Alicia Rasley

A Regency Holiday is a solid collection of Christmastime novellas. The four have a bit of a rushed feel in parts, understandably due to their shortened size, but the overall effect of each is still a well-written story that leaves you with a warm glow. They all take place around the Christmas season, but they don't smack you in the face with overly saccharine seasonal sweetness, or use Christmas as an eye-rollingly obvious plot device, which is nice. I've made it a point to try and read show more Christmas-themed books this holiday season, and have found that for some reason the historical ones have by far been more satisfying reads than the contemporary--and this anthology is a perfect example. Of the four, the first and the last ("Coventry's Christmas" by Rebecca Hagan Lee and "Home for Christmas" by Alicia Rasley) were my favorites, but the other two (Lynn Kerstan's "Star of Wonder" and Allison Lane's "A Christmas Homecoming") were just as enjoyable. Any of them would benefit from being written into a full-length novel, but readers don't feel cheated at all with the shorter format. I hadn't read anything by any of the four authors before, but my experience with this collection will definitely have me looking for more from all of them in the future. show less

I downloaded this for free as a Kindle book. I got caught up in it immediately, to the point that I was willing to read it on my small iPhone screen. The story begins when a Presbyterian minister is confronted by a young man with a birth certificate showing her as his mother. She proves to him that this is impossible, since her only child was born just a few months later, and then notices he looks exactly like his father.....her husband. She goes back to her small WV hometown to think things show more over, and discovers her mother, the town matriarch, is acting strangely and planning to leave her entire estate to the local college. She summons her 2 living sisters to town to help make some decisions. One is a nun, adopted into the family when she was 6 years old. The other is a bicoastal actress.
The story is told from multiple points of view and the plot is full of twists and turns as we learn the truth of the boy's identity, and look into the family's past. It may well be the best 'free' book I've read! Loved it! show less

I am simply blown away by what an excellent book this is. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys Regencies with a bit of mystery and adventure. The author's knowledge of sailing, navigation, collecting antiquities, and Shakespeare is most impressive. There's no sex (the wedding night could have been hotter), but the love story is compelling.

What I liked: the heroine is smart and sassy but doesn't get into silly scrapes. The hero is dark and has a past but he's not brooding or haunted. Jessica show more and John become allies due to their love of old books and to thwart an attempt to prove that Bacon wrote the Shakespeare plays. There are engaging secondary characters and plot lines. The Prince Regent is a minor character, and I enjoyed seeing him depicted with approval of his efforts to protect England's literary heritage; most Regencies either leave him out or focus on his silly extravagance.

What I didn't like: The uncle changed his mind and approved their marriage awfully quickly and without sufficient explanation.It was never clear to me who would inherit the Parham collection if Jessica did not; perhaps I missed something there. Minor complaints: I don't think that Jessica and John would have called one another by their first names in front of her aunt and uncle. What happened to poor Damien? Was he Shanghaied?

This is a rewritten Kindle version of the print version published in the 1990s. It was free to Amazon Prime customers and is available in the Amazon lending library. show less

Really enjoyed both stories and authors, seamless transition between the storylines. Both have strong male and female leads and character driven stories but my favorite was Maggie and Simon, what a couple!