May 25 2012
Dear Ms. Bliss: Your last few books have had a sort of a madcap adventure feel to them and so “Bring Him Home” is a change in tone and pace. It deals with grief and recovery and discovery and relies less on external conflict and more on the internal changes that the leads experience. Nathan [...]
Dec 27 2011
Dear Ms. Grant: I don’t remember reading a book like this lately. I’m sure that there have been ones written, after all, romance has been published for decades at a clip of several hundred a month. There are no new stories, only new ways to tell them. However, Marta Russell and Theophilus Mirkwood are two [...]
Nov 7 2011
Dear Ms. Burrowes: I have been anxious to read your books since The Heir came out and circumstances (and other books) have always interfered with that goal until this month. I bought The Virtuoso the day that it came out and sat down one evening with great anticipation. The sad fact is that there scarcely [...]
Sep 1 2011
Dear Ms. Linden: I picked this one up when I realized I hadn’t read many historicals lately. This is the first in a three book series involving the de Lacey brothers who discover that their recently deceased father may have been a bigamist threatening their standing in society and their inheritances. Edward, the second son, [...]
Jun 16 2011
Dear Ms. Neville, I had enjoyed your book, The Dangerous Viscount, enough that I wanted to read the upcoming The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton. The rub was that I hate reading series out of order. What’s an anal reader to do but backtrack and get the first book in the Burgundy Club series, The [...]
Jan 6 2011
Dear Ms. Neville, Here’s a testament to the fact that Twitter can sell books. I’ve enjoyed your personable tweets so much that when I saw on SonomaLass’s website that she enjoyed your newest novel, The Dangerous Viscount, I decided to get my hands on a copy. This was back in October, before I bought my [...]
Apr 13 2010
Dear Ms. Harper: I am a sucker for survivor stories. I think it is because one never knows how one will act in really terrible situations but you hope you will be one of those that will bravely pick themselves up and move on. Or maybe one knows that you will be a wallower but [...]
Jan 19 2010
Dear Ms. Boyle: I don’t think I’ve read any significant number of your novels but I wanted to read a historical. How I Met My Countess blurb promised a reconciled lover story and I thought I would give it a try. I purchased an ecopy. Miss Lucy Ellyson married Archibald Thatcher, a clerk, who eventually [...]
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 [...]
Nov 6 2009
Dear Ms. Mayberry: I think this might be your most emotional romance yet. I certainly felt a little misty eyed (damn you) at the end of the story. Hannah Napier and Joe Lawson meet under inauspicious circumstances. Joe is exhausted and all he can hear is the loud sound of an engine next door. It’s [...]
Jul 2 2009
Dear Ms. Krahn: I don’t think I’ve read a Blaze Historical before (and I’m not even sure what a Blaze Historical is). I’ll admit that I passed over this book initially when I was perusing the eHarlequin ebook website because the blurb which included a reference to Prince of Wales and I am always nervous [...]
Mar 25 2009
Dear Ms. Rimmer: While you have been a long time commenter on Dear Author, I hadn’t picked up one of your books until recently. I kept meaning too but I never saw your name within the lines at Harlequin I usually perused each month. Jayne’s reviews of various Harlequin books has encouraged me to step [...]
Jul 29 2008
Dear Ms. Dahl: Had you not sent Dear Author the ARC of this book for review, the cheesy cover, hackneyed title, and curious cover quote from Eloisa James – “So hot the pages smoke . . . ” – would have thoroughly deterred me from picking it up on my own. Which would have been [...]
May 28 2008
Dear Mr. Archer Thank you for sending your book to us to read. You may, however, regret this decision if you read the review. I suggest not reading it. Reviews are for readers and in this case, that maxim is doubly true. Summary of the story is that Lloyd Vance, a detective from Alaska has [...]
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