What We’ve Been Reading

The Collection

Explore our full library of honest reviews and literary recommendations.

How the Marquess Was Won

I liked this book. I liked it a lot. And yet…. The truth is, I’ve so loved the last two books in Ms. Long’s Pennyroyal Green series, I Kissed an…

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Desired

At the start of Desired, Tess Darent, the Dowager Marchioness of Darent, in an attempt to elude raiding redcoats searching for radical reformers, ties a sheet about her waist and…

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The Sinner

Alex MacDonald, the Scots hero of Margaret Mallory’s The Sinner, has every attribute one could dream up for the perfect alpha male hero. He’s a “blindingly handsome” golden haired sex…

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Some Like It Hot

I’m wondering if Louisa Edwards wishes she’d chosen a different heroine for her latest Recipe for Love series. Somehow right now doesn’t seem like the best time to have a…

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A Scottish Love

The beginning of this book is so peculiar, it’s disconcerting. It’s 1859 in Inverness and Shona, the widowed Countess of Morton, so penniless she can barely feed herself, is interviewing…

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Blood and Fire

It’s safe to say I don’t want to live in Shannon McKenna’s fictional world. The bad guys are Machiavellian and ubiquitous, and way too much gruesomely horrifying stuff happens to…

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To Wed a Wild Lord

Ms. Jeffries’ latest in her Hellions of Halstead Hall series begins inauspiciously with an odd letter to readers from a character in the novel — the grandmother of the hellacious…

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The Other Guy’s Bride

As I read Ms. Brockway’s much anticipated The Other Guy’s Bride, I was reminded of one of my favorite featherweight films, the 1999 romantic comedy caper “The Mummy.” The novel,…

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A Beginner’s Guide to Rakes

In Ms. Enoch’s latest, The Beginner’s Guide to Rakes, the first paragraph reads: “Very few things in the world could make Oliver Warren, the Marquis of Haybury, flinch. He could…

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To Pleasure a Duke

When I was growing up, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” was regularly put forth as an argument against premarital sex. This awful phrase…

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Real Men Will

Ms. Dahl’s final book in her Donovan Brothers Brewery series tells the story of Eric, the eldest and least at ease of the Donovan siblings. He, like his brother and…

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