Indiscretion, by Jude Morgan

I read Indiscretion in one sitting and enjoyed it immensely. Partly because I had absolutely no expectations approaching it and partly because it was light, witty, smart and entertaining. What more could I ask of it?

Caroline Fortune has had an unconventional upbringing in the shadow of her rakish, unreliable father - a dandy, soldier, actor in one incorrigible bundle. Dodging debt-collectors and making do with less than desirable accommodations is second nature to her. So when her father confesses to losing every thing he owns, she determines to make her own way.

But Captain Fortune finds her an eminently suitable position - companion to the childless, fearsome and formidably rich Mrs Catling. They remove to Brighton, where the first part of the story takes place. There, Caro enjoys polite society and befriends Mrs Catling’s young relatives - Matthew and Maria Downey, and their good friend the elegant Mr Leabrook. Beautiful, pleasant and well bred, Caro is attracts plenty of attention in Brighton - but not all of it is welcome. Her time there comes to a climactic end with a dishonourable proposition and a personal tragedy.

From there, the story shifts to a small parish in Huntingdonshire, where Caroline moves in with her mother’s relatives and attempts to adjust to country life. In particular, she befriends beautiful and gentle Miss Isabella Milner and makes the acquaintance of her provoking brother Stephen. But trouble is soon to catch up with Caro and the story descends into a good natured comedy of manners as the past and present collide in a witty, Heyer-esque romp through regency England.

That’s the bare bones of the story. What I loved above all was the easy, flowing language, peppered with witty asides and a cast of characters - caricatures, certainly - that stayed true to themselves. Caro was a delight. Mature, composed and practical, there might have been an element of the dreaded Mary-Sue about her, but I cheerfully ignored it. Her reactions and feelings always felt true and real. When she is propositioned by a gentleman her response was so right, so what I thought a woman in her situation might feel I actually nodded approvingly to myself....

... she had been put in such a situation that no usual emotions seemed appropriate. There was anger, indignation, humiliation - yet none in a strong enough measure to be purgative. Her sense of self had been dealt the severest blow. If... had seen her as fair game, then was that how she habitually appeared? Did she bear some Cain-like mark that incited the adventurer, that roused the rake? Nonsense, said Reason: as well say the fox invites the hounds. But Reason’s voice could not always be heard above the clamour of self-doubt, especially when she fell into a melancholy wondering whether this kind of offer - the kind that was hardly distinguishable from an insult - was the best she could ever hope for.

Other great things - the dialogue. In particular, I loved the banter between Stepehn Milner and Caro. Behold -

“You are very silent, Miss Fortune.”
“Oh - I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be: I consider it a promising development.”
“Indeed: perhaps you can consider something else while you are about it, and that is how it is possible to be very silent , when silence is an absolute. You would not say that I was very perfect, would you?”
“No,” he said gravely, “I certainly would not say that.”

Jude Morgan writes with wit and assurance, and the story trips along lightly and irreverently. I know some reviewers fold down the pages of passages they find particularly repugnant: I do the opposite and, at last count, I had 14 pages marked for repeat reading. There are times when the characters and situations felt very familiar - oh, here’s Lydia Bennett, I thought. This must be Mr Collins. This guy is totally Col. Brandon... but what the hell. I liked it anyway. I liked it enough to order Morgan’s next book (sounds very much like Bath Tangle...)

I discovered after reading the book that Jude Morgan is in fact a man. I have no idea why I found this so surprising, except that most romances I read a written by women. I had no inkling until I went on-line and read the author bio. The book itself gave nothing away, but I am left wondering if my bemusement reveals a certain prejudice about men and romance.

Overall, a grade A from me.

Two Unexpected Pleasures

Although I have stuck ‘librarian’ on my profile I don’t physically work in libraries any longer, although I do work for them. As a result, the amount of time I spend there has dropped quite significantly, not least because I now prefer to buy my books. Last week, however, I found myself in a number of libraries for extended periods of time and discovered two excellent novels whilst browsing the shelves.

This is noteworthy because:

1. I can’t remember the last time I came across a book like this. (It’s so old fashioned!) These days, I visit my favourite blogs/ review sites and pick up recommendations from reviewers I trust. I just don’t have the time to read books that merely sound promising - see monstrous and growing TBR pile. I need a little more insurance.
2. I don’t visit libraries much, as mentioned, and since I tend to bulk buy online, I don’t really visit bookshops either. Thus, the simple pleasure of browsing rows and rows of bookshelves at my leisure has been lost to me. And it is a pleasure. I found some of my favourite reads completely by chance - the innocuous, clothbound I Capture the Castle, Regency Buck (my first Heyer), Little Women, Jo Goodman's My Reckless Heart etc

Anyway, browsing through the shelves last week I found Indiscretion by Jude Morgan, a book I immediately began to read and finished the same evening. And then a few days later, Bareback by Kit Whitfield. I haven’t read this yet, but the first chapter was incredible.

All of which may sound very mundane, but it brought home the sad truth of my reading habits and how stale the whole process has become. Perhaps my ever-growing tbr pile, and my inability to confront it, has something to do with the lack of spontaneity and risk involved in my choices.

Reviews to follow.

Beast of Burden

My TBR pile is overflowing; quivering on the verge of insurmountable. It stares at me accusingly, an ungainly presence on my troubled conscience. etc.

This (sideways) pile is by no means exhaustive. There are books I own that I can’t even begin contemplating at the moment (Moby Dick, anyone? What was I thinking? That is definitely one for a long vacation). There are also the two books currently weighing down my bag - Murder on the Leviathan by the Russian writer Boris Akunin and Voices of the Night, by Lydia Joyce.

Now, I must admit I have seen worse piles, but not in my house. Never have I spent so expansively and read so slowly. I blame the blogs. There are so many great books out there, read and recommended by all and sundry, that I simply can't resist. Combine this with my trigger happy internet shopping 'problem' and there is no saving me from my own folly.

This is the list as far as I can tell:

• Demon Angel
  
• Demon Moon (These books have come sooo highly recommended I don't know why I keep putting them off. Anticipation? I think I'm waiting for the third to come out, so I can read all in a happy, gluttonous haze.)
• Kafka on the Shore (Murakami)
  
• Dead Sky (Hoag)
  
• Duke of Sin (Ashworth)
  
• The Devil to Pay (Carlyle)
  
• Theft (Carey)
  
• Cold Comfort Farm (Gibson)
  
• Slightly Married (Balogh)
  
• Simply Love (Balogh)
  
• Slightly Wicked (and again)
  
• Simply Unforgettable (I've never read a Balogh and went a little mad here...)
• The Victorian House (Flanders)
  
• Midsummer Moon (Kinsale)
  
• For My Lady's Heart (Kinsale)
  
• My Sweet Folly (Kinsale)
  
• The Crimson Petal and the White (Faber)
  
• If his Kiss is Wicked (Goodman)
  
• Special Topics in Calamity Physics (Pessl)
  
• The Inheritance of Loss (Desai)
  
• Skylight Confessions (Hoffman)
  
• The Editor's Wife (Chambers)
  
• Absurdistan (Shteyngart)
  
• The Plot Against America (Roth)
  
• Consuming Passions, Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain (Flanders)
  

Also - but not pictured

• The Tin Drum (Grass)
  
• Lady Audley's Secret (Braddon)
  
• Not Quite a Lady (Chase)
  
• Disobedience (Alderman)
  
• Jane Eyre (one day...)
• The Dream Thief (Abe)
  
• Bliss (Cuevas)
  
• Dance (Cuevas)
  
• Moral Disorder (Atwood)
  
• The Tent (Atwood)
  

Gah!

On Football (or "soccer" to the unenlightened)

I've had a general interest in football for a couple of years now, which has only recently developed into a fully-fledged love affair. I love the game (obviously) but there's the other stuff that I love just as much. I love the sports pages, I love the feuds and the history and the antics of players and managers both off and on the pitch. I love the tea-time football newsletter I get every weekday and my favorite football podcast and of course I love my football team (Manchester United - I know, know, but I love them, I can't help it!) and my favorite Manager (Alex Ferguson) and I loved to hate Jose Murhino; that dark, satanic, provocative imp. Ah, Jose, you will be missed.

This week I entered "Pick the Score," The Guardian's new predictions game. It's devilishly simple (which is a good thing). All I have to do is predict the score for upcoming premiership games. If I predict the score correctly I get 3 points, if I merely predict the outcome I get 1. Simple! So I joined belatedly this week and started with the average number of points accrued by the participants so far - 26.

My current rank: 9,514

Top score currently: 60

I've predicted my first set of scores and those games begin today. I have to be honest, I've checked the latest scores and it's not looking good. At this point if I can get my rank up to 5,000 I'll be a happy camper.

ETA: Congratulations to the United State's women's football team, who soundly spanked England in the quarter-finals of the World Cup. And to England, dammit, for getting so far.

The Smoke Thief, by Shana Abe

Ten minutes into this book (I was on the bus, bored) left me enthralled and excited, as I feel when I know I’ve got hours of great reading ahead of me.

“Imagine a place so ripe and thick with the promise of magic that the very air breathes in plumes of pearl and gray and smoky blue; that the trees bow with the weight of their heavy branches, dipping low to the ground, dropping needles and leaves into beds of perfume.”

Isn’t that pretty? Overwrought, yes, but pretty!

Clarissa Rue Hawthorne is a halfling. A member of the Drakon tribe, living in seclusion among the green hills of northern England, she is a perpetual outsider in this closely knit society - for her father was a mortal. The Drakons are a beautiful and mysterious breed, with the ability to shift from human to smoke to dragon and back again. There’s just one problem; only a dwindling number of males can Turn and no woman has for generations. Thus the tribe lives in fear of its own extinction.

From a young age, Clarissa has loved Christoff, son and heir of the tribe’s Alpha, the Marquess of Langford. She loves in vain, however, as Christoff - older, beautiful, bored - pays her scant attention, sowing his wild oats among the impressionable young women of the tribe.

And so Clarissa contrives the impossible - she escapes the tribe (runners are hunted down and brought back without fail) and contrives to make a life for herself in London. As the Smoke Thief, she steals the brightest, most dazzling of jewels from the highest echelons of society.

Years later, her fame has reached the ears of the tribe, most particularly the new Marquess of Langford, Christoff, or Kit. Using the famed Langford Diamond as bait, a trap is set for the Smoke Thief. It is only when Kit catches Clarissa that he realises the thief is a woman - and she is the only drakon female alive able to turn. This makes her the female Alpha and his mate.

From there, the story twists and turns, revolving around these compelling characters and their passionate, absorbing relationship.

I don’t think Abe strikes a wrong note throughout the book, sustaining elements of romance and fantasy and adventure in a very particular time and place (18th century England). Her writing is assured and poetic, her dialogue never jars. I gobbled up the book in one day and immediately went on-line to order the next. (To my disappointment, the third in the series is out next spring, not as Amazon claim in December).

What did I like? Everything! Kit - his golden hair and sleepy green eyes; an Alpha in the true sense, without resorting to the ass-holism so often synonymous with the term. He is the leader of his tribe, and this is an integral part of him; his duty to the tribe and the sacrifices he makes for its greater good have shaped him.

Clarissa (or Rue) is the perfect mate for Kit - strong, brave, loyal and smart. Her decisions are logical, her desire for freedom and autonomy real and valid - indeed, I was utterly indignant on her behalf when this freedom is threatened by the tribe. Often novels have heroines acting wildly out of character to serve the plot - didn’t happen here. Rue is great. My only quibble was with her great and unearthly beauty, but all drakon are beautiful, so I suppose I have to let that go.

The dragon aspect is well done. Abe skillfully avoids the cheesy and creates magical, wondrous creatures of beauty and grace. Rue and Kit’s first flight - more of a midnight chase - is high octane, thrilling, brutal.

What a wonderful surprise this book was. I haven’t read an A-story in months. Highly recommended!

(As an aside, there are some excellent reviews of this book out there, on the big wide web. I recommend Dear Author as one such place).

Match Me If You Can, by Susan Elizabeth Phillips.

I’m a huge SEP fan and have been for years. YEARS. I read my first one when I was school all those years ago... she’s consistently smart, funny and her characters are alive. Larger than life, brash, unrepentantly outrageous.

So why did I put this book off for an entire year?

Her last two left me feeling a little flat. Writers evolve, grow in confidence and skill, become more serious. In her last couple of books, I think SEP toned down the high camp of her earlier novels, giving her characters more maturity and self-awareness. Which is fine but, necessarily, some of the dramatic tension, the highs and lows of a roller-coaster romance are also missing. In its place was more of the earnestness, the self-growth, the finding-yourself-in-your-lowest-moment stuff that is always central to an SEP novel. Whilst enjoyable, I was left feeling a little unsatisfied.

So does this latest - a return to her popular Chicago Stars series - turn things around?

Annabelle Granger is a professional matchmaker. Her small struggling company - Perfect for You - desperately needs business and that’s where Heath Champion(!) comes in. Heath is a very successful sports agent and the hottest bachelor in town. Wealthy, driven and gorgeous Heath is Annabelle’s polar opposite. For - of course - Annabelle is a bit of a flake. Her life is as unruly and out of control as her wild red hair. She is the disappointment of her uber-successful family, the perpetual failure. What saves Annabelle from annoying the hell out of me is her very droll sense of humour and her amusing sparring bouts with Heath.

Annabelle manages to (very cleverly) trick Heath into hiring her services. Heath’s looking for Mrs Champion - refined, beautiful, upper class, the very antidote to his humble beginnings - and Annabelle brings him fresh candidates to consider. Heath insists that Annabelle sit through every introduction and thus their odd, quirky relationship begins. Indeed, thinks Heath, If Annabelle were a few inches taller, a hell of a lot more sophisticated, better organised, less bossy and more inclined to worship at his feet, she’d have made a perfect wife.

The good: My favourite romances are the ones where I don’t want the verbal foreplay to end. When the flirting, bickering, falling-in-love-and-not-knowing goes on and on and I just love it. This was perfect. Heath and Annabelle had a great, fizzing chemistry, sparkling repartee and the whole friends to something more was handled with just the right touch. And how great was it that they were friends first? (I’m reading some Shannon McKenna short stories at the moment and I think my eyes were starting to bleed...) Pretty damn great. These two, the reader thinks, fit in more ways than good old sexual compatibility.

The bad. Well, I would say this begins when Heath and Annabelle start to get serious about their feelings. From this point on, it’s all self-doubt and denial and angst. As per practically every SEP book in existence, the heroine can’t believe that the hero loves her and throws his declaration back in his face (how many times does SEP use this device? How many times has the hero publicly declared himself, only to be rejected and humiliated?) There is that moment of self-realisation when the heroine thinks “I DESERVE to be LOVED” and, of course, there is much abasement of the hero before she gets that yes - YES - he really, really loves her as she so rightly DESERVES to be LOVED.

Unh. After the fizz and crackle of the first two thirds of the book, this was a real downer.

The other thing that brought me down were all the visitors from previous Chicago Stars novels. This is such a tired device, the author really milking her franchise - buy the other books, buy the other books! At one point, as the women approach their men, Phoebe murmurs “Welcome to the Garden of the Gods, ladies.”

I mean, come on! The premise - that footballers are smart, articulate, romance novel material - is shaky enough to begin with. When they stand together - Gods among men - I felt my credulity stretched beyond repair.

The secondary romance - featuring a rival matchmaker and Heath’s friend - was tacked on and slightly jarring even though there is a very funny bit at the end that had me snorting to myself.

Overall, a solid B.

Dangerous Lover, by Lisa Marie Rice

This book came dangerously close to becoming a wall-banger. Unfortunately I bought it as an ebook and, well, I didn’t hate it enough to toss my MacBook.

So here’s the premise. Ben is a homeless kid in love with the lovely young girl who visits the shelter in which he resides with his father, an unlovely drunk. Caroline is everything beautiful, kind and generous; dispensing bounty like a latter day Mother Theresa, and Ben loves her with an unhealthy intensity. The night Ben’s father kicks the bucket, Ben resolves to see Caroline. It’s Christmas eve and I’m not entirely sure what Ben intends to do, but he is a young man of Resolve and so he trudges through a snow storm to his beloved’s house.

Witnessing Caroline from the window, in the loving bosom of her elegant, wealthy family, smooching with a handsome blond stranger, Ben decides to disappear into the night, never to return.

Six years later. Ben is now Jack Prescott, a lean, mean man of war. A veteran of some of the most nasty war zones in the world; Iraq, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone - truly, the trifecta. Jack’s been sorting out a nasty mess in Sierra Leone, killing some bad guys and selling off the security company his late foster father (young Ben found himself a kindly colonel) left him. A free agent, he resolves to find the young woman who so haunted his dreams in the intervening years - the woman he could never forget, even as he fucked his way through countless other women; never committing, but satisfying his manly urges with one night stands (or three nights - if he really liked them) and his best friend, Mr Right Hand.

Life hasn’t been all that great to Caroline, we soon learn. Her parents died, leaving her poor and debt-ridden. Her brother, surviving the crash that took her parents, lived on for six years but as a cripple. Alone now, caroline runs a bookstore - purely on whimsy as it doesn’t get any business (seriously - huh?), and struggles to make ends meet by having lodgers in her beautiful old house - beautiful but falling apart, naturally.

Jack finds out that Caroline is single, poor and in need of a lodger and makes his move. Pretty soon (and I mean, PRETTY SOON), he’s in her home and her bed. There is much sex and angsting. Naturally, Jack tells her nothing of their shared past and his unwholesome obsession with her; he tells her nothing of his more recent past either, so later on there can be all sorts of misunderstandings and ‘tension’ and shenanigans.

Here’s my first and major problem with the book: almost all of it is internal musing, endless retrospection and soul searching. Worse - and SHAMELESSLY - there are pages and pages of info-dumping; exposition on a grand scale. Shameless because - ugh! - it’s lazy! it’s boring! it’s endless! It makes the story drag! We get 2-4 pages of back story, a page of dialogue and then a little sex, to perk things up. That’s the formula, and Ms Rice sticks to it.

Next, the secondary plot. Presumably tacked on to add some element of ‘suspense,’ this revolves around one of the bad guys Jack thought he took care of in Sierra Leone reappearing to steal back the diamonds Jack took away with him. This bad guys gets loads of storytime, but he is a cliched romance-land villain; pure E-vil, so scheming and fiendish and cartoonish I ended up skipping his bits. So don’t ask me.

Some of the writing is overblown and eye-rollingly earnest. Here’s what Jack had to say about the diamond trade:

...An entire country was tearing itself apart because of dull rocks just like these—over eighty thousand people killed over the past year in Sierra Leone. Countless others had had their hands, lips and ears chopped off by the drugged-up baby soldiers fighting in the Revolutionary Army....

No wonder they called them blood diamonds. It was a miracle that no blood oozed from the stones. But no—they were as neutral as they were inert—just rocks, for fuck’s sake. Just rocks...

Yep, Jack’s a deep guy. Here’s some more wisdom.

“It’s a bad world out there, Caroline,” he said gently. “You have to be prepared.”

Fuck, but that was true. He’d seen it, he’d lived it. In the shelters he’d grown up in, a beauty like Caroline would have been raped the instant she’d reached puberty, probably even before. In Afghanistan, she’d have been dressed in a head-to-toe burqa and beaten if a man could hear her footsteps. There, too, she would have been raped, with the added pleasure of being sentenced to death for fornication. In Sierra Leone—Jack’s back teeth ground together. He’d seen the shattered remains of the women who’d fallen into the hands of the Revolutionary Army. Death for them had been a release.

Blimey! Good job she’s a middle class white woman living in the West.

Notwithstanding the nonsensical political claptrap, there’s also the perpetual hard-on Jack carries about in his tight jeans, his inability to tell an emotion apart from a heart attack (“Fuck, maybe he should see a cardiologist”) and Caroline's unremitting Mary Sue-ness. For, of course, Caroline is truly perfect; beautiful, plucky, feminine, gentle, well bred, honest and fair. Verily, an angel come unto the earth to spread her light.

I read the book feeling as though I’d read it all before. Jack is supposed to be a taciturn hard man, a man of few words but great depth, brought to his knees by a beautiful damsel in distress. I found him boring, and so - I get the feeling - did Caroline.

“It was humbling to think that her body wasn’t paying any attention at all to what he was saying, what books he might have read, what his politics might be.”

Good job Caroline has that massive ding-dong to keep her entertained, because the internal Jack is a bit of a windbag.

C- Were it not for the relentless exposition, I think this book would have been a lot better.