TBR Challenge Review: Sugar Daddy by Lisa Kleypas

Format: Mass Market paperback
Pub Date: 2008 (orig. pubbed as a hardcover in 2007)
Length: 418 pages
FTC: Purchased used
Why it was in the TBR: Wanted to try Kleypas's contemporary debut

I've been meaning to read this book since it came out in hardcover back in 2007. Of course, I rarely buy romances in hardcover, so I waited until I found a used paperback copy at the local thrift store. And then it sat neglected on the shelf for another couple years. Ah well.

I pulled this out thinking it would match this month's contemporary romance theme. Turns out I was wrong. This isn't my idea of a contemporary romance. It's more of a women's fiction/straight fiction novel. The focus isn't on a main couple, something I need to have to qualify a book as a romance.

Review: Love in the Afternoon by Lisa Kleypas

Publisher: St. Martins
Pub Date: July 2010
332 pages
ISBN: 9780312605391
Format: Mass Market Paperback

I am rarely moved by a historical romance anymore. Most are either too light and superficial or too dark and depressing. But Kleypas's Love in the Afternoon was funny, moving, poignant and best of all, memorable.

Beatrix Hathaway is considered a bit of an odd duck. She gathers wounded animals around her that are shunned by others. She eschews the ton gatherings in favor of staying in the country, and while admired by many men, she has yet to meet one she would consider marrying.

When Beatrix Hathaway discovers that her friend, Prudence, is not going to write to one of her suitors (Christopher Phelan, a soldier at war who had written begging for words of encouragement) Beatrix asks that she be allowed to pose as Prudence and write the letters herself. Despite the fact that Christopher had once called her "peculiar" for bringing a hedgehog to a picnic and said she belonged in the stables.

Through their letters, Christopher and Beatrix fall in love. But things become much more complicated when Christoper returns home, eager to find Prudence, only to discover that she was not the person her letters made her appear.