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 Vivienne de la Mare’s marriage has been fading for a while, so she doesn’t actually mind very much when her husband goes off to fight in World War II, leaving her, her mother-in-law Evelyn, and her two daughters alone on the island of Guernsey. Vivienne has many other problems to deal with, such as Evelyn’s fading memory, her elder daughter’s budding womanhood, and the difficult choice of whether to leave the island. Just when Vivienne chooses to stay, the Germans occupy Guernsey, and Vivienne faces the most pressing problem of all as she falls in love with a German soldier, Gunther, even as she witnesses the atrocities committed by his fellow soldiers right before her eyes.
After I flat out adored The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society I knew I wanted to read more World War II fiction centred around the occupation of Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands. This book fit right in with my plans; smooth and easy to read, it nonetheless dealt with a lot of the very difficult issues surrounding German presence on the island as well as Vivienne’s own struggle to continue to live a meaningful and content life in the shadow of so many other problems.
Because Vivienne’s husband has been rather openly cheating on her, she has very little guilt about betraying him, but with a German soldier? That’s a whole different story, because Vivienne can see all too well the suffering that other Germans are inflicting on others. She doesn’t have to rely on tales she hears when there are dying men in front of her eyes. But she knows that Gunther is different, even as she questions how deeply she can ever truly know a person. It’s thoughtfully and sensitively handled; Leroy speaks to both the horrors of Nazi acts even as she shows us that not every soldier was behind what was happening.
At the same time, it’s a considerate look at the difficulties that children go through in wartime. Vivienne’s elder daughter longs to have the glamorous life she’s read about in so many places, but it simply isn’t possible with rationing. She dreams of London and fancy dresses, but she’s trapped on Guernsey and Vivienne is the one who must tell her so and attempt to keep her daughter happy in the midst of deprivation and struggle.
And there’s Vivienne’s own self-discovery, as she starts to come out of the shell that years of an unloving marriage have left her in, with difficult decisions to make completely on her own. Her indecisiveness at the beginning of the book changes as she make choices, and whether they turn out correct or not, we can see that Vivienne’s experience through the war years have changed and strengthened her.
Overall, The Collaborator is a very moving and sensitive read, dealing with issues unique to wartime and universal to women at the same time. Well worth it for those who enjoy historical and women’s fiction.
All book links to external sites are affiliate links. I received this book for free from a publicist for review.
 Good afternoon everyone! This is going to have to be a quick Sunday Salon as I’m exceptionally busy today.
Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting Kathy from Bermudaonion’s Weblog and her husband Carl. We had a great time wandering London for a few hours – I only wish I could have stayed longer! Carl took all of the pictures, so I’ll have to wait until she’s home to show them to you.
Kathy was kind enough to bring me no less than five books from home:
- The Linen Queen by Patricia Falvey
- The Maid by Kimberly Cutter
- This Burns My Hearts by Samuel Park
- A Fierce Radiance by Lauren Belfer
- The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
I can hardly wait to dig into them! I’m so backlogged that it may be a while, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy all of them. She also brought me a lovely Harper Perennial tote bag. You know how it works with tote bags – you can never have too many.
Next weekend I am off to London once again to meet Jodie of Book Gazing, Ana of things mean a lot, and Ana of The Book Smugglers. It promises to be another awesome Saturday!
In the meantime, I am trying to read and review, but mostly failing at home (though I got some good reading time in on the train yesterday with The Story of Beautiful Girl). I have a couple of books I have to review this week, but that might be it from me. In the meantime, I hope you are all reading fabulous books and enjoying the start of summer!
As you may have noticed (or maybe not!) I have been very absent from this little blog lately, at least for me. I haven’t abandoned it, and have no desire to, but my life has gone a bit crazy and I’ve found both my weekends and my evenings full over the past month or so. Things aren’t looking likely to calm down, as I’ll be away a few more weekends, two full weeks, and am going to be moving in the next two and a half months. I’m really hoping everything will be back to normal by the end of August.
In the meantime, while I struggle to actually write anything, I thought I’d share a few photos of my recent adventures with you.
We went to visit the Brontes first:
 I actually enjoyed this quite a bit, possibly because my expectations were lowered and a bit conflicted after reading about Ana’s visit. It wasn’t particularly crowded when we went, and I loved seeing everything that actually belonged to the sisters and their family. Finding out that Charlotte was smaller than me, for example, and seeing her dresses for myself, really humanized her.
We then had a bit of a walk along the countryside:
We had the somewhat misfortune of visiting Haworth during a 1940’s festival, and it was more crowded than possibly anywhere I’ve been in my life, so no pictures of the town from me. I’m not kidding; it was so crowded that we were trapped unmoving on the High Street until policemen got involved. But many of the participants were wearing 40’s outfits, which were really fun to see, and were distracted from the Parsonage itself by the festivities, so I credit this with the reason it was very quiet within the museum.
Just last weekend we visited Oxford, and for me the highlight was clearly the Bodleian library:
 I loved seeing Duke Humphrey’s library, as it’s called, with its medieval roots, especially as I’d learned about Humphrey previously. It was enough to make me wish I’d studied in Oxford, just for the right to go in there every so often. (To be fair I had York Minster Library which is amazing in its own right).
As for the rest of Oxford, we were left a bit disappointed by the culture. I was shocked by how many beggars there are on the streets; it seemed so wrong that the richest people in the country go to university here when the streets are lined with people who are begging for spare change. You’ll have some obviously well off students in expensive dress striding past these poor people without giving them a glance. It felt wrong and made me quite sad. I don’t know why Oxford is such a focus, but I’ve never seen so many beggars in one city before.
Oxford did have its excellent points, with extensive history, free museums, and a burrito place among them, but unfortunately that is the image the city has left me with.
Our last stop was Blenheim Palace, the only non-royal secular palace in the whole of the UK:
 It’s quite stunning, inside and out, and was especially interesting for me as I’ve read a couple of books featuring Sarah, the first Duchess who was behind much of the construction. Most notable of those books is Duchess by Susan Holloway Scott, which focuses quite a bit on the romance between Sarah and her husband and Sarah’s tempestuous relationship with Queen Anne.
And that’s a summary of all I’ve been up to lately! I do hope to write a couple of reviews this weekend, but I am off on Saturday to meet the exceptionally lovely Kathy of Bermudaonion’s Weblog in London, so it’s mostly crossing fingers that I’ll have time on Sunday. In the meantime, enjoy the slight lessening of the burden on your feed readers, and I hope to be back in full force soon.
 Today I have the pleasure of welcoming Nicola Cornick, author most recently of Whisper of Scandal here in the UK, to my blog for a quick few questions! I hope you’ll welcome her.
· I’ve seen that you’ve been writing romance since 1998, which is fantastic! How did you get started writing historical romance?
Thank you! I started writing historical romance when I was eighteen. It was my favourite reading material throughout my teens and I thought I would like to try writing it myself. I always knew I wanted to write historical rather than contemporary fiction because it fired my imagination from the start and history has always inspired me. So I wrote a historical romance and sent it to Harlequin Mills & Boon and after several attempts and rejections they published my first book, True Colours, in 1998.
· What was your inspiration for your new Scandalous Women of the Ton series?
Lots of ideas came together for me to inspire the Scandalous Women of the ton series. First there was the idea for the first book, Whisper of Scandal, which came to me when I was researching the cult of celebrity in the 18th and 19th centuries. I discovered how famous explorers and travellers were during that period and thought that voyage to the Arctic would make an intriguing background for a novel. Then I realised that only male explorers were lauded – female travellers were considered unfeminine and inappropriate. This made me realise how very scandalous it would be for a woman to travel to the Arctic and so the idea for the first book and for the series was born.
· Can you tell us more about the series?
Each of the Scandalous Women of the Ton books features a heroine who has done something that outrages society in a different way. As well as Lady Joanna travelling to Spitsbergen in Whisper of Scandal we have her sister Merryn, who works for a living, and another sister who is a political cartoonist… I wanted to explore the concept of what was scandalous in early nineteenth century society and take a different aspect of it in each book.
· What’s your favourite romance novel?
Oh, that is such a tough choice! How many can I choose? I have a lot of old favourites on my keeper shelf but I think it is probably Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne Du Maurier. I love the evocative atmosphere that she creates and the way that she effortlessly conjures the historical setting. The characters are wonderful and it is such a romantic book!
· Besides the one you write in, which period in history is your favourite?
I have so many! I studied Medieval History and love British history to 1485. The Tudor period was a favourite of mine when I was younger and I’m still very fond of books set in that time. And I work as a guide in a 17th century manor house so am very drawn to the English Civil War and Restoration period… Imperial Russia interests me as well… So many historical periods, so hard to choose!
Thanks Nicola! To purchase the book, visit The Book Depository.
After a disastrous first marriage, the lovely widow Joanna Ware has absolutely no desire to marry anyone, ever again. Certainly not another explorer cut, in her mind, from the same mold as her late husband. But in the midst of thwarting yet another proposal, Joanna kisses Alex, Lord Grant, an Artic explorer who was her husband’s best friend. Despite the seeming clash in their personalities, the will of Joanna’s late husband throws them together again and again. It’s no surprise when she and Alex start to feel something for one another, and rumors begin to run rampant across London.
This first novel in a new series by long time romance author Nicola Cornick is an engaging, witty, and emotional journey through London up to the chilly Arctic to retrieve a little girl, the child that Joanna Ware never had with her husband. While the characters sometimes suffer colossal struggles to communicate, their mistrust eventually fades and I did get a genuine sense that they loved one another and belonged together. It’s difficult because sometimes I did want to smack them, but I certainly supported them in the end.
They have so many misunderstandings to surmount that we automatically know reconciliation isn’t going to happen in a second anyway. There are sparks, but there are also problems. Joanna has been led by her experience with her husband, while Alex’s mind has been poisoned by his slander, so they have learn to actually know one another instead of knowing the myths that each of them have built around their lives.
Providing a bit of comic relief to the otherwise emotional, painful story is Joanna’s friend Lottie. This frivolous society girl takes along an unimaginable amount of belongings to the frozen north and doesn’t hesitate to head straight for affairs when she feels necessary. While she is surprisingly ridiculous, Lottie isn’t a soulless character, as she has an affair of the heart in the book and learns just what it feels like to be treated the way she normally treats men.
Mostly, however, this book is an emotional journey through one couple’s struggle to learn to be comfortable with one another, to set aside past scars and focus solely on their future together rather than the battle-strewn past they’ve endured. With that in mind, Whisper of Scandal is an excellent choice for the romance reader, though not one lacking patience, and I’m looking forward to the second and third books in the series.
All book links to external sites are affiliate links. I received this book for free for review.
 Finley Jayne would have just been an ordinary servant girl in this steampunk version of London if she wasn’t two personalities in one body. Her dark side gives her supernatural strength and an incredible amount of anger, while her normal personality is sweet and unthreatening. When she flees from one of the numerous houses in which she’s attempted service, after (rightly) beating an aristocrat for sexually accosting her, she runs into Griffin King, a young duke who promptly takes her home to his relatively ragtag bunch of odd personalities. Each has a special talent, but they’ve also been targeted by a mysterious villain, The Machinist, who has it out for Queen Victoria.
This was an incredibly entertaining read that I just couldn’t put down. I loved the atmosphere of steampunk London and the special skills that each of the characters had. It felt almost like I was reading a classic superhero comic book set in Victorian London, with some vicious automatons added in. It’s a atmosphere at once familiar and different, so I could fit right in while still taking some time to learn about the world.
The book is pretty clearly a YA novel with a bit of an emphasis on Finley’s romantic relationships and her seesawing between Jack Dandy and Griff. It’s very much about her personal growth from a girl with two personalities into a girl who can control herself and unleash her feelings when it’s more appropriate. She changes quite a bit over the course of the novel; at times it’s difficult to get a grasp on who she is due to her separate personalities, but overall I certainly liked her as a heroine and felt I could understand her issues and hope for her to do better.
I did feel the book was a bit predictable; I figured one part out well before the characters managed it, and while I was probably meant to, I would have preferred that extra suspense towards the end. Plus I felt by the end that I hadn’t got to know many of the other characters particularly well; it was enough to like them, but not the same degree as I felt for Finley after her journey of self-discovery.
Still, though, I really enjoyed The Girl in the Steel Corset. I looked forward to reading it whenever I had a chance and I was very invested in the story’s outcome. It’s not perfect, but I will most definitely be looking forward to further volumes in the series.
All book links to external sites are affiliate links. I received this book for free for review from Netgalley.
 As an adult, Heather Sellers discovers that she suffers from a condition called prosopagnosia, commonly known as face blindness. She is unable to recognize people by their faces; while she can usually identify them by features such as hair, ears, and clothing, it’s never reliable and she runs into her own husband thinking he’s a stranger. With her condition as a guide, Heather can start to process her difficult childhood and her relationship with her parents, both of whom have issues of their own. More importantly, Heather’s diagnosis comes to provide more clarity for her life, giving her a better understanding of who she is and how she can deal with her condition.
I’d never heard of prosopagnosia before reading this book, but it sounds very difficult. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like not to recognize people I knew walking down the street, or introduce myself to someone I already knew at a party – it’s just automatic for me and, clearly, for the many people who told Heather, “Oh, I’m really bad with names too”, ignoring her very real condition. I could feel her frustration and her certainty that she genuinely had this problem and I was relieved when she finally got a diagnosis and could begin to deal with what she did have. There is currently no cure for face blindness, but letting others know about the situation seems to help.
Tied in with Heather’s modern day story is the depiction of her childhood, which was far from ordinary. Her mother appears to be a paranoid schizophrenic, while Heather’s father has issues that are never fully understood throughout the narrative. Her parents live separately and as a child Heather lives with one and then the other and back again, switching schools on a yearly basis and struggling to make many friends. Her success to PhD level and eventual professorship at a university is simply astounding coming out of that and she deserves a lot of credit for sticking to her education, even when her mother handed her job listings for secretaries and cleaning women.
I did find the stories of her childhood very hard to take, simply because her life was so difficult. I felt very bad for her but to be honest, I was also just more interested in her modern day struggles with her condition, her marriage, and the fallout from her childhood rather than the events itself. As a result the second section of the book, which moves more away from childhood, struck a deeper chord with me and had me much more eager to read to the end. I think that Heather’s childhood is essential to understand her problems as an adult, but personally, I wouldn’t have minded an entire book on face blindness.
You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know is a moving memoir on a condition very few people are familiar with. The author is a strong woman with a difficult past to overcome that readers will come to empathize with and even admire. Recommended.
All book links to external sites are affiliate links. I received this book for free for review from the publisher.
 Lady Elaine Warren began her first season full of excitement and verve, ready to have her chance at the world. But slowly, she began to fade away and turned into a wallflower of the highest order. The culprit? Evan Carlton, the Earl of Westfield, made Elaine his target. With his insecure cousin in tow, Evan made Elaine’s life miserable, until she lost all chance of finding a well-placed husband. But in reality, Evan has always liked Elaine, and his mocking of her was simply an immature reaction to an attraction he didn’t know what to do with. Returned from the Continent, and several life-changing experiences, Evan longs to show Elaine just how stupid he was and see if he can have a chance at winning the woman he loves most of all, even if she wants nothing to do with him.
This little novella by Courtney Milan has received rave reviews pretty much everywhere. I’m not going to lie, I was absolutely thrilled when I discovered I could buy it for 86p on my Kindle, even though I’m in the UK. I downloaded it and read it within two days. It’s a short novella, equivalent to about 100 pages in print, so it’s best read straight in an evening (preferably alone, and with tissues if you’re anything like me).
Anyway, despite the reviews, I was genuinely surprised at how well this worked. I often have trouble buying into short romances, because it’s hard to believe they’d fall in love so fast, but this one just clicked with me instantly. The back story comes thick and fast, so we’re prepared for the characters’ reactions immediately. Plus, they tap right into that stereotype of the popular teenager longing for the wallflower, turning around and falling in love with her, then grovelling in order to win her heart back. I’m sure we’d all wish to avoid the torment that is actually inflicted on poor Elaine, but watching Evan try impossibly hard to win her back is gorgeous reading for someone who loves romance.
Plus, if you’ve ever been made fun of, even if not to such a degree, it’s impossible not to empathise with Elaine. Who wouldn’t want their former tormentor to turn around, beg forgiveness, and proceed to do everything in his power to make things perfect? At the same time, how hard would it be to trust that person not to turn around and make it all a living hell once again? It’s all so well done and so true to real life emotions. I’d never really Courtney Milan before, but trust me, this will not be the last time I do so, and I will be purchasing her backlist the minute I allow myself to buy books again.
If you’re a romance reader, you simply must give this novella a try. It’s available for every e-reader through All Romance ebooks, Amazon, or Amazon UK.
All book links to external sites are affiliate links. I purchased this book.
 In 1876, fancy mail order magic is driving out homespun magic, the kind Emily Edwards practices. As her and her father’s situation gets more and more desperate, she decides to snare a wealthy husband with a love spell. Her efforts, though meant well, completely backfire, and soon she finds herself racing across the country with Dreadnought Stanton, a snobbish warlock from New York City, on a frantic effort to reach the centre of the warlock’s world before it’s too late.
This was a great book in so many different ways. I love the setting – like other reviewers before me have said, it’s that wild west meets magic that is surprisingly appealing. It reminds me of Firefly in a way, both set in a world full of cowboys but with added twists to make them fresh and new. Here we have not only magic but echoes of steampunk and a few other bits and pieces.
Hobson’s ideas about magic are different from anything I’ve personally read, but the contrast is so apt for the time period when the mass catalogues started going out and people began to crave something other than homespun, homemade goods. This is a few years before that started to happen in real life, but it has that feel about it of the new pushing out the old, and the old struggling to survive in any way possible. The magic system develops very much along the course of the book, with new discoveries coming rapidly. It’s obvious that Hobson has a lot of ideas and I’m really looking forward to her fleshing this version of our world out more. The end of the book hints at a sequel and I am crossing my fingers that this is true, because I would definitely like to spend more time here.
And then, of course, there is a fantastic romance, and I can’t spoil that for anyone as it’s right on the back cover. Plus, tension sparks between Emily and Dreadnought almost immediately, and I think it would be difficult to miss their eventual romance from the opening chapters of the book. It’s a well done romance, too, without getting at all in the way of the plot. Instead it feels natural, inspired by the tension they’re both experiencing and the chemistry that springs up between them. There are very few types of novels that I like better than a good fantasy with a side romance, so needless to say this book ticked all of those boxes for me.
The Native Star is a solid satisfying indulgence of a read, well worth the time for anyone who likes fantasy or romance. And it was a nominee for the Nebula award this year, which is a third-party agreement of this book’s excellence.
All book links to external sites are affiliate links. I purchased this book.
 Eleanor of Aquitaine is just fifteen years old when her father dies and she marries Louis, the future king of France. They’ve not even reached Paris before the crises in Eleanor’s marriage become apparent; her husband has no interest in consummating their union, despite his physical attractiveness, is ruled by several members of his government, and has ascended to the throne without knowing anything about what he is doing. Taking us through Eleanor’s life from this moment through her journey on Crusade and second marriage, Devil’s Consort (Queen Defiant in the US) explores what might have really happened to one of history’s most well known royal women.
Historical fiction and Eleanor of Aquitaine are not strangers to one another; in fact, I feel like she’s been the subject of more and more books lately, both fiction and non-fiction. She’s a character that’s hard to resist, after all, a strong woman who broke free of convention, possibly had several affairs, and was the queen of two rival countries in the High Middle Ages, also known as the part of the Middle Ages that best represents our imaginings of it. She divorced her French husband and almost immediately dashed off to marry the future Henry II – so quick we can’t help but think she planned it – but also represents a woman who was easily capable of ruling, even if she did have to do it under her husband’s and son’s names.
Devil’s Consort is a hugely enjoyable book; it doesn’t precisely challenge any of the leading ideas about Eleanor, which means she does have those affairs I mentioned, one in particular with a crusading knight, and she does get very frustrated with her first husband Louis. Naturally he adores her, in a puppyish way, as he completely ignores her and goes off to pray instead of make heirs. At times I did wish the book reached beyond conventional ideas, but for someone who is a bit less read in Eleanor’s life and times, I don’t think this would at all be a problem. One thing I did think was that, outside of Eleanor and Henry, a few of the characters were more cardboard than flesh, in particular Louis. This doesn’t at all mean that history is neglected; I particularly enjoyed the mention of a particular rock crystal vase, the only item that we know Eleanor actually possessed (and can see for ourselves).
Overall, it’s a fast-reading, entertaining romp through medieval England and the thoughts and struggles of a woman who clearly knows who she is and often what she wants as well. I enjoyed in particular the bits when Eleanor herself goes on crusade; obviously she didn’t participate in the fighting and I was very curious to see how O’Brien depicted her time in the holy land. Devil’s Consort is a book well suited for others who love historical fiction and should stand firmly on the shelf next to other works about her. I’d recommend it!
All book links to external sites are affiliate links. I received this book for free for review from a publicist.
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