eyes.2c Reviews

Ripples in Stone  (Ripples in Stone #1) by Claire Harper    ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Being walled up in a convent, a silent order at that, by your family for something your sister did is so unjust that I was shocked. Not only that the Abbess de Tourmont  was a bully, self interested and a harsh disciplinarian. Lady Geneviève was fourteen when she entered into the Abbey as a novice.  It is a time of unrest in Paris and their majesties have retired from the troublesome area waiting for calm. Their court of course travels with them. Viva la Revolution! (sort of)  As background, her sister Félicité had been acting as the King’s mistress, however the King bedded their sister Celeste to prove he wasn’t impotent. Unfortunately the Pope is furious because bedding sisters is incest. Someone had to pay. That someone was the horse mad, innocent  Geneviève. What’s really happening is that the aristocracy is caught in the snare of the French Revolution, fighting for their positions...

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...