Elizabeth Mazer

Dangerous is the first in Minerva Spencer’s new Outcasts series of Regency romances, and it has such deliciously juicy backstories for its charming protagonists that it’s impossible to imagine anything topping it. The devilishly delectable hero—Adam de Courtney, Lord Exley—is known as the Murderous Marquess due to the mysterious deaths of both of his former wives, and the heroine has spent nearly two decades in a sultan’s harem! Though English born and bred, Lady Euphemia “Mia” Marlington was abducted by corsairs while sailing through the Mediterranean when she was just 14. She survived 17 years of cutthroat palace intrigue before she was rescued and returned to England, to the shock and embarrassment of her extremely stuffy father, the Duke of Carlisle. The duke is, in fact, so very eager to marry her off and get his scandalous daughter out of his house that he’ll even push her towards the widely-shunned Lord Exley, who has three daughters from his previous marriages but lacks a son and heir.

It’s a match made somewhere very far from heaven, and yet, despite a bumpy beginning, a strong relationship quickly falls into place. Mia’s spent too much time being judged by society to give credence to the rumors about Adam, who is so frustrated by society’s fakery that he relishes his wife’s uninhibited boldness. Not only is Mia stubborn and outspoken, she’s also sensual and passionate, with none of the bashfulness or uncertainty about her body sometimes seen in Regency heroines. While the intimacy between the characters quickly steams up the pages, it is actually remarkably sweet to see how his wife’s open, easy affection softens Adam’s long-frozen heart. The tenderness that develops between them makes it all the more dramatic when the secret Mia has kept—the one that has driven all her decisions, down to her choice to marry Adam—rises up and threatens to tear their marriage apart.

With so much going on, and such high stakes, it’s perhaps inevitable that some elements feel rather unfinished. Characters who seem important in early scenes disappear entirely in the book’s second half. Some plot elements are mentioned once and then never brought up again. But with a story this giddy and exciting, it’s hard to blame the author for getting a little carried away. Spencer certainly succeeds in sweeping the reader up in the same dizzying whirl! Sexy and wildly entertaining, Dangerous is a promising romance debut.

In her latest installment in the Penhallow Dynasty series, The Bride Takes a Groom, Lisa Berne takes all the classic elements of a Regency romance and turns them upside down. The most charming surprise is the hero himself, Hugo Penhallow, who stands out from the legion of Regency leading men before him by being kind, pleasant and affable. Hugo is not a cad or a rake, nor is he the relentlessly proper image of decorum. He’s not cold and bitter from a broken heart, nor sarcastic and snide from a chilly upbringing. Instead, Hugo is a genuinely sunny soul, reared by a delightfully quirky family he adores. While he is marvelously well connected through his influential family name and strikingly handsome (in a gentle jab at the usual tropes, nearly everyone he meets compares him to a Greek god while he politely refrains from rolling his eyes), Hugo is so impoverished after his military service that he must marry well or see his family become destitute. Despite this, Hugo never seems gloomy or desperate. He genuinely believes he can live happily ever after, and hopes to build that happiness with heiress Katherine Brooke.

As the daughter of absurdly wealthy and deeply shallow parents (a clever bit of set dressing has their library filled with handsome leather volumes, with weighty and important titles stamped on the spine, and pages that are entirely blank), Katherine’s sole responsibility is to be a dazzling social success. So of course, her greatest wish is simply to be left alone. When she’s forced to socialize, she plays at taking on the personas of the heroines she admires from the novels she sneaks in under her mother’s nose. After all, being herself has never worked out well.

Katherine and Hugo marry quickly, but a true union takes longer to form. The forthright Hugo struggles to connect with a Katherine, who has always known who she was supposed to be but hasn’t the faintest idea who she truly is. It’s her journey to selfhood that makes Katherine so frustrating and fascinating—especially when she starts to move from being the leading lady of a melodrama to being a heroine in her own life. Does she really want to be a belle dame sans merci, or can she let herself choose to be kind? The answer, once she discovers it, is as sweet as the chocolates she also used to sneak behind her mother’s back and that she comes to share with the husband she eventually allows herself to adore.