Romantic Fiction, Reality Shaping and The Work

[Voyageur]

345	Stella Riley	Roundheads & Cavaliers	1	The Black Madonna
346	Stella Riley	Roundheads & Cavaliers	2	Garland of Straw
347	Stella Riley	Roundheads & Cavaliers	3	The King's Falcon
348	Stella Riley	Roundheads & Cavaliers	4	Lords of Misrule
349	Stella Riley	The Shadow Earl

After the Rockliffe series, had then jumped into The Shadow Earl, which in the latter part of that story introduced a number of interesting old family names and reconnects with others from Rockliffe. One realizes, there is much to these names that come up, and if read after the Roundheads & Cavaliers as the civil war explodes, it would have connected. However, even this way it has been very interesting following different characters knowing some will emerge, or their generational families would in later books.

As for the Roundheads & Cavaliers, the author Riley did a lot of deep research to tell these stories, stories that had characters in so many different religious and political polarities that became central to the civil war. Horrible hard times, and Stella does not pull any punches in the writing of them.

Lastly, if I had read Stella's books (have not finished) before any of the other Romance novels, none would have been forgotten. With these books being read now, they do indeed set the stage for the years that followed.

 

[lilies]

A mirror to the real psychological evil.

What is wrong with society?

Wicked Little Letters (2023)

Statistically its not the serial killers that are wreaking havoc in society today and in past centuries. Its the wicked little things people do to each other deliberately.

Brings forth the anti-dote in the end, shows us what is possible with external consideration, compassion, understanding. Maybe we could build a real society, if we just let it go? All the lies.

Wonderful new movie came out with the big surprise of having actual hidden qualities - ending in a tears-inducing Romance Book / Work effect. Its like after a powerful therapy session. Release and made me think hard about what went wrong in my life.

You don't know what it is [?], - when you start watching - you don't suspect anything. This masterpiece works its hidden effect on you, just like participating in an unfamiliar Gurdjieff-exercise. You don't know what it is about. Until you experience the end-result.

Wicked Little Letters (2023) slowly starts working, while you watch. Its not a tricky story. Since the movie deliberately harbors now mystery. Spars us the cheap puzzles. It shows you the culprit early on, right there!

But how exactly can people behave like this? How can the minds of a 'virgin society' in 1920 in West Sussex, England react, like they do in the movie? Are people really this gullible?!

Dealing with the root causes behind people's distraught relationships, resulting from mountains of lies to the Self. Tons of internal considering. Social psychology, massive lack of understanding towards the other. Either in the family or in court.

The movie manages to resolve the conflict in the end in a wonderfully liberating fashion, that brings out the recognition of hidden conflicts within the Self. Shows us how much did NOT change since 1920.

In 1920, during the suffragette movement in the United Kingdom, Edith Swan, a spinster and devout Christian in Littlehampton, becomes the target of hate mail - an issue of great distress to her, her controlling father Edward and gentle mother Victoria. Having endured nineteen such letters spilt with profanities, Edward [her father] seeks the assistance of the local constabulary, suspecting their neighbor, the haughty-yet-lone mother and Irish migrant Rose Gooding, as the sender.

Based on a true scandal, it follows an investigation into the anonymous author of numerous crudely insulting letters sent to the residents of seaside town Littlehampton.[6][7][8].

(No, the trailer won't help!)

 

[nicoleblalonde]

I’ve only just started engaging with this project. I read one book off the list so far, Say No To The Duke by Eloisa James. It was a really fun read and the characters were much more in depth than I expected!
I found this book at a local thrift shop for 75 cents, anyways I was wondering if it would be ok to offer to send it to anyone who wants it in the group now that I’m finished with it. I totally understand though if people are uncomfortable sharing their address. I’ll donate it to our Free Little Library if mailing it out is not advised.

 

[Tuatha de Danaan]

Just had a notification from Amazon.co. uk.

£356 Release date: 29 May 2024 Sweet Poison: A Small Town; Enemies To Lovers; Mafia Romance by Georgia Le Carre Hazel There's a new man in town. He rolled in with his little girl a few days ago. A real head turner too: tall, dark, and impossibly dashing… He sure turned my head one hot night not so long ago. . . and oh my, what a night it was? I waited for him to call, but he didn't. I get it. It was just a one night stand. Naturally, he's sent all the unmarried ladies in our... I've got a pile of books on the go at the moment. Not sure wether to purchase another on. Doesn't seem to have the same vibe as the other "Russian" ones.

 

[hlat]

Anne Gracie's latest book was released a few days ago, The Heiress's Daughter, book 3 of The Brides of Bellaire Gardens.

The Heiress's Daughter

A dashing rake must prove he has changed his scandalous ways to win his one true love from the arms of another, in a witty new Regency romance from the national bestselling author of The Rake's Daughter. Heiress Clarissa Studley yearns to be love...

www.overdrive.com

The Heiress's Daughter

A dashing rake must prove he has changed his scandalous ways to win his one true love from the arms of another, in a witty new Regency romance from the bestselling author of The Rake's Daughter. Heiress Clarissa Studley yearns to be loved for more...

www.overdrive.com

 

[Eulenspiegel]

In my pursuit to improve my French reading skills over the past couple of years, I've noticed that the French have been cranking out detective tales/roman policier for ages now. I want to read something else. Are there any contemporary French novels that are of the same genre as Balogh's books and of similar quality? I'm not looking for any translations into the French language, but rather original French works.

 

[Voyageur]

Going back to Stella Riley, and not on the list (seek10's list), would recommend Stella's book called A Splendid Defiance.

In other books, readers may, if read, recall the Maxwell family members of Thorne Ash. They may remember Kate Maxwell when the military tax collector came, a captain, and then those stories moved in different directions. The above title is the Captain's story, and nearly all of it takes place at Banbury Castle among the times of siege warfare.

In the historical notes, Stella makes mention of the inventive characters she used, and yet many people in the story were very real. The events around Banbury seemed to have followed history, and she weaved her story through it.

It is quite a story (osit).

The main character is Captain Justin Ambrose, posted to the castle due to issues he had had with a commanding officer stationed out of Oxford. Justin finds himself in the middle of history and the siege of the castle - not all of the story. The other side of the story (and history) are the puritan's who lived in the town. In this respect, there is a family that is headed by Jonas, married to Rachele, and brother to Abigail and Samuel, with their mother, Alix, living under the same roof.

No spoiler here, because it is immediatly obvious that the story has an extreme pious element, linked through different families and characters. In the story, there are people 'not right in the head' (an understatement), spy's, murder, innocents - even a sense that some things play out like Plato's cave, their reality being so confined, wrapped up in a religious mindset that does not let up.

* a warning for anyone who has gone through this type of religious fever/trauma, especially one by the rod. If so, and it pains me to know that it happens (it still does I'm sure), this story would be hard.

 

[Laura]

Going back to Stella Riley, and not on the list (seek10's list), would recommend Stella's book called A Splendid Defiance.

In other books, readers may, if read, recall the Maxwell family members of Thorne Ash. They may remember Kate Maxwell when the military tax collector came, a captain, and then those stories moved in different directions. The above title is the Captain's story, and nearly all of it takes place at Banbury Castle among the times of siege warfare.

In the historical notes, Stella makes mention of the inventive characters she used, and yet many people in the story were very real. The events around Banbury seemed to have followed history, and she weaved her story through it.

It is quite a story (osit).

The main character is Captain Justin Ambrose, posted to the castle due to issues he had had with a commanding officer stationed out of Oxford. Justin finds himself in the middle of history and the siege of the castle - not all of the story. The other side of the story (and history) are the puritan's who lived in the town. In this respect, there is a family that is headed by Jonas, married to Rachele, and brother to Abigail and Samuel, with their mother, Alix, living under the same roof.

No spoiler here, because it is immediatly obvious that the story has an extreme pious element, linked through different families and characters. In the story, there are people 'not right in the head' (an understatement), spy's, murder, innocents - even a sense that some things play out like Plato's cave, their reality being so confined, wrapped up in a religious mindset that does not let up.

* a warning for anyone who has gone through this type of religious fever/trauma, especially one by the rod. If so, and it pains me to know that it happens (it still does I'm sure), this story would be hard.

View attachment 97568

Yes, highly recommended. Stella really hits some of the historical elements hard.

 

[Gwenllian]

As for the Roundheads & Cavaliers, the author Riley did a lot of deep research to tell these stories, stories that had characters in so many different religious and political polarities that became central to the civil war. Horrible hard times, and Stella does not pull any punches in the writing of them.

After reading Mary Balogh's Longing (which also depicted hard times for mine-workers in Wales) I read Michael Nicholson's Dark Rosaleen: A Famine Novel which took place in Ireland in the mid eighteen hundreds. Talking about horrible hard times. I really had to put down the book at times and read something lighter, because the facts were so gruesome that I couldn't take it anymore. Maybe I was processing something.

At one point the author states that what white people did to the slaves and to the natives in the US was not as bad as compared to what the English did to the Irish. Tell that to the woke brigade!

 

[Voyageur]

I read Michael Nicholson's Dark Rosaleen: A Famine Novel which took place in Ireland in the mid eighteen hundreds. Talking about horrible hard times.

Although not a novel, Niall had mentioned the 'The Famine Plot: England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy and Michael Collins' on a post here. Have not read it, though it looks at the bigger historical picture of what what you are saying of the book mentioned above.

Book outline here.

 

[Gwenllian]

Although not a novel, Niall had mentioned the 'The Famine Plot: England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy and Michael Collins' on a post here. Have not read it, though it looks at the bigger historical picture of what what you are saying of the book mentioned above.

Thank you, Voyageur! I will put that book on my reading list, as I would really like to learn more about this unbelievable tragedy. Niall mentioned Dark Rosaleen somewhere, perhaps on X, but I couldn't find it again.

Interestingly, Mary Balogh mentions Irish mine-workers in Longing, they may have been the ones who left Ireland for England, Scotland and Wales during the famine looking for a job and food? According to Mary they were willing to work for lower wages in the mines which caused problems for the Welsh, although it makes me wonder how on earth these Irish immigrants could have survived on these wages if the Welsh couldn't even make a decent living and had to share a home with multiple generations.

Divide and conquer, eh, and in the end it's always the wealthy English elite who benefits. My two cents.

 

[Alejo]

Hi guys,

I had a few books to finish before jumping back on Romance Novels, I just finished Remember Always by Mary Balogh, it's her latest book, on the ravenswood series.

A few ideas on the spoiler section

Spoiler: Always Remember

This series follows the crisis on Ravenswood in the first novel, where it was presented that the father of the family, the old Earl of Stratton, was a shameless womanizer, this lead to Devlin spilling the beans, revealing the truth and destroying the false illusion of stability they lived in.

But Mary does something rather interesting with that single event, with the father being dead, she manages to transform the perception of his character in really interesting ways, creating a posthumously nuanced character that still influences everyone years after his passing. It's wonderful!

This story follows Ben and Jennifer, Ben is the bastard son of the old Earl, and Jennifer is the sister of the Duke of Wilby (who made an appearance in the second book). They are both defined by an even in their early childhood, she had a disease that had crippled her, and he was a bastard, untitled and missing half his family history as his father never told him anything about his mother.

This story presents the notion that life will provide us all with opportunities to revisit our past, and address our lives, but we have to navigate those opportunities, or chose to take action in that direction for them to be fruitful.

In his case it was a letter from his unknown brother, that offered the rest of his past. For her, it was Ben, who showed up with a get it done attitude, and showed her possibilities that she hadn't considered.

They both were offered the freedom, or rather the realization that they're crystalized beliefs about themselves weren't solid at all, that the sentence they had placed upon themselves for not questioning their current situations, wasn't a sentence at all.

She had to try Ben's ideas to regain mobility, and independence. He had to dare to ask questions and stop hiding from the world, face it and find wholeness.

Through this journey, which is really very uneventful and smooth, they both found the other part of themselves which was right there all along. But, there's another interesting aspect, which I believe has been touched upon elsewhere here, and it's the incredible value of stories, the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.

Ben had no story about his mother, and so, he told himself the story of simply being the result of his father's indiscretions and lack of self control, lack of a sense of duty to his wife, immature drives and so much more. He convinced himself, and lived life, that he was simply a mistake, an unwanted act of weakness and dishonor. But as he discovered all the shades of gray of his conception, he realized that he was the product of love.

His story was completed, he was no longer a mistake, he was the fruit of (and surrounded by) love, of an honorable man, confused an unable to challenge society, and a woman who dared to escape an abusive husband.

Jenn, told herself the story of a cripple who was condemned to never walk, but Ben showed up and she began to write the rest of her story.

Sometimes we get stuck, maybe we like our story because it allows us to be mean, lazy, or feels safe, or we lack information and details. We get stuck in what we think is possible, and so our story, and how it is reflected in our choices and behavior, is all we offer to the world.

But what would happen, if we we realized we're in charge of that story? Perhaps not in the past, like a childhood disease (as it happens to Jennifer) or the passing of your mother when you were 3, as it happened to Ben, but today... from now on? I that's what this book explored in a very rewarding manner.

Thank you for reading!

I will be waiting for her next book which is scheduled to be published on January 2025, Remember When

 

[hlat]

I will be waiting for her next book which is scheduled to be published on January 2025, Remember When

I am looking forward to this. I read somewhere that Always Remember was the last book, and I thought that's a shame because there's plenty of story left among the family.

 

[Alejo]

I am looking forward to this. I read somewhere that Always Remember was the last book, and I thought that's a shame because there's plenty of story left among the family.

Same here,

I didn't remember how much I enjoyed her story telling.

 

[trytofly]

Although it is not on the list because it was released last year, I must mention the fourth volume of the series The Wagers of Sin (Fortune favors the viscount) by Caroline Linden. Following on from the three previous ones relating to the Vega club, I found this last book all the more moving because there are children to protect.
For my part, this book is also worthy of being recommended.