Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal

Shades of Milk and Honey was a Regency romance à la Jane Austen or Georgette Heyer, but with a touch of fantasy.

In this version of Regency England, a talent for manipulating glamour was added along with music, drawing and such for a fashionable young lady's list of accomplishments. Other than that, everything else is relatively the same.

Shades of Milk and Honey is like an Austen novel in the sense that it borrows characters from Austen's stories. The heroine, Jane, is sort of like an Anne Elliot sort of character. There are also characters that resemble Darcy, Lydia, and Mr and Mrs Bennett in Jane's parents, among other characters.

The whole glamour thing took me a while to catch on to, but I eventually got it. Towards the end it got sort of distracting and in one scene I could barely keep up with what was happening; I had to reread it several times to finally get a hold of what was going on.

Jane has a particular talent for glamour and finds herself using it to get people out of nasty messes. Her talent soon has one upside, as it helps her find herself in her very own romance, something that at the age of 28, she had all but given up on.

All in all, a fairly good novel. Very entertaining.

Mariana by Susanna Kearsley

I just have to start this review out by saying: I hope Susanna Kearsley never, ever stops writing. This is only the second of her books that I have read, but it's another 5-star winner! I'll be rereading this sometime soon, no doubt!

Having said that, Marianna, like The Winter Sea, is another time-slip historical novel. Julia Beckett has been drawn to Greywethers since she was a kid, and as an adult decides to buy it. As Julia settles in, things start to happen that make Julia think she is starting to crack up.

She finds herself drawn into the past, literally, as Mariana Farr, a young woman who lived at Greywethers in the 17^th century. During these time slips, she is Mariana Farr; sometimes she can control it, sometimes she can't, but soon Julia finds herself more invested in the past than in the present. She realizes that the two are more intertwined then she would think.

I was so emotionally invested in Mariana, and I love that. I couldn't stop reading: torn between finding out what happens as soon as possible and never wanting the story to end.

I found the way Julia slipped into the past absolutely fascinating, but I don't want to give too much away. And as fascinating as it was, it was also a tad terrifying. I don't know how I would manage if that happened to me.

Mariana was a gorgeous book, flawlessly interweaving past and present. How everything flowed and tied together was absolutely masterful. The ending was just perfection, that even after I finished the book and went to bed, I turned the lights back on several times to read the last few pages. I just want to read the rest of Susanna Kearsley's books right now!