May 1 2012
In the wake of ubiquitous popularity for The Book That Shall Not Be Named, the reality that women do experience – and even enjoy! – sexual fantasy has collided with far more than 50 shades of judgment about who, what, where, when, why, how, and whether that’s okay. Last week, Leigh at AAR wrote [...]
Mar 27 2012
Dear Ms. Linden: Before I get too far into this review, I want to say right up front that I found Blame it on Bath quite likeable. I do so because the series that includes this book – The Truth about the Duke – is based on a legal issue that, even to my limited [...]
Feb 28 2012
Dear Ms. MacLean: This is the first of your books I’ve read, and it’s the first in quite a while that I’ve considered applying the mistorical tag to. Given the muddled nature of Regency history in Romance, as well as my insecurity regarding how much I really know that’s true about the period, I decided [...]
Feb 1 2012
Dear Ms. Kondazian: One of the reasons I was excited to read The Whip is that I lived for quite a while in Santa Cruz County, where some of the novel is set. I was also intrigued by the idea of a fact-based story about Charley Parkhurst, a woman who not only lived for most [...]
Jan 24 2012
Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen a lot of bluster in the YA community over what reviews “should be” and how they should be written and defined and what they should and should not contain. It’s a conversation that was very common in the online Romance community not so many years ago, and the [...]
Jan 17 2012
Dear Ms. Guhrke: In a way I wish I had read Trouble at the Wedding before the first two books in the Abandoned at the Altar series. The Edwardian setting, pairing of the bourgeois heroine from the American South and the titled but impoverished English duke, and mixed cocktail of the marriage for money and [...]
Jan 11 2012
Dear Ms. Kleypas: I may be in the minority of readers in this, but I really prefer your contemporary books to your historicals. I find your contemporary voice more confident, fluent, and engaging, and, more specifically, I find Travis series books reliable comfort reads. Since we already had reviews of Sugar Daddy and Smooth Talking [...]
Dec 27 2011
Although I’m not exactly a devoted reader of John Scalzi’s Whatever blog, a Twitter retweet last week drew my attention to a recent post, in which he announces that readers protesting ebook prices on his “Big Idea” posts will have their comment deleted: Why? Primarily because here at the tail end of 2011, I [...]
Dec 7 2011
Dear Ms. Chambers: It’s always exciting to read a debut book by a fellow blogger, although it can be a bit daunting, too. What if I don’t like it? Will that affect the way I read your blog? Fortunately, I enjoyed The Lady’s Secret, a book that mixes old and new genre conventions in interesting [...]
Nov 29 2011
Anyone who’s spend any length of time on Twitter likely knows about #fridayreads, the hashtag started by Bethanne Patrick, aka The Book Maven, who created, among other things, NPR’s The Book Studio. In fact, I know some people who have actually unfollowed Patrick because of the FridayReads cheerleading, which, admittedly, can get a little intense [...]
Nov 22 2011
Dear Ms. Shalvis: When I first started the Lucky Harbor series, I wasn’t sure I would like it. I have a visceral aversion to books with cute titles set in cutely named small towns, with covers colored in pastels and adorned with cute dogs or food. But my strong appreciation for your Sierra Nevada-set series [...]
Nov 8 2011
Who doesn’t love a small town Romance? Given Jane’s observation in her 2011 RWA wrap-up that small towns remain very popular, apparently a lot of readers do. Given the comments to that post and various lamentations from readers online, there are many readers who absolutely despise the small town Romance. While all genre devices have [...]
Oct 31 2011
Dear Ms. Weir: I have been slowly working my way through your backlist titles, so when I came across the re-released, reasonably-priced digital edition of Bad Karma at the Kindle store, it shot to the top of my TBR list. I have to admit that I’m not the biggest fan of the “psychic heroine” trope, [...]
Oct 25 2011
Dear Ms. Dahl: I had been planning to review Good Girls Don’t, but by the time I got to it, Bad Boys Do was out and Real Men Will was imminent. So I figured I might as well review all three, since the trilogy’s release dates are so close together. I’m not a stickler for [...]
Oct 21 2011
Dear Ms. Napier: When someone on Twitter mentioned that your older book, The Mistress Deception, features a virgin widower, I bolted right over to Amazon to purchase a digital copy, excited at the idea of a Harlequin Presents playing against type in this way. That was not the only pleasant surprise of the book, and [...]
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