gambling

REVIEW:  One Good Earl Deserves a Lover by Sarah MacLean

REVIEW: One Good Earl Deserves a Lover by Sarah MacLean

Dear Ms. MacLean: The day before I wrote this review I was stuck in the library of a large public high school, waiting to be called to a debate tournament. I was there for eight hours and only judged one match. The rest of the time I spent re-reading One Good Earl Deserves a Lover(…)

REVIEW:  A Gentleman Undone by Cecilia Grant

REVIEW: A Gentleman Undone by Cecilia Grant

Dear Ms. Grant: Your debut novel, A Lady Awakened, is one of my favorite Romances of the past year. So I was particularly excited to read A Gentleman Undone, not only to catch up with the delightfully perverse Martha and her new husband, Theo, but also to discover if Martha’s brother, Will, made as fascinating(…)

REVIEW:  A Gentleman Undone by Cecilia Grant

REVIEW: A Gentleman Undone by Cecilia Grant

Dear Ms. Grant: As I read your novel A Gentleman Undone I brooded over words from one my favorite 18th century wordsmiths, the great Alexander Pope: “Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part: there all the honor lies.” Here Pope asserts honor and shame are products of  behavior rather than experience or(…)

REVIEW: In Total Surrender by Anne Mallory

REVIEW: In Total Surrender by Anne Mallory

Dear Ms. Mallory, I have been anticipating the release of your novel, In Total Surrender, since I read about the Merrick brothers in your last effort, One Night Is Never Enough. There’s just something about a pair of intellectual thugs that gets my blood pumping. In Total Surrender is Andreas Merrick’s book. The one in(…)

REVIEW: A Betting Chance by Lynne Connolly

REVIEW: A Betting Chance by Lynne Connolly

Sapphira Vardon needs five thousand pounds to avoid a cruel marriage and a grim future, and there's only one path for her. Don a mask and an assumed name, and risk everything to win at the gaming tables. First, though, she has to get through the door. Luckily she knows just whose name to drop.(…)

JOINT REVIEW: Double Blind by Heidi Cullinan

JOINT REVIEW: Double Blind by Heidi Cullinan

Dear Ms. Cullinan. Joan/SarahF: I reviewed your Special Delivery and adored it. I also said at the end that the sequel was out and I was looking forward to reading it. I have to admit I tried to read it once, but it was too…busy? for that point in my mental health, or maybe I(…)

REVIEW: Cheating Chance by James Buchanan

REVIEW: Cheating Chance by James Buchanan

Dear James. You’ve just published the third (and last?) book, All or Nothing, in your Taking the Odds series and I thought this was a good chance for me to reread (and review) the first two as a refresher before I start Book 3. Cheating Chance is the first book in the series. From the(…)

REVIEW: The Price of Desire by Jo Goodman

Dear Ms. Goodman: Starting with the Compass Club series, your books have been getting increasingly darker, and The Price of Desire is the darkest by far, darker, I think, than any other book of yours that I have read.   It was also an emotionally cathartic read, a book that hearkens back to the Compass Club(…)

REVIEW: The Archer’s Heart by Astrid Amara

Dear Ms. Amara, There’s a continuing discussion among fantasy circles about non-Western settings and non-Caucasian characters in fantasy. Or more to the point, the lack thereof. I confess I count myself among their number. I realize many people take it as a given that a fantasy setting should be faux medieval Europe but these days,(…)

REVIEW: Never Trust a Scoundrel by Gayle Callen

Dear Ms. Callen: I really liked Viscount in Her Bedroom. I appreciate that you try to tackle some serious problems. Viscount featured a blind hero. This one tried to tackle too many issues: gambling, blackmail, a girl who flirts too much, the devastated mother who shuns society, grief, etc. Ultimately, my real problem was the(…)