Saturday Review: Lost in a Royal Kiss

Lost in a Royal Kiss

By Vanessa Kelly

Publisher: Zebra

Release Date: 

November 26, 2013

Linnet St. Clare may look like an angel, but there is nothing angelic about her temper or her determination. She has had to be strong. When her father’s death meant her mother’s accepting a position as sub-governess in the royal household, Linnet assumed responsibility for her younger brother and sister. Linnet’s mother may be gently pushing her towards marriage, but Linnet herself has accepted that she is destined for spinsterhood because she can’t leave her siblings. So fierce has she become in her role as caretaker and protector that she frightens off prospective suitors. What Linnet doesn’t yet know is that one man refuses to be frightened off. Indeed, he has decided Linnet is exactly whom he wants as his wife.

As King George’s liaison to the Home Office, Sir Anthony Tait is a powerful man at Court. He is a man accustomed to seeing his plans reach fruition, and no plan is more important to him than making Linnet his wife. Linnet’s independence and competence that make others look askance just make Sir Anthony all the more certain she is the one for him. If gaining her hand requires subterfuge, he is persuaded that his and Linnet’s happiness will be worth the unusual exercise of his skills.

Linnet is comfortable taking charge, but when Dominic Hunter, the orphaned son of a butcher who has been reared with the royal princes due to the queen’s misguided efforts at a social experiment, attacks Prince Ernest, Linnet knows she must have help to protect young Dominic from the consequences of his folly. She turns to Sir Anthony for help because she trusts his integrity and compassion, she knows he will understand Dominic’s isolation, and she believes he has the power to act.

As Linnet and Sir Anthony work together to solve the problems of Dominic and others, they must balance the call on their consciences with the need for pragmatism and avoiding offense to the royal family. Can they find the time to respond to the call of their own hearts in the midst of their maneuvering for the good of others?

Lost in a Royal Kiss is a prequel to Vanessa Kelly’s new series The Renegade Royals. Set in 1786, a quarter century before the Regency, it introduces fourteen-year-old Dominic Hunter and the events that shaped him into the man readers will encounter in the first two books of the series. It also gives readers a delightful Georgian love story. Linnet is an endearing heroine—strong without becoming a modern miss in costume, caring, and stubborn with a willingness to sacrifice for what she considers the right thing. Anthony is a man at ease with his power but uncorrupted by it. He understands himself, and he understands Linnet. One of the things I liked best about the story is that both Linnet and Anthony understand the other better than anyone realizes.

Because the two are so tied to court life, readers get an unusually close look at the privileges and precariousness of those who are part of court circles. It is a different setting and one I really enjoyed.

A good prequel should give the reader an engaging story on its own merits and whet the reader’s appetite for the larger story. Lost in a Royal Kiss succeeds on both counts. I give the novella high marks, and I eagerly await the Regency-set historicals Secrets of a Royal Bodyguard (January 7, 2014) and Confessions of a Royal Bridegroom (April 1, 2014).

I’ve been a fan of Georgian romances since I read Georgette Heyer’s These Old Shades. I have since read and loved Georgians by Patricia Veryan, Jo Beverley, Eloisa James, and Elizabeth Hoyt among others. What’s your favorite Georgian romance?

Review: His Mistletoe Bride

His Mistletoe Bride

By Vanessa Kelly

Publisher: Zebra Books

Release Date: October 2, 2012

Phoebe Linville has never quite felt as if she really belonged in the New Jersey Quaker community where she has lived since her father’s death with her brother George and his family. Maybe it’s her memories of the tales her mother told her, stories of the life she lived before she married Phoebe’s father, a Quaker merchant from America, stories of the days when she was Lady Elspeth, only daughter of the seventh Earl of Merritt, that make Phoebe feel different. Or maybe it’s the temper she struggles to control that keeps her from being an obedient Quaker. Whatever the reason, Phoebe accepts her maternal grandfather’s invitation to come home to England. But after a long, difficult journey, she is greeted by her distant cousin Major Lucas Stanton with the news that her grandfather had died and his final wish was that Phoebe marry his heir, Major Stanton.  

Lucas Stanton is not enthusiastic about his new responsibilities as the eighth Earl of Merritt. A soldier’s life suited him, as did maintaining distance from his cousin, Stephen Mallory, Marquess of Silverton, from whom he has been estranged for a decade. At first Phoebe is just one more responsibility that Lucas feels duty bound to accept, but as they come to know each other, he develops affection and respect for the young woman who is far more spirited than he expected a Quaker miss to be. She’s also far more beautiful than he expected, and he begins to think marriage to this “responsibility” might be far more satisfying than he imagined.

Phoebe quickly comes to love her new family, who welcome her warmly into their home and their hearts, but it is Lucas on whom she grows to depend for security in the London social world that often confuses her and sometimes troubles her. He also evokes feelings in her that she’s certain are most inappropriate for a Quaker. But however attractive she finds Lucas, she knows he is still very much a soldier at heart, antithetical to her beliefs, and she is determined to marry for love, while Lucas is determined to avoid the messy emotion at all costs. But a run-in with a cad at a ball and the very emotional kisses that she and Lucas exchange afterward leaves her with no choice but to marry him to avoid plunging her new-found family into scandal.

Phoebe knows she loves Lucas, and everyone but Phoebe and Lucas knows that he loves her. But the two of them are very different, and their differences are exacerbated by conditions at Mistletoe Manor and the troubles in the village. On the subject of the smuggling ring that is operating on Merritt land, Lucas is strictly law and order, and Phoebe is all compassion and mercy. Christmas is the season that honors a miracle of love, but will even the season in a house full of servants named Christmas be enough to bring this pair of opposites their own miracle?

I’ve been a Vanessa Kelly fan since I read an ARC of her debut book, Mastering the Marquess, which reminded me in many ways of my beloved traditional Regencies, which had all but disappeared at that point. One of the things I liked best was the strong, resourceful heroine who was also flawed and vulnerable. That has become the pattern of Kelly’s books, and it’s one of the reasons they are all favorites of mine. Phoebe is no exception. I loved her independence, her honesty, her refusal to forsake her beliefs. And while I may have thought Lucas should have recovered from that early love affair sooner, I both liked and understood him. There’s a particularly revealing passage early on that makes clear how he has been shaped by his experiences as a warrior:

“No one who had ever lived through war could ever completely turn his back on it. And part of him didn’t want to. Not the killing, of course, but the purpose and clarity that came with knowing what must be done, and then doing it. No messy relationships or extravagant emotions, no broken promises or betrayals that could turn a man’s life into a complicated hell.”

From that point, I knew this man and wanted to see him find his HEA.

There are Christmas books in which the holiday is just a backdrop, a stage setting that could be changed without significantly altering the story. Then, there are others in which the season is an inextricable part of the story, stories whose meaning would change in essential ways if the setting were different. His Mistletoe Bride belongs in the latter group. It’s a lovely, heartwarming story about romantic love, familial love, and love of one’s fellow human beings; it’s a story about forgiving and growing and opening one’s heart. It’s the best kind of Christmas romance. I highly recommend it.

What are some of your favorite holiday romances in which the holiday is a significant part of the story?

Redeeming the Heroine: Vanessa Kelly's MY FAVORITE COUNTESS

Life has not been kind to Bathsheba Compton, the widowed Countess of Randolph since her plan to marry the wealthy Earl of Trask ended disastrously two years ago—for her, at least. Bad investments and poor harvests have left the family coffers empty and the debts ruinous. Only Bathsheba’s responsibilities have not diminished. Her best option appears to be bartering her beauty for marriage to a wealthy and generous gentleman.


But before Bathsheba can leave Yorkshire for her husband hunt in London, she meets Dr. John Blackmore. Her response to the handsome physician is instantaneous and visceral. She knows he’s all wrong for her, and she has sworn that never again will passion control her. But circumstances keep throwing them together, and her resolution proves futile when she realizes passion is just part of what she feels for John Blackmore.

John is fighting his own demons. Driven by an old guilt, he challenges established medical practices and ignores those who warn him against the house calls he makes to patients in London’s most dangerous slums. Even his love for Bathsheba is not enough to persuade him to surrender his obsession to save the lives of poor women and their babies.


The journey to an HEA is not an easy one for these two complicated characters, but it is one that will touch the reader’s heart and remain in her memory after the last page is turned.

Those of you familiar with Vanessa Kelly’s second book, Sex and the Single Earl, will recognize Bathsheba as the rejected mistress who plots to keep Simon and Sophie apart. The redemption theme is a popular one in romance fiction, as evidenced by the most recent AAR top 100 poll in which Loretta Chase’s Lord of Scoundrels and Lisa Kleypas’s Dreaming of You claimed the top two spots, but most romance novels that feature the redemption theme, like these two classic romances, focus on the hero’s transformation from an incomplete, morally flawed character to one who is whole and healed. Redeemed heroines are uncommon except in inspirationals such as Francine Rivers’s Redeeming Love. I was privileged to read a draft of Sex and the Single Earl, and I commented to the author then that Bathsheba was an atypical villainess, one who clearly had an interesting story of her own. I was delighted when I learned that Bathsheba would be redeemed as the heroine of the third book in the series.

My Favorite Countess lived up to all my expectations. As a heroine-redeemed tale, I rank it with Edith Layton’s To Wed a Stranger and Mary Balogh’s The Christmas Bride. Kelly develops Bathsheba’s character arc skillfully and realistically. Early in the novel, the reader learns that there is more to Bathsheba than the arrogant, seductive beauty that her world sees. Yet even as the reader learns the countess’s secrets and develops sympathy for her, an awareness persists of her less than admirable values and the ease with which she employs her viper’s tongue on those who displease her. It’s not until near the end of the book when Bathsheba learns to place someone else’s needs before her own that her transformation is complete.

John Blackmore is as unusual a hero as Bathsheba is a heroine. As a physician, he would have been a rare hero; as an accoucheur, the 19th-century version of an obstetrician, he’s even rarer. He’s also great looking, intelligent, honorable, and passionate about his vocation and his woman. I fell for him in a big way. Once you learn that Kelly says her inspirations for John were Hugh Jackman and Patrick Dempsey, you’ll understand why I found him irresistible.

Another thing I loved about My Favorite Countess was the role played by the hero and heroine of Mastering the Marquess, Kelly’s first novel and a book that I raved about at various online sites. I’m a series addict who rejoices to see favorite characters reappear but prefers them to contribute to the story. Meredith and Silverton play significant roles in this story. In fact, the friendship that develops between Bathsheba and Meredith was another of my favorite parts of the novel.

Reading My Favorite Countess, a reader will understand why Booklist named Vanessa Kelly one of the new stars of historical romance. Richly complex characters, smoking hot love scenes, and elements that set the book apart from the usual romance—My Favorite Countess has all of these things and more. The book will officially be released on May 3. Mark that date on your calendar and look for My Favorite Countess, another Janga five-star recommendation, at your favorite bookstore, or go ahead and pre-order it online now.

What’s your favorite redemption-themed romance? What authors have joined your auto-buy list with their first novel?