A Gentleman's Honor - Stephanie Laurens (Bastion Club #2)

A Gentleman's Honor is the second book in Laurens' "Bastion Club" series, about a group of noblemen during the Regency period who are prime targets on the ton marriage mart and yet are determined to pick their own wives instead of having young women foisted upon them by interfering mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, etc.  I read the first book in the series, too, and after finishing this one, I've come to a realization: Laurens doesn't have much variation in her characters.  It's a lot of hot, possessive guys and a lot of girls who like to think they're independent but becoming melting messes the second they lay eyes on their love interests.

That said, the book wasn't bad.  Actually, I found it more interesting than the first one in the series, and I got through it a good deal quicker, too, but that was mostly because it had a more interesting plot than the first book.  That's another thing about these books.  They have plots.  I would like to call them subplots, because the main plot should be the romance, but...it's kind of not?  I mean, there's lots of kissing and sex and all of that good stuff (so much, in this book, that I actually kind of got bored of it...apparently there's a delicate balance for these things in my mind) but there's a plot that goes through it all of Anthony, the main male character, trying to catch someone who has committed treason, and Alicia really ends up on his radar because the traitor is trying to use her as a scapegoat.  And meanwhile, Alicia is hiding her own background in the hopes that she'll be able to successfully marry off her younger sister, Adriana.  The "catch the traitor" plot in this one was more interesting than the "catch the creepy guy" plot in the first one, but given the repetitiveness of the characters between the first book and this, I doubt the others in the series will be much different, and I probably won't be reading onward.

3 out of 5 stars, but not a memorable 3, if that makes any sense.

The Marriage List - Dorothy McFalls

As far as regency romances go, I would say The Marriage List was just okay.  The two main characters are May, who is described as "squat" with "amber" hair, and Radford, who was injured on the Peninsula and has struggled with his crushed leg and foot ever since.  Both Radford and May do everything because of a sense of duty.  Radford feels like it's his duty to marry a suitable girl and carry on the family name so that his mother doesn't end up distressed.  May does everything in the name of family duty to care for her ailing Aunt Winnie.  The two of them are convinced that even though they are attracted to each other, they can never be together because being together would get in the way of their duties.  Overall, they were just too similar in personality to make their interactions terribly interesting, and the witty banter for which regency romances are generally known was pretty much entirely lacking.  The entire book was pretty much one character going, "I can't be with him/her," and then the other character doing the same.  There was a slight secondary conflict built in involving May's uncle, and if that had been played up a bit more, the narrative might have been more interesting.  As it was, I just found it bland.  Honestly, the most interesting characters in the whole thing were the side characters, Wynters (I don't remember his first name), who was Radford's best friend, and May's best friend Iona--oh, and Princess the horse!

This is also a "sweet" romance, rather than a "sultry" one, which means that the steamiest it gets is some kissing.  Now, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but combined with the bland plot and bland characters, I found myself struggling to continue on.  I did finish the book, but it didn't really capture my interest like regency romances by some of the greats like Julia Quinn and Lisa Kleypas.  This edition also had some typos, missing words, and so on, and could have used a final editing.

2 out of 5 stars.

Chills - Heather Boyd (Distinguished Rogues #1)

Ah, historical romance.  How you toy with my heart.  So, I'd previously read Boyd's An Accidental Affair, which I did not review here but would recommend to someone looking for a juicy historical romance with a pretty good plot attached to it.  I enjoyed it enough that I looked up what else Boyd has written.  (I spend my weekends devouring historical romances and books about food.  It's my "me" time.)  Chills is the first in a series that An Accidental Affair is apparently related to, but not directly situated in, so of course it was natural book to read next.

What can I say about this...?  Blah.  That's all I can say.  The book is about Constance "Pixie" Grange and Jack, the Marquess of Ettington.  Constance is recently impoverished due to her mother's gambling problem and needs to marry someone rich to cover her debts and avoid prison.  She turns to Jack's twin sister, Virginia, to help her on her husband hunt.  As the debts keep appearing, though, Constance's list of possible husbands gets shorter and shorter.  Meanwhile, Jack--who is also Constance's former guardian, following the death of their fathers--is insulted that he hasn't been included on his list.  As a subplot, Virginia has a love-hate relationship with Jack's best friend Bernard, though she has a darker past linked to her marriage to a now-deceased lord.

Anyway, Chills is downright boring.  It felt nothing happened for the entire book.  Jack and Constance spent the entire thing taking one step forward and two steps back around each other.  Virginia and Bernard's plot would have made a much more compelling main storyline, while Constance and Jack could have easily been relegated to subplot territory without losing anything.  Also, the title.  What?  What chills?  The only chill anyone gets in this book is from falling into a pond.

The long and short of it?  An Accidental Affair was enough to persuade me to read the next book in this series, hoping it will be better, but I wouldn't recommend Chills on its own merits, of which there are few.  (There are a few good kissing scenes, but they are disappointingly brief and nothing steamier comes about until the very end.)

2 out of 5 stars.

A Kiss at Midnight - Eloisa James (Fairy Tales #1)

Every now and then, a girl likes to read a trashy romance novel.  It's one of those simple truths, a little guilty pleasure I think we all like to indulge in every now and then.  And in my opinion, if the novel is based off a fairy tale, even better, because then I get to scrutinize it for interesting twists.

This didn't have many of them.

As the title and cover would suggest, A Kiss at Midnight is based off the story of Cinderella, though it takes place in Regency-period England rather than in some place where magic trees or fairy godmothers are prevalent.  There are some changes from the original story--the stepsister isn't evil, the prince is exiled and will never be king, the heroine is posing as someone else for much of the story--but it's nothing that made my jaw drop.  Really, I feel like it didn't need to be a Cinderella story at all, and that it would have served its purpose, romance-novel-wise, if it had just revolved around Kate pretending to be Victoria.  I think a more interesting story would probably have been that of Tatiana: the Russian princess uprooted from her home to marry an impoverished prince she's never met, only to find him in love with another woman.  That could be interesting.  This?  This was...entertaining, in a typical romance novel sort of way, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's actually interesting.

So, the plot wasn't terribly interesting.  The characters weren't that interesting, either.  Really, my favorites were Effie and Henry.  Kate and Gabriel themselves were just...blah.  Kate is a Nice Girl who slaves away for her family, servants, and tenants while her stepmother and stepsister spend all of her dead father's fortune.  After her stepsister Victoria, who is genuinely a nice person, has a little mishap with a dog bite, Kate agrees to pose as Victoria in order to secure the approval of one of Victoria's fiance's relatives; this approval is apparently vital, even though the fiance and the relative (the prince) have never met before.  Kate spends the entire story talking about duty, how she just couldn't leave her stepfamily, and whining that she will never marry Gabriel because she believes that he'll have affairs, even if she blatantly states that she doesn't think he's the type to leave.  Gabriel spends his time whining that Kate isn't rich enough for him to marry if he's going to pay for the upkeep of an entire castle and its staff because that is his responsibility.

Suck it up and find solutions.  The two of you are supposed to be adults, aren't you?

Effie and Henry, though, were delightful.  And Tatiana seems like she had potential, too, though we didn't really see that much of her.  Oh well.  That's the way the cookie crumbles.

2 stars out of 5.