eyes.2c Reviews

Desperate Fire (Angel in the Whirlwind #4)   by  Christopher G. Nuttall                                Despite some Commonwealth opposition, the final showdown with the Theocracy is given full approval after the true madness of that Empire's reactions to loss are revealed. The harsh reality is exposed when the Theocracy explodes seeded nuclear devices on an occupied planet just as the Commonwealth is set to liberate it, ensuring the planet and its inhabitants to total destruction. Kat is left handling a humanitarian crisis on one hand and the political ramifications on the other. Operation Hammer is devised. Kat Falconer as a Commodore of the fleet and second-in-charge will have to call on all the cunning, stealth, and giftedness she has in the final showdown. The Commonwealth takes the fight to the very centre of the Theocracy's domain--to their home planet Ahura Mazda. The bat...

Only a Viscount Will Do (To Marry a Rogue #3)   by Tamara Gill                               When Lady Alice Worthingham and her mother are robbed by a highwayman, Alice doesn't play the meek and mild victim. The action that follows is highly unorthodox and the Surrey Bandit aka  the Viscount, Lord Callum Arundel has unknowingly met his match! I liked Lady Alice, I liked Lord Callum. I just wasn't drawn into their sphere in the way I wanted to be. Sure the dramatic potential was all here. The poor relation who became a viscount, blackmailed into committing crimes to keep his family safe. The beautiful, somewhat eccentric Lady who discovers his secret. A Lady drawn to him like a moth to a flame. A Lady who felt slighted by him in an earlier encounter, who seeks to punish him and in doing so finds herself playing with fire. Except that fire seemed contrived. An HEA ending that di...

The Noble Servant  (A Medieval Fairy Tale #3) by  Melanie Dickerson                             Dickerson continues to take a well known fairy story and reimagine it to life in a new way. This time Grimm's tale of the Goose Girl is reborn. Lady Magdalen is to marry Steffan, the Duke of Wolfberg. This marriage will help lift her province out of poverty. En route she is forced by her maid and maid's father to exchange places. Agnes her maid will now marry the Duke. However at the Duke's castle, the wicked Lord has seen to it that his son Alexander will take Steffan's place. Men are sent to kill Steffan. Fortunately that plot fails. Steffan and Magdalen have to find a way to regain their respective proper places and come to a mutual understanding of what love and worthiness truly is. I liked Magdalen, but Steffan left me somewhat unmoved. He certainly has more growing to do than Magdalen. T...

An Eccentric Engagement  ( Classic Regency Romances #18)   by  Donna Lea Simpson.                                   I thought about the word 'charming', but that's not quite right. Sorrow Marchand is not charming, she's spirited and insightful and attuned to others. Her world is not 'charming.' It is however forthright, kind and true. We really don't see much of Sorrow's interaction with the ton. What we do see is her interaction with her very unusual family--one that is certainly far from any family her fiancé,  the Honorable Bertram Carlyle, has envisioned. We do see is the growth of Bertram and Sorrow's relationship into one of true understanding and appreciation, and for Bertram the coming into being his own man. Until now he's been at the beck and call of his domineering father, Lord Newton. The early arrival of Bertram's father  does put Sorrow through her pa...

Legion (The Talon Saga #4)   by  Julie Kagawa                             Dragon twins Dante and Ember are each seeking freedom in their own ways.  But shall the truth set them free? Unfortunately each has a different truth and a different moral compass as to what they are willing to do for that freedom. The wrym leader is a fright. Her plans far reaching and devastating. A fight is looming between Talon and the order of st George, yet are they not both pawns in the games the Elder Wrym,  CEO of the Talon is playing? Dante is now the Elder's right-hand man. But 'the weight of her gaze [is] suffocating.' The Elder truly is terrifying. Dante never feels as important as Ember and once again he's proved right. There is one piece of the Elder's plan missing. The Elder gives Dante an order,  ' “Ember Hill must be retrieved." ' But even Dante does not know the depths of th...

Hard-Hearted Highlander (Highland Grooms #3)   by  Julia London.  Bernadette Holly has taken up the life as a governess after her scandalous elopement became salacious gossip for polite society. Her charge is Avaline is the daughter of an English Baron, Baron Kent. Kent is determined to marry his daughter off to Rabbie Mackenzie. The Baron wants access to the sea for trading from the dispossessed lands of Killeaven he's bought from the crown that surround the Mackenzie stronghold of Belhaire. Marriage with the Mackenzie will give him that. In a world post Culloden and the Jacobite uprising, 1750 Scotland leaves little choice for anyone. 'Scotland [was] drowning under the weight of taxes and excises.' Rabbie will marry the Sassenach for his family and their survival.  Rabbie's heart has been broken from the day he found out his one true love Seona, was missing after the English had taken their revenge. Seona had never returned.  Avaline is a flig...

Beartown: A Novel   by  Fredrik Backman ***** I dragged my heels a bit beginning this new Fredrik Backman novel. I needed to be in the right head space. I knew that if it was anything like Backman's previous works it would grab me by the throat and not let me go.  I was right! The depth of the characters, the reality of their struggles, so decisively described, and colored with the deceptively simple underpinning of mores of the small community of Beartown, a lonely outpost in the forest, is insightful and powerful.  You know that the intermittent ' Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang. ' the sound of a puk striking, or a gun being fired, is important. That small refrain builds tension and suspense--and the wondering. On the surface this is the story of a town's hockey club and of the A grade team hockey players, their coaches and their families and the importance of Hockey to the morale and financial viability of the town. Beartown is Hockey. It's all pe...

Never Trust a Pirate (Playful Brides #7)   by Valerie Bowman                               The action literally hums! Not a dull moment! Gorgeous, ' enfant terrible', pirate spy and enticing lady spy masquerading as a lady's maid are unknowingly in search of the same things. Half French, Danielle LaCrosse, has been placed by the home office secret services into the household of Viscount  Rafferty Cavendish,  to watch his brother Cade Cavendish. Having lost her father at thirteen, and with her mother gravely ill, Danielle is determined to bring the villain responsible for her family's pain, Lafayette Baptiste, to justice. That conveniently coincided with the wishes of General Mark Grimaldi, head of an elite unit of English spies. Equally Cade is determined to track down the enemy who nearly killed his brother, Baptiste! State secrets, vengeance and love go hand in han...

The Bad Luck Bride (The Cavensham Heiresses #1)   by  Janna MacGregor                                  Lady Claire Cavensham  believed the rumours ... that she was 'cursed'. After all she had survived a tragic accident when her beloved parents had been swept away to their doom. Her first tue love had died just before their wedding. Subsequently Claire had become engaged for a third time. Now she was about to withdraw from a fourth. Yes, the curse she laboured under was well and truly alive! Lord Alexander Pembroke blamed his best friend Lord Paul for his sister Alice's death. His determined  vengeful pursuit of the destruction of his former friend was alive, virulent and focused. And Lady Clair was now being dragged into this vortex of swirling antagonism. When Alex saw a chance to destroy Lord Paul he took it. That destruction lay via Lady Claire . Little did he kn...

Nothing Like a Duke (The Duke's Sons #4)   by Jane Ashford An amusing romance with all the right ingredients.  Lord Robert Gresham is an acknowledged leader of the ton. Handsome, laconic and intrigued rather too much by the attractive Flora Jennings.  The opening scenes of the Lord Robert acquiring a small, seemingly thoughtful dog is amusing. In fact Plato the dog is a magnificent foil and comic, all knowing, little sage--a delightful muse who becomes a center piece in the story. Robert did not expect Flora to be a guest at the house party! After all as he had discloses to Plato earlier, he was 'not thinking about her!' And now here she is. He'd accepted an invitation to a house party to be out of her orbit. As the novel progresses the Duke comes a long way from the man about town to the man mad about Flora. Flora is very different from the normal run of debutants, intelligent and articulate without too many clues about the rules governing s...