The Shocking Secret of a Guest at the Wedding
The Shocking Secret of a Guest at the Wedding by Victoria Alexander is $1.99! And boy, is that a mouthful! This book is a historical romance and was also mentioned by Rachel of Northshire Bookstores in today’s post on Locally Sourced Romance. Some readers loved the back and forth banter between the hero and heroine, while others felt the characterization was a bit inconsistent at times. The book also includes a fake engagement and I know how much we love those here at the Bitchery!
The bride and groom cordially request your presence for a wedding at Millworth Manor…
Guests will include Jackson Quincy Graham Channing, New York City banker, and Lady Theodosia “Teddy” Winslow, wedding planner to the finest families in England.
Introductions shall be followed by light conversation, dancing, flirtation, arguing, reconciliation, and an impulsive kiss that both parties are quite certain they will never repeat.
Until they do.
A mutually beneficial fake engagement will be accompanied by all manner of very real complications, scandalous revelations, nefarious schemes, and one inescapable conclusion:
That true love–unlike the perfect wedding–is impossible to plan…
Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
Find on Scribd →This book is on sale at:
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!The Prince Who Loved Me
The Prince Who Loved Me by Karen Hawkins is $1.99! This is the first book in the Oxenburg Princes historical romance series. The hero, a Russian prince, wants to ruin his grandmother’s engagement scheming, so he runs off to Scotland and finds our “brainy, bookish, and bespectacled” heroine. Yeah…I’m buying this one. Though the jacket copy mentions this is similar to the story of Cinderella, some readers felt that was a bit of a stretch. It has a 3.8-star rating on GoodReads.
A handsome, rakish prince who doesn’t believe in true love meets a stubborn lass who will settle for nothing less…
In a lighthearted retelling of a classic fairy tale, bestselling author Karen Hawkins gives Cinderella a Scottish twist!
Prince Alexsey Romanovin enjoys his carefree life, flirting—and more—with every lovely lady who crosses his path. But when the interfering Grand Duchess Natasha decides it’s time for her grandson to wed, Alexsey finds himself in Scotland, determined to foil her plans. Brainy, bookish, and bespectacled, Bronwyn Murdoch seems the perfect answer—she isn’t at all to the duchess’ taste.
Living at the beck and call of her ambitious stepmother and social butterfly stepsisters, Bronwyn has little time for a handsome flirt—no matter how intoxicating his kisses are. After all, no spoiled, arrogant prince would be seriously interested in a firm-minded female like herself. So . . . wouldn’t it be fun to turn his “game” upside down and prove that an ordinary woman can bring a prince to his knees?
Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
This book is on sale at:
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!To Catch a Countess
To Catch a Countess by Patricia Grasso is 99c! Full disclosure, Patricia Grasso once gave me a ride to a T stop following an RWA chapter meeting I attended out of curiosity. This is the last book in the Douglas Trilogy, though each book focuses on a different Douglas sister. Though readers mentioned how they enjoyed the emotions shared between the hero and heroine, though some took issues with the hero’s actions. It has a 3.9-star rating on GoodReads.
The most outrageous and reckless of the Douglas sisters, Victoria marries Alexander Emerson, the Earl of Winchester. She curbs her wild ways and tries to be a devoted wife. Everything would be perfect if not for her shameful secret. Victoria cannot read or write. She is determined to overcome her disability because she fears her sophisticated husband’s former mistresses will lure him away.
Alexander agreed to marry Victoria to right a grievous wrong that his late father perpetrated on the Douglas family. He soon realizes Victoria will make the perfect wife. Her sensual beauty and bright spirit captivate him. Could their marriage be a love match after all?
Ugly rumors and a malicious plot threaten to tear them apart. Can their marriage withstand the vicious ton? Will their love survive the scandal?
Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
This book is on sale at:
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!Never Less Than a Lady
Never Less Than a Lady by Mary Jo Putney is $1.99! There are a lot of Alex heroes in today’s sales, I just noticed. This is also the second book in the Lost Lords historical romance series. The heroine is a midwife and a widow, and the hero wants to shirk his duties and marry her. Some readers mention that the heroine’s first marriage is very unhealthy and abusive, so please keep that trigger warning in mind.
As the sole remaining heir to the Earl of Daventry, Alexander Randall knows his duty: find a wife and sire a son of his own. The perfect bride for a man in his position would be a biddable young girl of good breeding. But the woman who haunts his imagination is Julia Bancroft–a village midwife with a dark secret that thrusts her into Randall’s protection.
Within the space of a day, Julia has been abducted by her first husband’s cronies, rescued, and proposed to by a man she scarcely knows. Stranger still is her urge to say yes. A union with Alexander Randall could benefit them both, but Julia doubts she can ever trust her heart again, or the fervent desire Randall ignites. Yet perhaps only a Lost Lord can show a woman like Julia everything a true marriage can be…
Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
Find on Scribd →This book is on sale at:
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!
Don't want to miss an ebook sale? Sign up for our newsletter, and you'll get the week's available deals each Friday.
Sarah Mayberry’s new release “Anticipation” is $2.99 at bn.com http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/anticipation-sarah-mayberry/1121650469?ean=2940151840149&itm=1&usri=anticipation
I discovered this when I finished “Satisfaction” last night and immediately had to go find the next one.
“Anticipation” is also $2.99at Amazon and Kobo.
I love “Never Less Than a Lady”, but there was some horrific abuse in the heroine’s previous marriage. We don’t see it happening live, but it is described in flashback. Actually, the hero suffered some abuse as a child too.
But totally worth it for the great rescue of damsel in distress plot.
I am going to have to skip the Karen Hawkins. Why does a Duchess have a diminutive name rather than Natalia? It’s like Duchess Libby rather than Duchess Elizabeth. Why does a Scottish heroine have a misspelt Welsh name (-yn is the masculine ending)? Why can’t historical authors do a tiny bit of research on the names they use?
This is where I plug my genuine idea for some kind of unified genre grid authors could plot their books on. One of the axes would be “More obsessed with realism-less obsessed with realism”. It would be so helpful for nerds like me! I currently rely on my easily-fooled system of scouring descriptions for words like “light”, or plots that involve dukes marrying housemaids.
I agree with Cordy- we don’t expect a “cozy” mystery to have detailed “police procedural” accuracy. I am am very flexible in the “historical accuracy” requirements if the story engages me. However, I have little to no tolerance of repetitive descriptions, using “ton” in every paragraph, and glaring modern violations of etiquette, dialog, and behavior. It makes me experience that scene from “Somewhere in Time” where Christopher Reeve is with Jane Alexander and he reaches in his pocket for a coin and sees the MODERN COIN and is ripped back into his own time. I would love a Realistic-Just Pretend rating system.
Oh goodness, I like that idea! I don’t demand perfect accuracy from my historical romances – for example, I don’t mind when the characters decide they’re going to dispense with calling each other ‘Mr’ and ‘Miss’ and use each other’s first names with wild familiarity. But when you have a Regency heroine called Chelsea or Madison and the hero’s an English Duke called Ryan with no explanation at all why an English peer would have an Irish name… Nononono. For me, it’s like having the heroine say ‘Gee, my bad!’ Ripped straight out of happy Regency romanceland, right there.
I would love this system to pieces! There’s plenty of stuff I’m willing to handwave (I’m pretty sure young female characters in historicals spend much, much more time alone or unchaperoned than ever happened in real life) but I do need things to *feel* accurate. So names are important to me, and it’s important to me that the characters at least engage with their era’s mores, even if they reject them.
I just read a Carla Kelly book I picked up through the bestseller list here, Miss Grimsley’s Oxford Career, and I thought it was such a great example of “this probably didn’t ever happen” while still feeling true to the era it was exploring. The heroine is a young intellectual who would love to study at a university and live the life of the mind, but that’s nowhere near possible for a woman of the Regency, period. The jacket copy sort of implies that maybe she dresses as a boy and enrolls on the sly, which made me nervous, but I always feel in good hands with Carla Kelly, and indeed, the jacket copy totally lied. There was some minor dressing-as-a-boy for plot reasons, but it was realistically hard to pull off and not a main element of the book.
It’s a very mild traditional Regency (the sexiest thing that happens is a vaguely-described kiss) but it had so many elements I really loved (if you like frustrated female intellect… this is the book for you!) and that gave the *feeling* of the period, whether or not they were literally accurate. Which is really all I’m ever looking for!
Another author I find to consistently nail the period feeling is Cecilia Grant. (Plus, more racy content, if that’s your thing.)
I’d love to find others! Would this ever be a good idea for a blog post? How to find authors with the “feel” you like?
CP, I would very much like this feature as well. Carla Kelly has been SUCH a find for me, and she’s right up there with my most-trusted authors for tropes I would usually hesitate on, and pulls them off wonderfully.
It’s funny how we are okay with suspension of disbelief in some places but not others, but oof. It’s like reading a “hard” SF novel only to have people totally fine if blown out an airlock as long as they hold their breath. N… no.
Oh man, I would love something like that! I picked up a book set in the Regency this week and not more than two chapters in our intrepid heroine “caught a fat whiff” of her deliciously-scented hero. I wanted to throw my Kindle. I can be flexible on names as long as they -feel- right, and I’m not going to nitpick a word that was introduced to common vernacular within a decade or two, but there is just nothing like modern anachronisms to take me right out of the story.
I agree totally about the problems with anachronisms and modern mores in Regency (or other historical) novels. I have a particular problem with the young, almost always virginal, Regency heroines who jump into bed with the hero within hours of meeting, in a time when there was no reliable contraception, so was a very real risk of pregnancy and consequent social isolation. On the other hand, I have a problem with the emphasis on a legal marriage or marriage by the Church in earlier times when that was not the norm for anyone other than the upper classes.