So Enchanting by Connie Brockway

The back cover copy of this book is atrocious. Ignore it. When this book came out in February, I saw it, realized it was Connie Brockway writing a historical, made a tiny squeaking sound in the bookstore and brought it home. Then I read the back cover copy and saw talk of magic and Scotland and the hero ruining the heroine’s life six years earlier, and set it aside for if/when I got desperate. And then reports started trickling in that no, it isn’t really like that, but is actually a rather charming romantic comedy, and so I dug it out.

When she was 16, a conartist tricked Francesca into marrying him, and then made her participate in his schemes to make people believe that he was a medium. After false mediums ruined his father, Grayson Sheffield made exposing fake mediums a dedicated hobby, and he exposes Fanny’s husband as a fraud, which results in the husband dying as he flees. Fanny isn’t exactly sorry to see him go (who would be?) but at a loss as to what she’ll do with her life until a neighbor of her family’s asks her to be his younger daughter’s governess in Scotland.

Six years later, Fanny’s employer has long since died, leaving Fanny to raise his daughter, Amelie, with the condition that the village they live in will receive a fortune as long as Amelie, who had been accused of witchcraft as a child, lives there until she turns 21. By the coincidence of Romancelandia, Grayson’s…Uncle? Brother? Cousin? I forgot which…is Amelie’s legal guardian, and when he receives a letter that someone is trying to kill Amelie, he asks Grayson to investigate, with his (the guardian’s) son, Hayden, in tow. Grayson and Fanny recognize each other immediately, of course, and sparks-and barbs-fly.

( cut for length )

Soul Song by Marjorie M. Liu

Warning! This book features a heroine who cons a would-be assassin into thinking she’ll bribe him to let her live, and then strangles him with the strap of her fiddle case. You have been warned!

Moving on!

I forgot how insane Liu’s Dirk & Steele plots tend to be! M’Cal is a merman (!!!) enslaved to a witch who forces him to steal souls for her to eat. While she usually sends him out for any old soul, this time she sends him to bring her a specific soul: Kitala Bell, a musician with the ability to see how people will die, if they’ll die violently. Naturally, M’Cal falls in love with her instead.

I have mixed feelings on this book (which I originally thought would be more of an insane genderswapped version of “The Little Mermaid” than it was). On the one hand, I really like Liu’s leads (though M’Cal is a bit too “Woes! My angst!” for me at times, and not as nice as Liu’s other heroes tend to be, though I did like his trust issues, and how they bounced off Kit’s isolation) and her crazy worldbuilding and mythology. I also really liked the music bits (though I suspect they’d drive me crazy if I actually knew anything about music beyond whether or not I like the way it sounds) and the non-evil, non-overwhelmingly-shiny-and-mystic-and-glorified handling of voodoo (though I don’t know how accurate it is, either…) especially Kit’s conversations with her grandmother’s ghost/past self (not sure which it was).

On the other hand, however, is the whole slavery thing. Liu tends to have a theme of slavery in her works. It normally works for me in the context of her plots and worldbuilding, but it bugged me more here than it has before. That may, however, be because there was one aspect of M’Cal’s enslavement that I thought she was dealing with too lightly, and didn’t directly address until late in the book.

But then the end of the book had a lot of focus on family and sacrifices for family, and I tend to love that stuff! I was also very amused by the other shapeshifters from the series, especially Rik and Koni. Rik because he’s mellowed in a way that makes me think everyone else in the series made him sit down and listen to their tales of angst and woe to give him some perspective. This has resulted in his going from something of an emo punk in Shadow Touch to more of a sweet kid here, and now I want him and Eddie to be adorable together as Liu grooms them to eventually get their own inevitable books. Koni I loved because he was so incredibly cranky, which was very entertaining. I’m sure he’s getting his own book, too.