CBR18 Book 4: "I've Got My Duke to Keep Me Warm" by Kelly Bowen

Page count: 352

Rating: 4 stars

Buzzword Reading Challenge 26: Me/My

Buzzword Cover Challenge 26: Wearable accessories (the cape!)

Defeating the Goblin TBR: The Dusty Book (has been on my TBR since 2016)

Monthly Keyword Challenge: Keep

Reading Rainbow - White Cover

Everyone believes that Giselle Whitby, is dead. Four years ago, she had to fake her death to escape her sadistic, controlling and abusive husband, the Marquess of Valence. To make sure there was no doubt of her demise, Giselle made sure the boat she and her stepdaughter were on exploded, in sight of half of London society. Conveniently, Giselle was wearing a very expensive diamond necklace at the time, meaning she escaped with a large share of her husband's fortune. Since her disappearance, Giselle has been in hiding, establishing a network of associates, helping other women in abusive relationships escape their husbands. Now she has discovered that Lord Valence plans to marry another young lady, and she has less than a week to stop him. 

Because one of her usual co-conspirators is off to Scotland to get married (to the stepdaughter who also escaped four years ago), Giselle needs to find another man who can help her foil her erstwhile abuser's marriage plans. She finds James "Jamie" Moncrieff drunk in a tavern and decides he will serve their purposes well enough. Once he sobers up and has a bath, Giselle and her partner (her husband's former valet) discover that he is a former war hero, still struggling with PTSD and guilt from the Napoleonic War. He is also the illegitimate son of a duke (because his father, the duke, married his mother a few hours after he was born. So he's the eldest son, but has no claims to the title. He is tall, muscular, handsome, charming, intelligent, deeply honourable, excellent at cards, great with horses and looks spectacular in evening wear. Does this man have any flaws at all?

Aiding Giselle in her plans is the Dowager Duchess of Worth, who is tremendously wealthy and appears mad as a box of cats every time she appears in public. To support her eccentric reputation, she collects chicken memorabilia (everything from carved birds, porcelin and even jewelled chickens) and even has a pet chicken with her every time she leaves the house. Her son, the current Duke of Worth, is concerned for his mother and keeps trying to get her to move in with him, without any luck. 

Giselle is described as a beautiful and accomplished woman, a bit of an ice queen, but thanks to her sadistic ex, is covered with scars on parts of the body fancy gowns would normally cover. With the impressive collar of diamonds she escaped with, she could have fled far away from England and made sure there was no chance her husband could ever find her. Instead, she has the Dowager Duchess sneakily selling off the diamonds to fund her rescue operations, and has gathered a network of concerned helpers from all layers of society to give these battered women safe havens when they've been successfully disappeared.

As far as I can tell, this is Kelly Bowen's debut romance novel, the first in her Dukes of Worth trilogy. Goodreads tells me that I read the third book in the series back in 2017, but didn't find it too impressive. In her later romances, Bowen basically has all her heroines be impressively competent in a number of fields, and all the men who fall for them are happy to play a supportive role in these women's lives, while clearly also adoring them. There are traces of that here as well, but since the entire plot takes place over the course of about a week, I think Giselle and Jamie fall for each other implausibly quickly, especially considering Giselle's previous abusive relationship. I was entertained enough that I'm going to want to read the second book in the series as well, featuring the Duke of Worth and his mother's mysterious ladies' companion. Also, I wish Bowen still wrote traditional historical romance; she was really good at it. 

Judging a book by its cover: I literally have NO idea what this cover has to do with the book, except for the cover model being a blonde. This is a fairly dark novel, with protagonists who have gone through a lot. Absolutely nowhere in the book does Giselle put on a big red fur-lined cloak and dance about in the snow. She mostly stays hidden and wears plain clothing so as not to attract attention. I also don't think the book is set in the winter. What were the design team thinking here? With all the red and white, it also makes it seem like a Christmas book. It is not. 

 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR17 Book 46: "Listen for the Lie" by Amy Tintera

Page count: 384 pages

Audio book length: 9 hrs 17 mins

Rating: 4 stars

Buzzword Title Challenge 25: Truth and Lies

CBR17 Bingo: Review (this was very favourably reviewed by Pooja, Narfna and Chairbrarian)

Five years ago, Lucy's best friend Savvy was murdered and Lucy was found wandering along the road, absolutely covered in Savvy's blood. Unfortunately, Lucy also had a pretty severe head wound, which resulted in amnesia, and can't remember anything about the night in question, before or after the murder took place. There wasn't enough evidence to convict her, but most people in her home town of Plumpton, Texas made up their own minds.

Since absolutely everyone back home is convinced Lucy is a murderer, she's been living and working in LA, writing romance novels under an assumed name and doing her very best to try to stay as anonymous as possible. Unfortunately, podcaster Ben Owens has decided to dedicate the second season of his very popular podcast 'Listen for the Lie' to investigating Savvy's murder, and all the sordid details are being dragged back into the light. In short order, Lucy gets fired from her job, and it becomes clear that her throroughly average boyfriend is too scared of her to actually break up with her, but very much would like her to be gone, from his life and apartment. So when Lucy's grandmother calls and emotionally blackmails her into coming back to Texas for her 80th birthday, Lucy doesn't really have a lot of options.

Of course, back in Plumpton, Ben Owens is going around interviewing people and asking intrusive questions, making Lucy's life oh so much more awkward. That he turns out to be handsome and very charming, and that Lucy's grandma is a big fan of his, makes the situation even more annoying. Did Lucy actually kill Savvy? If she didn't, who was the actual murderer and why have they managed to stay hidden for the past five years? Lucy wants Ben to find out the truth, but also fears that it may turn out she was guilty all along.

As I mentioned above, several Cannonballers whose opinions I trust recommended this book, and I had Audible credits to spare, so I figured it might be an entertaining Spring read. There is a tradition in Norway, that during the Easter holidays, you do very little (if you're outdoorsy, you go to a cabin in the mountains somewhere and ski, either cross-country or downhill) and you read crime novels. The various television networks all show mystery mini-series and the book stores put all their crime novels front and centre on their displays. We even have a specific term for it 'påskekrim', roughly translated as Easter Crime/Mystery. It's a whole thing. So listening to a novel about murder and true crime around Easter seemed very fitting.

The audio book is very well done. It alternates between chapters narrated by Lucy, who is a very sarcastic and cynical individual. January LaVoy does an excellent job conveying her snarky tone. Then in between, there are the 'podcast' sections, narrated by Will Damron as Ben Owens. I don't listen to podcasts, really (they take time away when I could be reading, or watching something with my husband, who is already a bit cranky about how much time I would rather be reading than watching stuff with him). So I'll take other people's word for it that these podcast sections are well-done and feel realistic. Based on what I heard, if I had ANY interest at all in true crime (I do NOT - the world is an awful place and I do not need to find out about all the horrible things people to do one another this way), 'Listen for the Lie' sounds like it would be a good podcast to follow.

I really liked that Tintera let Lucy be a quite spiky and hostile character. Convenient though it may seem, the amnesia makes her life more difficult, because there is always that nagging doubt that something horrible happened, and she actually murdered her best friend. Her complete lack of memory of the whole evening (including the events leading up to the murder) also makes it impossible for her to help the police investigate and find the real killer, when she desperately wants justice for Savvy. So a little part of her is relieved that Ben Owens is investigating the case again. It's obvious that a lot of people have been lying about and keeping secrets about the night of the murder, but he manages to ferret out the truth and uncover a lot of information the police never discovered.

This was very entertaining, and I'm impressed that this was Tintera's debut into crime fiction She seems to have only written YA fantasy before this. Nevertheless, I didn't love it as much as Narfna and Chairbrarian. There were some story developments that I found a bit unneccesary. I would absolutely read more of Tintera's books in the future, though. 

Judging a book by its cover: Not the most exciting cover, really (and it also seems like it directly ripped off the cover design of Good Girl, Bad Blood, which came out four years before this book. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR16 Book 6: "Winter's Orbit" by Everina Maxwell

Page count: 496 pages

Audio book length: 15 hrs 24 mins

Rating: 4 stars

Nowhere Bingo Card: A book that's been on my shelf for more than a year

Prince Kiem, a minor royal in the Iskat Empire is called before the Emperor and told in no uncertain terms that he will be getting married to secure a valuable political alliance. The Empire is about to renegotiate its treaty agreements with all the planets in its dominion, and the representatives all have to be married to be accepted (that bit wasn't entirely clear to me). So Kiem has to marry his cousin Taam's widower, a Thean called Jainan. Oh, and he has to do it the day after he is told.

So the outgoing and exuberant Kiem, who has quite a reputation as a playboy and for getting into scrapes finds himself married to Jainan, a reserved and extremely polite man, his exact opposite. Jainan has multiple degrees and is knowledgeable about engineering and advanced mining techniques, Kiem barely made it through school without getting expelled. Kiem assumes Jainan is still grieving his partner of five years, so tries to keep his distance. Jainan is certainly still affected by memories of his former partner and also assumes that a handsome, charming man like Kiem could never be attracted to someone as quiet and boring as him.

Both men are actually very attracted to the other but keep misunderstanding each other's signals and therefore growing further apart. To add to the complications, it turns out that their hastily arranged marriage might also have been for nothing, as the other-worldly arbitrators might not even accept them as representatives. It turns out that there is suspicion that Prince Taam was murdered, and Jainan is the main suspect. There's also a whole bunch of unique alien artifacts that have been replaced with convincing fakes, making the arbitrators furious. If Kiem and Jainan can't figure out whether Taam was actually murdered, and if so, by whom, as well as help the Empire locate the stolen artifacts, the whole Empirial alliance could be dissolved and war is likely to break out.

I mostly really liked this, and it's narrated very well by Raphael Corkhill, who does a really good job of giving the characters distinctive voices and accents. However, it also made it clear that extreme slow burn just isn't the trope for me. Reading about two characters who clearly care for each other and find one another attractive, but keep misunderstanding the other for a large part of the story just annoys me. Drawn-out mutual pining might work for some readers, but to me, it decreases my enjoyment of the story. That's not to say that very good in-story reasons are given for the miscommunications. Being thrust into a marriage of convenience to a stranger isn't necessarily going to make for lots of honest and open conversations right off the bat, and given Jainen's previous marriage, it's no wonder he's careful and has difficulties trusting Kiem at first. 

The world-building in this story is nicely done, even though I didn't entirely understand how the various political alliances worked. The titles are all non-gendered, from Emperor to Prince to Count and so forth, no matter what gender identity the individual has. There's also a whole system of wearing wood or glass or flint to indicate which gender every individual is, and in the Thean culture, it involves tying scarves in different ways. The author possibly overdoes the explanation with the gender markers, it's repeated quite a few times throughout the story. Trust your readers, lady.

This book is full of political intrigue, there's a murder mystery, and there were clearly suspicious things going on with the mining operation that Prince Taam was involved in (so they have to figure out what that was all about too). Throughout the story, there are near-death experiences, having to trek through the wilderness (there's only ONE tent), someone gets abducted by villains and having to be rescued by a band of rag-tag heroes, as well as the arranged marriage and opposites attract tropes as previously mentioned. So the book has a lot going on. For me, it would have been better if the pining had been resolved earlier in the proceedings, but to each their own. 

I already have the sequel to this, Ocean's Echo, on my bookshelf, but having really enjoyed the audio version of this, I may end up having to get it in audio at some point soon as well. 

Judging a book by its cover: The cover is fine but I think it's also a bit non-descript. It's obviously a sci-fi novel, with strange vistas and multiple heavenly bodies in the sky. I don't know if I'm projecting about the colours of the bisexual flag being used in the title, but considering that this is an unashamedly queer romance, I would be surprised if it wasn't intentional. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

#CBR8 Book 134: "How Not to Let Go" by Emily Foster

Page count: 320 pages
Rating: 4.5 stars

Spoiler warning! This is a direct continuation of part one of The Belhaven series, How Not to Fall, and while the reader is given enough context to understand what happened in the previous book, it will not make as much sense or have the emotional resonance for the reader unless you have read the first one. Seriously, these books are two halves of a whole story. Also, you will probably get spoilers for the first book in the series in this review. So maybe skip it until you've read part one. It's a really great start to a romance, and I promise you that the second part gives the story a satisfactory ending.

At the end of an extremely steamy month of physical intimacy, medical student Annabelle "Annie" Coffey can't help but fall in love with her intense lover, Dr. Charles Douglas, only to be told that due to the horrible abuse he watched his family go through at the hands of his father, and the extreme emotional strain this has had on him, Charles isn't capable of returning her feelings. Their arrangement was always meant to be one month of no strings attached sex, before they went their separate ways, remaining friends. Utterly heartbroken, Annie is in no fit state to maintain any sort of friendship. She leaves Charles without even saying goodbye and goes home to her parents, hurt and devastated, to slowly put herself back together. The couple meet briefly a month later, at Annie's best friend's wedding, and Charles is mortified at how much he has hurt her.

They don't have any contact or see each other for nearly a year. Having worked closely together for years before they started their sexual relationship, both deeply miss the company and professional input of the other. Annie keeps writing long e-mails to Charles, but never sends them. She knows he will be at a big conference in London, where she will be presenting, however, and having spent their time apart trying to come to grips with her feelings for him, and recalibrating them, so they might have a chance at a friendship, she reaches out and asks to meet Charles when they are both in England.

Back in London for the first time in four years, Charles also has to face his family again. His genius computer programmer brother and his long-suffering, abused mother. When the airport is closed down suddenly as Annie is due to fly back to the US, she ends up staying over at Charles' brother and gets to meet and see for herself just how monstrous his father actually is. She begins to see the challenges Charles struggles against and what is he fighting so desperately not to become.

While at least the first two thirds of How Not to Fall is all laughter, intimacy, getting to know each other better, the flutterings of infatuation and a LOT of smexy times, the last third shows that in the face of severe psychological damage, the love of a good woman and an amazing physical connection isn't enough to magically heal.

In How Not to Let Go both Annie and Charles have to change and redefine their relationship. Annie has to get over her initial heartbreak and figure out if her heart has lied to her, or if Charles is worth loving and keeping in her life, even if she can never be his partner. It takes her a year of processing and soul-searching before she's ready to consider a friendship with him, despite their continued physical attraction. Charles, on the other hand, is gutted that he ever caused Annie a moment of pain and has spent a year just trying to be worthy of her respect. Through a lot of gruelling therapy, he's started mapping out exactly how messed up his psyche is and how many protective layers there are, keeping him from being able to allow himself to get close to or trust anyone.

There is a LOT of pain in this book and several rounds of gruelling emotional exploration. It's quite clear that both Annie and Charles are better together than apart, but Charles has such a long way to go before he can return Annie's love and his family situation really is so very messed up. While the first book was told entirely from Annie's point of view, this one has more or less alternating chapters from Annie and Charles, so the reader gets to fully see inside Charles as he works his way up from the pit of despair, through the swamp and wasteland, up rage mountain to battle the metaphorical dragon, before he can begin to break down the walls surrounding his inner self.

With How Not to Fall, I had trouble putting the book down, and kept reading long after it was entirely sensible. I find Annie and Charles such incredibly compelling characters and kept wanting to read more about them. In this book, I occasionally had to take a break, though, as their emotional journey was absolutely exhausting to me. While the first book focuses mostly on Annie, the second book is probably more Charles'. We get to meet Charles' family, his anorexic little sister, who has no end of imagination games to parse out people's inner psyche; his extremely brilliant and sensitive younger brother, who seems to express himself best through piano playing; his lovely mother and see the joy they can share when Charles senior, Lord Belhaven is nowhere near them. We also get to see the contrast in Annie's home life with her incredibly loving and supportive parents.

The first book ends on a cliffhanger, when Annie leaves Charles. The second book begins at the same place. Neither book will be entirely satisfying without the other, they are really two halves of a whole story. While some romances get the couple together quickly and spend very little time actually having them get to know each other, the opposite has to be said for Emily Foster. By the end of the book, Annie and Charles have known each other for about four years, and have had their "Thing" for the best end of two. The course of their true love certainly doesn't run smooth, and there is a lot of pain to work through and a whole lot of metaphorical dragon slaying to do before they can have a chance at their HEA.

I have no idea if Foster intends to write any more about the younger Charles siblings, but based on their appearances in this book, I would absolutely love to see a book starring Charles' younger brother Simon as a hero, or his wounded but snarky younger sister Elizabeth as a heroine. Preferably both. I know that she primarily writes scientific non-fiction, but based on these two books, it would be a terrible shame if she didn't continue writing realistic and very satisfying romance as well.

And with this, I post my final book review of the year. Cannonball 9 starts on January 1st. Anyone interested in participating can sign up here.

Judging a book by its cover: How Not to Fall had a couple embracing and kissing in the rain, here the weather is a lot more sunny (possibly indicative of the brighter times faced by the couple towards the very end of the book). It may just be me, but the male cover model reminds me a lot of Ryan Gosling. Charles does not. I forget exactly how Annie is described in the book, but I'm pretty sure the female cover isn't a very good match for her. Nonetheless, it's a sweet and romantic book cover. Doesn't quite match the emotional turmoil of the contents, but there IS a happy ending, so maybe I'm just being overly critical.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR8 Book 60: "Hot in Hellcat Canyon" by Julie Anne Long

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

Actor John Tennessee McCord was the star of a long-running TV show, but recently, his career has taken a bit of a dive. Having been one half of a big Hollywood power couple and then being rather publically dumped last year certainly hasn't helped. Now he's got a new TV series lined up about the California gold rush and while scouting out the locations for it, his pickup truck breaks down in Hellcat Canyon. Not that he minds all that much, as the burgers at the Misty Cat Cavern, the former Hellcat Saloon, are very tasty, and the blonde waitress there is clearly both intelligent and gorgeous.

Still physically and emotionally scarred from her previous marriage, Britt Langley really isn't looking for any kind of relationship and has gotten very good at charmingly turning away any male interest in herself. She works as a waitress at the Misty Cat Cavern and a part-time real estate agent to pay the bills and nurses plants back from the brink of death in her spare time. When the handsome and charming J.T walks into the Misty Cat, Britt is smitten despite her vows to stay unattached.

Liking the small time charm of Hellcat Canyon and the prospect of wooing the pants of Ms. Langley, J.T. decides to stay around town for a while. The chemistry between him and Britt is noticable to everyone around them, and it doesn't take all that long for them to act on their mutual attraction. But while J.T. may not be as hot a gossip commodity as he once was, the paparazzi will eventually track him down, and what started as a small town flirtation is soon broadcast all over the internet. Can their developing romance survive the sudden glare of the spotlight?

I read and mostly enjoyed the entirety of Julie Anne Long's Pennyroyal Green series. This is her first contemporary novel and I was curious to see how she'd manage writing a whole new genre. Sadly, the first half of this book is quite slow and rather boring in parts. The banter between Britt and J.T is pretty good, but nothing much of interest happens, even after they start hooking up. Britt is very wary of commitment and J.T is known far and wide as the "man allergic to the L-word". Just as they are starting to get more comfortable in each other's company, J.T's mega famous mean girl ex shows up to try to get him back. For the first two thirds of the novel, I was really just reading out of loyalty to Ms. Long, but then, towards the end, things started picking up and the book got really very entertaining. J.T delivers one heck of a wedding speech which would melt the heart of any right-thinking woman and Britt engages in some drunken billboard graffiti out of jealousy that made me laugh a lot. It's not enough to get the book more than half a star above 3, though.

Unsurprisingly, the book introduces a whole bunch of characters, both from the Hellcat Canyon region and from J.T's Hollywood life, whom I am sure we will meet again in future books. Ms. Long got 11 books out of her previous series, after all, and I'm sure she can mine the little mountain region for quite a few romances in years to come. I'm personally looking forward to that of J.T's former colleague and sometime frenemy, Franco Francone. He plays a significant enough part in this book that I cannot imagine he's a future hero. I pre-ordered this book based on Ms. Long's entertaining historicals, but based on this first contemporary, Ms. Long is off the auto-buy list for now. I'll still buy her books on sale, of course, but I'm going to need something more consistently good for her to move back to "buy at full price" status.

Judging a book by its cover: Things I like - the red pick-up truck is relevant to the story, as J.T loves his truck and has spent a lot of time and money making sure it still runs. The cover models look like they have the correct hair colours. I think Britt may have been wearing cowboy boots at some point. The flowers are a nice touch, even though no such profusion of wild flowers are ever mentioned in the book. Things I don't like - the absolutely ridiculous pose. Britt is supposed to be quite petite, which the cover model doesn't look to be. I also think both models could look older, as both Britt and J.T are in their mid-30s.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.