Adriana Kraft

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Adriana's Library

A pair of delightful reads! Books by @TinaDonahue and @JessSavage11 #EroticRomance #BookReview

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Love reading about threesomes? Me too, and most of the stories my husband and I write together under this pen name feature threesomes (and even a few more-somes).

But I’m also an avid reader, and recently I’ve read a pair of threesome stories that you won’t want to miss.

Ever egalitarian, I will let you know ahead of time that one of these stories features two men and one woman, and the other, two women and one man. Since they’re both romances, I’m giving nothing away by saying there’s a happy ending for all – including the reader!

Anything you Want by Tina Donahue

MFM Erotic Romance

REVIEW: Like many writers, I’m basically a shy nerd, and best selling author Tina Donahue confesses to the same in her bio. Her latest release, Anything You Want, features three shy nerds in a sumptuous and luscious story set in a tropical hedonistic resort. Oh, and two of those shy nerds? They’re tall, handsome, and billionaires. A completely yummy why-choose MFM romp – and there’s chocolate.

5 stars

My review on Goodreads

BUY LINK

Universal Buy Link: https://books2read.com/u/mYxJ0w

 

Good in the Zak by Jess Savage

MFF Erotic Romance

REVIEW: Picture this: you’ve had a massive crush on your brother’s best friend as long as you can remember, but he’s been off limits because he’s practically family. Now you’ve just finished college, that friend is a TV star, he just got married, and he hires you to keep an eye on his new wife while he’s on a shoot in Canada and she’s on the Mexican Riviera in a shoot of her own.

And you fall in love with the wife.

A recipe for disaster? Or a recipe for a delicious fast-paced romcom that somehow creates a happy ending for all concerned?

I fell in love with this book and will definitely be back for more from author Jess Savage. The perfect amount of angst, craziness, steam, conflict, deceit, and surprise.

5 stars

My Review on GoodReads

BUY LINK

Free to Read on Amazon KU

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08HXB8R1L

 

My Review: #5Stars for the Lydiard Chronicles, by Elizabeth St. John @ElizStJohn #HistoricalFiction #UKHistory #KU

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When you read historical fiction that’s anchored in real events, do you ever wonder where your own ancestors were at that point in time, what their role was, what they were doing? My husband and I each have UK and European ancestors, and we’ve been able to follow some of their lines back farther than we’d ever hoped. A distant relative traced one my husband’s lines all the way back to England’s Edward III, through Edward’s second son, John of Gaunt, and John’s mistress, Katherine Swynford (later his wife).

So when the two of us delve into books about UK royalty during the War of the Roses, the Tudor era, and beyond, we’re reading about (very) distant relatives, and yes, we wonder where our related ancestors were and how they fit in with those events.

MY REVIEW

When I downloaded The Lady of the Tower, by Elizabeth St. John, I didn’t know what to expect. I was immediately pulled into 17th century England. The opening lines bring us a woman entering the Tower of London, uncertain what will happen to her next. I feared for her and kept reading. You will, too.

It turns out that the Lady who looks to be in peril is Lucy St. John, a descendent of the St. John family who owned the Lydiard estate, now preserved as Lydiard Park, some 85 miles east of London. The author is a present day descendent of that same family.

In her three-book series, aptly named The Lydiard Chronicles, Elizabeth St. John traces four generations of family members who, as relatives of Elizabeth I, were close to that court and continued to be connected to royalty throughout the 17th century during the reigns of James I/VI, Charles I, and later Charles II. During the civil war and the Commonwealth era, family members took opposite sides, with sometimes tragic results.

The works are thoroughly researched, and the major events are historically accurate. The prose is so engaging and the details rich that I was compelled to stay in in the 17th century through all three books in her series. I didn’t want to set them down, and I know I will go back and re-read them.

Highly recommend.

Five Stars.

BUY LINKS

The Lady of the Tower

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1523417889/

The Lydiard Chronicles

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GRDP6QP/

PORTRAITS

Author Elizabeth St. John has graciously sent me the following three photographs of portraits several major characters in the Lydiard series. The portraits were commissioned by their older brother, John St. John, for a family Polyptych which now hangs in St. Mary’s Church, Lydiard.

The Lady St. Johns (Lucy St. John is on the left, Barbara next to her.

The Original Polyptych

John St. John, painted when he had just acquired his title of Baronet in 1611:

Instagram, Homophobia, and My New Favorite Gay Romance Book #LGBTQ #SafePlace #LoveIsLove

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Can a book be simultaneously extremely subtle and dynamically shocking?

Yes. The House in the Cerulean Sea is such a book.

This is a long story, so bear with me.

If you’re not on Instagram, you might not be aware that over the last couple weeks, vast numbers of authors, reviewers and bookstagrammers began posting notice that they are a Safe Place for the LGBTQ+ community. Check out the hashtag #RainbowStack if these are peeps you’d like to follow.

I missed the event that triggered the outpouring of support, so I have no idea who or how many people said what or when. But the confluence of that heartwarming response and a book I’ve been wanting to write about sent me to put these words on the page.

I belong to a monthly Zoom book group with a select few of my friends, both so I make sure to catch up with them every month, and so that I stretch my pleasure reading outside the bounds of what I might choose by myself. I haven’t been disappointed.

I had no idea what I was in for when our group selected this book, recommended by another member. I have a gay son, a grandchild in transition, and many LGBTQ+ friends. I conceptualize myself, my writing, and my life as a “safe place.” Most of the novels and novellas I co-author with my husband under our pen name feature Happily-Ever-Afters for bisexual woman.

This beautiful and magical book challenged me in a way I didn’t anticipate.

My conflicting response manifested almost immediately: I’m not a fan of pudgy bureaucrats who don’t take care of themselves and appear not to have a life. But I immediately felt a kinship with the main character when, in the opening scene, he stood up for the magical child who could levitate and deserved love and safety.

I do love magic. I’m familiar with lore about sprites, phoenixes, trolls, and magical abilities like levitating and shape shifting. I kept reading because, like the main character, I wanted safety for these children, and also because I’d promised to finish any book our group started.

I’m not going to say much more about the plot or outcome of the book. For me, its power is the meta message that took its sweet time settling into my brain: Love is love is love, and it is not mine to judge. I’ve known that message forever, it feels like, about LGBTQ issues. The sweep of this book is far larger. It’s about love and acceptance not only for weirdly magical children, but for nondescript ordinary people of whatever ilk, especially those who are raising their voices for any who are discriminated against.

The world in which I write is the e-pub world, and as a KU subscriber, it’s a world I primarily read in. The E-pubbed and indie-pubbed world is filled with well written and beautifully crafted stories featuring LGBTQ+ characters. I write a monthly column featuring those stories for the Sweet ‘n Sexy Divas blog.

In contrast, The House in the Cerulean Sea is a mainstream NYC publishing house release, brought out by Tor (long a leader in pushing boundaries), which is an imprint of MacMillan publishing. I’m so pleased for that.

So I hereby declare my books, website, blog, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to be a safe place, not just for the LGBTQ+ community, but for pudgy bureaucrats who don’t take care of themselves and deserve a happy ending, whether they are straight, queer, magical, or some other label outside the norm.

About the Author:

TJ KLUNE is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling, Lambda Literary Award-winning author of The House in the Cerulean Sea, The Extraordinaries, and more. Being queer himself, Klune believes it’s important—now more than ever—to have accurate, positive queer representation in stories.

Author Website: https://www.tjklunebooks.com/

Where to find this book:

https://www.tjklunebooks.com/the-house-in-the-cerulean-sea

My Review: The Last Great Saxon Earls, by Mercedes Rochelle @authorrochelle #1066 #KU #MedievalHistory #UKHistory #Review

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The Last Great Saxon Earls, by Mercedes Rochelle

I first “met” Earl Godwine in Helen Hollick’s exquisite fictional account of Queen Emma, The Forever Queen. But the earl and his sons were shadowy figures on the edges of my awareness as I continued to explore more pre-Norman historical fiction. Mercedes Rochelle has knit all the puzzle pieces together marvelously in her three-volume series, The Last Great Saxon Earls.

As the author notes in her opening, it is always the victors who record and pass down the history. The Godwine family, ultimately defeated by William the Conqueror in 1066, have nearly faded into obscurity. Major dates are known – births, deaths, even some marriages – as are their various titles: earldoms, and eventually kingship, for son Harold, briefly in 1066. But the missing details are fertile ground for an author of fiction, and Rochelle fills in the blanks with compelling and engaging motives and actions.

How did Earl Godwine first meet Canute and fall into his favor? Why was there so much conflict between Earl Godwine’s sons Harold and Tostig? Was the Earl truly responsible for the death of Æthling Alfred, Emma’s son by Æthlred the Unready? What was the ultimate fate of the earl’s youngest son, Wulfnoth, a hostage in Normandy for decades?

No one knows the true answer to any of these questions. I do suspect the author’s experience as an actor in Living History has contributed to her ability to place herself – and hence us, as readers – so convincingly in both the inner and outer worlds of these characters from over a millennium ago. It’s a challenge to create a page-turner when the outcome of so many events is already known, but Rochelle’s account has succeeded. I found myself rooting for characters along the way in spite of knowing their ultimate fate, a testament to her ability to evoke empathy for characters long vilified as traitors, at worst, or simply losers, at best.

Five stars, highly recommend.

BUY LINK

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BRQMHYWB
Free to read on Kindle Unlimited
$2.99 each to purchase

 

 

 

The Huguenot Chronicles, by Paul C. R. Monk @pcrmonk: Review and Reflections #Huguenot #HistoricalFiction #KU

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Both my husband and I have French Huguenot ancestors. Each of our mothers carried the original immigrant’s Huguenot surname, though anglicized. Not long after the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes, his mother’s ancestor emigrated from Normandy, France, to the Northern Neck of Virginia. He arrived sometime between 1687 and 1693. It is thought he may have come through England, possibly via Jersey in the Channel Islands. We have no family stories about this trip.

My mother’s ancestor arrived somewhat later. Along with his two brothers, he landed in Philadelphia in 1752, having set sail from Antwerp, Belgium. The story we have is that the boys’ mother had fled France with her family many years earlier and settled in Geneva, Switzerland. After her death, the three sons, by then adults, chose to come to the Colonies.

We have no records of the financial situation of either family at the time they left France or arrived in the Colonies. My mother’s ancestors, like many Huguenots, were well educated and quickly found jobs teaching in the Pennsylvania Dutch region west of Philadelphia. My husband’s ancestor must have come with resources. Though he had previously married in France, he fairly quickly married a Virginia woman. By the time he died some 35 years later, he had become the owner of a vast tobacco plantation in Westmoreland County, which he purchased from from Catherine Culpeper and her husband, Thomas Fairfax, 5th Lord Fairfax. His neighbors included the Washingtons, the Monroes, and the Lees.

So it was with great personal interest that each of us read a fairly recent release, The Huguenot Chronicles, by Paul C.R. Monk. The fictional story is, according to its description, “based on true events.” I do not know if this means it is true of a particular family, or more generally true. I certainly believe that every event reported in the series actually happened, over and over, to countless Protestants of conscience during the years preceding and following the edict’s revocation.

This series is a chilling story about a treacherous and hazardous period of history. Thousands of French Protestants did not survive the harsh turnabout that took place in 1685. Thousands more converted to Roman Catholicism to save their lives and those of their families.

As I read these books, I was constantly imagining the experience and journey of my ancestor. Did that family, like the heroine, have a long trek on foot through France to reach the refuge offered by Switzerland? Did they, like her, travel with a small band of refugees, walking by night, hiding by day? Since I do not know when my ancestor’s mother fled with her three sons or how old they were then, I wonder how much her experience paralleled the travails so vividly brought forth in Monk’s work.

My husband’s ancestor likely travelled a different route; much of Normandy is not far from England. Perhaps he, along with other refugees, was able to cross the channel furtively and proceed with less threat from there. It is not clear from existing records whether his first wife had died in France, or whether he left her behind. Records do show that three children of that union reached adulthood in France. Perhaps, as with some of the families in Monk’s story, his wife was unwilling to make the sacrifice and chose instead to remain in France with her children and convert.

Can the fictional family in Monk’s series possibly have a happy ending? Odds are definitely against them; but so were the odds against safe and successful flight from persecution in France for my ancestor and my husband’s. Were this not true for thousands more, the early colonies and our infant nation would not have benefitted so greatly from the significant contributions of Huguenot immigrants.

In short, I found this trilogy of books to be well-told, gripping, and realistic. I highly recommend it, especially to anyone with Huguenot ancestry. More generally, it offers a vivid picture of prejudice, hatred, and power in a tumultuous period of history that many Americans know little about.

Five Stars.

Buy Link:

https://www.amazon.com/Huguenot-Chronicles-Merchants-historical-fiction-ebook/dp/B09J3RYL5G/

Read for Free on Kindle Unlimited

 

My Review: The Forever Queen, by Helen Hollick @HelenHollick #MedeivalHistory #UKHistory

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This week I’m continuing my reviews of fiction about women across the ages who’ve had an impact on the history of the British Empire. Two weeks ago I reviewed Cathie Dunn’s novel Ascent, focused on the Viking invader Rollo’s hand-fasted wife, Poppa. Poppa is the great grandmother of today’s impactful heroine, Queen Emma.

When I wrote about Poppa, I was writing about a direct – although very distant – ancestor of my husband. Like so many Americans of British descent, his lineage traces back to Edward III, in his case through Edward’s son John of Gaunt and John’s mistress and later wife, Katheryn Swynford.

Queen Emma is not my husband’s ancestor, and the British royal line descends not from her but from her brother. Nonetheless, she and her children had a profound and powerful impact on the course of UK history.

MY REVIEW

The Forever Queen, by Helen Hollick

Emma was but thirteen when her brother – the future Duke of Normandy – accompanied her across the channel from France in 1002 to wed King Æthelred, later known as Æthelred the Unready. Little could she know that as England’s future queen, she held in her hands both England’s rise to success across the middle decades of the century, and its fall to William the Conqueror, her grandnephew, in 1066.

Perhaps more is known about this pre-Norman queen than about any who preceded her, in part because late in her life, she commissioned a book about herself. One may need to take the details of that book with a grain of salt, but its broad strokes mesh with much that is documented elsewhere.

As Æthelred’s queen consort, Emma ruled England with him until his death except for a brief interim in 1013, in which the Dane Sweyn Forkbeard conquered the island and Æthelred fled with his family to Emma’s brother, by then Duke Richard, in Normandy. After Æthelred’s death in 1016, a son of Emma and Æthelred ruled briefly, but was defeated by Sweyn’s son Cnut the Great, who shortly married Emma; hence her title, the forever queen. She ruled with him until his death in 1032, and she was an active participant in the government of her two sons who succeeded him, Harthacnute and Edward the Confessor. Emma died in 1052. Counting her years as advisor to her ruling sons, Emma was central to English politics for nearly half a century, a ruler in fact if not in name.

Author Helen Hollick has taken these known and conjectured facts and delivered a compelling account of Emma, her inner world, her dilemmas, and her choices. In addition, she embeds this narrative in a rich and detailed presentation of Emma’s outer world – the backward state of England’s royal and liturgical structures, the complex medieval culture, the political interplay and some of its traitors, the powerful role of the Catholic church and its bishops, and the incessant Viking invasions.

The Emma who emerges is engaging, often admirable, sometimes devious, and clearly very clever to successfully navigate the swirling power plays that surround her. Is she a likable character? Yes and no. For me, Hollick succeeds in making us understand and empathize with her, so that even when she takes an action we might disapprove of, we know why. I found the presentation of her character and her era to be highly engaging and informative.

Five Stars ~ Highly Recommend.

BUY LINK

The Forever Queen: Sometimes, a desperate kingdom is in need of one great woman.

Helen Hollick

https://amazon.com/dp/B0042JU7QW/