Book Review: One Dance With a Duke & Twice Tempted By a Rogue

I was really impressed with Tessa Dare's debut series, and so I thought I'd give her new series, The Stud Club (she makes fun of that name herself, don't worry), a chance. Well, as far as the first book, One Dance With a Dukegoes, I wasn't disappointed. This is a great book!

Spencer is a duke who grew up in the wilds of Canada until his uncle summoned him back to England to prepare him to take over the duchal responsibilities. He is not particularly sociable, and thus he has developed quite a reputation. His mysterious reputation increases due to the fact that he shows up at ton events precisely at midnight and then selects one young woman to dance a single dance with.

Amelia is the only daughter in a family of poor aristocrats. Her brother Jack is four hundred pounds in debt to the duke, and so when he arrives at a ball one night, Amelia takes matters into her own hands and essentially forces him to dance with her so that she can discuss her brother's debt. Except that happens to be the night that the leader of the Stud Club, Leo, is murdered. The Stud Club is rather simple. There are ten tokens that represent ten ownership shares to a valuable stallion. Each token holder has breeding rights to the stallion. Tokens can only be transferred by gambling them away. As it turns out, Spencer has been making it his mission to win all ten tokens. When Leo is murdered, there are only three other owners: Spencer, Rhys, and Julian. When Rhys and Julian show up at the ball to tell Spencer that he has to help them break the news to Leo's sister Lily, Amelia is present and insists on accompanying to give Lily some female support. By the end of their evening together, Spencer has decided that he wants to marry Amelia.

What I liked about this book was this: it was a speedy marriage, but it wasn't a marriage of convenience. Spencer asked for Amelia's hand because he was immediately attracted to her. And Amelia accepted because she was a spinster and because she was attracted to Spencer, too. Not only that, but Spencer is simply a nice guy. A really good guy. It can be hard for authors to create a hero that is both an alpha male and not a jerk. But Dare did a great job, here. The way that Spencer's history and character is revealed as the book goes on makes it so there is no need for silly plot devices.

Admittedly, the book falters a bit at the end and wanders into cliched territory. But that doesn't negate what came before. A simple, enjoyable little romance novel.

Because I liked One Dance With a Duke so much, I was excited to read Twice Tempted by a Rogue. But it just didn't deliver.

This book is about Rhys, a scarred war hero who inherits his father's baroncy. The book begins when he goes back to his lands, which are not much considering that the manor house burned down over a decade ago and the family abandoned the area. When Rhys returns, he meets Meredith, the daughter of his family's former stablemaster. Meredith is a widow who married the local innskeeper and now runs the inn in an effort to bring more commerce to her struggling community. Rhys believes in fate because, as he sees it, he's tried to kill himself for years by getting into fights, charging the front lines during battle, etc, and he's stil alive. It is his fate to survive. And when he sees Meredith, he figures that it's his fate to marry her. He tells her that a lot.

Now, Meredith is attracted to Rhys. She's had a crush on him her entire life, and she'd like nothing more than to jump into bed with him. But she's not interested in marriage because she doesn't want to give up her inn, and she thinks Rhys won't stay in the area despite his assurances otherwise.

And... there you have it. That's about it as far as the compelling story goes. Somewhere along the line, however, Rhys and Meredith's roles reverse, and to me, that felt very sudden. Rhys gives up on fate and Meredith decides she wants to be with him. To be honest, I just kind of raced through the last fourth of this book, so I don't really know what was behind this switch. All I know is that I found it very confusing.

The biggest problem, though, was the lack of chemistry between the characters. Spencer and Amelia from One Dance With a Duke had plenty of chemistry, but I just didn't feel it between Rhys and Meredith. As a result, I didn't care about what happened to them. Oh well, even the best writers have to stumble sometimes. There was nothing wrong with the writing in this book, though.

A Genre Switch

I'm pretty much a life-long romance reader, but lately I find that I've grown rather tired of the books set in early 19th century England. (Basically a huge sub-genre in modern romance.) I used to love those books. But in the past few months I've passed on two new Mary Balogh books and a Julia Quinn book, authors who I used to count among my favorites. I've enjoyed discovering new authors like Tessa Dare, but all in all I'm tired of the English regency era novel.

After reading Sara Donati's Wilderness series, what I find myself really wanting to read are books set in America, especially the American west. For instance, I have gotten a little bored waiting for The Endless Forest and Insatiable to arrive, so I dug through storage for some of my old romance novels. My top choices were those classic Westerns from Elizabeth Lowell (Only His, Only Mine, Only You, Only Love, Autumn Lover, and Winter Fire). I've always loved that series. Another top choice was the Clayborne series from Julie Garwood (For the Roses, One Pink Rose, One White Rose, One Red Rose, and Come the Spring).

I wish I knew of other great western romances, but it's not a sub-genre I'm familiar with other than those that I've listed. Any recommendations?

Book Review: Surrender of a Siren

Well, it's finals week, which of course means that I have been prodigiously reading romance novels. This is what I do people. We all have our avoidance/stress management methods. Some people drink, some people smoke pot. I read romance novels.

And this romance novel was special, because it was the first full-size ebook I read! How exciting! I read the whole thing on my iPhone! I initially resisted this whole ebook phenomena because I really like print books, but I gotta tell you, this is some awesome shit. No going to the bookstore, no searching all over town for a particular book. I can be at home, in my apartment, wearing no pants, and instantly have a book at my disposal. Amazing. (Not so amazing are the ebooks that expect you to pay full (print) prices. Nice try, assholes.)

Anyway, onto the substance of the book. Surrender of a Siren is the "sequel" to Goddess of the Hunt." I put sequel in quotation marks because they are independent stories even though the heroine shows up in both books. At the end of Goddess, Sophia Hathaway had jilted her fiance and ran off to God knows where. Siren picks up with Sophia boarding a ship bound for the West Indies with six hundred pounds of her inheritance strapped to her chest. She books passage on the Aphrodite owned by Mr. Grayson, known as "Gray." Of course, Gray is hunky.

Most of this book takes place on the ship between London and the West Indies. It's a pretty common romance novel scène à faire, and it reminded me of one of my favorite modern romance classics, The Gift by Julie Garwood. Gray and Sophia are attracted to each other, but it takes them a while to act on. Gray is reluctant to take a move because he promised his brother, the ship's captain, that he wouldn't touch her. Turns out, Gray and his brother were privateers during the Napoleonic wars, and now they are attempting to set up a respectable shipping business. The last thing they need is for Gray to seduce a young passenger. Oh yeah, did I mention that Sophia is traveling under an assumed identity? Probably because she conned a bank out of giving her an advance on her inheritance and dumped a man a few weeks before their wedding. She doesn't want to be found.

I just read this book less than a week ago, but I'm having a hard time conjuring up any strong impressions. Maybe that is an impression in itself. I liked this book. Tessa Dare's writing is good enough to keep your interest, and the characters are all likable. Gray was a nice romantic hero. Manly, but also vulnerable, but not an asshole on account of his vulnerabilities. You genuinely believe that he fell for Sophia. Sophia is a fun little character, too, mostly because of the stuff she starts in Goddess that carries over to Siren in part.

At the end things get kind of annoying because no one just TALKS to each other. But that's to be expected because otherwise where would the conflict be? However, I actually kind of believe the obstacles standing in their way. At least I believed that the characters believed them. So, well done.

Book Review: Goddess of the Hunt

Goddess of the Hunt by Tessa Dare is a fun little book. It is lighthearted without being silly, but it also has a serious side. And best of all, it's just a straight-up romance novel. There's no mystery or whatnot to distract from the story.

The story centers around Lucy Walthram, younger sister to Harry. For eight years, Harry and his three best friends have been spending holidays at Harry's family home. Because Harry and Lucy are orphans with only a senile old aunt to watch after Lucy, Lucy has been following after the men for much of her life. She fancies herself in love with Toby, but everyone knows that Toby will soon become engaged to Sophia, sister-in-law of Felix. Lucy decides that she has to seduce Toby into falling for her, but first she needs to practice on Jeremy, the only other bachelor in the group. And of course, you can guess what happens.

The only thing I didn't like about this book was the conflict, which is pretty much centered around Jeremy's past. I love me a tormented hero as much as the next girl, but I didn't completely buy Jeremy's torment here. Parts of it felt contrived, but not so much that I couldn't enjoy the story. Besides, the writing was good enough that I didn't really care about the flaws. Good writing is such a delight to stumble across in a romance novel!