Loretta Chase
Author of Lord of Scoundrels
About the Author
Disambiguation Notice:
Loretta Chase's complete name is Loretta Lynda Chekani Chase.
Image credit: From LorettaChase.com
Series
Works by Loretta Chase
A Christmas Present [After Innocence / Falling Stars / Gifts of the Heart / Surrender] (1994) — Contributor — 44 copies, 1 review
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Chekani Chase, Loretta Lynda
- Birthdate
- 1949
- Gender
- female
- Education
- Clark University (BA|English)
- Awards and honors
- RT Career Achievement Award
AAR Annual Reader Poll ([HM] Author Most Glommed, 2006) - Short biography
- Loretta Lynda Chekani was born in 1949, of Albanian ancestry. For her, the trouble started when she learned to write in first grade. Before then, she had been making up her own stories but now she knew how to write them down to share. In her teenage years, she continue to write letters, keep a journal, write poetry and even attempt the Great American Novel (still unfinished). She attended New England public schools, before she went off to college and earned an English degree from Clark University.
After graduation, she worked a variety of jobs at Clark including a part-time teaching post. She was also moonlighting as a video scriptwriter. It was there that she met a video producer who inspired her to write novels and marry him. Under her married name, Loretta Chase, has been publishing historical romance novels since 1987. Her books have won many awards, including the Romance Writers of America RITA. - Nationality
- USA
- Disambiguation notice
- Loretta Chase's complete name is Loretta Lynda Chekani Chase.
- Associated Place (for map)
- USA
Members
Discussions
Regency (?) Romance, Daughter marries Hero, Her mother marries his uncle(?) in Name that Book (August 2015)
Reviews
Don't Tempt Me by Loretta Chase is utterly ridiculous, a delightfully ludicrous piece of froth. Zoe Octavia, childhood friend of Lucien, who is now a cold, sad duke, was kidnapped in Egypt when she was twelve, and sold into a harem. Twelve years later she has overcome enormous danger to escape the harem and has now returned to England. Her parents had never stopped searching for her and are overjoyed, but once Zoe's sisters have become accustomed to Zoe's return, they start to worry that she show more will never be accepted by the ton, and that the whole family will be ostracised. Lucien, who is devoted to Zoe's father, his childhood guardian, takes it upon himself to have Zoe accepted by the ton. One big problem is Zoe's training in the arts of seduction and pleasure, which make it hard for her to say no to a handsome man.
I enjoyed this very silly book. show less
I enjoyed this very silly book. show less
Fieldnotes:
London & Richmond, 1835
1 Beautiful But Stifled Heiress with Too Many Suitors
1 Obnoxious but Brilliant Barrister with Family Ties to a Dukedom
1 Dissolute Bully of a Cousin
1 Trial for the Right to Propose
Unlooked-for Advancement
1 Missing Ragamuffin
1 Street Gang Leader Intent on Murder
Typhus
A Clever Ambush
The Short Version:
Lady Clara Fairfax is the Diamond of the Season, but she is bored with all of her suitors who only look at her, but pay no attention to her mind or her feelings, show more only her face. She seeks out a lawyer's chambers to help her track down a ragamuffin - the brother of a promising young seamstress - who has been lured to a street gang in retaliation for a snub. The lawyer turns out to be Oliver Radford, a childhood friend of her brother's. His steel-trap mind is matched only by his obnoxiousness - but Clara sees beyond that shield (and enjoys sparring with him).
As they endeavour to find Toby through the poverty-stricken slums of London, Radford must also tend to his cousin's responsibilities as Duke, spend time with his ill father in Richmond and evade the murderous attentions of career criminal Jacob Freame. The witty banter between Radford and Clara is excellent fun, though I did wish we would have been able to see a bit more of Clara's societal machinations. An interesting look at some of the seedier sides of Regency living put me in mind of Elizabeth Hoyt's Maiden Lane. show less
London & Richmond, 1835
1 Beautiful But Stifled Heiress with Too Many Suitors
1 Obnoxious but Brilliant Barrister with Family Ties to a Dukedom
1 Dissolute Bully of a Cousin
1 Trial for the Right to Propose
Unlooked-for Advancement
1 Missing Ragamuffin
1 Street Gang Leader Intent on Murder
Typhus
A Clever Ambush
The Short Version:
Lady Clara Fairfax is the Diamond of the Season, but she is bored with all of her suitors who only look at her, but pay no attention to her mind or her feelings, show more only her face. She seeks out a lawyer's chambers to help her track down a ragamuffin - the brother of a promising young seamstress - who has been lured to a street gang in retaliation for a snub. The lawyer turns out to be Oliver Radford, a childhood friend of her brother's. His steel-trap mind is matched only by his obnoxiousness - but Clara sees beyond that shield (and enjoys sparring with him).
As they endeavour to find Toby through the poverty-stricken slums of London, Radford must also tend to his cousin's responsibilities as Duke, spend time with his ill father in Richmond and evade the murderous attentions of career criminal Jacob Freame. The witty banter between Radford and Clara is excellent fun, though I did wish we would have been able to see a bit more of Clara's societal machinations. An interesting look at some of the seedier sides of Regency living put me in mind of Elizabeth Hoyt's Maiden Lane. show less
I adore Loretta Chase, and this series is one of her finest. She is witty, sharp and extremely romantic without being sappy. You don't get to keep the hero angsty, dark and brooding, because the heroine is usually like a hurricane which snatches him and whirls him away until he is too dizzy to brood and have no idea what hit him.
Scandal Wears Satin is no different. Sophy Noirot is a gorgeous and extremely sharp journalist for London's most famous gossip newspaper. Longmore is a bored young show more aristocrat whose lack of purpose poisons all his life and pursuit of pleasures. Despite all that, he is very funny, very handsome and very sceptical of sisters Noirot, whose dressmakers' shop dresses his younger sister Lady Clara.
However when Clara bolts after a disastrous forced engagement to a fortune hunter it's up to Longmore and ever resourceful Sophy to chase her across the country and create an elaborate scheme to extricate poor girl from from the villain's clutches without ruining her reputation.
Pffff. Nothing like bonding over some swindler's plan, and those two are ever suited with each other...
The thing with Loretta is that she goes for the gut. You keep laughing over the characters delightful banter, and then BAM! she does something so casually but deeply romantic that it cuts straight through you. Both Longmore and Sophy understand the ridiculousness of their attraction to each other and keep fighting it, but they still fall head over heels for each other. *sigh* It's just lovely without being silly, and I adored it.
A MUST READ. show less
Scandal Wears Satin is no different. Sophy Noirot is a gorgeous and extremely sharp journalist for London's most famous gossip newspaper. Longmore is a bored young show more aristocrat whose lack of purpose poisons all his life and pursuit of pleasures. Despite all that, he is very funny, very handsome and very sceptical of sisters Noirot, whose dressmakers' shop dresses his younger sister Lady Clara.
However when Clara bolts after a disastrous forced engagement to a fortune hunter it's up to Longmore and ever resourceful Sophy to chase her across the country and create an elaborate scheme to extricate poor girl from from the villain's clutches without ruining her reputation.
Pffff. Nothing like bonding over some swindler's plan, and those two are ever suited with each other...
The thing with Loretta is that she goes for the gut. You keep laughing over the characters delightful banter, and then BAM! she does something so casually but deeply romantic that it cuts straight through you. Both Longmore and Sophy understand the ridiculousness of their attraction to each other and keep fighting it, but they still fall head over heels for each other. *sigh* It's just lovely without being silly, and I adored it.
A MUST READ. show less
3.5 stars
I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
A match made in Bedlam: the Gorgon and the prankster.
Second in the Difficult Dukes series, this starts off about a week after the first in the series, A Duke in Shining Armor, ended. If you read the first, you'll remember Lucius, the Duke of Ashmont as the drunken jilted groom. Lucius did not recommend himself much and as this starts off, he show more continues with his drunken ways, causing a carriage accident that enmeshes our heroine. Lady Cassandra deGriffith has a reputation as a too opinionated woman and considered on the shelf. When a carriage accident caused by none other than the wastrel Duke of Ashmont and her childhood crush, has her groom and friend laid up with broken ribs, she is furious at him.
“I like a lively girl,” Ashmont said.
The first half of this felt a little slow and meandering but it comes together more in the second half as everything comes crashing together. The carriage accident causing Cassandra's friend to be laid up and her maid running away, sets up Lucius offering marriage to her to save her reputation and thus our marriage of convenience trope is born. Cassandra states and thinks the betrothal is fake and just for appearances sake but Lucius wants it to be real as by the second half, he's consciously enamored by Cassandra's backbone and wit and subconsciously in love with her.
She was a force to be reckoned with, and he was ready to reckon.
Cassandra for her part is extremely cautious about Lucius, she knew him in childhood as their circle of family and friends played together and had a childhood crush on him. Her childhood crush gets, well crushed, as they grow-up and Lucius becomes an obnoxious prankster and lush. Cassandra is scared to believe and trust in this “new” Lucius that is trying to act more mature and seems intrigued and attracted to her. Cassandra was mostly raised by her grandparents as her parents had eleven kids and seemed to want to focus on the boys more. This seemed an odd add-in as we never get scenes with Cassandra and her grandparents and there was some dancing around making her father a caring man for her but he didn't raise her? She has the added pressure to not cause drama because of her more feminist views and actions she takes in their favor have damaged her reputation and her father is trying to keep her in line by punishing Cassandra's younger sister, Hyacinth, by restricting what Hyacinth can do during her season. I'm team Cassandra, because how can you not be with this line: Coffee rooms, generally, were men’s domains. Cassandra usually observed such proprieties, because men became hysterical when women trespassed, and that was tedious. The word tedious is killer. So Cassandra is trying to protect her heart and not cross any lines, all while scandalous Lucius is saying he has mended his ways and truly wants her as a wife.
This was the one who’d spun herself dizzy, gazing at the stars. This was the little rebel who wouldn’t be bullied. This was she, all grown up.
Lucius grew up without a mother and his father definitely had a hand in creating the man who became one of the three 'Dis-Graces'. Again, for how much and important Lucius' uncle Frederick was, I was we could have gotten more scenes with the two together. I was not a fan, at all, of Lucius when the first book ended but I have to say, he did a pretty good job of redeeming himself in his own book. He pays attention to Casandra (her reads Wollstonecraft for her!) and begins to fall in love for who she is and he works to show her that. For people that are looking for more sex scenes, you only get one here, for others that want the depth of relationship to come from more tantalizing emotion bred from inner and mental connections, the second half delivers this with some sweet letter writing and other moments.
The way she’d looked at him. He’d thought he’d died and come to life at the same time.
Secondary characters from the first carry over and I find myself still strongly desiring Lucius' uncle Frederick and Julia's story and Lucius' friend Blackwood (another Dis-Grace) and his wife Alice clearly have some marriage angst that begs to be sorted out. I also really enjoyed the sense of time and place that the author managed to create, it helped make this feel like a solid historical instead of window dressed. This started off slow for me but with a hero that worked to bond with the heroine and managed to be dashing in Vauxhall and feel this while helping Cassandra stop a family from being evicted: They had nothing. He wanted to weep. She makes men cry, Morris had said. Maybe they ought to., well, how could you not soften towards him and cheer for him to sweep Cassandra off her feet.
“Because you’re you,” he said softly. show less
I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
A match made in Bedlam: the Gorgon and the prankster.
Second in the Difficult Dukes series, this starts off about a week after the first in the series, A Duke in Shining Armor, ended. If you read the first, you'll remember Lucius, the Duke of Ashmont as the drunken jilted groom. Lucius did not recommend himself much and as this starts off, he show more continues with his drunken ways, causing a carriage accident that enmeshes our heroine. Lady Cassandra deGriffith has a reputation as a too opinionated woman and considered on the shelf. When a carriage accident caused by none other than the wastrel Duke of Ashmont and her childhood crush, has her groom and friend laid up with broken ribs, she is furious at him.
“I like a lively girl,” Ashmont said.
The first half of this felt a little slow and meandering but it comes together more in the second half as everything comes crashing together. The carriage accident causing Cassandra's friend to be laid up and her maid running away, sets up Lucius offering marriage to her to save her reputation and thus our marriage of convenience trope is born. Cassandra states and thinks the betrothal is fake and just for appearances sake but Lucius wants it to be real as by the second half, he's consciously enamored by Cassandra's backbone and wit and subconsciously in love with her.
She was a force to be reckoned with, and he was ready to reckon.
Cassandra for her part is extremely cautious about Lucius, she knew him in childhood as their circle of family and friends played together and had a childhood crush on him. Her childhood crush gets, well crushed, as they grow-up and Lucius becomes an obnoxious prankster and lush. Cassandra is scared to believe and trust in this “new” Lucius that is trying to act more mature and seems intrigued and attracted to her. Cassandra was mostly raised by her grandparents as her parents had eleven kids and seemed to want to focus on the boys more. This seemed an odd add-in as we never get scenes with Cassandra and her grandparents and there was some dancing around making her father a caring man for her but he didn't raise her? She has the added pressure to not cause drama because of her more feminist views and actions she takes in their favor have damaged her reputation and her father is trying to keep her in line by punishing Cassandra's younger sister, Hyacinth, by restricting what Hyacinth can do during her season. I'm team Cassandra, because how can you not be with this line: Coffee rooms, generally, were men’s domains. Cassandra usually observed such proprieties, because men became hysterical when women trespassed, and that was tedious. The word tedious is killer. So Cassandra is trying to protect her heart and not cross any lines, all while scandalous Lucius is saying he has mended his ways and truly wants her as a wife.
This was the one who’d spun herself dizzy, gazing at the stars. This was the little rebel who wouldn’t be bullied. This was she, all grown up.
Lucius grew up without a mother and his father definitely had a hand in creating the man who became one of the three 'Dis-Graces'. Again, for how much and important Lucius' uncle Frederick was, I was we could have gotten more scenes with the two together. I was not a fan, at all, of Lucius when the first book ended but I have to say, he did a pretty good job of redeeming himself in his own book. He pays attention to Casandra (her reads Wollstonecraft for her!) and begins to fall in love for who she is and he works to show her that. For people that are looking for more sex scenes, you only get one here, for others that want the depth of relationship to come from more tantalizing emotion bred from inner and mental connections, the second half delivers this with some sweet letter writing and other moments.
The way she’d looked at him. He’d thought he’d died and come to life at the same time.
Secondary characters from the first carry over and I find myself still strongly desiring Lucius' uncle Frederick and Julia's story and Lucius' friend Blackwood (another Dis-Grace) and his wife Alice clearly have some marriage angst that begs to be sorted out. I also really enjoyed the sense of time and place that the author managed to create, it helped make this feel like a solid historical instead of window dressed. This started off slow for me but with a hero that worked to bond with the heroine and managed to be dashing in Vauxhall and feel this while helping Cassandra stop a family from being evicted: They had nothing. He wanted to weep. She makes men cry, Morris had said. Maybe they ought to., well, how could you not soften towards him and cheer for him to sweep Cassandra off her feet.
“Because you’re you,” he said softly. show less
Lists
Awards
Lord Perfect (Best Cabin/Road Romance, Best Couple, Favorite Funny, [HM] Best Romance, [HM] Best European Historical, [HM] Best Heroine [Tie], [HM] Strongest Heroine [Tie] – 2007)
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 35
- Also by
- 2
- Members
- 11,778
- Popularity
- #1,998
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 511
- ISBNs
- 303
- Languages
- 12
- Favorited
- 55