A Duchess Enraged by Alicia Quigley

I was first attracted to reading this book by the fact that according to the blurb it is inspired by real-life events. This is pretty much what it says:

‘The novel is based on actual history, that of the Earl of March and Lady Sarah Cadogan. The Earl of Cadogan married his daughter, Lady Sarah Cadogan, to the Duke of Richmond’s son, the Earl of March, sight unseen, as a way of settling an enormous gambling debt he owed the Duke. They were married the day after the agreement was made, and the infuriated Earl of March departed on his Grand Tour immediately thereafter, not to return for four years.’

According to Wikipedia, the bride was only 13 years old at the time and the groom 18.  Obviously arranged marriages were not uncommon, but this seems really sudden and very unfair to both of them. I was pleased to see that the real life couple actually had a happy marriage, as far as can be told from surviving letters. Other snippets of interest are that Lady Sarah shared my birthday, and that her husband, Charles the second Duke of Richmond, is now best remembered for being an important early patron of cricket! The picture here is a portrait of the couple.

In ‘A Duchess Enraged’ the couple in question are renamed to Allegra and Adam. I think the man who lost the fortune has been changed to be the groom’s father here. Allegra’s father, in lieu of receiving £20,000, offers to have Adam as a son-in-law instead. This has the benefit for the Duke that Adam won’t come back from his Grand Tour with an unsuitable wife in tow. Allegra is extremely frightened at being made to marry and Adam is livid with rage. He finds her unattractive and is completely uninterested in her. The plan is for her to return to her family’s home and await his return from the Grand Tour.

‘Any hopes she had cherished of possibly striking up a friendship with her husband withered away. This marriage, it seemed, was doomed from the start.’

The story then fast forwards four years. Adam’s father has now died, meaning that he is now the Duke. He has a very beautiful mistress, a widow called Lady Lousia Manning, who is hopeful that he will have his unconsummated marriage dissolved and make her his duchess. Adam’s mother has been asking him to go home and take up his life there, and he goes – taking his mistress with him. He sets her up in a house, as was common with a kept woman.

For the first few nights back in London Adam doesn’t go home, but he accompanies Lady Manning to a function. While she gambles at the card table, he wanders about, and a very beautiful lady catches his eye. She is happy to flirt with him, recognising him as her husband. He has no idea who she is, at this point. He finds out the next day, and is hypocritically unhappy about his wife behaving in such a way. She is unhappy that he is openly keeping a mistress. And so sets up the story, with Adam finding Allegra unmanageable and stubborn, Allegra trying to show Adam that he can’t control her while struggling with feelings of attraction towards him, Adam’s mother and sister trying to sort out their differences and other parties trying to cause trouble between them and force them apart.

This book is available in two versions – ‘A Duchess Enraged; An After Dark Version’ which has sex scenes, and ‘A Most Unusual Situation: A Traditional Georgian Romance’, which doesn’t. From the reviews on Amazon UK it seemed as though there wasn’t much in the way of sex scenes so I got the 'after dark' version but to be honest, I think I’d have been better off with the version with none, there were too many scenes for my liking, the style of them wasn't really to my taste, and there is literally a bodice-ripping scene, which I found brutish rather than romantic.

I was hoping for this book to deal with the couple’s unusual situation, and show how they worked through their differences and build a relationship but I didn’t really get that from this book. They just seemed to really lust after each other and that was the main driving force of their relationship. Allegra was a bit childish and naive, but she was still only 18, so that wasn’t too hard to deal with, although she made some tiresomely stupid decisions. I really wasn’t fond of Adam. Firstly, he is a bossy alpha-male type, which isn’t the type of hero I'm fond of, but the real issue was his double standards. Both his wife and his mistress are sex-mad. In his mistress he interprets this as her devotion to him, but in his wife he decides that she is untrustworthy and will very likely be taking lovers left, right and centre. He never applies this logic to his mistress’s likely behaviour, just his wife’s. It was just completely illogical. Both Adam and Allegra are also very gullible.

Some of the secondary characters were interesting, such as Adam's sister Caroline, and a beau of Allegra's, Lord Gresham, but neither of the main protagonists came alive for me here; I felt the characters needed to be fleshed out more. I felt like this was such a missed opportunity, because the bare bones of this story is fascinating and I’d have liked to see the characters come to life, and their relationship grow and develop.

Overexposed by Noelle Adams

This book starts five years back with barista/wannabe actress Leah on a dream holiday in the south of France with her friend, Cassie, Cassie’s boyfriend – Hollywood star Kevin Grayson, and Leah’s boyfriend Joey. It’s pretty obvious that Leah has feelings for Kevin and that her relationship with Joey is fizzling out. We come back to the present and find out something has gone badly wrong for Leah. She’s still good friends with Cassie but it’s clear that sometime after the holiday Leah got involved romantically with Kevin and he used her pretty badly. A sex tape scandal involving Leah and Kevin led to his waning career progressing from teen star to a successful serious actor, while Leah was branded as an attention seeker who was responsible for the tapes being leaked.  But Leah is entirely innocent of this.

When the scandal broke Kevin cut off all contact and Leah was left to pick up the pieces of her life with a ruined reputation. Her hopes of an acting career were completely scuppered. Still, all publicity is good publicity and Leah had enough nous to salvage what she could of the situation, making some money which she invested successfully in the coffee house she had been hoping she could leave behind her. Now she is the owner of the business. She fronts up to rude comments from frat boys and sleazy men coming on to her in the humiliating knowledge that they’ve all seen her naked and having sex on the internet. She hasn’t had a boyfriend since the incident, as understandably she is going to have a hard time trusting.

‘She’d made more money from it than she could have ever hoped to make as an actress, since she probably never would have been a big star. But she would give it all back in an instant if it meant her life and reputation wouldn’t have been trashed four and a half years ago.’

Do you hate Kevin yet? I certainly did by this point! Now Leah’s business manager wants to set up a publicity stunt involving her and Kevin going on a ‘secret’ romantic holiday. Although Leah doesn’t want to see Kevin again she’s about to branch out the business to open a restaurant in addition to the coffee shop and the extra publicity would serve her well.

But then we switch to Kevin’s point of view and we see there is another side to it. He has agreed to do this for some closure, because four and a half years ago when the tapes appeared online he felt completely betrayed by the only woman he had ever loved.

‘He’d been launched into his career.
And he’d give it all up in an instant if it meant his heart hadn’t been trampled into the mud four and a half years ago.’

I usually enjoy Noelle Adams’ books, and this one was no exception. I felt so bad for Leah, the betrayal of being let down, the humiliation of having your most intimate moments exposed and all the mudslinging and character assassination that followed. Afterwards I felt sorry for Kevin too as although he hadn’t had the reputational damage that Leah had lived through the heartbreak was just as real.

Since it’s dual point of view we know that Kevin is telling the truth when he tells Leah that he isn’t responsible for the tapes going online, but she has no idea, and after being so badly let down in the past, it would take a huge leap of faith on her part to allow her to take the risk of trusting him again. She’s not sure she can go back to being the girl that she was, before she had the barriers to hide behind.

There is one thing which I thought was a bit odd; once they accept that neither one of them leaked the tapes they don't really moderate their behaviour or speculate over who it could have been although Kevin sets somebody to investigate. If somebody did something so life-changing to me there's no way I could drop it until I found out who it was.

This author’s works vary, with some containing no sex scenes but this book has quite a lot of sex scenes, and some crude language too, so if you don’t like those then perhaps this is one you should avoid, but if you don’t mind those things and are looking for a spicy sunlounger read then maybe give this one a go!

Frigid by J Lynn

I quite enjoy a bit of new adult (I know, I’m on the old side to be a ‘new’ adult!), and J Lynn, who also writes as Jennifer L Armentrout has great reviews so I thought I’d give one of her stories a try. Frigid is about two friends, Kyler and Sydney. They are a somewhat mismatched set of friends but they’ve been best buddies for years.

‘Actually, we went together like a lion and a gimpy gazelle that had no chance of outrunning the predator. I was the gimpy gazelle.’

When they met Kyler was a boy from a trailer park and Sydney was the sweet little girl who befriended him. Over the years Kyler’s family succeeded in their business and are now very wealthy but in his head he is still trash and she is still too good for him.

‘Sydney Bell had always been, and would always be, a few pedestals too high for me.’

Kyler is a bit of a man whore, never having relationships but a succession of one night stands. Sydney on the other hand is very inexperienced. She had one boyfriend a few years ago, who labelled her ‘frigid’, which she found very hurtful. All potential boyfriends since then have been chased off by Kyler, who is insanely protective over her. Of course, it doesn’t help her romantic life that she’s been in love with him for years.

‘No one could replace me in his life. I knew that. I was the friend who knew everything about him and whom he trusted and whom he trusted above everyone else. 
I was Kyler’s best friend.
And because of that, he would never love me the way I loved him.’

Every year Kyler has a group of friends over to his mum’s ski lodge for some skiing. This year, Kyler and Sydney will be driving together, and their friends will follow. However, the mother of all storms hits, leaving them stranded together, unable to leave, with a lot of misunderstanding and mutual attraction between them. To add to the tension, somebody is carrying out some attacks on the property and they are not sure who or why.

I found this to be some very easy reading, and I gobbled it up in just a few hours.  I always enjoy the friends secretly in love trope, I’m not attractive enough for him/She deserves better scenario, and I enjoyed this. Sydney is a funny girl, a real over-thinker, a quality I can identify with. Kyler was generally a bit selfish and thoughtless but he genuinely cared for Sydney which was nice. If you prefer to avoid sex scenes you probably wouldn’t be reading New Adult genre, but just to warn you there are several.

The downside of this book for me was the attacks; I didn’t feel either of them, particularly Sydney, took the attacks on them very seriously which didn’t make sense to me as they could have led to serious injury. Some of the actions that Sydney took once she knew there was danger present reminded me of one of those horror films where the TSTL (Too Stupid To Live) girl makes decisions that are devoid of all sense. For me, this would have been a better book without this aspect to the story as it didn’t add the tension that it could have if the characters had reacted to it differently, so it just got in the way.

However, this was a nice easy read, and the next time I’m in a reading slump I’d definitely consider reading another J Lynn book.

Heirs of Damon Series 1-3 by Noelle Adams

Last year I read the first of the Heirs of Damon series by Noelle Adams. Businessman Cyrus Damon has no children himself but he has four nephews. Brothers Harrison and Andrew Damon have their stories told in books 1 and 2, Seducing the Enemy and Playing the Playboy. Their cousin Jonathan is the hero of book 3, Engaging the Boss and there is another cousin Benjamin Damon, who I believe will be the hero of book 4, due out in summer 2014. I read books 2 and 3 of the series back to back, which worked really well actually, as some events in book 3 follow on from book 2. Here are my thoughts on the series so far. 

Please note, for those who prefer to avoid them, that all these books contain sex scenes.

Seducing the Enemy begins with Marietta, who has an interesting back-story, having spent a number of years in a wheelchair after being involved in a car crash as a child. Following several surgeries she has now recovered, and after so many years she wants to live her life to the full, and has come to a club to see if she can attract a man...

Harrison is checking the facilities at a club his family owns when a sexy blonde catches his eye. He really shouldn't let himself get distracted, as he'll need to keep his wits about him for the following day, when he'll be meeting to try and agree a settlement for a long-running legal battle with his uncle's former business partner for a long-ago car crash...

Marietta is sweet, genuine, and amusing, although a bit too nice. Harrison is a bit too alpha-male some of the time for my taste, but he seemed nice enough when he wasn't being an arse, either generally, or specifically towards Marietta because of his misinterpretation of her motives. Marietta doesn't appear to hold a grudge at all and she forgives him much more readily than he deserves!

There were a number of instances of behaviour that I didn't really feel was plausible and although the author provides explanation I still didn't see some things as being likely to happen. Also, I'd have liked there to be more of a basis for their feelings for each other, aside from their chemistry, to see their relationship develop, as I felt that it happens too quickly. Aside from these quibbles, I found this book to be an enjoyable quick read.

In Playing the Playboy we meet Laurel who is in a bad situation; she is a widow who didn’t have the best upbringing, and was managing the bar in a seedy strip joint when she met an older man who she fell in love with. After they married he gave her a hotel in Greece. This was about the only good thing he did for her – over the time of their marriage she lost one illusion after another about him and he ended up bankrupt after his debts caught up with him. Now he is dead and the Damons are saying that her hotel belongs to them. Since Cyrus Damon isn’t speaking to his blue eyed boy Harrison, he’s sent Andrew Damon, a notorious playboy, in his brother’s stead to try and sort out the dispute amicably. Laurel has done her homework on Andrew and, desperate not to lose her home and her livelihood, she has decided on a dishonourable course of action, which is to seduce Andrew, get it caught on CCTV and blackmail him with the evidence.

I really wondered if I could like Laurel at all after an introduction like that but it really is desperation that has brought her to this point and she isn’t anywhere near as heartless as her plan suggests. Andrew ends up staying at the hotel and it brings Laurel some conflict because she keeps feeling like she should be manipulating the situation to her advantage but she genuinely likes Andrew and is very strongly attracted to him. Andrew is similarly conflicted – he really wants to prove his mettle to his uncle and close out this situation advantageously for the company while on the other hand he finds himself believing that Laurel may have been dealt a bad hand here and feeling sympathetic towards her.

Both Andrew and Laurel are likeable protagonists and they fit together very nicely. Both of them feel unworthy to an extent, her because of her background (although she has done nothing wrong, just tried to make the best of the hand that life has dealt her) and him because he doesn’t knuckle down to anything and doesn’t feel respected. She is very bad at allowing people to help her, but she is forced to accept his help on more than one occasion which is good for them both, as she comes to see that she doesn’t need to only rely on herself, and he finds himself in the novel position of having somebody trust in him.  This story is set largely on a Greek island and I thought a few times while I read it that it would make an excellent holiday sun-lounger read. It’s a very easy to read romance and I enjoyed it very much.  This is book 2 in the Heirs of Damon series and though Harrison and Marietta from Seducing the Enemy play a part in this story you could read this one as stand alone.

Engaging the Boss is book 3 in the Heirs of Damon series and tells the story of Harrison and Andrew’s cousin, Jonathan Damon, who is a genetic scientist. His uncle, Cyrus, has funded Jonathan’s research lab, which has been of huge advantage to Jonathan, meaning that he’s been able to do the research purely independently rather than having to worry about commercial bias and keeping the sponsors happy. However, Cyrus has decided that Jonathan needs to settle down and the lab is taking too much of his focus, so he makes the despotic decision to cut the funding unless Jonathan pays more attention to his personal life. Panicked, Jonathan blurts out that he has recently become engaged. He is overheard in this phonecall by his assistant Sarah, who is devastated by this news because she’s been madly in love with him for some time. Jonathan confesses his lie to Sarah, and she offers to pose as his fiancée for a week-long visit to his family and to attend his cousin Harrison’s wedding.

I love, love, love the fake fiancée trope, it’s a guilty pleasure of mine, and I really enjoyed this book; it’s probably my favourite of this series so far. Of course we know from the outset what is likely to happen between the protagonists, but the fun is in the journey. Sarah is a really nice heroine. She has worked closely with Jonathan for the past few years, but she knows that somebody that gorgeous couldn’t be interested in her because she doesn’t feel that she’s attractive enough to tempt him. She also doesn’t want to endanger her job, which she loves. Jonathan was such a loveable male lead, most definitely not the alpha male type, but a sweet geek who doesn’t believe that people will love him as he is, but that he has to earn their love. His parents were very disinterested in him, and he found the only way he could get positive attention from them was through achieving well in school. His parents died when he was still a child and he was put under the guardianship of Cyrus. He never felt like he fitted in with his cousins and uncle, and feels like he doesn’t matter to his family.

Jonathan is very much the type of person who shows his love rather than expresses it, for example he does thoughtful things for Sarah such as keeps her desk stocked with mints he knows she likes and fixing her chair after hours without expecting thanks.  However when he tries to express things with words he just clams up:

“You look...” She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. He swallowed. “Fine.”

Sarah obviously finds this very frustrating!

She wanted to hit him and take care of him both. It was a very disorienting feeling.

I could completely understand where she was coming from. To secure his lady Jonathan must first understand that he wants her, that he is worthy of her love, and be willing to get out of his comfort zone to make sure she knows it before it’s too late. 

This is book 3 of the series and although the couples from books 1 and 2, Seducing the Enemy and Playing the Playboy appear, the story is stand alone. I think you’d probably get more from it if you’ve read the others too, but you wouldn’t be lost by any means if you just read this one. We have a very interesting introduction to the other heir of Damon, the black sheep of the family, Benjamin Damon, who I think will have his story told in the next book, due out in summer 2014, and I’m certainly intrigued to read it.

One Week Girlfriend Series by Monica Murphy

I read the first two parts of this series, One Week Girlfriend and Second Chance Boyfriend last year and I really enjoyed them.  They tell the story of Drew (who isn’t in reality how he’s been drawn) and Fable (who isn’t like the stories told about her – do you see what the author did there?!) who meet under unusual circumstances, but turn out to be just what the other needs. The series continues with Three Broken Promises which tells the story of Jen and Colin, who Fable meets through work, a novella completing Drew and Fable’s story called Drew + Fable Forever and a story about Fable’s teenage brother Owen which came out this month, Four Years Later.  I wanted to find out about Owen’s story because I was so fond of him in the first two books so I thought I’d finish off reading the whole series, and here are my thoughts on each instalment:

One Week Girlfriend: College student Drew hires Fable to pose as his girlfriend for a week on a trip home. On paper, Drew has a brilliant life; he's rich, does well in college, football team star and is hot to boot but he has some major issues. The poor guy is pretty lonely and unloved, has some serious guilt, control issues and has been used pretty badly. He doesn't want a real girlfriend as he's unprepared to let anybody past his defences and he asks Fable, who has a reputation as the town's easy lay to pose as his girlfriend rather than somebody else because he knows she won't expect anything more from him, relationship-wise.

Fable has her own problems - she is having to pick up the slack from her alcoholic mother both financially and as a stable parent figure to her younger brother. She is also very unloved, and although she sleeps around a bit to escape from her life for a brief time, her reputation has been exaggerated.

Spending time together proves more problematic than either Drew or Fable had anticipated, they have some serious chemistry and the fact that they both have issues helps them understand each other and break through each other's barriers but neither are sure how much is an act for the week and how much is real and whether either of them are capable of having a relationship at this time.

I really enjoyed this story although I felt sorry for both Drew and Fable for the issues they had but I felt that there was some good progression with their problems, particularly for Drew.  

Second Chance Boyfriend - We pick up a couple of months after the first book. Drew has run away from his feelings again, and is missing Fable badly. He realises how stupid he has been to throw away a relationship which could really have helped him work through his demons and when he meets again with Fable he seizes the chance to try again. If you've read the first book you will know that these two both have some serious issues and baggage and they continue their improvement into the realms of "normal" rather than remaining messed up. We also get to see some more of Adele (HATE her, she turns my stomach!) and more of Fable's brother Owen, who I liked, I thought he was a really believable character. I am probably not selling this book well, saying it's all about healing etc, but it's a heartwarming book rather than a soppy tale, both Drew and Fable are such likeable characters and so good for each other that I really enjoyed seeing their progress towards a happy ending.

Three Broken Promises – I thought Jen and Colin were interesting secondary characters in Second Chance Boyfriend, we knew they went way back, and that Jen had feelings for him and that Colin had some demons, so I was glad to see that they were getting a book of their own.  Colin was the childhood best friend of Jen’s brother, who died overseas serving in the military. Jen’s family fell apart after Danny’s death and Jen ended up in a bad situation that Colin saved her from.  He gave her a job and a roof over her head and though he cares for her deeply he doesn’t want to pursue a relationship with her because he feels too guilty – for her brother’s death, the family breakdown that led to the situation she got into and he also doesn’t feel he is good relationship material and Jen deserves better.  Jen feels trapped; she loves Colin but he won’t open up to her and although she misses her brother she feels it’s time to move on with her life.  She also has some secrets from her past which she is afraid are catching up with her. Jen can’t see Colin ever letting her in so she hands in her notice at work and tells him that in 4 weeks she’ll be moving away, putting the ball in his court – if he wants her to stay he’ll have to do something about it.

While I enjoyed this book there were aspects I found frustrating.  First of which was Jen – she wasn’t what I expected. I thought she was more like Fable, who is feisty, independent and capable, but Jen is frustratingly naive – she says that she is always dependent on somebody but that is just as well, as anytime she does something of her own instigation she makes bad decisions and takes silly risks.  I also felt like there was too much time spent on the ‘will they – won’t they’ and the resolution of other threads, such as Colin’s fractured relationship with his father was tied up too quickly.  Still, I enjoyed this story, and I liked seeing some small glimpses of Drew and Fable, which whets the appetite for the novella tying up their story.

Drew + Fable Forever

We first met Drew and Fable in One Week Girlfriend and saw them take on their issues in Second Chance Boyfriend, working to overcome their obstacles and becoming happier than either of them thought was possible.  I loved both Drew and Fable from the previous books and I was looking forward to seeing a bit more of them.  If you hadn’t read the first two books you could pick up this novella and it would make sense because some of the main events from the previous books are referred to, but you would miss out on all the detail, I would definitely recommend reading this after reading the first two books. 

  

We start off about a year after the end of SCB.  Drew is now a professional American Football player and he and Fable are still very much in love but theirs is not a carefree existence because they have to spend a lot of time apart, as Drew has to train with his team in another town and Fable can’t go with him because she has to stay in home because of her responsibility for her brother. Owen is still in school and they don’t want to disrupt his schooling.  We see a number of different events in Drew and Fable’s lives in the near future as they work towards their happy ever after.  This novella isn’t so much a story as more of an extended epilogue, following Drew and Fable through the next few years.  The novella is very, very sweet, and if you already know the couple and what they’ve worked through together then you are on their side hoping for a happy ending, but if you prefer a bit more conflict and tension you may feel it falls a bit flat.  However, since I am very fond of the couple I really enjoyed it!

Four Years Later

Owen is Fable’s brother from One Week Girlfriend and Second Chance Boyfriend and I was very fond of him from those books, when he was a foul-mouthed teen who poor Fable was trying to keep from going off the rails.  Owen’s mother is an alcoholic and drug user who never stepped up to the plate for her kids. Fable had to step into that role, and her anger at that, and trying to minimise the distress and damage it caused Owen left her with very little sympathy for her mother, especially when she abandoned her children.  Fable has cut her mother out of her life without a backward glance. Owen was always more forgiving towards her and now, four years later Owen’s mother has come back into his life, asking for handouts all the time. He knows he should tell her where to go but deep down he still craves his mother’s love. 

Owen is living in a pretty good situation; his brother in law, Drew, is doing well in his career as a pro American footballer and he’s bought Owen a house to live in and a car.  Owen is potentially good enough to become a pro footballer too, but he needs to keep his grades up to stay on the team, and that is where one problem lies – he’s been cutting class so he can work more at his part time job so he can keep giving his mother money.  Owen has also been turning to drink and drugs to curb his anxieties, which obviously could lead to him losing his place on the team.  Owen agrees to have a tutor to help his grades in English Literature and creative writing, and this means he meets Chelsea.

Chelsea is a bit of a lonely soul. Academically she’s pretty gifted and she was advanced a few years, meaning she made few friends amongst people her age or her older classmates. Her family is dysfunctional, with a mother who has done her best to indoctrinate Chelsea to be independent and stay clear of men while simultaneously behaving in the exact opposite way, allowing Chelsea’s father to walk all over her.  Chelsea’s father is currently in prison, which is something she is trying to keep secret, but due to this Chelsea is on a tight budget, hence the tutoring, and a part time job too.  She is immediately attracted to Owen, but he has heartbreaker written all over him and so she does her best to keep her distance.

Owen has some pretty strong feelings for Chelsea from the beginning too, but he needs the tutoring to raise his grades, doesn’t want to scare Chelsea off and doesn’t feel like he’s good enough for her.  These two are a bit like chalk and cheese, he’s foul-mouthed, promiscuous and a casual drug using party boy and she is all work and no play, pretty straitlaced and she is very inexperienced with the opposite sex but the more time they spend together the more they like one another. 

These two are so sweet together; the differences between them balance each other out really nicely, she loosens up a bit and he cleans up his act.  Not everything goes smoothly for these two.  I was actually expecting more obstacles, but these two don’t have the same type of big issues that Drew and Fable had to overcome.  Reminiscent of Drew, Owen also writes poetry for his lady, but rather than the sweet poems that Drew writes Owen’s are a little more earthy. 

“I am so lucky. He’s so thoughtful, sweet and funny.  He writes me poems.  Dirty ones, but I don’t care. They’re beautiful.  He’s beautiful.  Not perfect, but he’s mine.  And I am his.”

Awww! I thought this was a lovely way to end the One Week Girlfriend series, I really enjoyed this book.

Wallbanger by Alice Clayton

Interior Designer Caroline has just moved into her dream apartment in San Francisco, sublet to her by her boss.  It’s a gorgeous place and she is really happy with it, except she gets woken at stupid o’clock in the morning by the sound of her neighbour’s bed banging into the wall as he ‘entertains’ a rather noisy companion, who enjoys being spanked.  The next night, he makes a different woman meow in bed, a noise that unfortunately makes Caroline’s cat Clive uber horny. Soon he is entertaining yet another lady in bed.  The disturbed sleep would be bad enough, but Caroline is also pretty jealous.  She had a one-night stand a while ago that was pretty forgettable, except that since then she has been missing her ‘O’, as she refers to it, and Simon, who she dubs ‘Wallbanger’ doesn’t seem to have that problem at all.

One night, she decides she’s had enough, and storms around there wearing a very fetching pink babydoll nightie.  She finds to her chagrin that Wallbanger is actually pretty hot, even if he is a smug arse.  Caroline is not the type to keep much to herself, so soon all her closest friends are well aware of the Wallbanger saga, but not that Caroline has begun to dream about him.  Soon, she and Simon meet each other socially, through mutual friends, and have to make a truce of sorts.  Wallbanger and Pink Nightie Girl soon become really good friends and have a lot of mutual attraction but Simon has never been the type to settle down with a girlfriend and Caroline is not about to join his harem of women, even if it does seem as though he might be a good candidate to help her recover her ‘O’.

This was such a funny story! Neither Caroline or Simon seem to keep much close to their chests, it’s all out there so it’s not the most subtle of relationships but I loved their banter and smutty innuendo, they were such a fun couple, and had such a lot of laughs.  Their close friends are also in the story, and although they were much less developed characters they certainly helped in forwarding the plot. Caroline has the funniest conversations with herself. 

“Was the Giggler out of the harem?

Was there even a harem left?

What did this mean?

Would I only think in questions now?

And if so, who is Eric Cartman’s father?”

The way she personified her ‘O’ reminded me a little bit of Ana talking about her ‘Inner Goddess’ in 50 Shades of Grey but she did it with such humour that instead of finding her annoying I was quite happy laughing at and along with Caroline.

“He was wooing me. And I was letting him woo. I wanted the woo. I deserved the woo.  I needed the wow that would surely follow the woo, but for now, the woo? It was whoa.”

Is this literature that will open your mind and expand your horizons? No.  Is it a very entertaining book that you’ll read with a smile on your face and will keep you laughing? It certainly did for me J

Nameless by Claire Kent

Nameless is the story of Erin and Seth.  Erin has known Seth by sight for 15-odd years.  He came to live in her town as a teenager and was pretty wild.  Since then, he’s made a success of himself in his legal career. He’s back in town for the funeral of his only relative.  Erin ends up getting drunk with Seth, and they have a one night stand.  Although they take precautions Erin finds herself pregnant and goes to tell Seth, who takes the news surprisingly well.  Erin is very wary of Seth as she has been burnt in the past; her ex-husband Marcus was a strong and decisive person and was very controlling of her, and she is scared of the same thing happening again.  She is willing to let Seth be part of the baby’s life if he wishes, but she intends that it will be on her terms, as she never wants to feel so powerless again.  Erin and Seth’s relationship becomes a bit confused - isn’t a romantic one, but it’s more than a friendship and both of them are holding back to prevent themselves from getting hurt, plus they have the added dynamic of a child, meaning that they don’t want to do anything which could damage their relationship long-term, as if Seth is to have a relationship with his child it will be easier if he and Erin can be on good terms.

I thought this was a pretty entertaining read.  Erin does her best to deal with a nightmarish situation, as does Seth.  They both have faults; she is too keen to project her ex’s faults onto Seth, and is quite blind towards his feelings on a number of occasions, and he is very reticent and does something that I’d find hard to forgive, but they also have their virtues – Erin is very forgiving of him and Seth, aside from his one big mistake, is there when Erin needs him.  They have lots of humour between them and make a really nice couple.  It would have been nice to have seen something from Seth’s point of view, he’s not very open and although you get Erin’s take on what she thinks might be going on, quite often she misses things or is wrong, so it would have been good to be privy to some of Seth’s thoughts and feelings.

The main downside for me with this book is that it felt too long. It’s understandable that the timeframe of the book is longer, as if I was in Erin’s position I wouldn’t be in a rush to jump into a relationship, she had a lot on her plate, and both her and her child’s future lay in the balance. Plus being a mum to a new baby takes a lot of your time! However, the book felt like some things could have been cut.  There were a number of sex scenes but they were a bit samey, and there were some interactions between Erin and Seth which were similar and I felt could be done without.

One thing I think the author portrayed well is the less glamorous side to motherhood, the upheaval and changed focus to your life, the fatigue is something that takes a while to get used to, your laundry piles up and you end up wearing clothes that are comfortable above anything else, romance is the last thing on your schedule for a while!

This author also writes under the name Noelle Adams, and I’ve read a few of those, but this is the first one I’ve read by her under the name Claire Kent.  I understand there are follow ups to Nameless, ‘Christening’ and ‘Incarnate’ showing later parts of Seth and Erin’s relationship which I will try and read sometime. I wish we could have half star ratings for books like these, it's better than a 3 star but less than a 4 star read for me!

The Man Who Loved Pride and Prejudice by Abigail Reynolds

I've read quite a few books by Abigail Reynolds; she's written a number of variations on Pride and Prejudice, changing certain elements and exploring how it could have affected the path of the story.  However, this was the first thing I've read by her that is set in modern times and I wasn't quite sure what to expect.  This is is modern day version of Pride and Prejudice.  Cassie, who is a marine biologist, meets Calder, who is the rich son of a congressman through a friend of hers starting a relationship with a friend of his.

Cassie and Calder's relationship starts off badly when he refuses to dance with her (sound familiar?!) but it's not only that which prejudices her against him.  Firstly, she has been badly hurt by a previous relationship breakup, and doesn't really have much trust in men, she has a few secrets that she's been keeping from everybody and she also doesn't think it's within the realms of possibility that somebody from Calder's background would be interested in her for anything other than a quick fling.  Calder's father is a Republican senator for whom image is everything, and the senator is also pretty anti-science, so when Calder finds himself interested in Cassie he fights it, knowing that she would be completely unacceptable to his family.

Obviously, since this is a modern update of P&P we know that Calder feels more for Cassie than she realises but the penny doesn't drop for a long time. In P&P, Lizzy feels sorry for Darcy's feelings once she's digested his letter, and she has unwittingly led him to have feelings for her, whereas Cassie has both given active encouragement to Calder and been very cold towards him to preserve her own feelings without any thought for his, so she has more to feel bad about. Plus Calder's version of the letter spells eloquently how much he cared, and how she's basically ripped out his heart and trampled all over it. One thing I think Abigail Reynolds generally does well is the type of pain which has you gripped to your kindle, and you feel bad for both Calder and Cassie.  But even when things begin to look hopeful they will have some family obstacles to overcome.

I thought this was an interesting update. A lot of the modern versions of Pride and Prejudice that I've read have very young protagonists but I liked them being a little bit older, and I also thought it was clever that instead of both being misled by vanity, instead they were misled because they both saw themselves as unworthy in some way - Cassie can't see a rich man staying interested and Calder has never felt loved by anybody. I thought him being part of such a ruthless, image-conscious senator's family gave an understandable reason for Calder to fight his attraction to Cassie. I liked the insights into the mechanics of Cassie's work too.  On the flipside, I found it frustrating that neither of them would talk to each other about how they felt for so long.  There is a lot lacking in Mr Darcy's courtship of Lizzy but at least at Hunsford she knew what she was turning down; at this couple's Hunsford moment it's not at all clear what Calder wants from her.  Also, Darcy gets the letter straight to her, Calder's 'letter' is delivered in a much more roundabout fashion and leaves a good deal to chance. It's understandable because he has so much less self-belief than Darcy, but it's still frustrating. It's good that by the end of the book we see these two work through some of their baggage and family issues, particularly Calder.

I enjoyed this book and I'd recommend it. There is another book in this series, 'Morning Light' which I believe is influenced by Jane Austen's 'Persuasion', which I'll try and read soon.