Month: May 2025

A Touch of Steele by Cathy Maxwell

On By BarbaraIn Barb's Reviews, Part of a Series, Regency Era (1811-1820)Leave a comment

A Touch of Steele (The Gambler's Daughters, #3)

Barbara’s rating: 3.6
Series: The Gambler’s Daughters #3
Publication Date: 5/27/25
Period: Regency – 1816
Number of Pages: 365

This book has one of the best opening lines I’ve read in a very long time. “He’d asked for the oldest whore in the house.” That certainly gets your attention. I did enjoy Beckett (Beck) Steele and Gwendolyn Lanscarr, but they were the only characters I even remotely liked. With a spectacular opening line and a dissatisfying finish, this book was all over the place for me. I loved the gist of the story, but I found it a tad slow and found myself putting it down much more often than I normally do with a book I’m reading. Perhaps that was me, and I was just more distracted. Not sure, but I felt there could have been more exciting things happening.

Beckett Steele is a war hero who ‘helps’ people. Often, that means finding things or people for them. Those tasks are quite lucrative, but he often declines money and asks them to grant him a favor at a future time when he asks. Usually, those favors are asked in furtherance of a personal pursuit – finding his mother. He’s sure she is a light-skirt because he’d lived in a bawdy house until a man came and put him in a boarding school. After being injured in the wars, Beck was determined to find out what happened to his mother. Is she alive? Is the woman in his dreams his mother?

Gwendolyn is one of three Irish sisters who pooled all of their resources to travel to London, participate in the season, and find suitable husbands. The two previous books in the series showed Gwendolyn’s sisters finding their HEAs. Gwendolyn met a man in Ireland, who has consumed all of her thoughts since. He helped her win enough money playing Whist so she and her sisters could implement their plan. All he asked in return was a favor to be granted at some future time.

I enjoyed that Gwendolyn made no secret of her fixation on Beck – and that he was thoroughly convinced he had no feelings for Gwendolyn. Watching the attraction grow, and watching Beck wrestle with those pesky ‘feelings’ he kept having, made the search for Beck’s mother an enjoyable read. I would have liked a bit more excitement and a slightly faster pace, but it was a nice read. One of the things that dampened my enthusiasm was that none (save one) of the villains got any punishment at all. If you look at what they did, could you just walk away and leave them unpunished? I couldn’t. But – that was followed by the HEA, and I did enjoy that.

I voluntarily read an early copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

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Curse of the Ravenscrofft Brides by Nola Saint James

On By TracyIn Check Content Warning/Triggers, Georgian Era (1714-1837), Historical Paranormal/Fantasy, New To Me Author, Part of a Series, Regency Era (1811-1820), Tracy's ReviewsLeave a comment

Curse of the Ravenscrofft Brides: A Regency Romantasy (The Ravenscrofft Chronicles Book 1)Curse of the Ravenscrofft Brides: A Regency Romantasy by Nola Saint James

Tracy’s Rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Series: The Ravenscrofft Chronicles, #1

Release Date: March 26, 2025

Wyatt Sinclair, Viscount Ravenscrofft, has a secret, his family was given a special gift by the Ravenal Roma Clan when the first viscount fell in love and married one of their clan. The gift gave them and their descendants the ability to shape-shift into a Raven. Wyatt loves his shifting ability but his is determined that the gift will end with him, as he believes that the gift comes with a curse – the death of the Ravenscrofft brides. Since the first viscount, each bride has died not long after the birth of an heir, and Wyatt refuses to marry and subject an innocent woman to a death sentence. But his convictions are tested with the discovery of a boy who is clearly related to him and when he meets Sophia, he begins to hope that the curse is not real.

After the death of her mother, Sophia Nightingale Braithwaite becomes increasingly uncomfortable with her step-father, The Earl of Easton Grey. On a rare afternoon alone, she is returning home from a walk in the forest, where she had the incredible experience of seeing what she believed to be a raven turn into a man, she is eager to get home and ponder what she saw. But her life changes in an instant when she is accosted by her step-father and learns that he raped Rebecca, her governess and has fired her after it becomes clear she is pregnant with his child. The earl makes it clear that without Rebecca he will turn his attentions to Sophia. With Rebecca’s help, they subdue the earl and escape the estate – hoping to find shelter in London with Rebecca’s aunt. But things don’t go as planned and they end up in the employ of Wyatt Sinclair, Viscount Ravenscrofft. Sophia is shocked to realize the viscount is the man she saw transform in the woods, but instinctively she trusts him and agrees to act as governess to his young brother. The more time she spends with Wyatt, the more she likes him and begins to fall in love with him. Secrets are shared but evil is still waiting in the wings and may keep our lovers from finding their HEA if they can’t learn to trust their hearts.

This was my first time reading this author and I liked this story, but I am not sure I would call it Romantasy – it is more Historical Romance with a supernatural twist. I liked Sophia and Wyatt, they are both likable characters with good hearts and heartache in their pasts, which made it easy to root for their happily ever after. This story has a lot going on and I felt that it was a bit predictable and at times it meandered a bit and lost the plot. But in the end, most of the story threads were tied up, the villain has been dealt with and our happy couple plans to marry. Overall, this was a good read with wonderful characters, warm love scenes, a truly nasty villain, secrets, heartache, surprising revelations, life-changing decisions and finally the promise of HEA. I would recommend it to HR readers who enjoy a bit of the paranormal in their stories.

*I am voluntarily leaving a review for an eARC that I requested and was provided to me by the publisher/author. All opinions in this review are my own. *