I’ve gotta hand it to Tessa Dare: I was not really sure how I was going to end up liking Julian Bellamy. In the first two books in the Stud Club trilogy, he’s very much that annoying friend in your group that you kind of put up with because he’s always been around, but you don’t really like him all that much. He’s whiny and has the worst case of tunnel-vision about the murder of his friend Leo — blinded by guilt and remorse, he […]
Historical Romance with High Hopes and Uneven Tone
As a romance reader, I rely on recommendations since it’s a genre full of authors of wildly varying quality. Like any other group, there are a few greats that land on one’s autobuy list, then the excellent, very good, reliable, guilty pleasures, desperate measures, and so on. Finding good new-to-me authors always feels like a coup. My romance spirit guide, Malin, has pointed me in many the right direction, as has emmalita and others. Writer Courtney Milan suggested this author on her blog and who […]
“What is the world coming to, with these modern women? A man can’t tell them what to do.”
So far, I’m enjoying the ludicrously named Stud Club trilogy, but at the same time I can tell that they are earlier works from an author whose later titles, I feel, are more indicative of her talent. The second entry into the trilogy follows the VERY tortured Rhys St. Maur, Lord Ashworth, a war hero and broody dude who is a closet romantic and wants nothing more than to start over and create, rather than destroy, back at his ancestral home. His love interest is Meredith Maddox, […]
Frustrating and lovely and decidedly different.
As a very new reader to romance, the books I’ve picked up have tended to be fairly new, as in published within the last 5-10 years, and decidedly feminist or progressive in their mentality. Even if they’re not openly advocating for women’s rights or chiding the customs that disadvantage(d) women, the stories I’ve loved have mostly had a bent of “they’re awesome but overlooked because of social/cultural reasons.” Enter Flowers from the Storm, which is more than twenty years old and not un-feminist or non-progressive, but it comes […]