Rose Sweetly is a mathematical genius with a passion for astronomy. Aside from her work, all she wants is a quiet life. For that, she has to guard her reputation, particularly because too many people will see a middle class black woman as not a lady and somebody of whom advantage can be easily taken. Stephen Shaughnessy, novelist and author of the "Ask a Man" column in the newspaper published for and by women which featured in the previous book in the series, is widely known as a rake. Rose knows that he's the last man that she should even let anybody think she associates with. Nevertheless, when he appears under the pretense of wanting to learn about astronomy for his next novel, she agrees to teach him.

I adored this book. Stephen is the best sort of romance rake: he genuinely likes women, he never hurts anybody, and he never pressures Rose to risk anything she doesn't want to. He loves her for her brilliance and the way she sees the world, and he makes it clear that if she marries him he'll support her continuing her work. Rose starts the book having learned to keep her head down and stay out of trouble as a method of survival; by the end she learns to take a stand for herself and her family, and when to dare to be a little bit outrageous. And when she *does* stand up for her sister... I can't give specifics without spoilers, but I love that Stephen joins in by threatening to help her rather than taking over the lead. Courtney Milan just writes the best beta heroes.

This *might* have became my new favorite Courtney Milan novel, except that as a novella, there just isn't enough of it to unseat the wonder that is The Suffragette Scandal. Which isn't to say that it feels too short in itself: it is exactly the right length for its own purposes.

Overall: A+

Frederica ("Free") Marshall publishes a newspaper by, for, and about women. She's an investigative reporter in the mold of Nellie Bly, and she has her share of enemies. One of them, James Delacey, is currently behind a scheme to ruin her paper by making it appear that it is plagiarizing from other papers.

Edward Clark was born Edward Delacey, James's older brother, but has been out of the country and unheard from in so long that he's about to be legally presumed dead and his title passed to his younger brother. Edward is fine with that. What he's not fine with is that James's scheme would also ruin Stephen Shaughnessy, the little brother of his childhood best friend. When he initially approaches Free with part of his story (leaving out that James is his brother and that his motive is protecting Stephen) he attempts to blackmail her into working with him. She blackmails him right back, and accepts.

This is quite possibly my new favorite romance, period. Free is a force of nature. She knows every bit of how ugly the world can be; she frequently subjects herself to it deliberately for the sake of a story. But she sees that ugliness and then finds bits of it that she can fix. And I love how Edward was utterly bowled over by her from the beginning. The author's note says that Milan's original intent was for Free to meet some guy who was opposed to women's rights, and I'd probably be writing a very different review if that hadn't changed. My favorite thing about Edward is that, even if he isn't always sure that there's much hope for Free to succeed, he never for a second thinks that she's wrong or needs to change.

There's also a secondary romance that was quite sweet, although not as integrated into the main plot as the one in The Heiress Effect. And as always with Milan's books, the dialogue was wonderful. I can hardly wait for the concluding novella in the series. For that matter, I can hardly wait for the next series after this.

Overall: A

Rumor has it that Lucien, Duke of Belliston, is a vampire. When a woman is discovered dead with bite marks on her throat, Sally Fitzhugh - certain that the vampire stories are nonsense and this murder has been staged to frame him - intervenes. The two join forces to find out who is behind the murder and possibly that of the Duke's parents, years before, which had been blamed on his mother.

This book is a delight. It's full of adventure, romance, and humor, most particularly in the form of a pet stoat. Sally has grown up to be a formidable heroine, brave but not foolishly so. She comes across as a sort of successor to Miss Gwen for the next generation. And Lucien, although his baggage sometimes temporarily gets the best of him, displays remarkable endurance. They make a perfect couple.

The only slight disappointment from this book is one that I have trouble describing because it would be incredibly spoilery. The best I can do is: although for most of the book, the characters believe that the murders are connected to the ongoing plot of the series, it turns out they have nothing to do with it. Change the names and have the characters not have a theory about who is behind the murders (just a need to investigate) and this could have been any stand alone romance. It was a fun one, but it was missing a crucial element of the series, as far as I'm concerned.

Overall Rating: B+

Theoretically The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla is released tomorrow, but since I didn't have an ARC, just a copy that shipped early from B&N, I wouldn't be surprised if you could find it already, too.

Derek Hollbrook, Viscount Banfield, and Clementine Grey were betrothed when he was seventeen and she was fourteen. For him, it was love at first sight. Now it's seven years later and they're finally to be married. But Clementine is terrified that her difficult childhood with a mother who behaved abusively to her father (though not to her) and her father's drinking will make it impossible for her to be the wife he deserves, or a mother to the children he will need. She initially plans to run away with a friend, Prince Nasser, and though she tells Derek about this, it doesn't exactly help him learn to trust her.

This is not my favorite book by Delilah Marvelle. As usual, the dialogue is wonderful and all the characters are interesting. And I liked the premise itself. However, the resolution seemed rushed and incomplete. Derek and Clementine stumble into the School of Gallantry and Derek is taken on as a pupil, but we don't really see the school playing a major factor in his learning to be a better husband by being a friend to his wife. The only scene of the actual school that we see, not counting the impromptu session before his official enrollment, doesn't serve any purpose except for providing a touchstone to link this book with the others in the series. His conversation with Prince Nasser is more relevant to his development. And there's no indication of how Clementine learns to overcome her fears of repeating her mother's destructive behaviors and be more affectionate with her husband. Although the official school is for men, I think Clementine was as much in need of tutoring as Derek if not more and could have benefited from some private sessions in confidence apart from being given a bag of bondage equipment. Then at the end we go straight from her not wanting children and not having slept with her husband since their wedding night to her deciding she wants babies immediately. We haven't seen that she's feeling secure in them as a couple yet before she announces that she'd like to add some more. Yes, logically a viscount needs an heir so they aren't going to be putting that off for long, but I'd have liked to see her having learned to be a happy wife before deciding she had gotten to a point where she was ready to be a mother, especially since the practicalities of them having sex while making sure they avoid pregnancy had already been dealt with in the plot so it wasn't like that wasn't on the table. (In fact, if only the mention of being ready to have a child could have been omitted from the final chapter before the epilogue entirely, there could still have been a baby in the epilogue I would have assumed she'd gone through those stages a little more slowly and it would have felt a little more natural. Although I would still probably have rolled my eyes a little at the cliche of the epilogue baby.)  The pacing just generally feels a bit off, without enough work having been done on Clementine's part, and with her issues having been fixed all in one step. That said, I'm still looking forward to Brayton's book just as eagerly as I have been since he was first introduced.

Overall: B

Tom has been Conrad's servant and friend for ten years. So far neither of them has admitted that their desires go beyond that, but when the Captain begins to suspect, they decide that if they are going to be condemned anyway, there's no point in refraining from the crime. And that's only the beginning....

This is my favorite of Alex Beecroft's shorter works that I've read so far. It packs a lot of action into a story that I read in under forty-five minutes. Although our heroes each have some doubts about making the first move, neither do they dither until the end about confessing their feelings. And there are pirates. The pirates are lots of fun.

Overall grade: A

Blessed Isle is framed as a joint diary by Harry, a captain with his first command, and Garnet, a lieutenant, in which they recount the story of how the loss of the ship and their being stranded finally gave them the opportunity to stop hiding their love.

I'm normally a big fan of Alex Beecroft, but I felt comparatively cool about this book, and I think it was the diary format. First, it meant it was told in alternating first person perspectives, and Harry in particular has something of a florid prose style. In a way it shows Beecroft's talent in making the first person narrators of this story not sound like the third person narrators of the others, but practically, I didn't enjoy the narrative voices of this one as much. Secondly, it may be silly considering that this is a romance and obviously our heroes are going to find happiness somewhere, but the knowledge that they were writing this diary somewhere after the fact, and apparently not from jail since they make references to going outside to write, made the rest of their travails a bit less immediate.

I don't regret having read this book, but I don't love it the way I love False Colors, either.

Overall grade: B

It's Alex Beecroft week here, because I put a lot of requests in through Overdrive at my library, and I read three novellas this weekend. Also, I'm currently working my way through a massive ARC hoping I can finish it just before the release date.

It's 1752, and Robert Hughes is a lieutenant in the British Navy. He's in love with fellow lieutenant Hal Morgan, who suffers from unrequited love for Captain Hamilton. Robert decides to declare his love for Hal just when Hal, in the depths of despair, is about to confess to Robert about his love for the Captain. But Robert is known as a bit of a rogue and a clown, his university education and lack of sea experience making it hard for him to fit in, and Hal doesn't believe that Robert's feelings for him can possibly match the purity of his love for the Captain. He refuses to believe it without proof.

In the past, I've only read Alex Beecroft's full length novels. I love them, but while False Colors, for example is a wider ranging seafaring novel centered on a romance but with both heroes also having various adventures apart, this novella is much more focused as a romance. As always, there's a balance between realism and idealism. Beecroft doesn't shy away from the fact that these men are living in a time when the Royal Navy punished sodomy with death, but after Hal comes to realize that Hamilton will never return his love, we are left able to believe that he and Robert will be able to find happiness together.


Overall grade: A

A Case of Possession is the second book in the A Charm of Magpies series, the first of which I reviewed here last fall.

As the book opens, Crane is being blackmailed over his relationship with Day. Crane could easily run back to China, but he won't leave Day behind. Day, meanwhile, is on a watchlist under suspicion of having turned warlock because the other justicars don't know that his sudden increase in magical power has been caused by his sexual bond with Crane. If that wasn't enough, London is being invaded by giant rats of Sumatra.

"Giant rats of Sumatra" is actually in the "product warnings" for this book. If I hadn't been awaiting the sequel to The Magpie Lord already, K.J. Charles would have had me at "giant rats of Sumatra." I love references to outside things and I love things that are mentioned but never explained, so I could only have been more excited if there was a warning for The Noodle Incident.

Generally, I love this book almost as much as I love the first one. Almost. I'll get the things that I didn't love as much out of the way first, since ultimately they're less important. First of all, in the first book I thought the time it took for Crane and Day to have sex and the various near-misses along the way made sense in the course of the story and for the characters. This book starts with them in an established relationship, so in the abstract it would make sense for there to be more sex throughout the book... but the first "sex" scene in the book is a dream sequence that takes place before we actually get our heroes into the same room, and the pacing didn't seem quite as natural. To me it felt a bit like somebody suggested that we needed to get to the sex faster, but since there wasn't a place for it to actually happen yet, Day had a dream. Secondly, Day doesn't get to sling around magic and kick butt quite as much in this book; given the emphasis on how much smaller he is than Crane, I thought it was important to the balance of power between them in the first book that above his being talented and brave, he is specifically able to throw somebody across a room using magic if he so chooses. Crane can say that Day's always in charge even if he's chained to the bed as much as he wants, but it's also true that Crane really couldn't physically overpower Day if he honestly resisted, or at least not without a serious fight, since Crane does have some ability to resist magic. The big magic showdowns in this book always include Day's other associates, so I'm not sure it's as clear just how dangerous he is in his own right this time around.

However. All of that pales next to how much I love all the things I love in this book. The story of the giant rats and the blackmail plot would be a great way to spend an afternoon even in the absence of the romance. And the tensions and anxieties in the relationship are quite believable ones; these are both men with considerable determination to protect the people who matter to them, and as a result neither are all that comfortable being taken care of. They have to find a balance of when to ask for help from each other. The big declaration of love scene is brilliant and so perfectly suited to both of them. We also get to come to know Day's associates a bit more, whom I hope we get to spend more time with in the third book, especially Esther.

I have a shelf full of ARCs I need to read and I'm debating if I can justify going back to read the short story that takes place in between The Magpie Lord and A Case of Possession next. I can't wait for bo

Confession time (this could be Librarian Shaming time if I took a picture with a sign): I spent a fair bit of time reading Les Miserables fan fic in high school and college. Not even about the musical, for the most part: based on the novel, or as it was affectionately known, "the brick." And really, the decrease in my reading it had more to do with a decrease in new material in the segments of it that interested me than in any "moving on" on my part. I still read new chapters in the epic works of my favorite authors when they appear. Specifically I liked the revolutionaries, and that was where I first really discovered slash. As a Trekkie, you'd have thought I'd have run into it before that, but what can I say? For some reason it made more sense to me to start by seeking out more about comparatively minor characters that Victor Hugo nevertheless gave complete personalities while telling us only about a small part of their lives than to look online for more stories about the main characters of three years of television shows and six movies. (I did a little of that later.)

I digress, but all of this is to say that I still have a fondness for good, solid, historical m/m. Alex Beecroft would be the best previous example of the kind of thing that I like. And I like historical fantasy. So when I saw that The Magpie Lord by K.J. Charles was available through Overdrive, I put in a request for my library to purchase it. (Because no matter how promising something sounds, I try new-to-me authors through the library if I possibly can.)

Lucien Vaudrey, the new Lord Crane, has just returned to England after the deaths of his father and elder brother after spending two decades in China. Since his return, he appears to have been placed under a curse that causes him to attempt to commit suicide. His loyal servant Merrick suspects the magical cause and suggests that they should consult a shaman. A friend puts them in touch with Stephen Day. (It's a little unclear if he is a shaman; the impression I get was that the term isn't used in England but that it refers to the same type of practitioner.) Day finds the magical artifact that was used to place the curse and neutralizes it, but realizes that somebody may have used it to murder the late father and brother and then left it to kill Lucien when he returned. Crane sympathizes with the reasons why somebody may have wanted his father and brother dead, but Day is a justicar whose duties include tracking down those who commit crimes with magic, and so he goes with Crane to his ancestral home to investigate further.

I enjoyed the fantastical Victorian world that Charles created. I'm a little unclear on how widespread magic is, still: it was implied several times that a person who uses magic could be prosecuted for witchcraft, period, by the civil authorities, not just punished by the justicars for what they did with that magic, and yet all the characters in the story seemed pretty open about who used it. Maybe it's a country vs. city thing, combined with Crane just having returned from China where shamans work openly? Maybe that will become clearer as the series goes on. And I enjoy the two main characters, both separately and how well balanced they are as a couple. Lord Crane is a survivor, strong and resourceful, and deeply committed to being different from his father and brother. Day, although physically unimpressive because he burns so much energy on magic, is a powerful magician and often takes the lead when danger looms. And although I would have said before reading this book that I was thoroughly sick of servants who are apparently their employer's best friend, the unique background between Lord Crane and Merrick made their relationship thoroughly believable and Merrick completely enjoyable.

I'm eagerly anticipating the next book in the Charm of Magpies series.

Overall Grade: A-

I started reading the School of Gallantry series just before the second one came out, Lord of Pleasure. Delilah Marvelle was promoting it on Smart Bitches Trashy Books, having been told that the publisher was planning on dropping the series and hoping that another could be convinced to pick it up if it sold well. Years and a couple of other trilogies later, she's gone to self publishing and released another full length book in the series and this novella with more to come, and it was worth the wait. (At one point on Facebook before she began self-publishing the books she asked how long we would wait for another title in a series. I responded that I'm still a G.R.R.M. fan so apparently I haven't hit my limit yet.)

The series is built around a school for seduction that an aging French courtesan runs for a select group of men. They overlap in time and share some characters but can be read in any order. However, Romancing Lady Stone touches only slightly on the school. It explains some backstory and we are told will also link to characters that will appear in her next planned series.

Now for the details: Konstantin Alexie Levin has until recently provided protection for powerful criminals and others who require muscle, but is now trying to make a living by less violent means. Now a deposed French duke has offered him a third of his property in return for saving his life and wishes to give it to him now, as soon as Konstantin can leave Russia and meet him in London.

Lady Cecilia Stone wakes up in a coach in Russia, realizing that she has been robbed and drugged. Her traveling companion has abandoned her and she is alone in Russia with no money, in need of reaching St. Petersburg where she plans to talk her son out of marrying an actress. Konstantin, who is traveling in the coach, offers to escort her to St. Petersburg and help her find her son.

This is a substantial novella with well constructed characters; Cecilia's concern for the future of her daughters should anything damage the family reputation back in London feels justified, and Konstantin's acceptance of that fact once her son drives it home for him marks him as a worthy hero. English and Russian society do come across as feeling like two different worlds, and when the happily-ever-after arrives, it feels like both a viable solution and not such a painfully obvious one as to make the reader think that there shouldn't have been a problem in the first place.

If you haven't read the School of Gallantry novels, this will give you a taste of the dialogue, strong grasp of setting, and sexuality level of the series. If you have, this will make the wait for book four a bit more bearable.

Overall Grade: A