Blame it on Bath: The Truth about the Duke

The second in Caroline Linden's new Truth about the Duke series, Blame it on Bath is the story of Lord Captain Gerard de Lacey, the youngest offspring of the late Duke of Durham. All three ducal sons  are entangled in what has come to be known as the Durham Dilemma, a situation which may find all three declared bastards and destitute. Each brother sets off on a mission to find and dismiss the rumor that their parents' marriage was illegal and their father was a bigamist.  Edward, the middle de Lacey, had his story told in the recently reviewed, One Night in London. 

Gerard is home on bereavement leave from the Peninsula Wars, and is determined to use his time to track down the blackmailer threatening his family and his livelihood. He finds himself propositioned into marriage by the widow Lady Katherine Howe. A merchant's daughter who married a viscount, Katherine is starved for attention and affection and finds herself still in love with Gerard, years after a chance encounter on a rainy country road.  She needs this marriage in order to extricate herself from the expectation of a match to her dead husband's heir. Lacking any self-confidence, Kate sees Gerard as her ticket out of the quandary heavily promoted by her formidable mother. Fortunately for her, Gerard needs an heiress to marry in order to guarantee his income should the Durham Dilemma resolve itself against the De Lacey's. And so, after much thought, he agrees to the marriage.

I loved this book because Gerard himself is so very lovable. He's the quintessential romance hero. Despite an arranged marriage, he tries to make a go of it and when faced with Kate's insecurity complex, he takes his time to coax her (both in bed and out) from her shell. She begins to truly believe in herself for the first time in her life and in return, earns Gerard's love for herself as well.  The blackmail story becomes the backdrop for this beautiful love story set in Bath.

Blame it on Bath is out on February 28, 2011. I look forward to reading elder brother and heir, Charles' story. I've found that this novel is incrementally better than the previous one. If that continues to be the case,  the last in this series will surely not disappoint, especially since Charles has the furthest to go to redemption.

Mariana, by Susanna Kearsley

The lure of Susanna Kearsley's story telling in both The Winter Sea and The Rose Garden was just too much, so I couldn't resist reading Mariana. If you enjoy this author, resistance is futile. You won't be disappointed, as Mariana is more than up to the task of settling in right among those two wonderful novels.

Julia Beckett is drawn to one particular  farmhouse in Exbury. Known as Greywethers, and located adjacent to Crofton Hall, the seat of the de Mornay family, the 16th century house calls to her from childhood, and as an adult of 29, with a job as an illustrator for children's books, she has the wherewithal to purchase it. As she settles in, she becomes aware of coincidences and what can coyly be described as side effects, of living there. She sees a gray stallion with a mysterious rider, who seems to be watching her from a copse of trees. Then, she has what seem to be a series of hallucinations. She finds herself in the Greywethers of the 1660's, as Mariana Farr, a girl who has come to live with her devout uncle during the plague years in London. As she comes back to herself after each "episode," Julia realizes that these are not hallucinations, or the product of too little sleep, but something quite different, and she feels compelled to continue her journeys into the past in order to experience the love that Richard de Mornay had for Mariana, and by doing so, answer questions that pertain to her own life.

Ms. Kearsley's secondary characters which include Julia's vicar brother Tom,  Geoff de Mornay (the owner of Crofton Hall), her friend Vivian, Vivian's Aunt Freda and Geoff's friend Iain Sumner, pull the story together and add the puzzle pieces that completes the picture of both Julia and Mariana's lives. While Mariana's tale is a compelling, tragic, but somewhat predictable love story, Julia's happy ending comes in the form of a lovely surprise, one we may have suspected at first, but brushed aside for a different outcome. I was happy to see that my first impression was correct in this case.

Mariana, like all of Ms. Kearsley's novels, pushes the envelope of reality without actually breaking through the seal. The story telling is so good that we put aside our doubts and questions and truly believe that the basis of these stories are entirely plausible. As with the other two wonderful novels I reviewed here, I didn't want to turn the last page. It's hard to find an author so adept at suspending reality and taking her readers along for the ride. I'm grateful to have found this one.

She Tempts the Duke (The Lost Lords of Pembrook) by Lorraine Heath

They called them the Lost Lords of Pembrook.  They are in reality three young men, one meant to inherit a dukedom, who disappeared years ago only to reappear twelve years later to claim the inheritance their unscrupulous uncle wants to take from them. Sebastian, the 8th Duke of Keswick, was 14 when his father died and his uncle locked him, his twin brother Tristan, and his younger brother Rafe in the tower at their ancestral home of Pembrook.  Uncle David's intent was clear. He would murder the three as he had murdered his own brother and assume the title for himself in retribution for his brother marrying Sebastian's mother.

Lady Mary Wynne-Jones, 12 year old neighbor, best friend to Sebastian, and daughter to the Earl of Winslow, overhears David's plans and manages to free the young lords. The boys then disappear into the night, each to live the next 12 years in their own exiles of hell before they come back together in dramatic fashion in order to take back what's rightfully theirs. In the escape, they leave Mary behind. She in turn, suffers her own form of exile when her father finds out exactly what she did that night and why.

Lorraine Heath's characters are horribly scarred psychologically by their ordeal. Sebastian even carries these scars as a physical manifestation, which adds to the dark undertones running rampant through this ultimately wonderful love story. The entire second half of the book is devoted to what we hope will be Sebastian's ultimate redemption, and the beating back of his demons and his unnatural need for retribution. Mary tries to break through the wall that surrounds this damaged grown up little boy, but it's only when Sebastian realizes what truly matters, that she succeeds. But will that realization come too late?

In the first of  a series of three novels, Ms. Heath takes us to the darkest reaches of despair and makes us wonder if perhaps this is the first time we will read a novel in this genre where a main character is so far  beyond all repair.  And seeing how this novel turned out, I can't help but hope that Tristan and Rafe's stories will follow in very short order. Published February 1, 2012.

The Capture of the Earl of Glencrae by Stephanie Laurens

Congratulations are in order. I am the owner of a brand new Kindle Touch. And to christen my latest bundle of technological joy, I immediately downloaded an advanced readers’ copy of Stephanie Laurens’ The Capture of the Earl of Glencrae. This is the third novel in the Cynster Sisters Triology and, as usual, Ms. Laurens delivers. Get ready, romance lovers. We have another winner.

The fun begins at a ton ball where a split second decision to act by the desperate Dominic Lachlan Guisachan, eighth Earl of Glencrae, changes the course of Angelica Cynster’s privileged, if somewhat mundane life. But the Scottish earl’s reputation as a dastardly villain does not accurately reflect this gentleman’s true nature; there is more to the story than meets the eye, for Angelica’s mother and Dominic’s father share a history – a history that the current Countess of Glencrae is none too happy about.  Irrationally jealous, Dominic’s mother steals a precious artifact – a goblet earmarked to be the financial salvation of the clan – and sets a ransom for its return. Dominic must deliver to her a Cynster, specifically a ruined Cynster. Then and only then will she hand over the goblet.  Dominic’s first two attempts at abduction (In Pursuit of Eliza Cynster and Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue) end in failure, but the third is the charm as Angelica turns out to be more cooperative than Dominic could have hoped. But Angelica has her own motives for assisting. She’s convinced Dominic is her hero, her one and only true love, and it’s just a matter of time before he reciprocates in kind.

Every book in Ms. Laurens’ Cynster series is well written with engaging protagonists in truly sigh-worthy romances.  The Capture of the Earl of Glencrae, the latest and perhaps my favorite of all, does the franchise proud.

Bond Girl, by Erin Duffy

In this stellar debut novel, Erin Duffy proves that "write what you know" is great advice indeed. Ms. Duffy, who spent years in the financial industry, spins the story of UVA alum Alex Garrett who, fresh from graduation, begins work at the Wall Street trading firm Cromwell, Pierce. Alex has known all her life that the financial industry is where she wants to make her mark. In a brilliant and almost too precocious light bulb moment at age eight, after visits to her father's place of work, Alex realizes that everything she's told not to do and everything she is undervalued for as a child, is actually permissible and admired on a trading floor.

At twenty-two, Alex arrives at Cromwell and meets her boss "Chick" Ciccone, and her assorted group of co-workers, all male, all older and all anxious to show the new "girlie" where she belongs on the office totem pole. What Alex does is turn her role as resident gopher into a chance to prove to herself and to them that she belongs, and over time she does just that. Some of the mistakes she makes on her way up her learning curve are quite hysterical, and her boss's punishments don't quite fit the "crimes" but we laugh at them anyway. Alex is faced with some challenges in the form of a duplicitous office love interest, a client who shows a bit too much enthusiasm for Alex's spare time, and the financial crisis of 2008. In true chic lit fashion, she overcomes it all, and comes out of it way ahead of the game.

For a debut novel, Ms. Duffy does an excellent job in serving up a fast-paced, absorbing page turner. Alex's embarrassment, trials and triumphs are all experienced first and center by the reader and by the end of the novel, we're ready to cheer her on to the next great thing she undertakes. It's an engaging story, very well-written, although the subject matter once again reminds me why I didn't study finance in graduate school. While it's a complicated subject to master, it's a heck of a lot of fun to read about. Highly recommend, and out on February 1, 2012. Published by William Morrow.

Until There Was You by Kristan Higgins

You never know what lurks in the shadows of an e-reader. Apparently a little while ago, I downloaded Until There Was You by Kristan Higgins, one of my favorite contemporary romance authors. I guess real life got in the way at the time and I didn’t get to it. Let me assure you, folks, had I known what I was missing, I would have cracked it open the minute it landed on my Kindle.

Cordelia Osterhagen, known to all as Posey, runs a salvage company, lives in an old church, owns three cats, a Great Dane and has been in love with one person since freshman year in high school. While her looks may have set her apart from her unusual but loving adoptive parents, her childhood was relatively normal and happy. That is until high school. Scrawny awkwardness doesn’t win teen popularity contests and Posey, given a choice between being the cool kids’ running joke or becoming invisible, chooses the latter and hopes no one notices.  Her plan to stay firmly on the fringe stays on course, even when the new, cool, straight out of juvenile detention kid in school takes a part time job in her parent’s kitschy German themed restaurant. Liam Declan Murphy is distant but cordial to Posey and this small amount of neutral attention thrown her way develops into a powerful one-sided teenaged crush. Posey painstakingly nurses her devotion to Liam – in fact, her entire existence revolves around him, even after he falls hard for another girl. But when Liam acts the bad boy toward Posey, proving he’s no different than any of the others at school, she is devastated. But she picks herself up and moves on, a little older in spirit and perhaps now a little wiser …

The decision to return to Bellsford, New Hampshire from San Diego isn’t an easy one for Liam, but as a widower, it seems the right decision to make for his teenaged daughter. The move will give her the chance to be closer to his late wife’s family. And being back will hopefully help him move past the painful, sometimes debilitating memories of his high school sweetheart’s death.  Liam is not surprised to find things haven’t changed very much. Guten Tag, the Osterhagen’s restaurant where he worked as a kid, is pretty much the same as is Cordelia (as he always called her). She’s still skinny, and still quirky. But as the weeks go by, he finds himself spending more and more time in her company – and surprisingly, enjoying it just a little too much… 

I’m a huge fan of all of Ms. Higgins’ work, but it’s the characters in this story that make it my favorite of hers. Both Posey and Liam are very unusual, Posey more for her looks than anything else. She is by far not a beauty, as the physical comparisons between her and her robust adoptive mother and cousin make obvious. But Posey’s personality is what makes her beautiful. At first Ms. Higgins administers only small doses of her character’s potential. But the fun is in watching Posey grow into herself, to finally fit into her huge personality – to be comfortable in her own skin.  Liam captured me in an entirely different way.  Appalled by his actions as a teen-aged boy, I was completely captivated by his behavior as a man. The author gives Liam touching humanity as the single father of a fifteen-year old daughter. The irony of this responsibility should not be lost on the reader as it is definitely not lost on Liam. And his struggles with OCD, panic attacks and general anxiety regarding his daughter's well being make this former bad boy motorcycle mechanic one of my favorite male protagonists.

As usual, Ms. Higgins scores huge. Until There Was You is most assuredly different and definitely divine. It's also very highly recommended. 

An Amber Heart: The Archetypal Journey of the Heroine, A Memoir by Susan Tossman Blue

When a friend of mine asked me to take a look at this book and possibly review it here, I was skeptical for a couple of reasons, not least of which was because it's a memoir. My review would be read by the person who actually lived the story, not by an author who created the characters just for his/her reader's enjoyment. That particular fear was put aside the moment I read the first paragraph. Susan Tossman Blue has written a gem; a memoir that serves to grip and teach at the same time. It's her life story, yes, but it's so well-written and the story so enlightening and yes, I'll even use the term "uplifting," that you can't help but come away at the last page questioning  the path of your own personal journey through life.

The novel starts with the author finding an antique amber heart. The heart, she believes is a metaphor for her own, locked and unmoving, held in place by past experience and early life trauma. Coupled with her affinity for a stand of trees on her grandfather's farm, the only place where she found acceptance and love in her strict, religious upbringing, she uses these two "tools" as a way to get past that childhood and come to terms and love the person she has become.

The book is divided into four parts, each serving its own purpose, and each builds upon the previous section to reveal a story sometimes too painful to read. Ms. Blue is coy about revealing too much too early, and this works very well. We come to wonder about her physical breakdown, the scars on her lower body, her previously broken jaw and nose. What happened? Where did these come from? Until the second part of the book, we don't know, but we have clues. And those clues keep us turning the pages.

On her trip home, in the section entitled Awareness, we get the background we were waiting for. Revelations come fast and furious, and her childhood of parental abuse, denigration and repression, all in the name of God and mental illness and family dysfunction are revealed to us. Instead of recoiling in horror at the past the author has endured, we become wrapped up in the thought that this is a survivor, and we, as readers, come to understand why she is the way she is, and begin to acknowledge that  we want her to let go, forgive herself for what she shouldn't have been blamed for in the first place and reach that place of acceptance and love that anyone would hope to find in their own life.

There are some wonderful secondary characters who Susan brings to life for us. The first is her husband Jack, who adds some wonderful commentary to the telling of this story. My favorite quote of his is this one, which is said to Susan in relation to her family, "the fact that you might love yourself is a threat." In addition to Jack, there are Susan's paternal grandparents, on whose farm she finds such peace, and her maternal grandmother. There's her therapist Nicole and her doctors, Simon and Dennis, and Dr. Valentine, who help her to recover physically so that she can pursue the emotional side of her journey. And her "wondercat," Tybee, also plays an intricate role in her recovery.

I highlighted many passages from this book in the course of my reading it, and intend to go back and re-read when I have the chance. While my life experiences do not compare with the author's, there are enough lessons for the reader to take away and apply. And days later, I'm still thinking about all of them.