Author: Lady Nightwolf

By Madeleine Roux, Pub Date October 22, 2024

4*s. 2 🌶️. A historical romance for the bookish.

Publisher’s Synopsis:

“Margaret Arden yearns to live like the passionate and daring women in her novel. The idyllic life at Mosely Cottage with her two younger sisters and mother is fine, but Margaret wants more than the demure and dainty existence she’s known. After a particularly brutal rejection from an annoyingly attractive publisher, Margaret fears being forced into marriage to protect her family if their financial situation doesn’t improve—until her cousin’s glamorous wedding masquerade brings her onto a collision course with scandal, notoriety, and even love.

Captain Bridger Darrow is starting over after fighting for his country. Now home, he is struggling to save his family from destitution and succeed in a new venture of passion: book publishing. It’s all going rather poorly, until he stumbles upon loose pages of an astonishing novel while in attendance at his dearest friend’s wedding. Bridger knows he must publish it. But upon meeting the author, Bridger is stunned to discover that he—she—is a woman, and he has already told her off in grand fashion.

While Bridger is keen to gain her trust and rescind the initial rejection, Margaret can’t help but be skeptical of his intentions. Sparks fly between the two, just as the wedding of the season starts to descend into chaos when a masked dance leads to a case of mistaken identities.”

My Notes:

I really enjoyed Madeleine Roux’s House of Furies, so when I saw she was taking a foray into historical romance, I knew I need to check it out. I’m pleased to say that this was an excellent step into historical romance.

Margaret’s character build is fantastic as is Bridger’s. I enjoyed Margaret (Maggie)’s will to flout the expectations of her overbearing aunts who want her to marry well and pay for the sins of her mother, who married for love. However, Maggie absolutely adored her father and received her pension for storytelling from him, which is why she has written a book in his honor that she is desperate to get published. 

That’s how she initially gets into it with Bridger, who is a book publisher. She brings her book to a salon after having sent it to his publishing office without response. Bridger, who honestly didn’t give the manuscript much of a chance in the first place, turns Maggie down in a most embarrassing fashion. Of course, the embarrassment was not necessarily on purpose – with his less than excellent father on his death bed and his older brother Paul off gambling and galivanting when he should be preparing to take over the family title, the former soldier-come-publisher doesn’t have much patience for social affairs. Unbeknownst to either, this will not be the last time they will see one another. 

Upon his arrival at his best friend Lane’s country house wedding, he finds himself once again face to face with Maggie, who just so happens to be Lane’s cousin. Neither expected to see the other, but they find themselves in a series of events that thrust them together in the most unpleasant – or perhaps very pleasant – of ways.

The above is all well and good, but what the synopsis does NOT talk about is the scandal that happens at the wedding. The bride, Ann, a delightful woman of British/Indian descent, is seen kissing another man the very evening after her nuptials…or is she? As Maggie and Bridger pursue the real culprits, they find themselves stuck at an Inn in a storm with a one bed room and the perpetrator onto them. 

It also doesn’t talk the issues that their adventure above will cause. There was plenty of mystery, heartbreak, enemies to lovers and one bed to keep anyone. Truly awful and unredeemable characters as well as survivors finding love. The Tertiary characters are also fantastic, and I look forward to seeing what else Roux can do with the genre. 

Thanks so much to Netgalley, the author, and Random House for the advanced copy in exchange for the above honest review. 

By Virginia Heath, Pub Date Nov 7, 2023

4*s, 2 Spice. Another delightful romance rom com from Virginia Heath!

Publisher’s Synopsis:

“Miss Venus Merriwell has been waiting for her prince to come since the tender age of fourteen. She wants a man who is a selfless academic like her, and free from all the wretched vices her gambler father enjoyed far too much before he left the Merriwell sisters practically destitute. Unfortunately, after a slew of romantic disappointments, there is still no sign of that prince at twenty-three and the only one true love of her life is the bursting-at-the-seams orphanage in Covent Garden that she works tirelessly for. An orphanage that desperately needs to expand into the empty building next door.

For Galahad Sinclair, gambling isn’t just his life, it’s in his blood. He grew up and learned the trade at his grandfather’s knee in a tavern on the far away banks of the Hudson in New York. But when fate took all that away and dragged him across the sea to London, it made sense to set up shop here. He’s spent five years making a success out of his gaming hall in the sleazy docks of the East End. Enough that he can finally afford to buy the pleasure palace of his dreams—and where better than in the capital’s sinful heart, Covent Garden? The only fly in his ointment is the perfect building he’s just bought to put it in also happens to be right next door to the orphanage run by his cousin’s wife’s youngest sister. A pious, disapproving and unsettling siren he has avoided like the plague since she flattened him five years ago.

While Venus and Galahad lock horns over practically everything, and while her malevolent orphans do their darndest to sabotage his lifelong dream, can either of them take the ultimate gamble—and learn to love thy neighbor?”

Showing My Hand:

This is the final installment in the Merriwell Sisters series. The series is great, you should really check it out!

The final installment follows Venus, the youngest Merriwell sister, a few years after the first book. I highly suggest reading at least the first one to give you a good idea of who Galahad is and is not, and also the shared history between the two. 

Venus and Galahad are rivals. Venus, who spend the majority of her time at a London orphanage reading books and helping with the children, is wanting to find a way to expand the building into the one next door for the purposes of housing the growing population of parentless kids in London. As she seeks out the new owner of the property to request the building be donated to the cause, she runs into a familiar face, one belonging to a person she once tackled to the ground in an ill-placed bid to protect her sister from harm. 

Galahad is the proprietor of a very successful gaming hell near the docks, thankfully grown and long separated from the machinations of his wicked father that brought him from America to London. He is looking to expand into Covent Garden and build his empire further, and he has found the absolute perfect place to put his plan in action. Unfortunately for him, he’s not the only one with eyes set on the building in question. Venus Merriwether, who once tackled him in his cousin’s garden in at night in a fit of protective rage, is also vying for the property which is connected to the orphanage she holds dear. Despite how attractive he finds the now adult woman who rivals the goddess for which she is named, he almost has his very dreams in his grasp and he refuses to let her tackle those from him as well. 

In the end, it comes down to a bet between the two. However, they do not realize yet that the true stakes are more than just the building and their dreams, but also their hearts. 

This book had a lot of heart. There was also a lot of adventure and some side characters that I really hope to see in future Heath books. The orphaned twins were absolute CHARACTERS and I hope she has plans to expand their stories. I was a little sad by the end of this one. I really enjoyed the whole thing, including Venus’s trips to the gaming hells and the fact that she was very intelligent and her family refused to play cards with her because she was so good. But she definitely met her match in Galahad, and Galahad never expected Venus. It was a rivals to lovers romance and one of my favorite tropes. 

All books are now available. I highly recommend this series if you like a good historical romcom with a little spice!

Thank you to Netgalley, St. Martin’s Press, and Virginia Heath for the advanced copy in exchange for this review.