The Dance Before Christmas by Victoria Alexander (2018)

Anabel Snelling doesn’t want to marry childhood friend, Reed, but her father is pushing for it. She’s almost 21 after all. She and her aunt hatch a plan: aunt Lillian knows an actor who’s agreed to play a rival suitor: the son of legendary explore Reginald Everhart. Wesley Grant is in London in hopes of gaining investors for his new chronograph. He comes across Anabel at the Explorers Club and when she mistakes him for the actor he plays along. Quickly, they’re engaged and neither one is quite so sure they’re acting anymore. 

Added into this tale are three delightful older Ladies who have a secret of their own: Reginald Everhart is a fiction they invented. From the beginning, they’re working to help the scheme succeed while doing a little matchmaking at the same time. Because there’s nothing better than falling in love at Christmas.

This was a fun read. Witty dialogue, amiable characters and a comedy of errors that is never tragic. The father isn’t a villain. Wesley is extremely respectable. And Anabel, well, she’s lucky enough to fall in love with someone who wants to dance with her forever.

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

The Duchess War (The Brothers Sinister #1) by Courtney Milan (2012)

One of the things that stands out to me about this series (and Courtney Milan's books) is how they will tackle relevant current issues, just in a Victorian setting. In this book, you have the realities of terrible working conditions, the poverty of the working poor, abuses of power, the powerlessness and marginalization of women, and the issue of homophobia. Tackling these issues could be done in a heavy-handed way, but Milan never forgets why we're reading: for the love story. While this book has our couple being influenced by these elements, their story isn't overshadowed by them and even though Minnie's secret is definitely a heavy and potentially explosive one, there are still moments that are adorable and humorous. It's is not a clean read, but like Julia Quinn's books, there's more to the story and their relationship than simple physical attraction. Minnie and Robert develop a strong relationship even as they face challenges and go to 'war' with each other over Unionizing flyers.  

Synopsis

Miss Minerva Lane is a quiet, bespectacled wallflower, and she wants to keep it that way. After all, the last time she was the center of attention, it ended badly--so badly that she changed her name to escape her scandalous past. Wallflowers may not be the prettiest of blooms, but at least they don't get trampled. So when a handsome duke comes to town, the last thing she wants is his attention. But that is precisely what she gets.

Lady Isabella’s Scandalous Marriage (Mackenzie Series #2) by Jennifer Ashley (2010)

Good grief, there was a lot of sex in this book. I usually note when something’s not a clean romance, but there was a lot of flipping past pages to skip their acts of the horizontal tango. I think it was to the story’s detriment. I get that Mac and Isabella are passionate people and passionately in love, but so many sex moments really detracted from the emotional weight of the story. What they were dealing with was heavy, and normally I would be crying empathetically with their pain. It just didn’t happen in this book. Unlike the first book, I never had a chance to connect with that emotional core because of the sex. Sex, in the romance context, is all about emotions like love, intimacy, trust and passion whereas what happened with their split involved grief and loss and fear. Because it kept flipping from one to the other without a bridge between them (other than one implied), it kept the story from being as good as the plot could have been.

A Night in Grosvenor Square (2018) by Three Authors

This is a collection of three novellas. My rating: 3.5/5 stars

A Match for Princess Pompous by Sarah M. Eden

Summary

Matchmaker Adelaide Northrop may be embarking on her greatest challenge yet. Miss Odette Armistead has been dubbed “Princess Pompous” by Society’s elite, and Odette’s parents are desperate to see her married off to a respectable gentleman. When Adelaide first meets Odette, she is expecting a young lady who fits the pompous description. Instead, Adelaide discovers that Odette is far from conceited, but has chosen to wear a mask in a desperate attempt to hide her love for a gentleman who has been chosen for someone else. It seems that Adelaide has far more than matchmaking to accomplish.

Thoughts

Of the three stories, I think I liked this one the best. While the other 2 novellas have the first meeting and lingering thoughts afterward, this story has the our pair already in love, a love built on mutual respect, affection and grown organically out of their childhood friendship. While the other 2 stories have the standard connection/attraction that is typical in historical romances, this pair have developed a deep and lasting regard for each other. Their main obstacle are their parents, rather than a cavernous difference in rank. Her parents will never agree to the marriage without his parents' approval because they're slightly higher in rank, and his mother is angling for him to marry a different girl in the neighborhood, one whose family is newer to the area and has a bit more money.  

Only Beloved (Survivors' Club #7) by Mary Balogh (2016)

Synopsis

For the first time since the death of his wife, the Duke of Stanbrook is considering remarrying and finally embracing happiness for himself. With that thought comes the treasured image of a woman he met briefly a year ago and never saw again. 

Dora Debbins relinquished all hope to marry when a family scandal left her in charge of her younger sister. Earning a modest living as a music teacher, she’s left with only an unfulfilled dream. Then one afternoon, an unexpected visitor makes it come true.

For both George and Dora that brief first encounter was as fleeting as it was unforgettable. Now is the time for a second chance. And while even true love comes with a risk, who are two dreamers to argue with destiny? 

Review

The man who held them all together, George, the duke of Stanbrook, gets his well-deserved happily ever after. The lucky woman? Agnes‘s older sister, Dora, a 39-year-old spinster who definitely deserves George as much as he deserved her. It was an endearing to watch them be practical and refined even as they’re fighting the giddiness that comes with falling in love.

There’s romance, scandals, revelations, reconciliations and moments that made me cry. In the series, George seem to be the most boring of the Survivors, but that was just the mask he hid behind. It’s definitely not a story to be missed. The epilogue was a fantastic way to close out not just the book but the series. 5 out of 5 stars.

Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Live in Concert (1995)

The synopsis begins with: "On a hot night in August 1995, Douglas Adams gave a barnstorming performance to an invited audience at the Almeida Theatre in London." This audiobook is a recording of this performance. I loved hearing the author dramatically reading excerpts from his Hitchhiker's series. He reads selections from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and Life, the Universe and Everything. Fabulous.

 

Rather than beginning where the book does, with Arthur Dent facing his home being destroyed to make way for a bypass and being rescued by Ford Prefect, right before the Earth is destroyed to make way for a galactic bypass, Adams begins with Life, the Universe and Everything. Arthur is stranded back on Cenozoic Earth, "in the middle of Islington and there wasn't a bus due for 2 million years." He'd been stranded "as a result of a complex sequence of events which had involved him being alternately blown up and insulted in more bizarre regions of the galaxy than he'd ever dreamt existed."

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo (2006)

Synopsis

Once, in a house of Egypt Street, there lived in a china rabbit named Edward Tulane. The rabbit was very pleased with himself, and for good reason: he was owned by a girl named Abilene, who adored him completely. And then, one day, he was lost... Kate DiCamillo takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the depth of the ocean to the net of a fisherman, from the bedside of an ailing child to the bustling streets of Memphis. Along the way, we are shown a miracle -- that even a heart of the most breakable kind can learn to love, to lose, and to love again.

Review

Edward Tulane is a porcelain rabbit. He is dearly loved by Abilene. But Edward doesn’t love her back. He tolerates her but he doesn’t know what love is. One day Abilene and her family travel by ship across the Atlantic. Some boys are mean and play keep away with Edward. Unfortunately when Abilene tries to get Edward back, he instead flies overboard and sinks to the bottom of the sea. And thus begins the strange miraculous journey of Edward Tulane.

 

To Have and to Hoax by Martha Waters (2020)

I absolutely loved this book! I read it with the audiobook and I highly recommend checking it out. There's 2 narrators and Joel Froomkin's James was such the perfect sardonic British wit, having it juxtaposed to Anais Inara Chase's Violet made me end up listening to the audiobook two-times in a row. The 2 narrators added extra life to the story - not that the story was at all boring or lifeless. The audiobook was just that excellent. I've already ordered the second book and I look forward to the further adventures.

Synopsis

In this fresh and hilarious historical rom-com, an estranged husband and wife in Regency England feign accidents and illness in an attempt to gain attention—and maybe just win each other back in the process.

Five years ago, Lady Violet Grey and Lord James Audley met, fell in love, and got married. Four years ago, they had a fight to end all fights, and have barely spoken since.

Their once-passionate love match has been reduced to one of cold, detached politeness. But when Violet receives a letter that James has been thrown from his horse and rendered unconscious at their country estate, she races to be by his side—only to discover him alive and well at a tavern, and completely unaware of her concern. She’s outraged. He’s confused. And the distance between them has never been more apparent.

Wanting to teach her estranged husband a lesson, Violet decides to feign an illness of her own. James quickly sees through it, but he decides to play along in an ever-escalating game of manipulation, featuring actors masquerading as doctors, threats of Swiss sanitariums, faux mistresses—and a lot of flirtation between a husband and wife who might not hate each other as much as they thought. Will the two be able to overcome four years of hurt or will they continue to deny the spark between them?

With charm, wit, and heart in spades, To Have and to Hoax is a fresh and eminently entertaining romantic comedy—perfect for fans of Jasmine Guillory and Julia Quinn.

The Girl in Red by Christina Henry (2019)

I find apocalyptic stories interesting because of the study into the human condition: in dire circumstances, people's core selves come on display. This led me to read The Girl in Red by Christina Henry, the author of Alice (a dark retelling of Alice in Wonderland). It lived up to everything I expected, but I asked myself several times why I was reading it during the COVID pandemic.

Synopsis:

It's not safe for anyone alone in the woods. There are predators that come out at night: critters and coyotes, snakes and wolves. But the woman in the red jacket has no choice. Not since the Crisis came, decimated the population, and sent those who survived fleeing into quarantine camps that serve as breeding grounds for death, destruction, and disease. She is just a woman trying not to get killed in a world that doesn't look anything like the one she grew up in, the one that was perfectly sane and normal and boring until three months ago.

There are worse threats in the woods than the things that stalk their prey at night. Sometimes, there are men. Men with dark desires, weak wills, and evil intent. Men in uniform with classified information, deadly secrets, and unforgiving orders. And sometimes, just sometimes, there's something worse than all of the horrible people and vicious beasts combined.

Red doesn't like to think of herself as a killer, but she isn't about to let herself get eaten up just because she is a woman alone in the woods....

Thoughts and Review:

This was a really engrossing read, but one that was really discomfiting after looking at the news today, seeing that it only took 17 days for the US's infection rate to go from 4 to 5 million and now there are almost 167K dead. Particularly because the Crisis, the Cough as it was nicknamed, was a particularly lethal, airborne-transmitted virus. 

A Duke, The Lady, and A Baby by Vanessa Riley (2020)

One thing to know: if you're looking for a light, fluffy, fun, escapist historical romance, wait until you're in the mood for something with a bit more gravitas. Right now, with dealing with worries over COVID-19, the upcoming election, rampant unemployment, racial and social justice and #metoo, I've been binging historical romances (HRs). Instead of reading other genres that I enjoy (like fantasy, sci-fi, mysteries and thrillers), I've been looking for stories that make me laugh from the witty banter and end with me having a stupid grin over the HEA. 

As I started this book, I wasn’t prepared for a first-person narrator whose emotions are on the raw, maudlin and jaded/traumatized side. It initially had me feeling detached rather than immersed in the story, which had me contemplating not finishing it. It's not that she’s unlikable. She’s just more bitter and desperate than our typical RH heroine and since it's her first-person narration that made it a harsher read. I’m glad I did stick it out because it engages with things that can be unsettling and we all need that sometimes.