Jul 26 2013
Everybody’s Talkin – Scandal by Carolyn Jewel Reading is so much very about context I sometimes wonder how on earth we’re meant to sensibly assess our responses to, well, just about any book we pick up. I came to Scandal immediately after Bared to You, which had left me a very sad llama indeed. But(…)
Mar 8 2012
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(…)
May 10 2011
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(…)
Jan 13 2011
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(…)
Dec 9 2010
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(…)
Jul 19 2010
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(…)
Feb 15 2010
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(…)
Dec 4 2009
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(…)
Dec 4 2009
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(…)
Oct 12 2009
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(…)
Jun 10 2009
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(…)
Apr 30 2009
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(…)
Apr 29 2009
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(…)
Mar 20 2009
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(…)
Feb 15 2008
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(…)
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