I bought this because I saw a video about it on TikTok and it looked really fun. I just can't say no to gothic romances, especially not if they have my favorite trope: is the house actually haunted or are we just slowly going mad? ALSO, the author failed to disclose that this is basically a stepmother x stepson romance because the heroine was actually married to the hero's father, which I think was a HUGE mistake, because there are people who are VERY into that (like me). Marketing, marketing, marketing. :p
Anyway, before she married his dad, Remi was in love with Ben. They were childhood friends on the cusp of becoming more, but her uncle kind of pressed her to marry Edgar. Then Edgar dies and things get weird, because his death might be connected to a couple other deaths that all seem to revolve mysteriously around Leone Manor. Ben is also a little bit of a fuckboy, which was giving Bridgerton Boy vibes. In some ways, this book is like Bridgerton if Bridgerton was having a goth phrase. Which you might be into.
The prologue and beginning were AMAZING. However, I really wish the pacing and atmosphere had been a little more intense. There were some fantastically creepy scenes scenes in here but I personally wanted more, although I did love how unlike traditional gothic romances, this one is very much open door. I wouldn't call it spicy but there is descriptive sex.
The ending was great and made up for some of the saggy middle. Like I said, the premise was awesome and reeled me right in and I happen to love this publisher a lot. It was just a bit cozier than I was expecting, based on the summary and the reviews, which made it feel blander than it probably would have felt if I were in the right mood for it. I would recommend this book to people who are fans of cozy horror/gothic authors like Chasity Bowlin and Darcy Coates.
Look, 9 times out of 10 when an author decides to rewrite their book from the male love interest's perspective, it's not interesting and feels wholly unnecessary. LOVER is that 1 book out of 10 that really adds something to the story, and it's also basically a masterclass in how to write a gentlemanly simp who is respectfully obsessive. HAWT.
Do NOT read this book if you haven't already read THE CRUEL DARK because it contains major spoilers for the book. Before I dive into my review, I will say that these two books are set during the roaring twenties, and are a lushly written gothic saga about a girl with a tragic past coming to help a hot and tormented professor with his research, only to discover that the house that they're working in harbors dark secrets that inextricably twine with both of their own sordid histories.
Callum is such a great hero. He had some of the best lines in this book ever, and the spicy scenes were both elegant and hot. A Michelin starred dish of spice, if you will. I also loved seeing Millie through his eyes. I loved her a lot in her own book, and getting to see the hero falling in love with her, being in love with her, was a real treat.
Does this book do much for the plot? No. But it advances the story emotionally and is actually a very thoughtful and complex piece of fan service that goes beyond a mere smuttening, so I am happy.
After reading and five-starring THROUGH THE SMOKE by this author, I knew I had to give her other books a try. As before, this was a buddy-read with my friend Sarah.
THROUGH THE SMOKE was a traditional gothic romance told in the mode of Jane Eyre (in fact the author lists it as an inspiration in her foreword). By contrast, HONOR BOUND feels like one of those 90s bodice-rippers. The author's style actually kind of reminded me of a cross between Danelle Harmon and Meredith Duran in this, so I think if you enjoy either of those authors, you'll like this a lot.
The story starts out with a wedding, as Jeanette is to be wedded to an older member of British aristocracy to provide money for her titled but land poor family after fleeing the Revolution. However, as she waits for her wedding night, Jeanette learns that her husband is an impotent creep who plans to have his friends gang-r*pe her on the wedding night. And as if that weren't awful enough, they plan to place bets on who will successfully impregnate her! UGH.
She runs away, which is how she meets the hero, Treynor, who is a lieutenant aboard a ship. He and his men are at port and preparing to sail away. They have their meet-cute in an inn where he at first mistakes her for a prostitute when she accidentally ends up in his room, which I thought was a great homage to the bodice-rippers where this was a surprisingly common trope (SWEET SAVAGE LOVE definitely had this!). Unlike the bodice-rippers, he doesn't succeed: she knees him in the balls.
The bulk of this story takes place aboard the ship with Jeanette in drag. This part of the story seems to have bored a lot of readers but it reminded me of one of my favorite books, THE TRUE CONFESSIONS OF CHARLOTTE DOYLE. I can't imagine how much research the author poured into this book to make the nautical setting so vivid and larger than life. She did the same thing with her coal mining community in THROUGH THE SMOKE and I am just amazed. It made me an instant fan and I'm happy to report that this second effort from her did not disappoint.
Only nitpicky things I can nitpick about are that the pacing wasn't quite as good as THROUGH THE SMOKE, especially towards the end, where it dragged a little, only to end up kind of abruptly. I really wish there was an epilogue even though I don't think the ending dissuited the story. I loved Jeanette and Treynor was a great hero, but I also wanted more from him. He sometimes felt like a somewhat stereotypical tortured bastard hero who hates the rich/titled folk for being what he's not, etc., although I will say that I liked how the book ended with him making amends with his estranged mom.
I buddy-read this book with my IG buddy, usedbookin. This is the second vintage gothic we've read together and the first one that I really adored. The Zebra gothic line could be hit or miss but this one has everything: lost birthrights, family secrets, hot stepbrothers, mysterious heirloom jewelry, and a fucking albino witch with a pet white wolf. DAMN.
When Annie's father is on his deathbed, he reveals to Annie that he's not actually her father: she was given to him to care for and she's actually the long-lost daughter of a rich winemaker family who lives in a castle. But when she writes to the family, the lawyer basically writes back and is like, "OUR CONDOLENCES BUT NO. XOXO."
Annie isn't about to take that shit, so she goes to the family to deal with them in person, and is almost turned away by the hot stepbrother, Christian, but the man who might be her father intervenes. He's half-mad and has never gotten over his first wife (Annie's supposed mother), despite his new wife literally BEING RIGHT THERE, but he is the one who decides that Annie simply must stay.
Weird shit starts happening pretty quickly. Christian makes a point of letting her know he thinks she's a fraud and calls her the G-slur literally dozens of times. His cousin isn't a fan of her either. Henri, a friend of the family, is a little *too* friendly, and the servants intimate that maybe her mother's disappearance was more sinister than mere flightiness. But honestly, who knows?
I thought this was a lot of fun. There were some great chilling scenes, it was extra without being too extra, and the novelty of a historical stepbrother romance was too good to miss. This reminded me a lot of BLACKMADDIE but more consistent in pacing. A must for anyone who loves vintage gothics.
This book was absolutely insane, which makes me happy because that's exactly what I was hoping for. BRUTAL SERPENT is the story of Viscount St. Erth, who has very good reason to hate the Wendover family. He also has plans to get revenge on them, which involve marrying their only daughter and getting her pregnant. How does this revenge work, you might ask? Wait and see.
This is definitely more erotica than it is a romance because I would venture to say that the sex and the fantasy that it sells are more of a focus than the romance/relationship development. That's the case with most of this author's books, but one of the reason I like them is because the plots are so unique and the heroes are literally insane. St. Erth does many crazy things like threaten to feed his wife to pigs, take her to the doctor for leeches (for fertility!) and blood letting (also for fertility!), and shove a snake down her blouse to keep her from talking. Also, he puts her PERIOD BLOOD into his WINE.
I would love to vacation in Kate's mind for a day just to see what it's like to have all of these wildly unhinged ideas. While reading, I kept trying to figure out what BRUTAL SERPENT reminded me of, and then it hit me: 60s and 70s erotic pulp. There's a definite bodice-ripper vibe to this book, especially since the hero literally gives no fucks and never stops being evil.
Viscount Erth is probably my favorite chaos goblin after Je Sweet.
Note: this book has been rereleased as CASTLE OF SECRETS but I personally like the older title and cover better.
Amanda Grange is a new-to-me author. I actually found one of her books at a thrift shop and it had been critically panned. Bad average ratings don't usually scare me off, though, and when I had finished reading MR. DARCY, VAMPYRE, I actually found that I had had an incredibly good time, 2.89 average rating or no. I found out that a lot of her backlist is actually on KU, so I started downloading her books one after the other, and each was better than the last!
STORMCROW CASTLE is an absolutely fantastic book, which hits all the notes you would expect in a gothic romance. It's very Jane Eyre in nature, minus the governess bit, so if you enjoy books that have the Jane vibe, you will eat this up on a silver spoon.
Helena is engaged to this guy she's kind of ambivalent about, but when she goes to the castle where her aunt works, she finds out that her aunt has mysteriously disappeared-- to visit a "sick sister," except Helena, being her niece, knows that her aunt doesn't have a sister. Disturbed, she gets the brilliant idea to pretend to be the new housekeeper so she can infiltrate the house and get the intel on her aunt's whereabouts.
Lord Torkrow (doesn't his name sound like a Pokemon???) is the man who owns the castle, although everyone in town refers to him and his family as stormcrows, which seems to be a bird of ill-omens. Strange cries come from the attic, there's a rumor that he was in love with his brother's wife and caused both their untimely deaths, and now, with the missing aunt, Helena soon wonders if maybe Torkrow is a serial murderer-- and if maybe he might plan to do away with her, too.
I just had so much fun with this book. There's sinister graveyard shenanigans, secret rooms, masquerade parties, beautiful writing, longing looks, and, in tradition of Jane Eyre, a hero who is described as ugly at a first glance, which is very Edward Rochester. I seem to recall that the heroine was plain as well(?), and I really enjoyed that. Especially since, with all her detective work and banter, Helena gives the hero plenty of reasons to respect her beyond wanting to bang her because she's hot. (Not that that isn't sometimes the vibe, too.) I'm honestly shocked this author isn't more popular.
Amanda Grange is officially a new autobuy author of mine and she's woefully underrated. I actually bought this book because it had a 2.89 average rating on Goodreads and I was dying to know why it had been panned. I honestly don't know why it was, though. It's a fun cross between Twilight, Dracula, and Pride and Prejudice, and I had such a good time reading it. My best guess is that because this author mostly writes Jane Austen fanfic, her primary audience was people who want traditional Jane Austen fanfic and didn't appreciate the high camp.
This book is a direct AU sequel to Pride and Prejudice that starts with Jane and Elizabeth's joint wedding and then jumps into action when Elizabeth and Darcy go on their European honeymoon. Elizabeth is slightly worried that Darcy won't consummate their marriage, and even as she is awed by their trip to first Paris and then Venice, she is disturbed by his relatives and acquaintances, and all the sly little hints they keep dropping about his dark secrets.
The title is definitely a bit of a spoiler but there were still tons of fun surprises. I loved Elizabeth's character and Darcy definitely gave off Edward Cullen vibes, which weirdly works because of course, Smeyer based Edward on so many Byronic and Byronic-adjacent heroes, like Darcy, Rochester, and Heathcliff. I'd recommend this to that very niche audience of people who enjoy both literature and camp, because it contains elements of both.
I know Johanna Lindsey is a lot of people's favorite romance author, but her work has always been kind of hit or miss with me. TENDER IS THE STORM was a book that I bought purely for the cover because I was lucky enough to find an uncensored version of the Robert McGinnis clinch cover for twenty-five cents at a thrift store (it often sells for $50).
I buddy-read this book with my friend, Larissa, from Goodreads. It's a Western mail order bride romance, so buckle up and brace in for spoilers, because I have THOUGHTS.
***WARNING: SPOILERS TO COME***
Sharisse and Stephanie are two society princesses living with their overprotective father in New York. Sharisse is supposed to marry Joel, the rich son from another family, but Stephanie, the younger sister, is in love with him. She thinks he's in love with her too but he's not man enough to stand up to their fathers and is more than willing to go ahead with the marriage (which says a LOT imo).
Stephanie decides that if she can't have Joel, she's going to run away and sends out a response to be a mail order bride. But her friend suggests that maybe she can persuade Sharisse to leave instead. And Sharisse agrees because Stephanie is a manipulative little sociopath who not only sends her sister packing but ALSO steals all of her sister's jewels just to ensure that she won't have the money to come back (royally fucking her over in the process, because Western life is bare bones when it comes to amenities).
Exhausted Sharisse comes to the Arizona territories and finds out her husband to be is actually hot. He's also tall and-- Freudianly-- reminds her of her father. Weird, but ok. I actually liked the hero, Lucas, a lot because he is so unhinged but he's also cheerful about it too. So many bodice-ripper heroes are brooding, which I like, so it was fun to find an alpha hero who took such great joy in being a psycho. And don't be fooled by his "nice" persona, this dude is DEVIOUS.
We think he's part of a twin pairing-- Lucas and Slade. Lucas is the nice twin and Slade is the rapey one who's always trying to force himself on Sharisse. BUT IT TURNS OUT THEY'RE BOTH THE SAME PERSON. Lucas is actually dead and Slade has been pretending to be both of them, and he thought that if Sharisse thought that if she were in danger from his Slade persona, she would cozy up to the Lucas one for protection. WHAT A PSYCHOPATH HAHAHA. You gotta admire the hustle.
There's some OW drama and Lucslade wants revenge on the guy who murdered people to get his father's gold mine, but most of the book is just Sharisse and Lucas and Slade fighting. I did like the fact that Slade took the trouble to beat up the French guy who was Sharisse's first love until he took advantage of her, and the shenanigans he did to "win" her back when she ran away were funny. Probably would have rated this higher if Stephanie had been punished for being a bitch and the ending didn't feel so incomplete but honestly, I had a good time reading this crazysauce-drenched nonsense.
THE SIX-MONTH MARRIAGE was mostly excellent but I also had some frustrations with it. The premise is fantastic, though, and sure to appeal to readers who enjoy high stakes marriages of convenience, such as BEAST OF BESWICK. Madeline is under her abusive uncle's thumb and he's about to marry her to an even crueler and more abusive man to assuage his gambling debts (as Madeline has a 10,000 pound dowry).
Instead of going along with this, Madeline runs away and ends up encountering a handsome scarred man who saves her from some would-be assaulters. When he talks with her and finds out the extent of her desperation, he decides that she would be the perfect candidate for his own trumped-up marriage proposal. He planned to marry a woman named Letitia to have as his countess because he thinks women are stupid and annoying, and at least she is a familiar enemy (lmao), but his father didn't agree with his choice and threatened to disinherit him posthumously from the Earldom if Philip married Letitia.
So Philip's new and ingenious plan is to marry Madeline for six months and then have the marriage annulled. Letitia gets the countesship, Madeline is freed from her uncle, and the uncle gets the dowry in exchange for leaving them all alone. It seems like the perfect plan, but obviously, since this book is more than twenty pages long, it is NOT.
For most of this book, I felt like it was going to be a five-star read. I liked the high stakes and the danger, and there was even a spy element at play that I liked (and I'm not normally into spies). It doesn't really go anywhere though and has the last ditch drama vibes that some of Lisa Kleypas's third act murder attempt subplots do, though. I liked all the characters and I thought the marriage of convenience was marriage-of-conveniencing quite nicely, but THEN Philip had to drop a skeazy line about how Madeline's trauma made her so much more mature and interesting than the vapid ladies of his acquaintance and that made me hate him a little, ngl. It's giving "I'm jealous you had a traumatic childhood because now you have GREAT material for a memoir!" energy. Yuck.
Madeline and Philip also made some INCREDIBLY stupid decisions in the third act and the use of the miscommunication trope in this book made me want to stick my head in gravel. Pro tip: if your romantic rival says, "Hey, let's meet up on this rickety bridge and talk terms" say NO. The end.
This was an impulse download because I kept seeing it being suggested to me every time I went on Amazon. On a whim, I downloaded THE CRUEL DARK and ended up completely obsessed. It's kind of like a threeway cross between Gothikana, Jane Eyre, and RoseRed, but set in the 1920s with a headstrong heroine who has come to a remote and supposedly haunted mansion named Willowfield to help a hot and standoffish professor with his research, only to realize that nothing about the house-- or the man-- is truly as it seems.
The lush writing and rich setting are good enough for those who read their gothics for the vibes, but the characterizations and SPICE are also top tier. Spice does nothing for me if there's no emotional element to it, so I was delighted that the chemistry between Callum and Millie basically set the pages on fire. They're so good together, and the dangerous edge to Callum's character makes it even better.
I was thinking this was going to be a four star read for a while because there were a few niggling things that weren't my fave, but then that TWIST flew out of nowhere and everything suddenly flew neatly into place, and I was like holy shitteth, there is no way that anything that made me gasp out loud like that is getting anything less than the full five stars. I don't make the rules. (JK, I do.)
If you're a fan of Keri Lake, you need to read this book.
The author was kind enough to gift me books two and three in her Phantom Saga series after my father was diagnosed with stage 4 brain cancer. It was such a wonderful present and a great pick-me-up, but I've been so slow in reading anything that isn't easy because I've been so depressed. Anyway, I finally finished ANGEL'S KISS and I'm happy to report that it is a wonderful sequel to the phantom.
ANGEL'S MASK was more of a straightforward retelling of the Phantom story we know and love, but ANGEL'S KISS takes more liberties with the story. What happens when the Persian Daroga continues to dog Erik's every step in an attempt to avenge the Shah he worked for? What happens when Christine begins to make it big and endures the jealousy of La Carlotta and the suspicions of those who believe in the curse of the Ghost? And how does Erik reconcile his jealousy and obsession with learning to treat Christine as a person?
There was a little bit of second book syndrome with this book, as most of it is character and relationship building. It has a little less action and suspense than the first book, which was a lot of will they/won't they with Christine discovering the identity of the man seducing her through the mirror. However, what this book lacks in tension, it makes up for in atmosphere and smut and exquisitely researched depictions of Paris and its opera house. It is also delightfully gay, with Erik and Raoul being canonically pan/bi, and several queer side characters. Also Christine gets her femdom on! Girl, you RIDE that phantom D.
I'm excited to read ANGEL'S FALL. Hopefully it doesn't take me as long to get through as this one did but they say genius can't be rushed, so if I have to take my time fangirling over my obsessive masked strangle king, then so be it.
Thanks to the author/publisher for sending me a copy!
Loved how this managed to capture the vibe of an old skool HP in the vein of Charlotte Lamb, but with a modern feminist twist and way more smut. RETURN TO MONTE CARLO also made me enjoy several tropes I hate, including secret baby and marriage in crisis. PLEASE let this be a series she's planning, I beg of you. I love the retro vibe without the stranglehold of dated sexism.
I'm honestly surprised at how many people were hating on Diane as the heroine (JK, no I'm not). People were saying she was immature but she was young. She's twenty. I was a hot mess when I was twenty. She's married and mostly has her shit together. She's basically a beautiful rube who got lucky and married way above her head to an older man with weird kinks she doesn't quite understand but (mostly) get her off. So in this case, the marriage in crisis element works because they literally come from two very different worlds.
Marco, her husband, is an Italian business tycoon. Lately, he's been neglecting her and Diane is afraid he's cheating. He's a hard man to read, the pinnacle of the strong and silent type with BDE Daddy energy. When their anniversary dinner goes to shit and results in a broken heirloom and a telenovela-style slap, Diane is disgraced and ends up leaving Marco and his family to return back to her hometown in Oklahoma.
I don't want to spoil too much but I thought the misunderstandings between them were really well done. I loved the dual POV, loved both narrators, and thought it was great to see Marco fall in love with his wife all over again: this time, not as a pretty doll he placed on a pedestal, but as the real flesh and blood article behind the painted face. We also STAN a grovel that has the man on his knees in front of his entire family begging her not to leave (YAS). Speaking of the family, they were interesting too. Even the villains of this story had interesting little twists to their characters, and I loved Rosanella.
Cate C. Wells was a new to me author who made me love mafia (another genre I usually don't like). At this point, I think I'm probably going to read everything she writes, regardless of whether it's a trope I enjoy or not. She is so fucking talented and I just love her characters and her worlds.
I discovered this author through Stuff Your Kindle Day with her title, THE LOST LORD OF CASTLE BLACK. I was obsessed with it. The second book in the series, however, was incredibly mid and had a cliffhanger ending that was not resolved in this book (Mary's book and resolution happens later in the series). However, THE MISSING MARQUESS OF ALTHORN delivers on the drama that I had come to expect from the first book and was almost-- almost-- as good.
Jane and Marcus have been betrothed by their grasping, conniving fathers since childhood. However, the seven year age gap between them disturbs Marcus, who at 21, tells his father that he doesn't want a 14-year-old bride. Jane overhears some of the argument, but only the damning parts, and their engagement ends up in limbo when he goes off to fight in the Napoleonic war, only to be presumed dead.
Spoiler: Marcus is not dead and returns to find that Jane is all grown up and beautiful now, at twenty-two years of age, laboring under the thumb of her overbearing father and his spoiled young wife who constantly emotionally abuses Jane and calls her fat. His cousin, Charles, has also been coveting the marquesate and is less than happy to see him return.
This book didn't have the gothic vibes that made LOST LORD such a hit, but there were shadows of it here. I love drama revolving around affairs and inheritance, and this book had that in spades. There were also some really good villains who had solid motives and added a good amount of stakes to the book. I liked the villains in book one more but these villains were perfectly odious. I also really liked the relationship between Marcus and Jane, and how the trust between them blossomed as they were forced to work together-- rather the way a married couple would.
The first half of this book was great! But then it quickly got weird. And not good weird, but WTF are you doing weird.
Benedict was the son of a wealthy family until he was kidnapped by a bunch of sinister men who ran in the debauched circles of his father. Years later, Benedict resurfaces as the owner of a gambling hell who is searching for his missing foster sister, Mary, who was kidnapped just as he was almost fifteen years ago.
The heroine, Elizabeth, is a paid companion to Benedict's mother, Lady Vale. Vale has gone mad with grief and her brother in law has sought someone out to keep an eye on her so she doesn't keep looking for her missing son in the faces of strangers. But when she and Elizabeth are rescued outside a shady fortune teller's parlor by a man who looks exactly like her missing son, Lady Vale is sure it's him.
Every book in this series is about a nobleman who's had his legacy ripped forcibly away and must fight for its return. It has the same gothic-adjacent vibes as Elizabeth Hoyt's Maiden Lane series, which I really enjoyed, so I was excited to find another book series that has the same vibes.
I loved book one in this series: it was passionate, the characters had great chemistry, and the pacing was excellent. This book, on the other hand, felt way less polished. The weird quasi-supernatural element, the constant filler of the fortune teller and her boy toy, the lack of chemistry between Benedict and Elizabeth, the lack of a satisfying showdown, and a very rushed and ultimately inconclusive and dissatisfying ending, all made this a very disappointing installment.
The next book in this series sounds REALLY good so I'll be checking that one out before I decide to call it quits, but I really was not a fan of the ending of this book at all. :/
FOLLOW ME TO THE YEW TREE is a short, sweet, and surprisingly spicy story about soulmates who are forced to fight for each other against the looming specter of death. I don't want to say too much more, but there's a little bit of death and the maiden, a little bit of a supernatural element, and a little bit of a fairytale twist. I'd highly recommend this book for anyone who read TUCK, EVERLASTING and thought that the heroine made the wrong choice. Eireann is a bad-ass bitch.
Also, side note: the hero of this book has pancolitis, which is an autoimmune disease that affects the colon and appears to result in gastrointestinal distress, bloating, and diarrhea. I saw some reviewers who thought this was gross but I loved seeing it. For years, an undiagnosed food sensitivity caused me to randomly vomit and, yes, shit. A couple times I almost shat my pants. This is something that is frequently played for comedy in movies, but until you have experienced bathroom anxiety and the terror of not knowing when you'll have another flare up, you'll never fully understand how satisfying it is to see someone who gets it.
So I really enjoyed this book and it sold me on the insta-love trope, which isn't usually something I enjoy (most authors can't pull it off, imo). So FOLLOW ME TO THE YEW TREE now joins Shiloh Sloane's LIKE NEON MORNINGS on the very short list of books that have me believing that people can fall in love after only one day.
I got this from Stuff Your Kindle day because the title sounded deliciously gothic and I think it's my favorite selection so far. THE LOST LORD OF CASTLE BLACK has everything I love in a historical romance: a sexy and dangerous hero, hidden identity, childhood friends to lovers, gothic vibes, murder subplots, and a headstrong and likable heroine.
Agatha and Nicholas were a wealthy married couple on business in Europe when Agatha cheated on her husband with a potential spy. On their way home, in disgrace, their ship suffered catastrophic damage and they were separated from their young son, Graham.
Now, years later, Graham has returned to Castle Black to take what is his. Only his mother has survived all these years, and his cousin, Edmund, has taken over the estate, acting as regent for his half-brother, Christopher. Also living at the estate is Beatrice, Nicholas's ward, who grew up with Edmund, Christopher, and Nicholas. Once, the four of them were close, but life at the castle under its new corrupt ownership has inextricably tainted them all.
This was so good, OMG. There was steam, there were scary villains, there was ROMANCE. I wouldn't exactly call this a gothic romance but man, it sure was gothic-infused. The danger gave the budding relationship between Graham and Beatrice some much-needed stakes, and even though it verged a little on insta-love, I thought it was pretty clever to make them childhood friends as a way of explaining some of that instantaneous trust and fondness. Graham was such a dreamboat too. When he told her she was HIS? And that nobody else could touch her? Swoon City: population me.
Another Stuff Your Kindle Day find for me, THE BEAST OF BLACKTHORNE CASTLE appealed to me immediately because of its gothic-sounding title. Sadly, the title is basically the only thing that's gothic about this book, although there is a castle. It's actually a very sweet and very short closed-door romance about a young woman named Emma who goes to Northumberland to become a paid companion to the dowager duchess/mother of a duke.
Nathaniel used to be quite athletic and somewhat social but one day there was a fire in his castle. He managed, with his father's help, to get the servants and his mother out, but then his father became trapped. While trying to save his father, a flaming plank crushed one of his legs, causing scarification and permanent injury. To make matters worse, rumormongers in town have started claiming that maybe he set the fire on purpose to murder his father and get his title early. Because of his painful limp and the suspicions of the townfolk, Nathaniel has stayed inside his castle, becoming weirder and lonelier, to the point where he basically has no social skills at all.
Enter Emma.
As a romance, this was fine. It's very short and therefore moves pretty fast. There's also no spice in it. I guess maybe that's hinted at because the author calls it a "sweet romance," but I've seen sweet spicy romances out there too, so just be forewarned: no spice. At all. It's a lot like those very short traditional regency romances that were popular in the 80s and 90s. I liked all of the characters just fine and there isn't really a villain to root against for the couple. Even the OWs are sweet and seem to be set-ups for the sequel. The only problem was it could feel a little wooden at times. I really wish there had been more of a tangible emotional connection between the leads. This book wasn't bad, it was just a little bland. So if you're looking for something low-conflict with nice characters and a romance that isn't really all that emotionally taxing, you will quite enjoy BEAST OF BLACKTHORNE.
I never would have heard of this author or been likely to pick up her work if not for SYK and now I'm curious about what else she writes. Definitely going to rec this one the next time someone asks me for something with no spice and all that comes to mind is Mimi Matthews lol.
This was a Stuff Your Kindle Day pick. Siniscalchi is a new-to-me author but as soon as I found out that this book was about wine-making in Portugal, I knew I had to have it. And in that vein, THE TRUE PURPOSE OF VINES does not disappoint. Julia is a Portuguese wine-maker and single mother. As if that weren't difficult enough, an English man named Croft is threatening to take away her winery, and her grapes are under threat from the phylloxera louse.
The hero, Griffin, is actually engaged to Croft's daughter (IIRC), and is supposed to chase Julia down as a wayward debtor. To his surprise, she's female, hot, and supremely capable... of turning his crank. For most of the book, though, he only reluctantly respects her. He is very much a realistic portrayal of an English for his time: he doesn't like or appreciate foreign food or culture, he doesn't think that English people should marry outside their race, and he basically thinks that Julia should fall over herself in gratitude that he's into her.
I appreciated the richly researched story and realism of the culture, but it also made it difficult to read this as a straight romance because Griffin was a highly unlikable character and for most of the book, I was more interested in the chaotically unhinged Pedro as a love interest (thank goodness he has a future book). Griffin does redeem himself and the last act has him groveling like mad, but I was not really attracted to him at all. HOWEVER, I do really appreciate the author's bravery in telling a story that feels realistic for its time and doesn't step to unrealistic and modern conventions to be more "palatable."
Three stars for the setting, the wine history (OH, the wine history), and a completely bad-ass heroine who probably deserved better than what she got, but hey, at least her story ended happily. :)
I will definitely be checking out more from this author.
Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨
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Books:
historical-romance
(434)
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