Acquired Book By: I am a regular tour hostess for blog tours via Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours whereupon I am thankful to have been able to host such a diverse breadth of stories, authors and wonderful guest features since I became a hostess! HFVBTs is one of the very first touring companies I started working with as a 1st Year Book Blogger – uniting my love and passion with Historical Fiction and the lovely sub-genres inside which I love devouring. Whether I am reading selections from Indie Authors & publishers to Major Trade and either from mainstream or INSPY markets – I am finding myself happily residing in the Historical past each year I am a blogger.
What I have been thankful for all these years since 2013 is the beautiful blessing of discovering new areas of Historical History to explore through realistically compelling Historical narratives which put me on the front-lines of where History and human interest stories interconnect. It has also allowed me to dive deeper into the historic past and root out new decades, centuries and millenniums to explore. For this and the stories themselves which are part of the memories I cherish most as a book blogger I am grateful to be a part of the #HFVBTBlogTours blogger team.
I received a complimentary copy of “The Earl’s Lady Geologist” direct from the author Alissa Baxter in exchange for an honest review. I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.
On why I love reading Historical Romances like this one:
I love the entire allure of a Regency – from the era to the society therein, whenever I am tucked inside a Regency Rom there is a measure of joy and comfort in the readings because it was the Regency & Victorian eras of Romances which first connected me into the genre of Romance itself. I didn’t enter through the portal of Heyer though – as I never felt I could connect to her stories, though mind you, at ages eight and nine I wasn’t reading Heyer or Austen; I left both of those lovely ladies for my thirties – however, when I was younger I was reading anthological Regencies & Victorian Christmas Romances – getting my first strong impressions of the genre and loving what I was discovering therein.
Despite my joy of reading – of late, with all the changes in my personal life – my fatigue and exhaustion has been a bit of a bear to work round and I admit, I haven’t been reading for long spurts of time in recent months. On top of which, since February and now March have taken a stronghold into my seasonal Spring allergies – its been quite miserable juggling those with the fatigue as well. I pray others are not dealing with the allergens this year – their beastly brutal!
Thereby, I cannot always finish the stories I am reading for a blog tour and have started to recognise this as a blogger and as a reader to where I have been turning in a shorter preview of my fuller thoughts rather than feel guilty about what I couldn’t finish. Thereby this review for the tour for Ms Baxter is also featuring one of my #25PagePreview reviews in lieu of an extended review. I wanted to highlight what I was enjoying as I first dove into the novel and why I appreciated my introduction to Ms Baxter’s writings of the Regency as she is definitely an author I want to keep an eye on and continue reading in the future.
A small life and blog news update:
As you might have seen, a lot of the posts I’ve been planning to share haven’t quite made it onto Jorie Loves A Story yet – the reason being!? I’ve had a bout of fatigue and exhaustion recently whilst adjusting to working full-time which has caused me to be offline a bit more than usual and has put me behind the eight ball truly when it comes to reading and blogging. However, I’m still blogging on deadlines as far as my 2021 Blog Schedule attests whilst I am also trying to find better balance with my work hours to where I’m not consistently working more than I am enjoying some downtime. Like everyone who starts a new job/career, there are some kinks to work out before you feel you’ve re-balanced your life. Ergo, if I’m remiss a bit online with blog visits, answering comments on Jorie Loves A Story or even in the twitterverse – kindly know its because I’ve been resting between shifts and getting online whenever I can betwixt and between.
I have some good news to share as well: I’ll be sharing my plans for the “Unconquerable Sun” RAL sooner than later, whilst helping to announce our 4th Year hosting #WyrdAndWonder – as Imyril has so kindly announced it recently herself to get us started whilst I still want to ink out a massive Sunday Post to curate a journal of updates and blog news as well. Keep your eyes on @SatBookChat this week as I’ll be announcing our featured guests for March & April – whilst I’m still booking guests for most of Spring and into the Summer months afterwards. Again, thank you for your visits and your conversations – I can’t wait to get back into visiting with everyone a bit more regularly again. I promise if I haven’t replied to your comments/reactions on my blog yet I will be this coming week.
The Earl's Lady Geologist
by Alissa Baxter
Source: Author via Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours
Cassandra Linfield is a lady fossil collector who declares she will never marry as no man will ever take her studies seriously. When circumstances force her to travel to Town for the Season, Cassy infiltrates the hallowed portals of the Geological Society from which she has been banned. She is horrified when she comes face to face with her nemesis, the infuriating Earl of Rothbury.
Lord Rothbury is a gentleman-geologist with a turbulent romantic past. After a youthful disappointment he vows never to fall in love again, and makes the decision, instead, to seek out a convenient wife when he returns to England from his geological travels abroad.
Brought together by their close family ties, Cassy and Rothbury collaborate on a geological paper and discover a powerful attraction. Marriage, however, is the one subject they cannot agree upon. But when Cassy’s life is threatened, the two realise that love matters more than their objections.
Places to find the book:
ISBN: 9781734150797
Published by Vinspire Publishing
on 28th February, 2021
Format: POD | Print On Demand Paperback
Pages: 222
Published by: Vinspire Publishing (@vinspire2004)
This is the first novel in the Linfield Ladies series!
Converse via: #HistFic or #HistNov as well as #HistoricalFiction
+ #TheEarlsLadyGeologist and #HFVBTBlogTours
Available Formats: Trade paperback and Ebook
About Alissa Baxter
Alissa Baxter was born in a small town in South Africa, and grew up with her nose in a book on a poultry and cattle farm. At the age of eleven she discovered her mother’s collection of Georgette Heyer novels. The first Heyer novel she ever read was Sylvester and she was hooked on Georgette Heyer after that. She read and reread her novels, and fell totally in love with the Regency period and Heyer’s grey-eyed heroes! After school and university, where she majored in Political Science and French, she published her first Regency novel, The Dashing Debutante.
Alissa travelled overseas and worked as a flight attendant in Dubai before she moved to England, where she did an odd assortment of jobs while researching her second novel, Lord Fenmore’s Wager, which she wrote when she moved back to South Africa. Alissa’s third Regency novel, A Marchioness Below Stairs, is the sequel to Lord Fenmore’s Wager.
Alissa has lived in Durban and Cape Town but she eventually settled in Johannesburg where she lives with her husband and two sons. Alissa is also the author of two chick-lit novels, Send and Receive and The Blog Affair, which have been re-released as The Truth About Series: The Truth about Clicking Send and Receive and The Truth About Cats and Bees.
| The Earl’s Lady Geologist | by Alissa Baxter
I personally love romances which have such well-esteemed characters rightly established in their lives and their hobbies as soon as you meet them! Baxter has created a charming heroine in Cassy – especially since her confidence in her abilities as a geologist notwithstanding it is her moxie and countenance in front of Rothbury which charms you the most! She isn’t one to let a person distract her from her interests nor allow her to feel she is doing something wrong simply because of public perception about the hobby which gives her a lot of joy. Except to me, it felt more like a path of career than a mere hobby – yet that was still to be seen if Baxter would develop the path Cassy would take into the field of geology or if she would remain a hobbyist alongside her friend Mary.
Wickedly, I loved how they put Rothbury to rights about his presumptions about their handling of the fossils and how in those early scenes you can tell how much Baxter herself knew about the field by the way she had her characters handling the discussion with Rothbury. I, myself, was fascinated by minerals and fossils as a young girl as I originally wanted to go into one of the fields wherein I would spend my days amongst dirt and dust looking for such gems as these lovelies. Geology, Archaeology and (Forensic) Anthropology were the key interests for me – however, it was the fossils which held my eye on Paleontology the most as a young girl. This is why I was fascinated by the premise of (the novel) Jurassic Park by Crichton because of the concept of how DNA could be contained in amber with a fossilised specimen which could then be used to create new life based on the DNA extracted.
The curious conversations between Cassy and Rothbury are golden – he, staunchly opposes her choices in life (as she prefers to live unconventionally, and rightly so!) and she isn’t taken by his blatant qualms about her choices nor about his desire to do the bidding of his mother and Cassy’s Cousin to set her back to rights about why she shouldn’t make herself less desirable to a match once she makes her rounds in London. The grievances there of course are how for a certain time in history, women were continuously expected to do the bidding of their male elders and relatives; women did not always have the right to choice their own path but had to follow the path set out for them to follow. Therein lies the most folly and where Historical Romances have a lot of dexterity for finding both the humour and the heart in the relationships they explore such as within this lovely one by Baxter.
Goodness! The ways in which Cassy’s Cousin carries on about her is quite priceless. Especially as she’s dead-on serious about how she is most concerned about how Cassy has carried forward the passion she has for Geology from her late father and how the two of them used to collect the fossils together rather than having Cassy out solo on the beach combing for new specimens as she is now. The woman is positively dreadful in how she continues to rail on about how horrid it is of Cassy to be an independent woman in this day and age and how difficult it makes to conceive of a future where a man would accept a wife such as Cassy! Imagine?
Even though you can give the cousin a bit of leeway about her troubled thoughts and mind, it is disheartening a bit to realise that she cannot accept Cassy on her own terms and see the beauty in how her mind bends towards Science and pursuing something others might not enjoy or understand but how lovely it is that she has such a grip of interest in the field herself. I suppose that would be asking too much for a Regency Cousin to understand – but oh! It just makes your heart go out to Cassy for all the unnecessary angst she has to contend with muddling through just because she’s different from her peers!!
Rothbury is a hard nut to crack – he’s the type of gentleman who has become accustomed to a certain way of life with certain expectations therein. And, yet, one meeting with Cassy – he’s all aflutter trying to understand his reactions to her and why reacting to Cassy is different than the others he is usually in consort with whilst he’s making his rounds in London. You truly love seeing this dilemma inside him because it starts to open the door towards him starting to see Cassy as herself rather than the version of herself he wants her to be which goes against her nature.
Ha! Just as my foray into this novel rounded into the twenty-fifth page, I had treated to a lovely little exchange between Aunt Ella and Cousin Agnes! Agnes of course wants Cassy to be prim, proper and available for courtship now that they are in London but Aunt Ella recognises the importance of her niece’s hobby and entertains the notion part of it can remain in her life – which was a shocking blow to Agnes who felt that kind of behaviour and interest should remain locked away in a former life! Laughs.
Plus, of course, I loved how despite the change of scenery and location, Cassy is still evermore herself – she’s simply changed houses. It will be keen to see how things go from here – from how she’s being implored to enter into a Season and how that might affect her sense of self and the projections she has for her own future. One thing is for certain, Baxter makes you eager to keep turning the pages of this Regency!
On the historical storycrafting styling of Alissa Baxter:
Baxter has a gentle hand when it comes to Regency Romances – she gently guides you into the world she’s written and there has been a lot of care and attention given to the era of her choice. She hasn’t taken any shortcuts like some Regency novelists take and you very much get to enjoy the flow of the language and the disciplines of the etiquette you’re expecting to encounter in a Regency setting. Very attuned to the social conventions and expectations of the era which made entering into this world wickedly delightful!
I loved how she played Cassy off Rothbury and how she let us peer into their persons from the perspectives known at the time – where Rothbury comes off a bit too strong in his opinions which aren’t necessarily limited to his perspective nor of his own thinking. Whilst for Cassy, she’s comfortable in the life she’s chosen and she doesn’t take kindly to someone acting as an interloper on her hours and criticising how she’s built the life she desires to live. And who could blame her? No one wants to be told they have to conform to society or have to live only the kind of life the family would approve of them living! Oy. I felt Baxter handled how this was becoming developed and explained quite well – especially as she caused a conflict in how Rothbury first entered into Cassy’s life and then, of course the joy of seeing where the two would go from their first conversation on the beach! I love when romances are set-up in this fashion as the conflict and the angst between the characters is perfect entertainment with a historical twist of course.
This blog tour is courtesy of:
Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours!
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Reading this story contributed to my 2021 reading challenges:
{SOURCES: Book cover for “The Earl’s Lady Geologist”, book synopsis, author biography, author photograph of Alissa Baxter the tour host badge and HFVBTs badge were all provided by Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours and used with permission. Post dividers badge by Fun Stuff for Your Blog via Pure Imagination. Tweets were embedded due to codes provided by Twitter. Blog graphics created by Jorie via Canva: 2021 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge banner, #HistoricalMondays banner, #25PagePreview banner and the Comment Box Banner.}
Copyright © Jorie Loves A Story, 2021.
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🌹#25PagePreview of The Earl's Lady Geologist"Baxter has a gentle hand when it comes to #RegencyRomance; loved how she played Cassy off Rothbury!"
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— Jorie Story 📖🎧 (@joriestory) March 15, 2021
Comments via Twitter:
Thanks for #amwriting such a cosy comforting #Regency #Romance which was a delight of joy to curl up inside – esp with everyone going on in my life ATM it was a lovely respite!😉Loved your instincts for how you crafted this together and had a lot of fun expressing what I loved!
— Jorie Story 📖🎧 (@joriestory) March 15, 2021
I’m so pleased you enjoyed it! Your review was so insightful and thoughtful. It was lovely to read your impressions of the story. I’m so glad my book resonated with you and that it was a welcome escape! Thanks again. ?
— Alissa Baxter (@alissa_baxter) March 15, 2021
I had quite the lovely afternoon conversing with Ms Baxter and seeing my review being read throughout the day; I loved highlighting what I enjoyed about her characters & the ways in which her story lifted my spirits – truly a wicked joy to be on the #blogtour!!👏👏
— Jorie Story 📖🎧 (@joriestory) March 16, 2021
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
- 2021 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge
Thank you so much for this wonderful review! We appreciate your support for the blog tour!
Amy
HF Virtual Book Tours
An interview sounds lovely! Thanks so much. So wonderful to connect with you.
You’ve made my day, Jorie! It’s amazing when someone just gets your story… and that’s what it felt like when I read your lovely review. So wonderful to connect with you! My earlier Regencies aren’t available at the moment but I’d be happy to send you a copy of Lord Fenmore’s Wager if you’d like to read it sometime!
OOh! I would love to read that one as I had my eye on it when I was visiting your website earlier! I look forward to seeing it arrive in the Post and I’ll let you know once its here, of course! Plus, I’d love to interview you sometime – either on my blog or have you as a featured guest on my Twitter chat @SatBookChat!?! I have open dates this Spring – esp in April and May!! :)
I love finding authors like you who curate such a lush historical backdrop into their Regencies and truly own the era their writing about – it makes it much more immersive and that’s what I wanted to get across to my readers today as I know a lot of them like Regencies and/or Historical Romances as much as I do. Plus of course, those are two top topics of #SatBookChat, as well naturally because I am passionate about those kinds of stories myself.
Thanks so much for this absolutely wonderful review!
Hallo, Hallo Ms Baxter,
Truly a delight of joy for me today conversing with you on Twitter and now my blog!! *waves!* I’m wicked grateful I was on your blog tour and that I’ve discovered your Regency Romances. I definitely will be keeping a ready eye out for new titles in this series as well as exploring your other #HistRom releases. Thank you for being kind and gracious today with me! I hope the rest of the tour will be just as wicked good as today for you!! Many blessings.