Unraveled by Courtney Milan

Grade: B

passion rating: hot

Over a rainy post-holiday weekend, I read - back to back - Courtney Milan’s Turner series. The series comprises three books and a novella and tells the tale, novella excepted, of the three Turner brothers, Ash (Unveiled), Mark (Unclaimed), and Smite, the hero of this novel. I found the series irresistible — taken together the books present an entrancing experience greater than that found in reading each alone. My favorite of the three is the first, Unveiled; my second, this tale of Smite and his unconventional love, Miranda Darling.

Each Turner is, in some way, an oddity. Ash is an Earl with no formal education and an inability to read; Mark, a ton darling who’s known for his treatise on and embracement of chastity; Smite, a wealthy magistrate who shuns all material and creature comforts. The three men are each acutely scarred by a childhood spent at the hands of a mother whose religious fervor devolved first into insane abuse, then into horrifying abandonment. These are books that must be read as a piece -Unraveled is firmly grounded in the brothers’ evolving relationships with one another and with Richard Dalrymple, once Smite’s closest friend and the brother of Margaret, Ash’s wife.

Ash and Mark have each found love, but, the Smite encountered in the previous books in the series seemed an unlikely candidate for intimacy. Smite is only a tad close to one person, his younger brother Mark. His relationship with Ash is strained, he lives alone with no servants, and his colleagues and those at his mercy in court see him as a zealot. He is known, unflatteringly, throughout Bristol as “Lord Justice.” Smite would be a completely solitary creature were it not for Ghost, an endearing sheepdog foisted on him by Mark. In general — there is the occasional meaningless coupling — Smite neither intimately touches nor talks to anyone.

One day he sees a young woman in his court. Smite, who has an eidetic memory, recognizes her despite the disguise she’s assumed; he’s seen her in his court before, testifying. Realizing, were she to swear to anything under oath, she’d be guilty of perjury, he dismisses the case before she can speak and, once the session is ended, goes in search of her. When he finds her, he tells her to stay out of his court or next time, she’ll find herself Australia bound or worse.

Staying out of the courts is a problem for Miss Miranda Darling. Miranda, the orphaned daughter of a pair of traveling players, lives in the slums of Bristol in Temple Parish. Those who live in Temple Parish rely not on the King’s edict for their safety and laws, but on the Patron. Miranda, in order to protect herself and her ward Robbie, does the Patron one favor a month in exchange for her and Robbie’s safety. Miranda’s theatrical background pooled with her charm makes her an ideal candidate to play roles for the Patron. A role she’s played several times is that of an innocent young lady testifying on the part of someone the Patron wants found not guilty. When Smite bans Miranda, in all her false incarnations, from the Bristol courts, Miranda worries the Patron will be displeased with her. When she tells the Patron, whose face is hidden away on the other side of an old confessional booth in a no longer used church, of Smite’s decree, the Patron tells her she’s to continue to seek out Lord Justice.

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A Lady Awakened by Cecilia Grant

Grade: A-

passion rating: hot

Ms. Grant’s excellent debut should really be titled A Lady and a Gentleman Awakened. Both the heroine, repressed Martha, and the hero, feckless Theo, are, by this novel’s end, alert to possibilities unimaginable to both prior to their relationship. In A Lady Awakened, opposites don’t merely attract; two strongly disparate people are transformed into a singular pair.

Martha Russell is twenty-one, childless, and recently freed by a riding accident from an unhappy marriage to a drunkard. She is prepared to leave the home in which she’s lived for the past year, her husband’s family seat, Seaton Park, and dutifully move in with one of her married siblings when she discovers her husband's heir is a selfish lech who, in the past, molested the female staff at Seaton Park. When the family solicitor points out the inheritance isn’t settled until it’s clear Martha’s not pregnant, Martha, a woman so virtuous it’s wearing, begins to think of defrauding her seedy brother-in-law out of the estate.

Martha decides to approach Theophilus (Theo) Mirkwood, a young man recently moved into the estate next door. Theo has been sent to rusticate in the country by his father who is justifiably concerned at Theo’s careless, irresponsible life in London. As Theo explains, the crowning blow was Theo’s “expenditure of two months’ allowance to buy a single snuffbox from Sèvres" which, he acknowledges, was “Wasteful, in fact, and foolish in the extreme. Particularly given that I don’t use snuff.” Martha offers to pay Theo to bed her; the two will have sex every afternoon until it’s clear she has or hasn’t conceived.

Theo, after a bit of thought and a peek or two down Martha’s bodice, says yes. He sees the offer as a way to have safe sex with a pretty young widow and, though he’s the heir to a fortune, his funds are currently low. He’s unconcerned about his part in the fraud — this, like most things, Theo sees as not his problem. Martha suggests the two begin immediately — time is of the essence literally here — and their relationship begins.

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my grading scorecard for 2011

Here's my grading scorecard for the 66 books I reviewed in my first year at All About Romance:


A's:  5 (7.6%)
B's: 30 (45.5%)
C's: 20 (30.3%)
D's: 10 (15.2%)
F's:  1 (1.5%)

Seductive as Flame by Susan Johnson

Grade: F

passion rating: hot

I delight in sizzling sex and absorbing ambiance in my romances, so I was sure I’d love Susan Johnson. I’ve not read any of her other books, but she’s definitely got a reputation, and I was confident her novels and I were bound to be a perfect match. Well, damn my socks, but I was wrong. I didn’t like anything about Ms. Johnson’s latest, Seductive as Flame. Not the oodles of gooey sex, not the back story and its implied approval of British economic imperialism in late 19th century Africa, nor the libertine lovers both of who are as removed from reality as is Lady Gaga’s wardrobe.

Let me elaborate.

I didn’t like the plot. From the moment fabulously wealthy, divinely handsome, sexually exceptional, linguistically prodigal, superb rider, and almost painfully well-endowed Alec Munro, the Earl of Dalgliesh, sees flame haired, multi-orgasmic, violet-eyed, lush breasted, well-traveled, lynx fur coat wearing Zelda Mackenzie, he wants to ravish her in every position possible. She feels the same way about him, and after several dull chapters where the two talk about how desperately and creatively they want to get down and dirty with each other, by page seventy, they’ve had (literally) unbelievable amounts of constant copious coitus and Zelda has fallen in love. Alec, who’s married to a super bitch, isn’t quite in love but he wants much much more of Zelda’s curves and crevices, so the two embark on an affair. Alec’s slutty psycho wife tries to first break them up and then kill them. Alec, when he’s not drinking half a bottle of whiskey for lunch or showing Zelda the joys of bondage with very special knots, works on making vast sums of money from his mines in South Africa and valiantly protecting his step-son from his nasty mom.

I didn’t like the characters. Alec is my least favorite kind of alpha-male hero. He’s screwed more women than he can remember, but even thinking about the other lovers who taught Zelda to be so bodacious in bed makes him want to hit her. He’s so cock-sure of himself that, when Zelda compliments his amorous abilities, he thinks to himself, “That’s what they all say.” He lies repeatedly to Zelda — sometimes to shut her up, other times to manipulate her into doing his will. He’s such a dick — in so many offensive ways — I kept hoping he’d suddenly be felled by some horrible, impotence-inducing disease. Zelda is no better. She’s a whiner, wails when she doesn’t get her twentieth big bang of the day, and constantly discounts the needs, schedules, and presence of others so she can have wild screaming sex anywhere, anytime with Alec. Violetta, Alec’s evil wife, is so over the top, she’s a caricature. She doesn’t have a single redeeming aspect to her — she makes Cruella DeVil look compassionate.

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How the Marquess Was Won by Julie Ann Long

Grade: B

passion rating: hot

The truth is, I’ve so loved the last two books in Ms. Long’s Pennyroyal Greenseries, I Kissed an Earl and What I Did for a Duke, that to like this book — just to like it and enjoy it as a good read — was a bummer. How the Marquess Was Won is, as I’d expect from Ms. Long, wildly well-written, peopled with complex characters, and willing to delve deeply into the nature of true love.It isn’t, however, relentlessly compelling or compulsively re-readable. Nor is it — and this is part of my discontent — the tale of an Eversea or a Redmond, the two families whose lives and loves have been chronicled in the series’ first five books.

The heroine of How the Marquess Was Won is Miss Phoebe Vale, a forthright young woman who is a teacher at Miss Marietta Endicott’s Academy for Girls. Phoebe, born in the slums of London, has secured her place in life by dint of will and intelligence. At twenty-two, she’s unmarried and feels rather uncomfortably on the proverbial shelf. Phoebe has a vibrant, enthusiastic imagination — fueled in part by the broadsheets she loves. She knows that while she may be lowly born, her aspirations are as valid as anyone’s. She appreciates the stability Endicott’s Academy has brought her — she arrived there at age ten, swept off the streets of Seven Dials by a mysterious benefactor — but she wants more. As the book begins, Phoebe is contemplating saying yes to two opportunities, one which would take her to Africa to teach, and the other, a short-term affair (just two days), which entails being a chaperone to former student Lisbeth Redmond, the niece of Fanchette and Isaiah Redmond.

Lisbeth, is at twenty, a diamond of the first, albeit shallow, water. She will make the perfect wife for any lord and, the hero, Julian Spenser, Marquess Dryden, is known for his perfection. Dryden, dubbed by the scandal sheets who track his every move as “Lord Ice,” has spent years ruthlessly, carefully, and flawlessly amassing his fame and fortune. His father was a reprobate who gambled away the family’s wealth and property. Julian has gotten it all back, whilst earning the slavish devotion of the ton - all but one last piece of land. That bit of English countryside, currently owned by Isaiah Redmond, will be Julian’s when he marries the lovely Lisbeth.

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