A hit-and-miss erotic fantasy with sharp writing but underemployed characters.
Psychic lovers wrangle with each other—in and out of bed—in this paranormal period romance.
Piper Scott and Jules Alexander seem like perfectly matched English aristocrats with scruffy Victorian backstories. He’s the eighth Viscount Beauchamp, she’s the granddaughter of an earl; he fled his abusive father to live as a London street urchin, and she spent her youth accompanying her wastrel dad to gambling dens. However, Jules is also head of the League, a secret organization that shelters misfits with psychic powers at his country estate, and he has visionary trances that debilitate him; she perceives people’s auras and can heal mystic maladies with a touch. They’re also both so gorgeous that they spend half the book tremulously ogling each other. However, vague contrivances stymie their passion. Jules rebuffs Piper because he thinks his psychic gift might overwhelm her if they get close; meanwhile, she’s pursued by an unbalanced Frenchwoman with ESP who’ll use violence to access Piper’s healing touch. This first installment of Sumner’s League of Lords series is weakened by the fact that the lady isn’t trouble enough: Piper has a background in gambling but never gambles, and she enters the novel posing as a fake clairvoyant but never cons anyone; throughout, she’s mainly just a woman in love who helps people. She’s surrounded by potentially interesting supporting characters whose entertainment value is similarly wasted, such as her maid Minnie, a sex worker’s daughter who can throw knives with her mind but never uses her telekinetic powers in the narrative. The action set pieces are mainly in the bedroom, where Piper and Jules get up to intense, if slow-paced, antics: “He swallowed her moan as he captured her lips, his lids sweeping low the last thing she saw before she crested, her body bowing off the bed and into him.” Still, Sumner has a knack for snappy dialogue and Austen-esque drollery: “A week passed before Piper concluded that her rejection of Julian’s pitiable but heartfelt proposal might have been an unintentionally deceptive feminine ploy.”
A hit-and-miss erotic fantasy with sharp writing but underemployed characters.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-65920-208-3
Page Count: 420
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.
Another reboot of Jane Austen?!? Hadlow pulls it off in a smart, heartfelt novel devoted to bookish Mary, middle of the five sisters in Pride and Prejudice.
Part 1 recaps Pride and Prejudice through Mary’s eyes, climaxing with the humiliating moment when she sings poorly at a party and older sister Elizabeth goads their father to cut her off in front of everyone. The sisters’ friend Charlotte, who marries the unctuous Mr. Collins after Elizabeth rejects him, emerges as a pivotal character; her conversations with Mary are even tougher-minded here than those with Elizabeth depicted by Austen. In Part 2, two years later, Mary observes on a visit that Charlotte is deferential but remote with her husband; she forms an intellectual friendship with the neglected and surprisingly nice Mr. Collins that leads to Charlotte’s asking Mary to leave. In Part 3, Mary finds refuge in London with her kindly aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner. Mrs. Gardiner is the second motherly woman, after Longbourn housekeeper Mrs. Hill, to try to undo the psychic damage wrought by Mary’s actual mother, shallow, status-obsessed Mrs. Bennet, by building up her confidence and buying her some nice clothes (funded by guilt-ridden Lizzy). Sure enough, two suitors appear: Tom Hayward, a poetry-loving lawyer who relishes Mary’s intellect but urges her to also express her feelings; and William Ryder, charming but feckless inheritor of a large fortune, whom naturally Mrs. Bennet loudly favors. It takes some maneuvering to orchestrate the estrangement of Mary and Tom, so clearly right for each other, but debut novelist Hadlow manages it with aplomb in a bravura passage describing a walking tour of the Lake District rife with seething complications furthered by odious Caroline Bingley. Her comeuppance at Mary’s hands marks the welcome final step in our heroine’s transformation from a self-doubting wallflower to a vibrant, self-assured woman who deserves her happy ending. Hadlow traces that progression with sensitivity, emotional clarity, and a quiet edge of social criticism Austen would have relished.
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-12941-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sweet and sparkling adult debut.
A romance ghostwriter who’s lost her motivation after a breakup is haunted by the spirit of her newly departed editor in this whimsical paranormal romance.
Florence Day doesn't believe in love or happily-ever-afters any longer. Unfortunately, she’s also the ghostwriter for a prominent romance novelist and is currently trying to finish her fourth and final contracted book. The deadline for her latest manuscript has already been pushed back several times, and her new editor, Benji Andor, isn’t allowing for any leeway. Florence can also see ghosts, an ability that’s made quite a name for her in her hometown but also partly contributed to the devastating end of her previous relationship. On the eve of her deadline, Florence finds her life upended by both an unexpected kiss with her editor and the sudden death of her beloved father. Returning home comes with its own set of baggage, though Florence holds out hope that her father’s ghost will appear for one last goodbye. She’s shocked, however, when the spirit that visits her isn’t her father but Ben Andor, mysteriously dead only a day after she’d met him. Now Florence must not only navigate her grief and fulfill her dad's last wishes, she must also contend with Ben’s confused ghost following her around until they can correct his unfinished business. The zippy banter between Florence and nearly everyone she meets keeps things moving at a sprightly clip. Every interaction is a delight, and getting to know the cast of characters in Florence’s orbit adds excitement to the book. The romance takes a bit longer to build, though, and flits in and out of focus. Florence and Ben share such chemistry that it’s a shame readers are often left waiting for them to interact. The ghostly element is fun and fresh, adding slightly higher stakes to Florence and Ben's happily-ever-after.
A sweet and sparkling adult debut.Pub Date: July 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-33648-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
