The Baleful Godmother series

Unmasking Miss Appleby

This is historical romance series with a fantasy twist.  Once upon a time a fairy was helped by a woman.  In exchange, she asked for each of her female descendants to be granted one wish when they are in their early twenties.  This series covers a few of the descendants as they choose their gift and then deal with the consequences in their lives.  I hadn’t read a series before that combined fantasy and Regency romance.

In the first book Charlotte decides to wish for the ability to shapeshift.  She uses this gift to disguise herself as a man to attempt to live an independent life.  This is a good opening for some social commentary about the restrictions on women.  The book is also funny as Charlotte tries to control a male body with its over large hands and obvious responses to sexual attraction.  Her employer (and eventual love interest) thinks he is taking a young, particularly naive man under his wing and teaching what life in London is like.  As their friendship and attraction deepen, both need to comes to terms with their own understanding of what it means to be attracted to a personality no matter the shape of the body that it is in.

Barnaby Ware was introduced in book 1 as the man who broke up a marriage and a lifelong friendship by having an affair.   When the wronged party attempts to reach out to him in forgiveness, he resists because he feels that what he did was unforgivable.  When he visits his former friend he meets Miss Merryweather.  Unbeknownst to him, she is due to receive her fairy gift in a few days.

This is a novella instead of a full length novel.  It is also the most forgettable of these books for me.  I was more interested in the friendship that was trying to be repaired instead of the romance that is supposed to be blossoming.

This is one of my favorites of the series.  Lydia has been living with her gift – the ability to tell lies from truth – for several years.  She has refused all offers of marriage because she knows that the men have only wanted her money and not her.  She gets involved with an injured former soldier who hears about her ability (but not the magical reason).  He wants her to help him find out what happened in the ambush where he was injured and all his companions were killed.

I liked the fact that this book had an older and wiser heroine.  She’s seen it all moving through society with the ability to cut through all the games and polite phrases.  The chance to do something new thrills her.

Icarus is suffering from severe PTSD.  He’s suicidal and has nightmares every night.  It is a good representation of this.  As the wife of a veteran with PTSD, I appreciated the thoughtful portrayal.

I did not like this book.  I wanted to.  This book focuses on two male characters who were important in the last book.  I liked them.  I wanted to find out more about their relationship.  My problem with this one was the way the sex was handled.  I’m not a huge fan of sex in books anyway.  I much prefer slow burn romances and fade to black sex scenes.  While the other books have had sex scenes there was enough romance and character development to balance them.

In this book, there is just sex.  You don’t get the romantic parts that were seen in the other books.  I think that the difference was here because it was switched to a m/m story instead of a male/virginal female story.  I don’t think that is a good reason to leave out the romance and tenderness though.  Relationship development is still important and that didn’t happen here.

Eleanor is searching for her sister, who ran away to marry a soldier.  Eleanor’s fiance ran off because of the scandal her sister caused.  Her father and aunt kept her sister’s letters from her.  Now she has found a several month old letter saying that her sister is in trouble. The only person willing to help her is a relative of the man who jilted her. 

This ends up being a road trip story like book 3.  I don’t think it is quite as strong as that one but is enjoyable nonetheless.

Georgiana can find anything, including the answers to old mysteries if she just asks the right questions.  But is uncovering the truth always for the best?

I liked this book a lot.  It was nice to see the heroine trying to convince the hero that she would stand by him instead of the other other way around like it is common in a lot of historical romances.  There is no meet-cute here.  They have known each other all their lives and their relationship is formed out of their friendship.  It was a nice end to the series.

Overall, I’d highly recommend this series if you like historical romances.  Just skip the third book.