Search Results for: tessa dare

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Three Nights with a Scoundrel (CBR9 #72)

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I usually set myself up with reading landmarks throughout the year, to keep things interesting for myself. It also helps to keep me on pace. The past three years I have ‘read with my ears’ Tessa Dare’s Stud Club series. It was a random choice, to pick this series to enjoy via audiobook, but I’ve stuck with it and it been for the good. The narrator, Rosalyn Landor, handles the text superbly and I’m fairly certain she improves upon Dare’s early, sometimes uneven, work.

Because that is in fact what we are dealing with: Three Nights with a Scoundrel is uneven. We are wrapping up a few storylines and they are not all as strong as they could be and the pacing suffers because of it. We learn the fate of that damned horse Ossiris as well as the circumstances of the death of Leo Chatwick, plus the resolution of who Julian Bellamy really is, or isn’t but it doesn’t come together in a completely satisfying whole.

There are things I truly and unabashedly loved – our heroine Lily who is deaf and the ways she functions in a society that isn’t built to accommodate her. The emotional landscape of her relationship with Julian is also expertly handled. I also enjoyed Morland’s pregnant ward Claudia and her various interactions as they were a hoot and not without consequence. It is all the other fluff and bits around the main story that detract from what Dare does very well. We have another strange pet, this time the parrot Tartuffe, who at least has plot significance, but he shouldn’t have had to, there should and could have been better communication between the leads. I know having a parrot around a romance novel should have been more amusing to me, it simply wasn’t.

We also receive visits from both previous couples in the series so the male leads can wrap up the murder investigation (ugh), but we were seriously shortshrifted where it came to Rhys and Meredith. They are bringing a crucial piece of the puzzle to London, but are merely treated as a conveyance. Urgh. And as to that piece of the puzzle… while I am always happy for more representation of lgbtq relationships in romance novels this one felt a bit shoehorned in and if it had been telegraphed I completely missed it. In a certain way it all came together a little too much deux ex machina for my personal tastes.

This one gets three stars for all it does right, but doesn’t get rounded up to four because to my mind it didn’t live up to the second in the series.

This book was read and reviewed as part of the charitable Cannonball Read where we read what we want, review it how we see fit (with a few guidelines), and raise money in the name of a fallen friend for the American Cancer Society. Registration for our tenth year is open now. 

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A Night to Surrender (CBR9 #59)

Following A Farewell to Arms, a trip to Romancelandia was in order.

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Historical Romance was up next in my rotation, so off to Tessa Dare’s Spindle Cove I went. In the first book in the series we are introduced not only to the seaside locale, but to its resident mistress in charge. Susanna Finch has everything set up just so, she has created a safe haven for women and a schedule to keep them happy and mentally engaged. Unfortunately for her, Victor Bramwell, the new Earl of Rycliff blasts his way (literally) into her life, and with some interference from her father, will be staying very much underfoot for the next month. All the worse, she is terribly attracted to him from the moment go.

This is a Tessa Dare book, and she writes charming, whimsical stories with characters that have great emotional chemistry. She also writes great side characters, even if she is a bit clumsy in introducing the next couple in her series (the chapter with Minerva and Colin stood out in the worst possible way). There was by far much less quirk than in the Castles Ever After books, which is a blessing, and more historical accuracy – as much as Dare is ever accurate. Dare does wacky like no one else, and like my other foray into the realms of Spindle Cove, was all-in with these wacky people (refreshingly not young) and their shenanigans. Where else am I likely to read about a pet lamb named Dinner?

It was silly, funny, and sexy, which is what I am looking for when I pick up a Tessa Dare book. The rest of the story had some pep in its step, and once the introduction of Spindle Cove itself was out of the way the narrative takes off and never really slows down. This book struck me as a more refined and more expertly executed version of One Dance with a Duke, another series introducer. It is in some ways burdened with world creation, but once that work is done Dare plays with two characters that are in equal measure true to their historical contexts, but also struggling with issues of gender roles and pride. It was all quite well done, and didn’t shy away from delivering very good sex scenes. All in all, you should all pack your bags for Spindle Cove, it is quite restorative.

This book was read and reviewed as part of the charitable Cannonball Read, where we read what we want, review it as we see fit (with a few guidelines), and raise money for the American Cancer Society in the name of a fallen friend.

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Completed Read Harder Challenge 2016

In its second year, I have once again completed Book Riot’s Read Harder Challenge. I appreciate that these 24 tasks push me to consider what I am reading, and give me a way to prioritize my endeavors. Below are all the books which I have read as of December 21, 2016 in attainment of these various goals.

I look forward to 2017’s challenge as the tasks continue to get more specific.

Read a Horror Book

Read a nonfiction book about science

Read a collection of essays

Read a book aloud to someone

Read a middle grade novel

Read a biography (not memoir or autobiography)

Read a dystopian or post-apocalyptic novel

Read a book originally published in the decade you were born

Listen to an audiobook that has won an Audie award.

  • The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith, narrated by Robert Glenister. Mystery 2015

Read a book over 500 pages long

Read a book under 100 pages

Read a book by or about a person that identifies as transgender

Read a book that is set in the Middle East

Read a book by an author from Southeast Asia

Read a book of historical fiction set before 1900

Read the first book in a series by a person of color

Read a non-superhero comic that debuted in the last three years

Read a book that was adapted into a movie, then watch the movie. Debate which is better

Read a nonfiction book about feminism or dealing with feminist themes

Read a book about religion (fiction or nonfiction)

Read a book about politics, in your country or another (fiction or nonfiction)

Read a food memoir

Read a play

Read a book with a main character that has a mental illness

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Twice Tempted by a Rogue (CBR8 #79)

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At the tail end of 2015 I listened to my first Romance audio book. It was an interesting experience. Not my favorite, but also not bad. Since I started the Stud Club books that way, with Tessa Dare’s One Dance with a Duke I figured I would continue on that path for the series and picked up Twice Tempted by a Rogue.

Then I promptly forgot to read it as I worked through other books this year. When I finished We Should All Be Feminists and All the Single Ladies I needed a fluffy palate cleanser: audio book romance to the rescue!

First, I liked this one quite a bit more than its predecessor. It wasn’t burdened with world building. This is relatively early Dare, and she gets better at pacing those things out, but for now she only had one new location to introduce and a relatively small cast of characters straight out of central casting to introduce so things went more smoothly. The title is ludicrous, which is a problem with the genre as a whole, but c’mon, nothing here is remotely accurate.He’s not a rogue, she’s doing the tempting, and the temptations are nonstop.

We follow Rhys St. Maur and Meredith Maddox as they square off and fall in love. Easy. He’s the very definition of a tortured soul and she’s a by the bootstraps survivor. They have a shared history, and it is both a boon and a problem for their furthering relationship. I’ll say no more here because this is a very straightforward love story and to recount the play by plays just doesn’t serve it.

The MURDER subplot is back, but it is contained to the second half of the novel and only completely dominates a couple scenes. We are also in the “someone else is off looking for clues” portion where we as the reader can sit back and let that disaster of a story line wait for the third book. The final quarter of the book is a bit cheesy and overly dramatic (Cave Ins! Runaway Carriages!), which was probably exacerbated by there not being as many story lines cluttering up the narrative as there was in One Dance with a Duke. Dare may have felt the need to ramp of the DRAMA, when really, this book had great small scale romance elements, a la Lisa Kleypas.

But I really enjoyed my time with these characters, and while its tough sometimes to listen to narrators have to be in the voice of the opposite sex, the narration here was good, even at 1.25 speed. I’m an outlier, this book is the lowest rated of the series over on Goodreads, but I liked it quite a bit – for exactly what it is.

This book was read and reviewed as part of the charitable Cannonball Read. Registration is open through Friday January 13 for Cannonball Read 9.

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When a Scot Ties the Knot (CBR8 #48)

Okay, Tessa Dare finally got me.

The third book in the Castles Ever After series, When a Scot Ties the Knot (oof, the titles on these) hit all of my particular romance novel loves:

  1. Independent lady making her way in the world
  2. Marriage of Convenience plot
  3. Steamy sexy times
  4. Scotland
  5. Wounded Hero
  6. Historical setting
  7. Interesting, but not overtaking, side characters
  8. Comedy/quirkiness/whimsy in some regard.

Those eight things in some order will almost guarantee a four star review from me if executed well, and the truly wonderful ones will get the full five stars. For me, this was a truly delightful read and earned itself the full five stars (on rounding up).

Dare, for those not in the know, does not stay even remotely historically accurate. Sometimes I love a book that sticks to its time period, and sometimes I love a fun, feminist, anachronistic romance novel which takes the barest bones of history and adds what it likes too. In this case we have Captain Logan MacKenzie, recently returned home from war on the continent in the Napoleonic Wars, arrives on the doorstep of Madeline Gracechurch, prepared to marry her. After all, he has a half dozen  wounded men needing a place to settle, and what better place than the castle of the woman who caused him so much hope and anguish for so many years?

The only problem… Maddie thought she’d made him up, and had also killed him off.

In her sixteenth year Maddie had lied about meeting a Scottish officer in order to avoid having a London season, due to her crippling social anxiety (which Dare explains in place of letting her have a lesser, more realistic aversion to people and crowds). Unfortunately for her, the name Maddie pulled out of air belonged to a real man, and he’s not above blackmail.

Enter the marriage of convenience, which gets a bit of a twist as they go with a handfasting which doesn’t bear the full weight of law until the marriage is consummated, and Maddie manages to put off the full act while she tried to find the letters so she can burn them, and she can follow her dream of being an illustrator while figuring out how to give Logan his dream of safety for his men. But we are treated to some satisfying funky bass along the way, as sexy times are very sexy when men respect their lady’s ideas, mind and person – and Logan does. The other part of Logan’s personality which made me swoon? He has a tragic origin story, which puts him on par with Griffin from Any Duchess Will Do. (Bonus part three? Dare doesn’t really hid that Logan is verra similar to Sam Heughan’s Jamie from Outlander.)

This is a Tessa Dare book, and she writes good, charming, whimsical stories with characters that have great emotional chemistry. She also writes great side characters. Seriously, all of Logan’s men and Maddie’s aunt were amusing on the page and added to, but did not hijack, the story. Yes, there is a quirky subplot around mating lobsters, but it’s nowhere near as distracting as the traveling cosplayers of Romancing the Duke, or the terrible ermine. I rounded that one down to four stars, I round this one up to five, and they are both better than Say Yes to the Marquess, which I rounded up to a four. I have a feeling I’ll be revisiting these eventually, they work for me.

This book was read and reviewed as part of the charitable Cannonball Read. 

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Completed Read Harder Challenge 2015

When I undertook the Read Harder Challenge put on by Book Riot this year I wasn’t expecting it to be too difficult. And honestly, it wasn’t. It did push my reading boundaries and scope – which is the point. It also introduced me to works I may not have given a second thought previously. All of this is good. Below is an accounting of all 24 tasks and the various books that satisfied the requirements.

  1. A book written by someone when they were under the age of 25
  2. A book written by someone when they were over the age of 65
  3. A collection of short stories (either by one person or an anthology by many people)
  4. A book published by an indie press
  5. A book by or about someone that identifies as LGBTQ
  6. A book by a person whose gender is different from your own
  7. A book that takes place in Asia
  8. A book by an author from Africa
  9. A book that is by or about someone from an indigenous culture (Native Americans, Aboriginals, etc.)
  10. A microhistory
  11. A YA novel:
  12. A sci-fi novel –
  13. A romance novel –
  14. A National Book Award, Man Booker Prize or Pulitzer Prize winner from the last decade
  15. A book that is a retelling of a classic story (fairytale, Shakespearian play, classic novel, etc.)
  16. An audiobook  –
  17. A collection of poetry –
  18. A book that someone else has recommended to you
  19. A book that was originally published in another language
  20. A graphic novel, a graphic memoir or a collection ofcomics of any kind (Hi, have you met Panels?)
  21. A book that you would consider a guilty pleasure (Read, and then realize that good entertainment is nothing to feel guilty over)
  22. A book published before 1850
  23. A book published this year
  24. A self-improvement book (can be traditionally or non-traditionally considered “self-improvement”)
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One Dance with a Duke (CBR7 #102)

A while back narfna mentioned trying romance novels in audio book format and I thought it sounded like an interesting idea. Then Audible, those b@stards, had a sale (I may have overspent with them lately) and Tessa Dare’s One Dance with a Duke was there. I’m not sorry I spent that $5 – even though its far from my favorite romance I read this year.

The basic premise from Goodreads:

A handsome and reclusive horse breeder, Spencer Dumarque, the fourth Duke of Morland, is a member of the exclusive Stud Club, an organization so select it has only ten members — yet membership is attainable to anyone with luck. And Spencer has plenty of it, along with an obsession with a prize horse, a dark secret, and, now, a reputation as the dashing “Duke of Midnight.” Each evening he selects one lady for a breathtaking midnight waltz. But none of the women catch his interest, and nobody ever bests the duke — until Lady Amelia d’Orsay tries her luck.

In a moment of desperation, the unconventional beauty claims the duke’s dance and unwittingly steals his heart. When Amelia demands that Spencer forgive her scapegrace brother’s debts, she never imagines that her game of wits and words will lead to breathless passion and a steamy proposal. Still, Spencer is a man of mystery, perhaps connected to the shocking murder of the Stud Club’s founder. Will Amelia lose her heart in this reckless wager or win everlasting love?

So, the standard romance stuff. What this novel does well is give us two interesting protagonists in a marriage of convenience plot. I particularly enjoyed the frankness of Amelia in her time and place. It’s not to say that I don’t truly and really enjoy a book where the older, wallflower leading lady is discovered to be something more, (see Romancing Mr. Bridgerton for example) or pushing the social mores (any Courtney Milan book) but it was refreshing on this outing to see Amelia embrace her historically appropriate goals: to marry, a love match all the better, but mostly because she wants the job of wife. And in the 1810s, it was absolutely a job; in her marriage to the Duke Amelia will now manage a series of households and all social responsibilities. Amelia has been ready for just such a reality, and embraces it, even as she is unsure whether or not she can trust and truly embrace her new husband.

We also see in Spencer that while who Amelia is works for him (he likes his ladies curvy and with a brain, he sees her skills and talents as valuable and her embroidery as art) he does not fall prey to the idea that she is somehow a hidden gem that society has missed. She is simply the right one for him. While Spencer can seem dominant and indifferent and often finds himself saying exactly the wrong thing, Dare gives good, believable explanations as to the development of his character and his Duke of Midnight persona.  Dare also gets points for the gradual way in which Spencer and Amelia get to know each other and fall in love.

So what didn’t work for me, and has thus landed this book a 3 star rating? Here’s a handy list:

  1. Anytime anyone discusses horses, especially (but not limited to) that damn Ossiris and the formation of the Stud Club.
  2. Amelia’s savior complex as related to her younger brother Jack and his unrepentant ways.
  3. Also, Spencer’s inability to use his words when frustrated with Amelia’s savior complex.
  4. The MURDER subplot tenuously tying this novel to the next two in the series.
  5. The investigating of the MURDER subplot.
  6. The structural pacing of the MURDER subplot and Amelia’s savior complex completely disrupting the natural flow of the romance plot.

I will however be reading the rest of the series eventually, because what Dare gets right, she gets very right.

This book was read and reviewed as part of the charitable Cannonball Read. 

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Romancing the Duke (CBR7 #80)

I can’t believe I’m writing my 80th review for the year. We are now well passed my goal of a cannonball and a half. Because of you crazy people I have endeavored to read more authors in romance, not just more romances. This brings me to Tessa Dare and Romancing the Duke.

Meet Isolde Ophelia Goodnight, impoverished 26-year-old securely on the shelf and without a means to support herself. She’s just inherited a castle (in serious disrepair) from her godfather whom she did not know well at all. This is good, because she needs a roof over her head having spent the past many months relying on the kindness of fans of her father’s writing to support her. However, this particular castle is currently inhabited by the Duke of Rothbury, who due to his recent blindness following a dueling accident has been hiding away from society for the past seven months and is understandably behind on his correspondence. Which means he didn’t know the castle he was living in had even been put up for sale, let alone sold and then inherited by Izzy. This story could have gone any number of routes, but I’m glad Dare chose the one she did.

Dare went for quirkiness. There are a lot of quirky, whimsical details in this book. Izzy’s father’s books are romantic tales of daring do in serial format (think Princess Bride). Those stories The Goodnight Tales, have their own brand of cosplayers who travel the countryside basically doing a cross between re-enactments and Renn Faires. I had been appropriately warned about this type of shenanigan by Mrs. Julien, narfna, and Malin and I am about it, so all these things worked really well for me. I love comedy. I have enough DRAMA in my life  and sometimes you just really want to swoon and laugh. And being able to do both in the same book and sometimes on the same page? Delightful.

I also didn’t really care that there wasn’t an actual historical time frame. Its sometime in the early 19th century and Dare is playing around with the motifs of gothic novels. That’s fine by me.  My biggest (only) problems with this one? The stupid pet ermine and Ransom’s name. Otherwise this book worked really well for me.

This book was read and reviewed as part of the charitable Cannonball Read. 

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It Happened One Autumn (CBR8 #51)

After being less than won over by the first book in the Wallflowers series by Lisa Kleypas, I decided the thing to do was to keep going. I figured out later that my real issue was with the secondary plot line and have warmed to the style of Kleypas’ writing in the intervening weeks. In the Wallflowers series, Kleypas tracks the lives and loves of four women passed over by the eligible men of the ton and the friendship they develop along the way.

Book two, It Happened One Autumn features American dollar princess Lillian Bowman and the extremely eligible Marcus Marsden, Lord Westcliff. We met both characters in the first installment, Secrets of a Summer Night, Westcliff is best friend and business partner of the swoon worthy Simon Hunt. Westcliff’s protector personality and the adaptability of his character, while still being loyal to tradition, are made clear at the end of that book and I found myself quite taken with the character who is constrained by his title and position, and appears to be content with who he is, even if he knows he doesn’t always come up to the mark against his friends Simon and Sebastian (more on him later). Lillian comes from new money, and in the social landscape of the United States in the 1840s, it was at times difficult to marry off these women, as neither social strata wanted them. Using that, and adding some truly hideous previous behavior on Lillian’s part, Kleypas weaves in the recognizable history I appreciate in these, and gives us a clear picture of the characters we are dealing with, while simultaneously setting them up as diametrically opposed (although I really didn’t need to hear one more time how Marcus was the heir of the oldest noble line in all of England blah blah blah).

For the first half of the book, another house party at Westcliff’s estate, we the reader are supposed to be enamored of free-spirit Lillian’s take on life and how it keeps running at odds with Westcliff’s propriety and be won over by the chemistry they can’t seem to ignore, even though they can’t stand each other.

I was bored.

Boredom is a grave sin in nearly any genre, but it is particularly terrible in romantical fluff books. The set up was good… it was just reminiscent of the previous book in the series. Kleypas writes the hell out of her scenes and her characters, and as Mrs. Julien says “not-fantastic Kleypas is still very damn good”, but I definitely felt as though I was treading water. There were fantastic scenes in there… they just weren’t nearly close enough together to keep the tediousness at bay.

My other complaint is how evil our next hero was made.

Enter Sebastian, Lord St. Vincent. A new character introduced at the beginning of the book and set up as Marcus’ rival for Lillian’s affections. He is in need of the money she brings to the marriage mart, and infamous rake that he is, the proper families likely won’t have him. Lillian seems to fit the bill, and she’s available, until Marcus makes his move (and it’s a good move).  If Kleypas had left it here, with the rake as legitimate competition for our heroine’s hand, and then let that play out as it did and leave him without the money he needed I would have been fine. I would even have been on board with *SPOILERS* Marcus’ mother orchestrating Lillian’s kidnapping and attempting to loop Sebastian in, and Sebastian not doing anything to help Lillian escape. *END SPOILERS* But with the lengths the last quarter of the book goes to in order to villainize Sebastian, I have epic Romance Trope Concerns. I adore a reforming a rake storyline (although Wounded Hero is really more my cup of tea), but Sebastian was already established as a rake… I don’t know that I needed more, and it’s never a good sign when you are editing a book in your head as you read it.

The next book, with Evie and Sebastian is universally loved (I think) around the Cannonball – I remain cautiously optimistic, but the two drawbacks combined on It Happened One Autumn keep this at three stars.

This book was read and reviewed as part of the charitable Cannonball Read.