Janine
 loves character-driven books written in lyrical prose. Attention to pacing is also important to her. Her favorite novel in the romance genre is Patricia Gaffney's fabulous To Have and to Hold. She also adores books by Laura Kinsale, Judith Ivory, and Sharon Shinn, among others. She'll read any genre of romance, as well as a smattering of fantasy, YA, mystery, chick lit, science fiction and short stories, but is most drawn to historical romance. Janine is now trying to write a romance herself, and finds that doing this well is one of the most challenging things she has ever attempted. She may or may not be biased, judge for yourself, but she genuinely thinks that her critique partners, Sherry Thomas, Meredith Duran, and Bettie Sharpe, are incredibly talented, and having them as friends is an embarrassment of riches.
Dear Ms. Green,
 I had heard about your book, The Husband She Couldn’t Forget, back in September and made a mental note to myself to purchase it, partly because I want to encourage more diversity in the genre, and buying a Silhouette Special Edition that features African American protagonists is a good way to do that, and partly because I have a soft spot for amnesia stories.
Unfortunately, like many mental notes I make to myself, this one went astray, and it wasn’t until your book was mentioned again during our recent discussion of cultural appropriation in romance that I bought the book and began to read it.
In the book’s prologue, we are introduced to Melanie Bishop. Melanie is holding a pregnancy test stick bearing negative results when her doorbell rings. She opens the door to be served with divorce papers. Melanie’s husband, Deion, has left her.
Melanie and Deion have been trying for years to have children, without much luck. Deion has done very well in an investment firm, and he and Melanie have all the trappings of success, but the emptiness of their home has made Melanie miserable. Melanie …
Dear Readers,
 Back in July of 2008, I reviewed Tangle XY, an anthology of short speculative m/m stories. Earlier this year, Blind Eye Books, the publisher of Tangle XY, came out with Tangle Girls, an f/f anthology. As with Tangle XY, some (not all) of the stories are multicultural, and many have fairy tale or science fiction elements, but in this anthology the commonality all the stories share is the focus on girls who love other girls. Here are my reviews of the six stories:
“Raccoon Skin” by J.D. EveryHope
In “Raccoon Skin,” Sophia, a college student, arrives at her parents’ home on a pre-dawn morning. After seeing that her parents’ trash can that has been upended by a raccoon, Sophia goes outside to put it back up, and while there, she sees crows attacking a golden eagle. The eagle falls to the snowy ground, and Sophia chases the crows away. Just as she is debating whether to take the eagle inside, the bird shifts shape and turns into a human girl — and not just any girl, but Sophia’s girlfriend, Caterina.
Caterina and Sophia met …
Dear Ms. Singh,
 Blaze of Memory begins shortly after Devraj Santos finds an unknown woman unconscious on his doorstep. Dev is the director of the Shine Foundation, an organization that assists the Forgotten and protects their children from those who would exploit their psychic powers.
For those who haven’t read the earlier books in the Psy/Changeling series, the Forgotten are the descendants of Psy who dropped out of the net that psychically links the members of that race. Those Psy intermarried with humans, and their descendants manifest psychic gifts that are frequently different from those of the Psy. Some of the high ranking Psy view the Forgotten as a threat, which is why they persecute them.
As director of the Shine Foundation, it is Dev’s role to put the Forgotten first at all times, and to do whatever is necessary to keep them from harm. Dev has a cold and ruthless side to his personality partly because of that, and partly because of his psy ability, which remains shrouded in mystery for much of the book but is said to involve metal. But despite his hard edges, Dev …
Dear Ms. Walsh,
 You don’t know me, but I sometimes lurk at your blog, Writer Unboxed, which is one of the best blogs for writers I know of. I’ve been following it since the days when you were writing this book, under the working title of Unbounded, so when Jane told me that we had been sent an ARC of The Last Will of Moira Leahy, I was interested in reading it.
The Last Will of Moira Leahy is narrated in both first person and third person. The first person sections take place in the present day and are narrated by twenty-five year old Maeve Leahy, the book’s main character. The third person sections take place between 1995 and 2000, and are mostly written in the POV of Maeve’s identical twin, Moira.
It becomes clear early in the present day story that Maeve lost her twin nine years ago at the age of sixteen, so although we are not told the details of how and why Moira’s life ended, we do know that the “Out of Time” third person sections, which begin when the twins are happy ten year olds, …
Dear Ms. Hart,
 I’ve enjoyed several of your books, and three of them, the novels Dirty and Broken, and the novella collection Pleasure and Purpose, are among the best books I’ve read in recent years. I was thrilled by Pleasure and Purpose and greatly looking forward to No Greater Pleasure, its sequel, so I’m genuinely sorry to report that I found the first half of the book unsatisfying enough to put the novel down unfinished. The following, then, will not be a full review but rather an attempt to articulate the reasons I stopped reading.
Like Pleasure and Purpose, No Greater Pleasure takes place in (to crib from my review of the earlier book) “a fantasy setting which resembles mid nineteenth century Europe in terms of its technological development.”
It is the prevailing religious belief that each time a soul finds perfect solace, even if only for a moment, an arrow appears in the god Sinder’s quiver. According to legend — and many people’s faith — when the quiver is full, Sinder, his wife and his son, The Holy Family, will reunite, bringing peace and harmony to mankind.
To that end, the Order of Solace
…
Dear Ms. Seidel,
 Your 1983 category, The Same Last Name, begins when three cars arrive at New York State’s Frank Lake State Park. One of the park’s forest rangers, twenty-five year old April Ramsey, greets the man who registers this group of six visitors. April directs the tourist to the best campsites for a group that size, and he gives her a list of the six visitors’ names and the telephone number of the law firm where all six work.
After the man leaves, April passes the list to a co-worker, Faith, and Faith calls April’s attention to the fact that one of the other lawyers shares April’s last name. April freezes in her tracks, because she and Christopher D. Ramsey III have more than their last name in common. The two used to be married.
At age eighteen, April was a bubbly, popular cheerleader from a small Virginia town. But she had never held a job, cooked, cleaned, or kept abreast of the news. April’s mother wanted her daughter to be popular and happy, and she did not prepare her daughter to cope with hardship.
When April began …
Dear Ms. Hart,
 Two of the many things I enjoyed about your erotic novella collection, Pleasure and Purpose, are the setting and the heroines’ background. All three novellas take place in a fantasy setting which resembles mid nineteenth century Europe in terms of its technological development. As far as I can tell, this world does not seem to contain magic, but underlying all the stories is a fascinating mythology that plays an important role in the characters’ lives.
It is the prevailing religious belief that each time a soul finds perfect solace, even if only for a moment, an arrow appears in the god Sinder’s quiver. According to legend — and many people’s faith — when the quiver is full, Sinder, his wife and his son, The Holy Family, will reunite, bringing peace and harmony to mankind.
To that end, the Order of Solace was created. The women who enter the order, called handmaidens, make it their task to bring solace to the patrons who engage their services. Sometimes doing that involves sex, but there is more to it than that. To give an idea of the handmaidens’ outlook, here are …
Dear Ms. Briggs,
 Even though I adored “Alpha and Omega” in the anthology On the Prowl, the story which introduced readers to the werewolves Charles and Anna, and also loved the first novel in the series which follows these characters, Cry Wolf, I’m not sure I’m the best person to review Hunting Ground, the latest entry in the Alpha and Omega series. That’s because I have a pattern of tending to lose interest in the second or third book of series which follow the same protagonists, and for this reason, I only rarely read them, and review them even more rarely.
I made an exception for Hunting Ground because when I first read “Alpha and Omega,” I fell in love with Charles and Anna. I felt that I could read about these characters forever and not tire of them. In fact by now I’ve read “Alpha and Omega” around seven times, and Cry Wolf around three.
For readers who are not familiar with them, let me introduce this endearing couple:
Charles is an over two hundred year old, half Native American werewolf. He is dominant enough to be an alpha, but his pack …
Dear Ms. Singh,
 Your Psy/Changeling series has me hooked. Set in a future and alternate Earth peopled by three races, humans, Psy, and changelings, the books feature dynamic characters, suspenseful plots and subplots, intricate world-building, and a lot of sexual and romantic tension. Though the world is dominated by the Psy, who are connected through a telepathic net, the changelings, who can shift form from animal to human, have slowly been gaining power, and it is they who are the focus of Branded by Fire, the sixth book in the series.
The story begins with a hot encounter between two changelings. Mercy, a sentinel for the DarkRiver leopard changeling pack, walks through the forest feeling the effects of eight months of abstinence. She is now the only one of the sentinels who is still unmated, and she worries she’ll remain that way. Mercy is dominant in her personality, and while she doesn’t want to walk all over a submissive man, she will also never allow someone else to boss her around. It’s a problem that other dominant females have sometimes been unable to resolve, and Mercy fears that even if she …
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