Bookish Thoughts

I adore Sarah MacLean, but this one took a while to grab me. Maybe it's just because I could see what was coming. Which is silly. I read romance for the predictability, and Sarah MacLean especially because I love what she does with the tropes. I guess I was just eager to get to the meat of it, and it started a bit slow. Mostly, though, I'm excited for what's coming next. MacLean has been laying the groundwork for her next series: Hell's Belles. I can hardly wait.

It only took a couple of chapters for me to remember how much I absolutely love Sarah MacLean's books. Actually it didn't really take that long, but that's when I came up for air because I needed to sleep. Hattie is a force of nature in this book, and I fell in love with her from the first moment I met her. So it's no wonder that Beast did, too. The banter between these two was perfect, the sex scenes were amazing, and the plot was thrilling. In my head, Beast was played by Tom Hardy, thanks to all his grunting. Being able to visualize the hero like that made this book all the more enjoyable. Also, half the fun of these books, now that I've read literally everything MacLean has written, is seeing the cameos of characters from earlier books. I'm sure they were there in the other books I've read. But since I worked through her books out of order, I missed a lot of them. Here I was able to recognize all sorts of minor characters and it really makes her worl...

I've been waiting to get to Georgiana's book for so long. I loved her cameos back in MacLean's Love by Numbers  books, and seeing her happily married in a later book had me itching to read her story. But of course I had to read the rest of the series first for the proper setup. And knowing what was coming made it that much more fun to watch a disguised Georgiana flirt with an oblivious Duncan. The attraction between these two is there from the very first pages, which I appreciate. Slow burns have nice payoffs, but it's also a lot of fun when the two people are attracted to each other from the get go and all their obstacles are external. And boy are there some obstacles in this one. Though it basically boils down to the fact that both of them have built their empires on secrets and manipulation. They've been lying to each other and about themselves for so long that they barely know how to tell the truth anymore. Especially about the important things. But that jus...

I was hesitant heading into this book. A lot of romance is somewhat contrived, but this premise seemed a bit much. Twelve years previously the heroine faked her own death and the hero was blamed for it. She disappeared and he had to live with a reputation as the "Killer Duke", which pushed him underground. And somehow the two of them are going to overcome this disastrous first meeting to find true love. It was a tall order. But I should know by now to trust MacLean. Halfway through the book she had completely won me over. It helped that the sex scenes were some of the hottest MacLean has ever written. But she's also just really good at finding the humanity in these absurd situations. She's also good at finding reasonable justifications for seemingly monstrous actions (I'm really excited for the last book in her Bare Knuckle Bastards series for this very reason). So ultimately I enjoyed this book. It wasn't my favorite MacLean, but it wasn't my least fa...

It's such a treat to be this close to reading all of an author's work and still be finding new favorites. One Good Earl Deserves a Lover  is definitely my favorite of MacLean's work. It has the adorably geeky and naive Phillipa, who is sure that she can conquer all her fears with knowledge. It has the incredibly repressed Cross who's so haunted by his past that he's denying himself every possible bit of pleasure. It has fun side plots and a wealth of interesting secondary characters. All that and a heist to boot. It's almost like this book was written just for me. Actually, this book put me in mind of a historical version of The Kiss Quotient . It's never stated or even hinted that Pippa might be on the spectrum, but that also was really a concept in the 1800s. She is described as strange. She hopes for nothing more than a kind husband who will let her go her own way. She's hungry for knowledge and follows her own pursuits without ever really caring ho...

I'm starting the last of Sarah MacLean's finished series, which is really impressive considering I only started reading her books a year or so ago. I can't remember the last time I tore through an author's entire backlog so quickly. But I'm getting ahead of myself - there are still a few of her books left that I haven't read. I don't expect that to be the case for long, though. This series focuses on the four co-owners of a gaming hell. Each has fled society for a different reason, each believes he is beyond redemption. Each will fall in love and be proven wrong. First up is Bourne, who lost his entire estate in a card game ten years prior. Since then he's focused only on regaining his land and getting revenge against the man who took it from him. When the land is attached to the dowry of his childhood friend, he coerces her into marriage. But he gets a lot more than he bargained for. Penelope has been out in society for nearly a decade by the time s...

Romance novels are all about emotional catharsis. The better the book, the more wrung out and satisfied I feel at the end of it. So when I come across one where I just cry straight through the last five chapters, well, that's the dream. Eleven Scandals to Start... is about Juliana, the Italian half-sister of the St. John brothers who found love in the first two books in this series. I loved Juliana from the first moment. She's feisty and brave. And even though she's unsure about what she wants and what her place in society is, she doesn't let that stop her from defending herself. Her hero is Simon, also known as the Duke of Disdain. He cares for nothing but his reputation, and Juliana confounds him. But Simon won me over, over the course of this book, in the most delightful way. Interacting with Juliana teaches him that love and family are more important that reputation and tradition. And that a life without fun isn't worth much, even if you have the respect of ...

It won't be long before I've read everything Sarah MacLean has ever written. All but two of her books are sitting on my shelf waiting for me to get around to them. I've read enough of them now that I'm starting to recognize characters across the different books, which only makes me want to read more. I need to hear the stories of all these amazing women and how they found the loves of their lives. MacLean's second book focuses on Isabel, the destitute daughter of a deceased Earl who's trying her best to keep the estate running until her younger brother comes of age and can take a stab at a fresh start. She's proud and self-sufficient and definitely doesn't need to be rescued. (Except maybe financially.) When she crosses paths with Lord Nicholas, who has recently been named a "Lord to Land" in a popular magazine and is fleeing London until his infamy passes, sparks fly almost immediately. Isabel is an absolute delight, and I loved everything...

Saying that this isn't my favorite Sarah MacLean book is a bit like saying that The Truth  isn't my favorite Discworld  book: it's still pretty damn good. MacLean's books are so consistently good that the variation within them is both heightened and almost meaningless. This is the story of Lily and Alec. Lily is Alec's ward, though Alec doesn't actually discover this until she finds herself in the center of a scandal and he swoops in to repair her reputation as much as he can. This dynamic isn't my favorite thing in the world, but MacLean pulls it off pretty well. Mostly by not having is be a long-established thing. Alec was a bit frustrating as a hero. He's got this tragic backstory that leads to commitment issues. But it drags out so long that when he finally spilled his guts I barely killed. Just get over it and admit you love this girl, I wanted to scream. But other than that, he's a very honorable (possibly too honorable), intelligent, kind ...

This is Sarah MacLean's first book, and it's pretty much guaranteed that I will now track down and read everything she's written. It didn't feature any of the characters I've come to love from her more recent books. But it does have the wonderful, bold Callie and Gabriel, who can't help but fall head over heels for her. Callie has spent the last decade playing by the rules. She has an immaculate reputation and nothing else to show for it. When her younger sister gets engaged, and it looks like Callie is destined for a life of spinsterhood, she sets out to enjoy all the things she's been denying herself. Along the way she captures the attention of notorious rake, Gabriel. Gabriel has just discovered his half-sister, and he needs help introducing her into society. He strikes a bargain with Callie - she helps his sister and he'll help her. But before he knows it, he's in way over his head. This book was a ton of fun, and Callie strikes an excellent ...

Sarah MacLean may officially be one of my favorite authors. One of those "buy a book just because she wrote it" authors. I've read three so far (with two more sitting on my shelf), and I'm in love. This one wasn't about new love, but rather a second chance at old love, after everything went wrong. It's about Sophie's older sister, Sera, who went missing after a traumatic stillbirth. She shows up years later to demand a divorce from her husband, the duke. The only problem is that the minute she disappeared, he realized how much he loved her, and now the last thing he wants is to divorce her. So her sets about planning to win her back. This book is filled to the brim with sweet, sweet angst. Sera and Malcolm have a wealth of issues to work out. Flashbacks help fill in how things went so very, very wrong. And the question hanging over the whole book is whether love is enough. It's a romance novel, so of course love wins the day. But what I appreciat...

One of the things I'm discovering as I dip my toe into the Romance waters is that this is a very personal genre. It's formulaic, sure. Two people meet, are attracted, face a variety of obstacles, and ultimately admit that they love each other. There's a kiss or a proposal or a marriage or something to cement that happily ever after. But for the broad strokes, you know what's going to happen. And so, moreso than in other genres, the appreciation of romance comes down to the details. Are these characters you enjoy rooting for? Is this someone you would be attracted to? Do you find the obstacles believable? And then it gets to be more explicitly about preferences. Historical vs contemporary. Steamy sex scenes vs chaste kissing. Friends to lovers or enemies to lovers or love at first sight. The point I'm trying to make here is that, in evaluating whether or not you liked a particular romance, you end up revealing a lot about yourself. I think that may be part of why ...

Sometimes you just want to be happy and know that everything's going to be alright. Especially with everything going on in the world right now, there's comfort in a formulaic, happy story. I've never read a proper romance before, and I've been meaning to rectify that for some time. Now that I finally have, well, I have half a mind to jettison my current to-read list and read nothing but romance until Trump is out of office. I'm not going to do that. But I'm definitely going to start reading more romance novels. They provide a fantastic anti-dote to the bleakness of the world at large. The one I read, The Rogue Not Taken , was funny and steamy and uplifting. It's about Sophie and King and their journey from enemies to lovers. Sophie and King only know each other by reputation. She's a "Dangerous Daughter", the youngest of a newly-minted Earl who bought his title and whose daughters are doing their utmost to land titled husbands and secure ...