Mary Jo Putney

This is the first book in a new series, Dangerous Gifts, about Regency-era men and women with paranormal abilities. I was enthralled with the story from the first pages, and I look forward to the rest of the series.

The book opens with Lord and Lady Tremayne discovering two young boys hiding in an alley in London. Their families had rejected Bran and Cade because they exhibited strange abilities. Taken in and raised by the Tremaynes, who also possess similar abilities, Bran and Cade learned show more to control and use their gifts for good. Both now work for the Home Office, doing what they can to protect their country. Bran's gifts lean towards investigation and being able to connect events to form an accurate picture of looming trouble.

Bran is shocked to return home one day and find a lawyer from Cornwall wanting to see him. It appears that the father who rejected him so cruelly years earlier now needs to find the only son he has left. Bran is not interested in Penhaligon's title, lands, or fortune, but his intuition tells him he must go to Cornwall. With another war with France looming, the Cornwall coast is a prime location for smugglers and spies.

Bran's arrival in Cornwall is just as awkward as he expected. While his mother and sister are welcoming and kind, his father is as dismissive and arrogant as Bran remembered. I loved Bran's ability to keep his cool, which riled his father more. Additionally, Bran feels a growing sense of danger as he spends time in the village and meets various people. There is also a sense that something else has drawn him there, but he doesn't yet know what it is.

Meanwhile, we meet a young woman simply called "Girl." She is being held captive by two people who appear to have nefarious intentions. One of her captors, Starling, has a gift for putting a mind block on Girl, keeping her subdued. But Girl has retained enough of a sense of self that she knows she must escape. I loved seeing her determination and how she worked to regain some of her control, eventually taking advantage of an opportunity to escape. My heart pounded as I followed her flight and how it led her straight to Bran.

I loved how Bran immediately recognized that Girl (who he calls Lady) is gifted. His protectiveness, patience, and kindness were balm to her soul as he helped her recover from her ordeal. The sparks between them are immediately noticeable. Bran has his work cut out to remember he's an honorable man, especially as she begins to recover her memories, such as her name, Merryn. There are some terrific scenes of them together as they get to know each other. Bran sends for Cade and his sister, Tamsyn, a healer, to help investigate the sense of danger and help Merryn. Seeing Bran struggle to resist Merryn's wiles while awaiting her complete recovery was fun. I especially enjoyed watching Bran attempt to explain the depth and reality of their connection to Merryn. The ending was great, and the epilogue was a perfect wrap-up for the book.

As the four of them delve deeper into the danger they feel, the twists and turns of discoveries and revelations kept them (and me) guessing about where and how the trouble would occur. Just when I thought I had it figured out, something would happen to complicate the situation. I never expected the particular gift that made Merryn so vital to the bad guys' plans and the danger it put her in. I was glued to the pages as everything came together, and they raced to prevent disaster. The resolution was well done.

The secondary characters were terrific and added extra depth to the story. I like the relationship between Cade and Bran, who have maintained their closeness into adulthood. Their love and respect for each other is evident throughout the book. I enjoyed seeing Cade confront part of his past. The surprise he discovered showed a little-known side of him, and I look forward to the possibility of seeing more of it. I loved their sister, Tamsyn, one of the three biological children of the Tremaynes. She is strong, independent, and gifted, and loves her family. The interactions between her and her brothers were fun. It was also evident that they respected her intelligence and abilities. I suspect that Cade and she will be the subjects of the next books in the series.

A secondary romance was going on between Bran's Penhaligon sister, Glynis, and the estate's lawyer, Matthew Davey. Her father forbids it, but she and Matthew find ways to be together. Matthew was a terrific man who loved her but wouldn't do anything that could hurt her. I liked Matthew's friendship with Bran and his willingness to assist with their investigations. Glynis was initially sweet and quiet, but her genuine personality began to show through as the book progressed. I loved her burgeoning friendship with Merryn and Tamsyn. I loved the twist at the end.

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This is the best kind of historical romance, a story that is more than just sex scenes but where the reader can learn things. This series has been great that way, even if I'm reading them all out of order. This particular book is about the London Regency art world. There's also a murder mystery, but I really enjoyed the sections to do with painting.
Kenneth Wilding is a noble who hid his sketching because his father thought it ungenteel and castigated him for it. He undertakes a mission to show more solve a murder in the home of a famous artist and becomes involved with his daughter Rebecca, also an artist. The romance is solid, but both Kenneth and Rebecca have secrets they must work through. I was fascinated with the art techniques and how they added to the story. Another great book in this series. show less

Shattered Rainbows is the fifth book in Mary Jo Putney’s Fallen Angels series, which centers around a group of four friends who met at school and became each other’s family when their own families failed them. Michael Kenyon is the last of the these friends to get his HEA. The second son of a duke, Michael went into the military and fought bravely in the Napoleonic War. He briefly met Catherine at a field hospital when he was wounded in Spain, where in only a few hours, she captivated show more him with her compassion toward a dying fellow soldier. Three years later, when Michael returns to the continent to once more fight the recently escaped Napoleon, they chance to meet up again, when he shares a billet with Catherine, and her family and friends in Brussels. Catherine’s husband is also a soldier, and she has been a devoted camp follower most of her life and an experienced nurse caring for the wounded. Sharing a house, Michael and Catherine grow close, and each of them begin to develop feelings for the other. However, despite knowing that her husband is unfaithful to her, Catherine is still committed to him, and after a previous disastrous affair with a married woman, Michael has sworn never to repeat that mistake. So they remain only friends. After Catherine saves Michael’s life, though, he basically grants her carte blanche to ask anything of him in the future. One year later, after Catherine’s husband has been murdered, and she’s struggling to make ends meet, she’s approached by the solicitor of the grandfather she’s never met, who’s considering making her his heir. The man wants to meet her husband, though, so she asks Michael to fulfill that role, not letting him in on the fact that her husband is really dead. Together, they travel to Skoal Island, where they must share a bedroom, which wreaks havoc on both of them. But Catherine is reluctant to explain her deception to Michael, believing that she can never be married again. Not to mention, Catherine’s jealous, greedy rival for the inheritance has decided that he wants it all and will stop at nothing to get it.

As I mentioned, Michael is the last of the self-described Fallen Angels, who’ve had each other’s backs most of their lives. His father was physically and emotionally abusive, so he’s viewed his fellow Fallen Angels as his family since they met at school. He had a disastrous affair with his friend, Nicholas’s (Thunder and Roses) first wife, a conniving and manipulative woman, which has made Michael swear never to repeat that mistake again. That’s why, after properly meeting the married Catherine at their shared billet, he’s determined to remain only friends, despite falling in love with her. Then she saves his life in more ways than one after he’s seriously wounded at Waterloo. Once recovered, he knows that he must try to forget her, but he bids farewell with a promise to be there for her if she ever needs anything. A year later, Catherine shows up at his doorstep with a request that he impersonate her husband for the opportunity to possibly inherit a mini-kingdom of her own. Although a bit reluctant, Michael finds he cannot deny her anything and agrees to help. On the island, they’re forced to share a room, and the nearness only makes Michael want Catherine more and more. But then he discovers that she deceived him by not telling him her husband was really dead, and even after she comes clean about her reasons, she strangely tries to push him away, leaving him wondering if he ever knew her at all. But in the end, he finds himself doing whatever it takes to save her from a villainous rival for the inheritance. I absolutely loved Michael for his single-minded devotion to Catherine and for being a real gentleman in every sense of the word. Once he starts falling for her, no other woman in the world exists for him. However, he’s determined to tamp down his emotions and exerts superhuman control over his feelings while she’s still married. Once he learns the truth behind her deception, he’s compassionate and understanding, and a dream lover. Everything about him made him the perfect romance hero for me, so he’ll definitely rank highly among my all-time favorites.

Catherine grew up as a camp follower, along with her mother, as they traveled around to wherever her soldier father was campaigning. Her parents were a shining example of the type of marriage she hoped to have one day. But after they both died tragically in a house fire when she was sixteen, she ended up marrying a man she didn’t love for security. Over ten years later, she and her daughter are still camp followers, now of her husband, but their marriage is more of an arrangement than a genuinely happy union with her aware of her husband’s infidelities. When Catherine meets Michael, they quickly grow close and she discovers that he’s everything she could want in a man. But even if she was free to pursue him, she’s decided, because of past experiences, that she never wants to be married to anyone else again. Therefore, she keeps her feelings for Michael in check, determined to only be friends. However, because of her feelings for him, she fights her own battle to save his life after he’s wounded. A year after they part ways, Catherine’s husband is murdered, and all the money they had went to pay back his gambling debts. She’s willing to work but having trouble finding employment when word comes about her grandfather possibly making her his heir but wanting to meet her husband as well. Desperately needing the money, she asks Michael for his help, but knowing that he might try to propose if she told him the truth, she keeps her husband’s death a secret. Sharing a room with him on her grandfather's island, all the old feelings come rushing back. Catherine would love to give in to them, but all her old fears still dog her. Then the truth comes out and she has no choice. Michael is surprisingly sweet and forgiving, and everything seems to be going well until her unscrupulous cousin twists her arm and leaves her feeling that she has no choice but to break Michael’s heart. Catherine is a genuinely good woman who has lived with a particular fear for over a decade. I’m glad that she was finally able to get past that and trust Michael with her secret. She’s also a devoted mother to her daughter, Amy. She may have engaged in some deception but it was always for a good reason, and she was very brave in dealing with her cousin’s betrayal.

Before ever starting the Fallen Angels series, I recall hearing that Shattered Rainbows was a fan-favorite, and it definitely lived up to the hype for me. Catherine and Michael have a rough road to travel to find their HEA, but I think it only made them a stronger couple in the end. They’re very well-suited for one another. Both have kind, compassionate natures. Both have a moral code that they’ve chosen to live by and don’t deviate from that, which gave me a lot of respect for them. They’re also both very intelligent and brave people, who think their way out of difficult situations and show courage and determination in the face of adversity. I loved them both as individual characters and as a couple. The story takes a little different track than most romances. It begins with Catherine asking Michael to impersonate her husband. Then it quickly backtracks to their meetings during the war. Nearly the first half of the book is about their time in Brussels together and the building of their friendship that led to Catherine making her request. This part was perhaps a tad bit slow. Because of their mutual determination not to turn their relationship into an affair, nothing of a real romantic nature takes place between them at that point. But there is a strong longing on both their parts, and when Michael is wounded and Catherine fights so hard to save him, I really started to feel their emotions for one another. Once we get back to their present situation with her needing a temporary husband, things really started to pick up. There’s romance aplenty as they gradually give in to their feelings and secrets start to come out. Their first love scene was sheer perfection. Then there’s the suspense portion of the plot with the dastardly cousin doing his worst, but Michael and Catherine work as a united front to both stay alive and bring an end to his perfidy. All the elements came together to make this a wonderful story. It’s one of the best romances I’ve read in a while and it’s left me looking forward to the final two books of the series, which are about Michael’s friend, Kenneth, and his brother, Stephen. show less

The Wild Child is the first book in Mary Jo Putney’s Bride Trilogy. Dominic has been mostly estranged from his identical twin brother, Kyle, for years, so he’s shocked when Kyle shows up at his door, asking for help. Kyle is committed to visiting and courting Meriel, his betrothed, but some other matter, which he won’t reveal, has come up, leaving him unable to go. Since Meriel is widely considered to be mad and likely wouldn’t even know he’s there and the courting simply cannot show more wait until his other business is finished, Kyle bribes Dominic to pretend to be him and go engage with Meriel until he can return. Dominic doesn’t entirely feel right about the situation, but Kyle’s offer is one he cannot refuse. He travels to Warfield, the vast estate Meriel inherited from her mother, where he finds a beautiful but mysterious and ethereal young woman who cannot speak and who flits around the gardens barefoot all day. Meriel was traumatized at the tender age of five when her parents were murdered in India and she was kidnapped by the attacking forces of a maharajah. After spending over a year in captivity, she was finally returned to England and placed under the guardianship of her two uncles. She hasn’t spoken a word since, leaving most people believing that she’s mentally deficient. Through patience and persistence, Dominic slowly gains Meriel’s trust and they share many emotional moments of connection. Because she has lived an unconventional life in which she’s closely studied flora and fauna, Meriel has a curiosity about a physical union between a man and a woman. Dominic is someone she wants to be with, but he keeps her at arm’s length until he can no longer resist the pull between them. Soon he realizes he’s done the unthinkable and fallen in love with his brother’s intended. However, when one of her uncles discovers the other's scheme to marry her off, he throws Dominic off the estate and locks Meriel up in an asylum, leaving Dominic racing to save her and find a way to protect her from ever being sent to such a horrid place again.

Although inseparable when they were young, Dominic and Kyle’s estrangement began when they were sent to different schools as boys. They began to grow apart with Dominic harboring some feelings of resentment for being relegated to second son status simply for being born ten minutes later, and for Kyle trying to tell Dominic how to run his life. They’ve barely seen each other for the past decade when Kyle comes to Dominic promising to give him a valuable estate in exchange for his help courting Meriel. As someone who’s always loved the land and wanted an estate of his own to run instead of his small monthly allowance, it’s too good of an offer to pass up. However, from the moment he meets Meriel, he sees something in her that others don’t. He recognizes her genius in the flowers and plants she tends in the garden and her kindness and compassion in the animals who’ve become loyal companions to her. As he patiently pursues her, he comes to realize that despite her lack of speech, she’s far from the madwoman others seem to believe she is. She also has a seductive side that is hard for him to resist, but he tries for the sake of his deal with Kyle. Eventually, though, Dominic realizes he’s fallen madly in love with Meriel, and tells her the truth of his identity, which doesn’t surprise her, as she’d surmised as much. But when the uncle who supports her marrying falls ill and the other one who wants to have her committed hears of the scheme, it places both Meriel and their love in danger.

Dominic is a beta-leaning, cinnamon-roll hero who is nothing but sweet to Meriel. I loved how he saw the best in her and not the worst like most other people. He appreciates her unconventional floral arrangements and connects to her love for animals. He sees all the things about her that everyone else, even the people who support her the most, miss. He was gentle and compassionate with her, just the right person to gain her trust and help her reconnect with the outside world. Dominic may have met Meriel under unusual and less than honest circumstances, but he came clean with her at exactly the right time. He’s also smart enough to realize that things aren’t going to be easy just because they love each other. He knows that as a younger son with no real money or property of his own that he’ll likely be viewed as a fortune hunter who took advantage of Meriel, but he doesn’t let it stop him from protecting her the best he can. Dominic is also very understanding of Meriel’s desire for independence and gives her assurances that he won’t step on her toes if she marries him.

After being traumatized by her childhood experience in India, Meriel hasn’t spoken a word. Her paternal uncle would’ve liked to see her locked up, while her maternal uncle believed that she would do better if she was allowed to live a more normal life. Luckily the latter’s opinion prevailed, so Meriel, who as the only daughter of her parents, is a very wealthy heiress, lives on her mother’s estate with two elderly widowed cousins who treat her kindly and an Indian bodyguard who came with her to England as a child and is her trusted friend. Warfield has become her sanctuary, and she spends her days there tending the gardens and befriending and caring for the animals. Now that her supportive uncle is aging, he wants to make sure Meriel is properly cared for if anything should happen to him, so he invoked a previous marriage contract with Kyle, wanting him to wed her quickly while her other uncle is out of the country. Meriel had met Kyle when he’d previously made a brief visit and hadn’t been impressed with her betrothed. But when a man looking like him returns, she finds herself almost immediately attracted to him. She can read people’s auras and senses something different about him. This man actually sees the real her and understands her like no one else does, which only solidifies their bond. Meriel has seen animals mating and is curious about what it would be like for humans, but she’s never felt a real desire for that kind of connection until she meets Dominic. She sets about trying to seduce him, but he surprisingly clings to his gentlemanly side for much longer than she would have expected. However, even after he tells her his true identity, she’s reluctant to marry him for fear of losing her independence, but she may not have a choice when her uncle tries to commit her.

Meriel is easily one of the most unique and unusual romance heroines I’ve read. Because she’s had no real contact with the outside world and because her cousins mostly leave her be, she harbors an interesting combination of traits. She can play the genteel lady with impeccable manners when she must, but it’s exhausting for her. Conversely she doesn’t feel at all constricted by the dictates of society, so she runs around barefoot all day, wants to remain an independent woman, and has no moral hang-ups about sex. Dominic shakes up her carefully ordered world, in both good ways and bad. He provides a deep human connection like she’s never experienced before and truly understands her. But his presence is, in part, responsible for her being sent to the asylum and having to make difficult choices about whether to risk her independence to marry him for the protection his name can provide. Meriel is just a delightful mixture of sweetness and light combined with strength and resolve that was very endearing.

The third main player in this story is Kyle who has several of his own POV scenes as we follow him on his journey to take care of the matter that is keeping him from courting Meriel and that he won’t reveal to Dominic. It would be easy to dislike him if one’s view was based simply on his opening scene where he asks for Dominic’s help. He has a rather imperious attitude, it appears that he can’t even be bothered to get to know his own bride-to-be, and he seems somewhat set on remaining estranged from his brother even though Dominic agrees to help. However, as Kyle’s part of the story progresses, we see a man who is deeply in love and at loose ends over the impending death of someone very close to him. We get to see him in the throes of grief and just how tender and loving he can be toward another human being. While I think that his decision to marry Meriel despite not loving her was a bad one and not at all fair to her, I was still much more sympathetic toward Kyle by the end of the story than I thought I’d be, which is good since he’s the hero of the next book, The China Bride.

The Mary Jo Putney books I’ve read so far have been a mixture of ones I thought were merely good and others that I loved, and I’m happy to say that The Wild Child fell into the latter category. Meriel captivated me from her opening scenes and continued to impress me the further I read. She’s such an interesting and unique character who grows a great deal throughout the story. Dominic equally enchanted me with his down-to-earth demeanor. Aside from his gentlemanliness when Meriel is trying to seduce him, which I appreciated, he’s never stuffy and isn’t afraid to get dirty in the garden with her. I just love how he treated her like a whole person right from the start, and as a result, she blossomed under his attentions. Dominic and Meriel were absolutely perfect for one another and I love how they fought for a future together free of society’s prejudices. Kyle’s part in the story was equally well done, leaving me very interested in reading his book. In some books she has that were passed down through the women in her family, we’re also told about Meriel’s ancestor who has the same name and that earlier Meriel is the heroine of the book, Uncommon Vows, which is considered by some to be a prequel to this series. As a whole, the characterizations were superb, showcasing all the different facets of the characters and showing them developing well throughout. The story itself was very rare and distinctive to the genre, so that alone kept me engaged and reading. I was even rather morbidly fascinated with the peek inside the horrors of an asylum of the era that the author gives her readers. All the elements simply came together to create a fantastic read that I thoroughly enjoyed. show less