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. Hart,
 Bess Walsh needs time away from her unhappy marriage. She finds it at the beach house she inherited from her parents. There, in the water, Bess fantasizes about Nick, the boy she loved and lost twenty years before. She touches herself and soon she feels Nick touching her. The lovemaking is intense, unforgettable.
But the next morning Bess is shocked to see that her fantasy lover hasn’t evaporated with the night. Nick is still there, and though physically he hasn’t aged a day since they parted company twenty years earlier, he feels solid and corporeal, and has an emotional maturity he did not have back in those days.
Bess has missed Nick so badly that she does not want to question his reappearance or interrogate his twenty year old disappearance. She knows it must involve something that she won’t like hearing. Instead, she drowns the questions in touch, in passionate sex that makes the rest of the world fade away.
Bess and Nick’s past is revealed in chapters that alternate with the present day storyline. Back then, Bess was a twenty year old college student who came to Bethany Beach …
Dear Ms. Marchetta,
 I have a bone to pick with you. I’ve got a packed read-and-review schedule for the next month or so, and I need to be able to move from book to book. But you’ve made that impossible. Yes, I blame you. It’s your fault that your book, Jellicoe Road, left me so drained and dazed that I can’t read anything else.
I tried. I tried a sexy historical romance. I tried a contemporary erotic novel. I tried a thought-provoking science fiction story. I tried one of my very favorite books from last year. I even eyed another YA. I put them all back down after a page or two.
It’s not that they were bad. They just weren’t your book. They weren’t Jellicoe Road.
It really isn’t fair of you to write a book that’s so beautiful and powerful that everything else pales in comparison.
Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, let me explain that when I picked up this book to read for Keishon’s TBR challenge, I was cheating a bit. Yes, technically speaking Jellicoe Road was …
Dear Ms. Jewel,
 It isn’t easy to summarize the plot of your newest book, the paranormal My Forbidden Desire, and doing so necessitates giving away some spoilers for the first book in the series, My Wicked Enemy. That’s because the series is set against a backdrop of a complex battle between paranormal beings known as demons or fiends and humans who possess magic, called mages or witches.
It’s established in both books that centuries ago, fiends sometimes took advantage of normal, “vanilla” humans using their powers, whereupon some humans developed magical abilities that they used to keep the fiends in check. By the time the series begins, though, mages and witches have long been abusing their power over the fiends by killing some of them to increase their own lifespans, and taking others “mageheld,” a practice which allows a powerful mage to control nearly every action of the fiend in his possession.
In the first book in this series, My Wicked Enemy, Xia was one such mageheld fiend. He was controlled by the mage Rasmus Kessler, who commanded him to commit terrible crimes, up to and including murder. Xia could do …
Note: This is Janine’s entry for Keishon’s To Be Read challenge.
Dear Ms. Frierson,
 It is 1953 in Plumville, Georgia, and seven year old Benjamin Drummond considers four year old Coralee “Ceelee” Simmons his best friend. Little Bennie loves to read to Ceelee and is determined to protect her from the bullying of Tommy Birch. But when Bennie announces that he wants to marry Ceelee when they grow up, his mother insists that Ceelee’s mother stop bringing her to their house.
In Florence Drummond’s eyes, it won’t do for the two children to remain close. Coralee’s mother, Patty, is Florence’s housekeeper, while Florence’s husband is a state judge in whose footsteps Benjamin is expected to follow. But that can’t happen if Benjamin remains so openly friendly toward Ceelee. Benjamin is white; Coralee is black. The two must be separated.
Flash forward fifteen years to 1968. Benjamin and Coralee are both attending the newly integrated Solomon College in Bakersfield, not far from Plumville. Twenty-two year old Benjamin is a senior political science major, football team quarterback, and a member of a “Good ole Omega Kappa Psi” fraternity. …
Janine: When Jaili (Maili) and I recently found out we were reading the same little-known book from 2008, Dru Pagliassotti’s Clockwork Heart, we thought it would be fun to discuss it here at Dear Author. But first, a plot synopsis:
 Clockwork Heart takes place in a fictional Industrial Age city-state called Ondinium. One of Ondinium’s industries is the mining of ondium, a precious metal lighter than air. Ondium is used to make wings for Ondinium’s icarii, flying messengers allowed to travel freely between Ondinium’s three sectors.
Ondinium is a divided city. Its citizens worship a goddess known as the Lady of the Forge and believe in reincarnation. Most of Ondinium’s citizens are divided into three castes, and the members of each caste live in separate sectors, and have their caste marks tattooed on their cheeks. Upper caste citizens are believed to be more enlightened than others, and are referred to as exalted. In theory the icarii, who do not belong to any caste, don’t have to defer to them, but the reality is different.
The story begins when its heroine, an icarus named …
Dear Ms. Stuart,
 Newlywed Rachel Chapman Middleton has been living in her husband’s hometown, the sleepy college hamlet of Silver Falls, Washington, for only a few months when the body of a young woman is discovered. It’s an especially unwelcome shock for Rachel because she married David Middleton, a respected college professor, in large part to put another murder behind her and her daughter.
Rachel has been a single mom ever since she gave birth to Sophie at the age of seventeen. After her fundamentalist parents disowned her for giving birth out of wedlock, Rachel and Sophie traversed the world like nomads, finding a new place whenever the old one bored them. Rachel worked as a photographer, but the life on the go which she and thirteen-year-old Sophie so enjoyed came to an abrupt standstill when Tessa, a friend of Sophie’s, was brutally murdered.
Fortunately or unfortunately, David Middleton swept into Rachel’s life following Tessa’s death and offered Rachel the stability and security she felt her daughter desperately needed. David was Rachel’s rock in those days, a kind, caring man and a bulwark of safety. Rachel and Sophie relocated …
Dear Ms. Day,
 Last May, when I reviewed Wicked Gentlemen, Ann Somerville recommended some m/m romances to me. I checked out excerpts from the books she mentioned, and of them all, A Strong and Sudden Thaw stood out the most.
I purchased a copy of the book intending to read and probably review it, but not long after that, you posted that the publisher which originally put out your book in October 2006, Iris Print, was sending you royalty checks that bounced. Since you officially requested that readers not purchase new copies of A Strong and Sudden Thaw, I was torn over whether to review the book. I didn’t so much make a decision not to do it, as was enticed by the many other books clamoring for my attention, and as time passed, I forgot about my good intentions to review your book.
But this story has a happy ending. In July, Iris Print went out of business, and two and a half months ago, a new edition of A Strong and Sudden Thaw was published by Lethe Press. …
DISCLAIMER: So as to avoid the appearance of impropriety in this conversational review by Joan/Sarah F. and Janine., Joan/Sarah F. says: “I acted as a first-reader for MHT on this story. While I wouldn’t say I was a critique partner or even a beta-reader, MHT did send me this story to see if I thought it got BDSM right. As I had nothing to correct, my input (”OMG! It’s fantastic!”) had no effect on the finished product.” Janine says: “I don’t know the author at all and only read the review copy with which DA was provided.” We encourage you to seek out other reviews should this review leave you with some questions about whether this story would work for you.
Janine: Adam is vacationing on a tropical island with his friend Stacy. As the story opens, Adam has been eyeing Brett, a fellow tourist, but because of Stacy’s drunken antics, he does not have much opportunity to approach the man he desires.
After lusting from afar, Adam get his chance when their tour bus stops and Brett struggles to use his digital camera. Adam gives Brett a few pointers and takes the opportunity to flirt …
Dear Ms. Jewel,
 Scandal is the first book of yours I have read, but it won’t be the last.
The book begins when Gwilym, Earl of Banallt, arrives at Havenwood in autumn of 1814. Banallt is a guest of John Mercer, who does not realize that his widowed sister Sophie has a previous acquaintance with Banallt.
When she was only seventeen, Sophie ran off with a fortune hunter and married him over the anvil at Gretna Green. It created a scandal, and Sophie was cut off by her family. It was during the years of her marriage that Sophie became acquainted with Banallt.
It is clear from the very beginning that although he has not seen her in two years, Banallt had strong feelings for Sophie. He hopes that seeing her will confirm his hopes that those feelings are now dead and gone. Banallt, who was also married when he first met Sophie, is now widowed and needs to marry again soon in order to continue his line.
But when he sees Sophie, Banallt realizes that his feelings for her are still alive and acute. Acting on a powerful instinct, Banallt asks …
Dear Ms. Rutland,
 Your book, No Crystal Stair, came to my attention a couple of years ago when I was perusing Library Journal’s best books of the year lists from previous years. Back in 2001, Library Journal designated No Crystal Stair one of the five best romances of 2000. I was intrigued enough by that to hunt down a copy of the book, but it went into my TBR pile and did not emerge from it until I recently picked it up again thanks to Keishon’s TBR challenge.
This month’s assignment from Keishon was to read “Historical romance or fiction or mystery.” I have loads of historical romance as well as some historical fiction and historical mystery in my TBR pile, most of it set during the 19th century. This book stood out from the rest of the pile in two ways: it takes place during the 20th century, and the characters it follows are African Americans who must face obstacles which include Jim Crow and prejudice.
Published by Harlequin’s Mira Books division as general fiction, No Crystal Stair follows one couple, as well as …
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