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Daughter of the Forest
RECOMMENDED: Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier is $3.99! I have such incredibly fond memories of this book. My best friend and I read this together in high school, but my school library only had one copy, so I had to wait my turn. It’s a lovely fantasy novel with some romance, but be warned that it’s a slow, slow burn. Definitely trigger warnings for rape/sexual assault.
Juliet Marillier is a rare talent, a writer who can imbue her characters and her story with such warmth, such heart, that no reader can come away from her work untouched. Daughter of the Forest is a testimony to that talent, a first novel and the beginning of a trilogy like no other: a mixture of history and fantasy, myth and magic, legend and love.
Lord Colum of Sevenwaters is blessed with six sons: Liam, a natural leader; Diarmid, with his passion for adventure; twins Cormack and Conor, each with a different calling; rebellious Finbar, grown old before his time by his gift of the Sight; and the young, compassionate Padriac.
But it is Sorcha, the seventh child and only daughter, who alone is destined to defend her family and protect her land from the Britons and the clan known as Northwoods. For her father has been bewitched, and her brothers bound by a spell that only Sorcha can lift.
To reclaim the lives of her brothers, Sorcha leaves the only safe place she has ever known, and embarks on a journey filled with pain, loss, and terror.
When she is kidnapped by enemy forces and taken to a foreign land, it seems that there will be no way for her to break the spell that condemns all that she loves. But magic knows no boundaries, and Sorcha will have to choose between the life she has always known and a love that comes only once.
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Dukes Are Forever
Dukes Are Forever by Anna Harrington is $1.99! This is a historical romance with what seems to be an enemies to lovers plot. It’s the first book in the Secret Life of Scoundrels series. Some readers found the heroine a bit TSTL, but others really loved the hero and his quest for revenge.
ALL’S FAIR IN LOVE
Battlefields and barrooms hold much more interest for Edward Westover, Duke of Strathmore, than a little girl’s fondness for dolls and lace. When he takes possession of his enemy’s estate, everything that villain held dear-including his daughter-belongs to Edward. Hire a governess, arrange a dowry, give a few reassurances, and be off on his way-that’s Edward’s plan. But he’s in for the shock of his life. For his new ward is a beautiful, impetuous, and utterly irresistible woman . . .. . . AND WAR
Kate Benton is stunned. Who is this arrogant, infuriating man who’s invited himself into her home and taken over her life? Her vow: to do everything in her power to convince him to leave her-and Brambly House-alone. Yet as chilly days melt into sultry nights, Kate sees glimpses of kindness underneath Edward’s cool façade . . . and a passionate nature that takes her breath away. There’s so much she doesn’t know about this man. But does she dare trust this devilish duke with her heart?Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
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Marvelous
Marvelous by Molly Greeley is $2.99! We mentioned this one on Cover Awe. I thought Carrie reviewed it, but she may have just mentioned it in a previous Whatcha Reading. This one is a Kindle Daily Deal!
A mesmerizing novel set in the French royal court of Catherine de’ Medici during the Renaissance, which recreates the touching and surprising true story behind the Beauty and the Beast legend, from the acclaimed author of The Clergyman’s Wife and The Heiress.
1547: Pedro Gonsalvus, a young boy living on the island of Tenerife, understands that he is different from the other children in his village. He is mercilessly ridiculed for the shiny layer of hair covering his body from head to toe. When he is kidnapped off the beach near his home, he finds himself delivered by a slave broker into the dangerous and glamorous world of France’s royal court. There “Monsieur Sauvage,” as he is known, learns French, literature, and sword fighting, becoming an attendant to the French King Henri II and a particular favorite of his queen, the formidable Catherine de’ Medici. Queen Catherine considers herself a collector of unusual people and is fascinated by Pedro…and determined to find him a bride.
Catherine D’Aubray is a beautiful eighteen-year-old girl whose merchant father has fallen on hard times and offers up his daughter to Queen Catherine. The queen will pay his debts, and his daughter will marry Monsieur Sauvage.
Catherine meets Pedro for the first time on their wedding day. Barely recovered from the shock of her father’s betrayal, she soon finds herself christened “Madame Sauvage” by the royal courtiers, and must learn to navigate this strange new world, and the unusual man who is now her husband.
Gorgeously written, heartbreaking and hopeful, Marvelous is the portrait of a marriage, the story of a remarkable, resilient family, and an unforgettable reimaging of one of the world’s most beloved fairy tales.
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Shanna
Shanna by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss $1.99! Old skool alert! This is definitely a formative historical romance text, but that comes with a warning that it probably won’t hold up. One of the foreign covers of Shanna is my absolute favorite.
A pact is sealed in secret behind the foreboding walls of Newgate Prison. In return for a night of unparalleled pleasure, a dashing condemned criminal consents to wed a beautiful heiress, thereby rescuing her with his name from an impending and abhorred arranged union. But in the fading echoes of hollow wedding vows, a solemn promise is broken, as a sensuous free spirit takes flight to a lush Caribbean paradise, abandoning the stranger she married to face the gallows unfulfilled.
But Ruark Beauchamp’s destiny is now eternally intertwined with that of the tempestuous, intoxicating Shanna. He will be free . . . and he will find her. For no iron ever forged can imprison his resolute passion. And no hangman’s noose will deny Ruark the ecstasy that is rightfully his.
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Bitches, take it from a matriarchal bitch—old-skool bodice-rippers are like puberty: something we had to go through to get where we are today, but not something that we would necessarily want to repeat.
Best comment ever, DDD!
God, I remember the summer Shanna came out. I was working in a Hallmark store with a small book selection. We had a countertop dump of Shanna at the register. I had to endure so many comments about how the place was “on a slippery slope” if we were selling “smutty books.” The irony being is there was a section called “Men’s Books” which had actual erotica and we never got complaints about that.
I’ll confess I read the book during quiet times while I was on shift at the register, being careful not to bend the spine and using whatever copy was at the back of the dump at the moment. I’ve no desire to read it again, but it’s very tied up in the memories of that summer between Junior and Senior year of high school. Shanna and Star Wars.
We had a copy of Shanna bouncing around our house for years, but I never managed to read it. I definitely read The Flame and the Flower though. I just one clicked this bc one is never too old!
Marvelous is one of the best books I read last year; pick it up if you can!
@DDD- YEP! Just whew. The majority of my Joanna Lindseys and Catherine Coulters have gone on to different hands. They have Aged.
The Love Campaign by Laura Marquez Diamond is free until August 8 on Amazon US. I really enjoyed this whole series focused on a hockey team in Ohio.
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Diamond is also free on Amazon.ca! Thanks!
Oh, I discovered DAUGHTER OF THE FOREST sometime in high school too and *loved* it and the second book, SON OF THE SHADOWS, though I never could really get into the rest of the series.
They definitely get quite dark, which is not usually my thing, but high school me swooned over the romance. It’s a very slow burn romance, but the eventual payoff is *so* good, even now. I still reread them occasionally (and swoon over the romance/hero of DAUGHTER OF THE FOREST a bit).
HOWEVER – if I remember right, on a recent reread I realized the heroine is a teenager – 16 maybe? definitely not 18 – and married and pregnant by the end, which is uh…yikes. Her age isn’t particularly relevant to the plot and she doesn’t read as being that young IMO, so…I just kind of pretend she’s older, but just a heads up.
Definitely remember finding SHANNA in my mom’s nightstand drawer about the same age, and sneaking off to skim through it when I was home alone, lol.
Mistakes Were Made by Meryl Wilsner is $2.99!
Counterpoint: I almost threw my ereader at the wall when I hit the rape in Daughter of the Forest. I’m sure it seems necessary to the plot for some readers but not me. I may try another Marillier at some point– we’ll see.
I loved the original Sevenwaters trilogy, although the second trilogy didn’t really work for me. Historical fantasy isn’t usually my thing at all, but Marillier was worth an exception.
Daughter of the Forest handles rape and its aftermath better than just about anything else I’ve ever read. That scene is harrowing and horrible and absolutely unpleasant to read, and it changes the heroine forever. There’s nothing titillating about it, nothing purposeful about it, nothing about giving her opportunities to grow. It just happens to her, through no fault of her own, and she’s left to deal with the consequences and the trauma, and she’s never the same again. But at the same time, it doesn’t destroy her.
Most of the time, it seems to me, when you have rape in a novel, it’s there to break a character, explain the character’s strength, or titillate. Marillier does none of these things; she just shows the senseless brutality of it and the aftermath.
This is part of something larger that Marillier does really well: she shows the effects of standard classic narrative tropes on women without a romanticizing filter, and she doesn’t let the reader look the other way. Sorcha literally cannot speak to explain what happened to her or defend herself or even scream when she’s brutally violated because her brothers would bear the cost, just as up to this day women are often expected to stay silent for the sake of men. The heroine of the third book is a teenage temptress sent by her relatives to play Delilah for an older man…and she doesn’t want to; she sees him as an old man and her duty and is completely torn up about everything. She is a victim, not a villain.
Anyway. Personally, I didn’t really find any of the romances in the books overly convincing, but I loved Marillier’s treatment of the female experience, and as a SA survivor, I thought the depiction of Sorcha’s healing process was incredibly well done.
Oh Shanna, I read that in junior high school in the back of the stacks at the library. And DDD nails it (as usual) I just need to see this again:
DiscoDollyDeb says:
August 4, 2023 at 11:37 am
+101
Bitches, take it from a matriarchal bitch—old-skool bodice-rippers are like puberty: something we had to go through to get where we are today, but not something that we would necessarily want to repeat.
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Secrets of a Summer Night (The Wallflowers Book 1) by Lisa Kleypas is $1.99