An enjoyable tale for Regency fans who like revenge plots in their romances.
The prospect of an undesirable marriage drives a lady to seek refuge in a rogue’s tavern in this fifth installment of a series.
In this Regency romance, Lady Regina Berkly faces a preposterous arranged union when her father, the Earl of Hedgewick, says she will marry a sickly 14-year-old marquess the very next morning. As part of the upper class, Regina never expected to marry for love, but to confront “no hope of happiness” was taking duty too far. Mere hours before her wedding, she runs away and soon meets the notorious “Scoundrel of St. Giles,” Carlton Guthrie. Carlton seems to feel pity for Regina, offering her shelter in his tavern. But he is concealing an ulterior motive: He has a personal vendetta against Regina’s father. Past attempts at retribution have taught him that “bringing a peer to his knees was no simple task.” Regina will serve as unwitting leverage, with her virtue at stake. Over time, Carlton’s commitment to the scheme falters. He is drawn to Regina, yet when she is open to intimacy, he realizes he can no longer toy with her ruination: “Ye’ve a future that cannot include me, luv, and I’d hate to be yer biggest regret.” Regina’s presence at the tavern is eventually discovered, and when she is pulled away from Carlton, he realizes “she’s the dream I dare not allow myself to have.” Carlton must decide if he can trade his desire for vengeance for Regina’s love. In this latest entry in the Diamonds in the Rough series, Barnes’ (The Infamous Duchess, 2019, etc.) Regency setting is a little less lush than those offered by some other historical romance novelists, lacking the assortment of fashion, decorative, and etiquette details that create an immersive story. But the disparity between Regina’s wealthy family and the poverty of St. Giles is effectively contrasted. The tale becomes a bit stagnant in the middle since Regina is in hiding with limited possibilities for appearing in action scenes or dealing with the supporting cast. But once the heroine comes out of hiding, the third-act momentum increases, resulting in a vibrant and satisfying conclusion.
An enjoyable tale for Regency fans who like revenge plots in their romances.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 311
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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