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 This gigantic book opens with the wedding of Savita Mehra and Pran Kapoor, uniting their families (and a whole lot of related families) for the rest of the book, though they have barely seen one another before. Part of the book revolves around Lata Mehra’s search for a suitable boy (hence the title), which her mother mainly controls, although Lata appears to be innately drawn towards the unsuitable boys. Another character, Maan, begins the novel as quite a superficial young man, not really interested in his business or his father’s role in government, mostly drawn to women, but he grows to become surprisingly lovable. And there are political forces at work throughout India, which is very newly independent and partitioned from Pakistan; struggles between Hindus and Muslims, between governmental parties, between the city and the countryside. Not only is the book immense, but so are the themes it covers.
This book probably took me the longest of any book I’m going to read this year, but I did it on purpose. It’s almost 1500 pages long (so it might be the actual longest book as well) and I attempted to spread it out over two weeks, although once I got towards the end I just read on to see what happened. I really, really enjoyed it. It’s properly satisfying and immersive as just such a chunkster should be. I did have my favorite parts, mostly to do with Lata and Maan (which is totally why they’re in my summary) and I also really liked the relationship between Pran and Savita, which goes from them barely knowing one another to a very sweet love. The book takes place over about a year’s time in India in the 50’s, so a ton of political action is happening. India is trying to define itself without the British, without part of its territory, and the process is messy.
I will admit that I found most of the political sections boring. I wasn’t really interested in the bills they were passing or all the arguments that went on. I felt like I could get what was happening from the parts that took place in the countryside, which I enjoyed more anyway, and which certainly had more of a human touch to them as we could see what various laws and decisions were taking effect. The actual politics don’t take up much of the book, but I definitely began skimming those parts toward the end to get back to the characters I cared about. I also was occasionally confused by how the characters classified themselves. I didn’t know the difference between people from various regions or castes and there was no way I could tell a Muslim from a Hindu by their names. I knew there was a caste system, but I guess I didn’t realize that it still existed so much fifty years ago, and I wonder how prevalent it is now. I was also really surprised at how much the color of skin was an issue. I was startled each time Mrs Rupa Mehra worried she was going to have a black grandchild and sought out a fair-skinned husband for Lata as a result.
It was wonderful to live in this book for a little while, and I already find that I miss many of the characters and I want to know what happened next. I was somewhat dissatisfied with one aspect of the ending, but that’s not enough to make me dislike the rest of the book. I’m very glad I read it and it had me thinking about India’s independence, a topic I was never really all that interested in before, maybe just because I never had reason to be. But at its core, this is still a novel about people and that’s why I really loved it. The characters are fully fleshed out and experience the full gamut of emotions; almost everything you could imagine happens in this book. I felt like I could have easily lived among them and become friends with them in real life, and Vikram Seth let me for the space of these pages. I’m very glad I have An Equal Music in my TBR piles at home, and I can imagine myself picking it up very soon.
A Suitable Boy is a huge, fantastic read with, to me, both a foreign and a very familiar focus. It was well worth the time I spent reading it and it’s a great start to my ongoing attempt to read outside of my comfort zone.
 What would happen if we twenty-first century people took a trip back in time to the fourteenth century? It would be very like visiting another country. Even our landscape would be greatly changed. Ian Mortimer takes this approach and, applying his theory of living history, treats his readers to an objective and entertaining view of one of the most stereotypical centuries in medieval history. The fourteenth century has not only castles, knights, tournaments, and wars, but also gave birth to many of the creative minds associated with medieval England like Chaucer and the Gawain-poet.
Living history is a fascinating idea. Instead of applying modern stereotypes to medieval practices, Mortimer attempts instead to understand them on their own terms. For example, a popular perception is that medieval people were dirty. In comparison to us, they were; most people did not bathe on a daily basis, nor did they have detergents and disinfectants to clean their houses or clothes with. From a medieval perspective, however, women spent hours working to clean their homes, clearing rushes from the floor, scouring pots and pans, and laundering clothes with a variety of harsh soaps. Men and women washed their hands and faces daily and even started to use perfumes. They ate politely, especially in the presence of their social betters. To them, that was cleanliness. There were, of course, smelly or messy people, but there are smelly and messy people now too.
Mortimer’s book is divided into eleven chapters, covering such topics as the landscape, the medieval character, health and hygiene, and the law. He uses examples to illustrate his points, such as a genuine medieval gang that evaded the law or examples of a few women who broke out of the status quo and became unusually wealthy and powerful. Queen Isabella is the second richest person in the century; quite remarkable when women were regarded as property of their husbands and fathers. He also attempts to convey the tragedy of the plague; while other historians may evaluate it for its effect on history, which was largely beneficial, Mortimer shows us how it was anything but that to the third to half of the population that died from it and their relatives, who watched them die and mourned for them. Mortimer even imagines a few conversations that travellers might have, for example, when bartering for food.
My favorite section, however, was the chapter on clothing. Using illuminated manuscripts and tapestries, Mortimer shows how the style of dress changed drastically from the beginning of the century to the end. Clothing more than anything enables me to visualize the people described in the book and, in my experience, is rarely mentioned in detail in schools or museums as few examples survive. I loved learning how the invention of the button changed clothing styles and how people moved gradually towards more provocative styles, which were of course disapproved of by clergy and the elderly.
This is certainly history worth reading. It’s not heavy at all and is a perfect read for the non-academic who wishes to learn a lot more about the Middle Ages but doesn’t have the patience for a more serious, longer study.
I loved this book so much that I’m going to be discussing it on That’s How I Blog with the wonderful Nicole on June 8th at 4 pm EST. Do you want a copy of your own to discuss with me? Thanks to Simon & Schuster, I have 3 copies to give away to anyone with a valid US mailing address. To enter, just leave a comment on this review. This contest will be open until February 8th. The winners are commenters 3, 6, and 32 thanks to random.org. Congratulations to Lindymc, The Kool-Aid Mom, and Alyce!
This review was originally posted at The Book Bag and I’d like to thank them for my review copy.
 Renee Michel is, at first glance, a nondescript middle-aged concierge of an apartment building in Paris. But she cultivates that image, and underneath her purposely plain exterior is a quick, intelligent brain. She uses her job as a way to hide her vibrant interest in philosophy, books, movies, and beauty. Upstairs lives a 12-year-old girl named Paloma who has determined to kill herself on her thirteenth birthday because she cannot handle being so disdained and undervalued. Both of their lives are set on a collision course when one of the upstairs neighbors falls ill and everything in the apartment building begins to change.
It’s hard to review a book in which I really disliked the first 100 pages and loved the following 200. At first it just seemed consumed with philosophy. Nothing was happening, Renee was constantly musing about things I don’t understand or particularly care about, and Paloma was completely doom and gloom about her life and her family. Honestly, I don’t like philosophy and never have. It just seems like a lot of musing about nothing particularly interesting. And then the neighbor died, and someone else moved in who changed everything. And somehow the characters’ musings became about life, and love, and missed opportunities, and caring what you do in the world. They became more relevant and more interesting.
It’s hard to go on without spoiling why this book became great. It’s when the characters collide that it happens, and they recognize in themselves people that are just like them. It’s a shout-out against the class system and defies Renee’s idea that because she began life as a poor woman, that rich people will always harm her and take advantage of her. It does its little bit to show that people are all just people and we never know what’s going on in someone else’s head. I’m not sure the ending didn’t really take away that message, that association with rich people will harm poor people, but it really moved me. It made me wonder if Barbery was reflecting on the way things are in France at the moment. I’ve never been there, so I don’t know how strong the class system still is, but reviews online (and this book) seem to suggest that it is still very present.
Anyway, I would really recommend The Elegance of the Hedgehog, I’d just suggest to stick to it a little longer than you might a normal book. It’s fairly short, but it is quite a touching journey.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free for review from the publisher.
 To my surprise, my copy of 84 Charing Cross Road included The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street as well, so I figured I’d review them both together, as they sort of go together anyway.
In a search for rare books, writer Helene Hanff pens a letter to Marks & Co. booksellers in London, hoping that they’ll have what she so desires. Her initial letter sparks two decades of communication between her and the employees of the bookstore, particularly Frank Doel, who answers that letter and becomes a dear penpal to her. In The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, Hanff finally makes a trip to London to promote the newly published 84 Charing Cross Road, visiting all the sights which had become familiar to her through the letters and through films.
It was almost inevitable that this book would let me down. My expectations were so, so high, given that this is a book for book lovers and countless people assured me that if I loved The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, I would love this too. And I did, but not as much, which was in itself disappointing. Yes, it is a totally charming and endearing story. I loved when Hanff grew so fond of the London employees that she sent them packages of hard-to-get items just after World War II when everything was still rationed. The time period felt real to me through these people that had lived through it. And of course this is certainly a book for book lovers, as Hanff’s passion for them especially shines through and definitely makes me feel like I should be reading all the books she’d read.
Unfortunately, though, I found Hanff slightly abrasive. She had a strange habit of suddenly writing in lower case, which I just didn’t understand, and she seemed to me very much like a loud American stereotype, particularly in comparison to the more somber British writers. I think I would have preferred more letters, too. There were gaps of years between some of the letters, and clearly there had been some correspondence over those years because they’d reply to one another. I kept feeling like I was missing something, and the book was so short that more letters could have been included easily.
I feel like there’s something wrong with me because I didn’t love this as much as everyone else does. All those five star reviews, everyone saying that book lovers can’t not love this book – well, clearly I should have waited and let my expectations die down a bit! There’s also the fact that the ending was spoiled for me by the back cover, which I almost never read but in this case did. That certainly hurt the book as it robbed me of the true emotional impact it could have had.
It was with a little bit of surprise that I then found myself loving the second book, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street. I’d hardly heard of this one, as everyone focuses on the first. But here, Hanff actually travels to London, even though she’s just had a hysterectomy and is in considerable pain. Watching her discover London – and England – was like doing it for myself all over again. And if you don’t think I got as excited and moved as she did, just ask my husband, who was there (and confused by me) for most of it!
Is it strange that I related far more to her passion for British history than I did to her passion for books? Because I certainly did. She’s a very different reader than me, and I’m sure that has something to do with it. In any case, there is something magical about a place you’ve read about in history books coming to life, and I could palpably feel her excitement. I know what it’s like to walk along paths I’d previously only dreamed of walking on, places where history that I love happened, where writers that I love wrote, where generations of other people have sat and dreamed and thought and changed the world. It’s awe-inspiring, and that’s what I loved about this book. I can still remember that thrilling first vision of green that was England from my plane window and there Hanff and I turned out to have quite a bit in common after all. And I found her visit to Marks & Co extremely moving – it closes down by the time she finally gets to see it – and her visits with her correspondents were touching and sweet. I liked her a lot better in this second book and I wonder now if I should reread the first with this new perspective.
Both of these books are worth your time. Don’t let expectations get to you and take it as it comes – and DON’T read the back cover!
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased these books.
I like the mini review format so much that I’m going to use it for a lot of my romance reading. In general, I don’t have enough to say about these books to generate a full review, and I like to clear out my review backlog, so I’ll be posting a set of four mini reviews every time I’ve finished four books!
 To Wed a Wicked Prince, Jane Feather
Prince Alex Prokov is an intriguing, compelling man and captivates Lady Livia Lacey from their very first meeting. What she doesn’t realize is that he is foremost intending to inspect her house, legally his because the eccentric woman who left it to Livia was his mother, and claim it if necessary. He finds Livia interesting enough to marry her instead, but their relationship is a minefield of secrets and half-truths. Will their love sustain them through Alex’s lies?
I was less than enchanted with this book. I liked the atmosphere, but Alex’s lies drove me up the wall. I could see that if he’d only told Livia the truth, practically all the bad things that happen to them in the novel would have been solved. I could see why he’d kept secrets about his activities, but about his mother’s identity? Not so much. Furthermore, he is very domineering, even wishing to get rid of Livia’s faithful servants despite the fact that they were first his mother’s. He’s just so hard to relate to and in the end I couldn’t figure out why Livia loved him. I did like her character, though, as I really like the more independent heroines as non-historical as they may be. Overall, this book was “eh” for me. Not a compelling plot, some irritating characters, and not enough genuine historical detail or good writing to override its faults.
 Compromised, Kate Noble
I’ve been looking forward to Kate Noble’s books for a good long time, ever since I heard about her on The Book Smugglers. In this, her debut, the Alton sisters have just returned from the Continent, new stepmother in tow, and it’s time for their first Season. Bookish Gail has no interest in a Season, however, and as an attempt to placate her, her father gives her a horse. That horse leads her to a gentleman, Maximillian, Viscount Fontaine, with whom she ends up in a lake, and who absolutely infuriates her. Things don’t get much better when that man is found in a compromising position with her sister – and they get worse when Gail starts to fall in love with him and vice versa.
I definitely had fun with this book. Gail’s interactions with Max sparkle and I could totally believe that they loved one another by the end. And I felt like they really knew each other before they hopped into bed, which is pretty much the standard by which I judge romances, especially historical ones. I like to read about love, not just lust. Anyway, probably the only thing that irritated me here was that Gail is quite a stereotype. There are so many books with the bookish heroine who shuns society, who doesn’t think she’s pretty, blah blah. She does get along with people eventually because she has issues, she’s not shy, but I don’t understand why a heroine can’t be bookish and still like to spend time with people occasionally right off the bat. I will also confess that I was largely drawn to this book by the cover, which is refreshingly not sexual and has the prettiest yellow dress on it. I’m not shallow at all, no.
 Crazy for You, Jennifer Crusie
When Quinn McKenzie meets a little dog she names Katie, she decides her life has to change. She’s gone along with everything her too nice boyfriend wants, with what her parents want, and has generally been the fixer of the family. She’s bored of her life and she’s had enough. When her boyfriend sends the puppy to the pound, she decides to leave him, and begins encouraging everyone to make little changes to make their lives better. She has no idea what she’s about to inflict on her family and friends.
I suspect all of Crusie’s novels are this delightful. While this has a similar premise to Welcome to Temptation, the other book by her that I read, it’s still totally charming. I loved Quinn and I was 100% behind her. Any guy who takes a puppy to be killed when his girlfriend has fallen in love with it probably deserves to be dumped. And after that boyfriend’s further behavior, I completely sympathized with her. I really enjoyed the love story and all the little tangents that followed, too. I can’t wait to read more of Crusie’s books. I hope they’re all this fun.
 Miss Wonderful, Loretta Chase
Alistair Carsington took great pleasure in falling love with women before he was involved in the Battle of Waterloo, where he nearly lost his life. Since his return, he has become obsessed with clothes to the detriment of everything else. Seeking activity and income, Alistair joins his friend’s scheme to build a canal through Derbyshire, and heads there to persuade the locals of the brilliance of his plan. Miss Mirabel Oldridge, practically on the shelf, is fiercely resistant of a canal cutting its way through her land, but soon she and Alistair realize they’re not particularly good at resisting each other.
This book wasn’t very memorable – I read it yesterday and I’ve already forgotten most of it. It struck me as a fairly typical romance. I liked that Mirabel was older and independent and had had a past with another man. I’d call it an enjoyable read but not much else.
As I just skimmed this post (which I put together over maybe a month), I realized that none of the covers are your typical half-naked embrace. I know British covers are way, way more conservative in this regard, but it doesn’t explain the two American ones. I am really, really tired of the endless parade of half-naked men and women on romance covers, and apparently I am showing my resistance by choosing books that don’t have it.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased these books or borrowed them from my local library.
 This graphic memoir depicts the childhood of Marjane Satrapi during and after the Islamic Revolution in Iran. She remembers when she first was required to wear a headscarf, when school changed, when she learned the danger of protesting, among many other things in a rapidly changing world. Interspersed with the severity of the revolution is the fact that the author was definitely a child; she was jealous of other people’s fathers because they’d been in prison and become “heroes” with cool stories, for example, and she decides that she wants to be a prophet. With simply drawn black-and-white pictures, this memoir successfully reminds us that people in Iran are still people like us, only living in far different circumstances.
I loved The House of the Mosque, which I read last week, and then Dawn at She is Too Fond of Books recommended this one in a review, and Andrea at Canongate Books left me a comment saying she had this one as well. I’d heard of it before, but this all just seemed like huge incentive to read it now. So naturally, I went to the library and took it out immediately, and it’s so short that I managed to read it the same day.
I really enjoyed it. I felt like Persepolis dealt with tough issues but had that human touch throughout. I appreciated the author’s mission to show us that Iran is more than terrorism and weapons, it’s an ancient culture with real people. It certainly has problems now, but there’s no reason to forget its past and the fact that all the people who live there are not exactly thrilled with their own government. The author, for example, is thrilled when her parents smuggle her modern posters, clothes, and a Michael Jackson button, only for her to get in trouble when women who are more committed to the new government see her in her new jeans and jacket.
I even liked the black-and-white drawings. They’re quite simplistic but Satrapi shows individuality with small touches and conveys emotion with them quite effectively. There is some violence depicted, but it’s not realistic enough to bother anyone, just enough to show that it must have been horrible.
Overall, Persepolis is a book I’d definitely recommend. It’s a fast and even enjoyable read that really touches on important – even essential – issues about the world today. I’m definitely interested in reading its sequel and hope my library has that one, too.
I am an Amazon Associate. I borrowed this book from my local library.
 Or, the problem with older romance novels.
Belliane, better known as Lianna, is a Frenchwoman determined to keep her castle in Normandy at all costs. But Henry V is invading, and he wants to marry her to Enguerrand of England, both to promote his friend and make life easier for himself. In protest, Lianna marries a Frenchman, but meets Rand not knowing who he is. Lianna and Rand both lie to one another and begin to fall in love – until Lianna’s husband dies and marriage goes on as planned. Both betrayed in the midst of battle, Lianna and Rand must decide what really matters to them, love or country.
I almost gave up this book on every other page. I don’t honestly know why I kept going. It has all my least favorite aspects of a romance novel. These two lust after one another and suddenly decide it’s love. Their lies are the foundation for almost everything bad that happens to them, and they don’t forgive one another even though of course they have to sleep with each other all the time. Because when you’re furious with someone, you really want to have sex with them. Yep. And Lianna is almost too unconventional to be true; how many noble ladies went around in the smocks of poor women with their hair down and learned to shoot newfangled guns? Sure, it’s a war, but I just found it very hard to believe. Besides that, she’s too stupid to live. She doesn’t realize the French guy she’s marrying is a slimeball, she walks straight into at least two traps, and she leaves her baby in the care of the wife of slimeball’s son. She’s basically the cause of ALL the relationship problems as Rand is completely lovesick.
The love story was the most disappointing one I’ve read in a long time, and the characters had dialogue I couldn’t imagine anyone saying. It’s too corny, too impassioned, too ridiculous. Very few romances are historically accurate in this respect, but I have to at least believe in the chemistry to put all that aside. And here I did not. Reading this book helped me realize how people could easily disdain the genre.
I do have to give the author a little respect, though, because her history is largely accurate. All the hallmarks of Henry V’s campaign and Agincourt are here, and all in all once Lianna and Rand are married and stop stripping every five seconds the book doesn’t suffer quite so much. The only part that annoyed me with the history was the constant mentions of chivalry, and it’s clear that the author doesn’t quite understand that chivalry == war for medieval knights. It’s not the Victorian always-be-nice-to-ladies idea. That’s only a tiny part of it. Being violent is being chivalric. That’s the point. All medieval romances aren’t this bad; I just read Scoundrel’s Kiss and enjoyed it a lot. The Lily and the Leopard just reinforces all the stereotypes. When you seriously hope there isn’t going to be a happy ending because you hate the characters, you know you have a problem. Yuck.
No Amazon link; the book is out of print. And that’s a good thing. I bought this one so you don’t have to.
 Aqa Jaan’s family has lived in the house of the mosque for centuries. Two of his cousins also live in the house; one is the mosque’s imam and the other is the muezzin. At first glimpse, their lives are going about as they have been for hundreds of years; television exists, but the house’s inhabitants studiously avoid it, and the women still cover themselves even though others in Tehran no longer bother. The family’s daughters are waiting for respectable men to approach their families to offer marriage, and the imam’s son is studying diligently to take his father’s place when he dies. Yet all is not the same, as a revolution is forming in 1970s Iran, and that revolution stands to change the family’s ways forever.
I found this book totally fascinating. I know so little of Iran, let alone what it’s like to live there, and I really felt like this book put me right in the midst of a revolution. Enough of their culture was established so that I felt terror and confusion just as the house’s residents did, and I was amazed at what some of the family was capable of doing for political purposes. It was all in the name of Islam, which makes it worse for me. I could see today’s political situation in the making, and it made me so sad that Iran couldn’t have continued on its former path of slow liberation without becoming extremists and closing up completely. The book does reveal how things can spiral out of control, without the people necessarily giving consent or realizing what they are doing. A few extremists can change the entire country given just a little encouragement, and that’s exactly what happens here.
My favorite character in the book was definitely Aqa Jaan. It’s predicted early in the novel that he’ll be the last one left of the family, and indeed this seems to be the case as his family either become extremists or become targets in the revolution, or simply disappear of their own volition. His emotions are often heartbreaking and I wished things could be different for him as his family began to fall apart. This is such a stunning novel of a country falling apart; it’s almost as though Aqa Jaan’s family is a microcosm of that, split between all the different factions, while he just wants life to remain as it has been for hundreds of years.
There is a lot of anti-Americanism here, but given the political circumstances, it’s understandable and didn’t put me off the book despite the fact that I am American. I also was left wondering how much of the book is true. The author, who fled Iran in 1988, was an illegal journalist and leftist there, and I expect much of the revolution was witnessed by him first-hand. He’s using a pen name here to honor executed friends (though his own name is available on wikipedia) and he dedicates the book to his own Aqa Jaan, so my curiosity is definitely piqued.
Honestly, I can’t recommend this book highly enough. It inspires me to read more non-fiction to learn more about the conflict and to read more multi-cultural fiction. This book helped me understand what’s happening in the world today and still engaged all of my emotions and thoughts. You should not miss The House of the Mosque.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the publisher for review.
 Mary Toliver DuMont knows she is dying. When she looks back on her life and reflects on all the mistakes she’s made, she chooses to sell her family’s huge farm rather than leave it to her great-niece as Rachel is expecting. In this multi-generational saga, the characters take us back through their lives to the beginning of many of their problems so that the conclusion becomes understandable. This family has experienced it all, and their mistakes may prevent the happiness of the newest generation.
I often love sagas of this variety and Roses was not really an exception. There’s little better than investing yourself in several hundred pages of a fictional family’s complicated and generally tragic life. Here the central tragedy is that Mary Toliver and Percy Warwick don’t marry, even though they are clearly the loves of each other’s lives, due to misunderstandings and mistakes. Those resonate throughout the book and influence decisions made by all the characters throughout.
These families are descended through Lancastrian and Yorkist immigrants to the United States and as a result use a system of roses to signal forgiveness (and unforgiveness) to one another. I have to admit I rolled my eyes a little at this, as it just seems way too sentimental for real life, but it works really well as a device within the story, so I got used to it very quickly and appreciated how the author wove it in, making the title perfectly appropriate for the book. I also really liked the characters for the most part, especially Percy; Mary and Rachel were slightly too abrasive for me to love them, but I still liked them.
Despite the fact that I was swept up in the story and really enjoyed it, I have to say I had an issue with the central reason for frustration. Everyone blames everything on Somerset, and it seemed to me what really happened was that the characters made bad decisions. Getting rid of the land would not have solved their problems, talking would. I could definitely understand the issue an early twentieth century southern magnate would have had with his wife out in the fields all day, but I do think there’s such a thing as compromise. Mary and Percy are just too stubborn to have things their own way.
Roses is a saga in a great tradition, but it’s not a perfect one. Still, if you enjoy reading about strong characters and don’t mind a little bit of tragedy and suspending belief, this would be a wonderful choice. I’d also suggest it to people who enjoyed Dallas on TV – the Texas feel is so similar here.
I am an Amazon Associate, so if you purchase books through my links I will earn a tiny percentage of the profit at no cost to you. Thanks! I received this book for free from the publisher.
 Ada, an Englishwoman who has found herself in medieval Spain after fleeing her homeland, is addicted to opium and will do almost anything to get it. She ends up at a slavery auction, blissfully addicted and completely unaware of her circumstances. Luckily for her, she’s spotted by two men: Gavriel, a former warrior and now dedicated novice, and her friend Jacob. Between them, they rescue her and take her away, but she faces a hard battle fighting her opium addiction. Can Gavriel’s dedication to her cure her of her addiction – and help him face down the trouble from his past?
I loved how this romance was different and yet still had all the essential ingredients for a wonderful romantic read. First off, the book is set in medieval Spain. There’s currently a total glut of historical romance (and regular fiction for that matter) set in England, which is all well and good, but sometimes I’m looking for something different. This fit that bill, and the author even includes a helpful note about what’s accurate and what’s different about her history at the end. I love when authors do this, it shows such dedication to their research that I really respect and admire. Her website lists the books she used to research in case readers are interested.
Secondly, I loved the characters. Gavriel himself feels familiar, as there are plenty of emotionally scarred warriors hanging around in the romance genre (I think immediately of Kev/Merripen in Seduce Me at Sunrise), but his character is done well and his journey to redemption is admirable and engaging.
It’s Ada that is different. She has severe issues with her life; opium addiction just one of the ways in which she is unusual. She’s treated her sister horribly, she’s seduced a man for her own purposes, and she’s not even willing to be rescued from the drug she’s addicted to. I started the book really wondering how the author was going to pull this off. Characters are absolutely essential to a successful romance, because really the entire book is centralized on the relationship between two people, and Ada was not a character that I liked at first. Somehow, though, I found myself really caring about Ada by the end. She recovers herself and realizes that many of her actions have been wrong, and that she can do better. Gavriel helps her on that path, but it’s really her that becomes strong and dedicated, and he’s not a necessity for it to happen.
Finally, I really loved the adventurous take that Lofty took with this one. Everyone fights and travels, so there is plenty of action mixed in with the more thoughtful and romantic scenes. It really helps to move the book along and provide a dimension which isn’t totally focused on the central romance. I always appreciate that.
Scoundrel’s Kiss has made me especially eager to read the author’s first book, What A Scoundrel Wants, which uses the Robin Hood legends and introduces Ada and her sister. This was a great read and I definitely recommend it.
I am an Amazon Associate, so if you purchase books through my links I will earn a tiny percentage of the profit at no cost to you. Thanks! I received this book for free from the author as an ebook.
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