Christmas books! Christmas books! I love Christmas books! Anthologies are hit or miss for me – short stories can go either way. Sometimes they’re perfectly pint size stories, sometimes they’re poorly paced and only serve to frustrate me that they should have been full length novels. I’m always willing to give one a go (after all, […]
Harlot by Victoria Dahl
I am an avid fan of Victoria Dahl. I love her style and her sass and so when she announced on Twitter that she was writing an erotic historical short novel, I marked the release date on my calendar and began avidly checking NetGalley in case it became available. Praise be, y’all. It did. Harlot is […]
The Duke and Miss Christmas by Amelia Gr
The Duke and Miss Christmas is a charming little novel set in Grey’s Heirs’ Club of Scoundrels series and I’d absolutely recommend it for anyone who is a fan of that series. Anyone else may find the family connections and short hands of relationships a bit confusing, but the book is delightful nonetheless. The book […]
What to Do with a Duke by Sally MacKenzi
Sally MacKenzie is one of those authors I’ve known of for years. I saw her books on shelves, heard them recommended on podcasts, but for whatever reason never picked one up. When I saw What to Do with a Duke up for request on NetGalley I jumped at the chance to get to know this […]
Finding Gabriel by Rachel Demeter
If you like historical romances, then this book is for you. Finding Gabriel, an upcoming release from Pan Macmillan, takes place in 19th century France. One snowy evening, Ariah finds a man laying half dead on the banks of the Seine. Against social convention, she takes him back to her house to nurse him back […]
Enchanted Afternoon by Susan Wiggs
Enchanted Afternoon almost counts as an Old School Romance, being written in 2002. It’s the unusual story of Helena and Michael, Helena’s journey to running a turn-of-the-century domestic violence shelter and how they created family out of their bare hands. It’s also one of the most pro-women novels I have read in a long time. […]
The Queen’s Vow: A Novel of Isabella of
The Queen’s Vow is the latest book in my on-going project of trying to read as much as I can about women leaders throughout history. I am slowly realizing, as I move through adulthood, how little I know about the women who have gone before me that have shaped the world. I know more […]
And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosse
And the Mountains Echoed is a complicated story that starts with a journey across Afghanistan and follows the ramifications of that journey over the following fifty-odd years. It’s a different kind of novel than I normally read – not just because I don’t normally indulge in Afghani fiction. I’m more used to straight narratives […]
Flowers from the Storm by Laura Kinsale
If you ever Google something like “romance canon” or “best romance novels”, Flowers in the Storm usually sends up on one of those lists. A classic of the genre, it was actually one of the first picks of the new and fast growing “Old School Romance Readers” Facebook group (of which of course I’m a […]
The Wild Queen by Carolyn Meyer
So I’m Scottish. Well, partially. But enough that I should know things about the history of the place. My mom and I went on a trip through our ancestral homelands a few months back and both of us were increasingly ashamed how often we had to Google information and stories. When we climbed back into […]