So back when I started first following the CBR (CBRV I believe) Malin reviewed The Black Hawk by Joanna Bourne. I then proceeded to read and enjoy it, without realizing that it’s actually book 4 in a series. Enter 2016 and I’ve decided to give the whole series a fresh go starting, in order, with The Spymaster’s Lady. ArtfulSophist has already reviewed this one this year, and I have to say I agree in many aspects. This is the story of Annique Villiers, spy extraordinaire […]
A historical romance with double agents
I’m back! Did you miss me? I finally finished enough work to start catching up on my reviews. Brace yourselves for quite a few in the coming week. This is the fifth book in Joanna Bourne’s Spymasters series, but as the books are written out of chronological order historically speaking, and some overlap (for those who HAVE read the previous books in the series, there’s a really interesting blog post here explaining where the various books fit into the historical time line), it’s not actually that big […]
Sexy Spies + Overwrought Plot = Not-so Sexy Spies
I’m a bit of a self-loathing historical romance reader. Some (Flowers From the Storm, The Grand Sophy, Outlander, Lord of Scoundrels) are really great but the vast majority can best be described as disappointing. In fact if you use Mrs. Julien’s infamous tally (and really, why wouldn’t you) as a guidepost, a meager 10 out of 75 historical romance novels read in 2014 warrant her coveted recommendation. Many of the characters and plotlines are relatively homogeneous because there are only so many variants of “wealthy […]