Duchess in Love by Eloisa James

Duchess in Love (2002) (Piatkus)
Eloisa James
Grade: B-
Genre: historical romance
Sex scenes: mild
Source: own
Duchess Quartet: (1) Duchess in Love

Romance RBC 2015: A book with an arranged marriage 

Forced into marriage aged twelve to eighteen-year-old Camden, future Duke of Girton, Gina has only ever known married life. However, she’s never known married life with her husband. Camden escaped out a window as soon as the ceremony was over and has been sculpting nude women in Greece for extortionate amounts of money and shocking the Ton ever since. When Gina requests an annulment so she can marry the love of her life, Sebastian, Marquess of Bonnington, Cam is only all too happy to oblige and returns to England for the first time in over a decade to get the ball rolling. What Cam doesn’t expect is to find that the slip of a girl he married has blossomed into a great beauty. Living and socialising in close quarters at a house party, they’re both forced to re-evaluate their decision to separate and find themselves distastefully falling in love with each other!

Once Upon a Tower by Eloisa James

Once Upon a Tower (2013) (Piatkus)
Eloisa James
Grade: A
Genre: historical romance / fairytale re-tellings
Sex scenes: a hot mild
Source: library
Happily Ever After: (1) A Kiss at Midnight, (2) When Beauty Tamed the Beast, (3) The Duke is Mine, (4) The Ugly Duchess, (5) Once Upon a Tower
Romance Reading Challenge 2014: A book based on a fairytale

At her debut ball, Lady Edith Gilchrist became the debutante of the season, despite having a fever so high she had no recollection of any detail – let alone her future husband-to-be. A talent cellist, Edie could be a true star had she been born a male. Nevertheless, her father has indulged her talents, delaying her entry into society so that she can spend hours each day practising. Now, Edie has effectively been sold to the highest bidder and to her dismay, she can’t even remember what her fiancée looks like!

The Ugly Duchess by Eloisa James

The Ugly Duchess (2012) (Piatkus)
Eloisa James
Grade: A
Genre: historical romance / fairytale re-telling
Sex scenes: short of hot
Source: library

Happily Ever After: (1) A Kiss at Midnight, (2) When Beauty Tamed the Beast, (3) The Duke is Mine, (4) The Ugly Duchess 

Lady Theodora Saxby (Daisy to her best friend James) might be one of the richest heiresses in England, but she’s not a beauty. Her guardian, the Duke of Ryburn is a reckless spender who has not only got the Dukedom into debt, but also spent a lot of Theo’s inheritance too. His son and Theo’s best friend, James is horrified when he discovers his father’s extravagance but grudgingly accepts that there is no other choice if they’re to avoid scandal and recoup Theo’s money: James is going to have to marry his best friend.

The Duke is Mine by Eloisa James

The Duke is Mine (2011) (Piatkus)
Eloisa James
Grade: A
Genre: historical romance / fairytale re-telling
Sex scenes: mild
Source: library 
Happily Ever After: (1) A Kiss at Midnight, (2) When Beauty Tamed the Beast, (3) The Duke is Mine, (4) The Ugly Duchess

Miss Olivia Mayfield Lytton was betrothed to Rupert, the Marquess of Montsurrey and future Duke of Canterwick before she was born. Their respective fathers made a pact at university that the Duke’s eldest son would marry Lytton’s eldest daughter and as a result, twins Olivia and Georgiana have been duchified all their life. The Lyttons don’t seem to understand that there aren’t that many spare Dukes hanging around, yet both daughters are trained equally for the task, with The Mirror of Compliments: A Complete Academy for the Attaining unto the Art of Being a Lady as their bible.

When Beauty Tamed the Beast by Eloisa James

When Beauty Tamed the Beast (2011)
Eloisa James
Grade: A-
Genre: historical romance / fairytale-retelling
Sex scenes: a notch hotter than mild
Source: library
Happily Ever After: (1) A Kiss at Midnight, (2) When Beauty Tamed the Beast, (3) The Duke is Mine, (4) The Ugly Duchess

Miss Linnet Berry Thrynne is A Beauty. She takes after her mother (not a good thing) and has the whole Ton at her heels. This has attracted the attention of Prince Augustus and after spotted kissing at a ball, the Ton put this together with her naturally overly-large bosom, and the fact that her dress was particularly voluminous, as if she had something to hide, coming to the scandalous conclusion that she’s pregnant. Her own father doesn’t believe her and overnight, Linnet is no longer the Ton’s pinnacle of innocence.

Once Upon a Time: Pilot

This is my newest favourite show. Heroes and Heartbreakers do an episode-by-episode breakdown as the series runs in America and so while I've refrained from reading them, the show has been sitting on my to-be-watched list for a while. About a month ago, I was scrolling through the channel listings on the television and saw it on. There aren't words for how excited I got. Granted, it was two episodes in the middle of the first season (Red-Handed and Heart of Darkness) and while it's not the easiest show to get to grips with if you don't watch from the start, I had enough of the basic gist of the show to mostly understand everything.

I think it's something that I've said before, but I have a thing about re-tellings of fairytales. Beauty by Robin McKinley features somewhere in my top twenty books and Beauty and the Beast is definitely my favourite fairytale to read. I've recently read books two and three in Eloisa James' Happily Ever After series (reviews to come) and they were brilliant. So far, Ms James has covered Cinderella (A Kiss at Midnight), Beauty and the Beast (When Beauty Tamed the Beast), The Princess and the Pea (The Duke is Mine) and The Ugly Duckling (The Ugly Duchess). The last will be released in October and after reading books two and three, the fourth in the series has become one of my most highly anticipated books of 2012. Fairytales are just one of my things.

Almost a Scandal by Elizabeth Essex

Almost a Scandal (2012)

Elizabeth Essex

Grade: B

Genre: historical romance/ship-road

Sex scenes: mild plus

Source: NetGalley

Sarah Alice ‘Sally’ Kent has spent a lot of her life on ships. She’s nineteen years old and the only daughter of Captain Alexander Kent, legendary Captain of His Majesty’s Royal Navy. Her three older brothers (Matthew, Owen, Dominic) have all followed in the path of their father and are deeply respected in their own right. Until several years ago, Sally and her youngest brother Richard spent much of their childhood travelling the world with their father on his ship. For the past few years, Sally and Richard have been left at their family home in Falmouth. While Sally longs for the sea, Richard has absolutely no desire to follow in the family tradition and has instead resolved to join the clergy. When his father and older brothers secure him a place as a midshipman on the Audacious, he runs away the day that he's scheduled to board the ship. Knowing that Richard's absence could possibly ruin the Kent reputation, Sally knows that there is only one thing that she can do: take Richard’s place.