that preceded A Week to Be Wicked, but I think this is her best book yet. Minerva and Colin are both characters who fall within the conventions of romance fiction (the bluestocking and the rake) and yet manage to be fresh and original. They are funny and flawed and completely engaging—an unexpected pairing that, against all odds, feels perfect.

At Your Pleasure

By Meredith Duran

Publisher: Pocket

Release Date: March 27, 2012

(review posted at The Romance Dish)

Meredith Duran is quite simply one of the best writers I’ve read. Her characterization is superb, her plots compelling, and her prose lucid and powerful. She also offers her readers the gift of difference in a genre more accustomed to sameness. Duran sets At Your Pleasure in England in 1715, the year after the coronation of George I. The possibility of a Jacobite rebellion was real; some scholars believe it was a more serious threat that the rebellion of 1745. Most readers of historical romance fiction are familiar with the rudiments of the latter rebellion, having encountered references to Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Battle of Culloden, and Cumberland’s brutal suppression in novels from Georgette Heyer’s The Masqueraders to those by Veryan, Gabaldon, Canham, and countless others. The political climate of England in 1715 when Catholics, including Catholic aristocrats, were denied the right to worship, to vote, to be educated is less familiar. Duran captures the realities of the period without slamming her readers in the face with a history book. And she combines historical accuracy with emotionally credible actions and reactions.

Confessions from an Arranged Marriage

By Miranda Neville

Publisher: Avon

Release Date: March 27, 2012

(review posted at Heroes and Heartbreakers)

Minerva’s deepening respect for the man Blake is empowers him to become more, and he is able when she needs him most to be commanding and powerful, every inch the duke with generations of dukes behind him. Perhaps the greatest evidence of the changes in Blake is his acceptance of what he is and what he is not, a self-acceptance tempered by his regret that he cannot be the man Minerva wants. And Minerva’s response to his self-acceptance is a lovely reminder that these two have grown into two people who like and respect one another as well as healthily lusting after one another.


“I’m not going to lead the party and I’ll never be a member of the government, let alone Prime Minister. I wish I could be the man you want, Minnie, but I don’t have it in me.”


“You are the man I want. You don’t have to be anyone different.”


Sigh! I’m a believer. Happily ever after all the way.





The three are very different books—a Regency road book (Dare), an early Georgian romance with a political subtext (Duran), and a forced marriage tale between opposites (Neville), but each features characters that capture the reader’s imagination and affections, plots that compel the reader’s attention, and prose that delights the reader’s ear. I highly recommend all three.


 Adding these three books to my March 27 list brings the total number of reviews to eight—five historical romances, two contemporary romances, and one women’s fiction novel. That a close approximation of my reading in romance/women’s fiction generally. What subgenres do your read most often?


Remember that the winner of the free book will be chosen randomly from among those who comment on Tuesday-Sunday posts. 

Celebrating March 27, Part V

The Cowboy Takes a Bride

By Lori Wilde

Publisher: Avon

Released Date: March 27, 2012

Mariah Callahan has spent eleven years as an assistant to the best wedding planner in Chicago, and then she’s fired, blackballed, and standing in unemployment lines. Just when things are their bleakest, Mariah gets a phone call telling her that her father is dead and she has inherited his ranch. Her father walked out on her and her mother the week before Mariah’s seventh birthday, and Mariah has seen him only once since then, an unannounced visit when she was fourteen that was a major embarrassment for her. But maybe her inheritance can be sold for enough money to set Mariah up as competition for her former boss. With this plan in mind, Mariah leaves for Jubilee, Texas, cutting horse capital of the world.

The first person she encounters in Jubilee is a drunk, nearly naked cowboy in a gold-plated horse trough. The drunk is Joe Daniels, who has used alcohol to escape from the pain of losing his friend and mentor, Dutch Callahan, two years to the day after the death of Joe’s wife, Becca. Joe and Dutch shared a dream of Some Kind of Miracle, a hose Dutch found and trained and that Joe owned and rode, winning the $400,000 purse of the Fort Worth Triple Crown Futurity. Dutch’s death just gives more impetus to the dream. Joe can’t believe the attraction he feels for Dutch’s city kitten daughter. She’s all wrong for him. Mariah is not any happier that she can’t seem to get the sexy cowboy with a smart mouth and a kind heart off her mind.

On the surface, Mariah and Joe are all wrong for each other. She’s a city girl who has never belonged anywhere. She believes her mother is the only person who ever loved her, and her mother, having found her true love late in life, is living happily with him in Argentina, unaware of the dire straits her daughter is in. Mariah is convinced that her only hope for happiness is selling her inheritance quickly and getting out of Jubilee. She fears Joe is a man cut in the pattern of her father. She has no intention of taking second place to a horse again. Joe’s Texas roots are deep. His land belonged to four generations of his forebears, and Joe can’t imagine living anywhere else. His grief over his wife’s death almost broke him, and he is convinced Becca was his one true love and that he will have no second chances. Can these two very different people, both fearful of risking their hearts, move past all that separates them to accept the love that can heal the wounds of the past and offer a happy future?

Joe and Mariah are likeable characters. It’s easy to understand their caution about each other, and the two-month period that Joe needs to buy the land from Mariah gives them time with each other, time to change Mariah’s mind about Jubilee, and time for their passion for each other to become greater than their fears. From the beginning, the exchanges between the two are funny and smart without detracting from the emotional appeal of a plot that includes a great deal of sorrow. There’s a strong secondary plot involving Joe’s former sister-in-law and life-long friend that substantively adds to the book’s appeal.

This is the first book in a new series for Wilde. Readers who enjoyed Wilde’s Twilight, Texas books and readers who are fans of the small-town subgenre will want to add The Cowboy Takes a Wife to their reading lists. Based on the first book, the new series will have the charm and colorful characters that made the Twilight series popular.

Are cowboys your weakness? Or do you prefer more polished heroes?

Celebrating March 27, Part IV

A Book to Celebrate: Day Four

Woodrose Mountain

(Hope’s Crossing, Book 2)

Publisher: HQN

Release Date: March 27, 2012

Evie Blanchard is a woman in retreat. Six months ago she left behind a life that had been fulfilling but also filled with devastating loss and moved to Hope’s Crossing, a small Colorado town, where she works at String Fever, the local bead shop. She finds making jewelry satisfying, and she develops meaningful friendships among the women who patronize the bead shop. She particularly values her friendships with the shop owner, Claire Bradford (Blackberry Winter), and Katherine Thorne. Although she sometimes thinks of her former life as a pediatric physical therapist, she can no longer pay the price of emotional involvement with her patients. The quiet, risk-free contentment of her new life is exactly what she wants.

One day that contentment is threatened when Brodie Thorne, a wealthy businessman in Hope’s Crossing, asks her to be in charge of physical therapy for his fifteen-year-old daughter Taryn, who sustained a serious head injury in an automobile accident in which another teenage girl was killed. Taryn’s lack of cooperation with her therapists at the rehabilitation center where she is being treated has led to the decision that she may make more progress at home. Brodie is determined that his daughter have the best care his money can provide, and his mother thinks that includes Evie as her physical therapist. Evie turns Brodie down, but when Katherine begs her to reconsider, Evie agrees to work with Taryn on a temporary basis, setting up her program and approving a physical therapist to replace her.

There is a strong attraction between Evie and Brodie. Both of them resist it initially, and even after they surrender to it, they clash on Taryn’s treatment. Evie’s methods bring about marked improvement in Taryn who makes progress with mobility and language skills. But when Brodie discovers that Evie’s has encouraged visits from the young man he holds responsible for his daughter’s injuries and her friend’s death, the developing relationship between them ends amid anger and accusations. However, Taryn’s courage proves the catalyst that frees them all from guilt and fear and offers the promise of an HEA.

I like small town stories, and I read a lot of them. I consider Thayne’s Hope’s Crossing series a standout in the genre. First, the town is not idealized. People know one another and are involved in one another’s lives to a greater degree that would be common in an urban setting, but Hope’s Crossing and its citizens have their share of problems. Marriages break up, kids get in trouble, and tragedies strike without discrimination. Second, Hope’s Crossing and its people are not generic. This is a specific place, and the characters are individuals. Because the characters and their problems seemed rooted in reality, I believed in them and cared about them.

Evie’s running away from her home and her job after the death of her adopted daughter may seem weak, but people handle grief in different ways. And Evie’s love for Taryn and the work she does with her proves her heart is bigger than her fear of being hurt again. Brodie is a flawed hero. Not only is he a father who was sometimes too busy for his daughter before her accident, but his guilt and his love for Taryn lead him to behave like a jerk at times. But his need to blame someone for what happened and his determination to protect his child from anything or anyone he perceived as harmful to her were understandable given the man he was and the accident and all that followed it. Thayne resists the temptation to turn Taryn into a suffering saint. She has the typical teen’s self-absorption. She is angry and frightened by her condition, and she feels guilty about one friend’s death and another’s vilification. Sometimes she can be a brat. But she is also capable of empathy, courage, and self-sacrifice, and it’s a delight to watch her begin to grow up.

Woodrose Mountain will join Blackberry Summer on my keeper shelf. And I have Sweet Laurel Falls marked as a must-read on my book calendar. It is a reunion story (my favorite trope) featuring Maura McKnight-Parker, the mother of the teen who died in the accident that injured Taryn. I look forward to revisiting Hope’s Crossing when this third book is released in October 2012.

Do you like books with small-town settings? What are your favorites?

Celebrating March 27, Part III

A Book to Celebrate: Day Three

Master of Sin

By Maggie Robinson

Publisher: Kensington

Release Date: March 27, 2012

Andrew Rossiter is a male prostitute who is paying a return visit to Duca Allesandro di Maneiro and his wife. Rossiter, who fathered the couple’s heir, two-and-a- half-year-old Marco, has been hired to impregnate the duchess a second time. The key players are on board the duke’s yacht when assassins board it, killing the duke and duchess. Andrew escapes with the child, but knowing his son’s life remains in jeopardy, he establishes a new identity on an isolated island in the Outer Hebrides. Andrew Rossiter has become Andrew Ross, a widower with one child.

Waiting for him on the island is Gemma Peartree, an impertinent sprite who speaks six languages. Their meeting is unpropitious. Gemma has been waiting on the island for two weeks. The house Andrew has purchased through agents is in disrepair, Gemma’s possessions have been lost, and the island is cold and wind-blown. Gemma badly needs a bath and a change of clothing. When Andrew first sees her, she looks more like scullery maid than a governess.  Andrew is eager to be rid of her. Not only is she not governess material, but also the inexplicable attraction he feels threatens his vow to put sin behind him. More important, Marco, who has been ripped from all that is familiar to him, forms a quick attachment to Gemma, who is gentle with him and the only person on the Gaelic-speaking island who speaks Italian. And, as Gemma keeps reminding Andrew, she has a contract.

Both Andrew and Gemma are haunted by their pasts and protective of their secrets. Andrew’s past is more deeply shadowed than Gemma’s. His angelic looks are ironic in view of his sordid secrets and the dark forces that shaped him from childhood. He believes himself incapable of giving or receiving love and unworthy of happiness. It will take all Gemma’s stubbornness and all her wiles to persuade Andrew that he has a heart that can be filled with love for her and for his son, to convince him that a future untainted by the past is within his reach.

Redemption stories are among my favorites, and this one is superb. First of all, it truly is about a man in need of redemption. Readers familiar with Mistress by Marriage will know that Andrew Rossiter is no titled hero suffering from a guilty conscience over wasting his substance on drink and doxies. He is, as Gemma recognizes full well, “a man who had done everything with everybody.” But the most fertile ground for love’s redemptive powers is often found in the hearts of those who believe themselves unfit to be redeemed. Second, both Andrew and Gemma grow during the course of the book. Revelation of secrets sheds healing light, and the love they feel for one another and for Marc frees them to become more fully the selves they were meant to be.

This final book in Robinson’s Courtesan Court series is a dark story, but it is also one filled with flashes of humor and seductive sensuality with characters who compel the reader's interest. It has the added benefit of Robinson’s lucid, skillfully crafted prose. If you’ve read Robinson’s other Courtesan Court books (Mistress by Mistake, Mistress by Midnight, and Mistress by Marriage), you probably have Master of Sin on your TBB list. If you haven’t read Robinson yet, what are you waiting for? Master of Sin can be read as a standalone. And I’m betting that you’ll find these books the verbal equivalent of Lay’s potato chips: bet you can’t read just one.

How do you feel about redemption stories? What are your favorites?