Marie August's Blog, page 17

Book Review: A Rich Man's Whim by Lynne Graham

Fascinating change of pace

A Rich Man's Whim (A Bride for a Billionaire) by Lynne Graham

Reading Level: Adult Romance
Release Date: May 1, 2013
Publisher: Harlequin Presents
Pages: 189 pages
Source: Purchased
Reviewed By: Kate McMurry

Kat Marshall is a 35-year-old virgin who has spent the past 12 years raising the younger half-sisters that her callous, flighty mother has abandoned. Currently the bank is on the verge of foreclosing on Kat's bed-and-breakfast, which has been the only means of supporting her and her sisters all these years. In addition, Kat's 23-year-old sister is pregnant by a man she won't name and has come to live with Kat because she has nowhere else to go. Then suddenly, in the middle of a blizzard, three men show up on Kat's doorstep seeking shelter at her bed-and-breakfast, one of them with a sprained ankle from a hiking accident.

Thirty-year-old Mikhail Kusnirovich is the only son of a deceased Russian oil oligarch. Mikhail's workaholic approach to business has massively extended the fortune he inherited into the billionaire range. He is a gorgeous alpha male who can (and has) had any woman he wanted since puberty--until Kat. The moment he sets eyes on the flame-haired beauty, he's determined to make her his lover, but Kat has no intention of being another notch on the Russian tycoon's bedpost.

Mikhail has never been told, "No," by a woman in his life, but rather than being discouraged, he is more determined than ever to have Kat. The problem is how best to accomplish his sensual goal. He has never paid a woman for sex in his life. It is abhorrent to him. But when he has Kat's background checked and discovers her terrible financial situation, he decides, with much misgiving at this violation of his principles, to make her a financial offer she can't refuse. He buys up the mortgage on her property and tells her if she will spend a month with him on his yacht as his hostess, he will sign over her property to her, free and clear. He salves his pride, and Kat's, by assuring her that nothing sexual will happen between them unless it's her idea. But he's confident that with her conveniently pinned to his side, day and night, her seduction is inevitable.

There is no other Harlequin Presents author that I read but Lynne Graham. The requirements for this line are so narrow, it takes real brilliance to write essentially the same story again and again, year after year, and virtually every book, make the old, new once more. Lynne Graham has that gift. It also takes major talent to write romance-novel sex scenes that are not a boring list of body parts swelling and heaving. I almost always skim them these days, because I've read so many across decades as a big romance fan, rarely does it feel like anything to me but, "Ho hum." Not so with Lynne Graham. She does what not enough romance authors manage to achieve--bring so much intensity to the interactions between her protagonists both outside and inside the bedroom that the sex scenes are filled with drama and emotional fire. Sex is never for its own sake, it serves to reveal new facets of the protagonists' personalities as it both brings the lovers together and pushes them apart, at the same time.

I was also delighted to see in this story a Harlequin Presents with a cougar plot, which I have never encountered in this particular short-contemporary line. In a bit of comic relief in the midst of a very dramatic story, when Kat learns Mikhail is five years younger than her, she recoils from being a cougar having a fling with a "boy toy." Mikhail's extreme offense at the term in reference to him is hilarious.

Because the heroine is not in her early 20's and utterly naive, she is a worthy opponent for the hero, meeting him toe to toe in every scene, unlike so many beggar-maid plots in Harlequin Presents where there are enormous emotional as well as financial disparities between the hero and heroine.

I am also happy to report that there is no unplanned pregnancy resulting in a secret baby in this story, in spite of the requisite, "I forgot the condom" scene. The hero does not blackmail the heroine for sex in any way, and though the inevitable Cinderella makeover occurs, there is a comic twist on it that is quite original.

In short, fans of Lynne Graham will be delighted with this book.

I rate this book as follows:

Heroine: 5

Hero: 5

Romance Plot: 5

Writing: 5

Overall: 5

Book Review: Five Little Peppers and How They Grew by Margaret Sidney

Review of the Project Gutenberg Free eBook Edition of this nineteenth-century children's classic

Five Little Peppers and How They Grew by Margaret Sidney

Reading Level: Young Adult
Release Date: 1881
Pages: 308
Source: Kindle download
Reviewed By: Kate McMurry

I was delighted to discover I could instantly download to my Kindle what I presume is the Project Gutenberg free version of this nineteenth century children's classic. The formatting is not the most presentable I've ever seen in an ebook, due to missing tabs and hard returns to set off the paragraphs from each other. Fortunately, though, there are few typos, so the this version of the book is readable enough that I donated my paper copy to the library as I am gradually moving almost entirely to ebooks since I got my Kindle a year and a half ago.

This book is about the Pepper family of five children and their widowed mother. "Mamsie" ekes out a bare living as a seamstress in a small New England town (the state isn't specified but perhaps is intended to be the author's native Connecticut). Though the story reads like an historical novel to modern readers, it was actually a contemporary novel when it was written in 1881. There are horse-drawn carriages instead of cars, candlelight instead of electric lamps, no running water, no refrigeration, and no central heating.

The Peppers live in a "little brown house" whose furnishings are only lightly described. Perhaps this is because the house is mostly bare due to their extreme poverty, but it would have been interesting to know how the family acquired water for cooking and bathing (and how the family bathed), if they had a fireplace or a Franklin stove, or simply used the kitchen stove to heat the house in the winter. (The Little House books are great for providing these historically accurate details, but not this series.)

Mrs. Pepper was widowed when her English husband died presumable shortly before or after her youngest child was born. We learn nothing about the children's father in this book as there is no attention at all to the family's "backstory." As the title of the book states, there are five siblings:

Ben (Ebenezer) is twelve years old. He had to be at least eight when the father died, but he has never gone to school--though somewhere along the way he and his sister Polly learned to read and write, probably taught by their mother since any school that the children might go to would cost tuition that Mrs. Pepper cannot afford. Throughout the story, Mrs. Pepper frequently frets over how she is ever going to get enough money to pay to educate her sons (there is no real concern about educating her daughters, perhaps because females of the working class were not commonly educated at this time). Ben augments Mamsie's income by doing odd jobs such as chopping wood. Ben has a placid, phlegmatic disposition, plodding along diligently through life, sure and steady in all he does. He is utterly loyal and would make any sacrifice for his family. He and Polly are particularly close.

Polly (Mary) is eleven years old. She and Ben act as second parents to their younger siblings whom they refer to as "the children." Polly has a nurturing disposition and is very motherly, but she also has a sensitive, imaginative disposition, which is a fascinating combination. She is the major focus of this book as she bustles about helping her mother with sewing, cooking meals for the family, cleaning the house, and caring for the younger children. She loves music and would give anything to be able to learn to play the piano. She adores any flowers that come her way, and the bane of her existence is the ancient wood stove she has to cook on which is full of holes that are stuffed with paper and leather from old shoes.

Joel is nine years old. He has a passionate, impulsive, choleric disposition. It is very hard for him to maintain the uncomplaining, sacrificial attitude Mamsie has worked hard to instill in her children which comes easily to all the Peppers except him. He wants what he wants this instant, and he's very loud about his disappointment if he doesn't get it--in short, he's a normal boy who constantly puts the house in an uproar. Fortunately for the training Mamsie wants to instill in him, he has a warm heart and is readily brought into line with a judicious application of maternal or sisterly guilt.

Davie (David) is seven years old. He has a placid, timid disposition. He is Joel's shadow and is ready to try anything Joel suggests.

Phronsie (Sophronia) is four at the time of this story and is the adored baby of the family. Though she is indulged by everyone, because she is a beautiful, blond girl, she has a remarkably unspoiled disposition. She is so angelically sweet and kind to everyone, she inspires instant love in every man, woman, child, and dog who meets her.

Though the family is barely scraping by, constantly on the verge of starvation (they live off whole-wheat bread, salted porridge, and potatoes), they have caring neighbors who try to help out when they can, which doesn't amount to a whole lot since everyone in the town is poor in their own way, and Mrs. Pepper is too proud to accept outright charity.

Two big crises lay the Peppers low during the course of this story: all the children get measles, which almost makes Polly go blind, and Phronsie runs off with an organ grinder and his monkey, terrifying the whole village for her safety.

It is this latter event which brings Jappy (Jasper) King into their lives, the thirteen-year-old son of the very rich Mr. King, a crotchety "old" man staying at a local hotel to improve his uncertain health. (Note that what was considered "old" in the latter part of the nineteenth century is not what we would consider "old" today. The average life expectancy at the turn of the twentieth century was little more than forty, and often people in their fifties in nineteenth century novels were labeled by authors as "old." Mr. King's age is never given, but I tried to figure it out this way: Mr. King is clearly a widower. Jasper has a much older sister with three sons, the oldest of which is ten at this time, meaning she is at least twenty-nine, making Mr. King very likely fifty-five or sixty years of age.) Mr. King's source of wealth isn't mentioned in the book, and we never hear of him going to work, so possibly he has inherited wealth rather than holding a job.

Margaret Sidney was the pseudonym of successful, American children's author, Harriett Mulford Stone Lothrop, who was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1844 and died in 1924, eight years after writing the last Pepper book. She began her writing career in 1878 at age thirty-four by publishing stories about Polly and Phronsie Pepper in a Boston children's magazine. She married the magazine's editor, Daniel Lothrop, who began a publishing company and published Harriett's "Five Little Peppers" series, starting in 1881. Here is a list of the twelve Pepper books by date written, which were produced over the course of thirty-five years:

Five Little Peppers and How They Grew (1881)
Five Little Peppers Midway (1890)
Five Little Peppers Grown Up (1892)
Five Little Peppers: Phronsie Pepper (1897)
Five Little Peppers: The Stories Polly Pepper Told (1899)
Five Little Peppers: The Adventures of Joel Pepper (1900)
Five Little Peppers Abroad (1902)
Five Little Peppers at School (1903)
Five Little Peppers and their Friends (1904)
Five Little Peppers: Ben Pepper (1905)
Five Little Peppers in the Little Brown House (1907)
Five Little Peppers: Our Davie Pepper (1916)

Margaret Sidney originally had no plans to write more Pepper books after the fourth book, "Phronsie Pepper", was published in 1897. She stated this firmly in her introduction to that book. However, over time the pleas of avid fans from all over the world caused her to give in and write eight more Pepper books. The events in the last eight books take place before the events of the third book in the original series of four books. If you would like to read the six main Pepper books in chronological order, rather than by publication date, this is the ideal sequence:

Five Little Peppers and How They Grew
Five Little Peppers Midway
Five Little Peppers Abroad
Five Little Peppers and their Friends
Five Little Peppers Grown Up
Five Little Peppers: Phronsie Pepper

If you read all the Pepper books, you will discover that the author did not take great care as to continuity in the later books, perhaps because so many years passed between writing these books. I am currently re-reading the series and have just finished this book and the second book, "Midway," and am currently reading "Abroad." In "Midway," the author states that five years have passed since the events of "How They Grew," but no ages are given for any of the children except Phronsie. We are told she is eight, which is one year younger than she ought to be if five years have passed. In "Abroad," whose events begin immediately after "Midway," Polly has her fifteenth birthday a few months into the events of the book, when it ought to be at least her sixteenth birthday given that she was eleven in the first book and presumably already fifteen or sixteen in the second book.

The Pepper books are not concerned with edge-of-the-seat action, which is one of the things I personally like about them. They are products of a much slower-paced era, and it is relaxing to experience that approach to children's fiction while being warmly enfolded into the loving Pepper family.

This book, and all the Pepper books, are strictly G-rated, and the values they show (not tell through preaching) are very useful ones for any child to be exposed to, including civility, kindness, consideration, keeping commitments, accepting difficult circumstances without complaint and forging through them, and so on.

I highly recommend this book for all ages.

Book Review: Dating The Devil by Lia Romeo

Contemporary, paranormal chick lit

Dating The Devil by Lia Romeo

Reading Level: Young Adult
Release Date: February 14, 2013
Publisher: Bell Bridge Books
Pages: 190 pages
Source: Net Galley
Reviewed By: Kate McMurry

Lucy is a 20-something living in NY City and working at a low-paying job at a boutique PR firm. After her long-time boyfriend dumps her, she moves into a small apartment with her two best girlfriends from college. Nat is an independently wealthy, gorgeous model who has sex with a different guy every night. Mel is an 80-hour-per-week management consultant who is engaged to the VP of a software company but engages in drunken make-out sessions with strangers she meets while bar hopping with Lucy and Nat. Lucy's dating disasters are legion, and she is just about to give up on dating in NYC entirely when she meets the man of her dreams. Too bad he's a real devil.

Readers who enjoy zany, paranormal chick lit will be delighted with this book. A staple of chick lit is dating disasters in NYC, but adding a supernatural element to it allows the story to go into wildly unconventional arenas for comedy. Lucy has an endearing naivete that makes it believable that she could desire a relationship with a good-looking man who is attentive in and outside of bed to such a degree that she allows herself to risk eternal consequences to achieve it.

Fans of Infernal Affairs by Jane Heller and the Demon Princess series by Michelle Rowen will especially enjoy this book.

I rate this book as follows:

Heroine: 4
Subcharacters: 4

Chick Lit Plot: 4

Writing: 4

Overall: 4

Book Review: Gimme a Call by Sarah Mlynowski

Cute contemporary, paranormal chick lit

Gimme a Call by Sarah Mlynowski

Reading Level: Young Adult
Release Date: May 24, 2011
Publisher: Ember
Pages: 320 pages
Source: Net Galley
Reviewed By:Kate McMurry

Seventeen-year-old Devi Banks will graduate high school in a few weeks, and the sole thing she's dedicated herself to for the past three and a half years, her relationship with her boyfriend Bryan, has blown up in her face. He is planning to attend a university in Montreal, and he doesn't want them to have a long-distance relationship. He and Devi have been joined at the hip for so long, he claims he needs to rediscover who he is separate from her.

Devi is heartbroken--and enraged. She sacrificed everything for Bryan, and she has nothing to show for it. Because she let her grades slide and participated in no extracurricular activities, her qualifications for admission at a university are so poor, her only option is to attend a community college. She also has no one to mourn her losses with her, because she abandoned her three best friends soon after she started dating Bryan, and her parents are too wrapped up in their own misery to care about Devi's. Her father was laid off, and her mother is working a job she hates to replace his lost income.

While standing by a fountain in the mall where people regularly toss in nickles to make a wish, Devi wishes she could go back in time to her freshman year when she began dating Bryan and warn her younger self to avoid him like the plague. Immediately after that, Devi's cell phone slips out of her hand and lands in the fountain far enough away that she has to wade in and get it. After much hassle, she locates it lying on top of a pile of make-a-wish nickles. Water destroys cell phones, but after Devi retrieves hers, she frantically starts jabbing buttons, just in case, and discovers there is only one thing it can do: place one-way calls to a strange girl who insists her name is Devi Banks.

After multiple laugh-out-loud moments of back-and-forth confusion, Devi discovers to her amazement that the strange girl is herself--at 14! Somehow, some way, her wish has been granted to nip in the bud a number of bad freshman decisions that have led to her current dead-end life.

Older Devi nicknames the younger version of herself "Frosh," but dubs herself, "Ivy," the favorite name of both the younger and older Devi, and this is only the beginning of Ivy-Devi taking complete control of Frosh-Devi's life. Frosh is naive and impressionable, and the much more forceful Ivy easily overwhelms her. Ivy insists that Frosh overcome her natural tendency to laziness, not in a gradual way, but going from one extreme to the other, studying like crazy and pursuing multiple extracurricular activities, so that Ivy can get into a decent university. The biggest demand of all, though, is that Frosh absolutely refuse to have anything to do with Bryan when he asks her out for their fateful first date.

This is delightful chick lit with a wonderful, paranormal, time-travel twist. Though Ivy has the laudable intention of providing both herself and Frosh with a better future, her misguided methods involve comic extremes, and there is a great deal of amusing irony in the fact that Ivy is constantly nagging Frosh to work harder than Ivy ever did in her life. It is also funny in a mind-bending way to observe Ivy's world warping around her like a cosmic kaliedoscope in response to every destiny-changing action that Ivy pushes Frosh to take.

The juxtaposition of sweet, naive Frosh with cynical, narcissistic Ivy, as two sides of the same Devi Banks, has the happy effect of allowing the reader to experience Ivy as more sympathetic than she would otherwise be. She isn't just running roughshod over any young girl who looks up to her--she's running roughshod over a version of herself.

Finally, in spite of all the madcap mayhem, the author subtly conveys a significant "girl power" message: getting obsessed with a boyfriend in high school can result in losing important female friendships and detrimentally impacting a girl's higher-education opportunities.

I read this book as a Kindle version, and it is well formatted and edited.

I rate this book as follows:

Heroine: 5

Subcharacters: 4

Chick Lit Contemporary Fantasy Plot: 5

Writing: 5

Overall: 5

Book Review: The Marriage Spell by Mary Jo Putney

An outstanding audio recording worthy of a wonderful book

The Marriage Spell by Mary Jo Putney

Reading Level: Adult Romance
Release Date: May 30, 2006
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Pages: 384 pages
Source: Purchased
Reviewed By: Kate McMurry

The Marriage Spell is a wonderful historical fantasy set in the Regency era. In this alternate universe, magic is everywhere and there are many wizards (female as well as male), but the aristocracy scorns magic. As a child, Jack Langdon, Lord Frayne, suffered terribly at the hands of his father, who hated Jack's magical talent so much, he sent Jack to a boarding school with brutal staff who beat and brainwashed Jack into loathing the magical part of himself--as well as magic in anyone else. While at the school, Jack banded together with several other sons of aristocrats, whose parents also despised their magical powers, in order to defend each other from the school bullies who abused their power as prefects over the other boys. In the process Jack formed lifelong friendships.

Abigail Barton is the daughter of a baronet who is a practicing wizard and who has raised her to use and respect her own magic. She has admired Jack from afar for many years when he has come to her part of England to hunt, but she has never met him until the day he suffers a terrible fall. Jack is paralyzed and near death when his long-time friends carry him to Abigail and beg her to try and heal him. Abigail agrees, but her powers are not strong enough alone. Jack's friends must unleash their long denied magical talent to join with Abigail and local wizards to do a powerful healing circle on Jack--which ultimately cannot fully succeed unless Abigail unlocks Jack's powers and draws on them as well.

The characters, story and writing are all excellent in this book, and I highly recommend it to fans of historical fantasy. Amazon seems to have placed all the reviews of Ms. Putney's fans for this book here, but I didn't see a review of the actual audiobook recording, so I will focus primarily on the quality of the audiobook recording itself.

Simon Prebble is a talented British actor who is a particularly felicitous choice to narrate a novel filled with British characters. He renders all of them with great authenticity.

Mr. Prebble is a multi-award-winning audiobook narrator who earns his glowing reputation here. He does full justice to every nuance of Ms. Putney's fabulous book and his voice talent reminds me of Jim Dale who narrated all of the Harry Potter books. That's a high compliment, because in my humble opinion, Jim Dale is the greatest living voice talent today.

The sound quality of this recording is excellent, and it comes with 10 separate discs.

If you like this recording, Mr. Prebble has recorded a number of other novels by romance authors, including Stolen Magic by Mary Jo Putney, Stephanie Laurens' The Reckless Bride, Jo Beverley's Lady Beware, and Julia Quinn's When He Was Wicked.

 
 

Book Review: The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer

Review of the Kindle Edition of a marvelous Regency Romp

The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer

Reading Level: Adult Romance
Release Date: Originally published in 1950
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Pages: 387 pages
Source: Purchased
Reviewed By: Kate McMurry

This Kindle edition is well formatted and well edited. I have several copies of The Grand Sophy in paperback, because it is one of my all-time favorite novels as a huge fan of romantic comedy. Georgette Heyer is the Grand Dame of the comic, Regency historical romance, and I just bought this Kindle edition to have a portable copy of this wonderful book. I actually read the whole thing on my iPhone using the Kindle app, even though I own a Kindle. I was out somewhere without my Kindle last week and simply downloaded it to my iPhone. Once I began reading it on my iPhone, with the Kindle app allowing me to enlarge the size of the font substantially, I found it very easy to keep reading it on my iPhone and read the whole book that way. I do dearly love Kindle ebooks! It's so handy to have access to my entire collection of Kindle books in multiple media, so I can read them wherever I am, whenever I want.

Now, for a little about the book itself:

Sophy is the daughter of a widowed diplomat and has had an extremely unconventional upbringing, traveling all over Europe during the Napoleonic wars with her wealthy, well-connected father, Sir Horace. Her father has been widowed since Sophy was five and had all the care of her, and to his way of thinking, it made no sense to raise a daughter with the irritating, "missish airs" of the sheltered women of her aristocratic background. He taught her to load a gun, clean it and shoot it with deadly accuracy, to ride even the most powerful and spirited horse as well as the most skilled horseman, and to drive a carriage "to an inch." Sir Horace has also expected Sophy to act as his hostess for the past three years, throwing parties for generals, royalty and many officers of the British military, who are titled aristocrats. All of these things taken together have amplified Sophy's innate inclination to always be helpful and set to rights any problems in the lives of the people around her--no matter how complicated. Though Sophy is only 20 years old, her attitude to everyone she meets is a that of a wise, helpful, older person, and this is exactly her approach to her relatives when Sir Horace sends her to his sister's home to have a "season" in London and make a marital match. Sophy immediately sees multiple personal problems all around her in the household of her aunt, Lady Ombersley. Her 19-year-old cousin Cecelia has fallen in love with a penniless poet and insists on marrying him, but the heavy-handed approach of her parents and brother in discouraging the match is simply driving Cecelia further into defiance. Sophy's bored younger cousins are in need of attention and entertainment and are thrilled with the exotic pets Sophie brings them, and no one but Sophy notices that Cousin Hubert, who is Sophy's age but seems much younger, is in financial difficulties. But the person who most needs Sophy's help is least aware of it. It is utterly clear to Sophy that no one but she can rein in the despotic tendencies of her 26-year-old cousin Charles, who has become the de facto head of his family after inheriting a fortune and settling his dissolute father's gaming debts. Worse, Charles has entered an unfortunate engagement with an obnoxious busybody who encourages the worst aspects of his nature.

Sophy is an extremely sympathetic character who acts in this story both as the heroine and the comic antagonist to every other character in the book. Her well-meant--and invariably successful--conniving for the betterment of the circumstances of everyone around her produces endless laugh-out-loud moments.

If you ever need cheering up, this is the book to do it.

 
 

Book Review: Devil's Cub by Georgette Heyer

Review of the Kindle Edition of a fabulous Regency Dramedy

Devil's Cub by Georgette Heyer

Reading Level: Adult Romance
Release Date: Originally published in 1932
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Pages: 323 pages
Source: Purchased
Reviewed By: Kate McMurry

This Kindle edition is well formatted and well edited. I have several copies of Devil's Cub in paperback, because it is one of my all-time favorite novels as a huge fan of romantic comedy, though this book is actually both drama and comedy. Georgette Heyer is the Grand Dame of the comic, Regency historical romance, and I just bought this Kindle edition to have a portable copy of this wonderful book. I actually read the whole thing on my iPhone using the Kindle app, even though I own a Kindle. I was out somewhere without my Kindle last week and simply downloaded it to my iPhone. Once I began reading it on my iPhone, with the Kindle app allowing me to enlarge the size of the font substantially, I found it very easy to keep reading it on my iPhone and read the whole book that way. I do dearly love Kindle ebooks! It's so handy to have access to my entire collection of Kindle books in multiple media, so I can read them wherever I am, whenever I want.

Now, for a little about the book itself:

Devil's Cub is a sequel to These Old Shades. The events in this story happen about 25 years after that story. The Duke of Avon is now very likely in his mid-60's and Leonie is in her early 40's and still looks young and vibrant--and they are clearly still very much in love. Dominic is 24 and very much his mother's son. He is a dead shot, a famous horseman, an infamous rake, never loses at cards, and can drink anyone else under the table. He gets into trouble by shooting a man in a duel and the Duke insists he must flee to the continent until the scandal dies down. Dominic agrees to go because it will keep his mother, whom he adores and measures all women by, from worrying. But he decides to take the beautiful, willing, 18-year-old daughter of a "cit," a rich businessman, with him on the journey. Mary, the 20-year-old big sister of Dominic's chosen mistress-to-be, is determined to foil her sister's dangerously naive scheme, which is to entrap Dom into marriage by letting him compromise her. Mary concocts a daring plan to take her sister's place and pretend to be such a coarse trollop that Dom leaves her behind in disgust and never comes near her sister again.

Unfortunately Mary goes too far, actually taunting Dom and laughing at him, pushing Dom into such a towering rage that he loses all common sense. He impulsively kidnaps her and takes her to France with him on his yacht, insisting she will do very well to replace her sister.

This is one of the most dramatic "first meets" I've ever read in a romance novel, and it is utterly delightful the way Dom's thoughtless act brings down on his head far more trouble than he ever experienced in his entire, privileged life. Mary is a woman with enormous physical and moral courage who will do whatever it takes to defend her family and her own honor in a manner no other woman besides his mother would dare to undertake, and she is more than a match for dark-and-dangerous Dominic. The battle of wits between the two of them is pure fun to watch.

No matter how many times I read this story, I never get tired of it. No one writes romance as well as Heyer, but her comic skill is also unparalleled. She especially excels at group scenes of comic mayhem where multiple characters are talking at cross purposes, to laugh-out-loud effect.

If you ever need cheering up on a gloomy day, this is the book to do it.

 
 

Book Review: Five Little Peppers Abroad by Margaret Sidney

Review of the Kindle Edition of this nineteenth-century children's classic

Five Little Peppers Abroad by Margaret Sidney

Reading Level: Young Adult
Release Date: 1902
Pages: 238
Source: Kindle download
Reviewed By: Kate McMurry

This is Book 3 (in terms of events, not when the author wrote it) in the Five Little Peppers series of nineteenth century children's books. (I've provided a complete list of the Pepper books below.)

I was delighted to discover I could instantly download to my Kindle what I presume is the Project Gutenberg free version of this nineteenth century children's classic. The formatting is what I'm coming to see as typical of these free versions. Though there are few typos, there are frequent missing tabs and/or hard returns to set off paragraphs from each other, which makes readability a bit difficult.

This book continues the adventures of the Pepper family of five children and their widowed mother, whom they call "Mamsie," and the millionaire, "old Mr. King," and his son Jasper King. Mrs. Pepper is Mr. King's housekeeper, but the Pepper children all call him Grandpapa, since he has informally adopted the Pepper children. Most especially Phronsie, whom he absolutely adores and endlessly showers with dolls.

The events of this book occur immediately after the end of Book 2. In this book, Mrs. Pepper is now married to kind Dr. Fisher of Book 1, who saved Polly's eyes when she got the measles. Mr. King decides to take Dr. and Mrs. Fisher, Polly, Phronsie, Jasper and Reverend and Mrs. Henderson (who were neighbors and friends of the Peppers in Book 1) on a tour of Europe.

The story is written in omniscient point of view, as are the other two books, so we get to experience the thoughts of many different characters, but Polly remains the key character in this book as in the others. Once again, everyone who meets her adores Polly for her bright smiles and kind nature--which we are, as always, made to understand that she owes to the influence of her down-to-earth, compassionate, hard-working mother.

Though the story reads like an historical novel to modern readers, it was actually a contemporary novel when it was written in 1902. There are horse-drawn carriages instead of cars, gaslight instead of electric lamps, no running water, no refrigeration, no central heating, and the traveling party gets to Europe on a "steamer," presumably an ocean liner run with a steam engine.

As the title of the book states, there are five siblings:

Polly (Mary) is 14, and midway through the book she turns 15.

Ben (Ebenezer) is now presumably 16, or nearly so, because he is a year older than Polly. Ben is one of my favorite characters, and I'm sorry to say that other than at the very beginning of the book, we don't see much of him in this book since he he has a job he doesn't want to leave to go to Europe.

Joel is now presumably 12 or 13, because he is two years younger than Polly. He, too, is not onstage except at the beginning of this book because he is left behind to go to boarding school.

Davie (David) is now presumably 10 or 11 years old, because he is two years younger than Joel. He, too, is left behind to go to school.

Phronsie (Sophronia) was four at the time of Book 1, but is listed as being only eight in this book as she was in Book 2, even though Book 2 says five years have passed since Book 1. She continues in the roll of the adored baby of the family. She is so beautiful, strangers stop on the street to stare at her, but she continues to have an angelic disposition to go with her celestial beauty.

Jappy (Jasper) King is now 17, since he is two years older than Polly, and he is not in school nor, unlike Ben, going to any kind of job. In this book Mrs. King's source of wealth still isn't mentioned, but it is clear by his actions and lofty attitude that he comes from "old money." (It is not until Book 4, Five Little Peppers Grown Up, that we learn for a fact that Mr. King has never worked a day in his life and believes, much like European aristocrats and nobility of that era, that soiling his hands with "trade" would be beneath him.)

A lot of this story reads like a fascinating travelogue of what it was like to take the Grand Tour of Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. However, there are plenty of fun adventures caused by the Pepper girls' taking under their wing many troubled fellow travelers. These include a sick old man who turns out to be an earl who is on their ocean liner incognito; the earl's incorrigible, teenage grandson; an artistic orphan girl age fourteen, and an impoverished father of starving children who mugs Mr. King and Phronsie in a Parisian park.

In this book as in the previous two, Mr. King's age is still never given, and he is constantly referred to by the author as "old Mr. King," but he's mighty spry. He loves having Phronsie sit on his lap (indeed, in the later books, she continues to sit on his lap even when she is an adult, which you would think would be very hard on an old man's body to bear that kind of weight).

Margaret Sidney was the pseudonym of successful, American children's author, Harriett Mulford Stone Lothrop, who was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1844 and died in 1924, eight years after writing the last Pepper book. She began her writing career in 1878 at age 34 by publishing stories about Polly and Phronsie Pepper in a Boston children's magazine. She married the magazine's editor, Daniel Lothrop, who began a publishing company and published Harriett's "Five Little Peppers" series, starting in 1881. Here is a list of the 12 Pepper books by date written, which were produced over the course of 35 years:

Five Little Peppers and How They Grew (1881)
Five Little Peppers Midway (1890)
Five Little Peppers Grown Up (1892)
Five Little Peppers: Phronsie Pepper (1897)
Five Little Peppers: The Stories Polly Pepper Told (1899)
Five Little Peppers: The Adventures of Joel Pepper (1900)
Five Little Peppers Abroad (1902)
Five Little Peppers at School (1903)
Five Little Peppers and their Friends (1904)
Five Little Peppers: Ben Pepper (1905)
Five Little Peppers in the Little Brown House (1907)
Five Little Peppers: Our Davie Pepper (1916)

Margaret Sidney originally had no plans to write more Pepper books after the fourth book, "Phronsie Pepper", was published in 1897, which she states in her introduction to that book. However, over time the pleas of avid fans from all over the world caused her to give in and write eight more Pepper books. The events in the last eight books take place before the events of the third book in the original series of four books. If you would like to read the six main Pepper books in chronological order, rather than by publication date, this is the ideal sequence:

Five Little Peppers and How They Grew
Five Little Peppers Midway
Five Little Peppers Abroad
Five Little Peppers and their Friends
Five Little Peppers Grown Up
Five Little Peppers: Phronsie Pepper

If you read all the Pepper books, you will discover that the author did not take great care as to continuity in the later books, perhaps because so many years passed between writing these books. The Pepper books are products of a much slower-paced era, and it is relaxing to experience that approach to children's fiction while being warmly enfolded into the loving Pepper family.

This book, and all the Pepper books, are strictly G-rated, and the values they show (not tell through preaching) are very useful ones for any child to be exposed to, including civility, kindness, gratitude, consideration, keeping commitments, accepting difficult circumstances without complaint and forging through them with good cheer.

I highly recommend this book for all ages.

Book Review: Crystal Gardens (Ladies of Lantern Street #1) by Amanda Quick

Book 1 in a new Jayne Ann Krentz paranormal, historical, romantic-suspense trilogy

Crystal Gardens (Ladies of Lantern Street #1) by Amanda Quick

Reading Level: Adult Romance
Release Date: April 24, 2012
Publisher: Putnam Adult
Pages: 352 pages
Source: Amazon Vine
Reviewed By: Kate McMurry

Evangeline Ames is a spinster by the social standards of Victorian England. She believes she has little chance of ever marrying because her father, an obsessed inventor, left her penniless when he committed suicide a few years after Evangeline's mother's death. Fortunately, after years of struggle, Evangeline has come into her own. She has a budding career writing "sensation" novels which are serialized in a newspaper, and she works as a paranormal "private inquiry agent," the historical equivalent of a modern private investigator (PI). She has the paranormal ability of being able to find anything, whether it is something lost, or some information that a criminal wants to hide. She works for an agency run by two women whose three investigators are all women with paranormal talents (the "ladies of Lantern Street" of the series title). The agency's primary clients are wealthy women who require a discrete investigation into men who might potentially be out to bilk either them or their heirs.

Since Evangeline always works in disguise, rendering her presumably invisible and anonymous to the people she investigates, prior to her most recent investigation, she did not consider her work dangerous. But not long before the story began, someone tried to murder her. Though she successfully defended herself (using means that I can't reveal without a spoiler), it was a tremendous shock. She has come to the small village of Little Digby for a dual purpose, to recover from the trauma of the attack and also to have uninterrupted time to work on her current novel, which has stringent deadlines for regularly delivering chapters to her publisher.

At the moment the story opens, Evangeline is struggling with writer's block and boredom. The only interesting thing in the neighborhood is the estate her cottage is attached to. Its gardens are notorious in the area for their weird and deadly plants which, rumor has it, killed the former owner. In spite of--or perhaps because of--these frightening tales, Evangeline has been gingerly exploring the outer areas of the estate, using her paranormal abilities to protect herself from stumbling into trouble with a garden that, she discovers to her delight, actually is infused with potent, paranormal energy.

As it turns out, it is extremely fortunate she has been trespassing into the mysterious estate, because another would-be murderer invades her home, and Evangeline flees from him onto the mystical estate grounds. There she encounters her landlord for the first time, the current owner of the estate, Lucas Sebastian. He helps Evangeline head off the murderer, and in the process each learns that the other has paranormal abilities, something neither has ever before encountered in the opposite sex.

I've been a fan of Jayne Ann Krentz's contemporary and futuristic romances for many years, but I did not begin reading her historical romances written as Amanda Quick until she added paranormal elements to them with tie-ins to her contemporary, Arcane Society books. I enjoyed the Arcane historical romances so much, I went back and read all the Amanda Quick historicals I had missed and thoroughly enjoyed them all.

Crystal Gardens is not directly part of the Arcane world in that none of the previous Arcane Society characters appear within it and the Arcane Society itself is never mentioned. However, the book's paranormal elements have similar names and functions to those in the Arcane series, so those who are fans of Krentz's Arcane books should enjoy this story.

In this book, Krentz employs a fan-favorite structure that she has used in essentially every one of her romantic-suspense novels: the hero and heroine meet, discover that each has a mystery to solve, that their mysteries are somehow tied together and, after much (often humorous) back-and-forth, stop fighting against each other and join forces. Besides this book, Krentz has also written multiple other historical romances set in Victorian England in which either the hero, heroine or both are PI's, and it is a theme that works well within the romantic suspense genre.

Evangeline is a classic Krentz heroine. She is independent, morally staunch, and determined to the point of bullheaded stubbornness. Best of all, she is as willing and capable as the hero of being a positive, protective warrior, which is demonstrated by her regularly defending herself, the hero, and helpless victims from the depredations of the villain.

In this story, as in all Krentz's novels, the heroine and hero are fascinatingly unique to the point of being eccentric--a tendency that is amplified in Krentz's paranormal novels by the addition of magical powers to the mix. The unconventional abilities and goals of Krentz's protagonists have inevitably led to isolation and loneliness, and in each other they experience for the first time real understanding, appreciation and acceptance. This is a huge reason why Krentz's romances are never just festivals of sexual chemistry. Instead, they always present a vital meeting of minds and spirits between the protagonists, making it possible for the reader to truly believe what all romance novels aim for (and many fail to achieve), that the protagonists are "soul mates" destined for each other.

I personally find Krentz's overt use of recurrent themes and plot structures to be an asset, not a liability. It makes her a dependably entertaining writer. She knows how to write romantic suspense, and she does it well, every time. In addition, her characters are always strong, and their blood relations and families of affiliation can be counted on to provide entertaining and emotionally satisfying interactions, whether they are acting as mentors, allies, or humorously subverting the protagonists with "friendly fire." Most of all, readers can count on Krentz for her skill as a writer. Her use of paranormal elements is logically consistent, and her command of language is smooth, clear, and never calls irritating attention to itself with gimmicky flourishes. In short, her writing gets out of the way and lets the story take center stage.

I rate this novel as follows:

Heroine: 4

Hero: 4

Subcharacters: 4

Fantasy World-Building: 4

Romance Plot: 4

Mystery/Thriller Plot: 4

Writing: 5

Overall: 4

Book Review: Angel Rogue by Mary Jo Putney

Review of Kindle Edition of a classic Regency comedy

Angel Rogue: Fallen Angels #4 by Mary Jo Putney

Reading Level: Adult Romance
Release Date: January 26, 2012
Publisher: Mary Jo Putney, Inc.
Pages: 357 pages
Source: Purchased
Reviewed By: Kate McMurry

Lord Robert Andreville (Robin) is in his early 30s and has become extremely burned out and depressed from two causes: The woman he wanted to marry, a fellow spy who for many years worked with him for the British government against Napoleon, has married another man, and after over 12 years of spy work, now that the Napoleonic wars are over, he doesn't know what to do with his life as the younger son of a noble family.

He is staying with his brother, an English lord, on his brother's quiet estate in the country when he runs, literally, into Maxima Collins. While he is napping in the woods on the estate, Maxie trips and falls on top of him, exposing to Robin in the process that what to outward appearances is a small, lower-class teenage boy is, in fact, a woman.

Maxie is in her mid-twenties and is the daughter of a second-son of a noble family who lived in the United States for many years and married a Mohawk woman. Maxie's father has recently died, and she believes he may have been murdered. She has left the protection of her uncle's estate--where she has been treated as an interloper by her aunt--and taken off on foot for London, determined to find out for herself what happened to her father. Being a gentleman with strong protective instincts, Robin is determined to accompany her and keep her safe, but he doesn't tell her immediately who he really is. First, because he doesn't think she will believe him since he is dressed in clothing almost as rough as Maxie's American frontier garb. Second, because he is sick of being depressed, privileged Lord Robert and wants to be someone else temporarily (and masquerading is a skill he perfected as a spy). Third, because initially this seems like it will be merely a temporary lark. The adventure soon proves to be far more than he expected. He finds himself coming alive again in the company of the most resolute, fascinating woman he's ever met--including the redoubtable woman who is his lost love.

As are all MJP's stories, this one is extremely well written, historically authentic, and alive with vibrant, sympathetic characters and exciting adventure.

I absolutely adore "two for the road" stories where two outsiders go on a journey together which allows them to make their own unique world together and find the acceptance and understanding with each other that no one else could ever provide. Maxie is a wonderful heroine, independent, forceful, and utterly loyal. In a fun twist on standard romance heroes, handsome Robin has a physical "flaw" of being a short man. However, he is plenty tall enough for tiny Maxie, and he knows how to fight in a way that allows him to turn the much larger size of an attacker back onto that enemy.

I have a long, happy history with this book. I first read this story as The Rogue and The Runaway, a short Regency romance written in 1990, and I loved it. Then when Ms. Putney rewrote it as a much longer Regency historical romance, this particular book, in 1995, I immediately purchased it, devoured it, and loved this version, too. Recently I have been replacing my paperback keeper romances, which have become worn with much use over the years (my own re-reading and loans to friends and family) with eBook versions. This eBook is very well done. The formatting is excellent, and there are no editing errors that I noticed.

I highly recommend this book both for readers newly discovering the magnificently talented Ms. Putney and for long-time fans such as myself.