On the one hand, love scenes are integral to the plot. I think it’s easy for romance writers to slip away from the plot when it comes time to write love scenes. But what I took from that lesson was that, as a writer, I need to be very careful to make sure that every scene and every action within the scene keeps the overall plot of the book in mind. I might just have lost the thread do to my own external circumstances. I was dragged away from reading for a couple of days and a little bit sleepy when I dove back into the book. Yes, for about two chapters-two chapters that involved a wedding and sexy times-I lost the plot. I had made it about two-thirds of the way through the book, things were twisting and turning to an exciting degree. So there I was, reading along, thoroughly enjoying myself with Robert and Minnie and the vibrant and delightful secondary characters. And because my book reports here on the blog are meant to be discussions of what I learned from each of the books I’ve been reading as opposed to just a review, here are a few of the issues I stumbled across in The Duchess War. No book is perfect, and ultimately that is what makes them so useful as well as enjoyable. There were a couple of things that made me wince or cluck my tongue a little bit. They are a perfect match, but of course the path to love does not run straight. The heroine, Minnie, is firmly middle class with some decidedly unusual secrets in her past. Sure, the hero, Robert, is a duke, but he is a very unconventional duke. Not only does she write in a non-standard historical time period (the 1860s), she writes characters who are not your standard upper class, wealthy, titled romance novel fare. I love how deep and dimensional Courtney’s characters are. So naturally I had her sign a copy of The Duchess War for me, and I actually paid for it too! It was the first of the 30+ books I got in Atlanta that I rushed to read. Then I met Courtney in Atlanta during RWA nationals and found her to be a really nice, brilliantly intelligent person.

I read The Governess Affaira couple of months ago and absolutely loved it.

The governess affair