Ugly heroine

REVIEW: Lord of the Abyss by Nalini Singh

REVIEW: Lord of the Abyss by Nalini Singh

Dear Ms. Singh: This is the fourth book in a connected series with the three other stories written by three other authors. I haven’t read the other three and I don’t feel like my reading experience was impaired in any way.  The prologue lays the table.  A long lived people leaved peacefully and prosperously in(…)

REVIEW:  The Duff by Kody Keplinger

REVIEW: The Duff by Kody Keplinger

Dear Ms. Keplinger, Your book has been getting some of the biggest press I’ve seen for a YA title.  It’s very rare that I have people that read heavily in the romance community telling me to pick a YA title up.  The Duff, however, seems to be a title that captured many people’s attention.  In(…)

Beauty and the Heroine

Beauty and the Heroine

I tend to read for three things: a visceral response, a delightful and interesting use of language, and character. While genre fiction often relies on plot rather than prose to compel the reader forward, I firmly believe that the best plots are rooted in character. Even if the plot of the novel is a quest(…)

REVIEW: The Charm School by Susan Wiggs

REVIEW: The Charm School by Susan Wiggs

Dear Ms. Wiggs, Your book, The Charm School (1999), was suggested to me one night whilst I was prowling around on Twitter looking for answers. I had asked for suggestions of books with ugly heroines. Ugly, mind you, not plain. Plain means that at some point in the novel there will be a paragraph in(…)