A delightfully multifaceted story from a writer who continues to map out new territory for Regency romance.
An undercover mapmaker and an undercover marquess fall for each other.
R. Fleming is known to draw the finest maps in London, but no one has ever met the actual cartographer: Rose Fleming, a woman whose work secretly keeps her family’s business afloat. She was raised learning mapmaking and surveying at her uncle’s side, but as it’s the Regency era, even though the shop was left to her in her uncle’s will and she handles all the commissions, her husband is in charge of the business and their accounts. Her marriage hasn’t been what she expected, but she’s resigned herself to a quiet life doing the work she loves. When her husband hires a new footman, she’s intrigued first by his good looks and then his candor, unexpected from someone in service. He’s surprisingly forward because he isn’t, as he claims, Alex, a farmer’s son. He’s actually Alex, Marquess of Brandon, and he’s working undercover as a footman because he suspects Rose’s husband has colluded with Brandon’s neighbors to cheat his family out of land on their country estate. He expects a footman position will allow him to do a bit of quick snooping to find proof of the fraud and destroy Fleming, but he quickly learns both that life as a footman is harder than he thought and that Rose is much more captivating than he’d imagined. As the complex plot unfolds, Rose and Alex are drawn to each other again and again, but the secrets they are keeping from each other might turn what seems like a happy ending into a final disappointment. Quincy delivers another compelling story featuring a hardworking heroine in the third entry in her Clandestine Affairs series. She also once again explores the difficulties of living in the Regency ton while also being of Arab descent as well as the ways in which class mobility could occur (or not) in this era. But what makes the story unusually daring is that its heroine starts the story married to one man and ends it married to another, via an elegant twist that ensures she retains the empathy and respect of the reader throughout. As the story also contains a slow burn as well as several passionately intimate scenes, there’s much for readers to love.
A delightfully multifaceted story from a writer who continues to map out new territory for Regency romance.Pub Date: March 29, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-298684-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Sink your teeth into this delightful paranormal romance with a modern twist.
A vampire and an Alpha werewolf enter into a marriage of convenience in order to ease tensions between their species.
As the only daughter of a prominent Vampyre councilman, Misery Lark has grown accustomed to playing the role that’s demanded of her—and now, her father is ordering her to be part of yet another truce agreement. In an effort to maintain goodwill between the Vampyres and their longtime nemeses the Weres, Misery must wed their Alpha, Lowe Moreland. But it turns out that Misery has her own motivations for agreeing to this political marriage, including finding answers about what happened to her best friend, who went missing after setting up a meeting in Were territory. Isolated from her kind and surrounded on all sides by the enemy after the wedding, Misery refuses to let herself forget about her real mission. It doesn’t matter that Lowe is one of the most confounding and intense people she’s ever met, or that the connection building between them doesn’t feel like one born entirely of convenience. There’s also the possibility that Lowe may already have a Were mate of his own, but in spite of their biological differences, they may turn out to be the missing piece in each other’s lives. While this is Hazelwood’s first paranormal romance, and the book does lean on some hallmark tropes of the genre, the contemporary setting lends itself to the author’s trademark humor and makes the political plot more easily digestible. Misery and Lowe’s slow-burn romance is appealing enough that readers will readily devour every moment between them and hunger to return to them whenever the story diverts from their scenes together.
Sink your teeth into this delightful paranormal romance with a modern twist.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9780593550403
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
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