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

Dear Ms. Johnston:

I know I haven’t read you in a long time, but when I got an ARC of this book I confess that I just had to read it. Tall, dark, and gorgeous always does it for me.  Thankfully, the characters lived up to the cover and despite some small problems here and there, I’m pretty much hooked on the “Fabulous Fourteen”.

Benjamin Benedict is one of fourteen kids between the mixed marriages of Foster Benedict and Abigail Coates Benedict Hamilton.  Foster and Abby had five boys with the youngest, Darlington, dying at the age of 4.  In the emotional year after Darlington’s death, Foster dallied with a waitress once and got her pregnant. Abby left him.  They both remarried. Foster to Pasty Taggart and Abby to Senator Hamilton.  Foster took Ben and Carter. Abby kept the youngest, Rhett, and the oldest, Nash, refused to leave his mother.

All of the Benedect boys (including Black Sheep, Ryan, the bastard) have gone to military school and then into the armed forces.  Ben got out of the army and now is an agent for ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), a division of homeland security.  What Ben’s family …

Dear Ms. Cantrell,

Back in October 2007, in one of our Publishing News posts, Jane detailed a little bit of information about your debut novel with a header, “Jayne, are you reading this?” Yep, I read it and was delighted when you followed up this year with an offer for us to review the book. It’s dark, it’s dangerous, it’s bittersweet and while I was reading it, I couldn’t put it down.

Echoes of my footfalls faded into the damp air of the Hall of the Unnamed Dead as I paused to stare at the framed photograph of a man. He was laid out against a riverbank, dark slime wrapped around his sculpted arms and legs. Even through the paleness and rigidity of death, his face was beautiful. A small, dark mole graced the left side of his cleft chin. His dark eyebrows arched across his forehead like bird wings, and his long hair, dark now with water, streamed out behind him. Watery morning light from high windows illuminated the neat grid of black-and-white photographs lining the walls of the Alexanderplatz police station. One hundred frames displayed the faces and postures of Berlin’s most recent unclaimed dead.

…

Dear Ms. Holley:

I bought this ebook because it was a new release from Samhain and because I found you entertaining and interesting on Twitter. (I think we shared a bad attitude Twitter day). I hadn’t realized when I bought and read it that it had been reviewed by Sarah over at SmartBitches. While I don’t disagree with Sarah’s comments about the flaws in the book, I would rate this book higher than a C- and here’s why.

Lark Manning has had a crush on Detective Taran Lloyd since forever. His family took her in when her parents died and her youthful hero worship has evolved into something much more adult. Unfortunately Taran hasn’t noticed that she has grown up and Lark is reluctant to force the issue for fear of rejection. Family dinners would be no fun.

What Lark doesn’t know but we, as the reader, do know is that Detective Taran Lloyd has not only noticed that Lark Manning has grown into a very hot woman but that she is his mate. He hasn’t figured out how to broach the mate subject with Lark. For the past …

Dear Ms. Hutchinson,

Firefighters are hot sexy thangs, so it’s easy to see why you picked that profession for this installment of the Courage Bay (Code Red) series. Wow, lots of stuff appears to be happening in this small, picturesque SoCal location including two people falling in love while they fight fires, rescue cats and solve an undercover investigation.

Shannon O’Shea is one of only two women in the fire department in Courage Bay, CA. She’s earned her spot though hard work, dedication and being in such top condition that she’s called “Biceps” by her fellow firemen. That and the fact that she arm wrestled, and beat, a fellow probie when his repeated attempts to ask her out annoyed her.

But John Forrester, newly arrived firefighter from NYC, lights her fires and quickly becomes very important to Shannon. She knows there’s something he’s not telling her. Is it related to the two mysterious warehouse fires that occurred? And is what he’s not telling her bad or good?

I love the calls out the squad gets. Some pathos mixed with humans at their hysterical, whacked out best. What people won’t do… The details about the station …

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 about the incorporation of Very Famous People in books. But! I am so glad that I did get this as an ARC because I actually thought the book was great and I wouldn’t have read it had it not been sent to me.

Mariah Eller is a widow whose sole inheritance from her deceased husband is the Eller-Stapleton Inn. One evening she is called to the Inn because several wealthy gentlemen were about to smash out the windows, molest her serving girl, and generally destroy the inn. Worse, because the so called gentlemen have signed her register under fake names (Jack Sprat, Jack B Nimble, Union Jack, Jack A. Dandy, Jack Ketch, Jack O. Lantern), she can’t even hold them responsible if they do wreak havoc. Her only choice is to lull them into a drunken stupor. …

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. Dahl:

Now that I’ve read three of your novels, I see a pattern in your heroines: they are extremely jealous of their independence, convinced that no man can be depended on, and afraid of showing themselves completely to the world.  I appreciate these qualities in a genre that too often holds its heroines to unreasonable standards of nobility, gentility, and congeniality.  All of which is another way of saying that I enjoyed Lori Love, the heroine of Start Me Up, and her difficult path toward the kind of happiness she had more or less given up on the moment she had to leave college and move back home to take care of her father and his car repair business.  I did not find the book to be as strong as last year’s Talk Me Down, but it was still very readable.

In Talk Me Down, we meet Lori as Molly Jennings’s childhood friend, a woman whose tomboy wardrobe, no-nonsense mien, and skills as a mechanic earn her a reputation as the town lesbian.  Lori has no real interest in changing anyone’s opinion of her, as the label gives her a certain amount of freedom from …

Dear Ms. Palmer

I admit that I read this because I had heard, early on, that this book had similarities to the JR Ward brotherhood series. I can’t help but think that pre publicity buzz was intentional. Ward’s Brotherhood series is hot, hot, hot, and anything that sounds like/looks like The Black Dagger Brotherhood is going to get some attention.

It wasn’t the similarities to the Ward series (and there are a few) that made the story drag for me, it was actually the lack of emulation.  Ward series excels, in part, because it is completely over the top. If you are going to have silly names and a somewhat silly storyline, you really have to bring it as an author. Instead, first installment of the Feral Warrior series came in with an emo sigh instead of a roar.

The Feral Warrior series is based on a band of shapeshifters who protect a Radiant, a woman through whom the power of nature is funneled (this imagery tends to remind me of the Angel of Death in the Raiders of the Lost Ark movie). The Radiant ascends and then through living and sexual energy derived through congress …

Dear Ms. Chase:

After I read last year’s book, Your Scandalous Ways, I knew my expectations were going to be set incredibly high for anything that came after.  And thankfully, Don’t Tempt Me is not a book in the same vein, but instead hearkens back to the Carsington series, especially Miss Wonderful and Mr. Impossible.  A hero who has suffered a great loss and who copes by putting on a distracting outward display and a heroine who lives on the margins of polite society’s rules and whose innocence does not equate to naïveté. And while Don’t Tempt Me possessed a number of charms of its own, somewhere between my high expectations and the echoes of other books, I was not as tempted to love it as I hoped I would be.

From the beginning, little Zoe Octavia Lexham, aka “The Bolter,” was a pain in Lucien de Gray’s young neck.  Although when Lucien came under the guardianship of Lord Lexham, following a tragic series of illnesses and accidents claiming both his parents and older brother, Zoe was also a “bright, bright spot in his life.”  He was the only one she seemed to listen to, and she …

Dear Ms. White,

Last November, I recommended your book “Redeeming Gabriel.”Since then, I’ve made it a point each month to check the historical offerings from the Steeple Hill line. When I saw this new book, I jumped on it and was happy to discover that it’s a (slight) sequel to the first one. I enjoyed “Crescent City Courtship” very much and it confirms that you are an author whose books I will look for.

When Abigail Neal hammers on the doors of Charity Hospital for a doctor to attend her laboring room mate, she wants a real doctor, not some “still wet behind the ears” student wannabe. Unfortunately, she gets John Braddock who stiffly informs her that he’s quite capable of handling the situation.

Only the labor has gone on too long and the baby can’t be saved. John is devastated by what he sees as his failure as a doctor and horrified by the conditions in which these two poor women live. The mother is far too weak to remain there so, along with Abigail and the poor wrapped baby, he takes her to the clinic located at Dr. Laniere’s residence.

And it’s here that a world …

Dear Ms. Winfree:

I can’t recall why I purchased this book but I bought it a couple of months ago with two other books from Samhain. It could have been a “new” book or it could have been on the bestseller list. Those usually influence my purchases at Samhain.  I thought it had good suspense and a very nice romance that was often complicated by attention paid to other romances which had taken place prior to the setting of Facing It.

Ruthie Chason is in a terrible marriage.  When she finds information that Stephen, her husband, is engaged in criminal behavior, she gets up the courage to grab her children and leave.   Her brother, Tick Calvert, is Sheriff of Chandler County.  She runs to him.

Tick recognizes that Ruthie has to hide while he figures out the best way to apprehend Stephen and make sure the evidence is good enough that Stephen gets put away for a long time.  Both Ruthie and Tick know that if Stephen catches her, Ruthie is a dead woman.  Tick calls on his friend and deputy Chris Parker to take Ruthie and her three children with him to St. …

Note: It will be hard to totally avoid spoilers in this review.

Dear Laura Baumbach and Josh Lanyon,

Dr. Sarah read and recommended “Mexican Heat” back in February but it’s taken me this long for a spare moment to check it out. Hot action, hot love and hot loving all rolled up in one book. I can see why Dr. Sarah likes it.

I’ll use the Samhain blurb because 1) I’m lazy and 2) it’ll sorta, kinda avoid spoilers. At least at this point.

SFPD detective Gabriel Sandalini might as well have put a gun to his own head. One red-hot sexual encounter in a bar’s back room has put two years of deep undercover work in jeopardy—two years of danger and deception as he worked his way into crime boss Ricco Botelli’s inner circle. Gabriel can’t afford emotional entanglements. Hell, he can’t afford emotions. But that was before he had a name to pin on that anonymous one-off—Miguel Ortega.

Miguel Ortega doesn’t trust anyone, but tough, street-smart Gabriel brings out the conquistador in his Spanish blood. But distractions are nothing short of deadly right now, not with his boss’s impending marriage to Botelli’s sister, which will ensure peace—and

…

Dear Ms. Quinn:

Confession time. I don’t remember much about The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever.  I vaguely remember Olivia, best friend of Miranda, younger sister of the hero but her flavor wasn’t with me when I started What Happens in London. I don’t know if that is good or bad but I highly enjoyed What Happens. It is sweet, funny and romantic. Can’t ask for much more from a romance book.

Olivia is the only daughter of the Earl of Rudland. She is very, very pretty. Has received a multitude of marriage proposals, all of which have been rejected and is currently being courted by a Prince.  Olivia’s problem is that she is bored now that Miranda has married her brother and hied off to the country-side.  Olivia finds herself gossiping with some nitwits who suggest her new neighbor killed his fiance. She has nothing better to do so for five days she spies on her neighbor while he is in his study.  She notices that he wears a funny hat with plumes and that he furtively tossed a whole sheaf of papers in the fireplace!  Olivia is intrigued.

Sir Harry is annoyed that Olivia is spying on …

Captain Blood (1935)
Captain Blood (DVD 2005 Turner Entertainment Co and Warner Bros Entertainment)
Grade A-
Genre: Romance/Swashbuckling/Pirate

I had so much fun doing my last Friday Film review that I decided to comb through my DVD collection and see what else might be suitable. Captain Blood is one of the epic pirate movies which set the standard for Hollywood historical action films for years to come. I first saw this as a teenager. I loved it! And then I discovered it was an adaptation from a book so I hunted that down and, wait a minute!, the author, Rafael Sabatini, wrote lots of similarly styled books. I was in heaven then. So not only did I fall in love with the movie but I ended up getting years of reading enjoyment out of it. Not a bad bargain.

Peter Blood, bachelor of medicine, is caught up against his will in the attempt to overthrow King James II (boo hiss). Called out to tend to a wounded rebel, Blood cares little for the man’s politics until he too is swept up by the King’s soldiers and sent to jail to await trial with the rest of the rebels. There he’s condemned and faces death …

Dear Ms. Harte:

I was interested in this story because it featured a shapeshifter of an unusual kind: birds of prey. Cullen Whitefeather is a part of the Ac-taw, the name for those who shape shift. Cullen’s other form is that of a golden eagle. Cullen and his family live in Cougar Falls, an area that is protected by a mystical totem which allows only those who are Ac-taw to find the place.

Cullen has visited the local diner nearly every morning to have coffee and waffles and to ogle Sarah Duncan, the waitress, for whom he has unrequited feelings. After Sarah is attacked by a jealous gaggle of raptors, Cullen takes her wounded body home with him where they await Ac-taw justice.

I did appreciate the attention given to the bird of prey habitat and behavior. You took careful effort to show how Cullen and Sarah were different types of shapeshifters. The battle scenes between the birds of prey was also unique and very well done. The mannerisms of the animals were also well incorporated throughout the book. Cullen’s mother calls …

Dear Ms. Rowland:

I’ve been stuck in a reading rut for months. Nothing has appealed to me.  Even books I was dying to get my hands on 6 months ago have languished away unread on my bookshelves.  After I explained my situation to Jane, she recommended your work and I’m glad that she did.  I  did have some trouble getting into the story and had issues with the characters, but ultimately it proved to be an entertaining book.

Kara Gillian is a Detective in a small town not too far from New Orleans. She’s also a summoner of demons.  Perhaps because of this, Kara has been fascinated for years by the unsolved Symbol Man murders and what she believes may be the involvement of the arcane arts in said murders.  When a body is found with strikingly similar injuries to the previous victims, Kara is pulled from her detective work in white collar crimes for her first homicide investigation.

While Kara is trying to stay one step ahead, or at least not too many behind, the Symbol Man and his steadily increasing body count, she’s also experiencing some demon trouble.  One night while attempting to summon a lower …

Ruthless Tycoon, Inexperienced Mistress by Cathy Williams

Cesar is tired of bailing his younger brother out of hot water so when Ferdinado asks for access to his trust fund, Cesar heads out to see who it is that has her gold digging claws in Ferndando. He finds not a statuesque model blonde, but a mannish, petite redhead. Not Ferdinado’s type and certainly not his. The two get stuck in a snowstorm. They have sex. Jude becomes pregnant and the real fireworks begin. Cesar is standard HP hero (alpha, hot, assholic). Jude isn’t a doormat but falls pretty easily for Cesar. B-
This book can be purchased at Amazon or in ebook format from Sony or other etailers.

Up Close and Dangerously Sexy by Karen Anders

Given that the haikus have come to a close here at Dear Author, I submit my own:
Stranger danger here
As long as he gives good Os
No worries, she thinks

I stopped after the second scene. The heroine is in the sister’s apartment. Some stranger comes in and thinks she’s the heroine’s twin. He gets in bed with her and brings her to orgasm with his hand. “She …

Dear Mrs. Mueller,

To begin, congratulations on your first print book. I liked the different “Impressionistic” cover. Your publisher did very well by you but I must say that I hope a less expensive, paperback edition will eventually be available for readers in the US.

Two years ago, The Honorable Miss Sophie Greenwood had just arrived in London for her first Season when it was over before it had barely begun. Her father’s attempt to increase the family fortune ended up costing them almost everything they had. But what was worse, at least in the eyes of the ton, was her mother’s desperate attempts to marry her off before the news became widely known.

She was unsuccessful, Sophie was humiliated and the family retreated to their modest country estate. Her brother bought a commission in the Army with what little funds they could scrape together and since then, Sophie has endured her mother’s tantrums and veiled comments making Sophie out to be the villain of the story.

She looks at her bleak future with dread until the day Mariah, a cousin, arrives with Lady Sandbourne who is to present Mariah for her first Season. Mariah has inveigled an …

Evangeline Anderson’s books are my dirty little secret, my secret shame, my love that dare not speak its name. I don’t know WHY her writing makes me feel oh so fulfilled but in such a wonderful dirty way, but it does. They’re so full of *angst* and *melodrama* and *gay for you* and all the things that usually just make me roll my eyes. But they’re quick reads, hott! as anything, rollicking good fun, and you totally don’t notice the huge gaping plot holes until after you’re done and REreading the damn thing when you go, Hur? (like I just did). Her books are the one reading habit I’m ashamed of, but it’s the squidgy, yummy shame that you just want to share with people. So let me share…

Str8te Boys is pretty much dorm porn with extra-angst. It’s a short little story–under 70 pages–but so much fun. It’s told completely from the third-person perspective of Maverick (ORLY? I mean, that name? Really?!), an arrow-straight (uh-huh) jock at the end of his senior year of college, who happens to play “gay chicken” with even straighter, party animal roommate and …

A couple of weeks ago there was a lot of contention on Dear Author because of an F review for Trinity Blacio’s The Claiming. In the midst of the usual cache of mean girl accusations were also a lot of intersecting issues related to the elements that we each take into consideration when deciding whether a book is good or bad, works for us or doesn’t. And one of the reasons I think conversations like the one over The Claiming become so heated is that we don’t always separate out the various quantitative and qualitative measures that go into our responses, the overlapping issues of correctness, style, and taste, especially when there are so many people talking around and through so many nuances of our specific responses.

I tend to be a somewhat analytical reader by nature, so when I endeavor to review a book, one of the first things I do is start breaking down each of these categories as they relate to the book, weighing and measuring how each worked for me and how much of each shaped my experience of reading.

Correctness

Correctness is a measure of how well the author conforms to basic rules of …

Dear Ms. Duran:

I was probably the only member of the Dear Author reviewing team that didn’t love your freshman debut, DUKE OF SHADOWS. For me, it read like a love story between you and India and not so much a love story between the characters. I admit that despite the urging of your critique partner, Janine, that I was reluctant to read your follow up book. I put off reading it until recently when I cracked it open just to read the first couple chapters and ended up not being able to put it down.

It’s obvious from the categorization of this post that I gave the book an A. It’s the first without qualification A I’ve given in a long time but I tried to look for flaws and couldn’t find them. This is a story that was technically masterful as well as being a great love story. I think it’s a book in which I would find new layers and meaning each time I read it.

Lydia Boyce is a spinster, living with her sister who is married to the man that Lydia thought she would marry. She’s plainer than …

Dear Ms. Leto,

My main problems with romantic suspense books are that sooner or later, someone’s got to act like an idiot or lose all common sense in order to have a reason to save or be saved. No way around this, it seems. I just prefer to not see characters I’m supposed to like acting like morons. So, why do I keep reading this type book? Because there are some rom susp books which have worked wonderfully for me and I’m always looking for the next one. The critical factor appears to be: can the author persuade me to go along with the characters and their actions or does my kitty get an ear load as I complain?

Attorney Faith Lawton steps outside the courthouse. Shots ring out from a nearby rooftop. The concrete around Faith explodes with expended bullets as a pair of strong arms pulls her back into the building….

Faith Lawton welcomes the strong embrace of chief of detectives Adam Guthrie—for the moment. His fast actions save her life. But it’s nothing personal. They’re adversaries in the courtroom and out—in spite of their often sexually charged exchanges. Now Adam’s convinced she was the

…

Dear Ms. Krentz:

This book was published in 1989 but I don’t think I read it until the early 1990s. My copy was used and I recall that I had purchased it used in its original Harlequin Temptation iteration. Since that time, it has been re-released by Harlequin at least twice more. I anxiously await for it to come out in ebook format. (Hint. Hint.)  The thing that I remember most about this book is that it was the first one that started out with the hero and heroine in bed together.

Juliana Grant is a tall, confident, passionate business woman.  When Travis Sawyer first met her, a relationship is that last thing on his mind but she embodied everything he had ever wanted in a woman.  Travis, a business consultant, had sought out Juliana because she was the only member of the Grant he had not yet met.  He begins to woo her under the guise of offering his consulting services for her burgeoning coffee shop empire.  Travis plans to crush the Grant family because they promised him a part of the business when he saved their bacon but reneged when …

Dear Mrs. Bylin,

Until recently, Readers looking for a western set, historical romance have had to hunt. Now there seems to be a growing number to feed our need for American historicals on the western frontier. But while some still feature the standard gunslinger, yours offers something different. A Bible slinging hero who’s already fallen to his lowest and a heroine who mistrusts religion.

Adie Clark runs a boarding house in Denver, Colorado and, up til now, has stuck to her policy of only renting to women. Adie’s known what it is to be a woman alone, with little money and few prospects. So when a gaunt man collapses on her front porch in the middle of the night, her first thought is to get rid of him quickly. But he’s not a drunk and offers her twice the normal rent to be allowed to stay. Needing the money for the mortgage payment, Adie reluctantly agrees to a week stay.

Events take a turn when one of Adie’s mistrustful boarders shoots the man in the shoulder when she feels threatened by him. Now Adie’s stuck with him and terrified that the longer he stays, the more …

Dear Ms. Jordan:

Oh, how I wanted to like this book. You are one of my favorite HP authors but I’ll be the first to admit that when you miss, it’s spectacular.

At the funeral of his youngest half brother, Falcon Leopardi learns of a terrible act perpetrated on a young woman. His deceased brother took it upon himself to drug a shy girl who refused his advances, raped her, impregnated her, and then refused to support the child once it was born.

Falcon immediately sets off to find the mother and the child to bring honor back to the Leopardi name. It is not easy to find Annie (whose last name apparently was so unimportant that I wonder if it was included. I could not find it for the review). Annie had taken her baby and ran away, fearing that her stepbrother would bring some harm upon Ollie. Falcon did find them and gave Annie a choice. Stay in London and live hand to mouth or come to Sicily and allow your child to be given every opportunity. Annie realizes there is no choice and goes to Sicily with …