CBR17 Book 60: "Can't Escape Love" by Alyssa Cole

Page count: 192 pages

Rating: 3.5 stars

CBR17 Pie Challenge: Inclusion

CBR17 Bingo: Borrow (read through Libby, since I don't actually own the book)

Regina "Reggie" Hobbs is working hard to make her nerdy website, Girls with Glasses, a success, and prove to her over-protective parents that she's perfectly capable of taking care of herself, even if she's in a wheelchair. She loves the work, she loves her very capable team, but lately, she's been struggling with insomnia, and the only thing that seems to soothe her to sleep is the voice of a puzzle podcaster, Gustave Nguyen, she used to follow, but he no longer podcasts, and the archive of his episodes has been deleted. So Reggie goes to the unusual step of contacting him, asking if he could make some recordings for her, to help her sleep.

Gustave "Gus" Nguyen is autistic and often has trouble with social interactions, especially with women. He remembers Reggie from chats they used to have on his live streams, but doesn't want to give a virtual stranger voice recordings that he would no longer have any control over. He sympathises with her plight, however, and offers to call her if she has trouble sleeping, to talk to her until she falls asleep. Thus begins their friendship, and soon it becomes clear that while Gus can help Reggie with her insomnia, Reggie can help Gus succeed in completing an escape room he's working on. He's been contracted to design an escape room based on a very popular romance anime for Anime Con, and he knows absolutely nothing about the anime, nor does he see what is so fascinating to others about it. 

Reggie, on the other hand, is a superfan and offers to help him understand the show and the characters in return for his nighttime phone calls. Once they discover that they both live fairly close to each other in Queens, they can meet up in person, and it doesn't take long for their friendship to develop into something more. 

Both Reggie and Gus have some personal issues to resolve before they can fully commit to a relationship, but since both feel more comfortable with each other than apart, and help complement each other's skills beautifully, there is never any doubt that they will find a HEA, without too much conflict.

While I've read all the full novels in the Reluctant Royals series, I have yet to complete all the novellas, and with this fitting into a number of my reading challenges this summer, it felt like a good quick read to choose. There are several mentions of Reggie's twin sister Portia in this, the heroine of A Duke by Default, a book that still makes me annoyed every time I think of it. Naledi, the heroine of A Princess in Theory also has a cameo. Even though it's part of an ongoing series, this novella would mostly work fine on its own. There are some issues with Reggie's parents and her sister that are not entirely resolved (that happens in Portia's book). But it's not anything that would ruin anyone's reading experience if this was the first book of Cole's they picked up.

The inclusion of neurodiverse characters has become quite common in romance now, but back in 2019, when this book came out, I think it was more unusual. Considering this also has a heroine who is mostly wheelchair-bound (she can stand for short periods of time, but lost the use of her legs after viral meningitis when she was younger), this book crosses off a lot of squares on a diversity bingo board. It therefore felt like a good choice for the "Inclusion" pie slice of the CBR Pie Challenge. It also works as "borrowed" as I got it through my library app Libby, and don't actually own the book. 

Judging a book by its cover: Cole usually has really good covers for her books, with cover models that actually look close to how they're described in the story. It's not often you see people in wheelchairs on romance covers. 

Crossposted by Cannonball Read

#CBR13 Book 37: "How to Find a Princess" by Alyssa Cole

Page count: 400 pages

Rating: 3 stars

Official book description:

Makeda Hicks has lost her job and her girlfriend in one fell swoop. The last thing she’s in the mood for is to rehash the story of her grandmother’s infamous summer fling with a runaway prince from Ibarania, or the investigator from the World Federation of Monarchies tasked with searching for Ibarania’s missing heir.

Yet when Beznaria Chetchevaliere crashes into her life, the sleek and sexy investigator exudes exactly the kind of chaos that organized and efficient Makeda finds irresistible, even if Bez is determined to drag her into a world of royal duty Makeda wants nothing to do with.

When a threat to her grandmother’s livelihood pushes Makeda to agree to return to Ibarania, Bez takes her on a transatlantic adventure with a crew of lovable weirdos, a fake marriage, and one-bed hijinks on the high seas. When they finally make it to Ibarania, they realize there’s more at stake than just cash and crown, and Makeda must learn what it means to fight for what she desires and not what she feels bound to by duty.

Alyssa Cole's contemporary romances keep being lauded on romance review sites I frequent, and I keep reading her books, waiting to be as impressed as others seem to be. We first met Beznaria "Bez" Chetchevaliere in a cameo in the first book in this series, How to Catch a Queen. Turns out I possibly prefer her in smaller doses, she's a bit much as a protagonist in her own book. I can see why Makeda is rather taken aback by her. 

Frequently one of my complaints of Cole's contemporary romances is that the heroines are way more impressive than the heroes and I just don't think they've found a person who's good enough for them. In this story, where we have two heroines, I'm still not entirely sold on them as a couple. I think I liked them fine as individuals and people interacting, but kept waiting for the romance to work for me - which it never really did.

Additionally, there is the whole missing "long lost heir" storyline that played out in an albeit surprising manner, certainly not at all the way I was expecting it to, but that once again felt a bit too outlandish to me. The things I liked best about this book were Makeda's grandmother, said grandmother's mean old cat and the dude we are introduced to who is yet another royal (SO many of them out there in Cole's romance world) out and about in a secret identity. He seemed interesting, so I guess I'll probably pick up the next book in this series as well. With the exception of her historical romances, Ms. Cole is now very much a "pick up on sale" or whenever I can find one available at the library. There's always enough entertainment value in each book that I don't entirely regret spending the time reading them, though. Not exactly the strongest recommendation, but there we are. 

Judging a book by its cover: As always, Ms. Cole has really beautiful covers, featuring beautiful people in interesting outfits. I still think the model who portrays Bez should have been more muscular (her arms are basically matchsticks, which feels very wrong) and her shoulders should have been wider, but otherwise, I guess it's fine. It's always nice to see two ladies in a clinch cover instead of the standard hetero couple. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR13 Book 9: "How to Catch a Queen" by Alyssa Cole

Page count: 384 pages

Audio book length: 10 hrs 53 mins

Rating: 3.5 stars

Official book description:

When Shanti Mohapi weds the king of Njaza, her dream of becoming a queen finally comes true. But it’s nothing like she imagined. Shanti and her husband may share an immediate and powerful attraction, but her subjects see her as an outsider, and everything she was taught about being the perfect wife goes disastrously wrong.

A king must rule with an iron fist, and newly crowned King Sanyu was born perfectly fitted for the gauntlet, even if he wishes he weren’t. He agrees to take a wife as is required of him, though he doesn’t expect to actually fall in love. Even more vexing? His beguiling new queen seems to have the answers to his country’s problems—except no one will listen to her.

By day, they lead separate lives. By night, she wears the crown, and he bows to her demands in matters of politics and passion. When turmoil erupts in their kingdom and their marriage, Shanti goes on the run, and Sanyu must learn whether he has what it takes both to lead his people and to catch his queen.

The engagement/marriage of convenience is quite a common trope in historical romance, it's harder to pull off in contemporary ones (although, by all means, it happens all the time, even though the author tends to have to get a bit more creative). Shanti has wanted to become a queen since she was a little girl, and has worked very hard to become a beautiful, poised, fit, and well-educated woman who would be the prize of any ruler. She doesn't want to become queen for the prestige, wealth, or title, but because she genuinely wants to take part in the day-to-day ruling of a kingdom, and trying to make the world a better place for as many as possible. When her profile is picked on Royalmatch.com and she is married off to Prince Sanyu of Njaza literally on his father's deathbed, she has already done thorough research into the country's resources, infrastructure, social conditions, and what challenges the country, still trying to recover from centuries of colonisation, are facing. Sadly for her, however, the tradition in Njaza is for women to be seen and not heard and this applies at all levels of society.

Sanyu's role models for marriage were his now-dead father, who kept replacing his queen every four months or his father's closest advisor (now Sanyu's), who never married. Sanyu's mother disappeared after she bore him, seemingly quite happy to be free of the kingdom, and the two ex-revolutionaries raised Sanyu to believe that any expression of softer emotion or personal need is unforgivable softness. Having fought a civil war to liberate Njaza from colonial rule, the two elder men were big on spreading propaganda about how strong, glorious, and unbeatable the nation was, and Sanyu's father ruled with an iron fist. Sanyu, who suffers from occasional crippling anxiety, doesn't even want the throne but has no choice but to step up upon his father's death. While he finds Shanti very attractive the first time he sees her, before the wedding, he then barely gives her a thought for several months after the coronation, grieving his father and trying to get some sort of idea of what the job of the king actually entails. Not that his royal council or advisors seem to want him to think too hard for himself, they seem to have very firm ideas of how the country should be ruled (no changes whatsoever from his father's rule). Meanwhile, the country's finances are suffering, a lot of the populace are starting to be unhappy with the lack of progress and innovation, while the royal council's isolationist views are keeping Njaza from making lucrative international deals that would benefit them both diplomatically and economically. 

Resigned to the fact that she'll be sent packing after her four month marriage trial is over (after about three months she's barely seen her husband), Shanti is nevertheless doing what she can to make a difference in the country. She's been sneaking out of the palace in disguise at night, trying to help out a group of women organising protests and trying to affect change from a local bookstore. She is rather surprised when Sanyu shows up at her private rooms one evening, asking to hear her suggestions and plans, and suddenly wanting to act on the clear attraction that's been there between them since their first meeting. However, he keeps their growing closeness a secret and only shows up at her quarters at night. Is he ever going to work through his anxiety and stand up to his advisors, becoming the husband that Shanti wishes for and the progressive king that Njaza needs?

It seems to me that a common theme in all of Alyssa Cole's contemporary romances featuring fictional royals and the people they fall in love with, is that the heroes rarely, if ever, prove themselves worthy of the awesome heroines. Despite almost throwing my e-reader across the room because of my frustration with A Duke by Default, I ended up reading all of the main novels in Cole's previous series, Reluctant Royals, and I found things to like in each book. Having once again heard many great things about this new book, I gave it a try, and mostly liked it, even though the "runaway royals" of the series title is a stretch in this book. While Shanti eventually gets sick of Sanyu's inability to confront his sort-of-uncle/head adviser and leaves the palace for a little while, she doesn't exactly go very far, and I would say calling her actions running away is exaggerating wildly. 

While there are a lot of dumb men in this book, Sanyu's close friend and one of the junior members of his council is very cool. I also liked the Njazan tradition of triad marriages, which I would happily have seen explored in more detail. There are sort of cameo appearances from quite a few of the protagonists in the previous series via a group chat Shanti is accepted into, and it was nice to "hear from" some of the other women that I'd come to quite like. 

While I found this to be a perfectly OK novel, I'm not sure I'll be re-reading it any time soon. One of the two heroines for the next books shows up in a very memorable scene, though, and I hope that her book, having a lesbian couple at the centre may escape the unworthy partner trope, since both protagonists are women. We shall see. I'm not willing to give up on Ms. Cole yet, but she's now on "get books from the library until they are on sale for less than 3 bucks" list.

Judging a book by its cover: The frocks on Alyssa Cole's contemporary novels are always amazing. The female cover model they've used to portray Shanti seems pretty spot on, in looks and general bearing. The dude who I'm supposing is meant to be Sanyu doesn't look anything like what our hero is described as (my mental image was Winston Duke as M'Baku). He's far too skinny looking and only has designer stubble, no actual beard. Do better, cover designers!

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR12 Book 23: "A Princess in Theory" by Alyssa Cole

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

Naledi "Ledi" Smith's parents died when she was very little, and she was shuffled through a series of foster homes her entire childhood. She learned to rely on no one but herself. When she keeps getting persistent e-mails about some African country named Thesolo and how she's the crown prince's intended, she obviously assumes that these communications are spam and deletes them all. Now she's working hard to get her degree in epidemiology and waitressing on the side, in between worrying about her hard-partying best friend Portia, who seems to be going off the rails a bit.

Of course, what Ledi doesn't know is that she was born in Thesolo, and her mother was best friends with the current queen. For reasons known to no one but her now-deceased parents, they chose to break all ties to their former friends and family and flee to the United States. While Ledi has loving grandparents and an uncle and cousin in Thesolo, not to mention an actual royal fiancee, she was too little to ever be told about this, and as her parents were using fake names when they died, no one was able to track down Ledi's true family.

Her royal betrothed, prince Thabiso, keeps being pressured by his parents to find a suitable replacement to marry. He fondly remembers his childhood friend, and while he feels hurt and betrayed by her parents' actions, he keeps asking his hyper-efficient assistant to continue the search for her. When she is tracked down in New York, he decides to travel to see her and confront her about the perceived abandonment of her duty. When he meets her, Ledi mistakes him for someone else and he likes the idea of getting to know his fiancee without any of the trappings of his title and status in the way. He doesn't exactly make a great first impression on her, being absolutely dreadful at the job he impulsively decides to pretend he's applying for, but pays one of her neighbours to go on an extended vacation, so he can rent her flat and be just across the hall from Ledi. He discovers that Ledi has absolutely no idea where she came from and what is waiting for her in Thesolo, she is completely ignorant about what her heritage entails.

Ledi is undeniably attracted to the handsome guy who suddenly moved in across the hall from her, but suspects there may be something strange about him too. When she discovers the truth about his identity, she's already half on her way to falling in love with him and is furious about his deceptions. She nevertheless agrees to come with him to Thesolo to see her forgotten homeland, not because she has any intention of marrying him and becoming a princess, but because there is a mysterious illness spreading among the population, and as an epidemiologist in training, trying to find out what is causing the disease would be incredibly good for her future career. She agrees to pretend to still be Thabiso's fiancee, as it makes things easier for her when she returns to an unfamiliar country, but is pretty clear on the fact that she'll be going back to her life in New York once she's helped figure out what is causing the strange illness.

This is the first in Alyssa Cole's Reluctant Royals series, which keeps being lauded all over the romance review blogs. Her contemporaries just keep getting so much love and keep appearing on best-of lists, but neither of the other two books I've read in this series has done much to impress me. A Duke by Default (about Ledi's best friend Portia who cleans up her wild child act and tries to get her life in order in Scotland) ended up on my Worst of 2018-list because it kept pushing all of my "nope"-buttons and A Prince on Paper (about Ledi's shy cousin), while somewhat better, still didn't exactly wow me. So if I hadn't actually already paid money for this one, I may not have even given Ms. Cole a third chance. I like her historical novels better, and will still keep reading those, but at least, reading the series in the wrong order, meant that I finally got a book I actually liked, and may possibly, at some future point, consider re-reading. I can only imagine my disappointment if I'd read the series in the order it was published.

My friend and fellow reviewer Narfna points out in her review (she read the series in order) that the heroine is a lot more sympathetic and relatable than the hero. This seems to be typical in all of the Cole contemporaries I've read. I found Portia's surprise duke utterly insufferable and wished her to find her HEA with anyone else, and the flamboyant step-prince who woos Ledi's cousin also made me roll my eyes a lot. While Naledi is a wonderfully realised character with obvious hopes, dreams, ambitions and extremely understandable emotional baggage because of her childhood, Thabiso is a lot more slick and complex. While it's obvious to the reader why he might find a break from his regular royal routine and scrutiny refreshing, he has very high-handed ways, and pretty much stalks and keeps lying to Ledi in order to spend more time with her. He also didn't have much personality beyond being a handsome royal who refused to cave to his parents' persistent matchmaking.

This is my favorite book of the series, and even with this, I have quite a lot of quibbles and misgivings. I'm not sure I'm going to re-read even this one, which I liked better than both the other main books in the series (there are also two novellas). Hence I can't give the book four stars, and I'm a bit reluctant in wholeheartedly recommending it. Still, while these books just aren't for me, Alyssa Cole does not lack for enthusiastic supporters online. Based on her Twitter feed, she's a great lady, I'm just sorry I couldn't really fall for her brand of escapism. 

Judging a book by its cover: While most of Alyssa Cole's contemporaries in this series just have not been working out for me, I cannot deny that the covers for the various books are gorgeous. The colourful dresses that the cover models wear are all breathtaking, and there is such a sense of joy in each of the images. This book (the first in the series) is no exception.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR11 Book 40: "A Prince on Paper" by Alyssa Cole

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 3 stars

#CBR11 Bingo: Birthday (Alyssa Cole's birthday is August 12th)

From Goodreads:
Nya Jerami fled Thesolo for the glitz and glamour of NYC but discovered that her Prince Charming only exists in her virtual dating games. When Nya returns home for a royal wedding, she accidentally finds herself up close and personal—in bed—with the real-life celebrity prince who she loves to hate.

For Johan von Braustein, the red-headed step-prince of Liechtienbourg, acting as paparazzi bait is a ruse that protects his brother—the heir to the throne—and his own heart. When a royal referendum threatens his brother’s future, a fake engagement is the perfect way to keep the cameras on him.

Nya and Johan both have good reasons to avoid love, but as desires are laid bare behind palace doors, they must decide if their fake romance will lead to a happily-ever-after.

I keep reading such effusive reviews about Alyssa Cole's Reluctant Royals series, and I really do want to like the book. At it turns out I like this better than A Duke by Default, but it still took me nearly a week to read it, which is an really unforgivably long time, considering the book has fewer than 400 pages, and shows that the book just isn't capturing my attention all that much.

The heroine of this book is Nya, who is very sweet and possibly a bit too perfect. She is inexperienced and has grown up very sheltered, because her father would actually secretly poison her every time she showed any signs of independence. She'd get ill and feel insecure, and only after her father was arrested after some sort of nefarious plot in book one (which I still haven't read) did Nya realise the truth and come to see that she needed to expand her horizons. Due to her sheltered upbringing, she doesn't really want to put herself out there, and plays a number of fantasy romance games on her phone instead of talking to, you know, real men. While Nya was clearly very kind, and open minded, and altruistic and understanding and so forth,  I wanted her to maybe be a bit more flawed, and have more of a personality. She was just a bit dull, if I'm completely honest.

Oh, the thing that annoyed me the most about her - while we're not quite in the realms of Anastasia Steele, who can't even think about her lady parts except as "down there", Nya is apparently so "charmingly innocent" that she seriously refers to sexual organs as aubergine and peach emoji. This would MAYBE be ok if it had happened once, but nope, it's a recurring thing throughout the book, and completely took me out of the scene every time. Not sexy in the slightest.

Johan, is the playboy prince with a bunch of emotional baggage because of unresolved issues after his Mum died. He as a very public persona that he uses to keep the press attention away from his younger brother, but doesn't actually speak with said brother all that much anymore and as a result, they've grown apart. Johan spends most of his free time working with charities (but doesn't want public to know he's actually a super good guy, because that would interfere with his shallow himbo image). In truth, Johan is really very private and dealing with a lot of anxiety - he's terrified to properly love ever again because the loss of his mother still affects him so much. He should clearly desperately see a therapist. Of course, for all that he is terrified of attachment, he clearly cares deeply about his brother and is upset about their estrangement, and he's a very caring and considerate fake boyfriend to Nya, letting her set the pace and making sure he has her enthusiastic consent for every new step of their relationship.

This book is pretty much the contemporary equivalent of the rake and the wallflower (to the point where Johan calls Nya "wallflower" for part of the book), but it was a lot less interesting to me than most historicals with the same trope.

Johan's stepfather is the king of the little fictional European country of Lichtenbourg. The country is about to have a big referendum about whether to abolish the monarchy once and for all, and one of the primary reasons given for Nya and Johan to have their big, public pretend relationship is so the Royal family gets positive press. There is a subplot involving  figuring out who's been working to sabotage the referendum, with anti-Royal graffiti and a number of negative and hostile posts on social media. I don't even want to call it a mystery, as it's really extremely obvious who the responsible individual is.

I don't really want to spoil the nature of the identity crisis that Johan's younger brother is experiencing. Suffice to say, he feels that Johan and his dad, the king, have unrealistic expectations of him, and doesn't feel like he can talk to his brother. Because of this, he is acting out in creative and pretty typical teenage ways, but when the fate of the future monarchy is at stake, having a public temper tantrum may not be the best idea.

Nothing in A Prince on Paper evoked anything like the stabbing rage I felt when reading the previous book in the series, but there were things that made me roll my eyes a lot. Nya's aforementioned inability to refer to human sexual organs by their actual names; the fact that "Lichtenbourgian" was really just a hodge podge of French and German (although this is actually jokingly acknowledged in the book) and Johan's weird tendency to go Oh la la (sometimes with a lot more las). Also, I just super hate the nickname Jo Jo for Johan. It's the opposite of sexy.

I should probably just accept that when it comes to Alyssa Cole, her historical romances are more my jam than her contemporaries. She's not on the "stay away at all costs" list, like Bella Andre and Sonali Dev (they know what they did). I still own the first book in the series, though, so will probably end up reading it at some point. My expectations will not be swayed by gushing internet reviews anymore, though.

Judging a book by its cover: For all that I seem incapable of feeling anything but fairly lukewarm towards these novels, I cannot deny that the covers for this series are excellent. Ginger romance heroes aren't exactly the norm, so it's always nice to see an attractive redheaded dude on a cover (and in a book). The dress that the female cover model is wearing is utterly gorgeous (and I love that Alyssa Cole wore it for at least one of her promotional appearances for this book).

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR10 Book 85: "A Duke by Default" by Alyssa Cole

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 1.5 stars

#CBR10Bingo: Cover Art

Spoiler warning! This review will discuss plot points from the book in detail, because it is impossible for me to list the many ways in which this book did not work for me without mentioning them. If you are unfamiliar with Scotland, Edinburgh and couldn't care less about the British peerage, then maybe these things will not bother you. Nevertheless, be warned that you may get spoilers if you continue with my review after the bold text further down.

New York socialite Portia Hobbs arrives in Edinburgh to complete an apprenticeship with a sword maker. Unfortunately, her new boss seems to be trying his very best to avoid her and while he's very hot, he also seems to be severely lacking in social skills. One of the reasons Portia has decided to go to a different continent for a while is that she was pretty much a hot mess in her old life - drinking too much, sleeping around and hurting friends and family members. She's determined to be a new and better Portia, and that person doesn't sleep with her boss. So she does her best to help out his flagging business while waiting for him to teach her what she's actually there to learn.

Tavish "Tav" McKenzie loves making swords and daggers, and as well as running Bodotria Armoury, he gives free fighting lessons to underprivileged kids and tries to make a difference in the rapidly gentrifying community. He doesn't entirely see why his brother hired him an apprentice, and he certainly wasn't expecting a posh and sexy American to show up, with tons of ideas of how he can improve his business through an improved social media presence. While he finds Portia very attractive, Tav is aware both of the difference in their ages and the fact that he's her boss. He's not intending to act on his attraction to her, and so instead tries to keep her at a distance by being as gruff as possible.

When Portia accidentally reveals on social media that Tav may in fact be the son of a duke, his life is suddenly changed completely and Portia feels responsible. Used to high society, she's determined to coach him in etiquette, so he can assume his rightful position, if that's what he wants to do.

I really wanted to like this. I did. I'd heard such good things about it on several romance review sites. The cover is beautiful. I think diversity in romance writing is incredibly important and Alyssa Cole cares about geeky stuff and complex and interesting female characters. Sadly, however, this book was not the book to win me over. I find it baffling that Ms Cole, who clearly writes very well researched historical romances set during the American Civil War shows such appalling lack of research skills when she writes in a contemporary setting.

Things that made it impossible for me to like this book:
- The book is set in Edinburgh. I have lived there for two years. Several of my dear friends still live there. The husband and I visit it often. The area most of the story takes part in is a fictional area called Bodotria, when it is clearly meant to be Leith, which is an actual, rapidly gentrifying section of Edinburgh. I cannot for the life of me understand why Ms Cole had to make up a new part to set her story in.

- The "Scottish" accents. Don't get me started on the fun interpretation of colloquial Scottish vernacular that many of the characters, including Tav speak.

- Turns out, Tav's biological dad (who his mother decided to leave because she was a poor, Chilean refugee and their union would never have worked out) is a duke. Not just any duke, however, a Royal Duke. The Duke of Edinburgh, in point of fact. This is where any suspension of disbelief I had went up in a fiery inferno of fury, because 1) The only royal dukes in Great Britain are directly related to the current monarch - in this case, Queen Elizabeth II. None of them are Scottish.This can be easily discovered with a quick Google search. 2) The Duke of Edinburgh is a title that has only existed three times in the history of the UK. The current, contemporary one is Prince Phillip, consort to aforementioned Queen Elizabeth II. 3)

There are in fact several Scottish dukedoms that Ms Cole could have used instead, but I can only surmise that since the title of this series of books is Reluctant Royals, a normal duke (still the highest order of peerage after the actual royals in the UK) wasn't good enough and had to make up a fictional royal dukedom to give to Tav's bio dad. Why in the world she couldn't just invent a new dukedom, rather than the one belonging to the man MARRIED to the current Queen is anyone's guess. How no one in Ms Cole's editing team didn't think to take her aside and say: "You know the Duke of Edinburgh is the Queen's husband, right?" seems like dereliction of duty of the highest order.

But Malin, I hear you say, it's only a romance novel. Why does this bother you so much? The answer, dear reader, is that if Alyssa Cole wanted her hero to have a Scottish duke as a father, she could have made up a title instead - like she made up a fictional part of Edinburgh. If this is in fact set in some alternate reality, where there is no Queen Elizabeth II (although the Queen featured later in the book sure seemed a LOT like her) and her husband is not the Duke of Edinburgh, then she should have made this a hell of a lot more clear.

- Tav is utterly undeserving of Portia (even as much of a mess as she seems to think she is). He treats her appallingly for much of the book and thoroughly deserved to be pepper sprayed by her. I don't care that he's nice to down on their luck local children if he can't treat a woman in his employ with basic respect and decency.

- Portia is supposed to be in Edinburgh to apprentice to a sword smith. She makes ONE sword in her three months there! Apart from that, she's Tav's secretary/PR-person/social media rep.

- It would have been nice if the villain of the story was slightly less of a racist stereotype, but this is so far down my list of grievances to be negligible.

- For all that Portia claims to be a hot mess and discovers through online tests that she most likely suffers from ADHD, she sure is beautiful, fit, personable and extremely competent at everything she sets her mind to.

Things I actually liked:
- Tav's sister in law, Cheryl, is adorable and runs a Chinese takeaway out of a little kiosk painted to look like a TARDIS. It's called Doctor Hu's.

- Portia, for all that she is almost too perfect (no matter what she tells herself), was very likable and I wanted better for her than Tav. Her family (minus the sister, who could be WAY better at communicating) is clearly awful and she should cut her toxic parents out of her life for good.

- Portia's friends all seemed pretty great. Not enough that I want to go back and read the first book in the series, but both Nya and Naledi were fun supporting characters.

- Prince Johan (of made up European principality - see, if you can make up new parts of Edinburgh and Europe, you can make up alternate peerage as well, Ms. Cole), who seems to be the hero of the next book in the series.

Sadly, based on this book and the rage it produced in me, I'm not sure I'm going to check out any more of the Reluctant Royals series. I'm frankly slightly reluctant to read any more Alyssa Cole at all, despite having enjoyed (but not loved) two of her historicals. I may give her a new chance in time, though.

Judging a book by its cover: Long before this book came out, I was interested in it because of the pretty cover. Having now read the book, I think the cover may in fact be one of the best things about it. The cover models look pretty much like the characters they're supposed to portray and I absolutely love both the hair and the warm shades of the dress on the female cover model.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR10 Book 8: "A Hope Divided" by Alyssa Cole

Page count: 320 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Until she was thirteen, Marlie Lynch grew up with her mother, a freed slave and wise woman. After her white father's death, she was taken in by her half-sister and has been able to combine her knowledge of herbs and root magic with scientific principles. Three years into the American Civil War, Marlie and her half-sister are working surreptitiously to aid the cause of the Union, giving aid to runaway slaves and Freedmen, taking medicine and food to imprisoned Union soldiers, and with Marlie sending coded messages about troop movements and the Confederate Home Guard to the Resistance group the Loyal League.

Unfortunately for Marlie and her sister, their various anti-Confederate enterprises are endangered when Marlie's half-brother (and technically the heir) returns home with his unpleasant and racist wife, who is deeply loyal to the Confederate cause, to the point where she offers to let the Home Guard use their estate as their base of operations. While Marlie has always been a free woman, and has been treated more or less as a part of the family, she now sees how little protection she actually has, and how easily she can be ignored and mistreated because of the colour of her skin. Only a few trusted servants know that Marlie is hiding an escaping Union soldier, Ewan McCall in the laboratory in her private quarters. While McCall was imprisoned in the camp nearby, he and Marlie would exchange notes discussing ethics and philosophy. There was an attraction between them even before Marlie came to shelter him from danger in her rooms.

As Marlie's evil sister-in-law grows increasingly more controlling and jealous, and the cruel Captain of the Home Guard turns his eye more closely to Marlie, whose independence and spirit offends him, it becomes clear that Ewan can no longer stay on the Lynch farm and will have to escape. When Marlie's freedom is suddenly threatened as well, she has no choice but to go with him. While Marlie wants to believe that Ewan's feelings for her are true, she's very conflicted because of her own background, a product of the unequal union a slave-owner and her then enslaved mother. Can a relationship with a white man ever really last, no matter how sensitive and philosophical he seems?  Marlie has also dedicated her life to the healing and helping of others; how will she react when she discovers that Ewan was a torturer before he was taken prisoner?

This is the second book in Alyssa Cole's historical romance series The Loyal League, set during the American Civil War. As with the first book in the series, An Extraordinary Union, which I read back in July of last year, A Hope Divided was widely loved and gushed over on several romance review sites I follow. In the first book, we meet spies Malcolm McCall and Elle Burns, who work to bring down the Confederacy once and for all. Ewan McCall, the hero in this book, is Malcolm's younger brother, who clearly doesn't have the social graces of his brother (and frankly comes across as if he may be neuro-atypical). While he doesn't really want to fight, he believes in the Union cause enough that he joined the army, and was quickly discovered to have a knack for interrogation, due to his dispassionate and seemingly unfeeling manner. Ewan seems to have been very good at torture, but it's not something he enjoyed or is proud of, and he feels especially ashamed of having lost control of his temper and emotions when questioning the sadistic Captain of the Home Guard who later comes to plague Marlie's existence. 

Marlie also works for the Loyal League, but in a much less active role than Elle or Malcolm. With her white half-sister and some of their most loyal servants (all freed slaves), they do their best to help runaway slaves and Union soldiers get to the northern states, and Marlie sends coded letters, and feeds and treats wounded imprisoned Union soldiers, but otherwise has lived a very sheltered life on the family's farm. Her skin colour has always kept her from being a fully accepted part of the Lynch family, but she discovers how lucky and privileged her life has been when her half-brother's vicious and prejudiced wife takes control of the household and invites brutal and ruthless Home Guard soldiers to stay in their home. Her status as an intelligent and independent freedwoman and half white means nothing to these people and she grows increasingly more despairing due to their treatment of her.

Ms Cole has clearly done a huge amount of research for these books, and as I personally don't actually know the time period very well, it was very interesting to me to learn about all the various ways many of the people of the Southern states actually worked against the Confederate cause. While the romance between Marlie and Ewan is central to the book, both have a lot of emotional baggage before they are able to commit to anyone else, even before you add in the complications of an illegal bi-racial union. At one point in the story, I was honestly not sure how exactly they were going to find a satisfying HEA together, but I am very glad that they did.

While the first book in the series was good, I think I liked this one even more, and will be excited to see what Alyssa Cole has in store in her next novel (I'm wondering if the next book will be about the third McCall sibling, the sister). 

Judging a book by its cover: Now, this is a lovely cover for a romance novel and I really like it. The cover model portraying our heroine looks confidently out at the reader, surrounded by the herbs and tools of her trade. I cannot speak for the accuracy of her dress (Civil War era America not being one of the historical periods I know a lot about), but there's no unlaced back, nor implausible amounts of skirts (while still showing a remarkable amount of leg). Just a beautiful, confident woman at her work desk. I don't know if Ms. Cole has any say in the choices of these covers (most authors don't), but either way, she's lucked out.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR9 Book 73: "An Extraordinary Union" by Alyssa Cole

Page count: 320 pages
Rating: 4 stars

From Goodreads:

Elle Burns is a former slave with a passion for justice and an eidetic memory. Trading in her life of freedom in Massachusetts, she returns to the indignity of slavery in the South - to spy for the Union Army. 

Malcolm McCall is a detective for Pinkerton's Secret Service. Subterfuge is his calling, but he's facing his deadliest mission yet - risking his life to infiltrate a Rebel enclave in Virginia.

Two undercover agents who share a common cause - and an undeniable attraction - Malcolm and Elle join forces when they discover a plot that could turn the tide of war in the Confederacy's favour. Caught in a tightening web of wartime intrigue, and fighting a fiery and forbidden love, Malcolm and Elle must make their boldest move to preserve the Union at any cost - even if it means losing each other...

Elle Burns is the daughter of slaves and can even remember the slavery of her childhood, before her parents' master's son freed them when he inherited. She may be young and female, but she has a gift that can provide invaluable help to the Union cause - her eidetic, or photographic memory. Able to recount with perfect recall anything she has read or overheard, she's the ideal spy. She is rather hot-tempered, though, which is why her current mission involves her posing in a newly elected Confederate senator's household as a mute slave. Her superiors hope that can keep her from exploding and risking the mission. Working undercover in Richmond, Virginia, she hopes to overhear plans that may help the Union cause and hopefully end the Civil War faster.

Malcolm McCall is the son of poor Scottish immigrants, and while he may be white, he remembers all too well the hardships his family suffered in their homeland before his family emigrated. His parents marriage suffered because of some of the horrors inflicted on his mother by British soldiers, his father could never entirely get over it and was pretty much driven mad. Determined to ensure that there is no such oppression and mistreatment of people in his new homeland, he is an avid supporter of the Abolitionist cause and proudly serves the Union and President Lincoln by working for the Pinkerton Secret Service. Posing as a decorated Confederate soldier, he charms his way as a favoured guest into Senator Caffrey's household and tries to learn as many secrets as possible to report back to his superiors.

He's somewhat taken aback to discover that the pretty slave he saw abused by the spoiled young Miss Caffrey earlier in the day is apparently his contact, and that she's not mute or in any way slow, rather the opposite. While Elle is naturally quite wary of the strange soldier she is asked to cooperate with, Malcolm seems pretty instantly infatuated with Elle, and his attraction only increases when he learns just how intelligent and talented she is. Even though they both work for the Union, the couple are both very aware that an inter-racial marriage would be impossible and forbidden, even if they survive their dangerous mission.

Elle is used to people around her being initially rather impressed with her memory, but usually they either seem jealous that such a gift is bestowed on a black woman, or they feel threatened and slightly put off by it. Daniel, her former best friend and erstwhile suitor, seemed intimidated by it and certainly didn't want her to use her abilities to spy for the Union. Now he's been taken prisoner by slavers, and one of Elle's hopes while working as a spy is to discover his whereabouts in the South to see if she can help get him freed. She's surprised when Malcolm is neither upset, threatened or intimidated by her recall, but seems even more attracted to her because of it. As they get to know each other better, he also comes to see what a burden it must be for Elle to perfectly remember absolutely everything she's ever read or heard - she can't really selectively overhear bad or horrible things.

This book was one of those releases that I've seen raved about practically everywhere that reviews romance on the internet. It may have raised my expectations too high, because while I liked the book, it certainly didn't exactly blow me away, and I thought the romance developed very fast and became intense extremely quickly, considering the brief timeline the novel takes place over. Especially considering the racial and political difficulties facing the couple, Elle's misgivings are brushed away in no time at all. Also, it's clear that Malcolm needs to be very open-minded, but he seemed almost anachronistically understanding and a bit too modern in his attitudes throughout the story.

I did like that over the course of the novel, it's clear that each of the protagonists have their strengths and while they are good apart, they're even better together. They also both get a chance to rescue the other out of some pretty dire straits. Thinking back, I think the ending may have been a bit sudden and certain bits were a little bit too convenient to be entirely realistic. I appreciate reading a romance from a different time period than I usually do, though, and it's quite clear that Ms. Cole has done her research well. This is the first book in a series, and I'm sure I'll be reading more of these.

Judging a book by its cover: I've seen this cover highlighted in a number of places as a very good one, and I agree that it's nice-looking, I have doubts that a house slave (like Elle is posing as) would be allowed such a nice dress. It really seems too delicate and pretty for that. I do really like the background details and the pose and posture of the woman on the cover. She looks competent, but wary and on guard, which seems very suitable for this book.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.