Spooky season may be over y’all, but it’s gonna take more than a new month to get yr girls out of Scotland. This week, Morgan and Isabeau embark on a historical romp through the Highlands in The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie by Jennifer Ashley. Our titular character, Lord Ian, is shrouded in rumors and hearsay when he crosses paths with our heroine Beth, on the arm of her then fiance. As her fiance’s appetites wend beyond the scope of Beth, our heroine is thrown further into the orbit of the mysterious Lord. But as suspicions gather around Lord Ian’s potential role in a double homicide, our lovers are forced to question the very fiber of their beings. What helps ensure the successful portrayal of neuro non-typicality? How do we account for perceived limitations of accurate historical representation? Could this election finally be over? All this and more on your favorite pod sluicing app.
While the Ball rages on, yr girls have to refuel on angst and mood before another heavy bout of haunting. This week, Morgan and Isabeau journey to the edge of the Cornish cliffs in Mistress of Mellyn by Victoria Holt, a nom de plume of Eleanor Hibbert. Our heroine Martha Leigh is past her seasons. In lieu of a husband, she becomes a governess to the daughter of gaunt widower and lesser of two heroes, Connan TreMellyn. But as Martha gets closer to her aloof employer, questions surrounding his wife’s death disrupt their nascent arousal. In a mansion of lavish decor and furnishings, something lies rotten. What remains in the absence of a loved one? How should we remember roads not taken? What’s it like to trust and be trusted by a horse? Saddle up and stay shook y’all.
It’s officially spooky season y’all, and we’re jumping in with both feet. This week, Morgan and Isabeau explore the categorical and the supernatural in Angie and the Ghostbuster, by Theresa Gladden. When paranormal investigator Dr. Gabriel Richards is drawn to a mysterious home, what he finds there raises more than just his neck hair. There to greet him is the blonde and dream-eyed Angie, Gabriel’s high school crush, who has been living alongside the very same ghostly presence he’s come to eradicate. But when passion overtakes profession, the otherworldly isn’t the only thing getting a little exercise. What’s a category romance? Are ghosts just unresolved trauma? Does anyone ever get their affairs in order? We’ll be putting a little ectoplasm in your feed all this month, so stay tuned and live deliciously.
Everyone experiences the agonies and ecstasies of expanding a circle of friends, but what about the trials and tribulations of expanding a circle of lovers? This week, Morgan and Isabeau mix with the hoipolloi of Edwardian elite in Jude Lucens’ polyamorous historical Behind These Doors, Radical Proposals Book 1. When a gossip columnist stumbles on the harmonious throuple of a Lord and Lady, and an Earl’s second son, a delicate balance of lust and heart strings is shifted. But buttoned up cultural norms be damned as passion mounts, and all involved grapple with the implications of propriety and class. Is love a scarce commodity? How do we navigate an array of uncontrollable feelings? May we share in this wash basin? Live free and love wide y’all.
It’s no secret that Whoa!mance is a product of the university — a meeting of minds that began with the pursuit of knowledge and ended in a holocaust of emotions. But we digress. This week, Morgan and Isabeau audit a few classes with Katrina Jackson’s ivory tower romp, Office Hours. High-achieving and beleaguered Assistant Professor of Sociology Dr. Deja Evans is in a rut. With her 3-year track to tenure review looming, her separation between work and life has blurred into non-existence. But her desire for the tenured history professor and dressed-to-the-nines hunk of all things past, Dr. Alejandro Mendoza, is keeping her pilot light aflame. What’s a proper work/life balance? Can a romance novel test the depth of our allyship? Why does higher education make us feel so low? This one’s for all y’all left jilted by the educational-industrial-complex.