Book Review: Becoming Lady Dalton (London Scandals, #2) by Carrie Lomax

FOUR STARS

Viola Cartwright and her eight-year-old son are new to the London scene. She is the sister of Harper Forsythe, now the Countess of Briarcliff (see Harper and Edward’s story in The Wild Lord Book 1 of this series). Harper has left the city with Edward, who really isn’t ready for society yet and doesn’t enjoy it all, leaving Viola to oversee the renovation and decorating of their house that had suffered a fire in London.

Viola and Matthew are living with Viola’s grandmother, who is a widowed baroness. Vi0la adores the busy city life; the parties, dancing, and the nightlife. Being the widow of a man who was 25 years older than she and also ended up in debtors prison, leaving her to deal with a farm that was going under, she was ready for the break. But nothing is ever that easy. While she’s enjoying the social life, rubbing shoulders with people she thinks are out of her league, there’s a jewel thief making the rounds at balls and plays, absconding with expensive baubles and heirloom pocket watches.

But she’s also being pursued by Piers Ranleigh, Viscount Dalton. I loved him. He’s a single father, adores his four-year-old daughter, is widowed, and is really a victim of bullying when he was younger by other children of the ton. His family, minus a sister, was wiped out by scarlet fever. The kids taunted and teased him about it, except Edward Northcote, the current Earl of Briarcliff. That’s worth mentioning in my opinion because Edward leaves his comfort zone to help Piers after Piers helped him in The Wild Lord. It was brief, but meaningful. Now Piers has to be “friends” with those very people who made his younger years an ever-living hell and they still think he’s cursed.

Viola refuses Piers at every turn. She doesn’t want to ever get married again and she certainly didn’t want to have anymore children. Instead, she tries to set him up with other women while a near-deaf admiral has his sights set on Viola. She doesn’t want anymore men under any circumstances and Piers won’t take no for an answer.

This book has quite a lot of angst, some feels, the agony of unrequited love, some hot scenes, and this is the first historical romance I’ve read that addresses contraception and condoms. I’m sure there are others out there, but this was a first for me.

Overall, it was a great read. But there was just one thing that I wasn’t able to get over. In several places, it is said that cattle are pulling the carriage. Cattle. Really? Cows. Bovines. Bulls. Oxen. Not horses. Cattle. I did some research to see if somehow, in all my years of reading books and attending school, I missed that horses could be called cattle. I came up with nothing. Cows and the like are cattle. Horses, mules, zebras, and the like are equines. I wasn’t able to imagine Ol’ Bessie pulling a carriage through the streets of London. Even when I tried to imagine a Highland Coo, it still didn’t work for me. It might be petty to some, but it was enough for me take away a star.

Book Review: The Wild Lord (London Scandals, #1) by Carrie Lomax

FOUR STARS

I’m always intrigued with historical books that deal with the mentally ill and asylums. I’m usually appalled at the cruelty and the depraved ways the mentally ill were treated by doctors, their assistants, and even the “orderlies”, if I can call them that. In this book, Harper Forsythe is an apprentice mental health worker under the guidance of Dr. Patton and his wife. Dr. Patton believes that many of his patients can be helped, if not cured, and able to lead productive lives without being committed. He’s passed that onto Harper, who shares that belief and genuinely wants to help people.

Edward Northcote is recently returned to England after being lost in the jungles of Brazil for 15 years. He was quite young when it happened and was left to fend for himself or die just trying to survive. Now he’s wild and untamed, climbs walls and buildings, runs around half dressed and without shoes, barely speaks to anyone, and is in line to be the Earl of Briarcliff. He wants no part of it. He’s been gone so long and is now torn between two worlds. He knows what’s expected of him in England and it’s all so stuffy and confining. He wants to be free to run, wear what he wants, act like he wants, and not be judged. His father doesn’t share Edward’s sentiments and sends for Dr. Patton to save his son from the asylum.

Dr. Patton sends Harper instead. Edward’s father is reluctant to believe a woman doctor can help anybody, especially his son, but he’s willing to give her a chance. Meanwhile, Edward’s brother, Richard, is determined to keep the earldom for himself and is doing everything possible to see Edward put away forever.

Harper knows this, as does Edward, and it’s a battle of wits and determination to save Edward from that end. Harper knows to rein him in like that would kill him. She sees him as a man rather than a part of the aristocracy. She loves everything about him, but she isn’t of his class and, even as they fall in love, she knows she has to let him go to marry a woman that is worthy of his title.

The last part of the book was kind of all over the place where Harper is concerned. She went from being a meek little doctor to this woman who knew exactly what she wanted and went after it, then had a fit of guilt or a flare of conscience or something, and went further back than where she’d started. It made her wishy-washy, but she held on and made it to a great end.

There’s some angst in the story, especially with Richard and his conniving, diabolical ways, some feels, and some steam, which made this a great read. I was hoping for a sit-down talk between Edward and Harper where he would tell her everything that had happened to him while he’d been lost. Where was he? How did he survive? Who were the people of this tribe he thought about? Did he have any friends? Who captured him? Did his captors know who he was when they captured him? How was Richard involved?

There are a ton of questions that I thought of as I read the book, but even unanswered it was still a stellar read.

Book Review: Kiss or Dare (Debutante Dares) by Charlie Lane

FIVE STARS

I’ve been reading and enjoying this series since it started and couldn’t imagine Devon being anything but the drunkard and gambler that he was in the first two books of the series. I never saw what Lillian saw in him and thought she deserved better. What did she want with a nasty drunk anyway? He didn’t pay much attention to her and she was besotted with him. A classic case of a good girl loving a loser.

Did I get a rude awakening or what? Lillian inadvertently brought him to his senses with a letter she didn’t sign. He knew who it was from and carried it with him. He really turned himself around. He was the “spare heir” and it bothered him that his brother would have to die in order for him to become someone. He didn’t want his brother to die and he didn’t want to be a duke. Instead, he joined Lillian’s father who was an inventor, and was trying his hand at the same profession. He wanted to be a self-made man, live off his own earnings rather than his inheritance, and worked manual labor and did some gambling to earn enough money to buy a coffeehouse. Being a coffee hound, he was the perfect buyer for it and his plan was to implement a new device he’d invented that took the grounds out of the coffee cup when he took it over.

Meanwhile, Lillian is on a quest of her own. She’s felt invisible to most of the ton for a long time. She did some changing, too. Instead of standing back and not saying much of anything when she was overlooked and feeling like she didn’t matter, she became more assertive (not abrasive) and wanted other wallflowers to be noticed, too. Nobody deserved to feel like that. She made it her mission to make these ladies be noticed in a good way.

Since Devon was working with her father albeit on his own invention, he spent a lot of time at Lillian’s house and, as things go, they are caught in a compromising position and are forced to marry. This is when things started rolling for me. Up until this time, Devon is just there to irritate her and she’s stabby (her word not mine, but so fitting). But they can’t deny the attraction between them, which is how they ended up in that position to begin with. Lillian was desperate for respectability, made Devon swear that he would avoid scandal, but could it work?

This book is reminiscent of The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry, a short story that I’ve always loved. I don’t want to say anymore about that because I feel like I’ve said too much already and I don’t want to risk throwing spoilers into this review. Suffice it to say, the chemistry between Devon and Lillian flew off the pages. The love scenes were hot. The story was divine.

This book is a part of a series, but can easily be read as a stand-alone novel.

*I received a free copy of this book and voluntarily left a review.

Book Review: Delayed Justice (Marc Kadella Legal Mystery #6) by Dennis Carstens

THREE STARS

I’m giving this a neutral rating because I did not finish it. It’s supposed to be a thriller and it started out on an interesting note with two businessmen from Minnesota making a one-day trip to Panama to meet with some drug dealers. But after that, the story went flat.

I’ve not read any of the previous books in this series. I didn’t feel particularly lost, but maybe it would’ve helped me to connect with the characters if I had. Not sure. The story is heavy on stockbrokers, lawyers, private detectives, and a powerful, meddling old woman. At least, I think she was old.

Regardless, the story was too slow to come together for me and I lost interest.

DNF

Book Review: To Desire a Devil (Legend of the Four Soldiers, #4) by Elizabeth Hoyt

FIVE STARS

This is the fourth and final book of the Legend of the Four Soldiers and wow! Was it ever worth the time it took to read the first three books to get to it. I loved everything about it.

Reynaud St. Aubyn has been thought dead for the past seven years. There were witnesses that had seen him crucified and burned alive by Indians after they’d been captured (Samuel Hartley, Jasper Renshaw now Viscount Vale, and Alastair Munroe), although Hartley wasn’t actually captured. He’d run for help and had been branded as a coward by those who didn’t know what his purpose had been. That was in the first book and has a review of its own.

In this book, Reynaud comes back to London after escaping his captors and taking a job as a cook helper on a ship to pay for his passage. When he arrives at his father’s house, he’s sick, dirty, has long hair, a big beard, and a tattoo of some birds over his eye. In addition to that, he’s delirious and is speaking French and nobody can understand what he’s saying. They think he’s mad.

Beatrice Corning has been enamored with a portrait of the young, sassy Reynaud since she moved into the house with her uncle several years ago. She’s spent hours gazing at it, wondering what he might have been like had he lived. When he shows up at the door, she takes him in, much to the chagrin of her uncle who now holds the title of Earl of Blanchard. He doesn’t want to give that up, especially since he had some power in Parliament and was friends of some powerful men, as well.

But Reynaud is determined and with that came his new look (I hate wigs), his ability to speak English came back, and he needed a wife to help portray that he was of sound mind and able to take on the responsibilities of his title, manage the money that came with it, and the duties of Parliament. Who better than Beatrice? Her uncle hated him, but he didn’t care. He liked her and he needed her to further his agenda.

Honestly, there were times when I had a hard time liking Reynaud. I thought he was too rough with Beatrice in the things he said and did. She was up to the task of taking him on and didn’t back down, but there were a few times I wished he’d eased up a bit. Considering what he’d been through and what he’d come home to, it was no surprise. He’d had to fight for his life in the Colonies and now he was having to fight for it in London.

But as things go, this spirals into a booming ending. Beatrice knew she was in love with him long before he realized he was in love with her. She wasn’t sure he had the capacity to feel anything like that for anyone and had decided she’d live her life loving him even if he never loved her back. She was prepared to go all the way just to be with him. He was a changed man; a scarred man with a tattoo on his face and a long earring. He wasn’t anything like the man in the portrait with a playful look on his face and she was okay with that. She figured she had enough love for both of them.

This was a magnificent book, although not my favorite of the series. My favorite was To Seduce a Sinner, Book 2, but this was a great conclusion to the series. The traitor is finally caught, which was an ongoing mystery with all the books and the four soldiers come together again after each finds love and happiness. The chemistry between Reynaud and Beatrice singed the pages, the secondary characters didn’t upstage the main characters even though Lottie and her husband had quite a story going as did Beatrice and her friend, Jeremy (that one made me cry)–the whole book rocked.

This book is part of a series, but can be read as a stand-alone novel. But the other books are stellar.

Books in the series:
1. To Taste Temptation
2. To Seduce a Sinner
3. To Beguile a Beast
4. To Desire a Devil