Christina here with a roundup of what the Wenches have been reading this month. As usual, it’s a wonderful mixture and I hope you will find something to your taste.
We start with Patricia who recommends Queen Bee by Dorothea Benton Frank:-
I love women’s fiction that veers off the standard path, and Frank always accomplishes that. Holly Jensen is a 30-year-old substitute teacher and beekeeper still living with her mama in coastal SC. She’s seriously in love with the little boys next door and thinks their widowed father is mighty fine as well, even if he is ten years older and a fancy college professor with a Harvard degree. But Holly really only talks to her bees. She does everything for everyone and thinks that ought to be enough, until it isn’t. Her married sister comes home to announce her wealthy husband is a transvestite who wants to star in Las Vegas reviews. The boys’ father develops a serious case of lust for someone else. Little by little, Holly’s passive little life falls apart and has to be put back together in a completely new picture with a fascinating set of family and friends who give her the confidence to finally speak her mind. And what a mind it is!
I’m not fond of Frank’s simple voice but the story is worth wading through the plain speaking and simple sentences.
The Matchmakers of Minnow Bay by Kelly Harms. First, before reading this, you need to be really sympathetic to the clueless artist type because the protagonist is absolutely the picture-perfect example. She doesn’t know to change the oil in her car, trusts everyone implicitly, believes if she keeps painting all will be right in the world—until it isn’t. A cascade of events leaves her homeless, apparently friendless, and stupefyingly—still married to a dotcom billionaire who married her in a drunken night of lust in Vegas ten years before. She suddenly gets smart enough to figure out where he’s living, despite his having carefully erased his existence, and what does she do? She drives all the way to frozen Wisconsin with her last few dollars to hand him the divorce papers she forgot to mail ten years earlier.
And that’s when it gets really interesting. She’s befriended by the locals and gets her mojo back without depending on any man, although the billionaire does turn out to be more than a curmudgeonly hermit. Eventually, she must learn she can’t keep depending on others and she learns to depend on herself. It’s a fun ride with a cast of wonderful characters!
Andrea’s recommendations:
This month I’ve been busy glomming through the delightful Spark & Bainbridge mystery series by Allison Montclair. I mentioned the first book, The Right Sort of Man, last month, and enjoyed the second one, A Royal Affair, just as much! Gwen and Iris are getting their new marriage bureau – The Right Sort – up and running, dealing with both the challenges of starting a business as well as navigating their own personal problems. One morning they get an unexpected call from a social friend of Gwen (who is a war widow of a blue-blooded aristocrat) asking for the bureau to vet a potential spouse – a certain obscure Greek prince … Naturally it has to be done very discreetly, for the request is from Buckingham Palace. The powers-that-be are in a tizzy because they’ve received a blackmail threat claiming to possess some highly embarrassing old letters written by the prince's mother that might make a match with Princess Elizabeth impossible. Gwen and Iris are asked to handle trying to retrieve the letters. (Iris was a special intelligence operative during the war). They agree, only to be caught up in a very tangled web intrigue, which forces them to cobble together a very unusual group of allies to outwit not only the villain, but also the different factions within the government, who have their own agendas, not all of which care about Princess Elizabeth’s happiness. The characters are absolutely delightful, and as you learn more about the complicated background of Iris and Gwen, you can’t help rooting for them in every way!
My second read is also on British history, but non-fiction and a bit more formal. The Last King of America – The Misunderstood Reign of George III by Andrew Roberts is a magisterial work on the life of King George III, which paints a very different portrait of him than the one that most of us picture. Roberts is a very sympathetic biographer, who through meticulous research into the government archives and letters of George III posits that in truth, he was not the dull-witted tyrant but rather, a thoughtful, well-educated man who embraced his role as a constitutional monarch, believing it was a good system of checks and balances. It’s a fascinating read – though not for the faint-hearted, as it’s quite long and very detailed. But I really enjoyed it. The section on the American Revolution and why war became inevitable is incredibly enlightening and explains how (in the author’s POV) it was a “perfect storm” of complex events, both within the British government and in America, where a number of different constituencies were flexing their muscle, that led to war. If you’re a history buff, I highly recommend it. You’ll come away with a new-found sympathy and respect for a much-misunderstood monarch.
Mary Jo: Shenanigans by Sarina Bowen
Sarina Bowen writes New Adult romances, which means stories that explore life, sex, personal growth, and did I mention sex?
But what I really like about her writing is her terrific characterizations, and the way she deals with serious real life issues while being very entertaining. As a native of Vermont, it's not surprising that she loves ice hockey, which is a sport that figures in a number of her books. She does college hockey in The Ivy Years, and has a whole series about the fictional Brooklyn Bruisers professional hockey team.
In Shenanigans, both hero and heroine are professional hockey players, though male hockey players earn a whole lot more money. Plus, hero Neil comes from a family of billionaires while Charli had a very rough South Philly childhood where she was passed around among relatives who didn't want her. They know each other because their teams share the same training facility, but have at most a snippy friendship before they both attend a big Las Vegas hockey awards event. Both end up getting wildly, improbably drunk, and they wake up the next morning married. Ooops!
This basic plot setup is far from original, but it's great fun as they contemplate a crazy expensive wedding ring so hideous that neither of them can imagine picking it out. They both agree they need an annulment pronto, but the situation rapidly gets more complicated. Neither of them wants to be married and Charli has hellacious trust issues from her childhood, but slowly they begin to know each other.
One of the things that makes the story interesting is that Neil is a Type 1 diabetic. It's not hyped up for drama, but it's always there, as it is in real life. He has an insulin pump and has to constantly monitor his blood sugar, and Charli has to pay attention to that as well. Neil really has to watch what he eats and drinks--just like real life diabetics do. (Neil seldom drinks, which is one reason why overdoing the whisky in Las Vegas had such an effect.)
On her part, Charli has to deal with sleazy relatives and a poverty level income, and she has to realize that rich boys can be decent. The result is a very entertaining story and a great romance.
Other Sarina Bowen books have been recommended here before, particularly her The Year We Fell Down, recommended by several wenches, in which the hero and heroine are in the disabled section of their dorm. He's temporarily disabled, but it's permanent for her, and the result is realistic, compassionate, and entertaining.
Another one I've recommended here is Boyfriend, where the hockey playing hero wants to avoid going home for Thanksgiving so he advertises to be someone's perfect, well behaved Thanksgiving date. The heroine, who has had her eye on him for a while, gets to be the lucky one, and over the course of the book, they both sort out difficult family situations as well as falling in love. Again - entertaining!
Susan:-
I had read Ruth Ware's In a Dark, Dark Wood and really enjoyed it, so I recently picked up The Turn of the Key – and though I have a few chapters left to go, I'm an involved and very intrigued reader. Ware writes detailed, complex, well-crafted mysteries that delve deeply into the mysterious circumstances of a murder while revealing, layer by layer, the unknown quantities that the characters add to the mystery as it builds. In The Turn of the Key, Rowan Caine accepts a nanny position in a remote part of Scotland, tending three little girls for a wealthy family in a home that looks like a romantic Highland manor house, yet with the added punch of every technical gadget and smart-home feature one could imagine. The place seems idyllic, until the underlayers start to show – the highly technical house that seems convenient and then invasive; absent parents, and children, too, hiding secrets; the attractive gardener/handyman Rowan is growing fond of, who could know something as well; the poison garden where a child died long ago, and a new death that is strangely connected; and then the secrets that Rowan herself brings to a complex, fascinating puzzle. I have a feeling where this mystery is heading, and the tension Ware so successfully crafts is making me a bit apprehensive. But I just have to know so I'll be up late the next couple of nights to finish this! Then I plan to pick up another of Ruth Ware's novels. She is an absolute master.
Christina:-
My favourite read this month was also Sarina Bowen’s Shenanigans. I’d been eagerly awaiting the release of this story and I wasn’t disappointed – it was fab! I won’t add anything to Mary Jo’s excellent review but really hope there will be more Brooklyn Bruisers stories soon! As an added bonus, there was a short novella released a few weeks before this, also set in this world, which I enjoyed as well – Must Love Hockey.
I’m not sure if it’s been mentioned on here before, but I recently read and enjoyed Lexi Ryan’s The Boys of Jackson Harbor series, starting with The Wrong Kind of Love. These stories feature five handsome brothers (the Jacksons), their sister and one of their close friends, and although they can be read as standalones, they’re better read in order. I fell in love with each of the brothers in turn (some more than others), as they struggle to win the women they want to spend the rest of their lives with. The stories are emotional and very sexy, and deal with some serious issues too. My favourite was actually the final one in the series, Not Without Your Love, which features Colton McKinley, a hero trying to claw his life back after he hit rock bottom. He’s been an addict and a petty criminal, and lost what he thought was the love of his life, but has turned things around completely. The woman he falls for has her own secrets and some serious trust issues, but the chemistry between them is undeniable. Loved it!
For a slightly more serious read, and anyone who is into timeslip stories with a bit of a Gothic feel, I can recommend The Awakenings by Sarah Maine. This story had me spell-bound from start to finish. Set partly in Anglo-Saxon times and partly during the late Victorian era, I really enjoyed this tale of a love so strong it has survived across the centuries. The fates of the hero and heroine in the past had me on the edge of my seat, and at the same time I was rooting for the ones in Victorian times to find a way to prevail against their enemies. I desperately wanted Olwen, a young heiress who is virtually a prisoner of her scheming relatives, to find a way to break free. I loved the romance brewing between her and the local doctor, who tries to help her. And I was fascinated by the historical details from the past, beautifully brought to life by the author. The story kept me racing towards the finish to see what would happen and I couldn’t put it down.
Anne: How to Find Love in a Bookshop, by Veronica Henry
Begun by her father when Emilia was just a baby, Nightingale Books has become a beloved institution in this pretty Cotswold village. But now Emilia's father has died and she must decide whether to keep the financially struggling bookshop running or cut her losses and sell. This is one of those books that have stories within stories, and gradually we learn more about the various bookshop customers. And all the time, the question looms, can Emilia keep the promise she made to her father and save Nightingale Books?
As for other reads, Mary Jo and Christina beat me to recommending Shenanigans by Sarina Bowen. Sarina Bowen is an auto-buy for me, and I loved this book too. I have also read the Allison Montclair books recommended by Andrea last month, The Right Sort of Man, and A Royal Affair. I would have bought the third book in the series, but I balked at paying $18.62 for an e-book.
So how about you? Please send us your recommendations as well – our TBR piles can never be high enough!
