Forbidden by Nicola Cornick

Forbidden (2012)
Nicola Cornick
Grade: A-
Genre: historical romance
Sex scenes: hot
Source: NetGalley
Scandalous Women of the Ton: (4) Notorious, (6) Forbidden 

The Earl of Templemore has never given up hope that his granddaughter is still alive; when new evidence arises that Lady Marguerite Catherine Rose Saint-Pierre might be living right under their noses, he sends his godson and current heir to discover the truth. Lord Henry Wardeaux is guaranteed to become penniless if this girl is indeed Lady Marguerite (the Templemore estate being only one of a handful in England that can be inherited through the female line) but Henry involves himself in the investigations anyway and finds himself drawn like a moth to a flame.

Header/Downton Abbey

How do you all like it? The header, I mean. I'll get to DA in a moment.

I chose the books and took the picture a few weeks ago, but when I uploaded it to blogger, the picture wouldn't shrink to fit. I was a tad annoyed, but for some reason, it worked today, so I'm very happy with it.

Added to that, my aunt ordered the two series of DA and the Christmas special to be sent to our house. Today and yesterday, we've had ourselves a DA marathon with the seven episodes of the first series (with my aunt's permission, of course) and we're watching the Christmas special right now (my third time). I'd never watched DA when it first started but I watched series two with my mother earnestly.

Series one was brilliant; not as good as series two, in my opinion. Watching it, I can't believe how different the characters are from what I saw in the second series. I thought my sisters and I can be horrible to each other at times, but Mary and Edith are utter bitches to each other when provoked. I absolutely love Mary, but she was so up herself it's untrue. Miss O'Brien and Thomas are similarly a lot nastier than I remember in series two and even just small things like Cora's accent seems so different to what I had got used to. Still loving it, though.

A list of the titles in the header will be put somewhere on this blog.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have the latter half of the Christmas episode to get back to.

Love Life

The show; not mine.

It's a ITV's new show featuring Downton Abbey's Thomas (Rob James-Collier) as Joe who has just returned from travelling to find his ex-girlfriend Lucy (Andrea Lowe) and the love of his life, pregnant. By her Dom (Alexander Armstrong) - her boss. Her married boss. Who is currently on bad terms with his wife (Penny, Sophie Jordan) because she can't get pregnant.

My mum told me about it since we're both Downton Abbey fans, and seeing as how it's the holidays and I'm too lazy to do any work, of course I sat down and watched it. Painfully slowly. The buffering icon was swirling for most of the time and I had to pause it continuously (even through the adverts) to let it catch up. And even after I had turned off the sub-titles, they continued to play: backwards, out-of-sync, too fast, too late - you name it, the sub-titles did it and it was a complete nightmare.

That said, it was a pretty cute show. A little cringy at times and it was a tad strange at first to see Joe as the 'good' guy as compared to the character he plays in DA, but overall, it was sweet. There were some funny lines and scenes as well as some pretty predictable bits (I mean, this is television. OF COURSE Lucy didn't tell Dom that the baby was his. Or even that she was pregnant in the first place. What fun would that be?) but Joe is clearly still in love with Lucy and it's just sweet, is how I can really sum it up. Not in DA's league, but I'll definitely be watching the next episode where it seems there'll be some crying and fighting and baby-kidnapping going on ...

(Available on ITV Player)