I knew from my previous outings with Ms. Dare that her Castles Ever After series is all about the quirky and fanciful. The conceit of these novels is that a generous benefactor, the Earl of Lynforth, has bequeathed a series of castles – not just properties – to his nieces and goddaughters,
is in and of itself a bit kooky. Book two in the series introduces us to Miss Clio Whitmore, inheritor of Twill Castle. She has also been engaged to Piers Brandon, now Marquess of Granville, for eight years. Eight very long years. Following her newfound inheritance, and the deaths of their respective parents, Clio decides to formally break the engagement, stop waiting for Piers to get around to marrying her and being stuck in a marriage to a near stranger (have I mentioned she’s barely seen him in 8 years?), and just be her own person with her own home, and her own business. She just needs to convince Piers brother Rafe to sign the appropriate paperwork. He however is hell-bent on getting her to the altar, because that’s what he should do for his brother. Regardless of his own feelings.
This is probably a 3.5 rounded up to a 4-star book for me. The pacing in the beginning was off, Dare’s amusing abandonment of strict historical accuracy just let me brain fill in what time period I wanted (I decided 1870s because why not? Regency doesn’t have to have all the books), and the “I’m too damaged and unlovable to have the woman I want” hit a little too close to home due to some recent events so while I liked the characters of Clio (whose name I made Cleopatra) and Rafe they also exasperated me just a little. I also spent a lot of time with this expression on my face, particularly whenever the side characters entered the plot and especially when Bruiser had his quizzing glass:
But perhaps the most importantly, I am left flummoxed by my library. My beautiful lovely library who always finds me all the books. SOMEONE DECIDED THE FRONT OF THIS BOOK NEEDED A POST IT NOTE ON IT TO PROTECT MY EYES. From what? I don’t know.
Our very own queen of the upvotes, emmalita, says perhaps they are in cahoots with big dressmaking, because of the apparent shoddy workmanship of the dress just *falling* off her body. Also, I’m not upset at the amount of back we’re seeing here, I’m annoyed that a character who is supposed to be on the voluptuous side is on the slim side here. Although at least they remembered she was supposed to be blonde, I never did.
To wrap up:
I’m not even sorry.
If you like a bit of romantical fluff with good sexy times and witty banter and flat out funny moments, you can’t really go wrong with Dare, but your mileage may vary with this one in particular. Although we’re pretty uniform in a 3.5-5 star rating here at the Cannonball Read.
Well done. “Romantical fluff” is going replace “kissing book” in my lexicon
Ladies’ backs are DANGEROUS KATIE.
They give the kids and the mens SEXY THOUGHTS OH NOOOOO.
I mean, just look at all those sexy spine bumps. LOOK AT THEM. I clearly have to go do something sexy and deranged now because I looked at it.
I already did something deranged, I wrote the review! :)
I loooooooved this one. It had so much catnip for me. It’s probably time for a re-read!
The books are actually set during the Regency era, but this is not clear until book 3, When A Scot Ties the Knot. All three books are set shortly after the Napoleonic wars, as far as that book is dated.
Piers, the Marquess who isn’t chosen, is the hero in Dare’s new book, featuring the third and youngest Highwood sister in a new Spindle Cove book. I’m very excited.
Narfna is right – the post-it is probably to shield those of a weak constitution from becoming all riled up at the sight of the cover model’s naked back. That, or they, like me, find the thought of a Regency lady wearing absolutely no kind of undergarments under her frock so unbelievable that they thought it best to just cover the whole thing up. For a while, there was a whole bunch of these – dress unlaced at the back, no corsetry or undergarments in sight – on romance covers. I think I prefer the new cover trend of women lounging on furniture with skirts so voluminous you could probably hide the population of a small village in them.
You crack me up. Be snarky about romance covers some more. I’ll get the popcorn.
Oh, I could do this for days. I have SO many opinions on romance covers, and especially how similar they all seem to be at a given time. Glad that it’s amusing rather than tiresome. Perhaps I’ll add a little section to each of my romance reviews, critiquing the cover.
My husband has a theory that at least a third of all criticism of the genre is due to the ridiculous covers. As he says, crime fiction, fantasy and sci-fi used to get put down a lot more when the covers were lurid. Now they’ve had make-overs, and even though they are genre fic, they seem a lot more acceptable to people in general. I don’t think he’s entirely wrong.
The covers are all terrible. It’s like, they have to keep all the kissing books in the ghetto lest someone try to take them seriously or admit they are good. It makes me so mad.
Piers is for the youngest Highwood?! This I can get behind.
I know! I’m so excited. The book description is up on Goodreads and I really hope it’s good!
I may have had a rage stroke about the innapropriate or lack of appropriat underthings on both the cover and in the pages of thebook, but I knew that I could rely on you to handle the topic for me.
I should perhaps be thankful that it wasn’t a pink post-it?
Thank you for the shout out! I would upvote every one of these comments if I could.