#tbrchallenge

Tl;dr: Imperfect characters who made awful and heroic choices and a second half that was mostly about war PTSD

*This is a #TBRChallenge review, there will be spoilers, I don't spoil everything but enough, because I treat these reviews as a bookclub discussion.

June's TBRChallenge theme was Road Trip, so I headed to my tbr feeling historical and glancing at reviews to see which ones had people talking about traveling. When I saw this Laura Kinsale's fit the bill, I happily jumped in. I read the first 50% of this in one sitting and then my reading mojo hit a major (for me) snag and I couldn't concentrate enough to read for five days straight. I'm mentioning this because I'm going to, mostly, blame my mojo, but I do also think the second half had some major pacing problems, just tough to parse from own issues. My brain can be a sieve, so that first half I raced through, EONS ago!, I guess I'm saying this review/talking about is going to probably read disjointed and foggy, enjoy!

If you've read Kinsale before, you know you're in for an emotional ride. Sometimes it rips my guts out (The Prince of Midnight) and sometimes I get left on the dock watching the emotions drift away from me (Shadowheart). This one had my eyes filling up and at other times dry eyed wanting to skim, my scatterbrained undecided review, enjoy!

"I loved you." Her voice trembled into a squeak. "I loved you…and you…betrayed me."

I'm going to start this with the author dedication, This book is dedicated to the combat veterans of Vietnam With respect, and love, and hope for healing. While you'll see the beginning of this from our lead Captain Sheridan Drake in the first half, your enjoyment of the whole second half is going to be if you remember this dedication and read it with the understanding that the story is now all about it. Your enjoyment is also going to hinge on if you want/can handle your leads being deliciously, frustratingly not perfect, because boy howdy do both Sheridan and Olympia fuck it all the way up numerous times.

The hero she'd loved with all her being had not died. He'd simply never existed.

The first half has Olympia, our sheltered princess of a small country but has lived all her life in England, setting out to meet her new neighbor, Sheridan. She's heard all about his bravery on his ship and wants to enlist him to use his contacts(???) to help her get to Rome. Why Rome you ask? She's going to appeal to the Pope to stop her betrothal to her uncle (I'd hurry my ass there too!). Her grandfather currently leads the country but he's old and the people have been grumbling for an overthrow to set up a democracy, which Olympia is fully for and plans to help happen. She is the completely young and naive do-gooder that knows the right destination but has no idea what it takes to get there. Readers know Sheridan isn't quite what the papers make him out to be and that he is completely destitute after his father who loved to pull pranks (incredibly dangerous and mean “jokes”) had him invest all his money in a train venture that went bankrupt. There's also the added connection that Sheridan's father's ex-mistress is/was Olympia's governess and tells Sheridan that his father's will gives him nothing, unless he does what she says to do(???). This leads to Sheridan offering marriage to Olympia to save her from her uncle, at ex-mistress' behest and somehow an English ambassador is also involved in telling Sheridan what to do, but she refuses having been poisoned by ex-mistress that she's too fat and unattractive. Sheridan decides to set-up his own plan and agrees to take Olympia to Rome, he sees how jewel rich she is, and then pretend to be kidnapped/killed by a secret assassin group that is after him(???) and steal her jewels riding richly off into the sunset, leaving her behind.

He laughed bitterly. "God, they were idiots. They'd ask how many ships I'd sunk and how many men I'd killed hand to hand…as if I kept a damned running account. They always wanted to know how it felt…" His voice had begun to shake. "But I never told them. They didn't want to know the truth. Not really."

It's a bit of a convoluted set-up, especially since Olympia's country drama winds up being like 10% of the story and doesn't come in at all until again at the end. By 20% we have them going on their road (ship) trip and then it's all on with them getting captured by pirates, shipwrecked, living on a island for months, saved, captured by pirates again, sold into slavery, and surviving a blood drunk mob. Late '80s historical romances aren't to be trifled with! There are dated terms in this and Sheridan's manservant/frenemy Mustafa is a bad characterization, so content warnings abounding again. While I enjoyed the meat of how the author allowed Sheridan and Olympia to make bad and wrong choices, they betray one other more than once, I could see how they would ultimately work together but I'm not sure I'd recommend this for the romance. I liked how Kinsale had Sheridan trying to warn Olympia off of him and how even though he thinks he's not worthy, Kinsale even has him do unworthy things (I'm not talking heinous things here), he always remained redeemable to me, which I think can be a good message. The juxtaposition of broken down tattered Sheridan and the bright shiny heroic younger captain that comes in later to be a romantic wedge between him and Olympia was perfect, especially since the shiny guy turned out to be under it all not so great, which YES, give us readers these emotions to wrestle with! The second half is more of a deep dive into how soldiers can be so lost after coming home from war.

That she would not hate him. That she was glad he was on her side. That he could keep them safe without violence, without hurting anyone. He tried to believe those things. He repeated them to himself. But he was afraid.

Sheridan is a broken man after all he had to survive. As the reader, it broke me how he was a boy who wanted to make music but after a “joke” by his father gone wrong, ends up on a ship in his preteens and is thrust into trying to survive war. I couldn't help thinking of all the current kids who just want to make music and instead have these awful circumstances thrust upon them; Kinsale did a really great job showing and articulating through Sheridan the scars such a life can leave. There was also an eye watering scene where Sheridan had finally let himself love Olympia only for her to betray him and oof, the emotions he went through here:

He should have known. He should have realized. It had been so hard for him to believe it was happening. That she could come to know him for what he was, fully, and understand what he'd done by opening the circle of himself and including her. They'd fought together, survived together, shared the miseries and the laughter and the disasters, and each small morning victory of waking up alive. He'd thought that meant something. That was love, that was the only name he had to give it. Last night, when in the midst of his whining concern for his own skin she'd said she loved and trusted him, he'd been so certain of it. He would have died for her then, he would have killed every man on board to protect her—except this was civilization, not a battle, and all he'd been able to do was make some brainless joke to cover the raw surge of emotion and then retreat before he embarrassed himself beyond recovery. She loved him. It had been hard to believe that; it had gone against every instinct built up in years of solitude, but he'd convinced himself. Aye. And he was wrong.

The love, the betrayal, the pain, just, the THE of it all! Meaty characters.

"Princess." His voice had a plea in it. "Do you understand? I don't know why the world is like this; I don't know why we go out to fight something that's wrong—something so much bigger than we are, something that ought to be fought—and end up creating a thousand little horrors to stop a huge one. Slavery's wrong. Tyranny's wrong. You weren't stupid or naive or trivial to believe that. You're right. Maybe your revolution was right. You just…didn't understand how real it would be."

The end has Olympia experiencing some trauma of her own and realizing her own naivety and a reveal for Sheridan that changes some things. This does end in an HEA but I felt a bit too rung out to have that high lovey dovey feeling for them, it's more of a gritty solemn one. The first half read fast for me but some convoluted set-up while the second half seemed to get lost and repetitive stagnate paced (could have been my no mojo brain!). However, if you remember that dedication and realize this whole story was a cover to talk about war induced PTSD you'll feel Sheridan's pain and probably think of the women and men in your own life who never fully make it back from war. These leads lied to each other, fought and survived together, were mean to each other, saved each other, and loved each other, they weren't perfect characters which honestly felt deliciously meaty to me at times.

"I'm here," she said into his shoulder. "I'm here, and I love you. I love you no matter what."

4.5 stars

*This is a #TBRChallenge review, there will be spoilers, I don't spoil everything but enough, because I treat these reviews as a bookclub discussion.

“Who is he?” I asked Zhou Dan as we moved to where he’d left the carriage. “No one you should associate with,” he replied abruptly. I took one final glance back over my shoulder at Gao. He stood still and tall in the middle of the street, watching me. It wasn’t long before his tall figure faded into the darkness.

This month's TBRChallenge theme was “Previously, in romance” and I knew immediately this was my chance to return to The Pingkang Li Mysteries series. Remember when I lost my mind reading The Lotus Palace in 2022 for a TBRChallenge theme? I've been itching for the chance to read the rich girl and the boy from the wrong side of the tracks next in the series romance. I'm also a very, very behind book blogger and only remembered the third Wednesday of the month was today around 9pm last night, so while I knew I couldn't finish The Hidden Moon, I knew I could the novella prequel to it, The Liar's Dice.

I shouldn’t have wanted for anything, yet I wanted. I stared down at my hands and how soft and empty they were. I didn’t even know what I wanted.

If you haven't read the previous two books in the series, Wei-wei is the rich sheltered sister of Huang (book 1) and Gao is the street kid who kind of works with/for Huang but also stabbed him once. When I found out these two were going to be paired up, I lost my mind, lol. This prequel would work to jump into the series here, as you get to know Wei-wei and Gao, previously secondary characters we got glimpses of. This novella delivered a mini murder mystery and a tantalizing look at the beginning of their romance.

“Your brother pays me whenever he needs things done, Lady Bai. We are not friends.”

Wei-wei is twenty-five and realizes she's a sheltered rich girl and is starting to itch against some of her restraints, while also realizing that she doesn't want to move out of her parent's home. She's created a niche where she helped her older brother Huang and now her younger brother study for the Imperial exams. This takes place in the Tang Dynasty China, so there was a wealth of new historical elements that will have you wanting to go down rabbit holes on. She has purpose but is starting to realize it feels for other people and not herself but she also has some freedom, she can get one of their servants, Zhou Dan, to keep secrets for her and her parents kind of let her do her thing.

“You want me to stay away,” I said. “I want you to stay away.”

Wei-wei doesn't want to marry and lose what she has at her home but her favorite tale, The Butterfly Lovers about Zhu and Liang, has her wondering if she could also dress like a male and experience life outside her home walls. She tests these limits one night by getting Zhou Dan to take her to Mingyu's (book 2) tea house and while she enjoys the conversation she gets to overhear, if not yet participate in, she also gets lost when trying to find Zhou Dan. In the alleyways she meets Gao and comes upon a murder victim. From here, we get a murder mystery that twists and weaves, involving Huang and gives Wei-wei opportunity to be in Gao's presence.

I reached out to him, just my hand against his chest for no reason other than that I wanted to. Just so he’d know, and so I’d know, but this time it was Gao who moved away.

This was all told from Wei-wei's pov but we get enough from her observations of Gao to know his feelings and how hard he's trying to repress them. Y'all, from the first time they meet and he puts his hand on the small of her back (screeching!) I was losing it for this couple. It's obvious Gao likes her, finds her actions and thoughts interesting and frustrating when they put her in danger and some of that she's the sun warming him and Wei-wei finds him intriguing in that he's supposed to be dangerous but why do I feel safe with him and why does he bring out a side of myself that I try to quiet. In case you didn't know, I'm goo for this kind of dynamic. They have a kiss but Wei-wei is too thrown by it to really react and Gao's insecurity has him thinking Wei-wei is probably doing a version of slumming.

When I was around him, I could be fearless too.

The murder mystery has Wei-wei land in danger and Huang and Gao have to come in to rescue. We do get a wrap-up to the who and why of the mystery, which was honestly pretty strong for a novella, but the romance is left drifted off for it to continue in the next book. Wei-wei and Gao both had a quiet intensity to them but also a sweet playfulness that I'm dying to read in their full story. If anyone wants to buddy read The Hidden Moon in March, let me know! This was a perfect appetizer novella and great if you wanted to jump into the series here (but don't, the first two books are so good!)

A simple message, one without words that held all the promise in the world. It had been folded into the shape of a butterfly (Gao knows Wei-wei's favorite tale is the Butterfly Lovers!!! He's sending her a message he hasn't forgotten about her, at the end of this.)

3.5 stars

*This is a #TBRChallenge review, there will be spoilers, I don't spoil everything but enough, because I treat these reviews as a bookclub discussion.

“Do you want me to put my hat back on?” He was joking, but she didn’t care. “Yes.” He chuckled a bit, then grabbed his cowboy hat off the hook near his bedroom door. He slipped it on his head, then climbed in the bed.

Starting the year off with a late #TBRChallenge, how sooo unlike me. January's theme was New Year, Who Dis?, which I took to mean a new to me author. I've had this author on my tbr for a couple years now and when I was going through my books on my Kindle, well, the cover caught my eye you could say.

This is an amnesia story, which on paper, I'm burnt out on but there was an interesting angle that drew me in as I got into the story (and no, it wasn't All due to the cowboy hat, lol). We start off with our female main character at an event where we learn Evie is a chef who won some reality tv competitions and is now co-hosting her own show, she's essentially made it. We get some clues that she's a bit tired, over worked, and is actually playing the game to save enough money to open her own restaurant. Things come to a crashing halt when someone she beat out on a competition show, ends up pushing her down a flight a stairs. Evie survives but has amnesia, she can't remember anything about herself.

With some secondary character bestfriends and inner circle, Evie's emergency contact is called, a Jesse Pleasant, a rancher from Southern California. Readers have a little knowledge that Evie grew-up on this ranch with the Pleasant brothers when her grandmother had to take her when her parents died when she was a kid. Jesse is the oldest, Sam the youngest, and the one who keeps appearing in her spotty dreams, Zach. With povs from mainly Evie and Zach, but also some of the secondary characters, we get a well rounded look at how Evie had a crush on Zach and they fooled around as teenagers only to have a crushing break-up ten years ago and the two haven't talked since.

With Evie's celebrity but memory loss, everyone thinks it's best to kind of hide Evie until she can recover, there's also some side worrying about how she ended up at the bottom of the stairs. Evie ends up leaving New York and going to stay at the Pleasant's ranch in SoCal. The interesting angle I talked about is how Evie and Zach are still essentially in a fight but Evie has no clue about it, so this leads to a different take on how they're going to work it out. Zach is pretty honest up front and tells her about it, he gives an apology and with Evie's memory loss, she's able to hear it, if not fully internalize it, because she's missing the blocking wall of pain and anger. Their forced proximity at the ranch has them spending time together with Evie physically attracted to Zach and having the lingering residue of emotionally having once been attached to him, some of her dreams work as mini flashbacks to moments they had growing up.

Zach's family is very cautious about him and Evie being together but Zach see's this as his second chance and Evie is growing to like him, so they get together, with the looming, is Evie going to get her memory back and then be mad all over again. It takes until around the 80% mark for her to eventually remember all but by then, she and Zach have bonded again, so most of the work has been done, with a brief moment of Evie having to work through that past anger but equipped with Zach's apology. Zach does apologize again, when it's more meaningful for Evie and readers get more of how they were early twenties and Evie's grandmother was in Zach's ear about not holding her back career wise. It's all easy and understandable why they disconnected but also why it's now easy for them to fall into this second chance.

I liked how the amnesia angle worked to deliver a different spin on a second chance forgiveness, I liked all the secondary characters who delivered (Miss Leona novella or supplement or something, give me more about this woman's life!) and have me anticipating their own books, I loved the cowboy hats, I did want more of the ranch but I have a feeling older brother Jesse may deliver that for me, I wanted a little more time spent together and developing Evie and Zach's new romance, I loved all the doggies running around, and I greatly enjoyed the friends and family relationship dynamics.

*This is a #TBRChallenge review, there will be spoilers, I don't spoil everything but enough, because I treat these reviews as a bookclub discussion.

WANTED—A HUSBAND. Need Healthy man of any age willing to work spread and share the place. See E. Dinsmore, top of Rock Creek Road

April's TBRChallenge theme was No Place Like Home, so I chose Morning Glory, a book on my tbr for decades. A drifter who's never had a home but works hard to make one with a widow, sounded like a perfect fit to the theme. The first half of this, I raced through. There's a prologue of a young mother bringing her baby home and her parents locking her up in the house because they're ashamed of her “sin”, it's 1917 and unwed mother's are not looked upon kindly. The story then quickly jumps to 1941 and to a drifter named Will about to be fired from a sawmill because it's found out that he served five years in prison for murdering a woman. I had to pause to imagine one of those graphics with arrows pointing at the book listing tropes, “Murderer!” “Shut-in recluse!”.

Will Parker's eyes were drawn to her stomach as she rested a hand on it. He thought about how maybe there was more than one kind of prison.

Will starving and having no money, decides that he will check out the widower at the edge town “Crazy Elly” and her newspaper ad asking for a husband. When I tell you, the pain of these two, gah. Will's constantly thinking, please let me stay, knowing he looks like a half-starved vagabond, who Elly knows, because he told her, that he served jail time for killing a woman but drawn to something warm in Elly's aura. The house and property are run down but Elly and her two small boys seem happy and for someone who was abandoned as a baby and on his own his whole life, Will can't help but want to be welcomed into that magic, even if Elly is pregnant with a third child. Elly for her part knows she needs help and is constantly thinking, please stay, even though she knows she's not pretty, has children and pregnant, run down farm, and is called “Crazy Elly” because of her past. They're both yearning for what the other can give and I honestly felt like a voyeur reading their relationship this first half as they slowly grew to trust one another.

She was a good mother, a fine woman who'd been locked in a house and called crazy, and if he didn't tell her she wasn't, who would?

The first half also gives a pov from a woman in town called Lula, who is said to run “hot” and wants Will but he rebuffs her because he knows those kind of women can lead to trouble because of his past. Readers do learn about the murder he went to jail for and it's, probably of course, nothing that makes him nonredeemable. Lula is that classic “other woman” villain that makes you uncomfortable reading because she's backed by a whole lot of slut-shaming, but it's, pretty obvious, why she's included and while she disappears for the majority of the middle of the story, her set-up comes into play for the last half. There's also a Miss Beasley, librarian, that was a great character (Mentally, I've given her a novella HEA with the lawyer) but, geez, yeah for women with facial hair being talked about but did the hair on her upper lip have to be mentioned, SO MANY times? Like, damn, give the gal a break. Anyway, by midpoint, Will and Elly have decided to marry and they have grown to the I love yous. I can say, even if it didn't feel over-the-top passionate (which can be considered better by some romance readers) I did believe they loved each other. Elly growing up locked up in her home, constantly being told she's a sin, until the law forced her grandparents (side question: I thought it was going to be directly said but am I the only one who thought her grandfather raped her mother and that was what was with the “drawn shades” business?) to let her go to school, but she was considered “crazy” because of her lack of socialization, and only getting befriended by her first husband (he died a'la Bridgerton, bee stings) had never really had a man care for her the way Will did, or turn her on. Will was never cared for either and had no one to care for, so when they meet, it's a pretty simple scenario of two people deserving love and finding the person that connects with them to give it. It felt real their feelings and why I said it gave a voyeuristic feeling for me.

She smiled into the bluebird's painted eye, her own shining with delight. "A bluebird...imagine that." She pressed it to her heart and beamed at Will. "How did you know I like birds?" He knew. He knew.

The second half is where things really slowed down for me. Pearl Harbor gets bombed and Will gets drafted. There's a couple chapters of letter writing between Will, Elly, and Miss Beasley and then a really great scene where Elly has to rush to see Will before he gets shipped to the Pacific. She's had the baby by now (the birth scene was something else with Will playing doctor) and while they managed to have sex once before he left for boot camp, these two are ramped up. I love how the author described their attraction, from how Will was sitting in the chair and Elly eyeing him up and Elly breastfeeding with Will seeing her exposed boob, could definitely feel the tension in the air. Will gets injured and he's eventually sent home after being medically discharged because of shrapnel in his leg. The townspeople view him differently and he gets the respect he's craved but he's also suffering from PTSD and that delivers some strain between him and Elly until he eventually opens up to her. We're at around 80% when Lula comes back into the picture and Will's suddenly arrested for her murder. The ending was the court case and Elly trying to help prove him innocent until the last 5% gives us the HEA.

He wanted to take her close, cradle her head and rub her shoulder and say. "Tell me...tell me what it is that hurts so bad, then we'll work at getting you over it."

The first half, a slower moving but pulling you in with these two and their hurts and pains, learning to come together but the second half was a slower moving left me kind of disinterested ending. I read this in almost one shot and kind of glad I did, because even though slower moving usually calls for savoring, pacing out, I feel like this would be one that would be hard to pick up again, so my two cents of advice. These two will linger with me because of how real they felt but I'm not sure I could recommended, maybe just the first half and that meet-up in Augusta. Hope springs eternal for a Donald Wade, Thomas, and Lizzy P. spin-off series! (Elly's kids) Guess what I'm watching tonight? (Hint: check out what's on Tubi)