Tessa Dare is just a gem. I was very slightly underwhelmed by her Stud Club series, having preferred the more recent books of hers that I’ve read, but here I am back at her first novel, and I feel like it’s a perfect representation of what readers should expect from her current oeuvre. Goddess of the Hunt has several delicious — if implausible — romantic encounters, a tomboy heroine, an Unfortunate Misunderstanding, and a really entertaining side plot that sets up the next book in the most […]

I’ve gotta hand it to Tessa Dare: I was not really sure how I was going to end up liking Julian Bellamy. In the first two books in the Stud Club trilogy, he’s very much that annoying friend in your group that you kind of put up with because he’s always been around, but you don’t really like him all that much. He’s whiny and has the worst case of tunnel-vision about the murder of his friend Leo — blinded by guilt and remorse, he […]

So far, I’m enjoying the ludicrously named Stud Club trilogy, but at the same time I can tell that they are earlier works from an author whose later titles, I feel, are more indicative of her talent. The second entry into the trilogy follows the VERY tortured Rhys St. Maur, Lord Ashworth, a war hero and broody dude who is a closet romantic and wants nothing more than to start over and create, rather than destroy, back at his ancestral home. His love interest is Meredith Maddox, […]