Flipping Pages: Fair is the Rose by Meagan McKinney Audiobook Review

Reviews of Books Written Before Year 2000.

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Lions and Lace and Fair is the Rose became available to borrow from the library at the same time, so it was a perfect for binge reading! Luckily, the narrator Lisa Flanagan was very good!

Although I didn’t LOVE Fair is the Rose as much as I loved Lions and Lace, it is still one of my most memorable reads. I am not a fan of Western Historical Romance, but there was a time where I read a bunch of them.

Fair is the Rose picks up about 3 years after the events of Lions and Lace and tells is Cristabel Van Alen’s HEA! [spoiler]It has been about 3 years since Cristal escaped from the Brooklyn Asylum and she is on the run, working at saloons and saving money trying to clear her name.[/spoiler] She dresses as a widow while traveling west but her stagecoach gets robbed and she gets kidnapped by the Kinneson Gang.

Cristal is ultimately protected by one gang member, Macaulay Cain, who is [spoiler]actually a Federal Marshal in disguise,[/spoiler] and falls in love with him.

I’m not really a fan of Stockholm syndrome stories, and Fair is the Rose has all the markings of Stockholm syndrome. Although, McKinney does a very good job with making it less creepy and disturbing because she allows Cristal and Macaulay to fall in love under normal circumstances. Or as normal as it gets.

I liked Cristal. I was waiting for her to get her HEA ever since I read about her in Lions and Lace and I liked how this book ended for her and Cain and I thought her choices were very appropriate. I just wish there were more Cristal and Alana interaction.

The Cover

I know the cover doesn’t say anything about the book and I think there was a time when historical romances had this type of cover, but I always looked forward to looking at the step backs! I mean, I still DO! Here is the step back!

Books like Fair is the Rose

Nobody’s Darling by Teresa Medeiros is one of those books that I read back in the day. This time, the heroine is the one that “abducts” the hero because she thinks that he has killed her brother. When she is proven wrong, she then hires him instead to help her find her brother.

Once a Princess by Johanna Lindsay is another book I read years ago. This is about an exiled princess who dances in a tavern to make ends meet, without knowing that she is a princess. That is until a prince comes to the tavern and claims her as his promised bride.

Taken by the Duke by Jess Michaels is one of the most recent erotic historical romances that I read and actually loved. This is another romance with the Stockholm syndrome trope, where the heroine is kidnapped by the hero as a way to seek vengeance for the death of his sister.

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