Jane Fairfield is an heiress known for her unfortunate fashion taste and her habit of saying exactly the wrong thing at any given moment. It's a reputation that she has deliberately cultivated in order to drive off potential suitors until her younger sister, Emily, comes of age and can leave the guardianship of their uncle. Emily suffers from a convulsive disorder, which Uncle Titus believes is best managed by keeping her indoors as much as possible, avoiding overstimulation, and occasionally subjecting her to whatever treatment the latest quack suggests. Jane needs to stay in her uncle's house to protect her sister and sometimes bribe doctors, and his condition for allowing her to stay until she marries is that she must accept the first offer she receives. Therefore, she must make sure that nobody offers.

Oliver Marshall is the illegitimate son of the late Duke of Claremont. (His mother's story can be found in the prequel novella The Governess Affair.) He is quietly walking a line between the working class and the aristocracy, advocating for voting reform. He aspires to a seat in the House of Commons, and although he has great ambition, he applies it subtly, never giving the powers that be the opportunity to see him making a wrong step. The Marquess of Brandenton can carry the votes of eight of his friends to Oliver's cause if he can be persuaded to join him, but in exchange he asks Oliver to teach Jane where her place is through public humiliation. But Oliver recognizes Jane as another person like himself (it is common knowledge that her father was not her mother's husband) who has always been treated as if she did not belong.

I've loved Courtney Milan's writing since before any of her books were published; I loved it on her blog, first, and I love everything about this book. I love how Oliver shows Jane that she doesn't   always have to stand against the world all on her own; I love how Jane gives  Oliver the courage to be bold. I love how Jane's frenemies, to use a rather anachronistic but wholly accurate term, develop into real friends when they reveal that they have also been playing games on multiple levels.

But wait, there is more. There are subplots. Emily has become quite talented at sneaking out of her window during her mandatory afternoon rest, and has a secondary romance with a Cambridge student from India, Anjan Battacharya. Emily's story develops to show her quiet strength and competence; a lesser author would have had Jane and Oliver rescuing her at the climax of the story. And then there's the wonderful scene when Battacharya meets Uncle Titus. And Oliver's youngest sister, called Free, advocates for women's suffrage and aspires to attend Cambridge. I'm very much looking forward to her book, The Mistress Rebellion, which will be the fourth after The Countess Conspiracy, Sebastian and Violet's story, which is set up a bit in this book.

Courtney Milan is a big part of why I read historical romance. She gets the history right, her characters properly deserve the titles of "hero" and "heroine," the dialogue is always sharp, and the love scenes always fit the characters perfectly.

Overall Grade: A+

Again, spoilers for previous books in the Dresden Files series, and again, I buy these so I read them in paperback and it has been out a while.

Harry Dresden is back from the mostly-dead, which means there's no way for him to get out of the bargain with Queen Mab that made him the new Winter Knight. After recuperating and undergoing physical therapy that includes daily threats on his life, she gives him his first order: to kill somebody who ought to be immortal.

I will get straight to the point and say that I love this series. If you don't, then there's not much that I'm going to say about it that could possibly change your mind, but I love it. One of the things that I love about it is how Harry Dresden has to fight  to avoid being turned to the "dark side" by tapping into some of the powers he has access to, and there is tons of that in this book. Many, many tons, more than I can remember in any of the other books, because the mantle of the Winter Knight is violent in really dark, vicious ways, and we the reader are deep in Harry's head, so we're exposed to all of his worst impulses even if he resists them. With approximately nine books left in the series, I'm not even sure if Harry will successfully not turn evil, but by acknowledging the struggle Jim Butcher has convinced me that if Harry were to turn evil, it would be because it was a story about a wizard being turned evil, and not an unintentional he's-the-hero-so-it's-ok kind of thing.

And although Harry's demons have gotten stronger, he is showing some signs of learning his lesson. He's starting to learn to trust his friends more and to realize that he shouldn't always make decisions based on the idea that he has to save the world alone. I wouldn't bet on him making too much personal progress too quickly - again, nine more books to fill - but he seems to be on the right track, even if at the same time there are new ways he could be dragged backwards on it.

Overall Grade: A

This review is full of spoilers for Thirteen and the Women of the Otherworld series as a whole, since it is the last book. It has been out for a year, so I think it's fair game.

A war is going on in this world and the spirit world as supernaturals take sides for and against the revelation of their existence to the human race and demons pick teams. Savannah Levine has rescued her brother Bryce from testing, but he has been injected with a virus that may yet kill him. Savannah's once exceptional magic powers are coming back after having been taken at the end of Waking the Witch but they're still shaky, and creatures are entering our world that are not supposed to be able to cross over.

I loved all of the family relationships in this book. Savannah's mother Eve, who was a witch and a half-demon and has become a part-time angel since her death, is called back into the world in the flesh to be reunited with her daughter for the first time since Savannah was twelve. Eve's book, Haunted, was in its way a story about parents letting their children go as they grow up. A large part of this book was about a mother and daughter forming an adult relationship, and although both of these women have magic powers and one of them isn't technically alive, it's still quite relate-able. Watching the demons get involved in the lives of their children and grandchildren was also good for a lot of fun; mostly they see their mortal descendents as tools or pawns in their own battles, but Lucifer seems to genuinely care for his daughter Hope, who gets abducted by the villain in hopes to use her to lure him there, and for the new granddaughter that she has at the end of the story.

I've never cared for the concept of Savannah and Adam as a couple, not so much because of the age difference as because I can't believe that a woman of twenty-one would still be in love with the same guy she's had an unrequited crush on since age twelve. People grow and change in their teens and in their twenties, and I'd think that nine years later either her taste in men would be different or he would be different. But I'm resigned to it by now, and I do like the way they interact in this book, half new lovebirds, half longtime couple that's used to each other, and both thoroughly confident in each other's abilities.

What did bother me was when Lucifer told Hope that her daughter, Nita, would take some of her power, partly because it just didn't make sense to me that Nita would only have the visions but not the chaos hunger because the latter is a side effect of living with demons. Hope didn't live with demons, Lucifer did, but Hope inherited the chaos hunger from him. But what bothered me more was that although Nita wouldn't have the chaos hunger herself, her taking some of Hope's powers would reduce her chaos hunger. It seemed to me uncomfortably as if Hope had been "fixed" by motherhood. I'm uncomfortable with pretty much all of Bitten in all its stalkerish dub-con glory, so I can't really say that this came completely out of nowhere, although most of the series is much better and not icky. But since it wasn't Hope's book, one paragraph about her didn't mess it up too badly for me.

Overall Grade: A-

This review is based on an advance copy received from the publisher when I was planning to buy one anyway because I'm quite fond of the series.

Kate Westbrook dreams on using her beauty and the assistance of her aunt to restore her and her sister's place in society to what it would have been had their father not married an actress. Though she is disappointed to learn that her aunt's plans (now that her own daughters are all married off) are actually to find her a place as a lady's companion rather than a husband, she is still determined to make the most of her opportunities and marry for the advantages it can bring, not romance.

Nick Blackshear, a young barrister, accepted years ago that Kate would not return his feelings. Besides, there has been a recent scandal in his family that means there is no way he could help her with the redemption of her family's reputation. But now her father has asked him to keep an eye on her while at events with a nobleman he hopes may further his own political ambitions.

I enjoy her unusual characters and the new twists she puts on well known tropes, plus I am fond of friends-to-lovers stories. Some other reviews have mentioned having trouble liking the characters, but I actually enjoy their practical streaks. That said, something about this book didn't work quite as well for me as Lady Awakened did. But then less than perfect Cecilia Grant is still better than a lot of other authors.

Overall Grade: B

This review is based on a free ARC received from the publisher.

The year is 1864. A young man is sent home from school facing possible expulsion to spend the holidays with his newly impoverished mother and sister in the south of England. While he is wrestling with his own demons, he at first barely notices the secrets the rest of his family is keeping. Then hostile letters and acts of mutilation against animals in the area begin, and as the lead suspect he is forced to pay attention.

This is a fantastic, dark, disturbing work, full of addiction, sexual frustration, secrets, and violence. I kept finding myself thinking of The Skull and the Nightingale from earlier this year. Although Rustication is set in a small coastal community among a poorer class than SatN's London life with occasional trips to country estates, there is a similar combination of sex, violence, and psychology interplaying in societal balances of power. I highly recommend it to fans of dark historical fiction and psychological suspense.

Overall Grade: A

Another review of something I read earlier this year while I'm working on the next book.

When Clemmie arrives at her grandmother Addie's birthday party, her grandmother, slightly dazed from her medication, calls her "Bea." This and a portrait of Addie's cousin Bea, whom Clemmie resembles, leads her on the track of long lost family secrets.

When Addie's parents died, and she was taken in by her aunt and uncle, her cousin Bea was her closest ally. Although they take different paths in life, the deep friendship between the two is the heart of the story.

I always get a kick out of Lauren Willig's Pink Carnation books, but while The Ashford Affair shares the time-slip narrative device of different plotlines running through different eras, it is a more serious book in tone. There is a lot of overlap between fans of this book and that series, but I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't line up exactly that if you love one, you must love the other.

This is sweeping story that drifts between 1999 and the years just after WWII, with a few stops before and in between, and journeys from London to Kenya to New York, examining love, family, friendship, and deeply buried secrets. Highly recommended to everybody who likes books that work in multiple timelines.

Overall Grade: A

This review is based on a free e-galley received from the publisher.

I am still here, really, although I had absolutely no time to post this since finishing it Friday morning. Shadow of the Alchemist is the latest Crispin Guest medieval noir, a series which I've been loving since the beginning.

It's 1387, and the famous alchemist Nicholas Flamel has hired Crispin Guest,
a disgraced knight now earning a living as the Tracker, to find his wife and
apprentice, who he believes have run away together. But things take a turn, and
Guest and his apprentice Jack Tucker find themselves playing a game of wits with
somebody after Flamel's secrets and revenge. Meanwhile, Henry, the son of Guest's old lord, has reappeared in his life. Is it coincidental, or is he involved?

 The Medieval Noir series is brilliant and offers everything that readers
expect from a private detective series (or as some characters explain Guest's
profession "private sheriff"): a down and out hero scraping by to make a living
but holding to his own code of ethics, mysterious women who may be more than
they seem, and in 14th century London, a dangerous city where the powers that be
fight among themselves while the common people struggle to stay alive.

 Yet this installment ends on a strangely optimistic note. One wonders where
Guest will be twelve years from this book. Will he regain his knighthood and
continue his investigations as a part of the court? Or will a falling out keep
him where he is? I only hope the series continues long enough for us to find
out.

Overall Grade: A

When our story begins Olivia Taylor-Jones is a young socialite who puts in full time hours doing volunteer work in a shelter whose biggest problem is that she wants to get her PhD in literature and then work for her living and her fiance, James Morgan, has just told her that people are talking about starting to groom him to run for senate. I don't entirely buy into those things being incompatible, considering that Dr. Biden's husband has gone from being a senator to VP and she's still a working English professor, but I digress and it doesn't really matter because Olivia's world is about to fall apart, anyway. Not only does it turn out that she is adopted, which her parents never told her, but her birth parents are Todd and Pamela Larsen, infamous serial killers currently serving life sentences.

Olivia's adoptive father passed away several years ago, and he was both the "strong one" and the parent that Olivia was closer to. She and her mother loved each other, but her mother tends to lean on Olivia to fix things and only knows how to fix things herself with money. She leaves for Europe to get away from the tabloids while Olivia is lying low. When Olivia realizes that she isn't going to be able to find a job with no references and an apartment that she can afford on the amount of her own money that is accessible in Chicago, circumstances lead her to a small town named Cainsville about an hour away. Cainsville is a strange town, covered with gargoyles but without a single church, even more insular than one expects from a small town and one where the elders still command great respect.

Pamela Larson's former lawyer, Gabriel Walsh, puts Olivia and her birth mother in touch. Pamela wants Olivia to bring reasonable doubt in the case of the fourth murder to the attention of nonprofits that work for the benefit of the wrongfully convicted. As Olivia and Gabriel investigate, Olivia begins to realize that she has a latent talent for recognizing and interpreting omens, and that Cainsville is strange in more ways than she understands.

The supernatural aspects in this book are subtle. The author includes a note at the beginning saying that if you wish to understand what's going on in Cainsville faster than Olivia does, Google the various foreign (Welsh, typically) words and phrases that appear untranslated in the text. I didn't Google any of them but I had a pretty good idea that fairies were involved from the first one that came up.

Olivia is not entirely likeable, but I'm not sure that she needs to be. Her desire to make her own way even before she has to speaks well for her, and it's an impulse to help somebody in danger that results in advice that she follows to Cainsville. But there's a level on which she is hardened, although she is also at times naive. She doesn't hesitate to use people for her own purposes any more than Gabriel the lawyer does, and there is something cold about her. Possibly a trait that she inherited from sociopathic parents, if they are guilty of any of the murders? Or a sign that she is not entirely (if at all?) human? I suspect a rather large amount of fairy blood in both Olivia and Gabriel, and if that is the case, their manipulative streaks are entirely fitting for a literally inhuman and often ruthless supernatural race. I have my theories about how this and some other information about Olivia's childhood could fit in with the murders, depending on the extent of her parents' involvement, but I don't want to get bogged down in the details here. Suffice to say that although I'm not sure I would want to spend much time with Olivia in person, I am eager to follow her through the rest of her books.

Overall Grade: A-