The Muse of Maiden Lane
The Muse of Maiden Lane by Mimi Matthews is $1.99 and a KDD! This is book four in The Belles of London series. I don’t think we’ve featured this one on sale before, but the series is highly recommended.
A 2024 BookBub Best Historical Romance!
One of Parade’s Best New Books of November 2024!
One of Amazon’s and Apple’s Best Romance Books of November 2024!A silver-haired equestrienne and a charismatic artist turn a scandalous bargain into a vibrant portrait of love.
Stella Hobhouse is a brilliant rider, stalwart friend, skilled sketch artist—and completely overlooked. Her outmodish gray hair makes her invisible to London society. Combined with her brother’s pious restrictions and her dwindling inheritance, Stella is on the verge of a lifetime marooned in Derbyshire as a spinster. Unless she does something drastic…like posing for a daring new style of portrait by the only man who’s ever really seen her.
Aspiring painter Edward “Teddy” Hayes knows true beauty when he sees it. He would never ask Stella to risk her reputation as an artist’s model but in the five years since a virulent bout of scarlet fever left him partially paralyzed, Teddy has learned to heed good fortune when he finds it. He’ll do anything to persuade his muse to pose for him, even if he must offer her a marriage of convenience.
After all, though Teddy has yearned to trace Stella’s luminous beauty on canvas since their chance meeting, her heart is what he truly aches to capture….
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Island Queen by Vanessa Riley is $2.99 and a KDD! This is Riley’s first work of historical fiction as opposed to historical romance. It’s about Dorothy Kirwan Thomas, a free Black woman who achieved great wealth. Have you read it?
A remarkable, sweeping historical novel based on the incredible true life story of Dorothy Kirwan Thomas, a free woman of color who rose from slavery to become one of the wealthiest and most powerful landowners in the colonial West Indies.
Born into slavery on the tiny Caribbean island of Montserrat, Doll bought her freedom—and that of her sister and her mother—from her Irish planter father and built a legacy of wealth and power as an entrepreneur, merchant, hotelier, and planter that extended from the marketplaces and sugar plantations of Dominica and Barbados to a glittering luxury hotel in Demerara on the South American continent.
Vanessa Riley’s novel brings Doll to vivid life as she rises above the harsh realities of slavery and colonialism by working the system and leveraging the competing attentions of the men in her life: a restless shipping merchant, Joseph Thomas; a wealthy planter hiding a secret, John Coseveldt Cells; and a roguish naval captain who will later become King William IV of England.
From the bustling port cities of the West Indies to the forbidding drawing rooms of London’s elite, Island Queen is a sweeping epic of an adventurer and a survivor who answered to no one but herself as she rose to power and autonomy against all odds, defying rigid eighteenth-century morality and the oppression of women as well as people of color. It is an unforgettable portrait of a true larger-than-life woman who made her mark on history.
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The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean is $2.99! I mentioned this on Get Rec’d for people who want horror with bookish themes. Please check triggers for this one, as I remember it being pretty graphic!
Out on the Yorkshire Moors lives a secret line of people for whom books are food, and who retain all of a book’s content after eating it. To them, spy novels are a peppery snack; romance novels are sweet and delicious. Eating a map can help them remember destinations, and children, when they misbehave, are forced to eat dry, musty pages from dictionaries.
Devon is part of The Family, an old and reclusive clan of book eaters. Her brothers grow up feasting on stories of valor and adventure, and Devon—like all other book eater women—is raised on a carefully curated diet of fairytales and cautionary stories.
But real life doesn’t always come with happy endings, as Devon learns when her son is born with a rare and darker kind of hunger—not for books, but for human minds.
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Sylvia’s Second Act by Hillary Yablon is $2.99! This features a heroine who is starting over at sixty-three and it looks very fun! Shana was reading it in a previous Whatcha Reading.
Her husband’s cheating on her. She hates Boca. Sylvia is mad and she isn’t going to take it anymore. She’s moving back north, to the city of her dreams—with her best friend, Evie, in tow. Think a screwball comedy featuring a sophisticated Thelma and Louise with martinis in hand . . .
When sixty-three-year-old Sylvia finds her husband in bed with the floozy of their Boca retirement community, she’s shocked and furious . . . at first. By the time her head stops spinning, Sylvia realizes that actually, this isn’t what she wants anymore anyway.
So she enlists her best friend, the glamorous older widow Evie, to join her in setting up a new life in Manhattan. Sylvia’s ex-husband may have lost her life savings, but Sylvia and Evie are scrappy and determined, unopposed to pawning jewelry and roughing it in tiny apartments. And before long, Sylvia signs on to revive her decades-old wedding planning business with a former professional rival. Sylvia has a lot to prove, and beneath it all, she can’t help but wonder: Will she ever be able to get back into the dating game?
Sylvia doesn’t want to be twenty-five or thirty again. Her age gives her wisdom, experience, and perspective. A career, sex, fun, and a new romance—her entire second act is stretched out in front of her, beckoning to her. It’s her time, and watch out, world, Sylvia is coming!
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I was excited to read MUSE OF MAIDEN LANE because a) Teddy is from Matthews’ Parish Orphans of Devon series and I loved him there and b) the Belles of London series is solid. I was a little disappointed—it was good, but not as good as I was hoping. A little too slow and low-conflict, I think I recall. I would still recommend it, but it’s not my favorite Matthews book (those would be GENTLEMAN JIM and RULES FOR RUIN.)
I don’t think I could read a book about a woman who made a fortune and chose to own slaves, especially when she began life as a slave herself.
Vanessa Riley participated in an author event I watched, and she seemed great—very intelligent, knowledgeable about history, etc—but she’s on my “nope authors” list due to some of her books being really problematic. At least one or two have included pretty bad ableism, for example, and they seem to be heavy on female suffering. Just not my thing.
To be clear, obviously women have suffered throughout history, often needlessly. I just don’t necessarily want to read about a FMC being repeatedly victimized/put through hell—especially when it’s the result of misogyny—on the way to her HEA.
$.99:
– Starf**ker: a Red Carpet novella by Kali Decker
– Nepo Baby: a Red Carpet short by Kali Decker
– Spoiled Brit: a Red Carpet novella by Kali Decker
– Meeting Millie (Oxford Romance Book 1) by Clare Ashton
– Discovering Nicola (Oxford Romance Book 3) by Clare Ashton
– Shattered: A New Orleans Witches Family Saga by Sarah M. Cradit
– The Woodcarver’s Model by Peter E. Fenton
– Danger Next Door by Donna Alward
– Her Savage Mountain Man: A Mountain Man Enemies to Lovers Romance (Her Savage Mountain Men Book 1) by Penelope Wylde
– Claimed by Her Mountain Man: A Steamy Mountain Man Friends to Lovers Romance (Her Savage Mountain Men Book 2) by Penelope Wylde
– His Snowbound Mountain Virgin: A Mountain Man friends to lovers Romance (Her Savage Mountain Men Book 4) by Penelope Wylde
– One Good Puck: an age gap hockey romance (Denver Bashers Series Book 5) by Sarah Smith
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– The Storm and the Darkness: A New Orleans Witches Family Saga (The House of Crimson and Clover Book 1) by Sarah M. Cradit
– April Seduction (The Silver Foxes of Westminster Book 11) by Merry Farmer
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– Training Maisy: A Steamy BBW Second Chance Standalone Romance by Samantha Morgan
The Book Eaters is currently being released free in audio in podcast format, from Stories from Among the Stars podcast, to May 29. Make sure to download before then if you’re not listening in real time.
$.50:
– At Close Range by Tara Taylor Quinn
– The Holiday Visitor by Tara Taylor Quinn
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– Only for Tonight by Kendall Ryan
– Fang: Lotus MC: San Antonio by Cala Riley
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– Dark and Stormy Knights: A Paranormal Fantasy Anthology (Kate Daniels)
by Jim Butcher, Ilona Andrews
– When the Tides Held the Moon by Venessa Vida Kelley
– Tsarina: A Novel by Ellen Alpsten
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– Securing His Heart (Power Security Book 1) by Nicole Flockton
– Beyond the Sea: LGBTQ+ Romance by Keira Andrews
– Savage: Lotus MC: San Antonio by Cala Riley
A few thoughts to share. First, Mimi Matthews is an underrated author. Her books are all five star for me and I highly recommend this series and especially her Somerset series. Those have been repeat reads for me.
Paris Match was five star for me. Yes it was cruel to invite Layla to the wedding. But that was kind of the point. Layla is a people pleaser (the reason is revealed later in the book). And Emily looks to Layla as her sister and those family ties are very strong for Layla. A big part of this story is how Layla comes to the realization that she has clung to this family (reasons revealed later) and has to navigate and establish boundaries. Something we could all learn. Griffin has his own issues which are slowly revealed. Jamie and Cassandra are mostly background characters there to help move the narrative and provide reasons for Layla to have her perspective changed.
Even if the characters didn’t work for you the depiction of Paris is so beautiful. I felt like I was right there enjoying the city. Another thing I liked was how this trip helped Layla work thru her feelings about Paris (being the place of her honeymoon and now as divorced).
So that’s my take on Paris Match. I encourage you to go back and give it another try. Its always interesting to me when there are strong feelings about a book that are so different than mine. There are a few popular authors (looking at you Beth O’Leary!) that always have great reviews but are not only DNF but I don’t even bother with anymore. Maybe someone can persuade me to try her books again. In the meantime I’ll sip a coffee with a delicious pastry at my local French Cafe and re-read a few chapters from Paris Match.