eyes.2c Reviews

Once a Rebel (Rogues Redeemed #2) by  Mary Jo Putney.     The research by Putney gives a solid background to a story that spans some years and encompasses betrayal, heartache, the 1812 British Invasion of Washington and Baltimore, race relations, slavery and courage. When sixteen year old Catherine Callista Brooke  was being forced into marriage with a man old enough to be her father, her best friend "Lord George Gordon Richard Augustus Audley, third and most worthless son of the Marquess of Kingston", suggested elopement to Scotland. What followed was a horrendous tale that forced the two apart and set them upon very different paths. Now, fifteen years and many life changes later, Gordon, called Richard by Callie (one of two people only ever to do so) is asked to go to America to find a Mrs. Audley. Curiously he wonders if they are related somehow as Audley is his name. Richard arrives as the British are attacking Washington, and ju...

Mask of Shadows by  Linsey Miller.                                    An engaging new novel ripe with assassins, political intrigue, the pale remnants of dark magic, and the need for vengeance. Sallot Leon is a thief with a shattering history who wants to be more. And that more happens the day they (I say they because Sal is apparently gender fluid, although it took me a while to realize this) hold up a coach, steal a ring from a young woman, and find in her purse a flyer inviting those who might, to audition for the role of one of the Queen's left hand assasins--Opal. Sal decides to audition, an audition that includes taking evidence of their abilities and suitability. Sal has a future ambition nourished in the darkness of their situation.. To pay back the nobles who caused her homeland of Nacea to be decimated, all slain without mercy or notice by the dreaded Mage creat...

A Murder too Soon: A Tudor mystery (Jack Blackjack Mysteries #2) (Bloody Mary #2)   by   Michael Jecks Ah Jack, Jack! Always a hair's breadth from serious trouble and yet like a cat with nine lives you land on your feet--sort of. Jack Blackjack, the consummate con artist has his master John Blount fooled into thinking he's an assassin. So when Blount actually sends him off to kill Lady Margery Throcklehampton, one of Lady Elizabeth's ladies-in-waiting, Jack's not happy. (Elizabeth is under what amounts to house arrest by her sister, Queen Mary). Although on the bright side this takes him out of London and away from Thomas Falkes, whom he owes money to and who is not happy. As Jack muses, Falkes "wanted to personally skin [him] alive–and he was not a slave to metaphor."  But when Jack finds himself caught in the middle of a struggle for the Tudor throne, Woodstock was no place Jack wanted to be. When he trips over the dead body of the lady he's se...

A Love to Remember (The Disgraced Lords #7)     by Bronwen Evans.                                   What started as an affair between the merry widow, the Duchess Rose Deverill the Earl of Cumberland, Philip Flagstaff ended up as true love. The only thing is that Philip is struggling with the way he came into his earldom and has vowed to never marry. Feeling responsible for his brother Robert's death at Waterloo, Philip has decided to forgo marriage and children as a penance. However when his mistress and the woman he loves and the life of her son are threatened Philip is forced to look at what he is prepared to sacrifice for honour and guilt. A different story that highlights the tug between perceived honour and love. A NetGalley ARC ***

When the Scoundrel Sins (Capturing the Carlisles #2)   by   Anna Harrington.   Harrington bases Annabelle (Belle) Green's story around the laws of inheritance and matrimony pursuant to regency times. When a woman married her property becomes her husband's to do with as he willed. However the twist in this story is that Belle has been left an estate by her benefactor's husband near the Scottish border that will revert to the church if she's not married by her twenty-fifth birthday. Belle must marry to retain her home she loves dearly. But whom is there to marry who will let her retain oversight of her beloved Castle Glenarvon. And there's the rub. Belle has been more or less away from society due to having been caught in an interesting situation at a ball six years ago with the rake, Quinton Carlisle, her nemesis and one of her oldest childhood friends. The third son of a duke, Quinn is about to set sail for America to take up land and a new future. H...

Unravelling Oliver: A Novel by Liz Nugent.                               Oliver Ryan, known as Vincent Dax, successful Children's writer, all but abondoned child, grows up in a boarding school with no love and no friends, until he meets Michael Condell and his sister Laura. Who Oliver really is is unveiled chapter by chapter until we come to know him--and thoroughly dislike him. His egocentric outlook, his destructiveness born of his abandonment and his desire for a father's love and acknowledgement, are the ingredients that meld together forming him. The stewpot of his angst. I think Barney is my hero and it's sad that Alice never will know him. Unravelling Oliver almost unravelled me. Brilliantly written, each chapter presents the various characters and their viewpoint on Oliver's Life. Surprise begets more surprise. A gritty, emotionally charged, psychological novel that provide...

Traitor in Her Arms (The Scarlet Chronicles #1)   by Shana Galen.  The opening scenes are gritty and vivid, laced with a certain amount of gallows humour. Lady Gabrielle McCullough is in a tumbrel in Paris rumbling over cobblestones, having had her hair slashed off in readiness to meet Madame la Guillotine,  and  surrounded by crowds screaming for yet more beheadings.  Yes! This new series has us smack in the middle of Paris at the time of the French Revolution. The scenes of gore and crowds howling for blood, the sansculotte, Robespierre, even Fouché, is here. Above all, the mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel is in the background moving people around, directing the rescue of aristocrats and others, always within a whisker of being discovered. The action then retreats to how Gabrielle has arrived at this state. It seems that upon being widowed Gabrielle found herself responsible for her husband's considerable gambling debts. Debts owed to a very nast...

Say No More  (Gravediggers #3) by  Liliana Hart.                                    Tight prose only adds to this episode of the Gravediggers. (Lord) Dante Malcolm is front and centre, a former British Intelligence force agent  and art thief extraordinaire, now an agent with Gravediggers. He is equally matched by Liv Rothschild. Sadness encompasses Liv. Her twin sister Elizabeth disappeared, taken when they we playing hooky in Harrods. No trace of Elizabeth was ever found. Liv blames herself. This effects all her actions. She  is driven by her sister's disappearance. She spends her life trying to make up for that. Liv is a Detective with Interpol and is on the hunt for art thief Simon Locke, an alter ego for Dante. Of course things are complex. This is a Gravedigger's novel after all. Their paths first cross prior to Dante joining the  Gravedigger's team. It seem...

Lord of Night (Rogues to Riches #3)   by  Erica Ridley.                                 Miss Dahlia Grenville, an unusual debutant will do anything to keep her home for destitute girls afloat.  Her passion for her girls, her cause and the lengths she's willing to go to are extraordinary. Those lengths include stealing small items from the ton and turning them into cash via a rather circuitous route. However Simon Spaulding, a Bow Street runner of impeccable standards is on the trail of the thief. The thief, on command of Prinny, is to be caught and hanged. Of course Simon doesn't realize that's Dahlia, a young woman he's become attracted to. In fact he thinks Dahlia is a respectable headmistress, not the daughter of a Baron. So we have the hero unknowingly pursing a thief who is the woman he is coming to appreciate. Dahlia's sense of fair play does go into realms I would neve...

How to Marry a Marquess (Wedded by Scandal #3) by  Stacy Reid                             A young man, Lord  Richard Maitland,  deceived by his lover, withdraws emotionally  and physically from society His one source of light becomes his best friend's sister  Lady Evie Chesterfield whom he has had a series of interesting meetings with over the years, seemingly always in the garden, often involving advice as to how to ward off unwanted suitors. For Evie, Richard becomes not only a friend but the man who holds her heart, but she can never let him know. Years later, uncovering an awful truth Richard, now the Marquess of Westfall, outrages society by claiming his illegitimate daughter openly and  adopting several desperate children. In fact, " it  had become a scandal that Richard publicly supported reforms of the injustice meted out to women and children in Newgate P...

The Wolf of Kisimul Castle (Highland Isles #3)   by  Heather McCollum.     Scottish Highlands 1523. Mairi Maclean knew that marriages were clan alliances, no matter that her first marriage went badly. Now widowed, she's again decided to marry for clan. Just before her wedding she learned that her fiancé intended to send a handsome friend to kiss her. If she enjoyed the kiss she might break off the wedding. Not that Mairi was going to do that! As she sad though, “Drunken plans should not be made the night before weddings!” But did her fiancé have to send someone so handsome? When Mairi kissed the stranger she almost swooned. Still, the wedding would continue Mairi decided even as the stranger was leading her out ... and away, wait a minute, to where? Oops drunken plans certainly played into the hands of Alec MacNeil! Mairi found herself captive to Alec, clan chief known as The Wolf of Kisimul Castle! Alec has decided to take vengeance a...

The Last Gamble (Bastards of London #3)   by Anabelle Bryant   Lucius Reese, we are told is, ' a man of many titles, none of them revered by the peerage: rakehell, philanderer, and bastard most of all.' Luke,  one of the partners of the gambling palace, the Underworld, is a man in pain. His son Nate has been kidnapped by his  half-brother, Viscount Dursley. Lady Georgina Harwood has fled her family situation and comfortable home in Mayfair to a cottage in Coventry and is currently employed by a local peer as a governess.  (Mind you I find the whole cooking episode a bit like Marie Antoinette playing at being a dairymaid) Luke and Georgina meet because Luke discovers that Georgina the governess can prove that Nate was in Dursley's hands. There are lovely moments of whimsy in Luke and Georgina's interactions .  Such as Georgina and Luke's individual reflections about each other at the inn. Luke is in room four and Georgina in room three, across th...

Into The Hall Of Vice (Bastards of London #2)   by Anabelle Bryant                                        Lady Gemma Amberson knows there's a mystery surrounding her father's death. That's why she spends her time at polite society gambling parties in an attempt to learn something, anything! Lord Winton, he of the slimey snake charmer abilities, drops hints to her that a visit to a certain Miss Devonshire in Charing Cross might help her enquiries. Of course that hint comes with a demand for payment of the more personal kind. That's where Cole Hewitt one of the owners of the Underworld, a gambling hall of note, finds her when he visits as his alter ego Mr. Goodworth. Cole is smitten but he knows the gap between them is real and not even possible. Cole and Gemma's story had great potential but to my mind it just wasn't pulled off with the same riviting quality that Den of I...

The Devil's Cup: A Medieval mystery (A Hawkenlye Mystery #17 )   by  Alys Clare "The treasure had been above ground for under an hour and already it had claimed three lives. This was how it began." 1216. King John seeks to combine his forces against the invading army of Prince Louis of France supported by disloyal barons. John calls on his loyal supporters, amongst them Sir Josse d’Acquin. Joss sets off with his brother Yves and his son Geoffroi to join the King. Meggie his daughter, a healer has been called by Abbess Caliste to Hawkenlye Abbey. When the message comes Meggie is deep in the forest. She finds strength and knowing here, descended as she is from the Forest People.  At the same time Meggie is concerned about her partner"s absence, Jehan, the smithy.  She's troubled about their relationship and what she wants for her future. At the Abbey, Meggie becomes involved with a distressed woman and her son, strangers to England and...

The Paris Spy (Maggie Hope Mystery #7)   by Susan Elia MacNeal                                I adore Maggie Hope. She's right out of 'Girls Own Magazine', a patterned heroine with a grownup twist. In Paris Spy Maggie is once again in the thick of things. This time she's called in favours from 'high places' to get herself over to occupied Paris--at the Ritz of course! Now that's a cover! She meets Coco! (As a side tack Chanel was reputably an ant-Semite and she had a German lover, Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage.) MacNeal has Maggie meeting Dincklage at Maxims after the ballet. The inclusion of Chanel is seamless, brilliant and believable. Bravo MacNeal! I have to say MacNeal's descriptions of an occupied high society Paris swirl with undercurrents of a nervous desperation despite all the glitz that is portrayed is riviting. Maggie's search for her half sister Elsie has ta...

Never Kiss a Highlander (The McTiernays #6)    by  Michele Sinclair                                     I really enjoyed this. We have a feisty young highlander woman who takes the breath away from her silent stalwart brother-in-law, a man who vowed to never return to the place he'd once called home. Hamish MacBrieve fled Foinaven Castle twelve years ago. He was now an elite guard with the McTiernay clan. After years of pleas to return home from his brother Robert, Hamish has finally acquiesced. The only problem is: 1) Hamish had once been head over heels in love with Mairead's sister Selah, who'd married Robert 2) Hamish has cleared out never to return and now only did so because his brother finally persuaded him of danger to the clan 3)Hamish was only stay ing to get the job done--his way 4) Hamish didn't want complications and falling in love with this ...

The Ghost Line: The Titanic of the Stars by  Andrew Neil Gray and J.S. Herbison.                                  Abandoned star ships that are more than they seem. This premise has been played out before. At this stage I am not interested enough to pursue a future reading of a subsequent tale. The trouble was I felt somewhat abandoned by it all.  It looked like a straight forward job for Saga and her husband Michel. Break into The Martian Queen, a sealed mothballed ship, and help bring it back online. Then other factors enter including their employer and the ship itself.  Life becomes something other. There was a reason this ship had been placed away from all. This novella has great potential but I was not captured. A NetGalley ARC **

Bloodfire Quest (The Dark Legacy of Shannara  #2)   by  Terry Brooks                                           "It all came down to Aleia Omarosian—the first of the Chosen, the original Ellcrys, but also the one responsible for the theft of the missing Elfstones." I'm with Arlingfant Elessedil. When Ellcrys really chooses you run from the scene screaming. After all we know what happened last time. Who wants to turn into a rooted tree even if it does live for age upon age? Arlingfant and her sister Aphenglow Elessedil are of the Chosen who live at Arborlon and tend to the tree Ellcrys. The tree that maintains the barrier between the Four Lands and the Forbidding. But Ellcrys is dying and needs a successor.  Ellcrys has chosen Arlingfant. "You will carry my seed to the Bloodfire and immerse it and then return to me, and through you I will be...

Too Scot to Handle (Windham Brides #2)   Grace Burrowes                                            Oh the comfortableness that eventually comes between those who are matched in Burrowes' historical romances. This trope of the strong quiet man coming to know a woman who has been underrated is once more is in ascendancy. Burrowes excels at this mix! These men wrap their loved ones in ease and warmth. They want to protect their women and do so without confining them. Burrowes has a wonderful way of giving us this. This story was interesting in many ways.  The plight of the destitute orphans is part of the story. The treatment that young women could look for at balls by insipid, entitled young male heirs of little sense was was appalling, exposing the ingrained habits and the right to bad behaviour and stupidity that many of the ton felt was owed them. ...

Beyond Absolution: A mystery set in 1920s Ireland (A Reverend Mother Mystery #3)   by  Cora Harrison In this rather marvellous Irish historical mystery I  found myself immersed in the actions and times, set as they are in Cork, in 1925. My reactions to the wonderfully rich descriptive narrative was probably helped by the fact that I was actually in Cork at my time of reading. I felt  immersed in the history of the time. The vivid reality of the story intertwined with my real life journey. Reverend Mother Aquinas is a gem. When her long time friend, Father Dominic, a priest beloved by the people and respected by the Irish Republican Army is killed in the confessional, the Reverend Mother brings to bear her vast influence and intelligent mind to solving the problem. This includes childhood acquaintances and their remembrances of the great houses during that time, past students and current ones, police, bankers, and others. The mix of people the Reverend...

The Secret of the India Orchid (Proper Romance)   by  Nancy Campbell Allen                               Sophia Elliot is distraught when her brother's best friend unaccountably takes himself off to the continent with his only word being some idiocy about them being best friends. For Sophia, their time together had been more than that. Indeed she'd thought Anthony Blake, the Earl of Wilshire felt likewise. The signs were all there. Anthony, is in reality an English spy and he's been called back into service on the eve of him declaring his intentions towards Sophia. The task he's charged with reveals that Sophia along with many others are in danger. A coded document detailing the English spy network, their  names and their loved ones has been stolen. The whole network maybe compromised unless Anthony can track it down. Two years later Sophia decides to join the Fishing Fleet fo...