BOOK REVIEW: The Wrong Lady Meets Lord Right by Suzanne Allain

I received this book for free from Netgalley. That did not influence this review.

The Wrong Lady Meets Lord Right by Suzanne Allain is a Regency Romance take on The Prince and the Pauper.

The orphaned Arabella (Bella) and her heiress cousin Lady Isabelle (Issie) have been raised together since toddlerhood by Issie’s demanding, overbearing mother, Lady Strickland, who makes it clear that her daughter is a disappointment and Bella is an unwanted burden. So it is somewhat of a relief to both young ladies when Lady Strickland suffers a stroke and dies.

After a year of mourning, during which they stayed hidden in the countryside, the two emerge to go to London for Issie’s planned season. Issie, who is painfully shy, doesn’t want to go, but Bella is more eager. Unfortunately, when they get to London, they are to stay with Issie’s great-aunt, Lady Dutton, who is every bit as bad as Lady Strickland.

However, Lady Dutton has poor eyesight and it isn’t long before Issie launches a scheme: taking to her bed, she claims she is too ill and frail to be presented to the Queen. And since Lady Dutton has been mixing them up anyway, why can’t Bella pretend to be her?

Good-natured and manipulable, Bella agrees, even though she can foresee all the potential consequences. The one she doesn’t foresee is falling for a handsome, kindly lord who courts her, thinking he is courting Lady Isabelle.

This sweet mistaken-identity romance is a delight to read (even if the reader will figure out what is going on with the hero long before Bella does.)

BOOK REVIEW: Home Is Where Your Bark Is by Debbie Burns

If you’re in the mood for some sweet contemporary romance, Home Is Where Your Bark Is by Debbie Burns is a new release from Sourcebooks Casablanca. (The title is a clue: there is also a lovable dog.)

Jenna Dunning has devoted far too much of herself to supporting her younger sister (just 15 months younger) ever since their mother died. Even the fact that her sister married the man Jenna had once been in love with couldn’t shatter their bond. But when her sister asks her to take the border collie she’d just adopted a couple weeks ago back to the shelter, this seems to be the last straw. Jenna had warned her the high energy dog was not the right fit for her family (two boys not even school age, a baby on the way, and a radiologist husband who spends more time working than at home, not to mention their expensively decorated house.) On the way to the shelter with the dog, Jenna is hit by a drunk driver and her car crashes into another.

Jake Stiles is the driver of the other car (not the drunk guy.) He rushes to help, holding her hand until the ambulance arrives. And then, he agrees to take the dog where it needs to go, not realizing the phone number he finds is for the shelter. Unable to surrender the trembling border collie, he finds himself fostering the dog.

A few of the chapters are in the voice of the dog, who comes to be named Seven.

Jenna and Jake bond over Seven, and despite their mutual decision to take things slowly, (Jake has just gotten out of a long-term relationship; Jenna is wary of jumping into a relationship with a stranger she met in a car crash when she had a concussion) there is strong momentum driving them along – especially when it seems they might have lost Seven.

This is a heartwarming love story, highly recommended if you need a lift.

BOOK REVIEW: The Women by Kristin Hannah

I finally read The Women by Kristin Hannah, an homage to the women who served in Vietnam. It reads fairly quickly despite its length.

It’s 1966, and Frances “Frankie” McGrath is a sheltered, innocent California girl, a “good girl,” whose parents’ plans for her are marriage, motherhood, country clubs, and maybe some volunteer work. She has an older brother, and is devoted to him. In keeping with the family expectations, he volunteers to go to Vietnam. Missing him, and wanting to get the same respect from her father that her brother gets, she signs up to be an army nurse. Her parents aren’t proud; they’re horrified.

Frankie is 20 years old and, although she has a nursing degree, she has no experience to speak of. When she arrives in Vietnam, it is to a baptism by fire. Fortunately, with the support and camaraderie of the staff there, especially two fellow nurses, she learns quickly and is soon a superbly competent surgical trauma nurse.

The harsh realities of life (and death) in Vietnam are fully explored, and are contrasted starkly with goings-on back home that Frankie learns about in letters from her mother. In country, Frankie falls in love, enjoys occasional respites with colleagues, learns to smoke and drink, and makes lifelong friends. But she also experiences the trauma and horrors of Vietnam. They are not spared the bombings and, if they venture away from camp, the threat of snipers or ambush. This part of the novel is like M*A*S*H, but in Vietnam, not Korea, seen through women’s eyes, not men’s, and without the humor.

The first part was a wrenching read, but captivating.

At the halfway mark, Frankie’s tour is done and she ships home. She arrives to a U.S.A. that has grown vehemently anti-war and anti-soldier. Her parents won’t speak of the war. It is made very clear to her that she should be ashamed of having been there. And when she reaches out for help for what we would now recognize as PTSD, she is told over and over that there were no women in Vietnam and that she doesn’t deserve resources reserved for combat veterans.

The second half of the book reads as a history lesson, as Frankie is traumatized again and again, suffering everything that nurses and returning veterans are known to have suffered and then some, until it began to feel like a checklist that needed to be completed. The plot twists were a bit too predictable. And the concluding chapters felt too preachy – even though I agree with the sermon that was preached.

So overall, I have mixed feelings about this book. The first half was riveting. The second half seemed to have an important message, but the plotting felt a bit contrived as it worked to deliver that message. 

BOOK REVIEW: The Muse of Maiden Lane by Mimi Matthews

I received this book for free from Netgalley. That did not influence this review.

The Muse of Maiden Lane is the fourth book in Mimi Matthews’s wonderful Victorian Romance series, Belles of London. The series centers around four women who come to London for the Season to find husbands. Initially, they find only each other, bonding over their love of and skill with horses. The series includes The Siren of Sussex, The Belle of Belgrave Square, and The Lily of Ludgate Hill. You don’t have to read them in order, but you might get to know the ladies best if you do.

The last of “the four horsewomen” to make a love match is Stella Hobhouse. When Stella’s father died, he left her a small inheritance, just enough to live on (with her horse) and to have two London Seasons to find a husband. If she doesn’t, she is doomed to live with her brother, a sour, self-righteous clergyman, who criticizes her constantly and keeps trying to control her and her money. Worst of all, he’s interested in marrying a woman who is even more critical than he is. 

But Stella has another problem. Although she is only twenty-two, her hair has gone completely platinum gray. She is seen as an oddity, and the ton is cruel to oddities. She hides in the background. But there is one man who sees her for the beauty she is.

Teddy Hayes is a young, very talented artist who burns to paint her from the first moment he sets eyes on her. Teddy has his own obstacle. An illness has left his legs paralyzed and he is confined to a wheelchair. He is accompanied everywhere by a manservant. And he is coddled by his sister and her husband, who infantilize him. But he is as determined to gain his independence as he is to paint Stella.

Stella can’t possibly pose for Teddy. Artist’s models are usually prostitutes or actresses, and Stella has enough trouble with her gray hair and judgmental brother. Still, the two are drawn together.

This is a beautiful story of two people overcoming society’s boundaries to fall in love and find their happily-ever-after. 

BOOK REVIEW: The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern by Lynda Cohen Loigman

The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern by Lynda Cohen Loigman has been garnering a lot of buzz. It’s a feel-good second-chance love story, so compelling that I read it in just two sittings.

Augusta Stern is about to turn eighty, and is nudged (against her inclination) into retirement from her position as a hospital pharmacist. Her niece has helped find her an active senior retirement community in Florida. Augusta is not crazy about this idea, but she goes, moving away from Brooklyn. The first day there, she comes across Irving Rivkin, a blast from her past. Sixty-two years ago, Irving was the delivery boy working in her father’s pharmacy. He was also her first and only love.

Augusta was devoted to her father, Solomon, and to his profession. In the 1920s, when Augusta was a teenager, women were rarely pharmacists and those who were faced significant discrimination. But Augusta had great determination and the support of her father. However, Augusta’s mother died (of diabetes, one year before insulin treatment was discovered) and Augusta’s great-aunt Esther arrived to help raise Augusta and her sister. Esther was, to Solomon’s dismay, a folk healer. On occasion, when none of Solomon’s medicines worked, and doctors had given up, Esther’s chicken soup, ointments, or...potions? cured the ills of their neighbors.

Augusta is enthralled, and yearns for a way to combine her father’s scientific knowledge and compassion with Aunt Esther’s somewhat magical elixirs, to use all means at her disposal to help people. 

The novel’s chapters alternate between 1987, in Florida, where Augusta is dealing with Irving, a man she’d never expected (or hoped) to see again, and the early 1920s. As kids, Augusta and Irving began as friends. Their friendship matured to love. And then, Irving disappeared to Chicago without so much as a goodbye, marrying another girl immediately, and breaking Augusta’s heart. Of course Augusta carries a grudge. But she also carries a lot of guilt. Because she believes that in experimenting with Aunt Esther’s elixirs, she might have been responsible for Irving’s defection.

Is it too late for honesty, forgiveness, and renewed love?

BOOK REVIEW: The Spinster's Last Dance by Mary Lancaster

 I received this book for free from Netgalley. That did not influence this review.

Although this is contrary to my usual practice, I read The Spinster’s Last Dance, Book 7 of Mary Lancaster’s Regency Romance series One Night in Blackhaven, after having only previously read Book One, The Captain’s Old Love. The books are centered on the Vales, a large family of siblings who have returned, after their father’s death, to the family estate in Blackhaven, which is a spa town. The youngest of the group, the twins Leona and Lawrence, play matchmakers for their older siblings. The stories take place simultaneously, so I think it doesn’t really matter to read them out of order, though I do recommend reading book one first.

The Spinster’s Last Dance focuses on the eldest sister, Delilah. She has always been something of a motherly figure to her siblings. She also played the role of hostess/secretary/traveling companion to their father, who was a diplomat. However, she is an illegitimate sibling and she has just turned thirty, so she now expects to fade away into genteel spinsterhood. Before she does, she wants one last waltz at a local ball. She chooses her partner, the handsome Denzil Talbot, Baron Linfield, who she vaguely recognizes. He also recognizes her. He’d been a young friend of her father.

Denzil is a spy for the Crown, and he has come to Blackhaven to investigate Delilah, who is suspected of being a traitor.

The two are made for each other. However, they have to get past Denzil’s initial mistrust and Delilah’s certainty that his only interest in her is as a suspect. They also have to solve the dangerous puzzle of who is the traitor in their midst, and there is a clock ticking.

The protagonists are sympathetic and the love story sweet. Additional viewpoint characters are brought in, which is unusual for historical romance but becoming more common. The main villain is sufficiently villainous to keep readers invested in his downfall.

The other siblings have fairly small roles, but their love stories are hinted at, and make me want to read more of the series.

BOOK REVIEW: Upon the Corner of the Moon by Valerie Nieman

 I received this ARC for free. That did not influence this review.

Upon the Corner of the Moon by Valerie Nieman is a remarkably immersive historical novel of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Set in Scotland in the early second millennium, the novel provides the backstories of this infamous couple, placing them squarely in the larger framework of Scotland’s history, while humanizing them and making them sympathetic. Each is related to the high king Malcolm, who guards his power jealously. Macbeth and Gruach (the future lady Macbeth) are taken from their parents for fostering, and are brought up to be pawns who will exist to support Malcolm’s aims. This is an era of constant warfare and jockeying for power. Christianity has a hold on the people, but the old religion of the Picts has not yet faded away. Macbeth and Gruach are lonely figures who do their best to survive by bending to the king’s will. Yet as time passes, Malcolm ages, and the ambitions of his followers lead them to break oaths and bonds. Macbeth and Gruach are shaped by events, and find each other in the bloody aftermath. The beautiful language of the novel pulls the reader into the cold, brutal world. This is book one of the story, and I’m eager for book two.