Grade: C+

I don’t understand why the good people of London won’t just form some sort of coalition to ferret out the identity of Lady Whistledown, capture her, stick her in a burlap bag, and beat her with sticks. Isn’t a good amount of the rake population of the ton secret agents, anyway? There’s what– ten or fifteen secret agents mingling about in London at one time? They can’t find one lousy society lady writing these rags? Lady Whistledown is a menace! I don’t care who she is, she can’t just go around randomly accusing members of polite society with no evidence whatsoever! In some countries, people are buried up to their necks and have rocks thrown at their heads for much, much less.

Anyway, the framing story of this group of novellas is centered on the “theft” of Lady Neeley’s stupid bracelet. It’s kind of lame, I guess, but the good editors of Avon probably demanded a framing story to pull the novellas together… and this is the best that these supposed best-selling authors could come up with? Hmm.
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Is it me or does Christian Bale look like a cover model for a romance novel here? He’s all commanding and angry-looking… maybe he’s even plotting revenge against the evil twin brother who had him transported to Australia (he’s the rightful heir) and married his one true love… and now he’s back in London to claim his title… AND HIS WOMAN!

Excuse me, I think I just drooled on myself. How embarrassing. But dear god, look at those abs… and I feel faint and tingly. I think I need to lie down.

Grade: B+

Meet Eloise Bridgerton. She’s twenty eight years old, number five on the Bridgerton hierarchy of children (after Anthony, Benedict, Colin, and Daphne), and a happily single woman despite being out for eight Seasons. Though she is well past an age where an English woman is considered a spinster (she has turned down six marriage proposals because none of the men have suited her), she does not mind being unmarried because her best friend Penelope is sitting cheerfully on the shelf with her… until her brother Colin sweeps Miss Featherington off of her feet, and Eloise finds herself alone in her spinsterhood (during the course of this story, Francesca is away in Scotland mourning her husband). One day, she hears that a distant country cousin has died and Eloise, ever the letter-writer, pens a note of condolences to the widower who lives on the other side of England. He answers promptly with a letter and a dried, pressed flower, thanking her for her kind words. Eloise is touched and responds quickly, thus initiating a year-long correspondence with a man she has never met, but has begun to think of fondly.

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Grade: A

Alys le Fayre is a bitch. She is a beautiful, golden-haired, manipulative bitch whose idea of fun is to pit against each other the young men who court and woo her. One of these young men is a handsome knight named Lucan Warre. Vicious and popular on the battlefield, Lucan’s only joy in life is Alys and he will do anything in the world for her. Alys, on the other hand, loves Lucan in her own way, but there is nothing more she enjoys than to rile up his jealousy, while flaunting him in front of her other suitors. One of her more ardent suitors, obsessive in his quest to have her, kills Lucan in a tourney. Lucan dies. Unbeknownst to Alys, Lucan’s father was Aengus, king of the Faeries. The King of Faeries punishes her by keeping her imprisoned in the underworld of Faeries for five hundred years. Ha-ha.
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I just finished reading Heather Cullman’s Stronger Than Magic and For All Eternity. Both were awesome reads. I will post their reviews soon.

Up next will be Beyond Seduction and Catching Midnight, both by Emma Holly. Woo-hoo, smut!

Speaking of smut, here’s a random hot Filipino dude: