Today's Special - - Maggie Robinson

It's always a pleasure to welcome Maggie Robinson to The Romance Dish because that usually means she has a new book out and that makes this reader very happy. Maggie's new book, Seducing Mr. Sykes is the second book in her Cotswold Confidential historical romance series. It's the perfect summer read with likable characters, plenty of humor, feel-good emotion, and an ending that will have you smiling while counting the weeks until your next visit to Robinson's fictional celebrity rehab village of Puddling-on-the-Wold. For more information about Seducing Mr. Sykes, be sure to read Janga's 5-star review.

Welcome back, Maggie!

Thanks so much for having me visit today! It wouldn’t be a proper book release week without a stop at the Romance Dish!

I live in Maine, where the sun first hits the United States. Where winter seems to last thirteen or fourteen months, and summer is gone in the blink of an eye. So when the first inch of green shoots up under the melting piles of snow, I am ecstatic.

Gardening has become my go-to when I want to de-stress or think

or just mindlessly enjoy nature’s beauty, not that I can get down on my knees and get up easily anymore, LOL. In the seven years we’ve owned our house, I’ve spent way too much money putting in delicious bulbs for the squirrels and chipmunks. My climbing roses hate where they are and refuse to climb or bloom. Some plants have thrived, some have spread like wet gremlins, and some have curled up and died. It’s been a learning experience, but when I sit in a folding chair and water (no sprinkler because that’s cheating), it’s the highlight of my day.

A garden plays a pivotal part in Seducing Mr. Sykes, where the characters use it for the very reasons I do. Of course, my modest perennial garden is nothing like the acres of garden rooms that my hero Tristan Sykes maintains—he has green fingers, whereas I have only half a green thumb at most.

The fictional Sykes estate garden was inspired by a real-life place, Painswick Rococo Gardens in Painswick, England. I went to it a couple of times when we rented a cottage in the town for a month a few years ago. Established in the 1740s, it’s been receiving recorded visitors since 1757. It’s difficult to think of my house standing for centuries and its garden attracting anything but deer and rodents, but the Rococo Gardens are going strong. It’s famous for its exquisite garden follies and its snowdrops, the first harbingers of spring. I could wander around there forever and never get bored. (www.rococogarden.org.uk)

The Sykes garden is where Tristan and heroine Sadie (AKA Lady Sarah Marchmain, a duke’s daughter) realize they’re in love, after a very rocky beginning with a forced marriage. Seducing Mr. Sykes is a marriage of in-convenience story, one of my favorite tropes. I like to think that, like plants, people can grow together, their roots intertwining in unexpected harmony.

Are you a gardener? Do you have a favorite flower? I think I’m a peony person, but sunflowers, lilacs, hydrangeas, foxgloves, and pansies are also very welcome at Casa Robinson.

One commenter will receive a download of the first book in the Cotswold Confidential series, Schooling the Viscount, and an extra package of goodies!

Seducing Mr. Sykes

By Maggie Robinson

Cotswold Confidential - Book 2

Publisher: Lyrical Press

Release Date: June 20, 2017

In Maggie Robinson's sparkling new series, the quaint village in Gloucestershire is where the wayward sons and daughters of Great Britain's finest families come for some R&R-and good old-fashioned "rehab." But sometimes they find much more . . .

No one at Puddling-on-the-Wold ever expected to see Sarah Marchmain enter through its doors. But after the legendary Lady's eleventh-hour rejection of the man she was slated to marry, she was sent here to restore her reputation . . . and change her mind. It amused Sadie that her father, a duke, would use the last of his funds to lock her up in this fancy facility-she couldn't be happier to be away from her loathsome family and have some time to herself. The last thing she needs is more romantic distraction . . .

As a local baronet's son, Tristan Sykes is all too familiar with the spoiled, socialite residents of the Puddling Rehabilitation Foundation-no matter how real their problems may be. But all that changes when he encounters Sadie, a brave and brazen beauty who wants nothing more than to escape the life that's been prescribed for her. If only Tristan could find a way to convince the Puddling powers-that-be that Sadie is unfit for release, he'd have a chance to explore the intense attraction that simmers between them-and prove himself fit to make her his bride . . .

Review - - Seducing Mr. Sykes

Seducing Mr. Sykes

By Maggie Robinson

Publisher: Lyrical Press

Release Date: June 20, 2017
Reviewed by Janga

 

Lady Sarah Marchman, only child of the Duke of Islesford, has been fighting her father’s attempts to marry her off to one of his debtors since she turned seventeen. Lady Sarah, known as Sadie to her few intimates, will inherit her late mother’s fortune when she turns twenty-five or upon her marriage. She is determined to hold out until her fortune is hers rather than yield to her father’s efforts to use her marriage to add money to his empty coffers. With her fortune, her lineage, and her beauty, Lady Sarah has an abundance of suitors. Her battles to remain unmarried have sometimes been literal; she has blackened a few eyes in the process. More often, she has used her wits to make herself a scandal. As a last resort, her father has used the last of his funds to send her to Puddling-on-the-Wold, a Gloucestershire village where generations of Britain’s wealthy families have sent their non-conforming relatives to be “restored” to more conventional behavior.

Sadie is an expert at breaking the rules the Puddling-on-the-Wold Foundation has laid down for their visitors. Her antics, which include theft of items ranging from pants to pastries, have drawn comparisons to another duke’s daughter, Lady Maribel de Winter, who terrorized her hosts eight decades ago.  Sadie has already exceeded the usual twenty-eight-day stay, but she is not eager to leave, fearing that her father’s threat to have her declared insane and institutionalize her may be more than an empty threat. She must walk a fine line to convince her hosts that she remains unrestored, but not hopelessly mad.

Tristan Sykes is an architect by profession and a member of Puddling-on-the-Wold’s first family. His grandfather, Sir Colin Sykes, married the infamous Lady Maribel, who remained a law unto herself. After a tempestuous marriage that ended in a scandalous divorce shortly before his wife’s death, Tristan wants a life free of chaos, shattered boundaries, and troublesome women. He thought he had found that ordered life in the space he created for himself on his father’s property and filling in for his absent father as head of the board of governors for the village enterprise. He refuses to allow one headstrong woman to violate his peace, regardless of the unwelcome desire the tall, voluptuous, flame-haired beauty stirs in him.

Tristan’s resolution is put to the test when the cottage where Sadie is housed catches fire, and the board of governors pressures him to move her into his father’s house. Now the exasperating woman is in his face every time he turns around, and she appears to delight in wearing trousers that make her long legs impossible for him to ignore or undergarments that reveal far too much of her other assets for his peace of mind. When Sadie’s father shows up during one of these encounters, irate at finding his daughter in a compromising situation and threatening the village’s reputation as a safe rehabilitation site, Tristan does the honorable thing and proposes marriage. However, when two people, neither of whom wants to be married but neither of whom can ignore the chemistry between them, are forced to marry, the journey to an HEA is filled with adjustments, misunderstandings, problems--and for the reader, delightful fun.

Seducing Mr. Sykes is the second book in Maggie Robinson’s Cotswold Confidential series, and it is even better than the first book, Schooling the Viscount. Sadie’s behavior may seem a bit over the top in the beginning, but the reader soon comes to understand that she is a smart, great-hearted woman driven to desperate measures by her particular circumstances and a culture in which a family-sanctioned marriage was the expectation of women of her class. She made me laugh, and she won my heart. Tristan comes across as a classic controlling prig until the reader learns his history and understands that his need for order and control are credibly rooted in his experience. I loved seeing this hero’s pomposity punctured by an audacious, unconventional heroine who lost her heart while winning his. Although this novel unquestionably has the qualities of a romp, it also has substance in its revelations about women’s roles and marriage and, less obviously, in determinations of insanity. The reader may laugh at Sadie’s ploys, but the threat she faces is real and scary.

I give high marks to Maggie Robinson for a book that made me laugh, sigh at some sweet and spicy scenes, and consider some grim historical realities. If you enjoy historical romance that has a light-heartedness without being lightweight, I highly recommend Seducing Mr. Sykes. And when you have finished this rewarding read, mark November 21 on your book calendars. That’s the release date of the third Cotswold Confidential book, Redeeming Lord Ryder, in which the lovers are both Puddling-on-the-Wold “guests.” It is a highly anticipated, starred item on my list.