Classic Review: The Cockermouth Mail by Dinah Dean

In which Sir Richard and Dorcas appear to be escaping a 1980s music video via the Cockermouth Mail…

Was she a fool to believe in miracles?

Miss Dorcas Minster was penniless and without prospects. She had no choice but to accept a position as governess in Cockermouth, a remote town in the English Lake District.

Resolved to make the best of her bleak future, Dorcas was not surprised when the stage-coach she was travelling in was waylaid by an accident. She and her fellow passengers were forced to seek refuge in a nearby inn. So much did she enjoy the assorted company that she found herself wishing to be stranded forever.

One passenger in particular, the dashing Colonel, Sir Richard Severall, was of special interest to Dorcas. And it seemed as if she was of special interest to him. Fate had delivered her into the hands of love. If only she could be certain Sir Richard returned her affection.

A distinct “is this all there is?” is usually the result when I read a romance that reviewers gush about.

With that in mind, I was understandably loath to pick up The Cockermouth Mail. Dinah Dean’s Regency romance, first published in 1982, is touted as one of the best of the classic Traditional Regencies by Regency lovers on message boards and blogs throughout Romancelandia.

I prepared myself for disappointment. Penniless governess, returning soldier, a convenient stranding in an inn, a mystery involving a highwayman who’s robbing mail coaches — there’s nothing in The Cockermouth Mail I hadn’t seen a hundred times before.

But darlings, The Cockermouth Mail is unlike anything else I’ve ever read. It more than lives up to its reputation.

The mail coach is a common Regency trope for creating meet-cute and convenient stranding for the hero and heroine, but I’ve never seen a mail coach employed quite the way Dean does in The Cockermouth Mail. She uses the peculiar etiquette, the protocol and the actual operation of the mail coach as a hub, with the characters and plot as the spokes on the wheel. No character in the book, and very few of the plot points do not, in some way, come back to the mail coach.

The mail coach signals how far Dorcas has fallen in the world; she’s forced to find and pay for her own transportation to her new position, which leaves her purse light and her virtue in question. Other travelers on her journey notice, and occasionally judge her by her unchaperoned appearance on such a questionable conveyance.

The mail coach brings her together with Richard, a landed and wealthy soldier who’s been invalided out of service following the Peninsular Campaign. The continual delays in the journey, due to weather, allow Richard to realize that Dorcas is unable to pay for a meal and thus learn the reasons for her destitution.

The mail coach strands them at an inn where the travelers, forced to spend Christmas in a strange town, celebrate as best they can, a particularly bittersweet happenstance for Dorcas, who knows she’s enjoying a last bit of freedom for the duration. The roads to Cockermouth are impassable for most of the winter, see, it will be spring before another mail coach returns.

You’d be forgiven if you reach this point of The Cockermouth Mail and think,  “Yes, the mail coach is cute, but this surely this leads to nothing more than the usual shotgun wedding following an unavoidable indiscretion.”

Well, yes and no. There were several stages in the book (see what I did there?) where I fully expected Richard to act accordingly and offer for Dorcas’ hand. You even see him on the verge a time or two, but there are a few other tropes to get out of the way first.

All the most gifted authors in a genre as convention-bound as the Traditional Regency find a way to use familiar constructions as building blocks. Dean does that brilliantly, and the best example is Richard’s hidebound hero-with-a-limp-or-other-imperfection inferiority complex. You keep waiting for it, but it never appears until the mail coach overturns during a sudden snow storm. Richard cannot travel on foot with the rest of the group. Dorcas, who is already beginning to recognize her feelings for Richard, stays behind with him to await help. The storm intensifies, Richard’s disability renders him helpless, and the consequences are nearly fatal for both he and Dorcas. It makes for reading that’s harrowing and touching by turns, and afterward, one can easily understand Richard’s resistance to his growing affection for Dorcas.

But as with all the best romances,  the resistance is the sweetest part. Richard and Dorcas are both lovely, and each encounter between them is imbued with burgeoning awareness and real affinity. All the while, Dean is deftly building toward a baited-breath climax and an HEA — including one of the few epilogues I can say truly adds to the story — that these two characters deserve.

The Cockermouth Mail could have easily become Dorcas and Richard’s Tale of Woe but it never does. The darker themes of the book are leavened by humor at almost every turn, much of it surrounding that infamous mail coach. It’s the best Traditional Regency I’ve read in a long time, and I can’t recommend it enough.

I give The Cockermouth Mail – book and coach route – five horses that do not bite or kick at the traces. (Richard and Dorcas get five hot brandy toddies and five snuggly blankets!)

 

Review: Margot Early’s “The Keeper”

Here’s a bizarre cover for you: who hangs out on a rock over raging rapids in a bikini?

I love it when I come across a book I’ve loved and lost, figuratively or literally. Miss Bates’ recent review of Margot Early’s Mr. Family  sent me in search of one I had nearly forgotten.

In some cobwebby corner of my mind, I associated Margot Early with a book I’d read in college, one that I had always meant to track down. Miss Bates’ post jogged my memory, but it still took some sleuthing to match a title with the Early book I sought, which turned out to be The Keeper.

Before you go any further if you are someone who detests spoilers, please stop reading. There is no way I can write about The Keeper without revealing a key part of the plot that is shrouded in mystery for most of the book.

That disclaimer out of the way, here is the book’s synopsis:

keeper. n. 1. one who protects, guides, cares for 2. person or object worth keeping 3. a “hole” in a river rapid 4. a romance novel the reader’s going to put on her “keeper” shelf!

Zachary Key married Grace Sutter because he loved her–and because he needed a Green Card. That devastated Grace. When she returned to Moab, Utah, to take over her father’s Colorado River outfitting company, the marriage was effectively over.

Now, more than a year later, Zac reenters her life. And Grace discovers that something disturbing happened to him after she left–something he doesn’t completely remember. She also discovers how deeply they still love each other ….

Does their marriage stand a chance? Is Zac a keeper–or does he need one?

After you’ve read this book in its entirety, that last sentence will strike you as incredibly insensitive.

To expand upon that synopsis, Grace and Zac meet in New York City, where they are coworkers, Grace being a sous chef (maybe — I’m a little hazy there) and Zac a waiter looking for acting jobs. They have a whirlwind courtship and marry. Zac’s behavior starts to subtly change, and when Grace’s father becomes ill and she must return to Utah, Zac does a disappearing act. In light of their hasty marriage to aid his immigration status, Grace assumes he only married her for the green card and writes him off, heartbroken.

In the year between their separation and their reunion, Zac’s career has taken off. When he shows up in Utah to answer the divorce papers Grace has filed —  and to shoot a movie —  it’s clear that these two have unfinished business. But he won’t tell her what precipitated his disappearance, and Grace is left to find out the hard way that Zac is suffering from mental illness.

When I read The Keeper in the early 2000s, it was as a selection on a list of popular fiction titles for an assignment in a social work class. The professor had chosen these books for their depictions of mental illness and its treatment, either realistically or unrealistically. I claimed The Keeper because, as a romance novel, I assumed it would be a short, easy read, thus allowing me to quickly return to my regular schedule of hell-raising, and because I assumed I could trash it for being unrealistic.

On the first count, I was right. For college reading, The Keeper was a relatively light read (though for romance, it’s heavy going). But on the second count — realistic/unrealistic portrayal of mental illness?

As best I remember the assignment was to respond to questions about the book’s portrayal of mental illness. Here’s that assignment, paraphrased and simplified:

1. Are the symptoms of the mental illness depicted realistically?

Zac has two acute psychotic episodes in The Keeper. The first begins just as Grace is leaving for Utah, and the signs — fixation on his immigration status, paranoia — are subtle enough that it’s easy to see how she misconstrued them. The second happens more than halfway through the book. The reader, and Grace, to an extent, see that something is coming, but the circumstances — Zac is a Method actor filming a movie under grueling conditions — have allowed Zac to mask the problem until a harrowing river rapids shoot triggers a psychotic break. It’s an affecting read; experiencing Zac’s perspective during his breaks is chilling, and Grace’s helplessness is almost as heartbreaking.

2. Is the treatment depicted realistically?

I have read several romance novels where mental illness is portrayed, and I have to say The Keeper is the only one where the hero or heroine isn’t cured by love alone. Early pulls no punches in her spot-on depiction of Zac’s treatment. Zac is forcibly restrained and medicated. He refuses treatment, and is hospitalized under a court-ordered 72-hour psych hold, some of which he spends in a padded room. He’s not magically cured, either; his career depends upon his ability to emote, and Zac’s struggle to overcome both the psychotic break and the slurred speech and flat affect that result from the medications he takes as part of his treatment are deftly-handled.

That being said, the particulars of Zac’s problem are a little hazy. Early never conclusively identifies Zac’s diagnosis, and that may be because The Keeper is, in the end, a Harlequin romance novel, and therefore requires both a happy ending and a specific page count. Heavy diagnoses like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder would throw a definite shadow over Zac and Grace’s HEA, and they’d also need more exposition than even a Superromance could provide. A qualified happy ending is doable, but I feel that the book would probably have worked better as a single title, where the fallout from Zac’s illness could be better explored.

Where Early excels is in showing the shame, the secrecy and the confusion that go hand-in-hand with mental illness. Zac refuses to seek treatment in New York, even when it becomes clear even to him that something is wrong, because he fears that the stigma of mental illness will result in his being deported. He is ashamed to reveal his condition to Grace, and carries a copy of the diagnostic manual for mental illness with him to Utah, fixating on his symptoms all the while he’s telling himself that he’s okay. Some of the contributing factors to his mental illness are explored, and his career choice in light of his diagnosis is touched upon. He and Grace both struggle with anger and confusion about his condition and the impact it has on their future.

I don’t want to leave you with the impression that the book is an angsty, depressing read. The Keeper is as effective as a romance as it is in its depiction of Zac and Grace’s struggles. Romance, to me, is always in the little things that couples share — favorite songs, gifts, rituals they create — and Early does an outstanding job of creating a tangible bond between Zac and Grace that is strong enough to overcome the obstacles they face.

I’m so glad that serendipity — and Miss Bates — brought The Keeper to my attention again. I’ll probably Amazon this, and highly recommend anyone who’s interested in this book to do the same. It’s well worth hunting down. If you can’t find a copy, read it on Open Library. I found the book there and skimmed it again for this post.

I should also add that in unearthing this book, I discovered that there is a sequel, the story of Grace’s sister Day and their coworker Nick, both of whom make appearances in The Keeper. That one’s called Nick’s Kind of Woman. That’s a singularly dumb title, but I’ll probably check it out, anyway.

The Keeper gets 5 love coupons. Zac and Grace both get 5 love coupons, too. 

A Real-Life Pilgrim Romance… Maybe?

An engraving from Longfellow’s “The Courtship of Miles Standish.”

Happy Thanksgiving, sweety darlings!

So in my search for Thanksgiving-themed romances for the Sweet Rocket Tumblr, I ran across a Pilgrim romance I’d completely forgotten: The Courtship of Miles Standish.

I’m hardly the only one who has forgotten The Courtship of Miles Standish; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic 1858 poem about friendship and unrequited love in Plymouth Colony is relegated now to the realms of high school American literature textbooks and scholars of American literature.

Based upon real people and dramatizing (and speculating upon) real events, The Courtship of Miles Standish recasts the Pilgrims’ progress in Plymouth Colony in the light of a love triangle that may or may not have been a fact.

The principals in The Courtship of Miles Standish were all real members of the Plymouth Colony. The best known is, of course, Miles (or Myles) Standish, the Englishman hired by the Pilgrims as a military advisor, who became a leader in the colony’s fledgling government. Our other male lead, John Alden, was another Englishman, hired as a cooper (barrel maker) who also became an important figure in the colony’s governorship, as well.

Our heroine is Priscilla Mullins, who’d come from England on the Mayflower with her mother, father and siblings, all of whom perished in that first hard winter in the colony. About half the colony was lost that winter, most of them women and children, the marriageable women who remained were a hot commodity.

Another woman lost during that winter was Rose Standish. Rose Standish is sometimes referred to as Miles Standish’s wife, sometimes by the more vague term of “consort.” Either way, once she passed, Miles Standish was another of the colony’s men who were in need of a wife.

In Longfellow’s poem, Standish and Alden have become roommates and friends who share confidences. Standish, a stout 35 or so, grieving for Rose and seeing the teenage Priscilla in need of the protection of a husband, sends young Alden to present his suit to Priscilla.

Little does Standish know that Alden’s nursing a tendre for Priscilla himself; less does he know that Priscilla’s bolder than Alden, who gives her the hard sell on Standish’s behalf, and when he’s done, says “why don’t you speak for yourself, John?”

Much sturm and drang ensues. Standish roars and howls and calls Alden Brutus. Alden puffs up and proclaims himself the victor. Natives pose a threat and Standish chases them, all the while decrying Alden’s perfidy and the nature of women. Standish is rumored to have been slain, and Alden and Priscilla mourn, but carry on with their wedding preparations. And lo, on the day of the wedding, who should appear but Standish, ready to beg the forgiveness of his friend and wish the bride well. Cue the happily ever after.

Longfellow’s lusty (so far as lust in mainstream literature in the Victorian era was possible) Pilgrims were a revelation to American and English readers accustomed to thinking of the Pilgrims as dour Puritans. As Frances D. Leach writes for the Pilgrim Hall Museum in Love & Legend: The Courtship of Miles Standish,

(Captain) Miles Standish appears as a swash-buckling hero, brave but inarticulate and somewhat peevish. Handsome young John Alden is torn between his devotion to the Captain and his love for the Pilgrim maiden. Priscilla, despite her domestic virtues, speaks her mind in the manner of a modern feminist. Longfellow could tell a romantic tale, and in so doing, he made the names of these three Pilgrims household words across the nation.

Most modern readers know Longfellow more by name than for his work, having been exposed to excerpts and his shorter poems in the schoolroom, but Longfellow was the superstar historical romance writer of his day. His epic poems based upon American history were bestsellers in book form, and often adapted to the stage and song. The Courtship of Miles Standish was a sensation with mid-Victorian era readers; published as a book, the poem sold 25,000 in its first two months in print, and was rumored to have sold 10,000 copies in London in a single day.

But how much of Longfellow’s story was true?

Longfellow claimed to have heard the story of the Standish-Alden-Mullins love triangle, from his family, and as his mother was a direct descendant of Plymouth settlers, this is a possibility. His poem compresses much of the action of the first two years of the colony’s existence, but hews fairly close to the facts as known.

As for that love triangle, there was further precedent for this legend in an 1814 book by one Timothy Alden, bearing the typical early 19th century title A Collection of American Epitaphs and Inscriptions With Occasional Notes. In this volume, Alden writes that:

In a very short time after the decease of Mrs. Standish, the captain was led to think, that, if he could obtain miss Priscilla Mullins, a daughter of Mr. William Mullins, the breach in his family would be happily repaired. He, therefore, according to the custom of those times, sent to ask Mr. Mullins’ permission to visit his daughter. John Alden, the messenger, went and faithfully communicated the wishes of the captain. The old gentleman… said it was perfectly agreeable to him, but the young lady must also be consulted. The damsel was then called into the room, and John Alden, who is said to have been a man of most excellent form with a fair and ruddy complexion, arose, and, in a very courteous and prepossessing manner, delivered his errand. Miss Mullins listened with respectful attention, and at last, after a considerable pause, fixing her eyes upon him, with an open and pleasant countenance, said, “prithee, John, why do you not speak for yourself?” He blushed, and bowed, and took his leave, but with a look, which indicated more, than his diffidence would
permit him otherwise to express. However, he soon renewed his visit, and it was not long before their nuptials were celebrated in ample form… What report he made to [Standish]… tradition does not unfold; but it is said, how true the writer knows not, that the captain never forgave him to the day of his death.

So Longfellow might have made Standish a more upstanding man than he was, but John Alden and Priscilla’s happily ever after seems fair enough: John and Priscilla went on to have ten children. Of that number, Sarah Alden, the fourth, married one Alexander Standish, the second of seven children from the union of Miles Standish and Barbara Standish.

Mary Stewart: 1916-2014

The Guardian is reporting that author Mary Stewart passed away on May 9, 2014.

The grand dame of the contemporary Gothic romance, Stewart published her first novel, Madam Will You Talk? in 1956. Stewart was an instant success, ushering in a new era of popular fiction populated by a new kind of heroine. Writes Rachel Hore for The Guardian:

Stewart’s stories were narrated by poised, smart, highly educated young women who drove fast cars and knew how to fight their corner. Also tender-hearted and with a strong moral sense, they spoke, one felt, with the voice of their creator.

Stewart wrote over 50 books during her 40-plus-year career, in genres including romantic suspense, Gothic, fantasy and juvenile literature.

Having come to Stewart’s work decades after their first publication, I’m not sure I understood just how spectacular her books must have seemed at the time until I began reading vintage Gothics and Harlequins from the same period. The heroines of these books would have considered Stewart’s heroines too forward, a bit fast, and altogether too self-assured to be borne. The Gothic and Harlequin heroines of 1950s-1970s often seem buffeted by the world, pushed into arranged marriages and secretarial jobs wearing sensible clothing in subdued colors. Things happen to these heroines — not so the Mary Stewart heroine. She’s either actively pursuing adventure, ala Christy Mansel in The Gabriel Hounds, or the architect of her own fate, like the heroine of The Ivy Tree. 

As much as she was responsible for writing a more modern heroine, Stewart hewed more to classic literature than to popular literature in her prose. A stylist whose books never pandered to her audience, she assumed her readers got the references and read between the lines. In her finest books, plot, setting and characters come together like the inner workings of a watch — tightly wound, intricate yet sturdy, each word chosen with precision to propel the mechanism forward.

Without a doubt my favorite Mary Stewart book is The Ivy Tree. You can read my review here, but let me preface that by saying that this book is the essence of Mary Stewart — characters that you wish you knew, an evocative setting that is integral to the story, a plot that seems simple on the surface but becomes more involved as the story unfolds, and prose that is both lush and succinct at once.

In honor of a talent unlike any other, here are three of my favorite Mary Stewart reads:

The Moonspinners (1962)

The Moonspinners was the first Mary Stewart book I read. I read it as a young teenager, maybe 12 or 13, after finding it in the library and recognizing the title from the Disney adaptation of the same name.

While the book is much less shiny-happy than the movie, The Moonspinners was a young girl’s perfect introduction to Mary Stewart and to the suspense genre. Heroine Nicola arranges to meet her cousin on the island of Crete, but when she arrives earlier than Frances, she finds herself involved with a hero in trouble and a mystery to unravel. The mystery was engrossing, to my younger self, and Nicola, who reads even now as very young for a Stewart heroine, was a big improvement over Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden. I wanted to be just like her.

I likely didn’t appreciate just how wonderful Stewart’s prose was, then, but here’s an example that makes me swoon as an adult:

…on the darkest night, the maidens take their spindles down to the sea, to wash their wool. And the wool slips from the spindles into the water, and unravels in long ripples of light from the shore to the horizon, and there is the moon again, rising above the sea….Only when all the wool is washed, and wound again into a white ball in the sky, can the moon-spinners start their work once more…

Nine Coaches Waiting (1958)

My first Mary Stewart experience as an adult was Nine Coaches Waiting, which I read in college.  I was reading Victorian British Literature at the time, and can remember thinking that Nine Coaches Waiting was the modern heir to all those classic Gothics — a seemingly simple governess Gothic with prose every bit as accomplished and evocative as Bronte’s (and infinitely more readable than Wuthering Heights, might I add). I felt sophisticated just reading this book, with the descriptions of Paris and the French countryside, and identified with lines like this:

[Loneliness] was something which was always there… one learns to keep it at bay, there are times when one even enjoys it — but there are also times when a desperate self-sufficiency doesn’t quite suffice, and then the search for the anodyne begins… the radio, the dog, the shampoo, the stockings-to-wash, the tin soldier…

My Brother Michael (1959)

When a book’s first line is “nothing ever happens to me,” you know something big is in the offing.

Within the first few pages of My Brother Michael, a stranger approaches heroine Camilla Haven in a crowded Athens café, hands her the keys to a car, and whispers “a matter of life and death.” On the stranger’s instructions, Camilla ends up traveling to Delphi to meet a Monsieur Simon, only to find Simon Lester, searching for clues to his brother’s death during World War II. But is Simon Lester Monsieur Simon? And what did his brother Michael know?

My Brother Michael is one of Stewart’s more plot-driven novels, and though Camilla may not seem that trailblazing to modern readers, as a wandering divorcee who travels alone with a stranger, she was enough to make her contemporary Gothic and Harlequin heroines clutch their pearls and gasp.  And so wryly wise, when she says “I get to know men quickest by the things they take for granted.”

I’ll sum up with one of my favorite quotes from Mary Stewart, one that describes her books and all good books, for that matter:

The best words in the best order… the same shock of recognition and delight when someone else’s words swam up to meet a thought or name a picture.

***

P.S. Most of Mary Stewart’s books have never been out of print, or not for long, so they’re easy to find in bookstores and libraries. Many of her books are available in e-book, too.

Wish List Wednesday: The Heir of Starvelings by Evelyn Berckman

I was so inspired by the Teaser Tuesday idea that I decided to do Wish List Wednesdays! Yes, I know, someone is probably doing it, too, but if I stole the idea I repent forthwith.

At any rate, every reader has a mile-long wish list of books she can’t wait to get her grubby little hands on. So, on Wish List Wednesdays, we’ll share the following:

• The title of a random book from our wish list,
• How or where we found out about the book,
• How long the book has been on our wish list,
• And why we want it so badly!

Post your Wish List Wednesday book to your blog/Twitter feed and link to it in the comments. If you have neither, just share your info in the comments. I can’t wait to see what’s on your wish lists!

Happy Halloween (or Hallowe’en, if you’re particular), precious ones!

In honor of the holiday, today’s Wish List Wednesday title is a creepy Gothic from the way back machine. It’s Evelyn Berckman’s The Heir of Starvelings (isn’t that a deliciously Gothic title?), and here be the book’s synopsis, courtesy of Fiction DB:

Lovely Davina Milne refused to stay away from Starvelings because of its sinister reputation. Village talk about the evil Lord Stanyon and his reclusive wife could not keep her from the youthful heir of the manor who so clearly and painfully needed her. But when the lovely young girl entered the bleak mansion, she found herself moving ever deeper into a labyrinth of fearful secrets. And when suddenly she could no longer ignore the dark chasm opening before her unbelieving eyes, she realized escape had become impossible…

Now doesn’t that just give you the creeps in a very good way?

I can’t remember where I heard of The Heir of Starvelings, but I strongly suspect it was from browsing the huge archives of vintage paperback covers over at Book Scans Database. Please visit Book Scans, by the way — the good people there are not getting nearly enough credit for the wonderful work they do!

I put the book on my Wish List on April 26th of this year.

As to why I haven’t made the purchase yet, I’m embarrassed to say I stuck this on my Wish List and promptly started wishing for 1000000000 other things. For once, the problem is not lack of copies to choose from; unlike most Gothics, there are more than just a few raggedy paperback copies to choose from. The Heir of Starvelings, which was first published in 1967,  has gone through more than one printing, and was even published in hardback. That says more about the author, Evelyn Berckman, than about the Gothic genre, which was, unfortunately, infamous for churning out forgettable books by forgettable authors during the genre’s 1960s-1970s heyday.

In fact, it’s the story of the author as much as this book that intrigues me. While The Heir of Starvelings most certainly hews to almost all Gothic conventions, as do many of Berckman’s books, Berckman is rarely identified as a Gothic author, but instead as a mystery/thriller author. This, however, may be a case of a rose by any other name; according to her Goodreads bio, Berckman wrote “post-war detective fiction, horror and naval history, with a gift for engaging titles, featuring no one detective but a series of independent young women.” Hmm. That sounds strangely like the premise of many a Gothic to me.

The gift for engaging titles was strong with this one; in addition to the delightfully creepy The Heir of Starvelings, Berckman’s Gothic (or not) titles also include A Finger to Her Lips, No Known Grave, Wait, Just You Wait and the evocative The Victorian Album.

At any rate, Kirkus Reviews had no doubt that Berckman was writing Gothics, as summed up by this pithy 1967 review of The Heir of Starvelings:

True Gothicism. Complete with ragged innocent heir, a little boy entombed in the blackness of his home–nicknamed “”Starvelings”” by frightened villagers, a lovely governess who comes to take care of him having lost her true love, and the evil that his father and his father’s manservant represented. Miss Berckman can impart an air of doom to the sound of a broom. She’s almost too clever but it’s for the ladies who will thrill along.

I’ll just bet Ms. Berckman put a hex on that reviewer.

Goodreads Review: Lady Elizabeth’s Comet by Sheila Simonson

Lady Elizabeth’s Comet by Sheila Simonson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Have you ever read a book once, and thought meh, then went back again and found it a totally different book? That’s me and Lady Elizabeth’s Comet. 

Part of my problem when first reading Lady Elizabeth’s Comet was, unfortunately, Lady Elizabeth. Lady Elizabeth is as near to an anti-heroine as you’ll find in a Traditional Regency. She’s short-tempered and snobbish, often treating the hero (and various other characters in the book) unkindly or dismissively. Interested more in astronomy than the people around her, it seems amazing that Lady Elizabeth could somehow attract not one but two suitors, her father’s heir, Tom Conroy, Lord Clanross, and Clanross’ close friend, Lord Bevis.

But as it turns out, some of the same pejoratives I applied to Lady Elizabeth applied to me as a reader, at least on my first go round with Lady Elizabeth’s Comet. If you stick with the book long enough to make friends with Lady Elizabeth, you’ll find she’s also funny and smart, and eventually all-too-aware of her own shortcomings. 

I won’t spoil the book for you by revealing which of her suitors Lady Elizabeth chooses, but I will say that although Lady Elizabeth is one of the least romantic female leads I’ve ever personally encountered, the romance that develops almost painfully slowly over the course of the book is delicious.  It will remind you more of an Austen romance than even a Heyer romance.

I find myself returning to Lady Elizabeth’s Comet  when I’m burned out on trite or trope-filled Traditional Regencies, or just want a great example of everything that is wonderful about the Traditional Regency genre.

View all my reviews

Review: Lord of Vengeance by Tina St. John/Lara Adrian

The new e-book “cover” for “Lord of Vengeance”

If the e-book revolution has done one thing for romance readers (aside from making us less ashamed of reading romance), it’s the fact that it’s given new life to hard-to-find and out-of-print romances, helping bring buried treasures into the the light. I can think of no better example than Lord of Vengeance by Lara Adrian.

Here’s the Amazon synopsis:

Taken captive by Gunnar Rutledge, a dark knight sworn to destroy her father, Raina d’Bussy must teach forgiveness to a man who knows no mercy and lives only to exact revenge on his enemy. But time in Gunnar’s keep stirs an unwanted passion in Raina, and something far more perilous, when she finds herself falling in love with the one man she should never desire.

For Gunnar, vengeance is all that matters. He seeks the ultimate price from his enemy’s beautiful young daughter, claiming Raina as his hostage. But the proud beauty defies him at every turn, tempting him like no other. Setting out to break Raina’s glorious spirit, Gunnar instead finds himself bewitched by her goodness, her strength. Can he seize the justice he is due without losing Raina forever?

Lord of Vengeance made quite a splash when it was originally published under Adrian’s pseudonym, Tina St. John, in 1995. The book won the Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award for Best Medieval Romance of the Year, and was a HOLT Medallion Finalist for Best Historical Romance of the Year. But like all save a select few romance novels, within a few years the book was out of print, and largely forgotten.

Lara Adrian, however, went on to write a number of paranormal romances. Now, she’s brought the medieval romances she wrote as Tina St. John back out in e-book format. Since I missed Adrian/St. John’s books the first time around, I’m so glad to have found them now.

I have to confess I’m not a big fan of medieval romances, so I’m not sure why I decided to buy Lord of Vengeance, but I’m glad I did. Adrian/St. John takes a number of the romance conventions that have been done to death, especially in medieval romances  — the revenge romance, the kidnapping romance, the big secret romance — and makes them both believable and entirely new.

Gunnar’s obsession with avenging his parents’ death and his own terrible experiences at the hands of Raina’s father is understandable, but Adrian/St. John never lets the obsession veer into crazy; although he’s been damaged by his past, there are several times in the book when Gunnar himself begins to question his motives, as he begins to see how d’Bussy has changed and aged in the years since he murdered Gunnar’s parents. Adrian/St. John also eschews that other romance convention related to revenge — blaming the child for the sins of the father. Gunnar never allows his hatred for d’Bussy to color his feelings for Raina.

The kidnapping, however, dovetails perfectly into Gunnar’s plans for revenge, and never seems forced (pun intended). In more romance novels than I care to count, a kidnapping serves only to sequester the heroine and hero for a period of time, so that they can realize how perfect they are for each other, and there’s rarely any but the merest hints that the victim is uncomfortable or distressed. While Gunnar and Raina do come to love each other while she’s in his keep, Adrian/St. John is careful to show Raina’s discomfort and anger at being held against her will.  Although Gunnar never mistreats Raina for no reason, in more than one instance he’s compelled to treat her less than politely, and Adrian/St. John handles this well, and, in turn, so does Raina.

Much of the plot of the book hinges on two big secrets that I won’t reveal for fear of ruining the book, but, again, unlike in many romances, the secrets are both believable and understandable, and, rarer still, serve to make the book’s two villains more human and more frightening; to me, a villain must have legitimate motives in order to be truly scary — evil for the sake of eeeeeeeevil is just cartoonish.

On top of all that, there’s the sheer beauty of Adrian/St. John’s prose. Here is one lovely example:

But he saw her face at every turn, felt her softness in the brush of the summer air, smelled her essence in the waft of heather rolling off the hills. The sound of his name on her lips lingered in his mind… She was under his skin and in his blood, and he could not deny it.

Lord of Vengeance is one of the best romances I’ve read in months. I give Lord of Vengeance 5 romps in the forest, and Gunnar gets 5 sprigs of heather, for remembrance’s sake. 

Lord of Vengeance by Lara Adrian/Tina St. John

Print Length: 329 pages

Publisher: Lara Adrian, LLC (April 11, 2012)

Did you like Lord of Vengeance, sweety-pie? Then check out these books that are similar to Lord of Vengeance:

The Devil of Kilmartin by Laurin Wittig

A Winter Ballad by Barbara Samuel

Classic Review – The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart

This is the copy of “The Ivy Tree” I wish I had.

This is the copy of “The Ivy Tree” I have.

Mary Stewart is Gothic Romance’s Shakespeare — an enduring talent whose books have become classics. In my ongoing effort to become better versed in the classics, I bring you Stewart’s The Ivy Tree.

Here’s a synopsis, courtesy of Goodreads:

If Mary Grey looked so much like the missing heiress, why should she not be an heiress? And so plain Mary Grey became the glamorous Annabel Winslow. But she did not live happily ever after. In fact, she almost did not live at all. Because someone wanted Annabel missing . . . permanently.

First published in 1961, The Ivy Tree has everything that a classic Gothic should: a mysterious heroine, a brooding but darkly attractive hero (anti-hero, perhaps?), a large estate and fortune at stake, and menace in spades.

The plot synopsis tells little about The Ivy Tree, for good reason. To reveal much more would give too much away. The book’s heroine is Mary Grey, recently relocated to England from Canada. Within days of her arrival, Mary is approached by the handsome, but gruff Conner Winslow. Conner mistakes her for his distant cousin and almost-fiancee Annabel, who’s missing and presumed dead. Conner’s also — conveniently — the manager of Annabel’s grandfather’s estate, Whitescar. Together they hatch a plan: if Mary will impersonate Annabel, the heir to her grandfather’s estate and fortune, just until the old man kicks the bucket, they’ll divvy up Annabel’s inheritance. But only if she can fool her grandfather, her young cousin, and all the others in and around Whitescar.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

The impersonation plot is a difficult one to pull off in any situation, but leave it to Mary Stewart to make it appear child’s play. Mary is, of course, Annabel. And if you haven’t figured this out by, oh, say the the first third of the book, once the reveal comes, you’ll realize that you should have known it all along. But the mystery of Mary/Annabel is only one of many that unfold during the course of the story. Nothing’s what it seems at Whitescar.

To reveal any more of the plot would deny you the pleasure of seeing it unfold layer by layer. But it gives nothing away to tell you that like all of Stewart’s books, The Ivy Tree has style and atmosphere to spare. Stewart’s descriptions of the Pennines/Hadrian’s Wall setting are gorgeous, as are her characterizations. Mary/Annabel is mysterious, yet sympathetic. Julia, Annabel’s younger cousin and harbinger of the Swinging 60s, brings a sparkle to the story that lightens the dark themes of the book.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS!

Since no Gothic would be complete without a enigmatic hero, Stewart outdoes herself and provides two. The first, of course, is Conner.
There’s no besting Stewart, so let’s let her describe Conner:

He was tall, and slenderly built, with that whippy look that told you he would be an ugly customer in a fight–and with something else about him that made it sufficiently obvious that he would not need much excuse to join any fight that was going…he had the almost excessive good looks of a certain type of Irishman, black hair, eyes of startling blue, and charm in the long, mobile mouth…all his movements had a grace that seemed a perfectly normal part of his physical beauty.

Whippy! Certain type of Irishman! Grace! Be still my beating heart! A better anti-hero than Conner Winslow will not be found anywhere, believe me. He lies, he cheats, he schemes and he calls Mary/Annabel a bitch. He’s tormented by what he can’t have. And he’s sexy as hell.

And then there’s Adam. Hmm. How to describe Adam? I wouldn’t know where to start, and neither, evidently, did, Stewart, because he’s hazy — dark eyes, dark brows, thin. Scarred. Suffering and sad.

Who, do you think, is the most interesting of the two? And who, do you think, survives the book?

I give The Ivy Tree 5 cleverly hidden love notes. That’s it. I’ll say no more. I don’t want to ruin anything. Just pick a day/weekend when you have nothing to do, and settle in for the ride. You won’t regret it.

Did you like this book? Here are a few more books like The Ivy Tree:

The Bride of Pendorric by Victoria Holt

Sea of Secrets by Amanda DeWees

By the way: Conner?

Okay, this is actually Ian MacShane, but I think he makes a great Conner.