CBR18 Book 33: "A Marvellous Light" by Freya Marske

Page count: 384 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

Monthly Keyword 26: Light

Nowhere Book Bingo 26: LGBTQIA+ rep

Buzzwords Challenge 26: Parts of a house

Buzzwords Cover Challenge 26: Featuring a silhouette

Sir Robert "Robin" Blyth ends up in a civil service position he is vastly unprepared for, as it turns out, he is supposed to be a liaison between the secret magical world and the more mundane regular world. Usually, the post is held by an individual from a magical family just unlucky enough not to have any magic of their own (seems like there are quite a few such "duds" in the magic-wielding families of society). Robin, on the other hand, is both shocked and rather intrigued when his co-liasion, Edwin Courcey, has to reveal the existence of magic to him. 

Edwin Courcey is both annoyed and worried at the disappearance of Robin's predecessor, especially when it becomes clear very quickly that something sinister is probably to blame. When Robin is attacked and a curse is placed upon him, a side-effect also appears to be that he can now receive visions of the future. Unfortunately, they are vague and usually seem to involve strangers. The curse is visible as a strange tattoo on one of Robin's arms, and with each new excruciatingly painful attack, the tattoo climbs higher up his arm, and the pain increases. Edwin can't leave an innocent man who didn't even know magic existed, least of all, where some magical artefact that the villains are searching for is located, suffer and potentially die. Unfortunately, most of the reference books he requires are at his family home, and Edwin doesn't exactly love returning to the bosom of his family.

Edwin may have magical powers, but he is seen as a huge disappointment in the Courcey family. He reluctantly goes back home, bringing Robin with him, to try to find a way to lift the curse. Edwin's plan is basically to get rid of Robin's pesky curse and then magically make him forget he ever even heard of magic (which seems to be the standard way magicians deal with regular humans). There is also the mystery of where Robin's predecessor disappeared to, the identity of the shadowy individuals who cursed Robin, and exactly what the artefact they are looking for is. 

This has been on my TBR list for a long time. I was initially waiting for the trilogy, of which this is the first part, to be completed, but by the time that happened, I sort of forgot about the whole series. This year, it fit into several of my reading challenges, however. As so many online friends whose opinions in books I trust have rated it highly on Goodreads, it felt like it was time to pull it off my shelf (I keep all of my unread dead tree books in a bookshelf in my bedroom, in the hopes that it might make me read them faster. Once I finish one, it gets moved up to the living room, where the majority of our fiction books are located.) Since I read this in mid-April and have since completed 22 other books, some of the finer details of the plot are now rather hazy to me. The book starts a bit slow, but once Robin is attacked and cursed, and Edwin realises that he has no choice but to help this handsome golden retriever of a man, I was pretty hooked. 

The book is set in Edwardian times, in an alternate history England where magic obviously exists. Robin and Edwin are pretty much opposites, with Robin being, as I previously mentioned, much like a golden retriever, while Edwin is a skittish black cat. Because Edwin has always been made to feel like a failure in his own family and generally lacking among his magical peers, he's got quite a big chip on his shoulder, and Robin's charming himbo ways are both attractive and frustrating to him. 

This is a slow-burn romance, but once the men actually admit their feelings for one another (and Edwin gets over a lot of his trust issues), the relationship between them is so beautiful. I also very much liked several of the supporting female characters, including Robin's younger sister (who I think is one of the protagonists of the second novel) and Robin's extremely overqualified and underestimated secretary in the civil service. They were both great.

There's clearly an overarching plot to the series, and some sort of mysterious cult of bad guys who will need to be stopped. However, this book also has a self-contained ending, and I didn't feel the need to rearrange my entire TBR list to read the two sequels right away (I will try to get to them before the end of the year, though). 

Judging a book by its cover:

I think the cover of this book is my least favourite thing about it. I have never liked the colour orange, and the orange silhouettes, accompanied by the most hideously busy wallpaper pattern covering the rest of the book, it gives me a headache if I look too closely at it. I would never ever have picked up this book if I hadn't been assured by several people that I trust that it was excellent. I find this cover very ugly. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR15 Book 104: "Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands" by Heather Fawcett

Page count: 352 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

Spoiler warning! There will be some spoilers in this review for the first book in the series, so if you're not caught up, stop what you're doing and go read Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries immediately. This review will be here when you return. 

Emily Wilde is back at her university in Cambridge, pleased with the success of her Faerie Encyclopedia. The proposal from her best friend Wendell Bambleby is still something she needs to consider, but after having her suspicions confirmed, that he isn't just a faerie, but a Faerie King gives her pause. Usually, nothing good happens to humans who get romantically involved with the Fey. She's determined to help him find a door back to his kingdom, though, and this is what most of her current research focuses on, when she's not working on her comprehensive map of the realms of Faerie.

Sadly, Bambleby's true identity wasn't just revealed to Emily, but to a whole host of villagers back in Hrafnavik as well. Now it seems the information is spreading, and his wicked stepmother, who usurped his throne and exiled him is sending assassins after him. Emily decides they need to get proactive about locating a back door to his kingdom, so they can stop his stepmother once and for all. This involves another journey, this time to the village of St. Liesl in the Austrian Alps, where several Faerie researchers are rumoured to have gone missing in the past. Along for the journey is Emily's niece Ariadne, who also wants to be a Faerie scholar, as well as Farris Rose, the head of Dryadology at Cambridge, who has pretty much blackmailed his way onto the expedition, threatening to have both Wendell and Emily discredited for falsifying sources for their academic publications (very much true in Wendell's case, very much not in Emily's). 

Will Professor Rose survive the dangerous expedition he has strongarmed his way onto? Will Wendell persuade Emily to actually be his wife? Will Emily manage to locate a door back to his kingdom? Will they manage to stop his wicked stepmother and counteract the poison affecting Wendell so that he and Emily even have a future together? 

I may have actually uttered an unladylike squeal of joy when I discovered this book on a shelf in the Waterstones in Morpeth (the English town where my parents-in-law live). I had seen on Heather Fawcett's Instagram that some UK readers got their pre-orders delivered early and some bookshops had received early deliveries of the book but never dared to hope that I was going to be lucky enough to go to one of those stores. Was I planning on buying this in hardback? No, now it doesn't go with my pretty paperback at all. Is the Norwegian kroner at a record low to the British pound (I seriously can't remember it being this bad for literal decades)? Absolutely. Did I snatch the book up and buy it anyway? Of course, I did! The book doesn't officially release until January 16th and I've wanted to read it pretty much since I finished book 1. There wasn't even a question in my mind.

Did it live up to my expectations? Yes, I am glad to say. I think I like it even better than the first book, even though it was a bit slow in parts and meanders a bit. I also wasn't as interested in the subplot about the missing scholars, but YMMV. Emily and Wendell are a delight together, and I liked that while Wendell had to rescue Emily in the first book, she was very much the rescuer here, even at the risk of her own safety and sanity. I don't know how many books Ms. Fawcett is planning for the series, but I was very happy to see that there will be at least one more book before I have to say goodbye to the characters. This was a really lovely book to finish off my reviewing year. 

Judging a book by its cover: Isn't this just the prettiest thing? The green is one of my favourite shades and the flowers and mushrooms and little items are so delicate and dainty. It also complements the colours of book 1 beautifully. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

#CBR7 Book 127: "A Room with a View" by E.M. Forster

Page count: 211 pages
Audio book length: 7 hrs 22 mins
Rating: 3.5 stars

Sometime in the first decade of the 20th Century, young Miss Lucy Honeychurch is in Florence with her older, constantly worrying cousin Charlotte Bartlett as companion and chaperone. When they discover that the rooms they've been assigned have no nice view, Lucy is disappointed. An older gentleman, Mr. Emerson, offers to trade them, as the rooms he and his son were given have lovely views. "Ladies care about that sort of thing, men do not". Miss Bartlett is worried about the impropriety of the trade, that accepting the rooms may leave them in debt to these strangers, but is convinced by other guests, and Lucy gets her view.

During her stay in Italy, Lucy discovers art and architecture and when she manages to escape the overbearing presence of her cousin, she quite enjoys herself. Luckily, Charlotte makes friends with the vaguely ridiculous lady novelist, Eleanor Lavish, so seems a bit distracted much of the time. Lucy has several encounters with the Emersons, who seem to have fairly radical notions for the time, both of social and gender equality. George, the son, seems to be of a rather gloomy and melancholy disposition, but the father is always cheerful and friendly.

While on one of her rambles, Lucy witnesses a man being stabbed to death in square, swoons and wakes up in the arms of young George Emerson. Later, during an outing in the Florentine countryside, George kisses Lucy on a hillside covered in violets, but they are interrupted by a shocked Charlotte before anything else can happen. Miss Bartless whisks her charge off to Rome before anything else untoward can happen, and Lucy and George don't see each other again.

Several months later, back in England, Lucy accepts the marriage proposal of Mr. Cecil Vyse, the third time he asks her for her hand (the first having been in Rome and the second in the Alps). Lucy's brother Freddy is none too happy about this turn of events, as he finds Cecil a stuffy and pretentious bore, but Mrs. Honeychurch is pleased for her daughter, as the Vyses are in a more rarefied social circle than the Honeychurches. Lucy's future looks set to be predictable, respectable and rather dull, with her thoughts, tastes and opinions carefully curated by her future husband. Then the Emersons unexpectedly let a house in the neighbourhood and Lucy is suddenly torn as to what she really wants.

I loved the 1985 Merchant Ivory film version of A Room with a View, with Helena Bonham Carter as Lucy, Julian Sands as George, Maggie Smith as Charlotte Bartlett and Daniel Day-Lewis at his most pompous as Cecil. At least I did when I saw it, many years ago. It's a visually stunning film and seemed ever so romantic, despite the slow pacing. I had never read the book, so when my Monthly Motif Challenge for November called for a book written before 2000, this seemed like a good opportunity. Sadly, while I'm sure it deserves its position as a literary classic and most likely brilliantly skewers the stuffy ideals of Edwardian society, I was hoping for more of a stirring romance and was quite disappointed, and bored by the book.

There are very few encounters between Lucy and George at all, and to make matters worse, later in the novel, when the kiss in Florence is discussed between Lucy and Charlotte, it seems to suggest that George only kissed Lucy on the cheek. I honestly don't see why this would cause such terrible consternation, with the event being brought up again and again over the course of the book. Charlotte just cannot leave the event well enough alone and even gossipped about it to Eleanor Lavish, who stole it and put it in her next lurid novel, also set in Italy. That a reading from said novel prompts George to kiss Lucy again, this time in a shrubbery, elicited a lot less excitement when there was the possibility that he may just have pecked her on the cheek again.

Of Lucy's suitors, Cecil is clearly the worst (in every sense of the word), although it is clear that that is exactly what Forster is going for. George isn't that much of an appealing catch either, mainly morosely slouching through beautiful Florence having to have his father plead his case for him with Lucy. He doesn't really put up that much of a spirited competition once he returns on the scene in England either, except the aforementioned shrubbery kiss and to exclaim in disgust that Lucy actually wants to marry pompous prig Cecil.

Not that Lucy is all that much to cheer for either. She's a bit wet, really. She does have the excuse of being a young woman in a time and society that didn't exactly value brains, independence or pluck in females. Her visit to Italy clearly starts her down the path of thinking for herself, until returning to England makes her believe she'd be better off just conforming. All the while, her most prominent character trait seems to be that she's a skilled pianist and her fondness for Beethoven seems to symbolise the hidden passions that might be unleashed, should only the right person come along. I only wish that Forster had shown me that George actually had anything worth stirring that passion in him.

I'm now actually afraid to go back and re-watch the film, in case I just imagined all the smouldering romance of it. I'm sure this is a very good book, but it is not at all what I was expecting, and hence I cannot rate it higher than I have. Your mileage may vary.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

CBR4 Book 8: "Trouble at the Wedding" by Laura Lee Guhrke

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 2 stars
Date begun: January 22nd, 2012
Date finished: January 23rd, 2012

Miss Annabell Wheaton and her family used to be poor white trash, until her no good scoundrel of a father discovered a bunch of gold mines, conveniently died, and left them to his daughter. Annabell thought this would mean they never had to worry about anything ever again, but obviously her New Money is no good, and while they no longer live in a shack barely making ends meet, neither she nor her family are well recieved in American high society. Annabel's solution: find an empoverished English nobleman whom she doesn't hate to give her a position in society, so she (and her younger sister) will no longer be shunned and sniffed at at polite gatherings.

Christian Du Quesne has been the Duke of Scarborough for about three months, since his brother died. Unfortunately for Christian and his younger sister, who both married weathly Americans to try to save the family fortunes, the previous Dukes were excellent at gambling and living irresponsibly, and less good at taking care of the Dukedom's extensive properties. His marriage ended badly, when the innocent young woman he married for her huge dowry killed herself, while Christian was off on the Continent spending her money. He's determined never to marry again, happy to let the title pass to his cousin. He is, however, pretty much broke, and needs money fast. So when Annabel's uncle promises him half a million dollars if he can talk her out of marrying the fortune hunting Earl of Rumsford in a week, what's an empoverished nobleman to do?

Trouble at the Wedding is Guhrke's third Abandoned at the Altar novel, and probably the one that fits least into the mold. For one thing, no one is abandoned or jilted anywhere, Christian just creates a huge scene at Annabel's wedding. It was a quick read, but not really that compelling, and lacked the wit and passion of some of Guhrke's previous novels. Neither the hero or heroine were really all that interesting, nor was their journey towards their HEA that compelling. I do like that Guhrke writes historical novels from other eras than Regency England, though, and hope that her next novel is back on form, as I've previously enjoyed many of her books a whole lot.

CBR3 Book 10: "Scandal of the Year" by Laura Lee Guhrke

Publisher: Avon

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Date begun: February 4th, 2011

Date finished: February 4th, 2011

Scandal of the Year is a sequel of sorts to Wedding of the Season, and in it, the man jilted in the previous book, Aidan Carr, the Duke of Thathen, finally finds his Duchess, but only after yet another broken engagement. While his first engagement was broken once he found Lady Beatrix Danbury in the arms of her childhood sweetheart, in a particularly passionate snog, his second attempt at matrimony was ruined about a year later, when he was found naked in bed with Lady Julia Yeardley (Beatrix' cousin, a supporting character in the previous book) by her husband.

Having tried to get a divorce from her beastly husband for years, Julia finally managed it by getting Aidan incredibly drunk on champagne and seducing him, knowing her husband would find them in bed together, and the public scandal wouldn't allow him to stay married to her any longer. She knows that Aidan probably hates her afterwards, and that his previously perfect reputation was rather tarnished by the incident. So she's surprised when he not only acknowledges her at social functions, but seems quite pleased to see her. Deeply in debt, as her husband made sure she had no money of her own for most of their marriage, Julia is in desperate need for gainful employment, not something easy to find for a woman of rank, and a notorious divorcee to boot. When Aidan offers to make her his social secretary, she gladly accepts, even though her primary role will be to help him find a suitable wife, and she'll have to spend lots of time in close proximity to the only man who's ever really made her feel passionate.

Aidan seen from Julia's perspective is rather a different man than the one presented in Wedding of the Season, and as it's clear that he's always fancied her cousin since the first time he met her, it's probably a good thing he didn't end up marrying Beatrix. He's still a perfect gentleman, kind, honourable, protective and chivalrous, but instead of coming across as a bit of a boring prig here, it's clear that he keeps his true emotions tightly shackled, for fear of repeating his father's mistakes. He knows that unless he keeps his desires reigned in, he'll hurt the people around him, who depend on him, and he strives to do the right thing always. Like Beatrix, he thinks he knows exactly what he wants in a life partner, only to have his mind changed for him. When he realizes what he does want, however, he doesn't hesitate as long as she did, he pursues it with a singleminded determination.

While Wedding of the Season was a nice bit of escapist fluff which I wouldn't necessarily remember a year from now, I'm glad I read it, as it set up the scene for the protagonists of this book. Scandal of the Year was a great romance and a much more satisfying read, more so because Aidan and Julia, who seemingly couldn't stand each other in the previous book, are clearly meant for each other. Having met at chance encounters throughout the years, the first time shortly before Julia was about to make her disastrous marriage, they've got a much more interesting backstory than Beatrix and Will, and Julia's vulnerability and vehement unwillingness to ever commit to a man are very understandable. Both protagonists seem like much more complex characters, and their sufferings and struggles make their happy ending so much more rewarding. This book reminded me in turns of Blue Eyed Devil by Lisa Kleypas and His at Night by Sherry Thomas, and stood up well in comparison to both books. There is apparently a third book in this series coming out, and I now can't wait to read it.

CBR3 Book 9: "Wedding of the Season" by Laura Lee Guhrke

Publisher: Avon
Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars
Date begun: January 30th, 2011
Date finished: January 31st, 2011

William Mallory, the Duke of Sunderland, is back in England for a brief time to see to his estates and borrow more money to fund his archaeological expedition in Egypt, where he's searching for the tomb of King Tutankhamen. He knows he can't avoid seeing his former fiancee, Lady Beatrix Danbury, as he wants to borrow the money off her cousin. Six years earlier, Will asked Beatrix to come with him on his adventures in Egypt, shortly before the couple were due to marry in a huge society event, but she turned him down. Now she's engaged to the Duke of Thrathen and likely to have all her dreams of a big family fulfilled.

Beatrix was shocked when Will asked her to come to Egypt. Her cousin's best friend, she always knew they'd get married, and she loved him since she was a little girl. Leaving one's family, estates and social obligations to go off digging for elusive treasures in the desert was never part of her plans, and she felt forced to turn Will down. Hoping for years that he'd return and choose her over Egypt, she finally convinced herself that she was over him, and accepted the proposal of another man, Aidan Carr, who is everything Will is not. He has a sense of tradition, honour, family and plans their honeymoon around his obligations on his estates and in Parliament. Some may consider him dull, Beatrix knows that he is safe and trust-worthy, if a bit overprotective.

Shortly before Beatrix is due to finally get her wedding of the season, she and Will are thrown together at the house party of a mutual friend. Upon seeing her again (when she nearly runs him over in her Daimler), Will is determined to win her back, and convince her to come with him to Egypt this time. Can he awaken Beatrix' dormant sense of adventure and persuade her that she's not over him after all?

I'd read a few romances by Laura Lee Guhrke before, and I like that she doesn't feel the need to set them during the Regency era, standard setting for a vast majority of historical romances (or so it seems, anyway). I'd heard mixed reports of this one, mainly from historical sticklers who couldn't get over the fact that Will is looking for the tomb of King Tutankhamen far earlier than the actual excavations for said tomb actually took place. I did not feel that this factual error in any way detracted from the story. Will and Beatrix are a nice couple, and complement each other well. It's clear that they're meant to be together, and that to an extent, it's a misunderstanding of each other's expectations of marriage, and Beatrix's controlling father that caused them to break up in the first place.

It's always a tricky thing when your hero has to steal the heroine away from another man. How do you do that without making him an unsympathetic cad? Sometimes the author chooses to make said other man utterly unlikable, but Guhrke has chosen not to make Aidan (the hero of a companion romance) a villain or a freak who clearly doesn't deserve the heroine, just someone who doesn't suit her very much, and who is clearly the rebound guy. He's kind and honourable, and reacts remarkably calmly to losing his fiancee, and I'm actually looking forward to reading the novel where he gets his own happy ending.