Lisa Kleypas's Dreaming of You

Okay, so, of course, I loved this one. I ADORE a wounded hero—physically or emotionally, either way, I’m sorry, I’m sick!!—and I love a hero who is straight up obsessed with his love interest, so Derek Craven (unsurprisingly) really worked for me. I love when she ~heals~ him and, boy, this book is PEAK she heals him. Before I get into all of that, though, I feel that it needs to be highlighted just how good Lisa Kleypas’s writing is in this book. In the broader literary community, historical romance doesn’t tend to get a lot of love for the quality of its writing (to understate the case LOL), but I would challenge anyone not to admire the writing in this book. The prose never calls attention to itself or takes up too much space but nevertheless I found myself stopping occasionally to admire a particularly deft turn of phrase or a little detail that hints at but does not outright explain deeper dynamics—Kleypas can do so much work with just a few words and that, to me, is the mark of great writing.

There are a few other aspects of Dreaming of You which I see as Lisa Kleypas hallmarks. First, I love the complexity of her characters—in all the Lisa Kleypas books that I have read, she always creates characters who feel real and behave in ways that feel deeply human. While her heroines—like Sara Fielding—are often sweet, smart, and have strong moral compasses, they always avoid the Perfect Angel syndrome that can be hard to shake in historical romances. So often in historicals, the heroine might feel like she is a bad person or flawed, etc., but she comes off to the reader as almost too perfect—it is a particularly pernicious problem in historicals became often the time period constraints on women inhibit their experiences and stigmatize transgressions that, to us, are no longer taboo. Lisa Kleypas avoids this issue with the most grace I have ever seen from a historical author—and without changing the essential nature of her heroines. For instance, in this book, Sara Fielding is this virginal, innocent heroine, but she is also a person with tangible, palpable flaws. For instance, she gets engaged to her milquetoast suitor from back home after meeting Derek---or, alternatively, when she feels rejected by Derek, she decides to alight into the night with his gaming hell rival, Ivo Jenner.

I also love how Kleypas’s books tend not to end with the marriage of the main couple but show their early married life and the conflicts therein. I always love it so much and think it does great things for the book. I wish more authors made this move outside of marriage of convenience narratives.

Anyway, Dreaming of You is really phenomenal for a variety of reasons, but chief among them, I think, is how, in this book, Kleypas has the ratio of conflict and harmony between her main characters down to a science. Very seldom did I feel annoyed with what the characters were doing and I almost never felt like they were being separated unnecessarily. I also thought that neither Sara nor Derek had annoying emotional hang ups—like even though their marriage was sort of brought about by circumstances, Sara doesn’t doubt Derek’s love for her. She knows that he is obsessed with her and she isn’t constantly doubting that fact, which made his attachment to her feel all the more real.

Is Derek Craven my favorite romance hero of all time? While I am not quite ready to bestow this laurel upon him, I am struggling to think of a hero I like MORE. Derek Craven is great because he melds alpha traits and softer characteristics in a pretty appealing medley—also, his reasons for having emotional issues are much more sympathetic than your typical alpha aristocrat with daddy issues. Furthermore, I was impressed by how Kleypas makes his experience and her innocence feel fresh—because he has been forced to be sexually experienced by circumstance (and much of that experience was complicated or even traumatic) his scruples about sullying Sara by association felt much more understandable. Their dynamic felt much more authentic than when the hero has been engaging in a bacchanalia of sensual delights for the past decade and then falls in love with a virginal girl ashamed of her own desires. Because of the lack of affection in Derek's life experiences, they felt on equal footing---it felt like Derek had sexual experience but little love in his life, whereas Sara had a loving family but little sexual experience.

When I listened to the Fated Mates episode about Dreaming of You, they noted that the depiction of Derek’s former mistress, Joyce, engages in the evil-other-woman trope and felt problematic because she is so demonized. I usually hate this trope, too, so I had girded myself for a characterization that I would find irritating. However, I have to say that I didn’t really mind! I think a big reason why I felt this way was because Joyce being evil was a main part of the plot from the beginning. I really don’t like it when the former mistress or lover is evil and it is revealed that she is evil/she becomes a problem in the third act—not only is it predictable in this capacity, but it is often used as a way to highlight the heroine’s goodness and make clear why the hero chooses her, etc. I didn’t mind this depiction of Joyce as much, though, because she is a problem from the beginning of the book; she is literally the reason Sara and Derek meet. Sara saves him from the men that Joyce sent to attack him. Therefore, it felt easier to categorize her as a particular woman and not a type of woman. Also, the fact that she was an aristocratic woman and an in-group member of the ton—a group that has both excluded Derek and given rise to his success—meant she embodied his love/hate relationship with the aristocracy. While I don’t generally love an evil ex-mistress, I don’t think it would have been as satisfying if Derek was being stalked by Ivo Jenner instead. You perhaps could take out the antagonist all together, but the book wouldn’t be as dramatic or angsty, I don’t think. Overall, in this one instance at least, the evil ex-mistress didn't really bother me.

Overall, I LOVED Dreaming of You. It is an amazing gaming hell book and a stellar historical romance. One of my new all-time favorites, for sure!

Recent Indie & Small Press Favorites

To conclude my baron-themed week, I am reviewing two books for my Recent Indie & Small Press Favorites feature that include baron characters. Karla Kratovil’s A Perfect Engagement and Sophie Barnes’s The Roguish Baron were both released in May and I really enjoyed them both!

Karla Kratovil’s A Perfect Engagement

The heroine of this book, Charlotte Grisham, is the daughter of a baron, and her father (and her mother) fit into the evil baron/baroness trope pretty perfectly. As becomes quickly evident, both parents mistreat their daughter and participate in the scheming social climbing often attributed to the baron rank in historical romances. When Charlotte becomes engaged to Miles Weston, a marquess, they are delighted—they didn’t believe Charlotte capable of making such a good match, so they are over the moon when she secures such a high-ranking fiancé. The baron and baroness quickly plan an elaborate weeklong engagement party for the couple at their country estate—except that Miles, burdened with work, cannot make it to the party and sends his identical twin brother, Daniel, to stand in as himself.

This setup is so fun! Miles and Charlotte became engaged after he pushed her out of the way of a speeding carriage and it happened quickly, so they don’t know each other very well. Nevertheless, Charlotte realizes right away that Daniel is not Miles—and quickly finds herself connecting in deeper ways with Daniel than she ever has with Miles. Daniel and Charlotte keep up the ruse to spare her the embarrassment of not having her fiancé attend their engagement party and, by the time Miles shows up, the two are essentially in love. After that, it takes quite a bit of drama and personal bravery for this pair to find their HEA.

There was one other thing that I really appreciated about this book. Daniel is still close with a former lover of his because they share a child together and this relationship is handled beautifully. It was nice to see a hero have an ex who is depicted in such a positive light—I really don’t care for the evil ex-mistress trope in historical romance and the depiction of Phoebe, Daniel’s ex, was a lovely departure from those types of characters.

Overall, I recommend A Perfect Engagement if you love identical twin heroes, mistaken identities, and historicals that are on the lower end of the spice scale (but that still have some spice!).

Sophie Barnes’s The Roguish Baron

Here we have the rare baron hero! Sophie Barnes’s The Roguish Baron was a sweet, short read, and I adored the childhood-friends-to-lovers set-up. Sophia and Jack always had a close connection as children, but, four years before the start of the novel, he left their country village and went to London to put space between the two of them. His father—an Earl—had told him that he could never marry Sophia and, if he did, he would forfeit his inheritance. He didn't feel that he was in love with Sophia at this point, but he was offended by his father's attempt to intervene and threaten him. He tells Sophia that he isn't interested in her and that she should forget him before his departure for the city. (And she is heartbroken because she has fallen in love with him). Once he is in London, he becomes--of course!--a rogue and acquires quite the reputation for his liaisons with married and unmarried women.

Now, Jack has returned to their country village for the first time since this rupture with both his father and Sophia. Upon arrival, he discovers that Sophia has recently become engaged to her foster brother, Edward. Jack immediately takes a dislike to this turn of events and it causes him to realize that he has long been in love with Sophia. They find their way together (including getting caught in a storm and having to take shelter in an empty shepherd’s cottage—love this trope!) and secure their HEA against the odds (which include a surprise inheritance for Sophia).

The Roguish Baron was truly tropetastic and had a lot of elements that I love in historicals. I definitely recommend it, especially if you like baron heroes, childhood-friends-to-lovers, and the best friends’ older brother trope. I also recommend it if you enjoy a shorter read--at 138 Kindle pages, this book was refreshing and light while still having great world building and characters.

Favorite April Historicals

Here are my three favorite historicals released in April! My reviews for Caroline Linden’s All the Duke I Need and Grace Burrowes’s Never a Duke are below—for my review of Janna MacGregor’s Rules for Engaging the Earl, see the post below this one.

Grace Burrowes’s Never a Duke

Never a Duke was my first Grace Burrowes! I have long heard of her work and so I was excited to finally sit down with one of her novels. Overall, I was very intrigued by her style of narration. Her writing is more formal and restrained than usual for a historical romance and I found the effect to be quite compelling. To give an example of what I mean here, in several parts of the book, the heroine reveals a secret to the hero that, in the hands of other writers, would be the source of much internal agony. Instead, here, the reader doesn’t even know about these parts of her past before Rosalind speaks them aloud in the moment of confession. I found the effect refreshing, particularly in a heroine…I liked that Lady Rosalind has her priorities straight and isn’t unduly worried about past indiscretions or circumstances beyond her control.

This book is the last in the Wentworth series (I believe) and while I noted that it must be later in the series as I was reading, it didn’t stop me from understanding or enjoying the novel. I was particularly fond of the hero, Ned Wentworth, who began life as the son of a tailor, briefly became a child convict in Newgate prison after the ruin of his family, and then rose to manage the bank owned by Quinton Wentworth, Duke of Walden. Ned was so sensitive and good-hearted, he just really got me—his past did weigh on him, but not in a way that I found to be unwarranted, and it was lovely to see him let go with Rosalind. Burrowes does a great job showing how Rosalind, with her matter-of-fact perspective on life, takes Ned’s childhood trauma seriously but, at the same time, helps him move past it. And, with Ned, Rosalind finds a man reflexively kind and considerate—he is the opposite of her entitled, villainous father and brothers. Rosalind has been hungering for someone to respect her thoughts and opinions—and Ned fulfills that desire with such steadfast care. It is really touching to see!

Never a Duke also contains a significant mystery plot, which I enjoyed watching unravel. To this point, I found this book to fall more towards the realist side of the historical romance spectrum. I don’t like to talk about historical “accuracy” because I think it is a bit reductive. What might have been historically accurate for one person or group might not have been for another—I think, when it comes to historicals, we should talk less about accuracy and inaccuracy and more about the approach to the historical setting. Is the author depicting the period as historians describe and understand it? Or are they approaching the setting more as a fantasy author would, taking elements of the period to create a distinct, self-sustaining world? Any historical romance is going to employ some of both approaches—it is just inevitable. And I think that most contemporary historicals tend to hew towards the middle of this spectrum—part realist, part fantasy. I enjoy romances all along this spectrum—and I certainly don’t think one approach is better than the other. Grace Burrowes notably falls towards the realist side, however, and I did appreciate how she captures the brutality of this historical period. Early nineteenth-century London was a ruthless environment and Burrowes uses this backdrop to inject a lot of tension and passion into Ned and Rosalind’s love story.

I really liked Never a Duke! I especially recommend it to readers who enjoy historicals that fall on the more realist side of the spectrum and want to see the gritty aspects of early nineteenth-century London.

Caroline Linden’s All the Duke I Need

I am a huge fan of the first book in this series, About a Rogue, so I was excited to read All the Duke I Need and it did not disappoint. I missed the second book in the series, A Scot to the Heart, but I wasn’t lost at all—although I do think it enhanced the experience that I had read book #1. This series is really an epic and you can feel that in All the Duke I Need. Even though the book is still an intimate and intense romance, the stakes feel bigger than the central relationship between Will and Phillipa. I found myself caring about the entire Carlyle family. Due to her heartbreak over the deaths of her children and her strength in the face of adversity, the duchess, the formidable dowager who has been searching for the right heir since book #1, is an inherently sympathetic character. And the duke, her son, who was disabled in an accident thirty years ago before the events of the book, is a rich character as well. When the duke regains some of his old vivacity in Will’s company, he reveals that he is more perceptive than his family gives him credit for. All the Duke I Need is not just a pleasurable read for the central romance, but for the entire cast of characters.

When reading this book, I found myself thinking about why historicals feature so many aristocratic families and why these books have such a draw. I know that some historical fans feel aristocrat fatigue—when I’ve asked on Instagram what readers would like to see more of in the genre, several people have said that they want more working-class and non-aristocratic characters. I share this desire, too, but I was reminded in reading this book why aristocratic families can be so appealing to readers. In this book, the Duchess of Carlyle has a portrait of herself and her children that she keeps in her personal sitting room—it ends up having a big role in solving the mystery at the center of the novel. When I was reading Linden’s description of this portrait, I realized how this image, within the text, memorializes and gives dignity to the family life of the original Carlyle unit. Because they are aristocrats, they get the privilege of such an image—but, nevertheless, the portrait, as a symbol to the reader, elevates the importance of family life, any family life, more generally. To me, this elevation is the appeal of the aristocratic family. For most people, their family members (biological or otherwise) are inherently important to them and so the exalted station of aristocratic families in books can serve as a metaphor for this emotional prominence. The heightened stakes attached to the fates of aristocratic families (many people rely on a dukedom, etc.) can serve as a metaphorical stand-in for the emotional importance of family writ large. This metaphor is particularly applicable, I think, in novels such as All the Duke I Need that hinge on families losing and then finding one another again. Finding the heir is, of course, also finding the long-lost son, grandson, etc., and opens onto the more universal experiences of trying to recover and restore family relationships after tragedy, separation, splintering of all types.

Okay, but enough theorizing, what about the romance?!?! I really enjoyed the connection between Philippa and Will. Linden gives us a bit of a slow burn here, but I didn’t even mind. These two truly get a chance to get to know one another and so their falling in love feels very authentic. You could see how their prior experiences really made them a match—for instance, they both come from multicultural families. Will’s father is English and his mother is French; he spoke French at home even though he grew up in the U.S. Conversely, Philippa’s mother was Indian and her father was English—her mother died when she was young and her father remarried Lady Jessica, the Duchess of Carlyle’s only daughter, when Philippa was about three years old. Due to her father’s marriage, Philippa has spent her entire life within the aristocratic English environs of the Carlyle estate, but she still has strong ties to her mother’s family in India and Indian culture. Therefore, both Will and Philippa are used to living across cultures and so, from the beginning, you can see why they will have an understanding of each other’s experiences and are able to foster a connection. I also really appreciated how forthright Philippa becomes about her love for Will. Sometimes, heroines are too prone to feel rejected for my taste, and I liked that Philippa doesn’t let Will get in the way of their mutual happiness.

Overall, I recommend All the Duke I Need, particularly if you love historicals with rich world-building and a substantive sense of character and setting!