Lorraine Heath's Falling Into Bed with a Duke
The title here really gets at the core of this book--it is basically about a girl who eventually sleeps with a Duke. This book is like thirty percent sex scenes and has little else going on, plotwise. Our dude has a tragic backstory--his parents were killed in a train accident when he was eight, and he and some other boys were raised by a crazy old Marquis. He also has a whole thing where he's dyslexic, but with numbers. Our girl is the daughter of some people who were in some other books by Heath--this one here is the first in a series, but set in the same world as a bunch of Heath's OTHER series and I definitely felt like I was missing backstory--and her whole deal is that she has a super big dowry BUT is opinionated and plain so the only guys who want to marry her are fortune-hunters. And do you know how these two meet? THEY MEET IN AN ARISTOCRATIC SEMI-ANONYMOUS SEX CLUB! Because he likes sex and she decides to lose her virginity to see what all the fuss is about. WHAT?!???!! Lorraine Heath, that is CRAZY. Anyway, this was pretty predictable, and while I liked the characters, I kind of found the story to be a little bit boring, and I didn't like that I felt like I needed to read 12 other books by Heath to understand the context here. B.
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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released in October.
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Friday, September 04, 2015
Friday, April 10, 2015
2015 book 86
Robin Stevens' A Murder Most Unladylike
This was a super cute historical YA mystery--that genre is my JAM--about two girls at a boarding school in England who have formed a detective agency. I liked that after one finds a dead body, and they have a REAL mystery to solve, one is like "oh shiiiiiiiit, this is crazy" and the other is like "yay I'm like I'm in a detective story!" I also liked that one was a girl from Hong Kong, and the story doesn't shy away from the casual period racism she has to deal with. I guess this is a British series being introduced in America, but the title here is "Murder is Bad Manners" which is not really as cool. A-.
This was a super cute historical YA mystery--that genre is my JAM--about two girls at a boarding school in England who have formed a detective agency. I liked that after one finds a dead body, and they have a REAL mystery to solve, one is like "oh shiiiiiiiit, this is crazy" and the other is like "yay I'm like I'm in a detective story!" I also liked that one was a girl from Hong Kong, and the story doesn't shy away from the casual period racism she has to deal with. I guess this is a British series being introduced in America, but the title here is "Murder is Bad Manners" which is not really as cool. A-.
Monday, November 17, 2014
2014 book 275
Candace Fleming's The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia
It's this year's pick for Thanksgiving Sister Book Club! (We're doing a theme: after we talk about it, we're going to watch the cartoon Anastasia). I'm a big history nerd, but figured a YA history book wouldn't be too onerous for the less nerdy, and this has gotten great reviews. I will say that this almost reads like a textbook, with sidebars and everything. (That's not an insult! It would be a very engaging and informative textbook.) That is, aside from the overuse of exclamation points (and I say that as a heavy user of exclamation points), which I felt were kind of out of place: They were invited to a ball! Workers earned 70 cents a month! The entire family had been placed under house arrest! etc. Fleming does a great job showing the VERY great contract between the ridiculous lives of the royalty and the terrible lives of the working class, and everything else that led up to the Revolution. I mean, no matter how many books I read about it, I am constantly amazed at what a clueless ruler Nicholas was. I also appreciated the look at anti-Semitism and the pogroms that resulted--encouraged by Nicholas! Fleming doesn't romanticize him a bit in this book, which is a nice change. I did wish for more on the Grand Duchesses, but there's always The Romanov Sisters for a follow-up. And there's not really enough on how Lenin became a leader (there are a few short Lenin interludes, but I felt like the gaps were too large). She does do a great job of contextualizing the murder of the family, including the children (well, young adults/teenagers) and the family servants. Solid bibliography/endnotes too. But I do kind of feel like I accidentally read a textbook. A-/B+.
It's this year's pick for Thanksgiving Sister Book Club! (We're doing a theme: after we talk about it, we're going to watch the cartoon Anastasia). I'm a big history nerd, but figured a YA history book wouldn't be too onerous for the less nerdy, and this has gotten great reviews. I will say that this almost reads like a textbook, with sidebars and everything. (That's not an insult! It would be a very engaging and informative textbook.) That is, aside from the overuse of exclamation points (and I say that as a heavy user of exclamation points), which I felt were kind of out of place: They were invited to a ball! Workers earned 70 cents a month! The entire family had been placed under house arrest! etc. Fleming does a great job showing the VERY great contract between the ridiculous lives of the royalty and the terrible lives of the working class, and everything else that led up to the Revolution. I mean, no matter how many books I read about it, I am constantly amazed at what a clueless ruler Nicholas was. I also appreciated the look at anti-Semitism and the pogroms that resulted--encouraged by Nicholas! Fleming doesn't romanticize him a bit in this book, which is a nice change. I did wish for more on the Grand Duchesses, but there's always The Romanov Sisters for a follow-up. And there's not really enough on how Lenin became a leader (there are a few short Lenin interludes, but I felt like the gaps were too large). She does do a great job of contextualizing the murder of the family, including the children (well, young adults/teenagers) and the family servants. Solid bibliography/endnotes too. But I do kind of feel like I accidentally read a textbook. A-/B+.
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