Dear Author: Romance Novel Reviews, Industry News, and Commentary

Film revew: Ladyhawke (1985) Grade:B Genre: Historical romantic fantasy (US)

Dear Richard Donner:

I really enjoyed your 1980 film Inside Moves, a romantic black comedy about a young man who, after a failed attempted suicide, acquires a permanent disability that takes him into an underworld of people with disabilities and a dark sense of humour.

In spite of that, I’d consistently avoided Ladyhawke because its notorious rape scene. Yet Ladyhawke keeps cropping up on romance readers’ lists of favourite romantic films and it puzzled me. I just couldn’t get it. I thought perhaps it was the same readers that like reading old skool historical romance novels featuring rapist heroes. However, I recently learnt from a conversation with a friend that Ladyhawke doesn’t feature the rape scene at all.

I was shocked. I remember seeing a such scene during a TV review. After investigating, it seems I had mistaken Ladyhawke for Flesh+Blood. Both films were released in 1985 and set in medieval-era Europe. Both feature Rutger Hauer as the leading character, and both feature blonde heroines (Jennifer Jason Leigh and Michelle Pfieffer) as romantic interests to Rutger Hauer’s characters. I learnt that apart from these similarities, Ladyhawke and Flesh+Blood …

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Earlier today I read this report Photos and Video From the National Federation of The Blind’s Kindle 2 Protest at the technology news blog, Gizmodo, about a street protest held by members of the National Federation of the Blind against the Author’s Guild.
As Gizmodo reports:

“Basically the story is this: the Author’s Guild raised issue with the Kindle 2’s new robotic text-to-speech feature, which can read any Kindle book aloud in a synthesized voice—naturally, a feature that would be an absolute delight for the vision impaired. The Author’s Guild, however, saw things differently, stating that eBooks are not sold with “performance” rights and that the Kindle’s read-aloud feature would cut into the sales of audio books. And last month, Amazon caved to the Guild, giving individual publishers the ability to disable the text-to-speech reader for specific books.”

I have an issue with the Guild for classifying the Kindle 2’s text-to-speech feature as “performance”. There’s a world’s difference between an audio book and a text-to-speech feature of an ebook. The key difference is there’s no voice actor in the text-to-speech feature. It’s deprived …

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Grade: B+
Genre: Romantic Comedy (1997)
Certificate: 15

Dear Theodore Witcher,

A few days ago, someone suggested I should review Bridget Jones’s Diary. I searched for it in my DVD library and found your film love jones instead.

love jones – which you’ve also scripted – is a simple and predictable romantic comedy and yet, not as straightforward as other romantic comedies.

At a jazz/poetry club in Chicago, aspiring novelist Darius Lovehall (Larenz Tate) is all set to give a poetry reading when he meets Nina Mosley (Nia Long), a photographer assistant who has enough talent to rise up high.

Their brief exchange at the bar intrigues Darius enough to change the title of his poem: “A Blues for Nina” on spot.
We slowly discover the poem is quite sexually charged. Nina doesn’t know what to make of it, but begrudgingly acknowledges an attraction between them.

After a chance encounter with Nina at a record shop, Darius talks Sheila, his close friend who works at the record shop as an assistant, into giving him Nina’s address taken from a cheque that Nina used to purchase a CD. When he shows up at her place, she unsurprisingly is suspicious.

Here, we expect to see the routine of a typical romantic comedy: …

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Maili, an old friend of the blog (and truly a vanguard of romance reader bloggers) has extensive film knowledge and offered to write a review of a romantic film every Friday.  I was delighted to accept.  Henceforth, every Friday, we will feature a film review so that if you aren’t sure what to do on the weekend, this might provide you with an idea.  We will be moving First Sale stories to Monday to accommodate our new addition to Dear Author. – Jane

Grade: A
Genre: Black comedy / Romantic comedy (US)

Dear Hal Ashby,

You and scriptwriter Colin Higgins passed away in the same year almost twenty one years ago, but your cinematic legacy still lives on. Especially your second directorial effort, Harold and Maude, which I’d describe as one of the best love stories in the history of cinema.

I wondered sometimes how the studio people reacted when you and Colin Higgins decided to film a love story about a suicidal rich-kid teenager and a 79-year-old feisty woman. Not to mention having this smart-dressed teenager Harold (Bud Cort) to hang himself in the living room during the film’s opening scene.

But as we quickly discover, it’s a fake suicide attempt to attract his …

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From the desk of guest reviewer, Jaili.

Dear Ms. Leigh,

When I saw that Kiss of Heat is Book 3 in Feline Breeds series, I assumed that it would be a standalone, anyway, just enough for me to get into the story easily. I mean, how hard could it be to catch up? Pretty easy, I’d say, but I had no idea how wrong I was.

Kiss of Heat is the story of Kane Tyler and Sherra who have enough issues to fill a six-piece luggage set. From what I gather so far, Sherra has a serious grudge against Kane Tyler for not honouring his promise he made to her some years ago. For not returning to save her from a pit of nightmares. And for not being there when she alone

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