Mary Balogh

A Good Road Trip Love Story

The Escape (The Survivors' Club #3) by Mary Balogh

December 9, 2018 by faintingviolet Leave a Comment

I have a library hold backlog gathering on my kitchen table, so I decided best plan was to knock out a few quick reads and hopefully catch up. Part of the backlog is a few of The Survivors’ Club books by Mary Balogh. I enjoyed The Proposal and The Arrangement earlier this year and had immediately put holds on the rest of the series. In typical me fashion I was nervous about the next book, The Escape, when I wrote my review for The Arrangement (as I was nervous about the focus of The Arrangement when I finished The Proposal) […]

12/9/2018 faintingviolet's CBR10 Review No:60 |

Balogh Gives Us Young Love (CBR10Bingo)

The Arrangement (Survivors Club #2) by Mary Balogh

September 13, 2018 by faintingviolet 2 Comments

I have stuff going on in my personal life right now (as do we all from time to time) so I found myself ready to check out of reality for a bit and sink into a safely fictional reality where things end happily. Off to Romancelandia I went to visit Mary Balogh’s Survivors’ Club and check off the Brain Candy square for bingo. The Arrangement is the second book in the series, and I’ll admit that I was a bit put off by which characters were going to be our focus having enjoyed the romance of people in their thirties […]

9/13/2018 faintingviolet's CBR10 Review No:43 |

“Fear must be challenged, I have found. It is a powerful beat if it is allowed the mastery.”

The Proposal (The Survivors' Club #1) by Mary Balogh

July 15, 2018 by faintingviolet Leave a Comment

I have finally taken my first trip to a Mary Balogh romance. I’m still surprised when I manage to miss an author completely, but it usually means that there’s a well-liked series with good reviews which is complete that I can dive right into. In the case of Mary Balogh that series is the Survivors’ Club which tells the story of seven people who survived great tragedy (whether physical or mental) during the Napoleonic Wars and formed a tight friendship while they healed for three years away from Society. The first book in the series, The Proposal, held my attention […]

7/15/2018 faintingviolet's CBR10 Review No:26 |

A truly lovely story of family that overwhelms the central romance

Someone to Wed by Mary Balogh

April 27, 2018 by Ellepkay 2 Comments

This is the third book in the Westcott series. I skipped the first and reviewed the second here. This third book was very good. The overarching theme throughout the series of family and acceptance was at its peak here, and I loved it. I always enjoy a series about a close family, but this takes it beyond the nuclear family to aunts/uncles/cousins, and it’s just wonderful to see people treating each other well. Alexander Westcott was happy with his life as a gentleman, but when his cousin, the heir to the Earl of Riverdale, is found to be illegitimate, Alex […]

4/27/2018 Ellepkay's CBR10 Review No:2 |

Good enough to finish – bad enough to have forgotten already

Someone to Hold by Mary Balogh

April 24, 2018 by Ellepkay 5 Comments

The premise of the Westcott series (non-spoilers: this is all basically in the cover copy) is that an earl was secretly married and had a daughter, and then he married again and had three more children. Upon the earl’s death the three presumptive heirs find that they are illegitimate and the orphaned child gets a huge inheritance. The first book is about that orphan, and she and her new husband make a bunch of appearances in the following books. I tried to read the first book (Someone to Love) when it came out, but gave up pretty quickly as it […]

4/24/2018 Ellepkay's CBR10 Review No:1 |

Slightly Slightly

Slightly Married, Slightly Dangerous (Bedwyn Saga #1,7) by Mary Balogh

February 13, 2018 by alwaysanswerb 2 Comments

Mary Balogh is a stalwart author in historical romance with whom my experience is very limited. Her Bedwyn Saga appears on NPR’s “Best Romances” list from several summers back, which I am still pretending to tackle in a very time-insensitive fashion. There are a total of six books in the series, and this review is for the first and last of them. If the rest of the books are like the first book, I will probably not read them, but if they’re more like the last one, I’d be more interested. The entire “saga,” in traditional romance series fashion, gives […]

2/13/2018 alwaysanswerb's CBR10 Review No:10 |

A Good Novella from the Ever Reliable Mary Balogh

A Matter of Class by Mary Balogh

September 10, 2017 by Mrs. Julien 1 Comment

“I don’t think anything inspired me except the necessity of coming up with a story so that I could fulfill my obligation to a contract I had agreed to! I had to dream up a story, and this one popped into my head.” Mary Balogh in the interview following A Matter of Class. Nonetheless, as an experienced, and clearly honest, professional writer, she delivered a sincerely charming historical romance novella. Reggie and Annabelle are lifelong neighbours divided by a waterway as well as the barriers of class levels in so-called polite society. Their estates may be next to each other […]

9/10/2017 Mrs. Julien's CBR9 Review No:25 |

Not an Affair to Remember

The Secret Affair by Mary Balogh

April 12, 2017 by Mikki Blu 1 Comment

Born a commoner, Hannah Reid has been Duchess of Dunbarton since she was nineteen years old. Now her husband is dead and, more beautiful than ever at thirty, Hannah has her freedom at last. To the shock of a conventional friend, she announces her intention to take a lover—and not just any lover, but the most dangerous and delicious man in all of upper-class England: Constantine Huxtable. So this book bored me to tears. I know that Mary Balogh is a beloved author, with a legion of fans, however I don’t get the appeal. I’ve only read a few of […]

4/12/2017 Mikki Blu's CBR9 Review No:33 |

Alexis on would you say it’s time for our viewers to crack open each other’s skulls?I am impressed that you had the fortitude to read this. Assuredly I do not. Most of the bestselling nonfiction books now are political in...
narfna on Not Every Essay ResonatedI ended up not rating this one because it was so hard to get through in a way that was unrelated to the actual writing....
Scootsa1000 on The girl anchors the stage, sucks in the male gaze, and, depending on who she is, throws her own gaze back out into the audience.I’m in a Starbucks right now and Kool Thing is playing. Weird. How did I not know this existed? Buying on audible right now!
yesknopemaybe on “I wish his darkness lived outside of him, because you have to know it’s there to see it. Like all real monsters, he hides in plain sight.”That AJ Finn/Daniel Mallory stuff was WILD. What even in the world. Agree with you about the ending for this one. I wanted just a...
yesknopemaybe on Once Upon a Time…Great review! Such a beautifully written book, a worthy successor to The Thirteenth Tale for sure.