Var. romance novels by Amanda McCabe
I read these books over a period of several months and typed up my comments roughly as I went along, so I’m sure there’s a lot of repetition and contradictions. While I liked all of McCabe’s Regency-set books that I read to some degree (and liked a few a lot) I much preferred her non-Regency set books, which were very much in the minority of what I read. In general, McCabe’s books took tropes I’m usually either leery of, or outright dislike, and made me like them, and usually got things cleared up quickly. What would usually be a Big Misunderstanding often got wrapped up quickly, when we’d usually get judgment and suspicion from the heroes, we got actual communication and understanding, and pretty much any time I thought “there had better be groveling after this,” the groveling started within a couple of pages. Also, while McCabe leans more towards virgin heroines than heroines with a sexual history, she has more experienced heroines than most authors whose books aren’t primarily risqué sexcapades, and the heroines typically actually enjoyed their previous sexual experiences (you’d be surprised how rare that is in romances novels) and there’s never any guilt or shame or judgement over it. OTOH, McCabe is one of those authors who's convinced that her fictional kids are the cutest and most adorable things ever. Real kids aren't that cute, much less fictional kids. (And I say that as someone who is very much a kid/baby person, and who doesn't hate fiction kids more often than not.
A Notorious Woman: I’m not sure I’ve ever read a romance novel with a plot like this one before. Set in 1525 Venice, the hero is a Spanish sea captain who is asked to investigate the heroine, a perfumer who is connected to several recent deaths. The heroine, meanwhile, is a widow who seems to have had a happy marriage, and who has had several lovers since her husband’s death, and has no apparent traumatic past. Yes, a heroine in a historical romance novel who has enjoyed sex with people other than the hero and isn’t judged or punished for it. The setup had me worried that there would be a lot of him suspecting her of murder and her having to prove herself, but that part is done away with pretty quickly and most of the book is their being adults who communicate and hunt serial killers.
A Sinful Alliance: This is technically a sequel to ANW, though you only really know from the names. The heroine is a French spy and the hero is a Russian spy. She tried to kill him in Venice 2 years ago, and he decided he was in love and kept her knife the way some men kept locks of hair. She just wants her knife back. They meet again in England and, with no particular reason to kill each other, they get the sparring out of the way and team up to fight crime. It played out more conventionally than I was hoping from the setup, but this is another where the leads act like adults and communicate, and where the heroine is sexually experienced and not judged or punished for it. This may also be the only romance novel I’ve read where the heroine believes she can’t have children not only doesn’t seem to feel lessened by it, but also doesn’t have her womb magically cured by sex with the hero.
The Winter Queen: I enjoyed this one as I was reading it, but barely remember it a few weeks later (mostly due to reading a lot of other books since, and reading it just before leaving for WisCon). An Elizabethan, the heroine is sent to London to serve the queen after a romantic misadventure, and promptly meets a handsome foreigner (who, for reasons I cannot recall, believes theirs is a Love That Cannot Be). Ir was fun, but signaled my leaving off with the less conventional of McCabe’s books. The main thing that stood out to me was McCabe’s loving and detailed depiction of the cold and snow of an Elizabethan winter. Reading it in Texas in May was incredible torture!
Lady in Disguise: The first of McCabe’s Trad. Regencies that I read. I found it to be…very By The Books? The heroine wants adventure, dresses as servant, is noticed by hunky Socially Suitable Dude With Angst who bonds with her while she’s at it, but knows you she really is and later proposes, and she has an evil obsessive rejected suitor. It’s not exactly every Regency plot ever, but something about it made me feel like there was a checklist involved. This was, though, the book where I realized that even if 3 of the 4 books I’d read at that point were set in England, they all featured at least one lead who wasn’t from England. (The heroine here is actually English, but she grew up in Russia with her Aunt and Uncle, who is Russian.)
Scandal in Venice: This one starts with the heroine killing her fiance/would-be rapist with a chamberpot, and then running away to Venice to escape muder charges. And to escape her brother-who was having a severe bout of post trauumatic stress-from trying to marry her off to someone else. A few years later, the brother, now with his act together, asks his war buddy to find her and bring her home. Naturally, said buddy decides deceit is the best way to go about this, and manages to get himself hired as the heroine's secretary by her bohemian BFF, who has decided she needs to have a love affair. I braced myself for lots of justification of lies and excuses being made, but instead, misunderstandings were avoided and everyone (including the brother) agrees that the hero is a lout for courting her under false pretenses, and there's lots of groveling from both men. I mean, there could have been more, but it did better than I expected on that front. The main story is enjoyable but not revolutionary or amazing, but I really liked the Venice setting, and I really appreciated McCabe managing to sidestep a lot of the worst parts of the tropes of this type of plot. Also, the bohemian BFF is amazing.
The Spanish Bride: Sequel to Scandal in Venice, about the previous heroine's brother and his supposedly dead Spanish wife. This book has a secret baby plot and "I spent 5 years thinking you were dead after you betrayed us all" and...managed to not annoy me with either! I'm rather in shock because they actually sit down and talk about things like actual adults and when she goes "Well gosh, when did you expect me to tell you about our daughter? When we found out the other was alive and you were accusing me of cheating on you and betraying you and your men to the French?" he goes "I still think you should have told me but I concede this point! Also, my sister has decided we're keeping you, so it's a good thing I do still love you and I'm 95% sure the same is true for you." Like the above, there isn't actually anything amazing to it (and I'm rather irked at the villain reveal) but it's good and manages to avoid the annoying bits of the plot type.
Lady Rogue: Another one in the same series, this one is about the Bohemian friend, Georgina. As tends to happen when the more outrageous characters get their own books, she's more conventional than she was portrayed before, though still different from the Regency heroine norm. Specifically, she's still thrice widowed, and not judged for having married older men for financial stability, or using their money to live the life she wants. The hero here is the "my brother the heir was a gambler and left us in debt and I must fix things" sort. I was prepped for endless "But he wants me for my money!" and "We cannot be because she'll think it's for the money!" and while there's a bit of the latter, it's handled "Oh, you're in debt? I have lots of money! Oh, your house is falling apart? I love fix-me-ups!" and it's another with mature adults actually communicating. Communicating so well, in fact, that there was little Drama, resulting in a last minute complication that felt blown way out of proportion for dramatic effect and it's all "Dude, swallow your pride already." (Which he does, and there is a bit of grovelling.) The last minute Drama wasn't enough to take away the enjoyment, though.
The India Star: The hero of this one is half Indian (Indian mother, British father) and spent most of his adolescence and adult life in India. He and the heroine were childhood friends and when they left England for India, his father entrusted her family with Indian artifacts his wife had brought with them. Later, her brother sold them to pay gambling debts, and a lot of the plot is the leads trying to find them. The stry itself was enjoyable, but I spent a lot of time cringing. There's a lot of emphasis on the Hindu faith viewing women as chattel to be sold off to marriage and Christianity/the English being so much more modern and never ever treating women like that (yeah right), and the characters frequently refer to his daughter as a "doll-like Arabian princess." And I'm sire most of it is McCabe writing about the biases of the time as opposed to her own beliefs, but I cringed a lot while reading.
A Loving Spirit: What is it with Regencies and matchmaking ghosts? I mean, I don't particularly object, I've just noticed it's a trend. In this one, the hero's mother arranges for the heroine, who was raised in Jamaica, to visit their supposedly-haunted castle in hopes of matchmaking. The castle ghosts are also thrilled at the chance of matchmaking. The hero, a scholar obsessed with Greek history, isn't interested in matchmaking and doesn't believe in ghosts. He reconsiders at least one when the heroine pillages his library for gothic novels and tries to make off with his Greek history books at the same time. (Or at least asks after them.) Enjoyable with likable characters and fun ghosts, but not overly memorable. The heroine also brings with her a Jamaican woman who was her companion in Jamaica and she...is not treated as lesser and isn't a servant, but at the same time, I can't help but think McCabe was trying to sweep some of the fraught racial politics under the rug, so to speak.
The Rules of Love: This is one of those books where someone has written a guidebook that everyone is obsessed with. In this case, the heroine, the headmistress of a boarding school, has written a book on etiquette. The hero's sister attends the school, and he''s a gambling buddy of the heroine's brother. It doesn't really deviate from the standard plot for the setup much-though it does have the rare gambling sibling who actually doesn't realize the family's financial status and decides that hey, maybe he should stop throwing money away and behave-but was fluffy and entertaining.
A Tangled Web: This is a trad Regency that reminded me of some of thr 80s ones I've read where there isn't so much a love triangle as there is a roomful of people with tons of potentially-one-sided crushes and marriage schemes from both parents and fortune hunters. Like most more recent Trad. Regencies, it;s more romance centric and less about the comedy of manners, it still maintained that feel, and was fun.
Chase Muses books: This is a trilogy of historical Regencies that's basically all about 3 sisters (named after the Greek muses) who get caught up in plots involving the theft of Greek antiquities. I read them back-to-back and they've pretty much all blended together in my head. They were fun and more adventurous than most of McCabe's other Regency-set books, and there's more awareness than the norm regarding the fact that the antiguities were stolen from either people who originally stole them from Greece, or bought them from people they did, but, like with various English colonies at the time, I'm not entire comfortable with the subject used as a platform for the British upper class to run around in. The books are:
To Catch A Rogue
To Deceive A Duke
To Kiss A Count
Countess of Scandal: This one was written under the name Laurel McKee, which I think is McCabe's real name. This is a "we were young and in love and then things happened and now we are on opposite sides of a political conflict but maybe will be in love again" story (And, you know, I have no weakness at all for those. None whatsoever.) centered around the Irish uprising in 1798. Hero is a British officer, heroine is also British, but sympathizes and assists the rebellion. Unlike most authors, McCabe doesn't spend half the book with the characters trying to deny still caring about each other and gets it out of the way ASAP, and instead has the romantic conflict revolve around dealing with their opposing beliefs and the situation around them. There's a lot more Plot (and sex) than in most of the other McCabe's I read, and it's also a lot more grounded in specific historical events. Actually, I kept getting thrown when she mentioned the Lennox sisters, because I watched the BBC series about them a few months ago. (This is a case of me going "Hey! I recognize this bit!" as opposed to any awkwardness in the narrative itself.)
Lady Midnight: This is a historical romance, but set in the same world as several of the trad. Regencies. inthis one, the heroine is the daughter of a Venetian courtesan who was in training to be a courtesan herself, but decided to fake her death in the shipwreck that killed her mother and becomes a governess The hero is a former "rakehell" who spends all his time in the country brooding in the country after his wife dies in a carriage accident. Both have facial scars! But it's emphasized that they're THIN scars that aren't very visible at first glance, but they're there. Sadly, the courtesan-in-training-angle is mostly used to have her obsessed would-be-lover be obsessive and stalkery (Though it seems to be set up for a future book with him and the hero's sister? That could be amusing if she maintained her "WTF dude seriously, MOVE ON! Also, this Dark and Brooding thing isn't nearly as hot as books make it out to be." but not so much as an actual romance.) but the hero is wonderfully non-judgey of her past, and it's pretty fun.