A sparkling new voice in historical romance delivers a satisfying story of love on the edges of the beau monde.
A duke and an inventor fall in love for a second time, and sparks fly.
Fiona McTavish was once in love with a duke, before she knew he was a duke. But when Edward Stirling, Duke of Wildeforde, returned home to tell his mother he was prepared to marry a commoner, she subtly reminded him of his duty, nipping his announcement in the bud. Fiona was devastated when he failed to return and chose to focus her curious mind on her inventions; meanwhile, in London, Edward focused on restoring his family’s reputation. But when Fiona comes to London five years later to try to find a distributor for her latest invention and finds herself arrested during a protest against the government—while dressed as a Mr. Finley McTavish, no less—Edward is the only person she knows who can get her out of jail. Unfortunately for Fiona’s plans, the rescue involves the requirement that she live in his house for a month in the middle of the season, just as the duke is beginning his search for a suitable wife. Fiona sets up a lab and tries to find a business partner, but her frustration at being turned down repeatedly by skittish moneymen is rivaled only by her frustration at the clear chemistry she and Edward still have. As they grow closer again, Edward comes to realize he wants to marry her, regardless of any gossip or scandal, but her day in court sparks a misstep that may part them permanently. The second entry in Parish’s Rebels With a Cause series, like the first, How To Survive a Scandal (2021), is an engaging story of love in the face of class differences, with an unusually honest assessment of the barriers many couples would face in such circumstances. The complex story is enlivened by Fiona’s Scottish voice as well as by the realistic way both hero and heroine navigate difficult family relationships alongside their own second-chance romance. Despite the obstacles, of course, Fiona and Edward have their happy-ever-after, and because Fiona’s invention is the safety match, this comes with copious fire metaphors alongside the steamy intimate scenes. Parish continues to bring a refreshing point of view to the Regency subgenre, and though the book stands alone, fans will want to read both volumes in the series so far for the full story.
A sparkling new voice in historical romance delivers a satisfying story of love on the edges of the beau monde.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5387-0454-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Forever
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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