#TBRChallenge Reading: The Lawrence Browne Affair by Cat Sebastian

2017 TBR Reading Challenge
Book: The Lawrence Browne Affair
Author: Cat Sebastian
My Categories: m/m Historical Romance
Wendy Crutcher's Category: Something Different (outside your usual reading)

This is my first m/m story, and I'm so glad I débuted with Cat Sebastian. She gets the Regency era just right, and she does a true Beauty and the Beast story.

Lawrence Browne, the Earl of Radnor, thinks he is mad. The people in the village believe he is mad. In reality, he's merely eccentric and a brilliant inventor and researcher. He has a touch of agoraphobia and an extreme shyness with people that makes him hide away in his disgusting, crumbling manor at Penkellis at the mercy of the handful of diehard servants. In a bid to save this lord, the Reverend writes a letter to his friend in London, begging him to send Radnor a secretary.

Enter handsome thief and confidence artist posing as a secretary. When he took up the post, little did Georgie Turner realize that Penkellis and Radnor would wake up a latent conscience and sense of duty in him. Of course, being wildly attracted to the large, gorgeous earl acts as a good prod to said conscience. In London, Turner was a thief who's on the run from a colleague out for his blood. In Cornwall, Turner is a hardworking secretary with patience and good organizational skills.

I loved how sensitively, Sebastian handles the two men's characters, their growing attraction, and how they open up to each other in all their vulnerability.

With a single, menacing forefinger, Lawrence touched Turner's chest. He had meant for the gesture to be intimidating, but it felt strangely intimate. Before he knew what had happened, Turner had taken hold of Lawrence's large, calloused hands in his own fine ones. Lawrence didn't know if the man was motivated by kindness or self-defense, but he found that he was holding hands with a person for the first time since he was a child.

While Radnor is no virgin, yet his experience is limited, and in recent years, nonexistent. So he is very susceptible to Turner's advances. I felt such tenderness for Radnor as he assumes his every moment of desire for Turner is a sign of incipient madness. Turner, in turn, is the experienced one but affection and admiration had never before been part of his dealings with his partners, and he is flummoxed by what Radnor brings out in him.

These two men from such disparate backgrounds come together as such equals—I loved that about this book. Neither disdains the other for who they are, what they do, or their past. They're concerned with who they are with each other. The Lawrence Browne Affair is such a romantic tale! Not to be missed.

My April Reading

Keira and romantic comedy? Who'd've thunk?! But Lucy Parker's books were a revelation to me, and I loved them so much, I can hardly wait for her next one. This doesn't mean that I'm going to dive into RomCom now. I doubt it, because whatever I have read in the past has been, ah, execrable not for me. (Convince me otherwise, please!) Nevertheless, I will read whatever Lucy Parker writes.

Act Like It by Lucy Parker
Pretty Face by Lucy Parker
Categories: RomCom
Comments: How I LOVED these two books: the snappy dialog, the wit, the modern characterization, the London theater scene, all of it so detailed and well-tuned. Parker's talent is in building tight, complex relationships that don't feel rushed or smoothened out. All the problems are out in the open, and they are all dealt with. There're no deus ex machina events that magically get characters out of the tight spots they put themselves in. Act Like It was a far funnier and tighter book than Pretty Face, but both are good. My review is here.

Artistic License by Elle Pierson
Categories: Contemporary Romance
Comments: Lucy Parker also writes as Elle Pierson but in a different vein. This is a sweet, gentle story of two socially awkward, diffident people finding freedom and love and trust with each other. How wonderful is that! Each thinks the other is wonderful and talented, and while neither can talk much to most other people, they can talk up a storm with each other. She's an introvert and he thinks he is ugly. This is their meet cute: Sophy James is a twenty-something art student on a tour of a gallery hosting the art collection of the Ryland Curry Corporation in Queenstown, New Zealand. Mick Hollister is the security guard hired to guard the touring collection. While Sophy and her fellow students of the Dunedin Art School were supposed to study and sketch some of the art, Sophy was not-so-secretly sketching Mick. He's irritated by her attention while also reveling in it. My review is here.

Of Thee I Sing by Barack Obama
Categories: Children's Picture Book
Comments: I cried as I read this book—it made me proud and it touched me, even as I absorbed the book with my mind and heart. The book covers the important figures of our nation's history with a paucity of words and a wealth of meaning. Obama is telling his kids how wonderful they are and how the beauty and hardships, successes and failures of history are all part of them. He touches upon the bravery of Jackie Robinson, the brilliance of Einstein, the creativity of O'Keefe, the healing power of Sitting Bull, the strength of Helen Keller, the emotional depth of Maya Lin, the kindness of Jane Addams, the persistence of Martin Luther King Jr., the bravery of Neil Armstrong, the inspiration of Cesar Chavez, the pride of Lincoln, and others.

"Have I told you that America is made up of people of every kind? People of all races, religions, and beliefs. People front the coastlines and the mountains. people who have made bright lights shine by sharing their unique gifts and giving us the courage to lift one another up, to keep up the fight, to work and build upon all that is good in our nation."

Goodnight from London by Jennifer Robson
Categories: General Fiction
Comments: Set in London during the 1940s, Robson brings the whole wartime atmosphere alive with great characterization and excellent setting. No detail was deemed too small to get right: journalism jobs, character thoughts and actions, pop culture references, the effects of the Blitz on the people and the city structures, and subsisting on the rationing of everything. The gentle, trusting romance is the icing on the top. Ruby Sutton is a young, ambitious American journalist, who's offered a plum assignment to move to London in the summer of 1940 to report on the war. She's great at her job and very passionate about it. The whole wartime journalism aspect of the story is done superbly well. My discussion of the book with two other reviewers is here.

All Through the Night by Connie Brockway
Categories: Regency Romance
Comments: My Dearest Enemy and All Through the Night are among my top favorite romances of all time. ATTN is a story of two strongly adversarial characters who fight their natures, their jobs, and society's constraints for the right to love one another.

Emily and the Dark Angel by Jo Beverley
Categories: Traditional Regency Romance
Comments: Put two perfectly disparate, but highly memorable people together and watch the sparks fly and love blossom. What a great book by a great author.

Whispering Palms by Rosalind Brett
Categories: Contemporary 1979 Romance
Comments: Alas, this book did not hold up to the test of time. It had racism, a brusque domineering wealthy hero, a formerly brave but now doormat heroine, a scheming beautiful older sister, and gorgeous African countryside. Africa was the only secondary character with anything positive going for it—I enjoyed reading about the description of countryside living in the mid-to-late 20th century. Unfortunately, we see only Caucasians in roles of power and wealth with casual racism running rampant through the narrative. Africa is a backdrop, a painting drop-cloth to the story, but it was unable to save it from its cheesiness. I got this 1979 Mills & Boon from a library book sale, and I won't get back the time I invested in it. Back to the library it goes, to be visited upon another hapless soul. Perhaps I should be kind and simply recycle it.

The Rake to Rescue Her by Julia Justiss
Categories: Historical Romance
Comments: I adore Julia Justiss's work but I just wasn't in the mood for the type of second-chance love this proved to be in the first few chapters. It was a DNF for me, and I felt very silently apologetic to Justiss for abandoning her book. In what little I read, the writing is as usual very good. My beef was with the type of story and the characters. The whole tragedy surrounding Diana and why she spurned the young Alastair's love so cruelly in front of all the ton after having professed her love for him was melodramatic and unbelievable. I simply could not move forward from there.

#TBRChallenge Reading: Act Like It & Pretty Face by Lucy Parker

2017 TBR Reading Challenge
Book: Act Like It and Pretty Face
Author: Lucy Parker
My Categories: Contemporary RomCom
Wendy Crutcher's Category: Contemporary

Act Like It was recommended to me on Twitter, and I loved it so much, that I immediately turned around and read Pretty Face. AAR and Twitter folks, recommended PF over ALI, but while PF was a 'A' read for me, ALI was a decided 'A+'.

In Act Like It, actress Lainie Graham has a lead role in a play running at the Metronome Theatre in London. In her off-stage life, she'd been involved with lead actor Will Farmer, but she has recently found out via the tabloids that she's been dumped. I admired how well she was coping, personally and professionally. The other leading man, Richard Troy, comes from wealth and the upper classes and has an overly-developed sense of self-importance to go with it. His temper tantrums and bad behavior has been affecting his public image and starting to affect the box office, so his publicist and the director ambush Lainey to convince her to commence a faux relationship with him so that her London's Sweetheart image will burnish his image. In return, the director will donate some of the box office take to Lainey's favorite charity.

In Pretty Face, actress Lily Lamprey has a body, face, and high, light voice that's well-suited to a sexy TV soap but ill-suited for West End London theater. Luc Savage is a highly respected director, who's coerced into taking Lily on. To their dismay, they discover instant chemistry, which would be highly detrimental to Lily's reputation and future theater career ("dumb bunny sleeps her way into a role" being the expected headline).

The simple setups of the enemies-to-lovers story for ACI and the May-December Romance story for PF ensure that all the focus is on the relationships. Usually, I look for complexity in a story with more happening around and to the characters than simple relationship development. However, with these two books, perversely, I felt glad that they were lacking in a plethora of calamities being visited upon their characters. Lucy Parker's talent is in building tight, complex relationships that don't feel rushed or smoothened out. All the problems are out in the open, and they are all dealt with. There're no deus ex machina events that magically get characters out of tight spots they put themselves in.

The writing in both books is sharp and funny, and the stories move along swiftly and very assuredly. The books have a breezy irreverent tone to it that belies the serious nature of the choices the characters have to make. The language felt London-based to me as did the characterization and the setting of the London theater scene. The theater details are well-researched and used sparingly and very effectively—a smooth immersion for the reader. I always find myself noting in my reviews when characters behave in a mature manner to resolve there differences since it's not that common in romances, so I was very pleased to find that there was none of the pouting and flouncing in these books for which I have very little patience.

ALI was by far the funnier, tighter, well-integrated book as compared with PF. If you will read just one book, do make it Act Like It.

My March Reading

This month, I discovered a new-to-me historical romance author with a reasonably long backlist, and I really enjoyed the two books I read. I feel a glom coming on!

Forbidden Nights with the Viscount by Julia Justiss
Categories: Historical Romance
Comments: I enjoyed this story so much. It's about two characters on opposing sides of British politics, who're dizzily attracted to each other and respect and trust each other's political interests and desire to work. This to me is so romantic. Instead of merely languishing in each others' arms, they're debating politics when they're not having a fiery&8212;but very safe—affair. Neither is afraid to broach sensitive topics with each other, because doing the right thing for the other person is a sign of caring. Lovely! My review is here.

Stolen Encounters with the Duchess by Julia Justiss
Categories: Historical Romance
Comments: This is the second book after the one above. Davie and Faith had met when they were very young and had set up a good friendship—well, fondness on her part and love on his. But she was not destined for him, but for a duke. She is now widowed, but as a duchess and he a farmer's orphan, the social gulf between them is as vast as ever. Davie is still in love with her and wants to marry her; she wants to have an affair with him, which he will not do to safeguard her reputation and his. Another lovely story by Justiss. My review is here.

My Dearest Enemy by Connie Brockway
Categories: Victorian Romance
Comments: How much I love this book! I read it during my first heady foray into Romancelandia. I met Brockway first and loved her voice and humor so much, I had to pick up her books. My Dearest Enemy was the first, and then I didn't stop until I had bought and read her entire backlist and set up a Facebook group for her fans. Over the years, I have read and re-read this book many times, and it has never ceased to make me laugh over the vitriolic moments and sigh over the tender moments. It is such a lovely romantic tale.

Lilian Bede and Avery Thorne exchange fiery letters over five years as Avery travels the obscure parts of the globe while Lilian tries to maintain Mill House in good heart. Avery had been promised Mill House since he was a child, but in his waning days, his malevolent uncle decides to hand over the management to Lilian, with the proviso that should she fail to make the estate thrive, it will pass on to Avery. Distraught and angered by this, Avery takes to intrepid adventuring with gusto. The vitriolic and very creative letters are hilarious and made me fall in love with the characters as did their deepening romance when they meet. This is a story not to be missed.

King's Warrior by Kris Kennedy
Categories: Medieval Romance
Comments: I’m a big fan of medieval romances and have enjoyed all of Kris Kennedy’s full-length stories. She has a great grasp of the medieval psyche and behaviors, and she backs it up with meticulous research. Irish renegade Tadgh O'Malley was Richard the Lionhearted's trusted soldier, but he's on the run from the Holy Land back to England, carrying a special dagger from Richard. In a coastal town of France, he rescues Magdalene from been harassed by the port reeve's assistant. Captivated by her looks and her intelligent conversation, Tadgh cannot help but dally with her despite the danger to him and his mission from the baron and his soldiers who're hunting him for his dagger. After the destruction of her home and business by the soldiers, Magdalena realizes that there's nothing keeping her in France and throws her lot in with Tadgh. Her quick wit and presence of mind gets them out of tight spots, eve as they indulge their deepening—and hot—romance. A good medieval read! My review is here.

Claiming Her by Kris Kennedy
Categories: Elizabethan Romance
Comments: A hot Elizabethan romance with a medieval flavor. She's intelligent, stubborn, and loyal; he's charismatic, a courtier, and a warrior. She's the chatelaine of Rardove, a castle in Ireland with thousands of acres of land attached to it. He's Irish and up until now, loyal to Queen Elizabeth. But his ancestors were Lords of Rardove, and he means to be one, too. She's just as determined not to indulge in treason by marrying him. The romance is intense! My review is coming up on this blog later this month. I'll link back here, when it posts.

The Forbidden Garden by Ellen Herrick
Categories: Contemporary Women's Fiction
Comments: Sorrel Sparrow is a gifted gardener from a small town on the New England coast. She’s been lured away from her nursery business to travel to Wiltshire, England to bring a Shakespearean garden back to life. Is it a malevolent garden or merely a neglected, desolate one? As she works hard to resurrect it, she’s distracted by Sir Graham Kirkwood’s enigmatic, good-looking, rector, brother-in-law who’s currently out of a job. Animosity and sparks of a different kind fly between them, but will the garden’s enchantment allow their love to grow? My Review is here.

The Lost Order by Steve Berry
Categories: Dual Timeline Thriller
Comments: I’m very fond of historical intrigues that are more fact than fiction, and when such a book is skillfully entwined with fiction, where you don’t know where fact ends and fiction begins, it makes for a particularly enjoyable read. Note: You don’t want to miss the exciting Author’s Note at the end either, which reveals how much of the story is historically true. This is a story of the confederate Knights of the Golden Cross, from the time of the Civil War and the vast horde of gold they amassed and hid, and the storied history and machinations of the Smithsonian Institution, Museums, and Libraries. My Review is here.

Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit by Jaye Robin Brown
Categories: Gay YA Fiction
Comments: If I didn't have to read this book for my romance book club, it would've been a DNF. I did not like the heroine who's self-absorbed and petty towards the other characters, and she does not change or grow over the book. The premise of the story is very interesting. Joanna Gordon is the daughter of a radio evangelist and is a person of faith and also gay. She moves to a small, religious town in her senior year after her father's marriage, where he essentially tells her to hide her gay-ness and dress like everybody else. When I picked the book up, I really wanted to know what she would do in this situation. The story had promise, but unfortunately, failed to deliver. My review is here.

Stolen Encounters with the Duchess by Julia Justiss

I loved the first book of Julia Justiss's Hadley's Hellions series, Forbidden Nights with the Viscount, so I was eagerly looking forward to reading Stolen Encounters with the Duchess. Justiss has done the rare thing of following one good book with another.

Faith is the widowed duchess of the Duke of Ashedon. She has three children by him and now lives in London with his dragon of a mother and is being menaced by her brother-in-law. She was so cowed over the course of her marriage—her vibrancy and vitality so diminished—that she's still a timid thing at the start of the story. Her gradual growth and assertiveness in the book were very interesting to see.

David Tanner is a rising Member of Parliament—some think he might even become Prime Minister—and one of the architects of the Reform Bill that will give the common man some say in the government. The bill stands in good stead to pass the House of Commons; the House of Lords is an entirely different matter. So Davie is involved in a lot of politicking along with the four friends, who're known as the Hellions since their Oxford days. He's a loyal friend, a hard worker, a passionate believer in people's rights, and deeply honorable.

But this is also Davie: After having to restrain himself around buffoons all day, the prospect of being able to deliver a few good whacks raised his spirits immensely. Heh! He's trying to rescue an unknown woman from her molesters—a knight on a charger with a big heart.

Faith and Davie had met one summer when she was sixteen and he was twenty. She was visiting her sister, whose husband was his sponsor. They had developed a great friendship then discussing all kinds of things and sharing many laughs together. She grew very fond of him; he fell in love with her. She returned home and married her duke during her first season. He turned his attention to politics, while the embers of his love still burned in his heart.

They have met again now, completely coincidentally, and Davie finds himself as much in love with her as before and her widowed status makes her unbearably tempting. Faith, in turn, is delighted to be meeting her childhood friend and wants desperately to have him in her life as her friend. And so they begin a tender friendship.

In the meantime, Davie has acquired some land including a well-to-do farm (that was his childhood farm) and a regular income through some well-placed sinecures. He's certainly not wealthy, but comfortable, and well able to support a wife in some style. Yet, Faith's immense wealth as a duchess stands in the way of his thinking she could become his.

Even worse is the vast social gulf between them. He's the jumped-up farmer's orphan and she is a duchess. A marriage between them would be a great mésalliance for her resulting in immediate and total social ostracization. She would move down to his level of society; he would not move up to hers. Davie drowns in this gulf and his self-esteem is at a low ebb because of this. Justiss shows very well how he grows into his own sense of self-worth over the course of the book.

One consequence of the mésalliance is very real. The trustees of her three children—in particular, the eight-year-old now Duke of Ashedon—could very well assume that she's not of sound mind to even contemplate such a relationship and remove the children from her care. Faith would not survive that and he would never put her in a position to choose between him and her children.

I enjoyed seeing how Davie and Faith wrestle with real-life problems that felt historically true to their laws, society, and culture, and work to solve them.

At one point, Davie feels so beset by thwarted love and sexual frustration, hemmed in by the laws of the land and societal norms, and pulled in every direction by Faith's needs that he becomes short with Faith, and I thought: "Bravo!" Anger is as normal a human reaction as is desire or affection, but romance novels so rarely have the courage to have their characters behave in that fashion with each other once affection and an acknowledgment of interest have been established. Davie is trying so very hard to be honorable to Faith and to himself, and it is a huge struggle for him to fight his body and his heart, but his mind rules his passions, and I found that incredibly romantic of him. On the other hand, I found Faith more in thrall to her emotions and to the power she knows she has over him. I did not think badly of Faith for behaving in that fashion; she's just being true to her character and Davie doesn't think badly of her either. However, he does remonstrate with her when it becomes unbearable for him, and Faith does feel chastised enough to want to be better about it.

An aside: I really liked that once the villain was routed, he was not resurrected to add a clichéd black moment to the story.

My one quibble with the book was the falseness of the political interest that Faith pretends to have. It feels like a plot device to throw Davie and Faith together, rather than a well-developed interest on Faith's part. I didn't mind the setup: She used to discuss politics when they first met, but had to suppress her interest, like much else, under the dominance of her husband, and now she could let that interest flower again. But Faith actually does so little to develop that interest. Here, she had the perfect opportunity in the guise of a rising MP, who's devoted to her. I would've liked to have seen her do more with this interest or to develop some other passion, other than just being concerned over her sons. I felt that this aspect of Faith could've been developed more.

But this is a minor point in an otherwise stellar novel. Have you read a Julia Justiss novel? If so, do you have recommendations for me? If you haven't read one, do start with Forbidden Nights.

#TBRChallenge Reading: Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit by Jaye Robin Brown

2017 TBR Reading Challenge
Book: Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit
Author: Jaye Robin Brown
My Categories: Lesbian YA Fiction
Wendy Crutcher's Category: Comfort Read

This review is almost a week late, and I have written it very reluctantly. I detested the book. It was the antithesis of a comfort read. Given my strong negative reaction, I have been foundering about where I should begin with the story and what I should say.

The premise of the story is very interesting. Joanna Gordon is the daughter of a radio evangelist and is a person of faith and also gay. Her father, Anthony, accepts her fully, or so she thinks, and she's encouraged to offer a series on his radio channel for other gay teens who might be interested in God. To Joanna, it is not inconceivable to think that God loves her just as she is. She does not need to dress in a particular manner or behave a certain way or give up living life on her terms to be acceptable to Him. And she wants other gay teens to feel the same acceptance.

However, the summer before her senior year, in a whirlwind marriage, Joanna's dad marries a younger woman. Elizabeth's condition of marriage is that Anthony and Joanna move from Atlanta to her small religious town in northern Georgia. After they move (not before), Anthony tells Joanna to not be so gay in this new town, to not dress Goth, and in general to not behave in a manner to rile up Elizabeth's relatives and the townspeople. And she should do this for him. In other words, this father who purportedly accepted his daughter's sexuality was uprooting her in her senior year and putting her back in the closet. In order to please her dad, she complies and pretends to be a twinset-wearing straight girl.

At school, she slowly gets in with the popular crowd, but that is how she meets the gorgeous Mary Carlson. How is she supposed to keep her eyes and her hands to herself? How her heart yearns and her body burns. So what is Joanna going to do?

Like I said, this book had promise. But unfortunately, Joanna spoiled it all. She's so self-involved and takes everything that is happening around her so personally. And she's thoughtless, rude to people around her, and generally does not hold good thoughts of most of the people in the book. In general, I found that many of the characters, other than the fabulous BTB, are selfish and mean-spirited. I can read about unlikable characters but not about mean characters. And that is all I have to say about this book. If you've read this book, please do share your thoughts.