Noël Cades

4 novels on OWO Novel

Four of my steamy forbidden romance novels have been published on OWO Novel. OWO Novel is an online community for novel lovers all over the globe, where readers can find a wide range of popular and serialised stories. If you download the app via one of the links below and enter the exclusive invitation code, you’ll get 100 free coins. French Kissing Falling From Grace His Model Student Man of…

How to add diversity to Regency Romance

Regency TV series such as Sanditon and Bridgerton have sparked interest in more diverse characters in Historical Romance novels. Is it possible to be historically accurate yet also have a more diverse cast, including ethnically diverse protagonists? In terms of black female aristocrats in the era, we do have the example of Dido Elizabeth Belle. However, it is not clear if she enjoyed entirely…

Historic Romance writing tips

This brilliant article by Regency Romance novelist Elizabeth Rolls contains some very relevant advice for authors wanting to set their novels in historic periods. We need to know how people lived.  How did they light a fire before matches were invented?  And how did you use a tinder box anyway?  How did they go to the toilet?  What did the beds look like?  A bath?  How did people dine?  What sort…

Why I’m on the fence about Bridgerton series 2

Ever Decreasing Heroes The first series of Bridgerton was enormous fun. It was very much a “Disney” version of the Regency period, and a very Americanised version of it. But it was entertaining, the costumes were glorious (if not historically accurate) and the romance was wonderful. The problem is that having used up the “No 1  prize” of London society – extremely rich, spectacularly handsome, a…

Escape by Rosalind Tate

Click for book link Escape is a wonderful, page-turner of a sequel to Rosalind Tate’s time travel mystery romance Stranded. Sophie is still stuck in 1925, but it’s a parallel universe where history has happened differently to our world. Her future is only assured if she marries a rich man, but she’s secretly in love with fellow time-traveller Hugo. Escape builds on the story of the first novel.…

New book: Paradise Calling

I’ve just published a preview on Wattpad of my new student-teacher Forbidden Romance novel Paradise Calling:   “When Caroline is shipwrecked during a school holiday, she finds herself stranded on a desert island with school’s hot Geography teacher, Drew Grant. Wondering if they’ll ever be rescued, Drew and Caroline quickly develop feelings for one another. But finally back home and thrust into…

Across the North Sea by Sofia Hahn

Click for book link Across the North Sea is the first Viking romance I’ve read, and it was very intriguing. It’s actually a tale of two romances, featuring sisters who each fall in love with quite different men. Captured from their Frankish village, they are taken over the seas where they have to fend off unwelcome suitors and learn to survive. Both stories were well developed, but I found…

Without Any Amazement by Margaret Malcolm

Click for book link Written in 1948, this is an arranged marriage between 17-year-old schoolgirl Jacynth and considerably older Jonathan Branksome. Jacynth isn’t reluctant at all, for what it’s worth, she seems to regard marriage as an exciting adventure. Which it possibly was for a schoolgirl in her era. “There’s the vicar,” she said breathlessly. “Grandmother told me that he was coming. Mr…

Storm Over Mandargi by Margaret Way

Click for book link Australian-set romance between 22-year-old Toni and (older, but not specified) Damon Nyland, who owns the ranch Toni’s brother manages, among other assets. He lives elsewhere in some horrendous-sounding country McMansion. Toni is rude, immature, angry, stroppy – for no apparent reason at all. I could barely get past her first interaction with Damon who has done nothing wrong…

Miss Columbine and Harley Quinn by Margery Hilton

Click for book link It’s the seventies and all the clothes are nylon, tricel and “wincey” in various shades of orange and tangerine, and everything is just sooper! Everything except the bizarre romance between a hopelessly immature teenager, Shelley, who’s 17-going-on-12, and an oddly withdrawn and bloodless hero, Harley Quinn, 35. Shelley is so immature that that she doesn’t even get on with her…

Accidental Bride by Susan Barrie

Click for book linkI very much enjoyed this book despite the exceedingly silly and implausible plot. Samantha goes to stay with an old schoolfriend in the family’s Australian schloss, and ends up in a bizarre fake engagement with her brother Stephan. The reason? There are two. The first is that because Samantha has overheard Stephan slagging her off, he feels compelled to propose marriage to her.…

Storm in Paradise by Judith Worthy

Click for book link Who the hell wears tights on the Great Barrier Reef? The temperature never falls below 23c/74F even in midwinter. We have here an Australian Mills & Boon “Medical Romance” where the heroine, Nicole Gardiner, in her silky “bare leg” tights, is a nurse on a resort island and the hero, Dr Sloan Reilly, is a doctor. We also – for this is 1992 – have a gay character! Just in case…

Wipe Away the Tears by Patricia Lake

Click for book link Wipe Away the Tears features 19-year-old Jassy (the name irritated the hell out of me, and it occurs 508 times in the book) falling in insta-lust with wealthy business magnate 36-year-old Max. Her controlling stepfather wants her to marry his business partner’s son René, but Jassy doesn’t want to. But she’s so damn weak she fears she’ll end up doing so anyway. So she agrees…

Dangerous Enchantment by Anne Mather

Click for book link Possibly the most outrageously hideous outfit ever is to be found in Dangerous Enchantment (1969): She had dressed with care in a new Crimplene two-piece of a delicious shade of salmon pink. The flared skirt was calf-length while the short jacket was double-breasted and scalloped on the neckline. With it she wore her double string of pearls and a beige llama coat Salmon-pink…

Caroline by Anne Mather

Click for book link Caroline is the first book that Anne Mather wrote, in 1965 when she was just 19. While her talent is still apparent, it’s a very naive work in many ways. 17-year-old Caroline has lunch and a dinner date (yes – literally just two dates) with her handsome boss 39-year-old Adam Steinbeck. After this briefest of brief relationships, if one can even call it that: She was in love…

Chase a Green Shadow by Anne Mather

Click for book link Three things irked me about the hero in Chase a Green Shadow: 37-ish Welsh writer Hywel, who’s paired with 17-year-old Tamsyn. The first is that his name – Hywel Benedict – sounds just like the actor Hywel Bennet (also Welsh) He’s described looking just like Welsh singer Tom Jones, all dark and hairy with massive sideburns that “reached his jawline” and a “thick covering of…

Forbidden Love by Karen Robards

Click for book link Forbidden Love is a pure, unadulterated bodice-ripper – in the most literal sense – from start to finish. If that’s what you’re after, and you’re happy with an alpha sexually aggressive hero, then this one will hit the spot. Our heroine is 17-year-old violet-eyed Megan and our hero is her 42-year-old guardian, Justin Brant, sixth Earl of Weston. If you want historical…