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REVIEW: To Dare the Duke of Dangerfield by Bronwen Evans

REVIEW: To Dare the Duke of Dangerfield by Bronwen Evans

Dear Ms. Evans, I’ll begin this review with the last line of your novella, To Dare the Duke of Dangerfield. He loved, with a consuming passion, the woman who’d dared the Duke of Dangerfield. This line evokes a picture perfect happy ending for Harlow Telford, the Duke of Dangerfield, and Lady Caitlin Southall, the woman who(…)

REVIEW: Midnight’s Wild Passion by Anna Campbell

REVIEW: Midnight’s Wild Passion by Anna Campbell

Dear Ms. Campbell: In your first book, Claiming the Courtesan, I really liked the mix of angsty melodrama with a fresh review of some well-worn genre stereotypes. That mix of old and new kept me reading your books, but with this new one, Midnight’s Wild Passion, it seems the novelty has worn off. I’m not(…)

Sunita's Best of 2010 Review: Emily and the Dark Angel by Jo Beverley

Sunita's Best of 2010 Review: Emily and the Dark Angel by Jo Beverley

In the spirit of better-late-than-never reviews, here is one of my favorite books of 2010. Dear Ms. Beverley, Before there were Mallorens, before there were Rogues, there was the Daffodil Dandy. You are justly renowned for your ability to create a fully realized world inhabited by characters across multiple books, but readers who love your(…)

REVIEW: Noble Satyr by Lucinda Brant

REVIEW: Noble Satyr by Lucinda Brant

Dear Ms. Brant, When you offered DA the chance to review some of your books, I got all excited. After all, I adore mid 18th century Georgian era set novels and that seems to be your specialty. Since I try to read series books in order, I decided to try “Noble Satyr” first. It also(…)

REVIEW: Ruthless by Anne Stuart

REVIEW: Ruthless by Anne Stuart

Dear Ms. Stuart: Elinor Harriman is the quintessential elder sister of romance. To wit, she is desperately trying to keep her little family together by protecting, guarding and working herself to the bone. Simultaneously, she is, of course, trying not to let on to her younger, more beautiful sister, Lydia, exactly how desperate their circumstances(…)

GIVEAWAY & REVIEW: Naked Edge by Pamela Clare

GIVEAWAY & REVIEW: Naked Edge by Pamela Clare

Dear Ms. Clare: I was given the opportunity to read The Naked Edge several months ago. I was initially reluctant because I have been all over the map with the series. The heroines, in particular, often struck me as foolish. I had some problems with the realism of the stories despite the fact that I(…)

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 Lady of Persuasion by Tessa Dare

REVIEW: A Lady of Persuasion by Tessa Dare

Dear Ms. Dare: A Lady of Persuasion brings home all the characters in the previous two books in the trilogy as the previous protagonists play a part in the romance of Sir Tobias Aldrige and Bel Grayson.   Sir Tobias was jilted at the end of book one, Goddess of the Hunt by Sophia, the heroine(…)

REVIEW: Lord Scandal by Kalen Hughes

REVIEW: Lord Scandal by Kalen Hughes

Dear Ms. Hughes, Last year I found “Lord Sin” to be a great and happy surprise. As you’d already written a follow up to it, I was poised for more happiness. Well, I was sorta happy but, alas, not quite as much. Gabriel Angelstone can’t believe his luck when he discovers that the subject of(…)

Two for One Review: Harlequin Historical Undones

Two for One Review: Harlequin Historical Undones

The Rake’s Intimate Encounter by Ann Lethbridge I’m still not sure I completely understand the set-up of this novella. I realize it’s a prologue, so to speak, for Lethbridge’s historical series for Harlequin but even so I felt like I was dumped midway into a story without any map to point me in the right(…)

REVIEW:  Always a Scoundrel by Suzanne Enoch

REVIEW: Always a Scoundrel by Suzanne Enoch

Dear Ms. Enoch: I’ve really enjoyed this Notorious Gentleman series which started with After the Kiss and ends with Always a Scoundrel, a book that csquared deemed one of your best in years. I agree. This is a book that had my emotions in my throat nearly the entire time. It was dark, evocative, and(…)

REVIEW: Scandal by Carolyn Jewel

REVIEW: Scandal by Carolyn Jewel

Dear Ms. Jewel, Scandal is the first book of yours I have read, but it won’t be the last. The book begins when Gwilym, Earl of Banallt, arrives at Havenwood in autumn of 1814. Banallt is a guest of John Mercer, who does not realize that his widowed sister Sophie has a previous acquaintance with(…)

REVIEW: The Perils of Pleasure by Julie Anne Long

Dear Ms. Long, Of the authors writing historical romance, you are one of my absolute favorites. Not too long ago, I sang the praises of your previous book, The Secret to Seduction, in what is one of the longest, most detailed reviews I have ever written. After I finished reading that book, I was tremendously(…)

REVIEW: The Secret to Seduction by Julie Anne Long

Dear Ms. Long, For me, reading The Secret to Seduction, was like having a glass of champagne. First the effervescent joy of being introduced to your characters through the liquid clarity of your voice, then the warmth of being immersed in the sensations and emotions that those characters grow to feel, and finally the blissful(…)