May 14 2012
Dear Remittance Girl, Your novella, Gaijin, caught me by surprise. A friend recommended it to me on Twitter and then loaned it to me through my Kindle. I had heard about it and investigated purchasing it once before, but shied away from making an actual purchase. Somehow, I wasn’t expecting as much thoughtfulness as I [...]
May 2 2012
Dear Ms. Milan: It’s difficult to give a grade to each one of your books because your prose is so fine that my complaints, if I have any, always sound so mean (as in small not cruel). There are some brilliant things in this book, so brilliant that I needed more time spent with each [...]
Apr 16 2012
Dear Ms. Gale, This premise had ‘January’ written all over it. The erotic adventures of Jane (from the Tarzan books)? It sounded like a fun read to me. Unfortunately, it wasn’t what I had in mind. I had imagined this to be an erotic retelling of Jane and Tarzan. Instead, this is a series that [...]
Apr 12 2012
“Kathryn West has it all–she’s a confident, bestselling author living it up in New York City. Too bad she doesn’t actually exist, and is only timid Maddie Sawyer’s pseudonym. Determined to attend her high school reunion with a man right out of one of her racy romance novels, she plots to find a sexy bad [...]
Feb 10 2012
Dear Ms. Smith, This book was not what I expected when I picked it up. In fact, I’d even venture so far as to offer a caption. Heat is probably the best independently published book I have read, and one of the best books I have read in a long while. It is also one [...]
Nov 10 2011
In the UK, a self published author is suing a reviewer for panning his book. Chris McGrath, an online entrepreneur from Milton Keynes, who wrote and self-published a little-known book entitled The Attempted Murder of God: Hidden Science You Really Need to Know, has launched libel proceedings against Vaughan Jones, 28. He claims Mr Jones [...]
Aug 29 2011
The middle of August is the start of the school year for me, so on the one hand I’ve got way too much to do to find time for reading, but on the other, reading is a stress reliever for me, so I seem to be reading more. Or at least, sampling more and reading [...]
May 13 2011
Dear Mr. Cohen, I should have known that picking up a sports book would not have yielded the best results from me. You must understand that someone who has no real interest in them or the sporting culture will find a book that is over 400 pages and all about this rather ‘meh’ culture (in [...]
Apr 27 2011
Dear Ms. Paris, Around the time we were having the discussion of rape fantasies here at DA, Jane asked for recommendations of books similar to Cara McKenna’s Willing Victim, and your novella, Petals and Thorns, came up on Twitter. Reader MaryK, who hadn’t read it, thought it might fit the bill of what Jane was [...]
Apr 20 2011
Note: This reader emailed me yesterday and wanted to share this story with me. I didn’t think it belonged in the comments even though the topic of this piece is on point. I also thought we should post it today rather than allow another week to pass because of its relevance. Without further ado, from [...]
Sep 25 2010
Dear Ms. McKenna: I bought and read this book based on the recommendation of another author. I was told that it dealt with rape fantasies and I include this warning at the very beginning so that those readers who have triggers will know what they are getting into. The other thing that the recommender told [...]
Sep 24 2010
I read a lot of novellas or stories that are even shorter than that. Torquere, for instance, regularly puts out stories that are 10 pages, or 20, or 30, but I don’t bother requesting them because how could I justify a review? But I figure if I review 3-4 shorts in one post, then I [...]
Sep 21 2010
Dear Ms. Slyvan: I would have never read this book if Angela James hadn’t recommended it to me. It is published by ACE and while I love some ACE authors like Patricia Briggs and Ilona Andrews, I associate the line with more straight up urban fantasy, fantasy and science fiction than any kind of romance. [...]
Feb 22 2010
Dear Ms. Craven: I was very excited to see that you had a new release out. You are one of my favorite Harlequin Presents authors. Sure, you have some rape books in your past, but this is 2010, and those are a thing of the past, right? Apparently not. The Innocent’s Surrender started out innocuously. [...]
Jan 29 2010
Dear Ms. McSparren: One negative aspect of having titles like the one that is given to your book is that it diminishes the content of the story Bachelor Cop is actually fairly intense emotional story but the title suggests something far more flippant. Perhaps that works in both positive and negative ways. Positive because the [...]
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