Book Review: Dreaming of You by Lisa Kleypas

I adore Lisa Kleypas. She always weaves such interesting stories that are not the norm for historical romance. Most of the time you read about Dukes or Viscounts, but Ms. Kleypas always gives me something different.

In Dreaming of You she introduces us to Sara Fielding, a common country girl who has made a name for herself writing fiction novels that show her readers how the less fortunate have lived, loved and lost. Sara is eccentric to the point that her own parents acknowledge the fact when she decides to go to London to conduct some research into the gambling lifestyle. She is spurred on by a local boy who lost it all.

So Sara packs up her things, says goodbye to her would-be fiancee and heads to the wicked city of London to stay with some friends of her parents. This is were things get very interesting. While Sara is out visiting gaming hells she comes upon a scuffle in the street and pulls a pistol to protect the person who's being savagely attacked by two knife wielding individuals. I won't give much more away other then that by this one action, Sara changes her entire life.

We also come to know Derek Craven. The self made millionaire owner of one of the most notable gaming clubs in London. He has amassed a fortune and has deep secrets he keeps from those closest to him, which are very few. As Sara follows her research she and … develop tender feelings for one another. Their story is exciting and fun. Watching Sara stand up for herself is perfect. I love a great heroine. And I love a man who values the intricacies of a woman's personality and what makes her special.

What I love about Derek and Sara is their fight to find love. They are clearly made for each other and their differences are their compliments, that is what makes them work. The fact that Derek lets down his guard with Sara is beautiful to read. I love the support they get from their loved ones, the fact that Derek falls completely and maddeningly in love with Sara.

I do say that there are a few things I didn't much care for in the book. I absolutely did not like the protagonist. I could find nothing redeemable about her. She was very two dimensional and I feel that she had a story to tell and we weren't privileged enough to get that story. Also I would have loved to have seen more of Sara's parents. I adored them. One thing that stood out to me was that Sara had no female friend in her small village. I would have thought the girl who was sort of engaged to the town saint would have a few female friends or at least acquaintances. But it was never mentioned so Sara felt almost like she was alone save for her parents.

Despite that I do recommend Dreaming of You I hope you will come to love the characters as much as I did.

Book: Dreaming of You

Author: Lisa Kleypas (website)

Print Type: Soft Cover Book 

Page Count:  373

Romance Type: Historical Romance

How Hot: 3 out of 5 licks

Do you want to buy this book? It's available at Amazon! The Kindle Edition is just $2.99. If you are more of a book person (I know the smell and feel of a book is unlike anything else!) then you will find a price of $3.99.

All Men Are Created Jerks and other Random Musings (BONUS Review)

Ah Mondays, don't you wish the weekends were longer and you can pack more stuff into them? I sure do. The way things have been going I'm behind on everything I wanted to do at the house, from painting to setting up rooms. I'll get there eventually but it's slow going.

So I finished Suzanne Enoch's Sins of a Duke. I enjoyed this book. Of course I've always liked my heroes forceful and in charge. I also enjoy a kick ass woman and this book had both. Sins of a Duke brings Sebastian Griffin, the Duke of Melbourne and Princess Josefina Katarina Embry in sights of one another. Princess Josefina is from South America (this is rare, usually I only come across Jamaica in a historical romance novel). Sebastian is the head of his family (duhhh, the duke) and when he is tasked by the Prince Regent to be the liaison between the Embrys and England. He is instantly attracted to Josefina and that really surprises him because he hasn't been attracted to anyone in the four years since his wife's death. He does have an adorable daughter who gives him advice on love (she's seven) so you have to enjoy a story where the man can be forceful one moment and then tender with a child the next. Anyway, the Embrys are in town to do two things, one is to gain a loan to help set up their newly founded country Costa Habichuela and two, to find a husband for Josefina.

The King of Costa Habichuela, Stephen Embry is an Englishman originally and requested Sebastian because he wanted to make a match there between Sebastian and Josefina. The only problem is that Sebastian really things that there is something wrong with the way the Embrys are describing Costa Habichuela. He starts to do some digging and definitely thinks that they are lying. Are they lying? No clue. I ain't telling you. But I will say that this is a continuation of The Griffin Family. The series starts out with Sin and Sensibility, followed by An Invitation to Sin and Something Sinful. I haven't read the others in the series but I did enjoy Sins of a Duke so much I am definitely going to go looking for them. You can read Chapter 1 at http://www.suzanneenoch.com/

Today at work is supposed to be S.T.A.R day and apparently we were supposed to come dressed up as a celebrity. I didn't get the memo till this morning so my celebrity is well. Me. Anyway, a drag queen just walked in. Go figure. I'll try to snag a photo later.

My head is throbbing today not so sure why, but it's probably a lack of sleep issue. Anyway I will be back later with a continuation of The Interview!

Taming the Highland Bride: A Highland Review

Yesterday I promised this review of Lynsay Sands Taming the Highland Bride. Merry Stewart is our fiery heroine and Alex d'Aumesbery is our dashing hero. It was a nice little read, it did lean on William Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew (Merry is called the Stewart Shrew, but I didn't see any shrew qualities to her).

Merry is a fun character who's family is a clan of drunkards, for the past six years she has virtually ran the clan while her father and two brothers drank themselves into stupors, she had always been engaged to Alex, however he was off at the war. He finally returns to England after the war and once Merry's family hears he's back they concoct a lie to take her to him for the wedding. Once they arrived, Alex is drunk as the dentist (who is also the blacksmith) had to pull a tooth. Merry is horrified as she thought she was leaving the evils of alcohol behind and now thinks her husband is also a drunkard.

I believe one of the funniest scenes in the book is the day after the wedding ceremony when they come for the sheets to prove Merry's "innocence", since her husband again appeared drunk he passed out, so Merry knew there had to be blood on the sheet, she cut her self on the thigh to give the blood but cut herself so badly that it looked like someone had been murdered on the sheet. The entire clan (including Alex) thought he had hurt her.

Well, someone is after Alex, trying to kill him in various ways, a fire, a falling boulder, etc. The truth of who it is isn't such a shock but the end was a little painful, I didn't like it. I thought it could have ended in a better way of course.

There are a couple in the series:

1.) Devil of the Highlands
2.) Taming the Highland Bride
3.) The Hellion and the Highlander

You can read excerpts of the stories on Lynsay Sands website. I've always been a fan of Lynsay Sands and it started with her debut novel The Deed, awesome wicked funny book!

Romance, EROTICA, Ebooks, OH MY!

Ladies, we have hit the Ebook motherload! There is a website All Romance Ebooks that has an ENTIRE freebie section for ebooks, and they are available in the formats of Adobe Acrobat, HTML, Mobipocket, Epub and pretty much any device you can read an ebook on listed here.


There are erotica, romance, all kinds of free ebooks, over 150 listed. Ellora's Cave is prominent among what is listed (Ellora's Cave is a publisher of Romantic Erotica.)

Anyway if you are a carnisour of books, this site is definitely for you! Enjoy!

All Romance Ebooks

Catherine Anderson's Early Dawn: A Review

Early Dawn last night but didn't get a chance to post the review until today, but I definitely wanted to get this out while the novel was fresh in my mind. I picked it up at Walmart for a pretty good price and since I have read a few of Ms. Anderson's books I knew it would be a good read, even though I had never read one of her historical romance novels. I was not disappointed.
I finished Catherine Anderson's

Early Dawn re-introduces us to the Coulter family, if you are familiar with any of Anderson's work you will recognize the name as she has written a several contemporary novels (Sweet Nothings, My Sunshine, Bright Eyes, Sun Kissed, Blue Skies and Phantom Waltz) featuring the family and also the Paxton family which she has written her historical novels around (Keegan's Lady, Summer Breeze)

The story begins with our hero tragically losing his wife when, after coming home from a picnic by a lake, he and his wife are brutally attacked by outlaws. Matthew Coulter almost dies however his mother nursed him back to health. He makes a vow to chase the outlaws down and avenge his wife.

Three years later, enter our Heroine. Eden Paxton is on a train heading towards Colorado from California when her train is held up by the same band of outlaws that attacked Matthew Coulter, and in the middle of the hold up she saves a child's life but the outlaws take her prisoner. She is with them for almost a week as they sexually abuse her (this will be hard for any woman who has ever been sexually abused I feel, it was a little graphic at times and can be slight uncomfortable, but don't worry ladies, Eden exacts her revenge!!) Matthew rescues Eden and they set out on a month long journey to escape the crazy gang of outlaws.

I thought the book was well written, it did drag on just a little bit while they were in the woods, but I licked the heroine and thought she had a backbone which is rare in romance novels. How many times can a lady swoon in some cases, however there was no swooning for Eden. I liked the hero too and the small comedy as he tried to figure out how to be more proper for Eden.

Even thought this is one novel in a series I didn't feel like I was lost for having not read the other two novels, I did read a few things at the end that made me want to read the other two of course (I think I'm in love with Eden's gunslinger brother). Early Dawn was a fantastic read and even though it is 417 pages I flew through the book in about three days.

If you are into books that have more drama then comedy and you love a good historical romance novel where their is no bodice rippers then definitely pick it up and give it a try. The characters were well developed and you get a good sense by the descriptions of exactly what everything looks like. I definitely am going to put the other two novels on my reading list/Find list. So pick up Early Dawn today and don't forget to tell me if you agree with my small review!

The Music of the Night: A Review

I picked up Music of the Night in a local Goodwill store (I LOVE Goodwill stores, you can get awesome books for a fraction of the price and you can find some real gems there). This is a historical novel, and basically, the story is about a former prostitute who gets caught up in a man's quest for revenge. I read a few reviews online that proclaimed this novel a winner and that it was a fantastic read, I have to beg to differ. It felt like it drug on forever, and Sarah Connolly, the heroine of the book is pretty much treated like crap through the entire book.

To be titled Music of the Night, there really was no music in the night. Maybe fifty pages before the end you fight out that the hero plays the piano, but really there was no music. Go figure.

Sarah finally got her life on track somehow, she wound up going to some school for girls, she had began prostituting at age 13 after being raped in a back ally. At age 16 she starts attending some school for girls (the book never really explains this satisfactorily) and then she gets a pretty nifty job as a companion to an old lady who doesn't make any demands on her.

In walks our Hero. I use that term loosely, trust me. Apparently he had an illegitimate daughter who was living with him (again not explained satisfactorily) and Sebastian Grimsthorpe, the Earl, was a pretty wild guy. He had a party at his house and his 12 year old daughter is raped by a friend, he belives. The villain, Bertrand de Lint laughs it off and denies doing it, but Sebastian is sure he's the culprit and sets out to exact revenge.

And this where the entire story moves from England to Venice. And Sebastian becomes de Lint's pimp and we learn the different vices of the villain. The daughter's tutor said that a woman with a scared face helped the rapist and Sebastian sees Sarah with de Lint's party in Venice and assumes it's her. (Oh another oddity, Sarah has a pock marked face, which she thinks makes her extremely ugly). This is where you start seeing Sebastian play mind games with everyone in the book.

In the end Sarah winds up losing her cushy job with de Lint's mother, almost gets raped AGAIN by de Lint, and winds up Sebastian's mistress.

All in all, Sarah was boring, Sebastian was kinda nutty, and de Lint grossed me out. Not what I was expecting after reading all the reviews online.

You can tell that Lydia is a good writer, she was very descriptive and I could imagine everything happening exactly as she describes, but the characters just sucked!

I'm starting a new book today. Susan Anderson's Early Dawn. I'll let you guys know how this one goes!