This book should have been my catnip. Brooding Egyptologist hero! Well-travelled curator heroine! Manorial espionage and mystery! I was there for that like you wouldn’t believe. Unfortunately, the book wasn’t really there with me. This is, again, a part of a series—the fourth installment by all appearances. The framing narrative is the presentation to a young woman of unspeakably judgmental shoes (they only fit if she’s worthy of true love?!) by a professional matchmaker (fairy … Continue reading Bella and the Beast by Olivia Drake →
Oof. You guys. I apparently did not know what I was doing when I was picking my RITA review books. I honestly probably would have DNFed it, but I’d already DNFed my other pick and I was feeling weirdly self-conscious that the Bitchery would judge me for not being able to finish a book. So I pushed through. And now I just feel depressed and negative. Earls Just Want to Have Fun was never going … Continue reading Earls Just Want to Have Fun by Shana Galen →
Reading Tiffany Girl, I discovered pretty quickly that I’m not the audience for this book. This came as an unfortunate surprise. I was promised women with cool jobs, turn-of-the-century New York, the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition that anyone who’s read The Devil in White City knows all the (literally) gory details about, plus romance? Yes, please, I love all of those things! Alas, it did not deliver on these premises in the way I was … Continue reading Tiffany Girl by Deeanne Gist →
Trigger warning: mentions of violence. Maxwell Derring, Earl of Dane hates the poor. They’re lazy, stupid, immoral, and “barely human.” He blames them for his father’s death—not because a poor person shot or stabbed his father, but because somebody robbed one of his father’s houses, and two weeks later he died of pneumonia. Now, you might be thinking, as I did, that that seems a very weak and specious chain of logic for deciding to … Continue reading Earls Just Want to Have Fun by Shana Galen →
If I had not signed up to review this book, I would never have thought about it critically (or at all). Unfortunately, I did, and there are…problems. Let’s get this straight: I love this story. Love. I just want to acknowledge that it is liable to enrage some folks, so let’s wade right into trouble. But first, so as not to have spoilers ahead of the jump, and also because I cannot refrain from referencing … Continue reading Tremaine’s True Love by Grace Burrowes →
When I saw Grace Burrowes’ Tremaine’s True Love on the 2016 RITA review list, I grabbed it like a can of insect repellant in high bug season in the Northeast back-country. While I love a well written historical, until this review, I had never read anything by Burrowes. However, I had accidentally purchased a couple of her books a year ago when I was getting ready to write a 2015 RITA review of one of … Continue reading Tremaine’s True Love by Grace Burrowes →
I disliked this book. Let me revise that: I liked the heroine but found the hero, the story and the writing objectionable. The story starts with our hero – let’s call him Douche Canoe – cut off from funds by his asshole older brother and about to leave society to become a Bow Street runner. He is scheming to get his fiancé, Jane, to jilt him because he assumes that she will not be able … Continue reading If the Viscount Falls by Sabrina Jeffries →
I’ll read any Beauty and The Beast themed book; y’all know that. And this one had promise- Bella is the daughter of a archeologist-adventurer, and Miles is a duke that’s turned his back on the world because ~reasons~ and spends all his time and energy with his house full of precious Egyptian artifacts. With the help of a fairy godmother of sorts and some magic shoes, will Bella melt his heart? I have not read … Continue reading Bella and the Beast by Olivia Drake →
I had never heard of Deeanne Gist before the “Everything Old Is New Again” panel at RT, where she talked about how she had three books set at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and how Tiffany the Stained Glass Guy (son of TIffany the Fancy-pants Jewelry Guy) was making a mosaic chapel for display, and then his glassworkers went on strike and he hired women from art schools to do the glass selection and cutting … Continue reading Tiffany Girl by Deeanne Gist →
