Dear Ms. London:
I can’t remember the last time I read a Julia London book. I thought that your books were more, well, flighty or frivolous. Maybe I got your name confused in my head with another author which happens not infrequently for me. In any event, I liked the [...]

Dear Ms. Salvatore,
I don’t think it’s unfair to say there are a lot of vampire books out there. Sometimes I feel like they should get their own category separate from paranormal books in general. But even so, I think your debut injected some light humor into a subgenre dominated by [...]

Dear Ms. Smith:
This was an interesting departure from the historical paranormals you’ve written and I think the setting and characters are a good fit for you. The voice sounds very natural. Before I Wake is more of an urban fantasy with a dash of romance than a true romance. It [...]

Dear Ms. Laverentz,
Recently I read one of Jane’s reviews of a sports themed novel (using football instead of hockey). You use the world of the NHL as the background for your hero, Eric Cameron. I’ll be honest and admit that I know just enough about hockey and medicine, the background of the heroine Dr. Emily [...]

Dear Ms. Pierce:
You are a new to me author and I have to say that this book has me conflicted. On the one hand it contains a lot of trite writing and plot elements: the merry band of friends, their loving wives who appeared in previous stories and are now [...]

Dear Ms. Medeiros:
Although I have Heather and Velvet sitting on a bookshelf in my house, I have not yet read it. In fact, Some Like It Wicked is my very first Teresa Medeiros book. That may have been a good thing, as I really had no expectations, but it also turned into a [...]

Dear Ms. Denison:
I think I read a Janelle Denison book before. Maybe in a category format? I can’t recall. Wild for Him is the seventh book in a Wilde series. The previous six books featured Wilde family members and this one starred Ben Cabrera, a friend of Joel Wilde. [...]

Dear Ms. Mallery:
I’ve gone on a bit of a Mallery glom and the readers here will have to suffer along with me. Delicious is the second book I read in the Buchanan series. I read book 2, Irresistible, first. I’m not sure whether knowing the outcome of the story in [...]

Dear Readers,
Since this review covers my responses to nine short stories and two novellas, I’ve decided that for the sake of clarity, it would be simper to address this letter to you rather than to eleven authors.
Tangle is an anthology featuring a variety of same-sex love stories. All the romances here have two heroes, [...]

Dear Ms. Roberts:
Usually your single title books work for me and work well. It’s the single titles, not the JD Robb books or the categories, that made me a fan. Unfortunately, I never quite grasped hold of the characters in Tribute. I like Cilla well enough but Ford, well, I did [...]

Dear Ms. Novak:

I liked the first book in this series, Trust Me, and I’ll definitely read the last book in this trilogy but the second entry, Stop Me, had issues that were difficult for me to overcome. The suspense part of the book was very good but the romance felt forced.
Jasmine Stratford receives a [...]

First up is one of my favorite Harlequin Presents author, Helen Brooks. Last month’s release wasn’t a favorite of mine but The Billionaire Boss’s Secretary Bride (I know, the title) is delicious. Gina Leighton is leaving her job as the personal secretary to the founder of an agricultural-machinery firm in [...]

Dear Ms. Bourne,
I was enthralled with the first half of your recent book, The Spymaster’s Lady. A smart hero, a plucky (in a good way) heroine and beautiful prose had the book well on the road to being a solid A for me. Unfortunately, in the second half of the book the heroine underwent [...]

Dear Ms. Saintcrow,
While I haven’t finished your Dante Valentine series, I enjoyed enough of what I read to seek out the first book in your new Jill Kismet series. I’ve said in the past that I do like reading about unsympathetic characters provided they’re compelling and the text doesn’t want me to [...]

Dear Ms. McCarty:
You’ve been a long time member of the romance blogosphere and I’ve wanted to read one of your books for quite some time. Your fan base is deep and devoted and you clearly write work that resonates strongly with them. Unfortunately, I never really connected with the stories in this [...]

Dear Ms. Ward,
It might be an understatement to say your previous novel, Lover Unbound, elicited some very passionate reactions from readers. I can’t say I disagree with those criticisms. Even though I ended up liking the book because it developed John Matthew’s storyline, the main romance drove me insane for so [...]

Of the three books reviewed below, two have that distinct HP feel to them replete with the high powered arrogant hero and the less empowered female. The two with the distinctive HP evoked more emotional response than the first one, His Mistress by Arrangement, but I gave higher marks to HMbA because it focused [...]

Dear Ms. Gibson,
Though I have read all of your books, in all honesty I’m not sure why. I liked your first book, Simply Irresistible, quite a bit, and loved your second, Truly, Madly Yours. Since then, your books have ranged from mediocre (I show five B- grades in my book log, which goes back [...]

Hot for You by Jodi Lynn Copeland. This is a friends to lovers story (the first of two in the anthology). Carinna was a cocktail waitress at The Liege, a resort in Las Vegas. She likes her men like her martinis “dirty as a girl could get ‘em.” [...]

Dear Ms VanEperen,
I hadn’t read a contemporary in a while and since I’d been meaning to try one of your books, I picked “Willow Spring.” The second-chance-at-love plot is also a favorite of mine, so with no vampires or werewolves likely to pop up anywhere, I fired this one up on the old Ipaq.
Overall, I [...]

Billionaire’s Virgin Bride by Helen Brooks – Brooks is becoming my favorite HP author but this one disappointed me. It sounded dated and didn’t have the smoothness in storytelling as her past ones. Zeke Russell and Melody Taylor were engaged to be married until Melody’s mother took photographs of Zeke with [...]

Dear Ms. Hauf,
I understand that this is the first offering from Nocturne Bites, the new Harlequin/Silhouette line of paranormal novellas. I wasn’t sure what to expect since I’ve never read any of your previous work and paranormal novellas can be hit or miss with me.
Sunday is a female mechanic who lives out in the [...]

Dear Ms. Melton:
You are a new to me author and I had heard good things about you so I was happy to try you out. While this book didn’t work for me, I am still interested in reading other books by you, either future or past works. The main reason that I struggled [...]

Dear Ms. Showalter,
Although your previous works haven’t worked as well for me as I’d hoped, I was intrigued when I heard about your new series, The Lords of the Underworld. Pandora’s box? Hell? A horde of ravenous demons? Not only did the premise feature some of my favorite story elements, it sounded fresh and original, [...]

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 [...]