Regency Romance

The first of two amazing books I read to end the year. (I want to put them both on my end of year best!)

Band Sinister by K.J. Charles

December 31, 2018 by narfna 4 Comments

“This, then, was a hellfire club: a debating society for alarming ideas.” What a delightful way to end the year. I always like K.J. Charles’s books, but this one just pushed every single one of my buttons. It’s an homage to Georgette Heyer, and a romance, but I’ve not read anything quite like it before. Guy Frisby and his sister Amanda are secluded from society in their quiet country home. An old scandal involving their mother and their neighbor besmirched their names and ruined Amanda’s prospects, and Guy now prefers to shrink quietly into the shadows of invisibility and propriety, […]

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Band Sinister by K.J. Charles

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12/31/2018 narfna's CBR10 Review No:174 |

A Sweet, Clean Romance

The Weaver Takes a Wife by Sheri Cobb South

July 26, 2018 by Ellepkay Leave a Comment

I bought this book for three reasons – (1) the utterly charming cover, (2) my maiden name is Weaver and it was too much to resist, and (3) I met my husband because I spotted him across the room and said “Who is that? I need to meet him.”, so I’m always a sucker for that story line. This was a very charming, ‘clean’ Regency romance. It did not dive as deeply into the characters as I would have liked, but it was overall an enjoyable, light read. Ethan Brundy (the titular weaver) is a workhouse orphan who worked his way […]

7/26/2018 Ellepkay's CBR10 Review No:3 |

She Was Mostly Immensely Relieved to Think That Virtually Everything That Anybody Had Ever Told Her Was Wrong

Someone to Hold by Mary Balogh

March 16, 2018 by Mrs. Julien 2 Comments

All glory to Douglas Adams for the review title. This is an almost 4 star book. Mary Balogh writes reliable romance about sensible and somewhat damaged people finding each other. The first in her new Westcott series, Someone to Love, wasn’t as strong as it could be, but Someone to Hold featured excellent and interesting character development. I don’t pre-order Balogh’s books or run to the library to get a look at a new release, but I am rarely let down by her writing. It sounds like I’m damning with faint praise, but I don’t mean to. When I buy a […]

3/16/2018 Mrs. Julien's CBR10 Review No:3 |

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 |

Favorite book of this series. Loved it.

A Woman Entangled (Blackshear Family, #3) by Cecilia Grant

January 10, 2018 by narfna 11 Comments

Please ignore the overgrown beefsteak on the cover of this book. I cannot imagine a worse dude to put on the cover to represent this lovely story. Okay, well, that’s a lie. I can imagine worse. But still! It is not representative! That is a LARGE MAN WITH UNREALISTICALLY LARGE MUSCLES. The hero of this book is a normal man with a more lean physique and probably very pale, because he is English in the 1800s and where is the sun? And also he is a bookish barrister who regularly turns down social engagements to study and read, and is emphatically not […]

1/10/2018 narfna's CBR10 Review No:5 |

The last hellion weds

A Lady Never Surrenders by Sabrina Jeffries

December 28, 2017 by Mikki Blu Leave a Comment

This is the fifth and final book in the Hellions of Halstead Hall series, and it’s the story of Celia Sharpe who is the last member of her family to be wed. As per her grandmother’s edict, Celia and her siblings were to be married in order to gain their inheritance and she is the last holdout. Their parents had died rather mysteriously years earlier, and Celia had become a hoyden who preferred riding and hunting with her brothers than any more feminine pursuits. However, evidence has been surfacing throughout the series that the deaths may have been murder and […]

12/28/2017 Mikki Blu's CBR9 Review No:103 |

Emotional whiplash

The Marrying Season by Candace Camp

December 8, 2017 by Mikki Blu Leave a Comment

Genevieve Stafford, our heroine, is considered to be aloof, respectable and everything a lady of Regency should be. She’s also worried that she will never marry, so she decides to pray at the shrine of St. Dwynwen to find love. The legend of the saint was told to her previously (in one of the other books in this series, which I haven’t read) but she finally decided it couldn’t hurt. And voila, her prayers are answered and she meets Lord Dursford as she is leaving the chapel. Fast forward a few months, and she is betrothed to Dursford even though […]

12/8/2017 Mikki Blu's CBR9 Review No:96 |

Was There A Kissing Book Writer Race to Use This Title?

Do You Want to Start a Scandal? by Tessa Dare

September 12, 2017 by Mrs. Julien 4 Comments

Tessa Dare’s latest Regency romance series is The Duchess Deal and I would recommend its first book, Girl Meets Duke, over Do You Want to Start a Scandal. This crossover story between Dare’s Spindle Cove and Castles Ever After novels, features the youngest of the Highwood sisters and longtime troublemaker, Charlotte, who has both eldest sibling Diana’s desire for a loving home and intellectual Minerva‘s sense of adventure. Piers Brandon, Lord Granville is an agent of the crown performing reconnaissance at a two-week house party in the English countryside. Devoted to his duty to King and country, he is caught off guard when Charlotte Highwood presents herself to him with a […]

9/12/2017 Mrs. Julien's CBR9 Review No:28 |

Manimama on Book Club Discussion Post: Good OmensI think you hit the mail on the head here!
blauracke on Book Club Discussion Post: Good OmensAgreed, it was probably written at exactly the right time. I guess it's going to be interesting to see how this will work in the...
faintingviolet on Book Club Discussion Post: Good OmensI agree with you on #7, I think the way in which the book pokes at religion would be handled differently now, and in some...
MarkAbaddon on Book Club Discussion Post: Good OmensI think everyone would agree with that statement, I commented on it myself. It felt like it was included because it may have been expected...
Markabaddon on Book Club Discussion Post: Good Omens#1 I loved this book. It is one of the few instances of a collaboration where I cannot tell who wrote any particular passage. The...