Who Wants to Marry a Duke

Who Wants to Marry a Duke (Duke Dynasty 3)- Sabrina Jeffries
Zebra Books
Release Date: August 25, 2020

Rating:
📚📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: A past kiss with adorably bookish Miss Olivia Norley should be barely a memory for Marlowe Drake, the Duke of Thornstock. After all, there are countless debutantes for a handsome rakehell to charm beyond a young lady whose singular passion is chemistry—of the laboratory type. But Thorn has not forgotten—or forgiven—the shocking blackmail scheme sparked by that single kiss, or the damage caused to both their names. Now Thorn’s half-brother, Grey, has hired the brilliant Miss Norley for her scientific expertise in solving a troubling family mystery. And the once-burned Thorn, suspicious of her true motives, vows to follow her every move . . .
 
For Olivia, determining whether arsenic poisoning killed Grey’s father is the pioneering experiment that could make her career—and Thorn’s constant presence is merely a distraction. But someone has explosive plans to derail her search. Soon the most unexpected discovery is the caring nature of the reputed scoundrel beside her—and the electricity it ignites between them . . .

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Who Wants to Marry a Duke continues the Duke Dynasty series, where siblings work to uncover the truth behind the potential murders of their fathers/step-fathers.  The urgency picks up when several suspicious "accidents" prove that the murderer is still very much alive and keeping an eye on the siblings- and willing to go to any length to prevent them from learning the truth!  It's a book of hiding secrets, suspicious motives, and long-believed lies- both in the romance and the mystery!

The Duke of Thorndale met Ms Olivia Norley his first year in England and was instantly attracted to how different she was from every other debutante.  When he's blackmailed into proposing to her, Thorn believes she must be like every other woman, out to snag a rich duke.  His pride is hurt and it doesn't help any when she turns him down.  Nine years later Thorn is a confirmed bachelor and rakehell, cynical and refusing to believe in love or reveal his inner self to anyone.  Olivia is now an accomplished chemist who Thorn's brother Grey convinces to test  his father's remains for arsenic.  Thorn refuses to believe she can do what she claims and joins her, determined to prove she is the schemer he has built up in his mind.

Olivia thought Thorn saw the real her nine years ago and didn't mind that she preferred chemistry to small talk, didn't know how to dance, and had no interest in flirting.  She didn't understand why he proposed when he didn't want to, and was crushed by how he treated her.  He only confirmed her belief that she was meant for science, not love.  Grey's offer is the chance to prove a test she's developed and make a name for herself as a chemist.  But a suspicious Thorn interrupts her at every turn, and the worst part is that the chemistry between them is as volatile as phosphorous and oxygen.

Who Wants to Marry a Duke is a delightful twist on a second-chance romance, where both Thorn and Olivia have been burned by their attraction and are too resentful to want to see where it could lead them.  Pride and misunderstandings stand between them, but being forced to spend time together allows them to see their true selves and to question the past as they understood it.  Every step of the way, Sabrina Jeffries reminds us of the importance of communication in a relationship, and how hiding secrets never ends well.  Thorn is closed-in and sensitive, afraid to show even his family members all of his true self, and he's built a hard shell around his heart to protect it from what he thinks love means and refuses to even acknowledge that his siblings might be finding the real thing. At times you want to shake him, at others comfort him.  Olivia is the stronger of the two in many ways: she's willing to admit when she's wrong, willing to admit when she's fallen in love (despite trying not to!) and willing to forgive when necessary.  She's gained confidence in herself in the nine years since Thorn saw her and has no problem being a chemist and not marrying.  Nor is she willing to give up what others consider a 'hobby' were she ever to marry.  It would take a special kind of man to give her both the respect and love she wants in a marriage, and Thorn has to decide if he can become that man for Olivia,  if he's capable of risking himself by falling in love or of losing her for good.

Full of Jeffries' lively sense of humor, complex characters, and enough urgency in the mystery to keep the plot moving along, Who Wants to Marry a Duke is a good continuation of the Duke Dynasty.    Despite being book three of a series, it could be read as a stand alone for new readers with no trouble, and sets up well the next book, promising us poisoners aplenty and dangerous dowagers as the mystery continues!

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion. 

The Truth About Baked Beans

The Truth About Baked Beans: An Edible History of New England- Meg Muckenhoupt
Washington Mews Books
Release Date: August 25, 2020

Rating:
📚📚📚

Synopsis:  Meg Muckenhoupt begins with a simple question: When did Bostonians start making Boston Baked Beans? Storekeepers in Faneuil Hall and Duck Tour guides may tell you that the Pilgrims learned a recipe for beans with maple syrup and bear fat from Native Americans, but in fact, the recipe for Boston Baked Beans is the result of a conscious effort in the late nineteenth century to create New England foods. New England foods were selected and resourcefully reinvented from fanciful stories about what English colonists cooked prior to the American revolution―while pointedly ignoring the foods cooked by contemporary New Englanders, especially the large immigrant populations who were powering industry and taking over farms around the region. 

The Truth about Baked Beans explores New England’s culinary myths and reality through some of the region’s most famous foods: baked beans, brown bread, clams, cod and lobster, maple syrup, pies, and Yankee pot roast. From 1870 to 1920, the idea of New England food was carefully constructed in magazines, newspapers, and cookbooks, often through fictitious and sometimes bizarre origin stories touted as time-honored American legends. This toothsome volume reveals the effort that went into the creation of these foods, and lets us begin to reclaim the culinary heritage of immigrant New England―the French Canadians, Irish, Italians, Portuguese, Polish, indigenous people, African-Americans, and other New Englanders whose culinary contributions were erased from this version of New England food. Complete with historic and contemporary recipes, The Truth about Baked Beans delves into the surprising history of this curious cuisine, explaining why and how “New England food” actually came to be.

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The Truth About Baked Beans is an incredibly detailed and well-researched book on the history of food in New England and the people who ate it.  Here we take a look behind the "traditional" New England foods, from maple syrup and lobster to cod and baked beans, and discover what New Englanders have actually been eating throughout history.

It will probably not come as a surprise to discover that the "traditional" New Englander and their dinners were invented in the late 1800s.  Times were changing, people were moving to cities, immigrants were moving to the United States, and a few Victorians began to think that life must have been better back in the day.  Their racism, classism, and outright xenophobia erased the Irish, Italian, Polish, Greek, and other European and African immigrants and slaves from the region, replaced them with a few helpful Native Americans who showed the Pilgrims how to plant corn before conveniently disappearing into the mists, and behold! The "traditional" New Englander and his food was born.  This attitude blended with the new scientific approach of the late 1800s-early 1900s where a few "experts" worked hard to convince poor people that what they were eating wasn't healthy and that they could eat better and cheaper with plain, boiled, tasteless meals that required hours of cooking and no vegetables.  

The book is a social, environmental, and cultural history of New England since the 1600s.  It tries to answer questions about what people were living in the region, what they were eating, what they had access to, and how attitudes towards different foods changed over time.  However, I didn't find myself as interested in this book as I expected to be.  Possibly this was because there was so much research that, despite Muckenhoupt's humor throughout the book, it ended up reading more like a scholarly work than a light food history read.  There was also a lot of repetition, some due to how the book was structured, and the combination made it a much more difficult book to get through than I expected.  The pacing dragged and I had a hard time staying interested for long periods of time.  Overall, this is an interesting book, but maybe more for intense thesis scholars than the rest of us.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Lady Romeo

Lady Romeo: The Radical and Revolutionary Life of Charlotte Cushman, America's First Celebrity- Tana Wojczuk  
Avid Reader/Simon & Schuster
Release Date: July 7, 2020

Rating:
📚📚📚

Synopsis: From the very beginning, she was a radical. At age nineteen, Charlotte Cushman, America’s beloved actress and the country’s first true celebrity, left her life—and countless suitors—behind to make it as a Shakespearean actress. After revolutionizing the role of Lady Macbeth in front of many adoring fans, she went on the road, performing in cities across a dividing America and building her fame. She was everywhere. And yet, her name has faded in the shadows of history.

Now, for the first time in decades, Cushman’s story comes to full and brilliant life in this definitive, exhilarating, and enlightening biography of the 19th-century icon. With rarely seen letters, Wojczuk reconstructs the formative years of Cushman’s life, set against the excitement and drama of New York City in the 1800s, featuring a cast of luminaries and revolutionaries that changed the cultural landscape of America forever.

A vivid portrait of an astonishing and uniquely American life, Lady Romeo reveals one of the most remarkable women in United States history, and restores her to the center stage where she belongs.

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The story of a little known, but pioneering actress, Lady Romeo introduces the reader to Charlotte Cushman- perhaps the greatest actress of her age and a woman who proved to the world that America was ready to embrace culture, theater, and especially Shakespeare.  Her triumphs and setbacks built Charlotte into a strong and determined woman- determined to provide for her family, determined to prove her own talent, and determined to prove America's cultural place in the world.  She befriended politicians and authors, actors and sculptors, and helped support other women in their professions.  Described here by Tana Wojczuk as America's first celebrity, Charlotte Cushman also had to learn to balance her public and private lives.  Especially when she was young, Charlotte worried about the effect on her American career if it was discovered that she had married another woman.  But in Europe as a leading actress her relationships with women and tendency to wear men's clothes were less remarked on.

I loved learning about the enterprising, determined, and pioneering Charlotte Cushman.  Wojczuk is at her best when writing about Charlotte's time on stage, bringing to life Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth or Romeo.  At these times Charlotte herself comes to life, much as she breathed life into her characters.  Wojczuk describes how Cushman left an entire generation of women (including Louisa May Alcott) star-struck; redefined Romeo and reintroduced the original Shakespearean text of Romeo and Juliet to English audiences; and broke restricting 19th-century gender roles on both sides of the ocean.

 I would have enjoyed a deeper exploration of Cushman's inner life- her emotions and thoughts, her family, and her romantic relationships- instead of the often flat or surface look we get here.  Lady Romeo is often so fast-paced that it feels like we've skipped years of Cushman's life and development.  At other times repetition or time-period hopping take away some of the emotional impact of scenes like Cushman's final performance- beautifully written and detailed but put in the beginning of the book, before we get to know Cushman, and then ignored completely at the end when it might have had an even larger emotional impact.  The people around Charlotte had no life to them, we get no real idea why Charlotte loved someone, what attracted her to a person (platonically or romantically).  Whether this is because there wasn't anything in the resources used to flesh out the people, or often Charlotte herself,  is impossible to say. But Lady Romeo definitely left me wanting to know more about Charlotte and her world- how she fit into it and how she changed it to fit her.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Sex and Vanity

Sex and Vanity- Kevin Kwan

DoubleDay/Random House

Release Day: June 30, 2020

Rating:

📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: On her very first morning on the jewel-like island of Capri, Lucie Churchill sets eyes on George Zao and she instantly can't stand him. She can't stand it when he gallantly offers to trade hotel rooms with her so that she can have a view of the Tyrrhenian Sea, she can't stand that he knows more about Casa Malaparte than she does, and she really can't stand it when he kisses her in the darkness of the ancient ruins of a Roman villa and they are caught by her snobbish, disapproving cousin Charlotte. "Your mother is Chinese so it's no surprise you'd be attracted to someone like him," Charlotte teases. The daughter of an American-born Chinese mother and a blue-blooded New York father, Lucie has always sublimated the Asian side of herself in favor of the white side, and she adamantly denies having feelings for George. But several years later, when George unexpectedly appears in East Hampton, where Lucie is weekending with her new fiancé, Lucie finds herself drawn to George again. Soon, Lucie is spinning a web of deceit that involves her family, her fiancé, the co-op board of her Fifth Avenue apartment building, and ultimately herself as she tries mightily to deny George entry into her world--and her heart. Moving between summer playgrounds of privilege, peppered with decadent food and extravagant fashion, Sex and Vanity is a truly modern love story, a daring homage to A Room with a View, and a brilliantly funny comedy of manners set between two cultures.

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From the creator of Crazy Rich Asians comes a new world of over-the-top money, family, and romance in New York.  When George and Lucie meet at a friend's wedding they are teens who barely speak to each other but are still drawn together.  One night, one indiscretion, and one drone send them apart.  Years later they are back in each other's orbit and Lucie has to decide if she's going to stay on the path she's planned for herself since she was 8 years old, or take a risk and go for what her heart really wants.

Sex and Vanity is a pretty good description of most of the people in this book- emphasis on the vanity.  It's Crazy Rich Asians up a notch.  The only exceptions seem to be our heroes, Lucy and George and their mothers- all other friends and family are shameless name droppers and have black belts in one-upmanship.  Lucy has spent her life trying to fit into this world, while believing that she isn't good enough for it because she's half-Asian and she doesn't look like her father's Plymouth Rock WASP family.  Every time she manages to enjoy a moment as herself, something happens to shock her or shame her back into her protective little shell.  She thinks she has to be what everyone else wants her to be, but George sees her for who she actually is, or could be.  

While I enjoyed the book, with its fast paced writing style and breezy over-the-top world, I wish we had gotten to see George more.  The reader actually gets very little "George" time, which makes it hard to believe in love between George and Lucie.  He almost never talks, does nice things without fanfare but just to help people (which is great, no complaints there- especially compared to Cecil!) but I hard a hard time following Lucie through her feelings for him.  At first she doesn't like him, on no basis at all.  Then she does, on no basis at all.  Magnetic pull might be a good start to a relationship, but it never got beyond that for me.  He seemed like a Mr. Darcy type who never got turned into a character to know, but just an idea.

Light summer fun to help make people smile, Sex and Vanity will be enjoyed by everyone who enjoyed the world of Crazy Rich Asians.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review  

House of Ghosts

A House of Ghosts- W.C. Ryan 
Simon & Schuster
Release Date: October 1, 2019

Rating:
📚📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: Winter 1917. As the First World War enters its most brutal phase, back home in England, everyone is seeking answers to the darkness that has seeped into their lives. At Blackwater Abbey, on an island off the Devon coast, armaments manufacturer Lord Highmount has arranged a spiritualist gathering to contact his two sons, both of whom died at the front.

Among the guests, two have been secretly dispatched from the intelligence service: Kate Cartwright, a friend of the family who lost her beloved brother at the Somme and who, in the realm of the spiritual, has her own special gift; and the mysterious Captain Donovan, recently returned from Europe. Top secret plans for weapons developed by Lord Highmount’s company have turned up in Berlin, and there is reason to believe enemy spies will be in attendance. As the guests arrive, it becomes clear that each has something they would rather keep hidden. Then, when a storm descends, they find themselves trapped on the island. Soon one of their number will die. For Blackwater Abbey is haunted in more ways than one . . . .

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During the darkest days of World War I no one is unaffected.  A house party at the island home of armaments manufacturer Lord Highmount is arranged to attempt to contact the spirits of those they've lost to the war.  But the party has another purpose- copies of Highmount's weapons designs have appeared in Berlin and both Highmount and the government want to flush out the spy. Highmount family friend Kate Cartwright and government agent Captain Donovan are sent in to identify the traitor. Soon, in a house with a reputation for being haunted, the living have as much to fear from each other as from any ghost.  

A House of Ghosts is a wonderful mystery novel, well-written and full of twists and turns, red herrings, and surprises.  It's a book that instantly calls up comparisons with Agatha Christie mysteries: an isolated Devon island home, a trapped house party, everyone at the party has secrets and hidden agendas, and there may or may not be a murderer among the guests.  W.C. Ryan makes A House of Ghosts unique with strong leading characters and a touch of the supernatural.

Kate and Donovan surprise themselves (but not the reader!) by becoming excellent partners, each with their own special skills. Kate's been stuck in Room 40 (the World War I precursor to the more famous Bletchley Park of World War II) breaking codes on weather reports, so when the mysterious C asks her to help with this case, she's happy to do so- even though it involves a haunted house with bad memories for her and pretending that her newly ex-fiancé is still her current fiancé.  She's an excellent blend of innocent and eager, with no naïveté about her, an intelligent woman who wants to do her part for the war effort and discover how her brother died.  

 Donovan is the hardbitten, mysterious agent who thinks he's jaded beyond saving, and suffers from PTSD from years at the front.  He's surprised to discover how much he enjoys working with Kate, and soon comes to think of her in far more than professional terms.  I was very happy that, even as Donovan and Kate's personal relationship develops, Donovan never treats Kate as less than his partner.  He may worry over the danger she's in, but he doesn't deny her the right to her part of the action and trusts that she can handle herself.

The supernatural angle was, I thought, particularly well-done here.  House of Ghosts never becomes a horror novel.  The book balances the rational skepticism of people like Donovan with Kate and her mother- who can see ghosts and even, occasionally, more with the help of a family artifact.  Seances  would have been common during the war and the two supposed psychics on the island are treated like  gifted people trying to help the grieving parents of soldiers.  Whether they are in fact genuinely trying to help or have a scam in mind is only one of the tangles facing Donovan and Kate. But the supernatural angle is treated so matter-of-factly that people who don't want ghosts with their mysteries should still enjoy House of Ghosts without too much skepticism.  And those of us who like a bit of supernatural to add to the drama are well rewarded. 

The Brothers York

The Brothers York: A Royal Tragedy- Thomas Penn
Simon & Schuster
Release Date: June 16, 2020

Rating:
📚📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: In 15th-century England, two royal families, the House of York and the House of Lancaster, fought a bitter, decades-long civil war for the English throne. As their symbols were a red rose for Lancaster and a white rose for York, the conflict became known as the Wars of the Roses.

During this time, the house of York came to dominate England. At its heart were three charismatic brothers—King Edward IV, and his two younger siblings George and Richard—who became the figureheads of a spectacular ruling dynasty. Together, they looked invincible.

But with Edward’s ascendancy the brothers began to turn on one another, unleashing a catastrophic chain of rebellion, vendetta, fratricide, usurpation, and regicide. The brutal end came at Bosworth Field in 1485, with the death of the youngest, then Richard III, at the hands of a new usurper, Henry Tudor, later Henry VII, progenitor of the Tudor line of monarchs.

Fascinating, dramatic, and filled with vivid historical detail, The Brothers York is a brilliant account of a conflict that fractured England for a generation. Riven by internal rivalries, jealousy, and infighting, the three York brothers failed to sustain their power and instead self-destructed. It is a rich and bloody tale as gripping as any historical fiction.

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For history lovers looking to read a definitive book on an English monarch or their era (such as Henry VIII and the Men Who Made Him or Good Queen Anne), in my opinion the book to read for King Edward IV's reign is The Brothers York: A Royal Tragedy by Thomas Penn.  Encompassing not only Edward IV's life and times, The Brothers York weaves together the stories of the battles between the Lancasters and the Yorks, Nevilles, Percys, Woodvilles, Rivers, and more.  More importantly, it also puts into context the lives of Edward's brothers George, the Duke of Clarence, and Richard, who would become King Richard III.  

What the average person knows of this family is probably little to nothing, and then their 'knowledge' is based on Shakespeare's evil King Richard destroying his family.  In Penn's Brothers York we meet the ambitious Edward and his advisor Warwick "the Kingmaker", the fascinating politics behind how Edward rewarded his favorites, and his unusual (and questionable) ways of constantly increasing the royal coffers.  Edward focused on the image of the royal family as a united front, heads above everyone else, and Penn argues that if Edward and his brothers had been able to remain united, there is probably little they couldn't have done.  But politics and personalities interfere and jealousy and the lures of ever increasing power were too much to keep the brothers united.  But the fractures didn't occur the way you think they did.

This is not your Shakespearean family, but a well-researched, well-written, neutral, and detailed account of Edward IV's reign, the multiple betrayals by the spoiled Clarence, and the warrior brother Richard, who was loyal to his elder brother until Edward's death- but not beyond.  The Brothers York is a fascinating history of brothers seeking to end conclusively the "Wars of the Roses", written in a casual, story-telling style that, combined with the drama and larger than life personalities involved, makes the pages fly by. An absolute must read for history lovers!       

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

The Marriage Game

The Marriage Game- Sara Desai
Berkley/Penguin Group
Release Date: June 9, 2020

Rating:
📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: After her life falls apart, recruitment consultant Layla Patel returns home to her family in San Francisco. But in the eyes of her father, who runs a Michelin starred restaurant, she can do no wrong. He would do anything to see her smile again. With the best intentions in mind, he offers her the office upstairs to start her new business and creates a profile on an online dating site to find her a man. She doesn’t know he’s arranged a series of blind dates until the first one comes knocking on her door…

As CEO of a corporate downsizing company Sam Mehta is more used to conflict than calm. In search of a quiet new office, he finds the perfect space above a cozy Indian restaurant that smells like home. But when communication goes awry, he's forced to share his space with the owner's beautiful yet infuriating daughter Layla, her crazy family, and a parade of hopeful suitors, all of whom threaten to disrupt his carefully ordered life.

As they face off in close quarters, the sarcasm and sparks fly. But when the battle for the office becomes a battle of the heart, Sam and Layla have to decide if this is love or just a game.

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Sam Mehta is a calm and control-oriented person.  He doesn't do noise, family, fun, or distractions.  Blaming himself for his sister's bad marriage and current pain, he has one focus: make the man who hurt her face justice.  But his plans- and his new office- get derailed when his landlord gives his office to someone else and has a heart attack before telling Sam about the change.  Layla is all energy, colors, and chaos as she tries to pull her life together and start her own business, but now she finds herself sharing an office with an uptight jerk who won't leave.  When Layla finds out her father set up blind dates for her, Sam and Layla make a deal: she'll go on the dates and if she gets married to one of the men, Sam can have the office.  No marriage means Sam's out.  Sam might start out as trying to save Layla the way he couldn't save his sister, but somewhere along the way his feelings to Layla become anything but  brotherly.

The Marriage Game is a definite opposites attract book.  Layla is all about emotions and empathy, helping her family and trying to move forward after bad things happen. She claims to not know who she really is and what she really wants, but instinctively she goes for exactly what is right for her- and only starts messing up when she thinks about it.  Sam is all about control, safety, and security. He thinks he knows what he should do and believes that he doesn't deserve happiness.  Both have suffered and I love how Sara Desai shows us the different ways people react to the troubles life brings us.  People can (and as this book shows us, do) become confusing contradictions of thoughts, feelings, and actions when it comes to trying to fix things that are broken and to prevent future pain.  

Desai celebrates Indian culture through food and family, and immerses the reader in a beautiful world of scents, sounds, and colors that explode from the page.  Sam and Layla may be in an office upstairs, but the reader can smell the scents of traditional Indian food cooking in Layla's family restaurant downstairs.  Busybody aunties drive everyone crazy with their matchmaking ways and odd attempts at American-Indian fusion food.  Bad dates mean a variety of humorous situations that inadvertently bring Layla and Sam closer together.  I wish we'd gotten the chance to get to know more of the people in Sam's life, like his sister Nisha, but I recognize that this was part of the point: Sam had closed himself off from his family and we only got to see them through Sam's pinhole vision. It works very well and makes you feel even sorrier for Sam- if we want to get to know Nisha better, think what her own brother is missing out on!

The Marriage Game is about discovering what really matters to you.  Who are you when everything falls apart?  What do you want moving forward? What are you willing to fight for?  Sam is about to discover that sometimes the worst thing that can happen to you is also the best thing that can happen to you.   

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review