DUCHESS IF YOU DARE by Anabelle Bryant

PUBLISHER: Zebra, 3/2021

GENRE: Fiction/Historical Romance

SETTING: England, 1817

MY GRADE: C

SYNOPSIS: Scarlett Wynn's tragic childhood taught her that life can be cruel to women with little power. So when a local seamstress disappears, Scarlett vows to find out why. Armed with a weapon and her courage, Scarlett scours London for clues—and crosses the unlikely path of Ambrose Cross, the Duke of Aylesford, at an unlikely place: an upscale brothel. The Duke is trying to solve a mystery of his own, and Scarlett is sure they can help each other—if she can resist the attraction that draws them together...

As Duke, Ambrose is duty-bound to protect his family name from scandal, no matter the cost. But Scarlett's fearless spirit forces him to look beyond his world of privilege. Scarlett is as intoxicating as she is dangerous, igniting a fire in him like no other. But when the pair learn both mysteries they're trying to solve are tied to a string of missing women, the tangled scheme they uncover may put their lives, and their growing love, in mortal danger—and lead them to search their hearts like never before...

MY THOUGHTS: What started out as 4 stars turned into a 3-star read. The mystery was the only thing interesting but even that turned very dull. Scarlett's out to find out what happened to her missing friend and seamstress/prostitute Linie/Daisy. In the process she meets twenty-eight-year-old Ambrose at a brothel called The Scarlet Rose while he's there to see his younger brother Martin, who frequents the place. Ambrose is trying to find out who's been lending Martin money.

Both main characters were severely underdeveloped, as was their quick-blooming relationship, which was very surface. One knows nothing about the other. I didn't feel any chemistry between them despite two sex scenes, the first of which felt out of place and too soon. Both characters were very bland to me.

Other than the time period, Regency, being given, the exact year wasn't until the last few pages, 1817. Scarlett's age was given, sort of, by saying she'd been on her own for almost twenty years and that at "barely" five years old she'd stopped wishing on stars. I assume that's when her prostitute mother was murdered by a lover, and I assume Scarlett's 24 but the author couldn't tell us outright.

I think this book failed (me) because of it being too condensed at only 250 pages and just not good writing. The subject matter is very dark (dead body washing ashore, missing brothel workers, possible abuse in a room in the brothel, sex trafficking) but it just wasn't handled well.

I received this from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

BRAT: AN '80S STORY by Andrew McCarthy

PUBLISHER: Grand Central Publishing, 5/2021
GENRE: Nonfiction/Memoir
PURCHASE: link
MY GRADE: C

SYNOPSIS: Most people know Andrew McCarthy from his movie roles in Pretty in Pink, St. Elmo's Fire, Weekend at Bernie's, and Less than Zero, and as a charter member of Hollywood's Brat Pack. That iconic group of ingenues and heartthrobs included Rob Lowe, Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, and Demi Moore, and has come to represent both a genre of film and an era of pop culture.

In his memoir Brat: An '80s Story, McCarthy focuses his gaze on that singular moment in time. The result is a revealing look at coming of age in a maelstrom, reckoning with conflicted ambition, innocence, addiction, and masculinity. New York City of the 1980s is brought to vivid life in these pages, from scoring loose joints in Washington Square Park to skipping school in favor of the dark revival houses of the Village where he fell in love with the movies that would change his life. Filled with personal revelations of innocence lost to heady days in Hollywood with John Hughes and an iconic cast of characters, Brat is a surprising and intimate story of an outsider caught up in a most unwitting success.

MY THOUGHTS: I'm giving this 3 stars because of a complete lack of depth. It feels very incomplete and I honestly don't know why it was written if he didn't want to share much. I'm sure there's a lot about his life that he could have said but chose to say not a whole lot of anything. The title is correct-it's about his life in the 80s and not much past it, except for the death of his father in the 2000s and brief mention of his children. He never mentioned why his father always borrowed and never paid back money from him, or if he even knows himself what the money was for. I'm guessing he was into gambling and owed people money, and that's why he'd tell his family not to answer the phone sometimes. He was in the hospital room when his father was dying yet he never once said what he was dying/died from.

What I learned about Andrew is that he's a deeply insecure person and a pushover. He doesn't seem to have much of a relationship with his mother and three brothers or if he does he kept it to himself. I definitely would have liked to know more about those relationships. I'm assuming his deep insecurities with his appearance (he said he was scrawny and didn't have much body hair as a youth) lead him to abuse drugs and alcohol though he never actually said so. Overall, this was a big disappointment.

I received this from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

ONE FAIRY STORY TOO MANY: THE BROTHERS GRIMM AND THEIR TALES by John M. Ellis

PUBLISHER: University of Chicago Press, 1983

GENRE: Nonfiction

MY GRADE: A

SYNOPSIS: One Fairy Story Too Many unmasks one of the most successfully perpetuated literary frauds in centuries. When the brothers Grimm presented their now beloved fairy tales to the world, they claimed to have tapped an oral tradition of folk story-telling in Germany. Supposedly, the tales were written down as the Grimms heard them told by peasants and other simple, uneducated folk.

But John Ellis argues in this book that the tales have little to do with German folklore-and that the brothers clearly knew it. Ellis shows that the Grimms deliberately made false claims for their tales and suppressed the evidence of their actual origin. In fact, their sources in many cases were not even German-the celebrated Märchenfrau of Niederzwehren was educated, middle-class, and French. Moreover the Grimms, while claiming to be utterly true to their sources, altered the tales radically before publication, changing their plots, characters, style, and moral tone, and continued to make revisions throughout the seven editions.

Woven like a secondary plot through Ellis's account is the strange history surrounding the evidence the he uses. That the Grimms had committed a fraud should have been clear to Grimm scholars from easily available evidence years ago. But the irresistible fairy tale of the two brothers going among the simple folk, carefully gathering their tales, had so beguiled even the most knowledgeable that they could not face the reality that the brothers had deliberately deceived their public. German scholars, Ellis shows, were especially reluctant to question the authenticity of what had become a national monument. This book, then, seriously calls into question the long-held notion that the Grimms are the fathers of folklore research.

One Fairy Story Too Many is a provocative, highly readable account of the text and history of a work that has achieved enormous importance in Western culture. Quotations from German sources are given in both English and German, and sample texts of three famous tales-The Frog Prince, Sleeping Beauty, and Hansel and Gretel-are provided in their original form and as later versions reworked by the Grimms.

MY THOUGHTS: This is pretty short, 209 pages. The first 110 pages discuss where the author thinks the stories really came from. A lot of those pages include German and English excerpts, comparisons and discussions of certain stories and how those stories were changing slightly as each new edition was published. Pages 111-194 contain manuscripts from 1810, two years before the first volume of their book was published, and different versions/reworkings, in German and English, for Hansel and Gretel, Sleeping Beauty, and The Frog King, that were put in different editions, showing how the stories kept changing over the years.

The author, and apparently some who came before him, thinks the stories originated with the Grimms themselves and a group of women, some sisters, one the future wife of Wilhelm Grimm, Dortchen Wild, and their elderly housekeeper they had growing up, "old Marie" and a woman named Dorothea Viehmann, who's of French descent and who may have provided her take on Frenchmen Charles Perrault's tales published over 100 years before. Neither brother ever said who, exactly, the peasants were who supposedly told them all of these tales. If these tales were indeed told to them and written down, as they claim, there wouldn't be a reason to keep tampering with them. You'd write down what they said verbatim and keep it that way. They appear to have kept reworking their own stories or those told to them by the group of women, until they liked the new versions. I believe there's a good chance that's what they did but I don't understand why they'd lie about the origin and pretend the stories came from others when they could have just taken credit for them themselves.

WHISPER TO ME OF LOVE by Shirlee Busbee

PUBLISHER: Avon, 4/1991
GENRE: Historical Romance
SETTING: England, 1815

STEPBACK: link
MY GRADE: A

SYNOPSIS: She was a raven-haired waif from the streets of London-- a wild innocent to be rescued... and tamed. A spirited beauty, she would captivate Royce Manchester's jaded heart-- while resisting the smoldering desire she felt for her virile protector.

In Royce's glittering world of money and privilege, young Morgana discovered the shocking secret of her true identity-- entangling the wealthy American planter in a deadly skein of aristocratic family intrigue. But grave peril would only feed the flames of a love that knew no bounds... and a glorious rapture that would not be denied.

MY THOUGHTS: I couldn't gauge the timespan on this but it felt very short, maybe a couple months and takes place in England. Like a lot of historical romances, this had a mystery running throughout that I thoroughly enjoyed. Shirlee created a few evil villains that were introduced in the prologue so that hooked me from the start.

Morgana is 19 and goes by the name 'Pip.' She had black curly hair and gray eyes. She's dirt-poor and lives with her two older brothers, Jacko and Ben. She dresses like a boy and is a pickpocket like her brothers. It's what they do to get by in life. She stands up to Royce and I really like her. 

Royce is a 33-year-old American. He's 6'3" with tawny hair and topaz eyes. He first meets Morgana when she attempts to steal from him. She ends up staying at his house when he learns she's female and what her living situation is like. They don't get along and bicker, which I like. Some of Royce's terms of endearment for her are, greedy little strumpet, scheming baggage, delectable little slut, conniving little slut, conniving little bitch, wretched grasping little hussy, grasping little harlot. Of course she's none of those things. We weren't really given any background on him, which was disappointing.

A servant helps Royce uncover the mystery of Morgana's parentage, which she doesn't even know isn't what is seems. This part of the plot involves three villains, two of which are working together, and I like all three. The mystery is essentially what keeps the story moving. I never guessed who the "one-eyed man" was and don't see how anyone could have.

Dominic Slade, from the previous book in this series, Midnight Masquerade, is in this one briefly, along with his wife Melissa. I haven't read it so I don't know if Royce is in it but I assume he is. Melissa is the sister of Royce's twenty-year-old cousin Zachary, who's in this book but he doesn't serve much purpose.