Top Ten Tuesday: Stormy!

 Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week's theme is Books to Read During a Storm (these can be cozy/comfy reads, books with storms in them, atmospheric reads for dark and stormy nights, light reads to combat the heavy weather, etc.) (Submitted by Astilbe.)

For my first three choices I thought I would share some books that have components of storms in the title. If there is a storm happening around you, there may be wind, there may be thunder and there may be rain. There could be other things, but let's start with those:

He Shall Thunder in the Sky by Elizabeth Peters - As a bonus this cover also has some lightning on it!

Ill Wind by Rachel Caine - Rachel Caine has a whole series of books called Weather Wardens where all the titles are weather related.

The Right Attitude to Rain by Alexander McCall Smith - This is one of the Isabel Dalhousie which is set in Edinburgh, so I imagine you would need to be used to rain!

And now lets move onto books with stormy titles.

Flowers from the Storm by Laura Kinsale - A romance classic from the early 1990s!

Firestorm by Rachel Caine - This is another book in the Weather Wardens series.

Storm Front by Jim Butcher - Apparently I read this in 2008 and again in 2011 - who knew! I certainly didn't remember that!

The Night They Stormed Eureka by Jackie French - I recently started reading another Jackie French book but didn't get very far before I had to return the book to the library!

Season of Storms by Susanna Kearsley - Never miss an opportunity to get a Susanne Kearsley book into the a TTT post!

A Storm of Swords by George RR Martin -  this is the third book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, more commonly known as the Game of Thrones books.

The Storm Sister by Lucinda Riley - The second book in the Seven Sisters series by Lucinda Riley. I am currently listening to the seventh book in the series.

Uncertain Magic by Laura Kinsale

A man damned by suspicion and innuendo

Dreadful rumors swirl around the impoverished Irish lord known as "The Devil Earl". But Faelen Savigar hides a dark secret, for even he doesn't know what dreadful deeds he may be capable of.

A woman cursed by the gift of "sight"

Roderica Delamore fears no man will ever want a wife who can read his every thought and emotion, until she encounters Faelan. As the two find their way to each other against all odds, Roddy becomes determined to save Faelen from his terrifying and mysterious ailment. But will their lvoe end up saving him ... or destroying her?

A breathtaking historical romance filled with poignancy, darkness, love, and an unexpected twist of Gaelic magic…

I am going to have to start this review with a bit of a rant! I really, really don’t like books where the hero refers to the heroine as little girl or little love or anything like that. Unfortunately, the author uses this as an endearment between our hero of this novel, Faelen Savigar, and the heroine,  Roddy Delamore,  and every time he called her that name I wanted to throw the book down and walk away. I was hoping that it would just be in the early part of the book, and that in due course Faelen would grow to see her as more than a little girl, but alas it didn't happen, at least in terms of endearments. To me, it just sounds so condescending and a little bit wrong. 

Now that that is out of the way a bit more about the book. Roddy has always been a little bit different, and she has always been aware that other people look at her a bit askance, a little bit fearful of what it is that is different about her. She can hear the thoughts and feel the emotions of humans and creatures near her. When she is at the races, she feels the pain of a racing horse, knowing that if it keeps on being forced to race it’s heart will give out. The owner of the horse is known as the Devil Earl, including that he murdered his father at a young age. He is a man who lives on the periphery of accepted society, and about whom many rumours swirl. He doesn’t really even trust himself as there are many occasions where he loses days, not knowing where he has been or what he has been doing. Amazingly for Roddy who wants a life away from her parents meaning marriage and children, he is also a man that she can’t get inside the head of, even if she tries, and that makes him attractive to her. She therefore suggest to him that perhaps he could court her.

Whilst her family are initially reluctant to agree to the match, Roddy convinces them that he is indeed the man she wants to marry and they agree. What follows their wedding is danger, intrigue, rebellion and mysticism with its heart in the Irish countryside. Faelen is hoping to rebuild his family’s crumbling estate, but before he can do that, his friend must move on the guns that he has illegally stored at the estate. It is however no easy matter to remove that number of weapons undetected by the English soldiers who are on the lookout for traitors, and feel no sense of injustice by destroying peoples homes and livelihoods in the process. From spectral haunting, to dangerous attempts to free people from jail, this book would seem to have all the ingredients for a cracking good read.

While all of this sounds very dramatic, I had trouble being interested enough in the storyline, and actually felt a bit lost at times as the mystical and then the temporal elements jostled for time at the forefront of the book.
I have liked the books I have read by this author before, but unfortunately this one didn’t work as well for me! Even by the time I got to the end of the book, I wasn't quite sure what at least two of the characters were and how they fitted into the big picture.

Whilst the paranormal elements in this novel were different from a lot of the books that are being released now, I do think that if you have been reading romance for a while you would recognise the style as a more older fashioned type of paranormal, which makes sense give that this book was originally published in 1987.


Thanks to Sourcebooks who provided me with a review copy of this book.

This book counted for the 2010 Pub Challenge, and the Romance Reading Challenge that I am participating in.

Rating 3.5/5

Lessons in French by Laura Kinsale

He's always been trouble...

Trevelyan and Callie are childhood sweethearts with a taste for adventure, until the fateful day her father discovers them embracing in the carriage house and, in a furious frenzy, drives Trevelyan away in disgrace...


Exactly the kind of trouble she's never been able to resist...

Nine long, lonely years later, Trevelyan returns. Callie discovers that he can still make her blood race and fill her life with excitement, but he can't give her the one thing she wants more than anything—himself.

For Trevelyan, Callie is a spark of light in a world of darkness and deceit. Before he can bear to say his last goodbyes, he's determined to sweep her into one last, fateful adventure, just for the two of them.

There was great excitement when it was announced that Laura Kinsale had a new book coming out this year. I was pleased because she is a big name in historical romance circles in particular, but personally I wasn't truly excited mainly because I have only read one of her books previously, albeit one of the classics - Flowers from the Storm. I am thinking that I am going to be more excited when we get news of the next book from Laura Kinsale, and now it is my intention to read through as much of her backlist as possible.

Lady Callie Tallefaire is the daughter of a duke, but at the age of 27, and having been jilted by fiances three times, she is resigned to the fact that she is never going to be married. Her cousin is now the duke, and his insufferable wife duchess, and Callie is waiting for the day when her younger sister marries so that she can move out with them. Callie is somewhat unique amongst her class. She is a lady, but she is also intensely passionate about her animals, in particular her prize bull, Hubert.

As youngsters, Callie was often caught up in escapades and adventures with her neighbour, Trevelyn d'Augustin. Trevelyn is a French emigre whose family escaped from The Terror with little more than the clothes on their back. However, when Callie and Trevelyn are caught in a somewhat intimate situation by her father, Trev is banished, returning to France ostensibly to try to regain his family's lands.

After ten years, Trev has returned, and he is completely surprised to find that Callie is not yet married with children, and finds that the feelings that he once had for her are not as dead as he thought. Trev has returned to visit his sick mother, but in so many ways he is not anything like he initially seemed. I am very much a hero-centric romance reader, and in this book I was not disappointed. Gradually we get to know the man that Trev has become as a result of the life he has experienced, and it is fair to say that he hasn't been living an elegant, or gentlemanly, life while he has been away.

Being the unmarried cousin to the current duke means that Callie is subject to the whims of her cousin and his wife. She is devastated when she finds out that he has sold her prize bull to one of her former suitors, Major Sturgeon, just before she is about to exhibit Hubert at the local show. It is to Trev that she turns in her despair, and there begins a series of misadventures featuring the two of them.

There is a definite sexual chemistry between Trev and Callie, but there is an underlying feeling of yearning, particular on Trev's part. He is a man used to thinking on his feet. His plans quite often don't necessarily work out as he intended, but he improvises as necessary, with often funny results, particularly as he leads Callie into some unlikely situations.

He is ,however, not what he seems, and neither Callie or his mother have any idea of exactly what is going on in his life until the very end of the novel. If there is a weakness with this novel, it is the ending. Suddenly we find out exactly how dangerous it is for Trev to have returned to England to see his ailing mother, and for him to remain there because of his attachment to Callie, and also some explanation of why Callie has been so unlucky in love for all these years. All's well that ends well I guess.

I loved how unusual some of Trev's past experiences have been and how they have influenced him, and I loved how certain he was in his feelings for Callie. Yes, he may have been tempted to walk away from Callie, but not because he didn't love her, but because he did love her and he knew what her life may have been had she stuck with him.

Callie wasn't quite as well defined for me. Whilst so many romance heroines are described as spirited (particularly the red haired ones who are so prevalent in historical romances) often they can be a bit too modern, or a bit too clever. There's no doubt that Callie was intelligent, and she did have unusual interests for a woman of her time, but she did still seem to fit her time in terms of setting.

This novel is a welcome return from Laura Kinsale, and one that I enjoyed very much. Whilst the story was funny (with a touch of slapstick at times) and somewhat light, there were also well developed characters with interesting back stories, and plenty of depth lying just under the surface waiting to be discovered.

This is my first read for the 2010 Pub Challenge, and also counts for my Romance Reading challenge.

Thanks to Sourcebooks for sending me a copy of this book for review.

Rating: 4.5/5

Teaser Tuesday - Lessons in French

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

I wasn't sure which book to do a teaser from this week. I finished another Terry Pratchett book today, but I only just did a teaser from another of his books last week, so I decided against it. One of the other options is a book that I have just started, but then I looked on my nightstand for the book that I have been reading at night, and decided, that yes, something romantic might be in order. This week's teaser therefore comes from Lessons in French by much loved romance author Laura Kinsale. The teaser comes from page 181:

Hubert proved himself a splendid gentleman, worthy of his exalted lineage and genteel upbringing, in his transit from the kitchen to the front door. Following Callie and a trail of carrots, he moved one ponderous step at a time, his big head swaying gently under the replaced blindfold.

I probably should mention that Hubert is a prize bull. I possibly could have actually found a romantic passage, but this is the one that I opened the page on!