Book Review: Karen Hawkins – To Scotland, With Love

This book is part of a series, and although it’s not the first one in the series, I read it as a stand-alone title with complete success.

This is a romance between Venetia Oglivie and Lord Gregor MacLean. They have known each other for a lot of years and have been friends all of that time, but when Lord Gregor finds that Venetia has been abducted by young Lord Ravenscroft, he realises that he must rescue her.

Venetia doesn’t think that she needs quite as much rescuing as Lord Gregor thinks she does. She is managing quite well to depress the pretentions of her abductor all by herself, thankyou!

Lord Gregor becomes so angry about the abduction that he activates his family’s weather curse and much of the action takes place in a snowbound inn with few domestic staff. By the time the thaw sets in (with a few additional snow flurries when Lord Gregor’s temper threatens to get the best of him again) Lord Gregor knows that he wants to marry Venetia; and as this is a romance, he gets his girl by the time the last page has been turned.

Book Review: Nora Roberts – Birthright

This is the fascinating tale of Callie Dunbrook and her ex-husband Jake Graystone.

The book starts with a prologue in Santa’s Grotto, where a baby disappears without a trace. Then we fast-forward to where prehistoric bones have been dug up on a building site in Woodsboro, the town where the snatched baby lived. Callie is an archaeologist, and she gets called in. When she appears on local television, the mother of the snatched baby, who has never given up hope that she will find her child, is convinced that Callie is that long-lost child.

Callie denies that she could be, but when she checks into her background, she discovers that she isn’t the natural child of her parents after all. As she continues to dig, both archaeologically and personally, it becomes apparent that she has stirred up a number of topics which other people would prefer to remain buried. The builder wants her gone, as he wants to continue building. However, he turns up dead before long. It seems that her delving into her past is attracting the wrong sort of attention, and the story of her adoption becomes murkier and murkier the more she looks into it.

This is a good book because there is the archaeological interest which gives the book its cornerstones; then there is the dangerous story of baby snatching and havey-cavey adoptions; and finally there is the chemistry between Callie and Jake, who married in haste, divorced in haste, and are now thrown back together.

I thoroughly enjoyed this one.

Book Review: Loretta Chase – Not Quite a Lady

(A Carsington Regency romance)

This is another in the series of Regency Romances where the Carsington brothers meet their matches. This time it is the turn of Darius, the studious one, who is interested in all things agricultural. His father, Lord Hargate, packs him off to turn around Beechwood, a property which has been in Chancery for a number of years while the previous owner’s Will was sorted out.

Now Beechwood adjoins another property, which is the residence of Lord Lithby, his second wife, his young sons – and his older daughter, who was the offspring of his deceased first wife. Lady Charlotte Hayward is a beauty and an heiress, but she has a blot on her copybook, and has become very adept at Not Getting Married, as the blot on her copybook is bound to come to light if she does.

Darius figures out that Charlotte has had a fall from grace; and so does another local man; although Charlotte’s father remains blissfully unaware, and is planning a huge house party to try and attract a suitor for Charlotte. Neither Darius nor his rival care about Charlotte’s non-virgin state; and Darius, a confirmed rake, wants to marry Charlotte for love. His rival has more of an eye to her money!

Darius still has to do some pretty serious wooing to convince Charlotte that marriage is indeed possible. This wooing is carried on against a backdrop of the reopening of the house at Beechwood, where Charlotte’s stepmother (and indeed Charlotte herself) are busy putting to rights a house which has been shut up for over a decade. All sorts of interesting things can happen in odd nooks and crannies in such a house!

Naturally things come out right in the end – and Darius even brings his family around to his choice of bride, guilty secret and all.

Book Review: Kay Hooper – Stealing Shadows

There are some books which you know, right from the first page, will be easy and satisfying to read, and this book is such a one.

Psychic Cassie Neill gets into the minds of abductors and murderers and helps law enforcement agencies to find them and bring them to justice. However, sometimes she is more successful than other times; and a mistake made in Los Angeles causes Cassie to run three thousand miles to Ryan’s Bluff in North Carolina, where she has inherited a house from her Aunt Alex.

After six months in Ryan’s Bluff, she finds herself in the mind of a murderer. She goes to the Sheriff Matt Dunbar; and to the Public Prosecutor Ben Ryan and tells them of the murder to come, but they are sceptical. However, the body turns up as she describes.

So starts a killing spree with the murderer staying one step ahead of Cassie for a long time. Matt the Sheriff is gradually brought around to believing in Cassie; and Ben the Public Prosecutor falls in love with her as events continue to unfold and draw to a conclusion with a surprising twist to it.

I have a fascination with books about extra-sensory perception, whether it is the telepathic abilities of Cassie or the telekinetic abilities of the characters in Anne McCaffrey’s Talent and Tower and Hive series. Some people might like a little more realism and a little less ESP and romance in their crime novels, but I am well satisfied with this one.

Book Review: other works by Gillian Kaye

Having just reviewed The Scheming Mr Cleeve, I decided to go back through my Book Review file and pull out some older reviews of work by Gillian Kaye and share those, too.

The Handsome Smuggler

This novel is set in 1793 at the time of the French Revolution, but it’s a novel set in England.

Fenella Hadleigh has been involved in a scandal (not of her making) in London and her parents have sent her to Dorset to stay with her aunt and uncle until the scandal blows over.

Fenella had been prepared to do her duty and marry the rich man who proposed to her, but is actually very relieved when he’s killed in a duel. She is a spirited girl, and defies her aunt by taking unaccompanied walks. During these walks, she manages to meet both smugglers and the riding officer who is trying to catch the smugglers. It soon becomes apparent that her sympathy lies on the side of the smugglers, particularly when one very handsome smuggler turns out to be a local landowner.

Fenella treats gunshot wounds and generally keeps the riding officer at bay as the stakes rise with French refugees being smuggled in as well as brandy.

The whole thing is complicated because Fenella is falling in love with her handsome smuggler, but he’s already engaged to Juliet. Then Juliet falls in love with one of the French refugees, but says that she will still go ahead with her marriage to Sir Alexander Knowle, despite loving Louis. Sir Alexander won’t cry off from his engagement, but keeps hoping that Juliet will. How it’s all resolved makes an entertaining tale.

The Enigmatic Mr Farrar

This book is in the style of a Regency Romance, although it’s set in Swaledale and not in London.

It also manages to pack in three different romances: that of Judith Piercy and Devlin Farrar, which is a romance fraught with difficulties; the romance of Judith’s brother Gerard with the young writer Miss Alice Boston, also fraught with difficulties due to the machinations of her elder sister; and the romance which is promoted by Judith and Gerald between Judith’s rejected suitor Harold Mefcalf and Alice’s older sister.

Judith has a second rejected suitor, Harvey, and while this book doesn’t manage to get him all settled down, it looks like Judith’s younger sister Emma will get together with him when she’s a year or two older!

It was an enjoyable read as these Regency Romances usually are.

The Proud Mr Peverill

This is a romance set at the time of the Peninsular War. Miss Anna Starkie, who lives near Bath, has refused her neighbour Mr Christopher Boyd on numerous occasions, but now she has a new neighbour, Mr Phillippe Peverill, with whom she seems to share that elusive spark.

Mr Peverill is somewhat mysterious, though, coming and going at odd times, leaving only his cousin at home. All kinds of rumours circulate locally about what Mr Peverill might be doing during his absences, but Anna finds out the truth.

She leads an exciting life as a result, and gets into some interesting scrapes. It’s the sort of book where it all comes out right at the end, though, even for the rejected Mr Christopher Boyd, who finds someone far more suitable than Anna for himself!

Book Review: Gillian Kaye – The Scheming Mr Cleeve

I do enjoy Gillian Kaye’s Regency romances and this one was no exception.

There was an interesting twist to the “boy meets girl” plot in this book. The Hon. Sarah Winterson meets Mr Julian Cleeve, who has inherited the house that the Wintersons have been renting, and has decided to take up residence there, displacing the Wintersons to the Lodge.

Before long Sarah is engaged to Julian, a state she finds preferable to the alternative of becoming engaged to Sir Bertram Hesslewood, who is pompous and old enough to be her father. This does leave Sir Bertram’s younger brother Philip out in the cold. He is a widower who cannot forget his young wife Clara – but suddenly discovers that he can after all when he finds Sarah is engaged to Julian!

Various other young people feature throughout the book, and Julian manages to give more than one couple a nudge in the right direction – the right direction not necessarily being matrimony, as in the case of Sarah’s brother, who comes home from Oxford with an ageing actress in tow!

The reader is kept guessing right up until the end of the book as to whether Sarah and Julian will actually make it to the altar; and one final twist to the plot resolves this.

As I said at the start of this review, a delightful read.

Book Review: Anne & Todd McCaffrey – Dragon Harper

It seems that Anne & Todd are continuing to collaborate rather than Todd being set loose alone again in Pern after his one solo foray in Dragonsblood. The collaboration yields novels which are nearer to the original style of a Pern novel than Todd’s single solo novel was.

The thing about Pern is that it has Intervals which last for 200 Turns between the Passes when Thread falls; and there are Pern books set during a number of different Passes. There aren’t so many set during the Intervals, although as with this book, some are set as a Pass approaches. Anyway, it means that there are huge time periods which haven’t been explored in any Pern novels so far, and therefore new novels can easily be created, either by Anne & Todd collaborating, as here, or by either alone. A complete new set of characters will exist in a novel set in a time not yet explored, so there isn’t a huge problem with continuity, although I was a little surprised by the presence of fire lizards in Dragon Harper. I thought that they had ceased to be kept as companions 500 Turns after Landing, and were not rediscovered until several more Passes had been and gone.

The fire lizards in the story are useful, but are not the main plot of the story. The plot is one which Anne & Todd must have dreamed up a couple of years ago, but it’s a very topical one right now, as it concerns an Influenza epidemic which is spreading through Pern.

The main character in the story is Kindan, who also appears in Dragon’s Kin and Dragon’s Fire, the other two novels in which mother and son have collaborated. Kindan is now resident at the Harper Hall, where he is an apprentice. He is desperately searching old Records for mention of earlier Plagues, when a mishap with a torch results in a fire among the Records. Kindan is expelled from the Harper Hall and banished to nearby Fort Hold, where the Influenza epidemic is taking a terrible toll. With the Healer dead, it falls upon Kindan to do the best he can for the sick of Fort Hold.

The dragons pop in and out of the book, but they are more out than in, due to the risk of infecting the Weyrfolk shortly before a Pass. Kindan takes on Harper duties not usually expected of an apprentice as Pern faces the twin perils of the Influenza and starvation caused by having no-one to gather food. Kindan tackles both problems, and all comes out right in the end.

This was a good read in the usual McCaffrey style. One wonders how much longer Anne will exercise a certain amount of control over her son’s Pern efforts in a bid to keep him conforming to the original style of the books.

It also occurs to me that I would be interested to read something by Todd McCaffrey alone set somewhere other than Pern. I’d like to know whether he’s got what it takes to build his own universe, and what his style would be like when unconstrained by previous books written by his mother. I suspect that he may not have quite the same interest in anthropology and music as his mother obviously has, so any solo books he produces might be quite different.

Actually, I’d probably read the books if Todd would write about the Brain & Brawn ships or the Crystal Singer universe (which are connected) as those are two series for which I would love to have more episodes to read. Bearing the potential differences in his style in mind, however, I don’t guarantee that I’d like them as much as what his mother has already produced.

Book Review: Sarah Langan – The Keeper

I found this book in a bargain book sale at Polhill and thought that it looked interesting. The front cover proclaims: “She lives in their dreams. They die in hers.” I thought that it was going to be a supernatural thriller, when in actual fact, it turned out to be more of a horror story.

Susan Marley is beautiful, but lives in a squalid apartment, and engages in prostitution in order to provide the bare essentials of life. Her younger sister Liz lives at home with their mother. Liz is in her final year at High School and finds being the sister of Susan is not easy.

The story is mostly told from Liz’s viewpoint, although in some ways the story is more about Susan, who dies during the course of the book.

After Susan’s death, things in the run-down mill town of Bedford start to go really seriously wrong, but we’re kept guessing about why this is and what’s going to happen. In fact, I’m not quite sure what the outcome was, even now I’ve finished the book!

This book was a struggle to read, but I kept at it and did eventually finish it, although the number of crosswords and killer sudoku puzzles I worked went up during the reading period, which I think must have been about a month!

Sarah Langan is unlikely to be on my list of authors to search for on my next visit to the library.

Book Review: Edward Marston – The Painted Lady

(A Christopher Redmayne Mystery)

Christopher’s less than savoury brother Henry and three of Henry’s friends have been in pursuit of a beauty by the name of Araminta Jewell, and not even her marriage to Sir Martin Culthorpe will deter them.

Sir Martin commissions Jean-Paul Villemot to paint Araminta’s portrait, which is how Christopher Redmayne’s path crosses Araminta’s – as Christopher has been commissioned by the painter to design him a house in London.

When Sir Martin is found murdered in his own garden, suspicion falls on Villemot, but a number of people are convinced of his innocence. Chistopher has good reason to help Villemot prove his innocence as Villemot’s house won’t get built if Villemot hangs for murder.

Christopher and his Puritan constable friend Jonathan Bale set about investigating the circumstances of Sir Martin’s murder and endeavour to come up with a better suspect than the already incarcerated Jean-Paul Villemot. Their investigations lead them into some interesting places in Restoration London, but they do eventually unravel the mystery of what really happened.

Book Review: Denise Mina – Garnethill

(The first Maureen O’Donnell mystery)

I picked this book up and started reading and knew that it was going to be an easy book to read. It’s a crime novel set in Glasgow, and either my year in Scotland taught me more local phraseology than I realised or this book is so well written that when it ventures into dialogue which you wouldn’t hear south of the border, it only adds to the reading enjoyment.

Maureen O’Donnell is an incest survivor who still sees a therapist. She also sleeps with a therapist, albeit not the same one. Unfortunately, she discovers him in her living room, tied to a chair, and with his throat cut.

She gets taken in for questioning and released, but is so worried that she’s an obvious candidate for blame that she feels that she needs to try and find the real killer in case the Police don’t look past the obvious.

She finds some very murky goings-on in the process, and decides that she must deal with them herself.

The action culminates with a trip to the Isle of Cumbrae, off the Clyde coast from Largs, which is an old stamping ground of mine from the aforementioned year spent in Scotland. I did think that Denise Mina got one thing wrong about her trip to Cumbrae, as she referred to the ferry turning around and backing in, and even back in my day, the ferries didn’t do that. Back then, one was roll-on-roll-off with a door that lowered at each end, so no need to back anywhere, while the other was an ex-landing craft with one door at the bow. Those two ferries have since been replaced by two larger RORO ferries, so I think that unless the ferry service to Cumbrae has been degraded recently that a little more research was needed!

Apart from that one possible inconsistency, this was a good read, albeit with an ending that I wasn’t expecting. The inside of the back cover indicates that there are more books featuring Maureen O’Donnell, so it looks like I’ve found myself another series to read.