LORD CAREW'S BRIDE by Mary Balogh

PUBLISHER: Signet, 6/1995

REISSUED: Bantam, 2/2010

GENRE: Fiction/Historical Romance

SETTING: England

MY GRADE: A

SYNOPSIS: Jennifer's cousin Samantha Newman is smarting after she too is toyed with by Lord Kersey. In the midst of her heartbreak, she seeks solace from her new friend, the disabled gardener Hartley Wade. If only she knew that Hartley is secretly Lord Carew, and that he hides more than extraordinary wealth: a passionate secret held deep in his heart that only her love can reveal.

MY THOUGHTS: This was very enjoyable right from the start. Hero and heroine meet just eight pages into the story, and it's less than 300 pages. The story takes place six years after Dark Angel, where we first met eighteen-year-old Samantha. She's twenty-four now and less than a year away from inheriting a fortune from her late parents. 

Samantha had her heart broke in the previous novel and that's turned her against falling in love and getting married. She meets Hartley by chance and they become fast friends. She's not attracted to him in a romantic way but he falls in love with her right away.  

Hartley seems slightly depressed. He's your typical nice guy without a bad bone in his body. He even cries a few times. He isn't happy about being single and is very sad when Samantha has to go back to London just a few days after meeting her, so he follows her there in hopes of catching a few glimpses of her without her knowing about it. She's genuinely happy to see him again and agrees to marry him though she's not in love with him. That part was a little too sudden to suit me. At this point she still doesn't know who he really is. She's actually horrified to know he's in love with her. She thinks that the relationship can only go downhill from there if you start out being in love with your spouse. 

Lionel, from Dark Angel, is back from abroad and he's here to stir up drama. A sad secret is revealed about him being involved with Hartley's childhood injury that caused him to become crippled. 

Sir Albert Boyle and Rosalie from Dark Angel are in here. They've been married for six years and have three children.

Jennifer and Gabriel from Dark Angel are in here and have three children.

There's nothing I disliked about this story. I like that Hartley has emotions and though I do prefer alpha males in fiction, I did enjoy reading about the opposite. He's very mild-mannered but we do see him get angry/jealous when he finds out about Samantha's past love interest.

DARK ANGEL by Mary Balogh

ORIGINAL PUBLICATION: Signet, 8/1994 

REISSUE: Bantam, 2/2010 

GENRE: Fiction/Historical Romance

SETTING: England

MY GRADE: B

SYNOPSIS: Jennifer Winwood has been engaged for five years to a man she hardly knows but believes to be honorable and good: Lord Lionel Kersey. Suddenly, she becomes the quarry of London's most notorious womanizer, Gabriel Fisher, the Earl of Thornhill. Jennifer has no idea that she is just a pawn in the long-simmering feud between these two headstrong, irresistible men—or that she will become a prize more valuable than revenge.

MY THOUGHTS: This was better than anticipated but still lacking in the believable love department. Jennifer is your typical easygoing person who's just anxious to get married and start a new life. She's days away from marrying Lionel, whom she barely knows yet is "so very, very dearly" in love with. He's twenty-five and she's twenty. He's got some secrets that get revealed to her at the very end. He was forced by his father into doing the right thing so he makes some confessions. 

Gabriel is twenty-six, and "very dark and very tall." He's become an outcast since everyone in town thinks he's guilty of something that he's really innocent of. He also knows of Lionel's secrets and wants revenge against him so Jennifer is used as a pawn in his game. It backfires. Two people who aren't in love with each other are forced to marry and of course they fall in love with one another in the course of a few days. The span of the story is just a couple weeks. The novel is shorter in length, 300 pages, but there wasn't really a need to condense the timeline within the story. I don't know why Jennifer and Gabriel couldn't have known each other for a few months, at least. So I wasn't happy with that. Another thing that bothered me is that the majority of the story takes place at a couple different parties. 

Jennifer's eighteen-year-old cousin Samantha is in this story almost as much as Jennifer is and I don't like that. Samantha's the star of her own novel, Lord Carew's Bride, so some of her should have been saved for that book. I do like that she's fallen in love with someone she shouldn't have.

I don't understand the title of Dark Angel. I assume it's referring to Jennifer but she's not dark in personality or coloring. The year this takes place wasn't given either, so it's somewhere during the Regency period of 1811-1820.

There's an update on Gabriel and Jennifer in the sequel of sorts, Lord Carew's Bride.

 

DREAMING OF YOU by Lisa Kleypas

PUBLISHER: Avon, 1994

GENRE: Fiction/Historical Romance

SETTING: England

MY GRADE: C

SYNOPSIS: In the shelter of her country cottage, Sara Fielding puts pen to paper to create dreams. But curiosity has enticed the prim, well-bred gentlewoman out of her safe haven—and into Derek Craven's dangerous world. 

A handsome, tough and tenacious Cockney, he rose from, poverty to become lord of London's most exclusive gambling house—a struggle that has left Derek Craven fabulously wealthy, but hardened and suspicious. And now duty demands he allow Sara Fielding into his world—with her impeccable manners and her infuriating innocence. But here, in a perilous shadow-realm of ever-shifting fortunes, even a proper "mouse" can be transformed into a breathtaking enchantress—and a world-weary gambler can be shaken to his cynical core by the power of passion... and the promise of love. 

MY THOUGHTS: I don't have much to say about Sara. She's not your typical heroine because she's cavorting behind her boyfriend's back with Derek. She's a twenty-five-year-old author who writes under a pseudonym yet a little boy in her neighborhood asks her how her next book is coming along. Not sure how he knows who she is since the book uses a pen name.

I like Derek even though he has no scruples to speak of. He's around thirty but doesn't know his exact age, which is ridiculous. He was raised by prostitutes and they certainly would have know when or around the year he was born. He's written just like a character from the time this book was published, 1994, or one published earlier, and I do like that a lot. He's gruff. I like learning about his tough background and knowing about all the horrible things he had to do as a child to make money. I want to say I'm glad he got rich and did something with his life but some of the things he did to get said money makes me cringe. 

His ex-mistress Joyce is a villain. I liked her terrible actions but not how she went about them. If you're going to harm someone or try to get revenge like she did quite a few times, including setting someone up to get raped, aren't you going to try hard to keep people from finding out you're behind it? Most would but not her. There's a scene (chapter 8) where Derek does something to her that's quite disturbing. I don't like at all how she was dealt with at the end after a major incident.

There's one ridiculous thing that runs throughout the entire story. Somehow everyone at Craven's just happens to have read a book of Sara's or had it read to them, and they think the fictional character Mathilda is real despite being told by Sara that she's fake. Many people claim to have seen her around town. It was funny the first time someone said it, the poor thing didn't understand what fiction meant, apparently, but the repeated spotting of Mathilda went on for far too long. One other thing that bothers me is that right at the beginning, Sara shoots and kills someone in defense of someone else, and it's basically swept under the rug. In real life the shooter would have to deal with it emotionally but Sara didn't deal with it at all.

I don't know what year this takes place nor the timespan but it seems like maybe a couple months, then the epilogue is around close to a year later. The story was just alright with almost all of it taking place at Derek's establishment, a brothel and gaming house called Craven's. It should have ended right after Derek and Sara got married since it dragged a lot after that. Too much talk of domestic things and clothes. I cannot put my finger on why I feel this way but I just don't think Derek and Sara make a good match.

This is my sixth Kleypas book and the fifth to get no higher than a C-grade. I had to abandon reading Midnight Angel in 2019 at around page 125 because it was so boring. The only one I've liked is Where Passion Leads.

MIDSUMMER MAGIC by Catherine Coulter

PUBLISHER: Onyx, 12/1987
GENRE: Historical Romance
SETTING: Scotland, England, 1810

SERIES: Magic trilogy, #1
MY GRADE: D

SYNOPSIS: Clever, beautiful Frances Kilbracken disguised herself as a mousy Scottish lass to keep Hawk, the notoriously rakish and dashing Earl of Rothermere, from being forced to marry her. But she was chosen as his bride for that very reason. Wedded, bedded, and finally deserted, Frances quickly shed her dowdy facade to become glittering London's most ravishing and fashionable leading lady...only to find she had roused the ire--and ignited the passions--of her faithless husband. But even as Hawk claimed rights to her body, Frances swore never to allow him to enter her heart. How could she trust this man who made women his playthings? yet how could she resist the burning kisses and soft caresses that plundered her yielding flesh...until they reached the deep core of her love...

MY THOUGHTS: This was beyond boring and it was a long 412 pages. The title really doesn't fit the contents. There really wasn't much of a plotline. Frances, nineteen, didn't want to marry anyone, let alone move to England to marry Hawk, who's twenty-six. She's incredibly immature and not enjoyable to read about. I really came to dislike her. Some reviewers see her first time with Hawk (p. 138) as rape but I don't. She made it clear that she didn't want to have sex but gave in when he told her to "just lie there." The third time Hawk wanted to have sex with her she hid in another room. Give me a break. She's always throwing fits, telling Hawk she "hates" him and I got tired of it. She even punched him in the stomach once, told him she wished his "toe would rot off" and wanted him to suffer a head injury. Hawk's not likable either. He's a pretty calm person, doesn't yell but he's always threatening violence towards her and that behavior doesn't really fit with what we see of him. They get along great one minute, start bickering the next for absolutely no reason. They're just really poorly written characters.

There's a subplot involving horses and racing that nearly overtook the story. Something criminal is going on with the horses and that I did find interesting but you kind of know who's involved long before it's revealed at the very end but I didn't mind that. And I liked the revelation involving his deceased brother.

There was too much sex in here and the word "cream" (as lube) was mentioned 13 TIMES, three of which were on the same page. But I couldn't have cared less about it because the story was so boring and I didn't care about any of the characters.

LORD DEVERILL'S HEIR and THE HEIR by Catherine Coulter

PUBLISHER: Topaz, 10/1996

ORIGINAL PUB: 1980

GENRE: Fiction/Historical Romance

SETTING: England, 1810

STEPBACK: link

RAPE? Yes

MY GRADE: B

SYNOPSIS: Justin Deverill is a military man strong, shrewd, stubborn, and very handsome who has just become the Earl of Strafford. He must wed his cousin Arabella, though, to reap the full legacy of his title. But faced with an order from her father s will to marry Justin, Arabella rebels. Since her father is dead, the only available target is Justin himself. Arabella has finally met her match and the pair sets off fireworks both in their anger and their passion.

The Heir is a reworked and expanded edition of the author's 1980 Signet Regency Romance novel Lord Deverill's Heir. The Heir is 156 pages longer than the original. The Signet Regency Romance series ran from 1979-2006. The novels are shorter in length, under 300 pages. 

MY THOUGHTS: Time span is short, maybe a month. Rape, incest, a villain, oh my!

I really like Arabella. She's eighteen. She's a very strong character. She hates Justin with a passion, is very angry and hostile towards him thinking he's out to get her inheritance. When she realizes he's not, her attitude changes completely, which I didn't like. It's like a switch was flipped and she became someone else. It should have taken some time for the change to happen.

Justin is nine years older than Isabella. He's a very distant cousin and they look very similar. I dislike that. They have the same black hair and gray eyes though she doesn't have a cleft in her chin like he does. He looks like he could be her brother. He thinks she's done him wrong before they wed so he rapes her on their wedding night (p. 72 in original, p. 133 in rewrite) but doesn't see it as rape because he "used cream." It's clearly rape, which he realizes at the end of the story and all is forgiven. 

I'm happy to say there's a villain in this, twenty-four-year-old Gervaise de Trecassis, cousin to Arabella's half sister, Elsbeth, who's twenty. He's out to get a certain something that's revealed near the end. Also revealed is a family secret involving him, which devastates him.

There are a few typos in this and two of these three sentences don't make sense, from page 141, "Arabella rather hoped that he would rot, in addition to hell. He deserved to rot. He deserved every bad thing that could happen to him did happen."

Some things I didn't like, I just didn't see the need for Arabella's mother, Ann, to be so involved, and her doctor beau, Paul Braynon. There was also another pointless character, Suzanne Talgarth. A paternity secret was discovered near the end too and how they figured out what was going on with that isn't really believable, just based on what was written in a note.

I don't like the stepback for this either because Arabella looks at least ten years older than she is and the larger photo of them looks nothing like the smaller background image of them. Justin has a cleft in his chin but not in the photo.
 

About the 1996 rewritten version- Every chapter is longer and some dialogue has been reworded or expanded. The rape and incest is still in it, incest is p. 97 of original version, p.178 in rewrite. One difference in the rape scene in the rewrite is that Justin uses lube ("cream".) In the original version the American author chose to use British spellings for certain words (color/colour, labor/labour, just two examples) but in the rewrite they're spelled the American way. In both versions Justin admits to raping Arabella (from original, page 208, "Yet, when I raped you, I felt loathing for myself.", from rewrite, page 358, "He saw Arabella on their wedding night, her face alight with anticipation until she had recognized his rage, until he had forced her, humiliated her."