A Beginner's Guide to Rakes by Suzanne Enoch

Grade: B+

passion rating: hot

In Ms. Enoch’s latest, The Beginner’s Guide to Rakes, the first paragraph reads: “Very few things in the world could make Oliver Warren, the Marquis of Haybury, flinch. He could count those things on one hand, in fact. The yowling of small children. The squeak of rusted metal. And the mention of that name.”

She had me at yowling.

That name is Diane Benchley. Two years ago, in Vienna, when Diane had just been widowed and made penniless, Oliver and she shared an intensely passionate two weeks which ended when Oliver fled her bed without a word of explanation. Now, Diane, Lady Cameron, has returned to London where she aims to open a gentleman’s club in the only thing her gambling addicted husband left her, a London mansion called Adam House. In order to do so, however, she needs cash: Cash which she plans to borrow — actually demand by blackmail — from Oliver.


Oliver is a man accustomed to getting his own way. When Diane gives him a choice between being banned from every gaming establishment in London (she has a signed statement saying Oliver cheated in a game of cards) or lending her five thousand pounds, Oliver agrees to loan her the money. He does so with two goals in mind. First, he wants to prove to himself he was right to cut and run two years ago. Second, he plans get the proverbial upper hand with Diane. No one, and especially not a woman, is going to tell him what to do.

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To Pleasure a Duke by Sara Bennett

Grade: C-

passion rating: warm

When I was growing up, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” was regularly put forth as an argument against premarital sex. This awful phrase has been appearing in English literature since the 17th century. For hundreds of years, those words have described men who want the wanton bang without the wedding bling. These twelve words and the dilemma they describe sum up much of Ms. Bennett’s latest novel To Pleasure a Duke.

Miss Eugenie Belmont belongs, along with several other young women, to the Husband Hunters Club, a group of marriage minded graduates from Miss. Debenhams’s Finishing School. The husband she tells her friends she’s hunting — initially it’s a ruse on her part — is the uber pompous Sinclair St. John, the Duke of Somerton. Somerton, often called the most eligible bachelor in the country, is her neighbor back at home in Gloucestershire and her family is vastly socially inferior to his. The Belmonts are a ramshackle bunch. Eugenie’s father is a trickster; her mother, a flighty emotional ditherer. Her twin brothers are always in trouble; her brother Terry has taken up gambling and speaking rudely. Only her animal whispering younger brother Jack does anything to help Eugenie keep the family on track. The titled Somertons hold not only the Belmonts but virtually every family in England — and thus the world — beneath their notice. They are the cream of the ton and Sinclair, his sister Annabelle, and their mother (the dowager duchess) are utter snobs.


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Real Men Will by Victoria Dahl

Grade: B+

sensuality rating: hot

Ms. Dahl’s final book in her Donovan Brothers Brewery series tells the story of Eric, the eldest and least at ease of the Donovan siblings. He, like his brother and sister, has to learn to be his true self in order to find love and happiness. In Real Men Will, as in the other novels in the series, honesty is hands down the best policy.


Eric has spent his entire adult life being responsible for his siblings and the family business. (The Donovan parents died in a car crash when Eric was 24.) Eric’s life — in nice contrast to his brother Jamie’s — is all work and no play. So, when sexy Beth Cantrell mistakes Eric for playboy Jamie at a business convention, Eric doesn’t correct her. In fact, he has an outrageously wild one night stand with her (described in Ms. Dahl’s novella Just One Taste) and leaves her without telling her who he really is.

Months later, Beth shows up at the Brewery and discovers Eric’s lie. She is fabulously furious with him. And she’s not the only one. Jamie, with whom Eric already has an extremely strained relationship, is outraged to learn the goody-two shoes brother who always lectures him about propriety and responsibility appropriated Jamie’s name and sex-god reputation in order to get laid. Eric’s life is instantly a mess and that, of course, turns out to be the best thing that ever happened to him.


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A Lily among Thorns by Rose Lerner

Grade: B

passion rating: warm

I had hoped to love this book. I thought Ms. Lerner’s debut, In for a Penny, was marvelous. I did not love this book…but I did really like it. And I thought the unusually beta hero was a wonderful character. Ultimately, my lack of love for this novel stems from my lack of love for its heroine.

Serena Ravenshaw is an archetype I rarely warm to: the hard bitten former famed courtesan. Serena was forced into sexual servitude by poverty and her beauty — no one hires a gorgeous nanny — but was able, years ago, to change her life. She bought her sex contract from the brothel owner who possessed her with money rather randomly given to her by a man she met only briefly: Solomon Hathaway. Serena is now both the owner of a successful inn and the Black Thorn, a woman with great power in the London underworld. (This irked me — I didn’t feel Ms. Lerner made that aspect of Serena’s character believable. She doesn’t come across as someone whom people would be terrified to cross. She isn’t a killer.) Serena is adamantly alone and sees emotional connection as a deadly weakness. She pours her whole self into her inn and its kitchen and staff, and spends her nights alone.

Solomon has been wallowing in numb misery ever since he learned his beloved identical twin Elijah died in the Napoleonic Wars. He’s cut himself off from his aristocratic family and spends his days working as a tailor in his uncle’s shop. He’s depressed, lonely, and stuck. He is roused out of his despair by a cry for help from his family. His sister is getting married and a family heirloom she wishes to wear at her wedding has been stolen. Simon goes to see the Black Thorn to ask for her help in recovering the gems. He and Serena are both shocked to meet again after so many years.

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A Bride Unveiled by Jillian Hunter

Grade: C-

passion rating: warm

The first two chapters of Ms. Hunter’s A Bride Unveiled are terrific. Violet Knowlton is thirteen and growing up in the sleepy English town of Monk’s Huntley. She has three friends: her awkwardly engaging neighbor Eldie, pompous local heir Ambrose, and dashing pauper Kit. The four, under the non-watchful eye of Violet’s young governess — she’s being led astray by the bricklayer’s feckless son — bond despite their social differences. Violet, an orphan being raised by an overprotective aunt and uncle, is especially drawn to Kit. He is smart, athletic, and literally desperate to escape the future the workhouse he lives in promises. As their childhoods come to a close, I yearned to learn of the fates of the four friends.


Sadly the next twenty-eight chapters and odious epilogue are a disappointment.

As the third chapter begins, ten years have passed and Violet is recently affianced to a dreary merchant named Godfrey. She hasn’t the slightest love for him, but her now widowed aunt, whom Violet longs to make happy, feels dull mercenary Godfrey is a safe choice for Violet given her background. (Violet’s secret past isn’t revealed until the last chapters of the book and is so unstartling it’s exasperating.) At a house party hosted by the notorious Jane and Grayson Boscastle — the lovers from Ms. Hunter’s guilty pleasure The Seduction of an English Scoundrel - Violet again encounters Kit.

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Only His by Susan Mallery

Grade: D

passion rating: warm

The penultimate love scene at the end of Only His involves a giant metal vagina. Yep. True love is declared amidst a giant metal vagina. This didn’t work for me. In fact, pretty much nothing about Ms. Mallery’s latest in the Fool’s Gold series didn't. This was my first time reading a book by Ms. Mallery and I suspect it will be my last.

The heroine of this book is Nevada Hendrix. Nevada and her big wacky family live in Fool’s Gold, a town that could only exist in fiction. Everyone in the town has either an eccentric personality and/or a troubled past. Women run the place which is crime, politics, and reality free. As the story begins, Nevada is interviewing for a job as construction manager for the new casino Janack Construction is building on nearby tribal land. She’d thought she’d be interviewed by the head of the firm, Elliot Janack, but, to her horror, finds herself facing his son Tucker, who as the first line of the book points out, has seen her naked.

Ten years ago, when Nevada was in college in Los Angeles, she, on the advice of her elder brother Ethan — he and Tucker were friends for a summer in high school— looked up Tucker. The very moment she saw him, she “could only stare at the man she knew she would love for the rest of her life.” Sadly, her “love at first sight” wasn’t mutual. Tucker was already madly in love with gorgeous, famous sculptress (and utter narcissist) Caterina “Cat” Stoicasescu. One night, Cat (who is a total tool) breaks up with Tucker and tells Nevada Tucker needs her in his time of sorrow. Nevada hurries to Tucker’s sloshed side, seduces him (even though she’s a virgin), then gets her heart broken first when Tucker yowls Cat’s name as he comes and then again when, a day later, Cat takes Tucker back.

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A Scoundrel's Surrender by Jenna Petersen

Grade: D-

passion rating: hot

Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover and the couple on the cover of Ms. Petersen’s latest is downright skanky. The chick looks like a stripper at a mid-level men’s club. She’s got streaked layered hair, lots of black mascara, lip-glossed pink lips, and is aiming a sexy pout at whoever took this photo. The guy’s sporting “hot dude” stubble and a chest so smooth I suspect he waxes. They both look too modern and too much like possible porn stars. The cover of screams sizzling contemporary; its prose drones dismal historical.

A Scoundrel’s Surrender has a boorish bastard for a hero. Two years ago Caleb Talbot found out he wasn’t his father’s son and freaked out. He ran away from home, refused any contact with his loving family (who, with the exception of his older brother, had no idea why he’d dumped them), and took up drinking copiously in low-rent taverns. Caleb is a jerk with really bad timing. A few days before he did his disappearing act, he’d made love to Marah Farnsworth, the virginal best friend of his sister-in-law. When Caleb bolts, he does so without offering any explanation to Marah. The guy’s an ass.

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and that makes 50!

Today, All About Romance posted my fiftieth review! I began reviewing for them in January of 2011. If you want to see some of my reviews from earlier in the year, go to Power Search and click on Staff Reviewer Name. You can pull up my name and all fifty reviews will be there.


I've loved writing these reviews and I'm proud I've done fifty in less than ten months!

Impulsive by HelenKay Dimon

Grade: C

passion rating: hot
mini-review

Impulsive is a rather mediocre read. The heroine made not a whit of sense to me. Her behavior was so all over the map, I wanted to recommend a nice therapist to her. The hero was too long-suffering for me and way too hung up on how the heroine looked and how hot she was in the sack. I never felt he truly cared for her... he saw her as a solution for his needs rather than a fully-formed person who could compliment him.

Additionally, I found the sup-plot bad guy really lame. I did like the hero's best friend. I found him more appealing than the hero, never a good thing!

Impulsive isn't a terrible book by any means. Ms. Dimon does a lovely job of showcasing Hawaii and the customs and vistas that make it such a unique place. And she has a good ear for funny dialog. But, the love story itself isn't convincing and is even, in places, hard to make sense of. With so many better written contemporaries out there, I suggest passing on this one.

Slow Ride by Erin McCarthy

Grade: D

passion rating: hot

Slow Ride, the latest in Ms. McCarthy’s Fast Track series, is a wreck of a book. The heroine is abrasive and has an unpleasant drinking pattern; the hero, an emotionally stunted man who enables her bad behavior. I’ve read all five books in the series and this one comes in dead last.

The profoundly aggravating Tuesday Jones is having a rough time. Her father recently died and she is unable to deal with her grief in any healthy way. She continues to write “Tuesday Talladega” (her famous racing blog), and hang out with her best friend Kendall (the heroine of the last book), but mostly, she’s drinking and being an immature brat. At Kendall’s wedding, she encounters Diesel Lange, a gorgeous retired racecar driver. Diesel, who is struggling with pain and injuries from his career ending wreck, gives sloshed Kendall a ride home —she classily offers to blow him while he’s driving, an offer he politely declines. The next day, he returns to her home where she’s horribly hung-over, and drives her first to a post wedding luncheon, and then back to her car.

The two begin sleeping together and then seeing each other. I wish they’d done neither. On the night of their first real date, they are driving back to Diesel’s place when Tuesday tells him to pull over into a mini-mart so she can buy a six-pack. Diesel, who doesn’t drink because he still sometimes takes pain medication, asks her not to. He tells her he doesn’t want her to “be impaired” when he gives her an orgasm. Tuesday, rather than seeing this as a good thing, gets pissy with him. Ms. McCarthy writes: “She just wanted to win. He had no right to deny her liquor. This was a free county.” Diesel takes her to the store, she buys a six-pack, and they head to his house. Soon - after establishing that Diesel likes to be utterly in charge in the bedroom - the two are naked and ready to have sex… without a condom in sight. Tuesday, desperate for Diesel (he’s apparently wildly “well hung”) says to him, “I’m on the pill. Unless you have some gross disease, you need to fuck me right now.” And he does.

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Swept Off Her Stilettos by Fiona Harper

Grade: C

passion rating: kisses

Somewhere out there are readers who will love this book. It’s sweet, the heroine didn’t get enough love as a small child, she hides her true self under a faux sex-kitten persona, and her hunky best friend turns out to be — and this is just a shock to our girl — madly in love with the real her. I, however, am not such a reader. I found Swept off her Stilettos to be prosaic, predictable, and passionless.

Coreen Fraser had a bad mom who loved poorly. Coreen is determined to never make that same mistake and thus only likes men who are mad for her and whom she can keep at an emotional and physical distance. Coreen works hard to get these guys. She’s perfected her sexy sway, and always wears red high heels, tons of make-up, and skintight sexy vintage clothes. The book is written in first person which, for me, was a problem, because I found Coreen a self-absorbed ninny. She natters on and on about how alluring she is and how important it is that she is so alluring. She’s that person who really would say to someone she’s just met and chattered to: “But enough about me. Let’s talk about you. What do you think about me?”

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