Teresa DesJardien

The Haunted Bride - Teresa DesJardien (148 pages)
On the occasion of her cousin's wedding, Etta Carson quite literally meets the man of her dreams. He introduces himself as Lord Healey, and demands to know why she possesses a dozen sketches of him, when they've never before met and he's never been to London. She rather reluctantly admits its because this is a man she has seen regularly in her dreams. His response is equally curious: does she believe in things beyond the reach of the physical show more senses?

Etta is reluctant to admit it to him, but yes, it's true. Sketching the images she sees in her dreams helps her make sense of them. She has dreamed of certain events which later actually occurred, and she is both uneasy about and confident in this ability to make sense of her dreams by sketching them out. She had no idea who this man was, but now that she sees him in the flesh, she realizes that it is, indeed, him.

Lord Healey (Daniel), is a friend of the husband of her cousin, who has arrived for the wedding and intends to return to his home in Bath the same day. But after meeting Etta, he decides to stick around, and for the rest of the week his earnestly courts her. He proposes seven days after they originally meet, and Etta accepts. Within the month, they are married, and they return to his property in Bath.

Etta immediately has an uneasy feeling about the house. Negativity seems to abound, and only 4 servants remain. The rest of them have been scared off by ghostly encounters. Daniel admits to Etta that he didn't tell her all of his background, wanting her to have a 'fresh' eye on the house and her own impression of it first. But with Daniel's sullen brother Sean lurking about, he has to tell her everything. Daniel's first wife, Aileen, died in the house after a horrific asthma attack, locked in her dressing room with no one knowing that she was suffering. Daniel himself was downstairs, asleep in his study, and was the first one to find her. Ever since her death, the servants reported seeing Aileen's ghost quite frequently, and some of them were so scared that they left, even without receiving their full wages.

Sean was injured during his time in the military and now basically lurks about Daniel's house, drinking himself to death. He seems to take keen and cruel interest in telling Etta the wild stories about Aileen's last days, and how Daniel reacted in the wake of her death. It becomes obvious that Sean was in love with Aileen, too; with it not being entirely clear that Aileen's death was indeed a natural one, Etta begins to wonder if she was murdered - and if so, by whom.

This story has a nice little gothic/Rebecca-esque feel (and, indeed, the housekeeper is a crazy woman, though her motives are more twisted that Mrs Danvers'). I enjoyed the flow and pace of this, and found it the most believable of the bunch, even with Etta's perhaps supernatural intuitions. She is a character who is strong and sure of herself, and even though the stories of her new home upset her, she isn't running around like a chicken with its head cut off, spooking at every shadow. At 148 pages, it is the longest novella of the collection and definitely has the most complete character and story arc.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Love's Magic - Cindy Holbrook (125 pages)
The first chapter sets the plot up quite nicely. In the village of Chancellorville, there exist both good and evil witches. The good witches are Bathsheba and Dorinda Goodfellow, a pair of elderly spinster sisters who are bumbling but well-meaning. They care for their (non-sorceress) niece, Sarabeth, whom they love to post is the most beautiful girl in the village. The evil witch is Dame Maudar Tureen, a woman obsessed with black magic and power, and the continual gain of both, at whatever cost. She is quite proud of her beautiful, raven-haired daughter, Gertrude, who is indeed beautiful but is also a complete moron.

The long-absent Duke of Tor, Damian, is returning to Chancellorville because his castle has been partially burned, and there is a suspicion of arson. Damian's family has long had the ability of wizardry, and Dame Tureen is determined to marry her daughter to Damian and gain control of his powers. When the Goodfellow sisters proudly boast that if anyone can catch the Duke's eye, it will be their niece Sarabeth, Maudar is furious. She will not let anything stand in the way of her kingmaking, and casts a spell to turn Sarabeth invisible, right before Damian's eyes.

Damian and Sarabeth meet briefly, so briefly that he thinks its a dream. He's wary of returning to the superstitious village, and has no belief in the stories about the men of his family being powerful wizards. He basically wants to restore his castle and get the hell out of town. He's relieved to meet Dame Tureen and Gertrude, as they claim to be among the few who also don't believe in the superstitious nonsense of the villagers. Plus, Gertrude is beautiful.

Sarabeth returns to her aunts, who try their hardest to make her visible again, but have several hilarious results instead: turning her into their cat, then a parrot, and finally a mouse. The Goodfellow family learns that Maudar has cast a spell on Damian to make him marry Gertrude because she believes that the consummation of their marriage will bring him into his latent abilities and that she can take control of him. So now its a race against time to return Sarabeth to her original form and stop Damian from making a terrible mistake that he'll never be able to undo.

This reads like a straight-up fairytale, a mixture of the Disney versions of Sleeping Beauty (the aunts are the good fairies) and Cinderella. It is also very...juvenile? Like, I'd expect to find this in a YA collection. It is very straightforward, with magic dictating the plot. There is no depth of emotion in any of the characters, beyond some wallowing in Maudar's evil villainess status. The happily ever after is literally the end of the story - I can't imagine any of these characters actually having sex, LOL.

⭐⭐

The Vampire Rogue - Valerie King (87 pages)
Emma Keverne, the newest heiress of Castle Breage, has decided to throw a huge Halloween masquerade at the spooky Cornwall estate. She invites many people, including Lord Chace, whom she has been in love with for the last 3 years. They met at Emma's coming out party and have been dancing around each other ever since. They start to do more than dance at this ball, however, and both notice a rather sinister figure hanging around, whom no one really knows. Only - Emma recognizes him. She drags Chace down to the picture gallery and points out a long ago ancestor, Count Lansallos. Chace agrees that he does indeed look like this unknown man, albeit in clothes a few centuries out of date. Emma tells him that while she was reading the papers associated with the castle, she came across some very disturbing stories and warnings, including the disappearance of her cousins the St Austells. One day they were there, the next they were missing, and no one had seen hide nor hair of them since. Edward St Austell left a warning to never fill in the moat around the castle, but without an explicit explanation as to why, Emma ignores the directive and fills it in for the party. Now Count Lansallos has shown up again, and Emma fears that he means to turn her into an immortal vampire.

She believes this because she has seen the youngest St Austell in the castle's secret passages, and introduces Chace to him when he pops out again. He's the one who tells them that Lansallos is a vampire, that he turned the St Austells into vampires nearly a century ago, and that filling the moat was his invitation back. He has his sights set on the beautiful Emma, and the only way they can protect themselves is with silver crosses and daylight. Emma and Chace spend the next few evenings battling with Lansallos and trying to help the St Austells, who were also drawn back because of the filled moat and who want to assist in defeating the man who ruined their lives all that time ago.

You basically have to roll with this premise, because things happen so fast you don't really have time to question them. There is so much historical handwaving going on that I'm a bit wary of trying this author's full-length work (I have several of her novels in my collection). The action is fast-paced and interesting enough to see through to the end, and there is a surprisingly gruesome climax (basically, vampire meets sunlight is a really awful way to go, like burning alive). Backstory for Emma and Chace is sprinkled in, but it doesn't really feel like much except setup for their own silly misunderstandings. There is an aunt to provide comic relief, but Emma and Chace drug her so she sleeps through most of the fighting. This story really needed some more page length to really flesh everything out, characters and plot alike.

⭐⭐ 1/2 show less

Olivia is finally coming out of mourning and decides she wants to experience everything. Her first outing is a Masquerade where she meets Ian Drake, a spy thinking she is who is to contact him. He soon realizes his error. When they meet later she knows who he is but he has no idea who she is. He figures she is just a snooty aristocrat. When he later learns who she is he is unsure what to do as he still needs to help a French spy who helped the English escape from England.

I liked these show more characters. Olivia is a total innocent who gets herself involved in things she has no idea exist. Ian does his best to protect her. Because of Olivia's innocence many people are drawn to her. That is fortunate as it helps her at the end. The secondary characters were interesting and eclectic. The story was fun. This is a good read for a lazy afternoon. show less

First story took me forever to get into... halfway in was intrigued.
Second story much more enjoyable and loved it.
Last story was ok with vampire and rogue.
All in all I did like the stories.

Just not my cuppa. I swear the book is 80% minutiae of the character’s day-to-day. It’s squeaky clean as hell, with just one brief kiss. And two sets of love triangles. I appreciated the snippets of angst here and there, but this book is just not for me.