Earl

REVIEW:  Thunder and Roses by Mary Jo Putney

REVIEW: Thunder and Roses by Mary Jo Putney

Dear Ms. Putney, I was a big fan of your books in the 1990s. They came along at a time when I had not read anything like them. If the characters made mistakes or committed wrongs, your books actually examined the of the characters’ motives for doing so in some depth. And your characters actually(…)

JOINT REVIEW: A Christmas Promise by Mary Balogh

JOINT REVIEW: A Christmas Promise by Mary Balogh

Janine: It's been roughly four years since the first time I read Mary Balogh's A Christmas Promise. At the time, I loved the book, so when I heard it was being reissued, I thought this would be a great time to review it. I felt a little trepidation though, because sometimes books I used to(…)

REVIEW: Dark Angel by Mary Balogh

REVIEW: Dark Angel by Mary Balogh

Warning: The following review contains some spoilers. Dear Ms. Balogh, Your books have been an acquired taste for me. My early experiences of them were like my first taste of sushi. They too, seemed like something unusual, intense and raw, to which my palate was unaccustomed. At first I wasn’t sure they would appeal to(…)

REVIEW: On the Edge by Ilona Andrews

REVIEW: On the Edge by Ilona Andrews

Dear Ms. Andrews, On the Edge was the first of your books that I’ve read, but it will not be the last. Rose Drayton and her two young brothers, Jack and Georgie, live in the Edge, an area where two dimensions known as the Weird and the Broken overlap. In the Weird, people have magical(…)

DUAL REFLECTIONS, PART 2: Black Silk by Judith Ivory (Judy Cuevas)

DUAL REFLECTIONS, PART 2: Black Silk by Judith Ivory (Judy Cuevas)

Black Silk was one of the first two Romance novels I read, and to this day it remains one of my absolute favorites. Submit Channing-Downs, the woman who deeply mourns the husband who was almost three times her age, is so unlike most Romance heroines. Her hair has the quality of thick yarn, her teeth(…)

DUAL REFLECTIONS, PART 1: Black Silk by Judith Ivory (Judy Cuevas)

On rare occasion, I come across a novel that seems so rich, so sumptuous, and so sublime, that I am afraid to reread it. The first reading experience is so close to perfect that I don’t think anything can equal it. Such was the case with Judith Ivory’s Black Silk. When I first read the(…)

REVIEW: A Countess Below Stairs by Eva Ibbotson

REVIEW: A Countess Below Stairs by Eva Ibbotson

Dear Ms. Ibbotson, When Azteclady asked me to review one of your romances, I was both excited and challenged. You pack so many irresistible characters into less than three hundred pages that it is difficult to do justice to these delightful folk. And how would I explain the magic by which you can take me(…)