Posts tagged with historical-fiction
Weekly Book Giveaway: Marrying Winterborne, by Lisa Kleypas
This week's Book Giveaway is Lisa Kleypas's latest historical romance: Marrying Winterborne, the second book in her Ravenels series. The first installment was one of the author's rare missteps, but I'm hoping this one will be better.
Weekly Book Giveaway: Shades of Milk and Honey, by Mary Robinette Kowal
This week's Book Giveaway is Mary Robinette Kowal's fantasy novel Shades of Milk and Honey, which the back cover describes as "like wandering onto a secret picnic attended by Pride and Prejudice and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell". That sounds like a very tall order, but hopefully Ms. Kowal's book is up to the challenge. A full review will follow later today...
The Dark Days Club, by Alison Goodman
Reading Alison Goodman's new YA novel The Dark Days Club is a bit like eating a ten course meal: the individual elements were delicious, but eventually I found myself too full to properly appreciate them...
Weekly Book Giveaway: The Dark Days Club, by Alison Goodman
This week's Book Giveaway is Alison Goodman's new YA novel The Dark Days Club. Goodman is the author of the brilliant Eon and Eona, so my hopes for this book are sky-high. Admittedly, the story loses a few points for the blurb on the back that proclaims it "Not your mother's Regency romance!" (a phrase that always strikes me as ageist and sexist; my mother is a badass and so is her taste in Regency romances), but...
Let Sleeping Rogues Lie, by Sabrina Jeffries
I have read and reviewed three romance novels this month. The first one was straight-up ridiculous. The second was irritatingly flimsy. I don't want to sound like Goldilocks, so I'll just say the third—Sabrina Jeffries's Let Sleeping Rogues Lie—is unquestionably the best of the bunch...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Let Sleeping Rogues Lie, by Sabrina Jeffries
This week's Book Giveaway is Sabrina Jeffries's 2008 novel Let Sleeping Rogues Lie, the fourth book in her long-running 'School for Heiresses' series. A full review will follow later today, but here's a spoiler: of the three romance novels we've read recently, this is DEFINITELY the pick of the bunch...
Reforming a Rake: With This Ring, by Suzanne Enoch
Suzanne Enoch's Reforming a Rake: With This Ring is lazy, cynical, and as predictable as an Applebee's meal. It is also about 1000 times better than the last romance novel we reviewed, partly because Enoch is a far better writer and partly because when it comes to romance novels, I don't mind a little predictability...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Reforming a Rake: With This Ring, by Suzanne Enoch
This week's Book Giveaway is Suzanne Enoch's 2009 novel Reforming a Rake: With this Ring. After reading this, I find myself in need of a historical-romance palate cleanser, and Enoch is the kind of consistently amusing writer who can be depended upon to provide one...
To Lure a Proper Lady, by Ashlyn MacNamara
When I reviewed a previous Ashlyn MacNamara book, I gave her writing a lukewarm but honest endorsement. Unfortunately, her upcoming novel To Lure A Proper Lady is the kind of hot mess that undoes a lot of preexisting goodwill...
By Possession, by Madeline Hunter
On a recent trip to the beach, I picked up a battered copy of Madeline Hunter's 2000 novel By Possession from a Little Free Library. As longtime readers of the site know, I rarely read pre-Regency romance novels (I can't get fully invested in any sex scene when I'm wondering when the participants last bathed), but hey: I'd already finished the books I brought with me, and the price was right...
Weekly Book Giveaway: By Possession, by Madeline Hunter
This week's Book Giveaway is Madeline Hunter's historical romance novel By Possession. Please note: I picked this particular edition out of a Little Free Library, and it is trashed. Totally readable, though, and at least we're recycling...
Weekly Book Giveaway: The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick
This week's Book Giveaway is Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, which has recently been transformed into a TV miniseries from Amazon. I usually find Dick's ideas more interesting than his actual novels, but what the hell: it's only 274 pages, so it can't be that bad either way...
These Shallow Graves, by Jennifer Donnelly
Jennifer Donnelly's These Shallow Graves is the kind of book you want to take on a plane: long, engrossing, and simultaneously fun yet intellectually challenging enough to distract you from the super irritating guy hogging the armrest...
Weekly Book Giveaway: These Shallow Graves, by Jennifer Donnelly
This week's Book Giveaway is Jennifer Donnelly's These Shallow Graves. Somewhat to my chagrin, it seems that this is not a book about zombie prom-goers*, but instead a combination of "dark mystery" and historically-accurate depiction of the Gilded Age. A full review will follow shortly...
Cold-Hearted Rake, by Lisa Kleypas
Lisa Kleypas's latest historical romance, Cold-Hearted Rake, checks quite a few of my preferred boxes: there's a strong focus on money, a period-appropriate (well, more or less) wariness about sex, and a celebration of family support systems. Unfortunately, the actual romance falls a little flat, but even sub-par Kleypas novels are well worth reading...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Cold-Hearted Rake, by Lisa Kleypas
This week's Book Giveaway is Lisa Kleypas's newest historical, Cold-Hearted Rake. Judging by that cover art, this is perhaps the least Halloween-appropriate giveaway ever, but if it helps, I will totally be eating candy while I read it. A review will follow shortly...
Weekly Book Giveaway: The Diviners, by Libba Bray
In the spirit of summer vacation, this week's Book Giveaway pick is Libba Bray's The Diviners. I was looking for something both satisfyingly hefty and sufficiently entertaining to offset my other beach reading choice—a book about the plague outbreak in the 14th century. At 608 presumably Black-Death-free pages, Ms. Bray's book seems like just the ticket. A review will follow shortly...
If only he was a fur-trapping zombie.
Whelp, the trailer for the upcoming film The Revenant is out (based "in part" on Michael Punke's 2003 novel of the same name), and it does absolutely nothing for me. I'm not impressed by Leonardo DiCaprio's goofy beard, the panting "soundtrack", or the CGI bear...
Dangerous Deceptions, by Sarah Zettel
Dangerous Deceptions is the second book in Sarah Zettel's 'Palace of Spies' series. It continues the adventures of Peggy Fitzroy, lady-in-waiting (and part-time spy) at the Hanoverian court of King George I. Peggy has been tasked with nosing out the Jacobite rebels at court, but her work as a spy is increasingly hindered by events in her “normal” life...
Gross! But interesting.
Romance novelist Hope Tarr recently wrote a guest post for the blog Heroes and Heartbreakers called "Keeping “It” Clean: Hygiene, Hot Sex, and the Historical Romance Novel". This is a subject near and dear to my heart...
What A Lady Requires, by Ashlyn MacNamara
Ashlyn McNamara's What The Lady Requires is the kind of fun-yet-forgettable historical romance that neither challenges one's intelligence nor insults it. I won't remember it a month from now, but it slid down perfectly pleasantly...
Depressing!
The trailer is out for the BBC's upcoming miniseries adaptation of Hilary Mantel's 2009 Booker Prize-winning novel Wolf Hall, which depicts Thomas Cromwell's rise to power in the court of Henry VIII...
Daughter of Xanadu, by Dori Jones Yang
When I picked up Dori Jones Yang's novel Daughter of Xanadu, I was hoping to find a fictionalized version of the story of Khutulun, the most famous Mongolian girl of the era. My expectations were totally off* (they usually are), but Yang's novel has charms of its own...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Daughter of Xanadu, by Doris Jones Yang
This week's Book Giveaway is Daughter of Xanadu, by Doris Jones Yang. Judging by the somber cover art, the story won't be a rollicking good time, but I notice the main character shares several characteristics (and a birth year) with Khutulun*, so there might be a happy ending in store...
Mortal Heart, by Robin LaFevers
The first two novels in Robin LaFevers's His Fair Assassin trilogy are intelligent, atmospheric, and jam-packed with historical detail, and the final installment, Mortal Heart, is no different. None of the books have been perfect, but this is still one of the most interesting and ambitious teen series to come out in years...
Weekly Book Giveaway: The Smoke Thief, by Shana Abe
This week's Book Giveaway is Shana Abé's The Smoke Thief. It's the first of her bestselling Drakon books, a series of historical fantasy/romance novels about characters that shift between human, dragon, and, uh, smoke monster forms (but not in a Lost kind of way)...
Trapped at the Altar, by Jane Feather
Before I begin, a word of warning: Jane Feather's Trapped at the Altar ends on such an inexplicably abrupt note that I found myself wondering if the e-reader advance copy I was sent was somehow missing several final chapters. But after poking around a bit online, I'm assuming my copy is fine—it seems that's just the way the story ends. However, if I find out later there's secretly another 100 pages out there, I promise to go back and update this with a more fair assessment...
The Lovely and the Lost, by Page Morgan
Page Morgan's The Lovely and the Lost is the second novel in her Dispossessed series. I found her first installment, The Beautiful and the Cursed, a little over-ambitious, but fans of Morgan's elaborate mythology and huge cast will be pleased to hear that her second book is just as jam-packed as the first...
Love Me, by Rachel Shukert
Rachel Shukert's YA novel Starstruck was one of my favorite books of 2013. Smart and compulsively readable, it managed to transform the basic plot of Jacqueline Susann's deadly dull Valley of the Dolls into a deliciously juicy soap opera about three girls struggling to make it big during the Golden Age of Hollywood...
One Good Earl Deserves a Lover and No Good Duke Goes Unpunished, by Sarah MacLean
To once again paraphrase Jane Austen, there are few historical romance novelists that I really like, and fewer still of whom I think well. In fact, the “like and think well” list is pretty much limited to Georgette Heyer and Lisa Kleypas, while the “just like” list includes authors like Suzanne Enoch, Teresa Medeiros, and Julia Quinn—writers who produce enjoyable but anachronistic stories, and mostly use their historical settings as...