Book 15: Any Old Diamonds by KJ Charles

I had a bad couple of days in terms of migraines this past week, when I didn't feel well enough to do anything while medicated but also desperately needed to keep my brain happy and calm and engaged. This book was exactly what I needed, and I was very grateful to it.

This story and setup feature the kind of characters who in my opinion Charles does best: people who are fundamentally good but have a moral ambiguity to them, whether because of their occupation or general motives of behavior. Given that one of the main characters is a jewel thief and the other is the man who hires him to rob his father and stepfather at a celebration of their marriage anniversary, moral ambiguity may seem too positive a view of them. But her scoundrels manage to be both law-breakers and extremely sympathetic.

In this particular situation, Alec Pyne has hired two jewel thieves to steal the most closely guarded necklace in the country outside of the crown jewels--namely, the one his father the Duke of Ilvar is about to give to his wife at their twentieth anniversary party. There is a slow, drawn out reveal of exactly why Alec would want to do this, with him confessing his family's past to Jerry Crozier, one of the thieves, as Jerry instructs him in how to deceive his family to achieve his goal. Naturally, one of the methods of his teaching is in sexual rewards, which is so compellingly written it makes the entire story work, in my opinion.

I truly did not know how they were going to succeed in the robbery, or what Jerry's grand plan or any of that was until it happened. Part of that is due to a sleight of hand in how the tale is written, and what is omitted to the reader; I didn't have a problem with how it was constructed, but I can see why it might not work as well for everyone. I was expecting a twist of some kind, and I was reasonably satisfied with the one we got. And the ending was just about everything I'm ever looking for at the end of a good heist story.

This isn't a direct sequel to any of her other books, but a couple of characters from a previous trilogy make appearances, which I enjoyed more than I expected to. All in all, I really liked both the main couple and the overall setup of this book a lot.

Grade: A 

Book 14: Band Sinister by KJ Charles

What a delightful romp! This is a slightly different flavor of the regency romance novels Charles is so good at: it's a gothic novel which knows that it's a gothic novel, and so it's almost like a backstage story or something of the like. A big house full of scandalous people and the two vulnerable young people who are trapped there for weeks and discover that perhaps their outside perceptions are wrong. But it's not precisely a "everything that's assumed about the villains is actually wrong" story, more of a "look closely and perhaps it's society itself that's villainous" tale.

Our story begins when Amanda Frisby falls from her horse and badly breaks her leg while riding too close to the estate of the treacherous Philip Rookwood. This would be difficult for her and her brother Guy under the best of circumstances, but for reasons both within and without her control, Amanda's reputation is extremely fragile, and Rookwood Hall is about the worst place for her to be unaccompanied. So Guy goes to the house, learns that she cannot be moved for weeks without potentially endangering herself, and has to sit and watch as she nearly dies from fever. On top of all of this, Rookwood has numerous guests staying at his home, including a notorious lord, all of whom Amanda wrote a thinly veiled novel about anonymously. Things get increasingly complicated, especially Guy's emotions when he discovers that not only is Rockwood much less evil than he had always presumed, he's also captivating and not at all a threat to Amanda's virtue, but his own.

This book was just fun, and the romance between Guy and Rockwood is really satisfying. It feels both classic and fresh: Guy is a tentative virgin who's never even been kissed before, and Rockwood does introduce him to all sorts of things, but the dynamic doesn't feel rote or boring, because it's so specific to these two characters. The inevitable third act conflict and drama is a touch by the numbers, if only because the potential solution is fairly evident, but it's still really lovely to see them get there, and to watch Guy and Amanda and Philip all grow and figure out themselves. It was just a good read from start to finish.

Grade: A 

Book 13: Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley

You know those books that have been on your bookshelf (or, in this case, on my e-reader) for so long that you have no idea how or why they got there in the first place? This is one of those books.

It's a short novel set at the turn of the twentieth century, right in the period of The Music Man, and it has a similar sensibility. It's about a woman who manages a farm in New England with her brother, but once he starts writing and publishing books he has less and less time (or interest) in keeping up his half of the bargain of running a farm. So when a traveling salesman comes by with a horse-pulled bookstore (the titular Parnassus) and tells her he's looking to sell the whole business, she buys it with her savings to prevent her brother from doing the same once he returns. And then she goes off and has some adventures, to the consternation of her brother, and the salesman, while not the scam artist I kept expecting him to be, sticks around for a variety of reasons as well.

It is a charming enough read, one I thought (correctly) was written in that era, rather than being a historical novel; it's just a novel. There wasn't a ton of suspense or intrigue, but enough to keep me happily reading it on my commute, which is about all I can ask of that sort of story. I still don't know why or how I obtained that book in the first place, but I don't regret reading it.

Grade: B