Dear Ms. Haynes:
I hadn’t read you before and honestly, I didn’t think I would like this book. The reason for this isn’t grounded in any good reason, but a fairly superficial one, but I’ll articulate it in case other readers make these snap judgments.
I had started the book Fortune Hunter and read [...]

Dear Ms. Cumbie and Ms. McClanahan,
Your first book was a delight, second I haven’t read, third was a disappointment and fourth I almost didn’t read. Ha. Let that be a lesson to me. From the blurb, I knew that this would be more comedy and mystery than romance and in the [...]

Dear Ms Novik,
I’m so glad I waited until now to read “Empire of Ivory” even though I’ve had a copy in my hot little hands, well actually piled on top of my TBR heap by my computer, for months now. Something told me to wait, to keep it in reserve until closer [...]

Dear Ms. Spencer-Fleming
As I blogged a couple of days ago, this series has been a long time favorite of friend and fellow reader, Keishon. I trust Keishon’s judgment quite a bit. She’s led me to read some wonderful mystery authors. However, I long held back from reading this series because [...]

Dear Mrs. Davison,
Earlier this year I read your first novel “Duking Days:Rebellion.” As I said, it took me back to my early days of reading historical fiction rather than true romance books. When I finished it, I already had plans to read the sequel, “Duking Days: Revolution.” This story does take up exactly where [...]

Dear Ms. Giffin,
Exactly one hundred days to her marriage to her husband Andy, Ellen Graham literally crosses paths with her ex-boyfriend Leo. Ellen describes their encounter this way:
From the outside, say if you were a cabdriver watching frantic jaywalkers scramble to cross the street in the final seconds before the light changed, it [...]

Dear Ms. Grant,
I know you were disappointed with the last review I did here but I think part of my grade was due to the fact that I’d read, and enjoyed, so many of your past books. You were gracious enough to reply with civility and offer up your next book for review. A [...]

Dear Mr. Lanyon:
I don’t ordinarily look for gay fiction but in at the urging of Teddy Pig I picked up the Adrien English Mysteries which is a two novella* collection featuring the titular character, Adrien English, a gay bookstore owner and mystery writer with a bad heart, whose situation forces him into sleuthing.
These stories are [...]

Dear Ms. Cole:
As soon as I finished Dark Desires After Dusk, I went back to track rage demon Cadeon Woede’s character in Wicked Deeds on a Winter Night and Dark Needs at Night’s Edge (am I the only one who’s starting to feel these titles are blending into one long tongue twister?), curious to [...]

Dear Mrs. Rigler,
When your publicist queried DA about a possible review for your book “Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict,” I admit to groaning and rolling my eyes. Not another book designed to appeal to the Austeninistas, I thought. Can’t these authors think of their own plots and characters? Must they [...]

Dear Mrs Hoyt,
I love the beginning of a new series. New characters to meet, new situations to explore, new relationships to work out. Everything’s fresh and (hopefully) wide open. “To Taste Temptation” is, I believe, book one in what looks like a four book series if the fable at the start is our guide. Okay, [...]

Dear Ms. Napier:
This is the second of your books I have read, and it was selected purely by what was available on Fictionwise. Luckily for me, Price of Passion was a winner, an entertaining and smart interpretation of the enduring Harlequin Presents equation of plucky but overset heroine + darkly passionate and misunderstood hero [...]

Dear Readers,
Two more vol 1’s from Viz. But the first is a Vol 1 from CMX, another publisher who brings quality shoujo to the US.
Land of the Blindfolded by Tsukuba Sakura. CMX. Retail $9.99. Not rated, but I’d say high school and up. 9 volumes (complete in Japan and in the US.)
(I should mention [...]

Dear Readers,
Here are some more first volumes of shoujo series coming out:
B.O.D.Y. by Ao Mimori. Viz. Retail $9.99. T+ for older teen (kisses, sexual innuendo). 12 volumes (ongoing in Japan, just starting here this month)
I’d never heard of this title but I was taken with it from the first page. The drawing is clear, sharp, [...]

Dear Readers,
I got some first volumes of some shoujo series from Viz for review. I’ve not read any of the series, so I’ll just be providing my first impressions based upon all the Vol 1’s, a couple at a time.
Wild Ones by Kiyo Fujiwara. Viz. $9.99. T for Teen (innuendo, some cartoony violence). 6 volumes [...]

Dear Readers,
Some of you will wonder why on earth I’m reviewing a book that’s over 80 years old and was written by John Erskine a Columbia University professor of English who went on to also be the first president of the Juilliard School of Music. Well, the answer is kind of rambling. I [...]

Dear Mrs. Thomas,
By now I’m sure you’ve heard the accolades from other review sites of how this title might herald The Return to Great Historicals of yesteryear. How it takes a Victorian setting plus two well thought out lead characters and mixes them to yield a scrumptious book for those of us tired of [...]

Dear Ms. Koomson:
This was a book that Karen Scott reviewed a while back on her blog. It was available only for sale in the UK at the time and while Karen’s review was compelling, it wasn’t quite enough to get me to pay for the international shipping. I was really excited to have [...]

Dear Mrs. O’Reilly,
How do you do it? How do you make accountants sexy? No offense to any number crunchers out there, especially at this time of year, but the profession isn’t up there on the sexy-job-o-meter. Daniel’s brothers, the lawyer and the bartender, have jobs that could be considered babe-magnets but it takes a [...]

Dear Mrs Connolly,
I know we at DA (okay, me in particular) have harshed on some of your latest paranormal books but with “Met by Chance” I can happily say you’re cooking with gas again. After finishing this, I need to go back and try the first two books in this “Triple Countess” trilogy from [...]

Dear Ms. Andrews,
When I read your first novel, Magic Bites, I was struck by your fresh worldbuilding. Sometimes I feel like many urban fantasy novels feature similar worldbuilding details. Execution makes all the difference, of course, but because of those similarities, I really appreciate unique worldbuilding when a book presents it to me. That said, [...]

Dear Ms. Lofty,
Wow, what a great way to start off my new year’s reading. Yes, I actually finished this novella in early January but took my sweet time actually writing a letter about it. Real life is a beotch, doncha know?
I want to congratulate you on a wonderful, inventive plot. It’s one I’ve never [...]

Dear Ms. St. Claire:
Your books and I have had a rocky relationship. It has been up and down and now, I am glad to say, we are up again. First You Run is my favorite of your bodyguard series so far. It was tightly plotted with no lapses that pulled me out [...]

From Far Away by Kyoko Hikawa. Publisher: Viz. Retail: $9.99 each. 14/14 volumes released in English. Rated T for Teen (some fighting, no sex).
Dear Readers,

I’m starting to feel a little like Harriet Klausner, with all the positive manga reviews I’ve been doing. But everyone knows there’s a lot of mediocre manga out [...]

Dear Mrs. Merrill,
Thank you for sending me the arc of your newest Regency, “A Wicked Liaison.” I like how you stick to convention Regency lore yet still give us something new. Most of the titled characters are either villains, idiots or snobs while the hero is a plain Mister. Ah, bliss. And there’s no sudden [...]