Wednesday Wanderings - May 17th

Wandering #1 ...

Sweet Contemporary Romance 
& Opportunity to Win a $50 Gift Card

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And good luck!

Wandering #2 ...

London - Day 2

Windsor Castle was our first stop.

I love what they've done with the moat. This is part of the moat garden.

They had a fire in 1992 that did a lot of damage to the north towers.

It's easy to forget that they needed these mammoth walls for protection.

Our next stop was the lovely village of Bath. Anyone who's read Austen or Regency romances will know the Pump Room was a social gathering place. It's a restaurant today.

It rather boggles the mind that this part of the city wasn't that much different in Jane Austen's day.

 We visited the Roman Baths. Also something that played quite a role in Austen's day and in Regency romances. The Romans really built them over hot springs.
It's pretty cool the place is still standing.

Just don't really get in there. Or drink the waters like they did in Austen's day. *gag*

Our last stop was Stonehenge. They're huge.
It's humbling to be an American with a relatively short history
and to visit places where things are so old.

Wandering #3 ...

We finally saw Guardians of the Galaxy. I enjoyed it, but not as much as I wanted to. One of my biggest complaints about the second Pirates movie was that they tried too hard to up the action from the epicly awesome fight scenes of the first movie. They ended up looking forced.

That's what I felt about some of the humor in G2. Some of it they hit dead on (for me--I recognize that people have different tastes in humor, and I heard plenty of people in the theater laughing when I wasn't). But, to me, some of it seemed forced.

Plus ... (spoiler alert--you need to highlight it to see my following comment):

Seriously?! Peter's father was a man-ho and caused his mother's death? UGH

I think the story's strength was its heart. I loved so many parts of that which I won't spoil here.

Anyway, have you seen it?

What did you think?

Did you stay for all the extra scenes?

I LOVED Peter and the teen Groot and what it foreshadows. 

Review of A Lady and a Spy by Ranee' S. Clark

Still on Blog Vacation

 

WHAT IT'S ABOUT:
Blanche Audley's old-fashioned grandfather cut off her mother after she married Thomas Audley and his millions of "new money," and for the last ten years since her parents' deaths, Blanche has lived under the gloom of his disappointment. So when she recklessly loses a thousand dollars to Etta Channing in a game of baccarat, she will do anything to keep her foolish actions from him. Except he oversees every penny she spends of the wealth her father left her, leaving her no way of paying the debt without his knowledge.

Until Etta offers her a deal. Alexander Whealdon, one of the most eligible bachelors in town, needs a companion to shepherd his younger sister through her first season. Etta wants Blanche to take the position and use it to infiltrate the household and pass along information that will help Etta get her hooks into the reserved Mr. Whealdon. It seems like an easy way to pay off the debt and save face at the same time. But the more Blanche sees of Mr. Whealdon's playful side, not to mention his surprising generosity, the less she wants to help Etta win him over.

Backing out means humiliating herself and disappointing both her grandfather and Mr. Whealdon, not to mention losing Miss Whealdon's trust and friendship, but if she goes through with her promise to Etta, she will lose what might be her last chance for love.

MY TAKE:
Ranee' and I have known each other online for a while, and we finally got to meet at Storymaker last month. Before we met, I'd had the opportunity to critique a couple of her regencies and really enjoyed them. Don't you love that cover?

I'm a fan of clean regency romances. I've read enough of Georgette Heyer's wonderful regencies to know that gambling in this day and age was as much as issue for the women of the ton as it was the men, so it was easy to sympathize with poor Blanche for getting sucked into such a high risk game. 

Blanche has been living under her grandfather's residual disapproval left over about her mother's marriage, yet Blanche desires the old man's praise. I could also understand her desire not to confirm the man's poor opinion of her and her willingness to hire herself out as a companion to Whealdon's youngers sister, Elsie. Ah, Elsie Whealdon. Loved her character. Clark's secondary characters were quirky and fun, making for a great ensemble cast.

I also enjoyed the ethical questions that came for Blanche as she agrees to spy on Mr. Whealdon. A fun summer read!

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Ranee` and her personal superhero, her husband, live in Wyoming where they are raising three future super-villains. When she's not breaking up impromptu UFC fights in her living room or losing to one of her sons at Uno, she loves to read and write. She has a bachelor’s degree in history that is probably useless, but she had a lot of fun earning it. She blogs about writing, reading, and editing at http://raneesclark.blogspot.com.

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Book Review - 'Courting Miss Lancaster' by Sarah M. Eden

I enjoy books that are set in the Regency period of England in the early 1900th century. I love the Horatio Hornblower series by C.S. Forester and the Richard Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell.

I'm also a sucker for a good love story.

On an aside, isn't it curious that if a book has a love story but the writer is a woman, it's a romance? Yet if a book has a love story but is written by a man, it's drama or adventure? The Bourne series by Robert Ludlum is absolutely a love story (much more, I know, but at the core it's a love story).

Regency romances (see this article) are actually a romance subgenre and include styles reminiscent of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer. I have Austen's complete works and am slowly accumulating Heyer's (either in paper or audio format). There's something fun about reading one of these books, and there are times when they're just what I need.

I was reading a post at the beginning of the year here where Shanda posed the question of which book she should read next. Courting Miss Lancaster was on the list of options, and several people commented on how much they enjoyed the story. Of course I checked to see if my library had it. It was on hold, but I only had to wait a few days before it was available.

The story is set in 1806 and involves the Little Season (coming out) of a Miss Athena Lancaster, who has this fortunate opportunity because her sister Persephone married a very rich and titled gentleman, Duke Adam Kielder. The Lancasters are well bred but not wealthy, so Adam takes the younger siblings under his wing and even bestows a substantial dowry on each of his sisters-in-law (though it will be some years before the two youngest girls are old enough to go through the marriage mart).

Now Adam is a serious grump (and one of my favorite characters in the book) and hates to go to all the ridiculous dances and parties involved. He has a good friend Harry Windover who is also well bred but poor. Harry loves to socialize and attend parties, so Adam decides to enlist his help by being responsible for escorting Athena to these events so she can meet eligible, prospective husbands.

Harry only agrees because he is in love with Athena and, while his own poverty rules him out as a suitor, he can at least make sure Athena finds a man worthy of her.

There's a lot of humor in this story, and the love story is very sweet. I enjoyed how Eden slowly helps us to know and understand the various characters. In the George Heyer and Jane Austen books, we see how hard it was to be a poor woman, but in Courting Miss Lancaster we're shown that it was hard on the men, too, who were of a certain station yet with very limited options.

The reading is less stilted than Heyer or Austen, so it goes very quickly. I ordered my own copy of it, and I'm reading it aloud to my husband.

I recommend this book and look forward to getting my hands on Seeking Persephone, since it's been accepted for publication.