Today’s Steals and Deals at AAR…..

This is a new cover for an older book. I like this series by MacLean–if you’ve found her recent works a bit more modern than you like, this one should work for you. (Here’s our review.)

 

Lady Calpurnia Hartwell, or Callie for short, has spent a lifetime being a good girl and model lady, but now she regrets it. On the eve of her younger sister’s wedding – a love match – she realizes her perfect reputation is a result of passiveness rather than choice, and decides she needs to change. Drawing up a list of forbidden activities is her first step, and being kissed (passionately) is the first item on the list.

Her kisser of choice is Gabriel St. John, the Marquess of Ralston and the man she has loved for years. As the weeks go by and Callie embarks on her other activities, Gabriel encounters her so often during her escapades that he finally makes her a proposition: He will squire her if she will shepherd his new found half-sister through her debut…..

[This is] a romantic character-driven story that also provides ample reasoning for the characters’ actions. I never once considered Callie’s list-making idiotic or contrived, and found myself sympathizing with her more often than not. If I occasionally thought she became idiotic, well, no one’s perfect. Gabriel is more or less your typical romance novel aristocrat, but he has depths that ring true and set him apart. His interactions with his family are particularly endearing. The secondary characters are roundish, if not quite well-rounded, and the external conflict believable.

 

It’s at Amazon for 1.99 here.


This too has a new cover. We gave it a DIK.

 

Alyssa Cole spins off her Reluctant Royals series (the hero and heroine in this story both appeared in A Prince on Paper) into a brand new set of tales, starting with How to Catch a Queen, a beautiful story about a woman who’s always wanted to be a queen, a man who never wanted to be king, and the way they both have to adjust their lives to accept each other’s love – and learn how to govern as a team.

Prince Sanyu stands to inherit the throne of Njaza on the death of his terminally ill father – which is imminent – but secretly believes that he’s not strong enough to rule, especially in light of his father’s achievements (he led the kingdom to independence) during his reign. When informed by Musoke, his head advisor, that he must marry to secure the line, Sanyu can only remember the long string of women his father married and ultimately discarded, refusing both their love and their advice, each one declared unworthy and sent packing for trying to rule his heart or his kingdom.

Sanyu, his only child, is the product of his father’s union with his twentieth wife.  Many came after her, and Sanyu can’t remember what any of them looked like, let alone the face of his own mother.  Understandably, he isn’t thrilled about the notion of marriage for himself, and is determined to take his father’s advice to never let his wife rule him or fall in love with her, but he vows to do his duty and produce heirs for the crown.  Then he meets Shanti, and everything changes.

 

It’s on sale at Amazon for 1.99 here.


Readers LOVE The Nightingale. (Our review is here.)

 

The novel starts with Vianne Mauriac, a sheltered housewife, saying goodbye to her husband, a postman. He’s leaving his wife and child to join the army, and given that this is France in the late 1930s, we know it’s not going to end well for his side. Soon the country is occupied and German soldiers are billeted in Vianne’s village, one of them staying in her house. She has to draw on the dwindling resources of her farm – and her own courage, which proves greater than she expects – to keep her daughter fed and safe, and to placate the occupiers.

Making Vianne’s life that much more difficult is her younger sister, Isabelle Rossignol. How I wish I could leave it at that without having to think of Isabelle to describe her for this review. She’s a stereotypical teenaged Mary Sue – belligerent, reckless, desperately in love with a bad boy she can’t have, and, of course, heartstoppingly beautiful. How beautiful? When two German soldiers spot a poorly disguised Englishman, they approach to question him. Isabelle interposes herself, smiling. Smitten, the Germans sit down to talk to her, all suspicion gone.

Vianne’s story was fascinating because she had to walk a fine line and because she didn’t automatically know who was right and who was wrong. Isabelle is a complete contrast to that. She goes out of her way to defy the Germans and is rewarded by being recruited into the French resistance. Perhaps they felt they had nothing to lose at that point. Then she starts leading downed airmen to safety, using the code name Nightingale. Her last name means nightingale, but it seems subtlety is as unknown to her as intelligence is to the Nazis.

Meanwhile, Vianne wages a quiet resistance of her own after her Jewish neighbor is deported, leaving a little son behind. Vianne takes him into her household, pretending he’s a relative, even though this puts her and her daughter at great risk. Especially after the German officer billeted with her is replaced by a sadist who despises French people and Jews alike, which raises the stakes considerably. What also kept me reading was the occasional chapter which shows that one of the sisters lived into old age and is remembering the war. The other sister didn’t make it, but it’s not until the end that we learn which of them survived.

 

It’s on sale for 1.99 here.


Props to MacLean for basing a scene in this on the infamous Beyonce/Jay-Z/Solange elevator argument/fight! We gave this one a B+–it’s a lot of fun!

In The Rogue Not Taken, the first in a new series from Sarah MacLean, she introduces us to the five Talbot sisters, daughters of a recently ennobled Earl who made his fortune in trade. Needless to say, given their origins, the family is tolerated rather than accepted by the ton, but instead of cowering in the face of society’s displeasure, the young ladies thumb their noses at convention, behaving in a manner which regularly sees their names gracing the pages of the scandal sheets. Well, four of them do, anyway.

Sophie, the youngest, doesn’t want to live in London, doesn’t want to be a part of society and doesn’t regard it as her sole purpose in life to snare herself a husband. She feels as though she doesn’t belong and wishes to return to the simpler life she led before; but her mother and sisters adore the round of parties, balls and society events to which they are invited and even thrive on the gossip, so Sophie just trails along in their wake, tarred with the same brush as her sisters even though she has never done anything remotely scandalous.

That is, until she catches her brother-in-law in a compromising position with an unknown woman and is so incensed at his behaviour towards his pregnant wife (her eldest sister) that she insults him within the hearing of everybody who is anybody and then promptly pushes him into a fishpond. Not wanting to bear her mother’s disappointment or the censure of the ton, Sophie ends up disguising herself as a footman and stowing away on the Marquess of Eversley’s carriage, believing it to be heading towards Mayfair and home.

Unfortunately for her, this is not the case, and a series of mishaps and mishaps sees Sophie travelling with the handsome, rakish marquess to Cumbria – he going to his father’s ducal seat, and she to the village of Mossband where she grew up and lived until a decade ago. She thinks to set up a small bookshop there, and make a quiet life for herself away from the prying eyes and gleeful gossip of the ton.

Eversley has no wish to become entangled with one of the Dangerous Daughters (as society has named the Talbot sisters), and is adamant that he will not be trapped into marriage, in spite of Sophie’s protestations that she has no intention of doing such a thing. In fact, she doesn’t even like him and wouldn’t marry him if he were the last man on earth; and her feelings are entirely reciprocated. Except… as their journey continues and Eversley, in spite of his frequent insults and cutting remarks, shows Sophie an unexpected kindness and understanding, she finds herself unable to maintain that dislike. And he, faced with Sophie’s strange mixture of gumption and vulnerability discovers that he likes her, too – is desperately attracted to her, in fact, but no matter how far Sophie worms her under his skin, he is determined there can be nothing lasting between them. Like so many heroes in historical romance, he is a confirmed bachelor with absolutely no intention of ever getting married. Some years earlier, he fell deeply in love with a young woman not of his class – but she died in tragic circumstances, and he has no wish to open his heart to that sort of pain ever again. An added bonus – for him – of his determination never to wed is that it affords him his revenge on his father, whom he holds ultimately responsible for the death of his beloved. The only son of the Duke of Lyne, Eversley is determined that he will be the last to bear the title; as he keeps telling his father, “the line dies with me.”

 

It’s at Amazon for 1.99 here.


 

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