Topaz by Beverly Jenkins

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The April book for Rake Appreciation Society was Topaz by Beverly Jenkins! This is one of her standalone novels, but most of Beverly Jenkins's books are in the same universe and do connect in some way. If you haven't heard of the Rake Appreciation Society, it's a historical romance book club hosted by Jenn and Crystal on YouTube and it's one of my favorites! I was able to use this for my Taylor Swift Quarterly Challenge for the prompt Blank Space (character that uses a gun) and the Love Has Sprung reading challenge for prompt diverse author.

Katherine is undercover as a reporter to expose a scheme by wealthy man Rupert. When undercover around him, she finds herself engaged to him to get closer to steal the evidence of his crimes. When he catches her, things hit the fan. Thankfully Kate's father is currently offering her hand in marriage to Marshall Dixon in return for selling off his cattle when he was presumed dead. Dix arrives in time to interrupt the wedding and steal Kate for himself. As they travel back to Indian Territory, where Dixon resides, they go by wagon and have a lot of time to connect and build their relationship.

I think this is my favorite Beverly Jenkins so far. I loved the humor and really enjoyed Dix as a hero. I do struggle with getting everything that I want in a 5-star from Beverly (so far), so I do have a few nit-picky things to touch on. First is the way that at times the romance feels secondary to whatever other plot points are happening. I think Topaz is the most romantic I've read so far and gave me most of what I need. I did pay attention to this one closely while reading and found a point that I struggle with. When it comes to her steamier scenes, I don't feel the tension between the characters. I was struggling with some of their kiss scenes early on and really payed attention once I was feeling let down once again. I have figured out why I feel disconnected with those scenes in particular and it's too many metaphors or roundabout ways of describing what the characters are feeling or doing. While I can go with one, there were times where one paragraph about the same moment would have three different metaphors. It just was too flowerly and almost felt removed from the situation for me to really feel the steaminess between the characters.

I do also have to say that while I love and commend Beverly for bringing to light events in history not everybody learns in school, sometimes they feel a little too history textbook-y. When it's something that our characters are going through or relate to them directly, I can understand it better. There are times though where we get a complete shift to get a history lesson and it really just removes me from the story. While I loved this book when I was reading it, I really struggled with the urge to pick it up once I put it down. This took me a lot longer than expected to get through and ended up setting it aside to do the Dark Romance Readathon.

Despite all the critiques though, I really did enjoy this book and like I said, it's my favorite Beverly Jenkins so far. I don't want to count out all of her books, but I think at this point her writing style just doesn't quite fit 100% with my tastes. I will read her in the future I'm sure, but it'll probably be because of a book club or buddy read or something. I'm not sure if I'll reach for one completely on my own. I had a lot of fun, as always, during the live show and can't wait until the next meeting!

Have you read Topaz?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

STATISTICS: Topaz, Beverly Jenkins, 4-stars, 7 days, eBook, 400 pages, published in 1997, traditionally published