Christina Dodd's "Secrets of Bella Terra"

Grade: B

passion rating: warm

Christina Dodd gets plenty right in her latest romantic suspense novel. Her hero is a bona fide hottie, the mystery underlying her tale is interesting, and her setting, Northern California's wine country, is so well-rendered I long to take my next vacation there. 80% of this book is really good. The other 20% is missing. Pieces that should have been there - why the heroine and hero make self-defeating relational choices, how the villains manage to commit so much mayhem, why brothers, mothers, and grandmothers keep the secrets they do - are absent. It's as if Ms. Dodd knew her story so well, she neglected to share all of it with her readers.

Secrets of Bella Terra is the first of a series featuring the DiLuca brothers. The three men share the same father and are connected to the family’s vineyards and famous resort Bella Terra. As the book begins, the matriarch of the DiLuca family — Nonna - is brutally attacked in her home. Her three grandsons as well as the novel's heroine, Brooke Peterson (an old family friend who is now the manager of Bella Terra), rush to her side. Two of the grandsons, Eli and Noah, live at Bella Terra, but Rafe - this tale's main male — is a globe-trotter who runs a quasi-military security firm with offices all over the world. Rafe and Brooke share a long history and, from the moment the two meet again in Nonna's hospital room, they are enmeshed in their complex feelings for one another.

It's not a spoiler to say Rafe and Brooke are the great loves of each others' lives. They were lovers in high school and again in their early 20's. It's clear they belong together. It's not so clear why they are apart. Brooke and Rafe spend much of the book telling themselves they can't be together, even though they are sharing kisses from the moment they are again first alone. They constantly fantasize about each other but don't make love until more than half-way through the book, and even then, it's for solace rather than because they're soul-mates. (That doesn't stop it, however, from being smoking hot.) The barriers to their romance are too briefly explained and the path to their HEA seems facile rather than fated.

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Tracey Anne Warren's "The Bed and the Bachelor"

Grade: C-

passion rating: warm

Ms. Warren’s latest Byrons of Braebourne historical romance is proof that an author’s competency with prose doesn’t inherently translate into a well-written book. Ms. Warren is a capable writer with a knack for description and settings. However, in this book, her proficiency does not extend to her plot or her characters. I found the former dreary and the latter unlikely.

Drake Byron is a brilliant scientist who has always put his work before his heart. Oh, he has the obligatory mistress he can pleasure several times in an evening, but he’s never come close to falling in love or even to believing any woman could understand his research-oriented life-style. He’s currently working on an unbreakable cipher to further stymie the French during the final years of the Napoleonic Wars. He takes great pains to make sure his work is secure, so he stores it in a safe, the key to which he wears around his elegant yet manly neck.


Drake hires the absurdly young and requisitely lovely Sebastianne Dumont to be his new housekeeper. Sebastianne, who is using the alias Anne Greenway, has been planted in Drake’s household by the cartoonishly evil Vacheau — a henchman working for bad guys somehow connected to Napoleon. Vacheau has threatened to destroy Sebastianne’s father and two young brothers if she doesn’t steal the cipher and turn it over to the French. Sebastianne has been picked for this unsavory task because she speaks perfect English and is English on her mother’s side. She hates to mislead Drake and his warm and caring staff (I am, of course, referring to those who work for him) but she must in order to save her family.


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Sophie Jordan's "Wicked in Your Arms"

Grade: D-

passion rating: hot

I so disliked this book — the second in Ms. Jordan’s inexplicably named Forgotten Princesses series - that, after reading it, I put it down, waited several weeks, then picked it up again for a re-read. I wondered if I'd initially judged it too harshly. Sadly, the second time around was an even worse experience. This book has it all: Inconsistent and annoying leads, a plot that plays like a mediocre melodrama, an obvious and unnecessary villain, and a love story one roots against rather than for. It is, as Lady Gaga would say, a bad romance.


The heroine, Grier Hadley, is the illegitimate daughter of the king of the London underworld. Her father, Jack Hadley, has brought Grier and her sisters to town to marry them off. He believes aristocratic marriages on their part will elevate his social status. Grier was raised by her now dead saintly step-father in Wales where she worked by his side as a game keeper. She loathes the social rituals demanded by the ton but believes a good marriage will give her the propriety she desires. Grier resents the upper class snobs who belittle her for her scandalous birth and her sun-speckled skin even as she longs to be one of them.


Jack keeps dragging Grier and her half-sister Cleo to society functions where, he informs them, the two will catch aristocratic mates. At one such ball, Grier is hiding behind a fern and shoving frosted biscuits in her mouth when she hears two men talking. The taller and broader of the two is clearly looking for a bride but when his companion suggests Grier or Cleo, the man dismisses the sisters as completely unsuitable. He and his friend quip that Grier and Cleo are women a man beds rather than weds. Grier, despite knowing that her pedigree does indeed make her ineligible to many, is so angered by this man’s words she dumps her glass of lemon water on his head, snaps at him, and flounces off.

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Waking Up with the Duke by Lorraine Heath

this review was originally published at All About Romance

In Waking up with the Duke a married woman has an affair with her crippled husband’s best friend. Their story, beautifully written by Lorraine Heath, is a moving and lovely read. If not for an overly dramatic scene near the end of the book, it would have been a DIK for me.

The heroine of the novel, Lady Jayne Seymour, has devoted herself to caring for her husband, Lord Walfort. Three years ago, Walfort and his cousin the Duke of Ainsley were out carousing in celebration of the news of Jayne’s pregnancy. Their carriage crashed; Walfort was terribly injured and left paralyzed from the waist down. In her grief, Jayne lost their baby — her first and, due to Walfort’s impotency, what would seem to be her last. Jayne loves her husband but misses the physical relationship the two had; since the accident, Walfort doesn’t share her bed, kiss, or touch her. She’s lonely and mourns the life of wife and mother she always thought she’d have.

Ainsley is grief stricken as well. He was driving the carriage the night of the accident and blames himself for all Walfort — and Jayne - lost with the crash. He knows Jayne loathes him for his carelessness that night and makes every effort to stay out of her sight. So, when Walfort asks him to come early to the first hunt he has hosted since his accident, Ainsley wishes he could say no. He can’t, of course; Ainsley would do almost anything to pay the debt he feels he owes Walfort. When he arrives, however, Ainsley is unprepared for what Walfort asks of him. Walfort tells Ainsley his debt will be settled if he will get Jayne pregnant and allow Walfort to pass the babe off as Walfort’s own.

Neither Ainsley nor Jayne initially says yes to Walfort’s proposal. Ainsley believes that it would devastate Jayne to betray her sacred marriage vows. Both Jayne and Ainsley believe that it’s wrong for Ainsley to be the father of Walfort’s legal heir. Jayne dislikes Ainsley and can’t imagine having him touch her. Ainsley has always been profoundly drawn to Jayne and doesn’t know if, once he has had her and she is pregnant with his child, he could live without her. Walfort, though, is determined. He tells Ainsley that if Ainsley — a man who is famous for his skills as a lover — won’t impregnate Jayne, Walfort will find some far more loutish lord who will. Walfort too wears down Jayne’s objections. He tells her he loves her and he can’t be happy until she has the child she has always wanted. By the end of the hunt, Walfort has won: Jayne and Ainsley agree to spend a month together at Blackmoor Cottage, Ainsley’s isolated county house, trying to conceive.

Once at Blackmoor, Ainsley does everything in his power to make Jayne comfortable in his home and in his bed. She has asked their lovemaking be brief, they never kiss, and she take no pleasure from his touch. She is there for Walfort and makes it clear she disdains Ainsley. But as the two begin to spend all their time together, Jayne realizes her perception of Ainsley as a cad is false. He, in the way he treats her and those around him, is a good and honorable man. Ainsley “wakes” Jayne up to all that she is missing, both in the bedroom and in her heart. He never kisses her, but he pleasures her beyond anything she could have ever imagined. As the weeks too quickly pass, Jayne comes alive in Ainsley’s arms - this is a book where making love is truly that. Jayne sees now how empty her marriage was even before Walfort’s accident. With Walfort, she shared a bed and a home. With Ainsley, she shares her true self.

I treasured Jayne’s and Ainsley’s tale and, had theirs been the only love story in this novel, it would have been enough. Ms. Heath, however, gives the reader one other: That of Ainsley’s mother Tessa and her much younger lover Oliver. It is uncommon in literature to show older women, let alone grandmothers, as sexy, passionate, desirable, and vibrant. Tessa, at age 53, is all those things and the scenes with her and Oliver, an artist with a great sense of humor, were among my favorites in the book.

I also found Walfort compelling. His reasons for pushing his wife and his cousin together are complex. He has his own secrets and in many ways is the villain of the piece. Yet I couldn’t hate or truly pity him. He is refreshingly morally ambiguous and is a nice change from the unadulterated evil villains often found in historical romance.

Ms. Heath has written an excellent book with Waking up with the Duke. As I turned the pages, I wondered how she would write a viable happy ending for Jayne and Ainsley without resorting to strained plot devices. Happily, Ms. Heath, who has done her research on 19th century medicine, resolves her story in a creative and satisfying way. Waking up with the Duke might be the first romance I’ve read where the appendix at the end of the story — it explains an invention of Benjamin Franklin’s — makes a strong story significantly better.

I shan’t go into the specifics of the scene I didn’t like. Suffice to say, I felt Jayne waited too long to make a choice she clearly could and should have made sooner. This book has enough genuine pathos and drama in it and did not need the addition of over the top melodrama to give it resonance.

I’ve liked many of Ms. Heath’s books. She’s deft with plotting, creates characters with depth, infuses her love scenes with believable passion, and tempers the joy of true love with just enough angst to keep sticky sweetness at bay. Waking up with the Duke is one of her best. I give it a B+.