I have not read the previous two books in the Maiden Lane series.  While I loved your initial books, Jayne began to review the series and she did such a competent job that I kept putting the Hoyt historicals aside to read and review others.  I was hankering to get back in the game.  For those readers who are unfamiliar with Hoyt or had gone on a Hoyt hiatus, like me, I can assure you that this book can be read without knowledge of the previous two in the Maiden Lane series.  However, I did get the impression from other reviews that there is backstory in the other books which might make this reading experience richer.

“Charming” Mickey O’Connor is a river pirate who steals cargo and imposes a protection tax on every dock in London. Mickey stole the contents of a ship that was captained by William Hollingbrook and the theft was blamed on Hollingbrook. In order to prevent her husband from hanging, Silence begged Mickey for succor. He agreed, but for a price. Silence paid this price but it ruined her in the eyes of all that she held close, including her husband. Silence lost her husband emotionally before his physical body expired.

Whether it was an apology of sorts or a way to tie Silence to Mickey (maybe both), Mickey left his infant daughter on the doorstep of the widowed Silence a year prior to the start of the book. When Silence and Mary Darling (the infant) are placed in danger, Mickey brings the two under his roof for protection.

Mickey O’Connor is not a male protagonist that everyone can support. He’s a real criminal and his victims were often innocents like Silence and her husband. Even when Mickey’s wealth exceeded all that he could ever spend in one lifetime, the spectre of hunger and want hung close on his heels. Or at least that is the excuse he gives to himself and others for why he continues his rapacious activities and his iron hold over the docks.

I’m unsure of whether Mickey is truly redeemed at the end of the story. I don’t believe I read Mickey as repentant of his criminal activity although he does have to make a decision about where his priorities lie.

I admit to being befuddled by Silence at times. Where was her anger at being left Mickey’s bastard; at being held hostage by him; at her marriage basically being ruined by his actions? Silence grew in personal fortitude during the course of the book, challenging Mickey, becoming less of a mouse. While the focus of the story is largely centered around Mickey, it is Silence’s principles that hold sway as she learns to get what she wants without sacrificing her beliefs in right versus wrong.

There is an interesting question that is raised by Silence and William’s marriage. William never loved Silence the same way after her encounter with Mickey. Mickey points out that William must not have loved Silence. I think of all of the second chance at love stories that are premised on big misunderstandings. If Mickey’s assertions about love and romance are true, real love would never fade nor be swayed by actions resulting from sacrifice. This is the attitude of Dimitri’s wife in Archangel’s Blade. Dimitri must go off and serve, perhaps even sexually, an angel who has become obsessed with him and will destroy his family. Dimitri’s wife is understanding. I felt that Mickey’s redemption turned on whether the reader buys into concept of love and romance that is propounded by Mickey.  In essence, Mickey’s argument is that his actions shined a light on a serious flaw in Silence’s marriage.  It does make her think about love, devotion and loyalty in a completely different light.

Scandalous Desires is a deeply romantic story, with both Mickey and Silence seeking redemption albeit in different ways. The setting is primarily the palace of Mickey in St. Giles and the larger society plays only a small part in the overall story, mostly as a hint for future books.  It’s hard not to be swept away by the writing in the book and while Mickey is a scourge, he does come to love Silence unabashedly.  Silence’s internal fortitude and her growing refusal to be silenced as she was in the past tips this book into the recommended read territory but I did wish for more anger from Silence earlier in the book. I guess that just wasn’t her character? B-

Best regards,

Jane

Goodreads | Amazon | BN | nook | Sony | Kobo

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: The Ice Princess by Elizabeth Hoyt
2. REVIEW: Wicked Intentions by Elizabeth Hoyt
3. REVIEW: Leopard Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt

SEVEN NIGHTS OF SIN

As the madam of Aphrodite’s Grotto, the most infamous brothel in London, Coral Smythe knows everything possible about men’s needs and desires. Yet she’s never experienced the love of a single man-’not even that of Captain Isaac Wargate whose hawk-like eyes stare at her with both condemnation-and lust.

SEVEN NIGHTS OF ECSTASY

Captain Wargate heartily disapproves of the sensuous madam who always wears a golden mask. She lures his officers from both his ship and their duty. But when Coral herself is offered up as the prize in a game of chance, Wargate impulsively enters-and wins.

SEVEN NIGHTS OF LOVE

Now the puritanical navy captain has just seven nights to learn everything he can about the mysterious madam and what she knows of a man’s desires. But when Coral is threatened by the new owner of Aphrodite’s Grotto, will Wargate take a chance on the woman beneath the mask-and on love?

Dear Ms Hoyt,

Yep, Sin, ecstasy and love. The perfect blurb description. Except, wait a minute!, there’s no Duke and the heroine is, gasp, a madam of a brothel. I had started to read this novella when you began to publish chapters on your website but after a while I forgot to check for new material and time slipped away. When I finally looked at it again, I saw it had been published as an ebook and decided to just buy the whole thing. I enjoyed Coral during her appearance in “The Raven Prince” and am not disappointed in her story.

Told, like the other “Princes” books, with a fairy tale – Coral is obviously the Ice Princess whose heart is frozen even while she longs for love. She’s encased herself and her heart to avoid pain, separating herself from what she does. She won’t let a man into her private life and is therefore shocked and angered when Isaac demands to be taken to her private rooms for their 7 nights vs the gaudy, stage set whore’s rooms she initially takes him to.

Isaac plays his hand carefully, like luring a skittish wild animal into trusting and believing him. He’s quite clever at this – just sleeping one night and playing a game the next. He talks with Coral thereby treating her like a person unlike all the other men who just wanted sex. He wants to get to know HER. This flabbergasts Coral. Who is this man? Why won’t he act like all the others and be satisfied with the outer shell of herself that she’s sold for years? He also lures her into revealing that which she’s kept hidden for years – the face behind her golden mask.

He keeps her off balance throughout the week, never going the easy way or accepting the pittance of herself she’s willing to offer. I kept thinking how horrible would it have been for her had she allowed him inside her heart only to end up being stuck back in Aphrodite’s Grotto once he’d left. He demands a lot of her but he also shows her himself – now, now don’t think nasty – to her so she can see him as a man rather than just a customer.

I like that Isaac doesn’t denigrate Coral for choice she made to begin her life of prostitution – she’s engineered things well for a person in her position and gotten the best deal out of life that she could. Isaac shows her sexual pleasure and makes sure that she feels it unlike the other men in her life who have been content or accepted that she got no enjoyment out of the acts they’ve done. As Coral thinks, prostitutes don’t deal in love, they deal in sex. That is until Isaac shows her real love.

Only the fact that she’s mainly kept to protectors vs the general public allows me to keep buying into the fairy tale that she isn’t a bubbling pot of venereal diseases after so many years in the profession. But then the story really does have to be read as a fairy tale and not just because of the “Ice Princess” one sprinkled throughout. It’s well known among his officers that he’s been to Aphrodite’s and I can’t imagine that the story won’t spread. That plus the fact that “Aphrodite” suddenly disappears only for Isaac to, equally suddenly, marry a few months later would have to be put together, like 2+2, by someone. But if they want to believe that her mask will have protected her identity as a madame, who am I to quibble?

After Coral buys out Jimmy and turns the Grotto over to the girls and bully boys, she leaves and hopes that Isaac will come after her. But as God told the man who kept praying to win the lottery then got disappointed when he didn’t, “You have to at least buy a ticket!” So since Coral didn’t intentionally leave any info about where she was going, she can’t get but so mad at Isaac for taking so long to find her. And he does propose so nicely.

So yes, it’s better to put on rose tinted reading glasses while checking this one out but I did and enjoyed myself. Thanks for giving Coral a HEA with a man who demands all of her so that he can love every bit of her. B-

~Jayne

Book Link | Kindle | nook
| Sony| KoboBooks

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: The Raven Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt
2. REVIEW: To Seduce a Sinner by Elizabeth Hoyt
3. REVIEW: The Raven Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt

I have enjoyed your previous books a great deal, particularly your first trilogy that began with The Raven Prince. While I was a bit disappointed with your last book, overall I have found you to be a solid author with three-dimensional characters, strong plots and fabulous love-scenes. I've been looking forward to your Maiden Lane series ever since I read the preview of Wicked Intentions at the back of To Desire a Devil.

Like your other series, Wicked Intentions, is set in the 18^th century. However, this one is set somewhat earlier than previous books. The year is1737 and I thought this was an interesting choice. Although it doesn't come into play much in this first book of the series-’whose story really could have occurred at any point between 1676 and 1825-’it did make me wonder whether the choice of such an early date in the 18^th century would come into play later in future books. Readers of an historical bent will realize that 1737 is, of course, before both the 1745 Rebellion and the Hardwicke Marriage Act. But other than that curiosity, the date seemed to be of little importance to the overall plot arc of this particular book.

In the slums of St. Giles, Temperance Dews is making her way back to the foundling home she runs with her brother, Winter. With her is the home's lone maidservant, Nell and the silent, sickly infant they had ventured into the evening to fetch before any worse fate could befall it. As anyone whose ever read historical romance knows, the streets of St. Giles are dangerous at any time of day, but particularly so at night. Not that any quarter of any city, ever in the history of the universe, has ever gotten safer at night, which is why the two women are in such a rush to get home. Nell is not just uneasy because of the usual dangers of a slum at night but because of the Ghost of St. Giles, the specter of a dead Harelquin, who, rumor has it, is haunting St. Giles with murder and mayhem in his quest for revenge. Temperance takes this information with a grain of salt but it doesn't make her any happier to be abroad at night, especially, when they stumble upon the grisly sight of a man, black-cloaked and with long white hair, leaning over a corpse. This nefarious personage is not the Ghost of St. Giles but Lazarus Huntington, Lord Caire, who Nell isn't any happier to see than if he were the Ghost of St. Giles.

They scurry past Lord Caire, because only the stupid stop in the dead of night in a slum. Or when they are too cheap to pay for a cab back to the city and end up taking the J train through Cypress Hills at 2am-’ahem, not that I've ever done that or anything. -coughs-   But this is not to be the last Temperance sees of Lord Caire. Oh no. Not even that night. Back at the foundling home, when everyone has settled to bed and the adventures of the night seem to be just a memory, Lord Caire shows up in Temperance's favorite chair with an indecent proposal. Not the kind that Robert Redford made to Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson. No. What Lord Caire wants is a guide through the slums of St. Giles. And when I say he shows up, I mean he just appears out of freakin' nowhere. I still haven't a clue how he got into the house. He's got some skills, that Lord Caire does.

Thus our plot: Lord Caire has been busily searching for his mistress's murderer on evidence that can be generally categorized as "little" and specifically categorized as "crap all." Temperance and her brother, meanwhile, are facing the impending eviction of themselves, Nell and their 28 little charges from the foundling home due to lack of funds since the death of their patron. A bargain is promptly struck. Temperance will help Lord Caire search St. Giles in return for his paying their back rent, lending them some operating money, and introducing Temperance to potential patrons.

But nothing's so simple. In the first place, nobody wants to talk to Lord Caire very much. Not only because of his own terrible reputation but because of the questions he's asking. Even with Temperance in tow and a generous amount of bribes, nobody is keen on giving them a lead. Add to that the fact that every one of their witnesses either is dead before they get there or dead soon thereafter and you can see where this might cause problems for a murder investigation. In 1737, the Bow Street Runners did not exist. There wasn't really a police, just the watch and if Much Ado About Nothing can be judged as giving an accurate viewpoint of that group even 200 years after it was written, then the watch wasn't a very effective means of, you know, policing things. So Temperance and Lord Caire are on their own, murder investigation wise.

Things are further complicated by Temperance's family, who is not at all pleased with this arrangement, although none of them have any better solution to the problem of the foundling home. Like I said, Lord Caire has a very bad reputation. Not as bad as the Ghost of St. Giles, who everyone now believes is the one that committed the murder, but bad enough that at one point all three of Temperance's brothers show up to yell at her. Lord Caire has strange tastes in bedsport. But who doesn't these days? Eh? Not that this intimidates Temperance, who is drawn to both Lord Caire and the idea of his perversions.

Some romances are about the detectives falling in love with each other as they solve the crime. This isn't one of those stories. The mystery is like a foil to the burgeoning relationship between Caire and Temperance and also, the opportunity for it to take root. That isn't to say there is not who-dunnnit aspect to this book. I just wouldn't call it a mystery because it doesn't truly proceed like one. The mystery is there really to reflect the personal demons each has; to thwart both Caire and Temperance in achieving their goals, and to highlight their personal flaws. St. Giles is frustratingly obscure and silent on this murder. Every piece of information leads to a dead end. The frustration that this causes is reflected by the fact that Lord Caire doesn't really understand his motivations for trying to solve his mistress's murder. He never loved the woman and in two years barely spoke to her. As for Temperance, she is barely given a chance to look for a patron, her excursions into the ton as equally frustrating as Lord Caire's excursions into St. Giles.   All in all, this is a book that's really about the emotional landscapes of the hero and heroine, not the suspense of an unsolved murder. The mystery is just a means of revealing that landscape.

Temperance is unusual in some respects to the average romance novel heroine. She doesn't come from money or gentility. The Makepeaces (that being her maiden name) are an educated family but their father was a beer brewer and not a particularly wealthy one at that. To call them gentility would be stretching that word to its breaking point. Her late husband was only a school-teacher and while she is respectably middle-class, she is neither distantly related to the aristocracy nor ambitious to join those ranks.

As for Lord Caire, he both is and isn't your typical hero. He reminded me, with his long white hair and black walking stick, of an anime character and though he was described as being large, I pictured him as being quite slender and effete. Typically, he's out to solve a mystery and avenge his mistress's death; but, like I said earlier, he wasn't in love with her at all. There were no emotions. Lord Caire isn't a rake. Rather, again, I felt as if he were an anime vampire. He's not a vampire, so don't get your hopes up (or down), but he does have vampiric qualities. In the first place, he doesn't have any emotions, which is what I meant when I said he wasn't at all in love with his mistress. He feels nothing. He's emotionally dead. He also dislikes being touched and has weird sexual proclivities. Well, weird for people in 1737 who didn't have the broadening experience of watching HBO's Real Sex on TV for years and thus becoming completely immune to other people's perversions. Although, why anyone would want to shag a clown is beyond me.

Speaking of clowns, the Ghost of St. Giles is another aspect of this book that made me think, if not of anime, then of the comic book. St. Giles itself as a setting had all the ominous ambiance of Gotham City. It seemed always to be night, that the sun never shone, and that every street corner was inhabited by some grotesque and soulless creature bent on mischief. The Ghost of St. Giles, with his rumored murders-’murders that are reminiscent of Jack the Ripper's by the by-’wanders about in a Harlequin costume, face masked and carries a sword. Very Gotham and goth, don't you think? Add in a subplot about Temperance's younger sister, Silence, and her ruin at the hands of dock-thief and slum-king, Charming Mickey, and the whole story has the dark and gloomy flavor of an episode of Batman: the animated series. Which is praise, because I loved that show; I watched it every day after school.

As usual, you frame the story with a fairy tale, an epigraph beginning each chapter that tells part of that tale as your main story progresses. If I can put on my literary critic hat for a moment (it's a beanie with helicopter blade on top, in case you were wondering), I'm interested in how this framing device helps or hinders me from understanding the interactions between the main characters in their story. Are the heroes of the romance mirrored in the heroes of the fairy tale? Or does the framing fairy tale say something different about both the hero and the heroine? But those are question for another day.

Your characters are well-drawn, for even when you use stock ones, they never become caricatures. You can imagine-’at least I can-’that the secondary characters have lives outside the book. Pasts, as it were. The love scenes were hot and delicious. And there were a lot of them. This is going to sound like a weird complaint but I almost felt like there were too many sex scenes. Perhaps this because there was a slew of them at the end of the book and it made it seem that instead of talking, Caire and Temperance were instead shagging. You did deal with this somewhat, but I felt it was so close to the end that the problem the sex causes between them didn't have time to develop properly either as a problem or a solution. So while I believed in the attraction, even the love, I also had the odd sensation of it being both sudden and truncated.

-’cue the off-topic rant-’

Maybe it's just me. Maybe I've been reading romances for too long. But I feel like sex has completely taken over character development. I mean, I like sex scenes, but if I wanted to read an erotica I would. What the hell happened to conversation? Tension? Building the longing? Where's the freakin' longing? This isn't just a singular problem limited to this book or this author, but one that seems to have invaded every corner of Romancelandia. Character development is hard, but often the differences and similarities between the lovers are revealed in their interactions with each other. While those interactions can be sex, I find that without enough conversation and dialogue to balance that out, I don't fully believe that they are in love. Does that make sense?

-’end rant-’

Anyhow, that was my one major complaint but it may just be a preference thing. I think some people would disagree with me and think that there was plenty of conversation to go around.

On the whole, the ambiance, the setting and the strangely Gothic vibe that ripples through this book was delightful and just unusual enough to stand out. I ripped right through it in a matter of hours and would re-read it, which is always a sure sign I enjoyed a book. Looking forward to the future installments of the Maiden Lane series. B+

Lazaraspaste

Book Link | Kindle | Amazon | nook | BN | Borders
| Sony|

This is a mass market paperback published by Grand Central, a division of Hachette.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: The Leopard Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt
2. REVIEW: To Taste Temptation by Elizabeth Hoyt
3. REVIEW: Leopard Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt

• “I Do” Anthology”
• “Grave Goods” Ariana Franklin
• “Whisper of Warning” Laura Griffin
• “To Beguile a Beast” Elizabeth Hoyt
• “Somebody’s Hero” Annie Jones
• “The Surgeon’s Lady” Carla Kelly
• “How to Woo a Spinster” Kasey Michaels
• “A Most Lamentable Comedy” Janet Mullany
• “A Gift from the Sea” Anna Schmidt
• “Crossed Wires” Rosy Thornton

Editorial note: Jayne is taking a hiatus from reviewing for the first time in four years. She’ll be back reviewing full time in February.

Related posts:

1. Top Romances of 2009 by Janet
2. Top Ten Romances of 2009 by Janine
3. Dear Author Recommends January 2009

Dear Ms Hoyt,

Capturing my attention for an entire series before I’ve even read the first book is something. Me remembering that a new book in a series is coming out without having someone remind me of it is something. Keeping my attention and enthusiasm for a series all the way into book four is something. So don’t be bummed that the grade for this one is lower than most of the others.

At last, here we are at the final book of the series when the bombshell, which was hurled at us in the preview included at the end of the previous book, explodes. For the length of the other three books and all during the seven years since the horrible events at Spinners Falls in the Colonies, everyone has known that Captain Lord Reynaud Hope, heir the Earldom of Blanchard, is dead. The pitifully few fellow Englishmen taken with him as captives by the Indian allies of the French saw poor Reynaud die. Two years later, his father died in England and the Earldom passed on to a distant relative, Reginald St. Aubyn who now lives with his niece, Beatrice Corning, as his hostess.

The boring tea being held by the Earl for his political cronies becomes less boring, in fact it becomes the talk of London, when Reynaud bursts into the room looking like a savage himself. And suddenly, right in the same house with her, lives the man with whom Beatrice fell in love when she and her uncle moved into Blanchard house and Beatrice first saw the portrait of Reynaud which hangs in the blue salon.

Only the man himself is nothing like she imagined. Gone is the laughing young man who left with his fellow soldiers for America. In his stead is a man who frightens half of London with his sometimes crazed behavior and who terrifies the one man who never thought his traitorous deeds would be uncovered. Is Reynaud a man who can find some tenderness and love in his heart for this woman who now loves him as he is instead of as how she dreamt he was? Or will the traitor finish what was started seven years ago before Reynaud is able to rediscover how to love?

Perhaps this book suffers somewhat from the “Devilish” syndrome wherein readers eagerly await a final book with a promised hero who then must live up to impossible standards. Perhaps it was the balance of the story which felt somewhat off to me. Maybe I wasn’t completely convinced of the hero’s sudden capitulation into headlong love for his heroine, who has already committed her heart to him by the middle of the story. I’m not sure what is the cause but I ended this book feeling somewhat let down.

Beatrice is a lovely heroine who compliments the other strong heroines she follows. She’s practical but with a romantic streak. She wants to believe that romance survives matrimony despite the unexpected “thud” sound she hears that heralds the letdown a dear friend is experiencing with her own marriage. Beatrice has been courted a little but no man has ever lived up to the dream she’s embroidered in her head about Reynaud. Yet, when the man himself doesn’t live up to her fantasy, she takes stock, really looks at her feelings and admits that she’s fallen for him as he is. She pushes for him to reveal to her parts of his captivity so that she’ll know him better. She doesn’t shrink from his grimness nor make excuses for him nor patronize him with empty platitudes. She wonders if her love alone will be enough for the two of them and she’s willing to accept this if that’s how it will be. In other words, she isn’t a missish weakling.

Reynaud is tortured, literally so as we learn throughout the course of the novel. He’s withstood seven years of hell by the overriding desire to get home. He’s been changed by his experience, as are all men who’ve survived war, and will never be the carefree man he was. If he had not been written with lingering effects, I would have cried foul. That he is resistant to anything which might weaken him, even if he might not be aware of that, is logical. He avoided the things which could have tied him to his Indian captors – marriage and children – and initially he avoids the deeper feelings which he might develop for Beatrice. His decision to marry is based on what it could gain him in other respects rather than for any tender feelings.

I was going to say that as with Hartley, Reynaud is too alpha for my tastes. He pays lip service to Beatrice’s wants too often. However, in his defense, I will allow that managing to live through what he did would probably turn almost anyone into an alpha just to survive. But if he’d come at me the night after taking my virginity and told me that I didn’t have enough experience with sex to know if I really wanted it again that night or not, I’d have told him, “Dude, you don’t know my knee well enough to know how it’s going to feel when I ram it up between your legs. But I’d be happy to let you find out.”

It takes too many outside influences to push Reynaud towards love. First Beatrice’s friend, Jeremy Oates, who is himself a broken survivor of war, has to extract a promise from Reynaud to take care of Beatrice when, up to then, all Reynaud can think when he sees Beatrice is “mine!” Then when the traitor makes his move and uses Beatrice as a pawn – and haven’t we seen too much of that already in this series? – suddenly, WHAM! Reynaud’s iron hard shell cracks and it’s love. Usually I enjoy watching how the fairy tale chapter headers mirror the action in the book but the heavy handed “bang me over the head with it” true love which has the strength to conquer the Goblin King (read traitor) ending of this one almost made me snicker.

I will say that I enjoyed watching Munroe and Hartley effectively spike the guns which were aimed at the bill which Beatrice and Lottie had worked so tirelessly for. It doesn’t take grand gestures to effect change, just smart ones. I wished that the subplot involving Lottie and Nate had got more resolution instead of the half baked “feel good” ending which didn’t seem to deal with the deeper issues which had caused them to separate. The outing of the traitor of Spinner’s Falls also fell flat for me. I had wanted all the information we had to be tied together somehow and the identity to be a “WOW, I should have seen this!” moment for me. Instead I felt cheated by the sleight of hand.

I wanted to finish this series with a bang. I wanted to close the book and feel replete, sated, emotionally spent – but in a good way. I felt a mild dose of these things but not the whole hog experience I was longing for. Don’t get me wrong, it is a good book. I enjoyed it and seeing Reynaud and Beatrice find their HEA but it’s not quite the book I was hoping for. B-

~Jayne

This book can be purchased at Amazon. The book will be available in ebook form on November 1 which is either the official release date or a way for publishers to punish you ebook readers.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Leopard Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt
2. REVIEW: The Leopard Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt
3. REVIEW: The Raven Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt

• To Beguile a Beast by Elizabeth Hoyt.   A beautiful courtesan falls in love with a scarred, tormented lord.  Recommended by Jayne.   
• Gift from the Sea by Anna Schmidt. Enemies turned lovers historical set in early 20th C America. Recommeded by Jayne.
• Always a Scoundrel by Suzanne Enoch.   True rogue tries to shed his past bad association and help a pratical woman about to be trapped in marriage to a man who takes pleasure in destroying others.   Recommended by Jane.
• Hard and Fast  by Erin McCarthy.   Dyslexic stock car racer falls for sociology graduate student.   Funny and sexy.   Recommended by Jane.
• The Madness of Lord Ian McKenzie  by Jennifer Ashley.   Asperger sufferer seduces a widow who curbs his madness.   Recommeded by Robin and Jane.
• Dead and Gone  by Charlaine Harris.   Robin says this is one of the best in the series.
• Not Quite a Husband  by Sherry Thomas.   Estranged couple reuintes and rekindles their love after overcoming past betrayals. Recommended by Janine, who by way of disclosure, is Sherry’s critique partner.   
• The Conqueror by Kris Kennedy. Medieval knight woos barons and landowners to Henry II’s side while plotting to regain his birthright, Everoot, and uproot its current residents including the woman he is falling in love with.   Recommended by Jane (it’s on sale for $2.38).

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Your books work for me. What else can I say? I believe in these characters. I believe in the circumstances you place them in. I believe the ways you make them act. I want them to find happiness and when they do, I’m thrilled. When Jane sent out a DA email asking for our recommendations for May, I realized I, once again, needed to get off my ass and read. I just now finished the book and am happy as a clam at high tide.

Sir Alistair Munroe thinks his life is the way he wants it. Living alone, except for a surly, lazy manservant, in a dirty castle in a remote part of Scotland while he works on his latest book on the flora and fauna of the British Isles. Therefore, when a woman with two children presents herself at his door as his new housekeeper, he knows she’s lying. He doesn’t want her or her children in his life, thank you very much, now go away.

Helen Halifax can’t afford to let this beastly man turn her way. On the run from her former protector the Duke of Lister, she must find a place to hide herself and her children. Lister doesn’t love her, probably never has, but what he thinks is his stays his. He manipulated Helen once by taking away their infant daughter and she’s under no illusions that he’d do it again and this time permanently.

So, she gathers her courage, straightens her spine and goes about thwarting Alistair’s intentions to see them gone. Amazed to find himself yielding to Helen’s machinations, Alistair gives her one week to prove to him that he’s better off with these changes in his life. But when Helen and her children, Abigail and Jamie, are finished with him, he might discover a future he never dared dream of.

I’ve been anticipating Alistair’s story since we met him in the previous book of the series, “To Seduce a Sinner.” He’s one of the surviving men of the ambush at Spinner’s Falls and the one most physically scarred by the event. A naturalist, Alistair was attached to the 28th Foot when they were attacked by the French and their Huron allies. And along with a few other men, he was taken back to their camp and tortured for days before rescue arrived.

But like Jasper Renshaw, he’s learned that the pain he suffered then was only the beginning. His face, now hideously scarred, and his hand, missing two fingers, will always set him apart from most men. For the rest of his life, he must endure the stares, screams and shrinking back of his fellow man. I found it entirely understandable that he wants little to do with people and prefers to avoid inflicting his looks on others.

Alistair immediately thinks that Helen is probably the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. But like he, Helen has learned that her face won’t bring her happiness. Impulsive by nature, she fell for a man who, though she knew he would never marry her, she thought at least loved her. It took her years to discover she’d thrown away her family and the respect of the world to be nothing more than a plaything controlled by a man only because he can.

She’s determined to get away from that because she doesn’t want her children to be at risk of being taken from her and she’s decided that she’s worth more than this half life. Helen and Alistair both accept their past and how it will affect their futures. Neither thinks that marriage is an option and both fear being rejected for what they now are. As such, I found the conflict to be a product of the backgrounds you’ve given them and not some flimsy excuse to avoid finishing the story too quickly.

Helen’s love of her children jumps off the page. For them, she risks ostracism in the parks of London, flees a comfortable, though precarious, life under the Duke’s protection and is willing to risk everything to start a new life. For them she will fight and strive and endure.

I found myself identifying a bit with Abigail for I was also a quiet child who thought a lot and sometimes preferred to be alone to think. And any adult can probably recall chance events which they at the time thought to be the result of their actions or wishes. I laughed when Alistair’s older sister commiserated with Abigail about the need to deal with younger brothers.

Alistair’s love for Abigail and Jamie starts slowly. Well, it would after one’s face has caused them to scream and shrink back. The breakthroughs to tolerance, affection and then willingness to fight for them as hard as does their mother are incremental and totally believable. What I liked is that the change is not without it’s missteps. For each time that Alistair gets it right – teaching Abigail trout fishing, starting both children on the road to being budding naturalists – he sometimes screws it up – as with the satchel peed on by a puppy.

And it is because of this love Alistair feels for them, even though he might not realize he does at the time, that allows me to excuse what he says to Helen once he discovers her secret. Alistair calls her some harsh things to her face that, while technically true, are barely a step up from slapping her. When I read this part I thought, “there are going to be a lot of readers who get pissed off at him at this point.” But I could see that he is overwhelmed at Helen’s past that has suddenly been thrust upon him and that he worries about how the children’s bastard status will affect them for life.

Once the danger from the villain is removed, and I think Alistair goes about spiking those guns rather cleverly, I will admit to being happy that all is not magically turned to rainbows and fluffy bunnies in the lives of Helen or the children. She was a mistress and the children are bastards and nothing will change that. Their close friends and some family may accept them but to most of polite society, they will probably forever be beyond the pale. Books in which such ostracized characters find widespread social acceptance, while giving readers warm fuzzies, always make me cringe a bit since I can never quite get over my doubts about them.

I do have one thing that bothered me about the story. Most of it takes place in Scotland and when Alistair and Helen traveled down to London, they presented themselves as “Mr. and Mrs. Munroe” and had obviously consummated their relationship. So…what about Scottish marriage laws? Having done what they did, doesn’t that mean that they are already married way before Alistair proposes to Helen in that lovely scene?

As always, I found the “fairy tale” told over the course of the book to be almost as entertaining as the actual story. And after reading the preview of the next book the only thing I can say is, “Holy Shit!” and “Can I wait until November?” But then I guess I don’t have much of a choice before finally discovering the identity of the traitor and what really happened six years ago in the wilds of the Colonies. A-

~Jayne

This book can be purchased in mass market from an independent bookstore or ebook format from the Sony Store and other etailers.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: The Raven Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt
2. REVIEW: To Seduce a Sinner by Elizabeth Hoyt
3. REVIEW: To Taste Temptation by Elizabeth Hoyt

The revenge trope    is a prevalent one in romance. Admittedly, it’s prevalent everywhere.   Revenge is what powered the Count of Monte Cristo. It’s easy, you see, because it provides insta-conflict in romance. Take one hero bent on revenge, one innocent bystander, mix and stir. It’s easy to arouse emotional response to the revenge trope. There is the reason for revenge that gains the avenger a sympathetic mien. There’s the conflict between whether the avenger gives up revenge and saves the heroine or succumbs to the need for revenge.

There seems to be three main types of revenge themes:

a)   Wants to wreak as much damage as possible without regard to who is really responsible.

The Avenger in this case usually believes that the value of his harmed loved one is worth more than any number of others.   Liz Fielding wrote an early series called the Beaumont Brides.   The first book in the series is about Luke Devlin’s sister fell in love with Edward Beaumont.   She pined for him and when she died, Luke vowed revenge on Beaumont. His plan was to ruin him financially, take his life away from him piece by pieces: his money, his reputation, his one daughter’s career on the stage, and the other daughter, Luke would make her fall in love with him, break her heart and then treat her as he believed Edward had treated the sister.   

The actions of the hero are horrible, really horrible.   Luke decides, unilaterally, that the destruction of at least two women of their lives, goals, dreams is a worthwhile endeavor to achieve his revenge against the women’s father.   He decides that his sister is worth more than any one else.   His justification is based on the belief that everyone but his own family members is worthless.

Similar is the setup in Scandal by Jayne Ann Krentz.   Simon, Earl of Blade contemplates the destruction of an entire family.   The way that it is presented to the reader it’s almost as if a pinpoint revenge is only undertaken by the weak of heart.   

A decent English gentleman of noble birth would never have dreamed of using an innocent young woman in his quest for vengeance. But Simon found he had no problem with the notion. None at all. In any event, if the rumors were true, the lady was not all that innocent.

b)   Doesn’t think about collateral damage.

There are avengers who act without thinking about collateral damage.   The Avenger has no intention of directly targeting family members. They are merely collateral damage.    In one of my favorite Krentz books, a category called Lady’s Choice.   (Please Harlequin, re-release this classic).   Travis Sawyer was a business consultant for the Grant family.   He was promised a part of the Grant resort as well as the Grant daughter in marriage.   Only the Grant daughter married someone else and squeezed Sawyer out of his consultant fee.   Sawyer comes back to put the Grant family out of business and in the meantime falls for Juliana.   It wasn’t Travis intent to bring Juliana into the scheme, but she is hurt by his actions, both financially and personally.  

c)   With precision targets the wrongdoers

Although I question whether anyone’s death or destruction is without collateral damage,   The Serpent Prince is about the best example of the focused precision targeted revenge.   Simon Iddesleigh has set a path before him to kill all four of the men involved in the death of his brother.   He is challenging each one to a duel.   When the story opens, he has killed two of the four.    Simon’s quest for revenge is one he undertakes with some reluctance.   

I enjoy the revenge trope because it usually signals a darker, more weighty read (although that’s not always true given that Scandal and Lady’s Choice are really fun books despite the revenge trope.) But in thinking about the trope, I realized I had some questions.   

Why is it that the avengers are almost always male? My supposition is that because we female readers are much more lenient in how amoral a male character is versus a female character. Whether it is because we identify with the heroine more or that we are more interested in the male journey, the fact is that men get away with a lot more stuff than women in our romances and this is one of them. Another reason may be because women, particularly in historicals, lack power and being an avenger almost always comes from a position of power and wealth.

Are you disappointed when revenge is not achieved? If you can bear more generalizations, I think romance readers are a bit of a bloodthirsty lot. Part of the fun of the fantasy is getting your cake and eating it too. Meaning that we often like to see our revenge carried out yet suffer no adverse consequences. The characters have to sell us on the idea that revenge is not worth it. Krentz does a great job of this in Scandal.     In Scandal, the hero gives up his course of revenge after the heroine starts telling the subjects of his revenge that they are off the hook. In one scene, the hero tries to get the heroine to understand that revenge is necessary and she says to him that he needs to stop living in the past and concentrate on making their future together.   He begins to realize that his relationship with the heroine is simply more important than getting even.

How much does the Avenger have to reform to be heroic?     Of the above examples, it is Simon in  The Serpent Prince  who is most affected by his quest for revenge. He realizes that with each step in his plan, he loses more of himself. He faces the moral question of whether he is worse off for enacting the revenge than in allowing the grave insult to go unmet.   Yet, Simon’s revenge is based on a very deep and serious insult.   Further, it is not based on a misunderstanding (as some revenge plots are like Fielding’s Wild Justice).   Ironically, Simon has the shortest path to redemption in my opinion.   His aversion to his task, his precision like tecniques make him more the heroic ideal than say Simon and Luke who want to destroy the entire family for a perceived or actual wrong.

There’s not one revenge trope that is better than the other for me, but each of them require a different level of redemption.   How successful an author is at selling me a revenge theme depends largely upon the reason why the revenge is undertaken (i.e., perceived v. actual wrongs); how the revenge is carried out; and whether the characters actually think about the consequences of their revenge.   One of the reasons that Lady’s Choice is a favorite Krentz novel of mine is that Travis  has to actively work to undo his revenge which imperils the business of the woman that he loves. He didn’t realize that she was invested in the company that he intended to destroy and once he did discover it, it was too late to change course. The conflict became not the revenge but the fear the hero had that if he didn’t fix the problem, she would choose her family over him.

What’s your thought readers regarding the Revenge Trope?   Love it? Hate It?   Concerned?   What are your favorite books in the revenge trope and why?   How about your least favorites?   Do you also want Lady’s Choice to be digitized???

Related posts:

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2. Favorite Tropes
3. REVIEW: Scandalous by Night by Barbara Pierce

We have open ended series like Kresley Cole’s Desires After Dark and nearly every cross over or paranormal fantasy. We have trilogies such as the Nora Roberts Pagan Stone series, the last of which was just recently released. Elizabeth Hoyt, one of Jayne’s favorite historical authors, is in the midst of The Legend of the Four Horsemen books. There are the seeming never ending books about the Cynsters by Stephanie Laurens. Some series I’ve given up on and some I don’t feel compelled to start but lord, wouldn’t it be lovely to have some stand alone books again? Or not?

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I hate this title but suppose that few readers would buy a book called “She is a balm for his soul.” Nah, not catchy enough but so accurate for this book. In “To Taste Temptation,” you gave us the secondary character of Jasper Renshaw, Viscount Vale. Jasper’s a former Army Captain, current “hale fellow well met,” slightly unlucky at love and possessed of nightmares that would curdle the entire milk supply of the state of Wisconsin. The boy’s got a few issues.

What he doesn’t realize he has is one strong woman who loves him above all others. When Melisande Fleming sees that Jasper is being thrown over on his wedding day – and for a curate, if it can be believed – she seizes her chance with both hands and hangs on for dear life. She knows that Jasper has never taken much notice of her beyond what politeness demands but she stiffens her spine, sneaks off to the church vestry and proposes to him. Slightly stunned, first to have lost his second fiancee in mere months and then to be on the receiving end of a marriage proposal, Jasper blinks then thinks, “what the hell. Got to get married and do my duty to the succession” before he accepts.

He thinks he’s getting a woman of good family, etc, who will be a dutiful wife, etc, and bear him children, etc, etc, etc. Melisande knows she’s getting the chance of which she’s hardly dared dream in all the years since she saw more depths to this man than most people who’ve known him for years ever noticed. But he doesn’t love her. Not as she loves him. And so she can’t reveal her love to him as that would make her too vulnerable. She’s been there and done that before only to have her heart crushed. And so begins a marriage of convenience that quickly becomes more as 1) Melisande watches Jasper try and discover who betrayed his regiment to the enemy deep in the primeval forests of North America during the late war and 2) Jasper begins to see the depths of this quiet wife who only wears drab dresses and hides her feelings better than he does.

Jasper’s little verbal witticisms – such as at his mother’s garden party – reminded me of Bertie Wooster but that’s natural as Jasper plays the slight fool in public to cover what he’s feeling inside. Melisande thinks she’s loved him for years but even then, after all she knows about his past lovers and the women he’s flirted with, she still doesn’t know him or know how to help him until after she begins to see what he hides. At first I questioned how deep could have been Melisande’s attachment to her first love but her confession of what happened after Timothy spurned her made it a bit more believable.

I have to agree with Munroe and Horn in their thoughts on Jasper’s scars – which have to be much worse than the physical ones those two men bear. Their pain was over seven years ago while Jasper’s still lives on. His sense of duty and honor are almost crushing him under their weight and I can see why he can’t let go of the search for a traitor. We finally begin to get some details about the torture that followed the betrayal and battle at Spinner’s Falls.

As Munroe tells Jasper, Melisande has courage. And as one of the few survivors of the torture inflicted on them by the Indians, he ought to know. She has the guts to take her only chance and go for the man she’s loved from afar, she decides to try for the kind of physical relationship she decides will take the place of romantic love and she confronts someone whom she suspects her husband fears blames him for the events at Spinner’s Falls. Melisande faces Jasper’s darkest fears and holds his hand while he walks through them. She sees the way he deals with the nightmares that still haunt him and makes no comments – only joins him in the rituals he needs in order to live through each dark night. I guess these two will be sleeping on a pallet bed with a loaf of bread and canteen of water until they’re eighty or so.

But was it ever revealed what in Melisande’s past made her the quiet, self controlled woman she grew to become? I do like that she doesn’t throw off her dull, brown clothes to don a rainbow of gowns as the book ends. Jasper falls in love with her as she is, as she looks, as she dresses and as she acts. Yet, what’s with the dress on the cover? Melisande is famous for her mud matching gowns and here she’s decked out in ever-lovin’ yellow.

It takes Jasper a long time to truly begin looking at Melisande as his early nice, but basically useless, present shows her. No woman has ever held his heart and despite the flowery phrases he uses about her in conversation with her, she’s not his dearest one or own true heart until he sees past the mask she wears in public to hide her inner self. And even after he gifts her with the lovely prezzie at the end, it’s still the small things he does for her that I remember – training Sir Mouse – despite the fact that the dog bit him – because Jasper realizes the dog is Melisande’s only friend, the promise of a huge bowl of pink blancmange just for her at Christmas and the elimination from her life of a past cause of pain while they revisit his aunt’s house in Edinburgh.

The plot is mainly a character study of Jasper and Melisande. The continuing arc of who betrayed the 28th Regiment is there but it mainly throws light on these two as Jasper continues his dogged search for the traitor. I still have a few doubts about these men being held for ransom, and how that was conveyed to the British authorities and how they got the remaining men away from the Indians. But now I’m almost as determined to discover who the blackguard is as are the men who suffered for his actions. From the “save” that Melisande makes, I think I know who’s the hero of the next book and who his heroine will be. I’m ready and waiting. B

~Jayne

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or Powells or ebook format.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: To Taste Temptation by Elizabeth Hoyt
2. REVIEW: The Raven Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt
3. CONVERSATIONAL REVIEW: The Serpent Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt

Demon Bound by Meljean Brook. This will not be my favorite Brook book, but her writing is consistently strong with excellent visuals and a compelling conflict. She’s the best author people are not reading, in my opinion. Jake is a younger (comparatively speaking for the eternal), optimistic Guardian whose teleporting gift is always going awry. He lives for the moment and generally takes joy in most things. Alice, dubbed the Black Widow, greets each day with resignation for she has made the worst possible bargains. Either kill the leader of the Guardians or lose herself to eternal torture in hell. She’s both repelled and attracted to Jake and his youthful and vibrant sexuality. Brook excels at creating unique characters who serve as foils as their exploration of their relationship moves with the plot. Recommended by Jane. Review to come.

Flat Out Sexy by Erin McCarthy. I love McCarthy’s contemporaries because of their lighthearted look at romace without relying on slapstick or tired innuendos. Tamara Briggs is a thirty-two year old widow with two small kids. Her deceased husband of a famous stock car driver who died in a crash. She’s still, reluctantly part of the racing scene, because her in-laws but if she remarries, it will be to a "man with a regular nine-to-five job, who came home for dinner, and who cut the grass on the weekend. A man who didn’t drive around the track at one hundred and eighty-five miles an hour every weekend, tempting fate.” Of course, who would rev up her engine but young driver, Elec Monroe. It was great fun to watch the older Tamara run like hell after their one night stand and have to bluster about it not being a one night stand when called on it by Elec. In a nice role reversal, Tamara really does want to just have sex with Elec only he doesn’t want that and once he gets an inkling that is all she’s interested in, he takes the opportunity to set her straight. More on the review here. (the giveaway has expired). Recommended by Jane.

Mermaid’s Kiss by Joey Hill. This is a lighter book than I am used to with Ms. Hill but not in a bad way. Mermaid’s Kiss is a retelling of the fairy tale popularized by Disney’s Little Mermaid. Disney, though, this book is not. Anna is the daughter in a long line of women cursed when their foremother fell in love with a human. All Ariel’s daughters die before the age of 21. When Jonah, an angel, falls from the sky, she undertakes one last journey to save his soul before hers is lost. I thought the retelling aspect was done marvelously incorporating some very familiar images with some new details. Mina, the sea witch, is Anna’s best friend, and while hideously deformed (familiar image), she is out to protect Anna (new detail). Jonah is weary at heart but relearns his purpose with the help of Ariel. There is definitely a fairy tale quality to this story. It’s an erotic romance, though, and some of the sex scenes are non traditional. Recommended by Jane. Review to come.

The Bride Price by Anne Mallory. The book starts off with the question of what a true gentleman is because Sebastien, by the circumstances of his birth, is not considered to be one. The competition is set up with the idea that you can win your way to status. But the competition is really a debasement. It pits individuals, who are already considered less than by society, against each other and holds them up for scorn and mockery. The men who compete in this "game" are not deemed to be individuals but rather pawns. The heroine, Caroline Martin, a genteel woman with a mysterious past is the only person that could push Sebastien off his path toward vindication and revenge. Recommended by Jane. Review here.

Like No Other Lover by Julie Ann Long. The plot of Like No Other Lover is quite simple. There are no spies running around or secrets to uncover – just a house party with various characters interacting with each other. This is both the strength and the weakness of the book. I appreciated the focus on the characters and the simplicity of the story. Miles is an appealing, if somewhat familiar, hero – the bespectacled scientific type (though he apparently does all right with women; Miles is not quite a Nerd Hero). Cynthia is rather more unique – here is a heroine who is fairly unrepentantly mercenary in her pursuit of a husband. She has made some mistakes that lead to her fall from grace in London. I really liked the way that Cynthia’s situation was handled – she is not depicted as a martyr. Recommended by Jennie and Janet (Robin). Review here.

The Edge of Impropriety by Pam Rosenthal. I think the title is an intriguing one, in light of Rosenthal’s fiction, because it seems to me that she is a writer who tries to find the edge of genre conventions. To me, all of her books that I’ve read are interested in questions of conventions and their boundaries. How far can the characters go, given their place in society? And how far can the book go, given its publication in the genre? Where is that dangerous edge that is going too far, and what is more exciting (for the characters and perhaps even for the author) than pushing up against it? Recommended by Jennie and Janine. Conversational review to come.

Redeeming Gabriel by Elizabeth White. The conflict between these two isn’t a silly misunderstanding. It’s not something that a 5 minute talk will clear up. [The hero] is trying to sabotage something in which her father has invested all the family money and which Jamie is going to pilot. Camilla, even though she’s an abolitionist and has worked for the Underground Railroad for four years, is a Southerner and wants the South to win the war. She has some growing up to do as far as the reality of blockade running and universal emancipation of the slaves is concerned. She wears glasses and sometimes they’re rose colored but she does face up to reality and make her hard choices. Recommended by Jayne. Review to come.

To Seduce a Sinner by Elizabeth Hoyt. The plot is mainly a character study of Jasper and Melisande. The continuing arc of who betrayed the 28th Regiment is there but it mainly throws light on these two as Jasper continues his dogged search for the traitor. As Munroe tells Jasper, Melisande has courage. She has the guts to take her only chance and go for the man she’s loved from afar, she decides to go for the kind of physical relationship she decides will take the place of romantic love and she confronts someone she suspects her husband fears blames him for the events at Spinner’s Falls. Melisande faces Jasper’s darkest fears and holds his hand while he walks through them. She sees the way he deals with the nightmares that still haunt him and makes no comments – only joins him in the rituals he needs to live through the dark night. I guess these two will be sleeping on a pallet bed with a loaf of bread and canteen of water until they’re eighty or so. Recommended by Jayne. Review to come.

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I love the beginning of a new series. New characters to meet, new situations to explore, new relationships to work out. Everything’s fresh and (hopefully) wide open. “To Taste Temptation” is, I believe, book one in what looks like a four book series if the fable at the start is our guide. Okay, let’s get going.

Lady Emeline Gordon starts off so correct, so polished, so controlled that I just knew she’d end up rumpled, turned upside down and very out of control. I enjoyed watching Samuel slowly peel away her perfect exterior. She’s afraid to love again after losing her first husband, afraid to trust a man’s promises after the deaths of her brother and father have left her alone and it takes a lot of work to get her heart to crack open enough to admit love again.

Samuel Hartley is a man who enjoys ignoring social conventions and prodding people just to get a reaction. He must have played countless pranks as a child. He’s also a man who is comfortable with himself and feels little need to make empty boasts or puff himself up in company. Something about Emmie’s smooth poise just calls to him to ruffle her a little. Then push her a lot in order to get her to admit her feelings for him. Yet he still retains some self doubt about this high born English lady. I’ll be honest and say that even as I liked watching Emmie let her hair down, Samuel tiptoes towards a bit of alpha-ish behavior. She said no and he ignored it a few too many times for my comfort.

I just mentioned recently that I’m tired of heroes held hostage to their PTSD so it was with reserve that I realized Samuel has his demons to fight. It’s not the usual Penninsular War ones of Regency infamy but instead those of an earlier and less well known war, unless one has watched “Last of the Mohicans.” Whatever one thinks of the 1992 version of the story, that ambush sequence has stayed with me for years and the end of Duncan Heyward leaves me cold so I can understand Samuel’s dreams and nightmares. I think you handled him and his issues well, not allowing them to take over his character or actions but still driving him to find the man who betrayed them all into that hell.

I do have some questions about Samuel’s actions after the attack. Ransom? How could he be running to an English fort for ransom if he left as the Hurons were taking the other men captive? How could he have known what the ransom would be? Plus did the Hurons/Wyandots usually take captives for ransom? I thought it was either for adoption into the tribe as replacements for tribal members killed or as war captives to entertain the rest of the tribe. Not for ransom. I stand prepared to be corrected.

I think you write ‘the hero realizes his love for his heroine’ scenes better than almost anyone else out there.

Soon now he would get up and walk to the door, leaving this room and making his way through the silent house. Let himself out into the dawn. Go back to the town house that wasn’t truly his. In two days, he would board a ship and spend over a month watching the waves as he sailed back home. And once there? Why, he’d continue his life as if he’d never met a woman named Emeline.

Except, while his life might look the same from the outside, it would be entirely different on the inside. He wouldn’t forget her, his warm lady, even if he lived for six decades more. He knew that now, sitting by her cold fire. She would be with him all the days of his life. As he walked the streets of Boston, as he conducted his business or chatted with acquaintances, she would be the ghost beside him. She would sit with him as he ate, she would lie beside him as he slept. And he knew that when his time on this earth was at an end, his last thought as he entered the void would be of her.

The scent of lemon balm would haunt him forever.

Rebecca is lost for whole days and segments of the book. I didn’t like this as Rebecca already seems to be a weaker character as compared to Emmie. Losing track of her for ages didn’t help any. I also hated to see her neglected by her brother. How did Jasper find out about Emmie and Samuel? Did I miss a scene or revelation? He apparently knows nothing of their relationship then suddenly he’s hellbent on revenge after everyone returns to London.

I was preparing to be disappointed with the villain and how quickly I figured out who he was. Then you flipped that a little, thank goodness. I loved Samuel’s interactions with Daniel. Guy bonding at its best. It must have reminded Samuel of the years before his own father died. Tante Cristelle is a darling. And you made an effort to try and make her sound French. Yeah!

This book seems less fairy tale like than “The Raven Prince” so maybe I was expecting more realism. The little things I noticed seem to bother me more here than similar things have in previous books. Not that I didn’t like this book and inhale it but I found myself reading it with a bit more of a critical eye. Still it’s a B+ grade.

~Jayne

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or Powells or ebook format.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: The Leopard Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt
2. CONVERSATIONAL REVIEW: The Serpent Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt
3. REVIEW: The Raven Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt

***

You know those authors who start their bios with, "I've been writing since the age of two. I wrote my first full length manuscript at the age of eleven. It was about little furry people who lived in a redwood forest, wore leaves as headdresses, and liked to dance, and I really think it would've sold if George Lucas hadn't come out with RETURN OF THE JEDI and his Ewoks that year.–? That's not me. I never thought about writing until the age of thirty-five.

I had other career ideas.

In grade school, I was going to become a– wait for it– potter. How many other eight-year-olds do you know who have a burning ambition to become a ceramic potter? Alas, my ambition was stymied by my inability to center a ball of clay on a potter's wheel. In early high school I dreamed of being an artist, but as graduation neared I realized I needed to think of more practical careers. Which is why I majored in archaeology in college, there being so many archaeological jobs out there for people with undergrad degrees. Okay, so practicality wasn't my strong point, which was confirmed by my next career goal: Classical Archaeologist. Tragically my studies were cut short by my dismal ability to master (mistress?) either Latin or classical Greek.

I married soon after graduating from college and it occurred to me that while I seemed to have no clue as to what I wanted to do career-wise, there was one thing I knew I wanted to do in life. Become a mother. This I could do and did very happily for about the next ten years, until my own mother spoiled my idyllic life of car-pooling and peanut butter and jelly sandwich lunches, by pointing out that my youngest child would soon enter kindergarten and perhaps I should think about getting a job. A paying job.

Sigh.

Naturally, my mind leapt to the most practical career of all: Romance Novelist. Actually, I did consider other careers, Paleoethnobotany, for instance, but all my ideas seemed to involve a) going back to school, and b) pantyhose. Romance Novelist, by contrast, involved sitting in cafes sipping mocha lattes and gazing into space. Really, it was tailor-made for my skill set.

Approximately five years later, I had three historical romance manuscripts under my belt and an agent (an agent!) who was out shopping them. Unfortunately, though, the editors at most of the major houses in New York didn't seem to recognize my brilliance and kept rejecting me. (Fools!) I had pretty much given up hope of selling those manuscripts (which were, by the way, The Raven Prince, The Leopard Prince, and The Serpent Prince) and started to write a contemporary romance (shameless plug: HOT, coming out January 2008 under the name of Julia Harper,) when I got an e-mail from my agent with the subject line: Heads Up. Usually an e-mail with this subject line was my agent's way of gently breaking the news that I had been rejected yet again. (I suspect she was worried that the pile of mounting rejections would send me into a wrist-slashing tailspin.) But this time the content was different. She wrote to tell me that the editor at Warner (Devi Pillai, who has since transferred to Little, Brown & Co) had called her "screaming–? with excitement even though she was only a quarter of the way into the manuscript. "Huh,–? I thought, "perhaps this is a good sign.–?

And it was! On the following Monday my agent called with a two-book offer.

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1. My First Sale by Dionne Galace, Blogger Makes Good
2. My First Sale by Meljean Brook, Geek Girl Makes Good
3. REVIEW: The Raven Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt

The transcript below is a chat that Jayne and I had regarding the book. Some of it is spoilerish and I’ve tried to denote that but if you don’t want to be spoiled at all, please don’t read this before you read the book.

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Many readers (including Jane and Jayne) have fallen in love with your debut, The Raven Prince. I wish I were one of them, but unhappily, I have to report that I closed the book feeling that the fan bus had left the bus terminal without me. As I sit here, figuratively waving to all those folks whose faces are plastered to the bus windows, wondering how to explain to them why I couldn’t get on board, the bus turns smaller and smaller, until it’s a dot on the horizon. I look around. Yup, I’m all by myself out here.

The Raven Prince takes place in eighteenth century England. It’s the story of Edward de Raaf, the temperamental Earl of Swartingham, and the widow Anna Wren, whom he nearly runs over with his horse one day. Shortly after that, Edward finds himself in need of a new secretary, and since he doesn’t give his steward, Mr. Hopple, much time to come up with one, Hopple hires Anna, a woman.

It doesn’t take long for a sexual attraction to emerge between Edward and Anna as they spend time together at luncheon and touring his estate. One day Anna discovers a bill from a house of ill repute called Aphrodite’s Grotto, and she realizes Edward is a customer there. Soon afterwards she (somewhat conveniently, I thought) finds an ailing prostitute lying in a ditch and takes her home to nurse.

Edward’s family died of smallpox when he was a child, and he lost his first wife in childbirth, so starting a new family is important to him. Anna is infertile and not of his class, so he feels he can’t marry her, and he goes to London to propose marriage to a young lady.

While in London, he plans to visit Aphrodite’s Grotto. He is not aware that Anna, thinking he has left the village to assuage his sexual desire for her with someone else, has, with the help Pearl and Coral, the prostitute and her demimondaine sister, come to the whorehouse wearing a mask, to be his lover for the night.

Almost from the very beginning, I had difficulty getting involved in this book. The biggest issue for me was probably how anachronistic it felt to me. In the first scene, after Edward departs, Anna says “Bastard!–? I didn’t think this word would be likely to be uttered by a respectable middle class woman in 1760 England.

Then, Hopple and Edward hired Anna as a secretary, at a time when only men were secretaries. I found this even more difficult to believe. The characters continued, it seemed to me, to behave and speak like twenty-first century people. For example, Anna goes on about Edward’s attractiveness to her mother-in-law. Later on she tells her friend that the earl isn’t likely to seduce her. Here’s a snippet from that conversation:

“Of course he won’t while you’re wearing that awful cap.–? Rebecca gestured with the teapot at the offending article of clothing. “I don’t know why you wear it. You’re not that old.–?

“Widows are supposed to wear caps.–? Anna touched the muslin cap self-consciously. “Besides, I don’t want him to seduce me.–?

“Why ever not?–?

“Because—-? Anna stopped.

She realized –” horribly–”that her mind had gone blank, and she couldn’t think of a single reason why she didn’t want the earl to seduce her.

I just couldn’t suspend disbelief that this conversation was taking place in 1760. There were other examples of speech that seemed contemporary to me. Edward says “Shit,–? in Anna’s presence. He also refers to another character as “that baboon.–? There’s mention of a “crackpot theory.–? Edward’s valet says to Anna, “Don’t have to be snotty.–?

It’s not just the characters’ behavior and speech that feels modern to me, but the narration and character thoughts also seem to me to use contemporary expressions. For example, Edward is described as having “demolished the food on his plate.–? Another time he thinks that something “had blown up in his face.–?

Understand, I’m not saying that these words themselves are actually anachronistic. They may in fact have been in use in 1760. But the expressions comprised of those words sound contemporary to me, and that was enough to pull me out of the story.

For these reasons, I had considerable difficulty suspending my disbelief enough to keep reading. I kept at it though, largely because the sex scenes were hot. Indeed, I have no gripes at all with Anna and Edward’s erotic encounters, which were sensual and rich with sensory descriptions.

Another issue I had (and perhaps it was partly because of my distraction due to the reasons I mentioned above), is that I didn’t see much romantic love between Anna and Edward. Their initial attraction seemed largely physical to me. Anna speculates about Edward’s chest hair, and Edward wonders about the color of Anna’s nipples. There’s nothing wrong with good old fashioned lust but in this case, I found myself longing for that lust to be conveyed in a fresher way, and even more importantly, I also wanted to feel more of other emotions between Edward and Anna, too.

For two people who had been through the wringer (Anna with her infertility and her late husband’s cheating, Edward with all the loved ones he’d lost), these two did not seem to carry any truly deep wounds, and I didn’t feel the psychological angst I would expect from a relationship between them.

There were places, too, where I felt a desire for more subtlety in the writing. Here’s an example:

He stopped suddenly as if she’d interrupted.

She hadn’t.

For me, the words “as if–? are sufficient to indicate that Anna hadn’t interrupted Edward in this exchange. As a reader, it’s important to me to feel that authors trust my intelligence and know that I will understand their words. The scene in which these two lines appeared is meant to be an emotional one, and it would have had a lot more power for me if I hadn’t been distracted by the unnecessary explanation in the second paragraph.

Nonetheless, there were also things I liked about this book. The fairy tale of the raven prince was lovely, and I enjoyed the way the bird theme was woven throughout the book, with Anna’s last name and the comparisons of Edward to a raven. I like that the main characters were both relatively plain (in Edward’s case, even ugly).

I also liked the character of Coral, the demimondaine. Her cynicism really appealed to me and I hope that she makes further appearances in future books. Some of the character names were evocative and enjoyable (though others, like Chilly, Dreary, and Lazarus Lillipin made it difficult to suspend disbelief). There were some nice turns of phrase in places, too. And as mentioned before, the sexy scenes are very sexy.

Overall, though, The Raven Prince was a frustrating reading experience for me, enough so that by the second half of the book I was skimming. So many readers have loved this book, and I’m glad that it found an audience and that its fans have enjoyed it so much. I truly wish I felt the same way.

I have no doubt that there are and will continue to be other readers for this book, and I recommend that our readers who haven’t done so yet read Jane’s review and Jayne’s review as well before deciding whether to buy it. Since I skimmed the second half and did not go back to read it in its entirety, for me The Raven Prince is a DNF.

Sincerely,

Janine

Goodreads | Amazon | BN | nook | Sony | Kobo

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After I finally got around to reading your first book, “The Raven Prince,” I was hooked on your writing. I knew I had this book and [gloating] “The Serpent Prince” [/gloating] already on hand. Well, now that I’ve finished this one I’m starting to panic. Only one book left. “Gah!” as a friend of mine says, write faster Mrs Hoyt. Write faster.

Much has been said about how your books are more focused on the characters than fussing about historical facts and I did admit that usually this drives me nuts but how in your case, I don’t care. And I still don’t yet I’m happy to say that I find Harry and George’s story more realistic than first book. In the mid eighteenth century, I find it easier to believe that a lower class man and an upperclass woman could wed and find happiness than perhaps in, say, a Regency set novel. And the fact that both are aware of the societal issues they’ll probably face and that both seem happier living in the country than “doing the pretty” in London helps as well.

One thing that stuck me immediately is how the way George acts seemed “right.” The way she would show up at Harry’s cottage and just waltz in, pick up his carved animals, question him, kept him waiting when he first applied for steward’s job — all seem like something an upperclass woman would do, unthinkingly — she’s the employer and he’s the servant. While Harry’s worried about 1) what people will think of him and of her, 2) that she’ll be injured if Granville goes after him while he’s on Granville’s land questioning the farmers about their poisoned sheep and 3) finding shelter after the carriage accident and making sure George is warm. All things that a servant would do and worry about.

Other things I loved: the bit in the church when discussion turned to crop rotation as all waited for George and Harry to “talk,” that the travel distances and amount of time needed to go from Yorkshire to London and back seem right and far more realistic than the two day jaunts from London to Gretna Green I’ve read in other books. I
like that Harry wasn’t suddenly elevated to gentleman status by long lost family turning up and claiming he was stolen by gypsies or some such rot. The sex scenes were hot and I love that Harry thinks George is beautiful just as she is. And thank you for not trying to pretty up Harry’s mother. The vindictive shrew in me rejoiced that old Granville suffered before he finally headed off to hell.

Alas, I also have a few niggles. I would have liked the lower class farmers and others in Yorkshire to have more realistic regional accents and dialect. It’s not hard to do if you watch a few episodes of “All Things Great and Small.” But at least you didn’t use Cockney for them as some authors do who seem to feel that’s the universal lower class accent in England. The identification of the sheep poisoner was a bit of a let-down since trying to incriminate Harry with carvings seems a little beyond Janie’s mental capabilities. And as Jane mentioned in her review, George does a few things that seemed out of character for her and sent her off in the direction of a Martyr Heroine.

But overall, I was almost as happy with your second book as I was with the first and am psyched for “The Serpent Prince.” Now I must go hold our arc of it in my hands and happy dance a bit. B+

~Jayne

You can purchase The Leopard Prince at Amazon or Fictionwise ($4.03 with buywise membership and micropay rebate) and BooksonBoard ($3.89)

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Last year my blogging partner raved to me about this book. “You must read it,” she said. I said I would and sincerely intended to but time passed. I read other reviews of it where people raved about it and thought, “I really need to read that.” And time passed. And I heard from trusted reading friends that it is spectacular and mentally said to myself, “yes, someday…must get to that.” And time passed. Then Jane emailed us and said she’d gotten an advanced copy of “The Serpent Prince” and after reading it she was mailing it out to us to read and I groaned at the thought that I still hadn’t read the first darn book yet. So after finishing another book yesterday I finally (at last!) picked up “The Raven Prince” and started it last night. I got 3 chapters into it before I went to bed then when I got up this morning, I picked it up and couldn’t put it down. Thank God I’d already walked the dog because only the need for food took me away from it until I finished it this afternoon.

I’d heard about the historical inaccuracies. Usually those bother me. Not this time. With this book I was so caught up in the story and the characters that I didn’t care. Not one bit. I was ready to believe that financially distressed widow Anna Wren could become the personal secretary of scarred Edward de Raafe, Earl of Swartingham (okay, I have to admit that I winced at that title) in 1760s England. That their attraction would intensify until Anna used her favor gained from helping a sick “barque of frailty” to take the chance to spend a hawt night (and then another hawter night) masked at a London brothel with this man who stirred her emotionally as well as physically. That Edward would at one point take Anna with him to London to a meeting of the Agrarian Society and the other members wouldn’t turn a hair. That the final showdown could take place in front of some members of the Quality and that Anna and Edward might have to face them down in the future. I didn’t care one little bit. Because by that point I was wiping away tears as I turned the pages. I so believed in the romance and the world you’d created between these two that if you’d told me they got into a Range Rover and drove off into the sunset on the M25 I would have nodded and said “of course, that’s the perfect vehicle for Jock to fit into”.

He drew back only to deliver a series of little nips along her bottom lip. “Will you marry me?” he breathed so close to her that the air from his body whispered across her face.

More tears blurred Anna’s eyes. “I love you so much, Edward,” she said brokenly. “What if we never have a family?”

He cupped her face in his hands. “You are my family. If we never have children, I will be disappointed, but if I never have you, I will be devastated. I love you. I need you. Please trust me enough to be my wife.”

“Yes.” Edward was already nibbling a row of kisses down her neck, so it was hard for her to get the word out, but she said it again anyway, because saying it was important.

“Yes.”

See, I’m tearing up again just reading that last bit over. I don’t care if this book has glaring historical inaccuracies. I don’t care if Edward acts more like a RomanceMan than a RealMan when he says this (though he does act more like a RealMan during the book). I don’t care I tell you. I want this to be real. I want these two to have the happiness they deserve. Even if they have to suffer through having Davis as Edwards’ shifty valet. I sighed happily when I finished this book and am happy to give it an A- (yes, well I had to take some points off form’s sake).

~Jayne

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I’ve come to the realization that your books are not really historicals, but rather fairy tales set in the mid 1700s. As such, this story need not abide by ordinary societal rules which may restrict the fair maiden from her reward with a servant. This book, like the last one, is about sleeping beauty awakening to her womanhood and then rising from her bespelled bed to assist the knight in slaying dragons and capturing her happy ever after. This time, though, the knight wears the disguise of the maiden’s land steward.

Lady Georgina Maitland is an older lady, firmly set on the shelf. She is single by choice for as the daughter of an Earl with a family fortune, Lady Georgina was frequently courted and proposed to. She always found someone else was a better match for her suitor and this dreamy and somewhat flighty woman who loved fairy tales found herself alone at the age of 28.

While traveling to view an inherited property, Lady Georgina takes a personal interest in her land steward, Harold Pye. Harry is the son of a land steward who has some strong but disturbing ties to Lady Georgina’s neighbor. Harry knows better than to get involved with Lady Georgina but she's persistent and he can't really resist her. Further, someone is poisoning nearby landowners sheep and Harry is the prime suspect.

But once Harry’s caught in Lady Georgina’s web, he’s a willing captive and is willing to stand up for Georgina and their right to be together, even in the face of familial pressure.

Tony coughed and started his horse. “Be that as it may, a gentleman doesn’t continue to press his attentions on a lady who can’t return them.”

“Then, as I see it, you have two problems, my lord,” Harry said.

Tony’s eyes narrowed.

“One, that the lady does, in fact, return my attentions, and two”–"Harry turned to meet the earl’s gaze–"”I am no gentleman.”

I loved both Harry and Lady Georgina and they really made the story. Harry was torn between what society deemed was proper and the strength of the growing tenderness between the two of them. Lady Georgina was a dreamy delight whose life eventually becomes as delightful as the fairy tales that she tells.

There are two major problems that drag this book down at the end. First, Georgina acts like a twit on two occassions leading to a Big (and foolish as they often are) Misunderstanding. Second, the suspense plot was weak. I suppose in keeping with the fairy tale theme, the villian had to be super villianous but I thought that the villian was more of a caricature than a character. I do wish that the societal differences between Lady Georgina and Harold were addressed a bit more. However, I think that those people who bought the Raven Prince will probably find this a good read. B-

Best regards,

Jane

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I’m buying several books today and in the spirit of the holiday season [which apparently means I still have some left over from Thanksgiving], I’ll giveaway five copies of Elizabeth Hoyt’s Raven Prince in the ebook format of the reader’s choice. First five that comment to THIS post, will win.

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Edited to add: Rosario loved it too.

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