Tagged: england
The Courtesan Duchess by Joanna Shupe
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
How to seduce an estranged husband—and banish debt!—in four wickedly improper, shockingly pleasurable steps…
1. Learn the most intimate secrets of London’s leading courtesan.
2. Pretend to be a courtesan yourself, using the name Juliet Leighton.
3. Travel to Venice and locate said husband.
4. Seduce husband, conceive an heir, and voilà, your future is secure!For Julia, the Duchess of Colton, such a ruse promises to be foolproof. After all, her husband has not bothered to lay eyes on her in eight years, since their hasty wedding day when she was only sixteen. But what begins as a tempestuous flirtation escalates into full-blown passion—and the feeling is mutual. Could the man the Courtesan Duchess married actually turn out to be the love of her life?
[Full disclosure: I requested and received a free copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]
This was a book I requested as a guilty pleasure read that actually turned out to be quite a wonderful story that was not only well-written but emotionally resonant.
Julia has been neglected by her husband for eight years since her wedding at the age of 16 (which wasn’t even consummated). Now with no heir her inlaws are furious with her and the manager of the estate that her husband appointed is hinting that she may have to do more than beg to get even a livable allowance. With her husband ignoring any letters she sends pleading with him to rectify the situation, he leaves her with no choice but to resort to drastic measures: seduce him under an assumed name to become pregnant. She knows it’s wrong to dupe him and throughout the whole affair she feels incredibly guilty but justifies it to herself by remembering the circumstances in which he left her.
By the time Julia met her husband in Venice I was personally ready to strangle him for leaving her in such circumstances and not caring at all about her. But as Julia and Nick grow closer under the courtesan-patron relationship, they start to actually develop feelings for one another which leads to us readers learning a lot more about Nick. I don’t want to spoil too much if you do decide to read this book, but needless to say Nick had some genuine reasons for wanting nothing to do with Julia (none of which were her fault at all). What I loved about The Courtesan Duchess is that both characters are so well developed. They each have their own baggage from their childhoods and they have very interesting, unique personalities. And Joanna Shupe doesn’t go for a straightforward romance; she recognizes that love is way more complicated than that and throws many, many twists and turns into Julia and Nick’s relationship.
The romance in this book is absolutely sizzling and the sex scenes were actually sexy instead of absolutely ridiculous. Not only that, they actually advanced the plot, which was quite fast-paced for a romance. I honestly wanted to find out what happened next and instead of reading a few chapters ended up reading the whole book in a single sitting. Joanna Shupe’s writing style is very descriptive without being overly boring and she really makes you as a reader feel the emotions of her characters. When I read romance books I often can’t emotionally click with one or even both characters but that was definitely not the case here. I wanted Julia and Nick to hash out their problems and get back together! I wanted their love to be real and not just a fake fling in Venice that happened because of entirely selfish reasons on both their parts. It was quite a refreshing change.
As I’ve said previously, I’m not a huge romance reader but I can’t deny that I absolutely loved this book and want to read more of Joanna Shupe’s work. It’s both guilty pleasure and serious novel with a great mixture of romance, intrigue and three dimensional characters. Really, what more can you ask for?
I give this book 5/5 stars.
Tabor’s Trinket by Janet Lane
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
Sold as a slave in Romania for seven pounds and three solidi, the Gypsy girl, Sharai, escapes a slave ship infected with the plague. As an adult, she performs her silky, exotic dances to earn enough to sustain herself and the toddling orphan girl she adopted. She yearns for relief from the grinding poverty, and a secure home. Having been violated by a nobleman posing as her hero, she wants naught of any other man of title, and also scorns the dubious Gypsy king who pursues her. In a tent at the bustling autumn fair in Winchester, she meets the dashing Lord Tabor, and her resolve to avoid all noblemen softens.
Though possessed of a stately castle with prosperous lands, the English knight,Tabor, teeters on the brink of losing all his holdings. A powerful noble has attacked Tabor’s castle, determined to seize his lands. Tabor seeks revenge for his older brother’s murder, but England’s throne is held by an infant king and his feuding uncles. The realm is paralyzed with uncertainty and lawlessness, and the crown has abandoned him.
Then a stroke of good fortune helps Tabor, a sizeable dowry that can save his holdings. He need only wed an earl’s daughter, the regal Lady Emilyne. But he has already fallen in love with Sharai, and they are locked in a powerful dance of desire. His refusal to abandon Sharai plunges them into life-and-death struggles–and a painful choice between duty and love.The story, book one in the four-volume Coin Forest series, is set in a unique period in history when Gypsies were welcomed, their travels even financed by the nobility in the countries in which they traveled. Dubbed the Gypsy social honeymoon period, it lasted for just a few decades as the Gypsies ventured into Western Europe. Growing mistrust, a waning interest in pilgrimages and increasing incidents of thievery and racial/culture clashes combined to end the honeymoon. The incidents in Tabor’s Trinket occur as the honeymoon begins to sour.
[Full disclosure: I received a free ebook as part of the blog tour in exchange for an honest review.]
English history is definitely one of the topics I’m not knowledgeable about when it comes to historical fiction but I have to say that because of Janet Lane, I learned so much more. The most impressive thing about Tabor’s Trinket is the amount of research Lane put into the novel. There are just tiny little details that make the world come alive like how the latest fashions were actually sewn, the little county fairs that cropped up sporadically and the migration of Gypsies into Western Europe and England. What I found the most interesting were the scenes with Sharai where we learn about the Gypsy culture. Obviously I can’t speak as to how accurate that was but considering the fact that the rest of the novel is very well researched I see no reason not to give Janet Lane the benefit of the doubt. Tabor’s Trinket was certainly a learning experience for me.
The strength of this first book in the Coin Forest series is undoubtedly the characters. Tabor is out to look for revenge for the taking of his castle and the death of his older brother and his brother’s bride-to-be. But he’s more complicated than that, believe me! He wants to restore his family’s fortune and get revenge but at the same time he fantasizes about making a love match, about finding a woman that’s right for him just like the heroes in all of the legends he reads. However, that’s not really his fiscal reality and he is forced to let his overbearing mother enter into marriage negotiations with a wealthy family whose daughter he does not love. At the same time, Sharai once dreamed about not marrying for love but marrying up in the world to gain security. She loses this illusion when we meet her a couple of years later after she has been raped and is being pursued by a self-proclaimed King of the Gypsies. When she’s offered a contract by Tabor to sew for his mother and the other ladies in the castle, she’s reluctant because she notices Tabor’s attraction to her. She’s understandably wary of men and this causes a definite push-and-pull dynamic between the two as Tabor struggles to make his feelings known while at the same time respecting her feelings and her space.
This push-and-pull dynamic causes some of the conflict in the novel and is the main focus for the most part but both characters have their own conflicts to overcome. Tabor has to figure out how to get money to keep his castle running and Sharai has to figure out how she’s going to deal with her growing feelings for Tabor while evading the Gypsy King who wants her to be his wife when her contract is up. I can’t really talk about the plot twists because it would be giving away far too much but let’s just say that all of the conflicts come together in the climax for a couple of absolutely gripping chapters that really leave you doubting whether both lovers will even survive the final conflict or not. The ending is sort of expected when you take the whole tone of the novel into account but I still loved it. It makes sense, even if it was fairly predictable. However, in between the ending and the beginning a lot of the plot twists will blindside you so Janet Lane deserves kudos for that.
If you like historical fiction with a well-developed and believable romance I think Tabor’s Trinket is the book for you. Yes, it flirts with the whole star-crossed lovers trope but as Janet Lane shows through her amazing research, the romance between Tabor and Sharai is not unprecedented in English history. Will it turn out like Tabor’s beloved romantic novels or will the lovers end up like Romeo and Juliet? It’s hard to say and if you’re even a little bit intrigued by the blurb or anything I’ve said in this review I’d recommend picking up this book. It will draw you in so quickly and you won’t want to put it down.
I give this novel 4.5/5 stars.
The Wise Woman’s Tale by Phillipa Bowers
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
Kate Barnes is 14 years old when she first experiences the strange gifts she has inherited from her grandmother’s side of the family. She has a vivid waking dream, a memory of an earlier life centuries before when she was murdered by an angry mob who believed her to be a witch. Her grandmother decides the time is right to reveal to Kate some family secrets, including the ancient cave that houses the family tomb. Just as Kate is learning to develop her second sight, her education with her grandmother is interrupted when her father insists she return home. He is determined that Kate forget her grandmother’s teachings and get a job in order to help support their growing family. But nothing will keep Kate from her destiny: to take her grandmother’s place as local wise woman and guardian of the mysterious cave.
If there’s one word I could use to describe this book it would have to be ‘confusing’ or ‘pointless’. Throughout the book I felt like Phillipa Bowers meant to impart some knowledge to the reader, to get to the point of the story but at the end I just felt confused. Basically, what was the point of writing this story? It wasn’t particularly entertaining, there were no great insights and the writing was mediocre at best.
Where do I start with the writing? Sometimes Phillipa Bowers tries to make the characters speak in a dialect characteristic of their social upbringing and the area they live in and other times it sounds like they’re almost speaking a more modern dialect. Her writing has absolutely no transitions whatsoever, which is in part why this story is so confusing. One minute Betty is a bratty four-year-old (as far as I can tell) and the next minute she’s darn near 13. How the heck did that happen? If there was a time jump she didn’t make it very obvious at all and if there was no time jump she should have done a better job making Betty’s age clear. It’s just plain confusing.
Since the writing was so confusing, the characters were bland at best. Kate is a stupid, naive young girl who doesn’t know how to say no to anyone. That seems typical for the times but she never really grows out of it. She never really realizes what is going to make her happy and her relationship with her younger sister Betty is just plain bizarre, even considering the circumstances. Part of the problem is that when a major change happens in the story, there’s no build-up to it. Suddenly her mum dies, her brother leaves, she moves out, her grandmother dies, etc. There’s just no transitioning.
I can’t call the plot fast-paced in all honesty because I struggled through this book. If the writing had been of a better quality this easily could have been a great read. However, since the writing was of such a poor quality the plot was all over the place and I had no idea what was happening half the time. This was just a really confusing story and I honestly couldn’t recommend it to anyone.
I give this book 1/5 stars.
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Victoria: May Blossom of Britannia by Anna Kirwan
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
29 May
…I had to kiss His Majesty’s hand. Really, one kisses the air over his hand, and that’s a good thing, for he’s so glistening with lotions and powders to cover the liver spots on his skin, which he hates…
Aunt Soap says he was a beautiful lad when he was young. “Prinny was the handsomest Prince ever. His curls were the colour of honey on toast, like that red-gold Russian sable the Princess de Lieven wears.” Now, unfortunately, his beauty has quite fled. Perhaps he does wear a corset, as I once heard Lady C. remark—though I can’t see that it does much good. (I’m sure she would be shocked to know I overheard. But I do wonder why so many people seem to think a young person’s ears do not work unless they are instructed to by some adult.)
Even for a princess in The Royal Diaries, Victoria is quite young when she’s ‘writing’ this book, at only 10 years old. Maybe it’s because I’m a cynical old reader, but even for ten years old she was, quite simply put, an annoying brat. Part of it was her immaturity and the other part was the annoying quirks Anna Kirwan used to make her ‘unique’.
In this portrayal of the future Queen Victoria, Anna Kirwan has made her quite ignorant of her station, immature and an incredibly annoying writer. You see, sometimes Victoria speaks in the language you would expect of the times and in the same entry you might see language you would use in an email to a friend. I don’t know why Kirwan decided to do this, but she makes Victoria use the arcane form of ‘choose’ (‘chuse’) without using any other arcane language. This, of course, doesn’t make it authentic so much as it makes it annoying. The most annoying personality quirk used was Victoria’s habit of using ‘v.’ as an abbreviation of ‘very’. So we end up with a character who uses words that are ten letters long, but abbreviates a four letter word. Writers take note: this is not quirky; it’s annoying.
When you have a book written in diary form, a good narrator is an absolute must because you can’t escape from their point of view. Therefore, Victoria: May Blossom of Britannia was bad overall. I’m sure with a better narrator I would have been more focused on the historical events than on translating v., but that was not the case. As far as I can tell, this book is mostly accurate, but Anna Kirwan admits to changing a few things around in her Historical Note.
I give this book 1.5/5 stars.
*Only available as a used book.
The Time Travelers by Linda Buckley-Archer
(Cover picture courtesy of Teacher Girl’s Book Blog.)
1763. Gideon Seymour, thief and gentleman, hides from the villainous Tar Man. Suddenly the sky peels away like fabric and from the gaping hole fall two curious-looking children.
Peter Schock and Kate Dryer have fallen straight from the twenty-first century, thanks to an experiment with an antigravity machine. Before Gideon and the children have a chance to gather their wits, the Tar Man takes off with the machine—and Peter and Kate’s only chance of getting home.
Soon Gideon, Peter and Kate are swept into a journey through eighteenth-century London and form a bond that, they hope, will stand strong in the face of unfathomable treachery.
The Time Travelers is pretty much your typical time traveling story, but with much more interesting characters and more complicated science behind the actual traveling through time (especially considering this is a YA novel!). Linda Buckley-Archer uses archetypes for her characters, but lets them grow and develop at a natural pace. She also twists the plot until you are left breathless and wanting the second book in the trilogy by the end.
I received this book for my birthday one year and immediately fell in love with it. Linda Buckley-Archer is an excellent writer who obviously did massive amounts of research to bring 18th century England to life. She stays true to major historical events and places, but it is the little details that make the world of Gideon Seymour come to life for readers.
Not only did I enjoy this book with its wonderful characterization and historical accuracy, I also learned a lot from it. Therefore, Linda Buckley-Archer has done her job as a writer of historical fiction.
I give this book 4/5 stars.