Archive for the 'Book Reviews' Category
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 …
 Updated: We are extending the promotion until Friday (today) at 11:59 pm EST.
Avon put together this really lovely giveaway to celebrate the start of the new Stephanie Laurens‘ series, The Black Cobra Quartet. The premise of the Black Cobra Quartet is that there is a British traitor who is the head of the Black Cobra cult, an organization that is terrorizing villages and setting up a reign of fear in Bombay. Evidence has been gathered to deliver to the England but given the scope of the Black Cobra influence, it is determined that the four British officers who have this information will split up and make their way back to England separately in hopes that at least one of them will be able to deliver the incriminating evidence and put a stop to the Black Cobra.
You can read the prelude to the series here and the first 20 % of the launch title,
Untamed Bride, here.
The winner of this contest will be sent this gorgeous Vera Bradley bag stuffed full of the entire Laurens backlist (almost 30 titles). To enter, simply …
Dear Ms. Campbell:
 I read your controversial debut and while I appreciated the chances you took, it didn’t inspire me to read your other books. When Captive of Sin arrived on my doorstep, I thought I would give the book a chance.
Sir Gideon Trevithick finds a woman cowering in the stable where his horse is quartered. She has clearly been beaten and when he extends his mantle of protection, she would rather be alone and in pain that accept his help. Gideon will not be gainsayed and sweeps the woman into his carriage and away from the perceived danger. He vows that he will not only protect her but he will not harm her himself.
Lady Charis Weston is one of the wealthiest women in England. Her stepbrothers are trying to force her into marriage with another man to pay off their debts. Charis refuses. She is only a few months away from gaining control over her fortune. Her stepbrothers engage in a series of small punishments which crescendo into threats of rape and of actual physical abuse. She runs away with no clear picture or plan, just an instinctive need to …
As there are many ways to get romance wrong, there are exponentially more ways to get BDSM romance wrong. BDSM is tricky. If you’re writing it because it’s hot, but you’ve got no experience with it, you’re almost bound to get it wrong. Almost, but not always, I hasten to add. Examples of successful BDSM romances by authors who aren’t BDSM-identified themselves — as far as I know — are Ann Somerville’s Remastering Jerna and Matthew Haldeman-Time’s An Affair in Paradise and Victoria Dahl’s The Wicked West. So the “authenticity” of a writer who is BDSM-identified isn’t necessary, if that author has imagination, empathy, and has done their research. But still, there are many many ways to get BDSM hideously, awfully, horrifically wrong. I’ve written before about how not to write BDSM romance, but I’ve recently had a string of truly scary BDSM romances cross my computer screen, all scary in very different ways, so I thought I’d combine reviews into a discussion of What NOT To Do.
 Thirty Days by Shayla Kersten (Liquid Silver Books)
This book horrified me. So much so that I literally can’t bring myself …
Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Genre: Romantic zombie comedy
Grade: Effing hilarious
When I looked ahead on the October calendar and saw that this last Friday would be the day before Halloween, I realized I needed some kind of horror film or monster film or, well you get the picture, to tie in with it. But since that genre isn’t something I normally watch and I wanted some romance in the film, I was a bit panicked. “What can I watch?” I muttered as I chewed a fingernail. A quick check of my Netflix queue and the day is saved. I’ll watch “Shaun of the Dead!” I said.
The plot is fairly simple. Shaun (Simon Pegg) is a 29 year old appliance salesman who’s having problems with his girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield) who is dissatisfied with their relationship, primarily because it revolves around going to “The Winchester,” Shaun’s favorite pub, every night. She wants something different, a nice dinner at a nice restaurant somewhere other than the pub. But Shaun screws even that up and tops it off by giving her flowers, complete with card, that he’d bought for his mother. She dumps him and Shaun and one of his flatmates, Ed (Nick …
Dear Ms. Andre:
 I admit that the one and only book I read by you was one about football and I had a fairly negative reaction to it given that so little of the football aspect was portrayed with accuracy. I was hoping that this would be different. While Hot as Sin is readable, it suffers from the same problem as the football book. The story is paramount and little details don’t matter so long as the story proceeds in the fashion that you want. Accuracy, authenticity take second fiddle to the emotional arcs of the characters.
Sam and Dianna were the epitome of young love (or at least that is the set up that you want us to buy initially). Sam was 20 and I think Dianna was 18. Dianna, for reasons revealed later, leaves Sam at the tender age of 20 and Sam has never, ever gotten over it. He’s so connected to her that when he is told she was in a car accident in Colorado, he immediately flies (from the Lake Tahoe area) to be by her side. Sam is a forest firefighter, a “hotshot”.
The story that you tell about …
Dear Ms. Justiss,
 You’ve been writing Regency set stories for years now so by now, I’m sure you’re more than familiar with all the conventions, the standard plots, the trope characters, all the things we’re used to seeing in this historical category. Well, I am too so when I come across something different, I’m liable to sit up, smile and say, “Yes!”
I’m sure that Sir Edward Greaves was, even if only briefly, a minor character in your book, “An Unconventional Match.” Alas, I don’t recall him. Shame on me as he’s a nice guy. As he, himself, thinks, he doesn’t have the lofty title of his friend Nicky Stanhope, the Marquess of Englemere, or the money his financial wizard friend Hal Waterman does but he’s not a bad catch on the marriage mart. So far, his attempts to find a wife he can admire as well as love, and who he thinks would enjoy living with him in the country, have not panned out but hope springs eternal.
In the meantime, he’s intrigued by a little property owned by Nicky. It’s far from Nicky’s other holdings and has currently …
Dear Ms. Enoch:
 After finishing the previous trilogy which I believe to contain some of the best work of your career, I was delighted when The Care and Taming of the Rogue arrived on my doorstep, ridiculous title notwithstanding. With the adventurer hero, I thought we might be getting something unique again.
While prose in The Care is a well written, the book lacked the emotional appeal of the previous three. In fact, in writing this review, I found my memory to be totally devoid of this book even though I read it only a week ago. Even the notes that I took failed to jog any emotional response.
Bennett Wolfe is a former adventurer in the Congo. He was thought dead and his journals were stolen by one of his fellow travelers. While he was presumed dead, said fellow traveler, Captain David Langley, published a memoir using Wolfe’s journals and notes and took the opportunity to paint Wolfe in a very unflattering light. Bennett’s uncle, the Marquess of Fennington, has Bennett declared dead so as to take part in the profits of the memoir. Bennett is not …
Okay people, listen up. This is the last book in the series and the whole thing is a spoiler for the first three books. You have been warned.
Dear Ms Hoyt,
 Capturing my attention for an entire series before I’ve even read the first book is something. Me remembering that a new book in a series is coming out without having someone remind me of it is something. Keeping my attention and enthusiasm for a series all the way into book four is something. So don’t be bummed that the grade for this one is lower than most of the others.
At last, here we are at the final book of the series when the bombshell, which was hurled at us in the preview included at the end of the previous book, explodes. For the length of the other three books and all during the seven years since the horrible events at Spinners Falls in the Colonies, everyone has known that Captain Lord Reynaud Hope, heir the Earldom of Blanchard, is dead. The pitifully few fellow Englishmen taken with him as captives by the Indian allies of the French saw poor Reynaud die. Two …
Notes: It is impossible for me to write this review without giving spoilers for the series so if you just want to enter the contest, skip to the comments and tell me your favorite soul mate story. We are giving away five copies of this book (and by we, I mean Dorchester and Dear Author).
Dear Ms. Wilson:
 I can see you don’t hesitate in ripping out the reader heart and squeezing it until we are gasping. This is not a bad thing. ne thing that sets you apart from other authors (not all but some) is that you are willing to take chances with your characters. Rain and Ellysetta, the main protagonists, remain inviolate. Their love continues to flourish, but war is not without its casualties and the knife of the soulmate can create real tragedy.
Ellysetta Baristani is a Tairen Soul, one of the only female Tairen Souls in the land. She was found living amongst the humans in Celieria when a dangerous glimpse through time, aided by magic, revealed to Rain, a Tairen Soul and leader of the Fey, that she would somehow help to save his …
Dear Ms. Lyons:
 This is a witch/witch hunter paranormal and while witch stories are not proliferous within the paranormal sub genre, the underlying tropes are familiar. Wing Slayer hunters, men chosen by the Wing Slayer to protect witches, must find their soul mirror or succumb to the rogue state where they live to slaughter witches. This story tries to inject new life into the soul mate saveth trope by placing into question whether love can overcome magical destiny.
Carla is a powerful witch who helps those rescued from cults to overcome brainwashing. She works at a local clinic with her good friend Max, a sociologist (and probably a Wing Slayer to be). Max was a caring, curious sociologist until he was unable to save someone from dying in a cult. Then he became romance hero material: “The curious sociologist in Max died, and this man, full of passion, grief, anger and guilt, was born.” Max is mentioned quite frequently but plays absolutely no role in this book despite having unrequited feelings for Carla. I can only guess that he is to be hero of his own book after suitably suffering …
Dear Ms. Schmidt,
 I am coming to look forward to your many novels set on the Massachusetts coastal islands. Plus you use the turn-of-the-century (turn of the last century I should say) era which is something I’d love to see more of.
Nola Burns initially appears to be an uptight, dried up spinster who’s as rigid as her corset while Harrison Starbuck has been known as a scamp and a carefree rogue since his boyhood. Nola’s hardworking, having taken over the care of her siblings at the death of their parents and since run the teahouse which was her childhood home. Harry is well off due to his instinct for a good business deal. Now they’re about to clash over Harry’s latest venture.
The beachfront teahouse is the perfect location for Harry’s planned luxury hotel to accompany the cabaret he’s building to entertain the locals and summer tourists upon whom they all depend. But it’s all Nola has and she’s not going to sell it or see her business ruined without a fight.
When Nola allows the actors to stay in her house in order to fill in for the summer …
Dear Ms. Wolf:
 I re-read your book recently in preparation for a year end list. I was shocked when I checked the DA Archives and did not see a review for it. I had to rectify that immediately. His Lordship’s Mistress is one of my favorite books and your work in the Signet Regency line was really wonderful. There are so many that I enjoy revisiting and I am so grateful that you decided to resell your ebook rights to Belgrave House so that I could buy ebook copies of many of them. I do think that His Lordship’s Mistress is the best of your stellar work in that line and I’ll do my best to convey why.
As Janine noted in the review of another of my favorite Wolf traditional regencies, A London Season, your writing style is simplistic and spare. I really enjoy that style and it’s out in full force here. His Lordship’s Mistress contains all the classic elements of a Wolf book: the heroine in trouble, gambling leading to despair, Shakespeare, and horses.
Jessica Andover has just buried her stepfather, a wastrel that gambled away her mother’s small fortune and left …
Rachel and the Stranger (1948)
Genre: Historical frontier romance
Grade: B
Here’s another movie from ‘way back when’ that I first saw years ago courtesy of the AMC TV channel. In my quest for movies to write Friday Film reviews on, it came to mind. When I noticed that it’s going to be shown on TCM in early November, I hauled ass to my stack of old VHS tapes and pulled it out. Thank goodness it’s being broadcast as I’ve learned the hard way that VHS tapes are not eternal.
The film could also be called, in true romance book fashion, “The Indentured Bride.” We’re on the Ohio frontier – exact time never specified – and David Harvey (William Holden) is in need of some feminine influence around the cabin. His beloved wife Susan died recently and since then, the homestead is going to hell and his young son (Gary Gray) is taking full advantage of the lack of supervision to ignore his schoolwork in favor of going fishing and playing with his hound dogs. But it’s not until his friend, and former suitor for Susan’s hand in marriage, Jim Fairways (Robert Mitchum) takes a break from his wandering ways to pay them a …
Dear Ms. Austen,
I will confess right off the bat that I’m one of those readers who never “got” you. I tried to read Pride and Prejudice years ago, but gave up after a few pages because of your writing style. What can I say – I had less patience in those days with long, indirect sentences which seemed to use 20 words to say what could be easily said in five (hah! I’m one to talk on that score…). I read Emma a few years ago and honestly did not care for it. It wasn’t so much the language this time; it was the fact that there seemed to be about a dozen main characters and only one of them (Mr. Knightley, of course) appeared to not be a complete and utter twit. Emma herself was dumber than a bag of hammers, and every other character seemed to fall somewhere on the continuum between “moron” and “get any stupider and we’ll need to water you twice a week” (to paraphrase the late, great Molly Ivins).
I don’t really like reading about stupid people, so Emma frustrated me. Nonetheless, I picked up a copy of Sense and Sensibility recently, and though I …
Dear Ms. Ford,
 Sometimes I’m in the mood for a nice, gentle story to cuddle up with. A story that features good people who act sensibly without throwing snits over Big Misunderstandings. A story about families who get along. A story set in small town America but one which doesn’t denigrate big cities. Or have characters who all have double first names. “Her Best Bet” fits all them all.
Izzy Gordon faces the fact that in the ten years since she graduated from high school, she’s let go of her major dream. But is it too late for her to break from the perfect life her parents have mapped out for her and reclaim her goal to direct movies? With the help of her room mate, she decides to shoot a documentary for a contest and what better place then at a lake resort in Wisconsin which her parents own. Well, they don’t own the buildings, just the land, and the 100 year lease is ending soon.
Gib Murphy’s family has run the White Bear Lodge for almost 100 years but changes are coming fast. The place has gotten run down and …
Dear Ms. McCarty:
 Your books have a beautiful look to them. They look and feel lush, heavy, as if the reader should curl up in front the fireplace with a hot toddy, a blanket and commence reading. Unfortunately for me, if I had done that, I would have been cooked to a crisp because this book too me a month to finish. It’s a lengthy tome, nearly 400 pages, and at the end, I couldn’t really understand why it was so everloving long.
Caleb is the beginning of a paranormal series that is populated with, at least, vampires and werewolves. The first story features Caleb, a shapeshifting vampire, who is the eldest of a group of vampire brothers. (They are a group of rogues, says the blurb. By rogues, I assume that means renegade or someone who rejects the an established group, rather than say a dishonest, knavish fellow.)
The story begins quite well. Allie, the town baker, is in lust with one of her regular customers, Caleb Johnson. She tries to flirt with him, but he seems resistant. She buys a push up bra …
WARNING: spoilers for the first four books are impossible to avoid.
Dear Ms. Kenner,
 I’ve been addicted to this series since it first started four books ago. While some things have stayed the same, others, thank goodness, have changed and evolved as the series has progressed. And if there’s one thing I can count on, it’s a bang up finish with a “to be continued…” bombshell to make me frantic for the next installment.
Kate Connor, level five Demon Hunter, is once again faced with the powers of Darkness in her otherwise quiet CA beach town of San Diablo. But now her secret identity, which she struggled to hide during past books, is not so secret anymore. Her almost fifteen year old daughter knows, her best friend knows and now her second husband, Stuart, knows. Oh and her first husband, Eric, who was murdered five years ago then returned to her in the body of another man and who is now known in town only as a teacher at their daughter’s school, also knows. Yeah, it’s a lot to keep straight.
The book starts with the usual attack of a demon who utters cryptic threats …
Dear Ms. Slade:
 I confess to being reluctant to start this book. I’m not sure why. I think because there wasn’t anything about the description of the book or the cover that really stood out. It was a paranormal story about good demons and bad demons. Given that it was a free book, however, it didn’t hurt to at least read the first chapter. I was intrigued enough by the first chapter to continue given that the writing style appealed to me.
Ferris Archer is a former southern gentleman who is now one of the demon possessed. He and others like him have banded together to fight in the war against other demon possessed individuals and malices that populate the earth. Archer views himself not so much as a warrior, but a trash collector . Malices can be drained but they cannot be returned to hell and over time, just regenerate. To say that Archer is weary would be an understatement. He went from fighting in the Civil War to a non stop, centuries long battle against entities simply cannot be defeated. When others warn him that …
Dear Ms Brook:
 I participated in a debate the other day on Twitter about whether Romance keeps women in a traditional social position by linking love and the nuclear family to a woman’s ultimate happiness. The Guardians series is one of those I would recommend as an example of how powerfully Romance can subvert traditional social structures and expectations while still celebrating love as a liberating force. And in Demon Forged, these themes are in play on several levels, not only between romantic protagonists Irena and Alejandro, but also in the world of the novel more generally. The nature of love, the nature of sacrifice, fate v. free will, the purpose of being – all are at issue in Demon Forged, a novel that, like the rest of the Guardians series, is dense, multi-layered, richly textured, and slightly flawed.
Irena has been a Guardian for sixteen centuries now, making her one of the oldest of their kind, and one of the most awe and fear inspiring. Her gift is that she can shape metal, and from her Siberian forge she favors making weaponry to be utilized against demons and nosferatu. Guardians, who are …
Dear Ms. Michaels,
 If the purpose of the novella “How to Woo a Spinster” was to get me to buy this full length novel, it worked. But as I started to read How to Tempt a Duke, I wondered if I would get through it. Let’s see…Regency era, Duke hero, feisty younger sister, heroine with Dark Secret in her past who starts to bicker with the hero as soon as he shows his face at the old homestead. Hmmmmm, where have I read all this too many times to count?
Rafe Daughtry, son of the younger son, never expected to inherit the Dukedom. After all, his uncle was healthy and the heir and a spare were still up to their wicked, disgusting ways. That is until all three were drowned – along with some barques of frailty – in a yachting accident. Once word finally caught up with him in Paris, Rafe decided to stay and escort Bonaparte to Elba before heading home.
When he arrives in England, it’s to discover that his newly married aunt has left his two much younger sisters in the charge of his old neighborhood friend, Charlie. And hasn’t …
Dear Ms. Lee:
 The previous two books in the series have told us some awful things about James, the hero in Billionaire’s Bride of Innocence. James was desperate to have a family and when his super model girlfriend could not deliver the goods, so to speak, he divorced her, impregnated a nice young woman, and married the nice young pregnant woman. Yes, James is a classy guy. But he’s a billionaire who wants children. Doesn’t that really absolve him of all sins?
Megan, James’ docile sweet, innocent wife, loses the baby. In the hospital, she overhears James’ two friends, Hugh and Russell, speculating as to whether the marriage will stay together now that James has lost the one thing that he wanted. Hugh is incensed that James impregnated and then married Megan in the first place, knowing that James did not love her. Megan is distraught over this news and basically moves into the pool house, refusing to allow James touch her.
James is upset because, well, he wants to be a dad and how can he get her with child again unless they have sex?
Becoming a dad was what James wanted most
…
How did I miss this? Srsly, where was I? Dunno. I’ve heard about the “holding up the boom box” scene. I’ve seen it on so many “Gawd, these are the best films evah!” lists and heard from so many people that “you have to see this film, I mean it!” that I should have seen it before now. But it took doing these reviews and scanning Top Films lists for more film ideas to finally make me do it.
No one thinks Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) and Diane Court (Ione Skye) will ever last. In fact, everyone’s surprised they ever got together in the first place. Including them. The first time Lloyd asks Diane out, she says yes then has to check their recent senior high school yearbook to even know who it is she just agreed to go to a party with. But as their relationship progresses, they find something special. She feels totally comfortable with him and he starts to trust in himself because of her.
Then things start to go wrong. Her father (John Mahoney) is being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service and the time before she’s due to leave for a prestigious fellowship in England is …
Dear Ms. Sheridan.
 Thank you for sending me your story when I was moaning on Twitter one night about wanting to read a BDSM romance. I hope you don’t regret it.
When I agreed to read the book, I had no idea it was #2 of the Beautiful C*cksucker series. I had no idea that BC *was* a series. I tend to agree with the outrage over the name (Paul Bens’ original reaction, Teddy Pig’s response, Karen Knows Best’s extensive discussion) but I also know that in BDSM play, some epithets that would otherwise be unacceptable (”cunt” comes to mind) are endearments during a scene. Which is not to say that they should be used as titles to the book/series. I will admit, though, that I deliberately avoided most of the debate and arguments because it was too huge and I’ve only got so much mental energy. But if the writing for BC#1 was anything like the writing for BC#2, we should all just have ignored it and let it slip into well-deserved obscurity.
I also had no idea how BC#2 connects with BC#1. And OMFG, doing the …
Dear Ms. Warren:
 I went out and bought this book for myself. *runs around in circles* A while back I blogged about the seeming dearth of werewolf books, at least books that focus on the pack dynamics and the myths of the beast. Another reader suggested I try Christine Warren’s Big Bad Wolf. I admit that the one book I had tried didn’t make me a fan but I was willing to take another chance. I went off to the bookstore that evening and bought the book. I read and finished it that same evening.
Graham Winters is the Alpha of the Silverback Werewolf Clan. He is bored to the point of celibacy with all the hot Otherworld women around him. He doesn’t have any problem getting it up, but no amount of sexual innovation from even the most gorgeous paranormal is floating his boat anymore. Thirteen days ago, he walked away from one super model look alike and now he’s wondering what he’s going to do with himself. (For a werewolf, thirteen days is like a decade).
Then at the same party in which Graham …
|
|
Loading ...
Open Threads at Dear Author. Want to know what new releases are out this month and what readers are excited about reading? Check out the threads below. 
We don’t like to censor comments nor do we endorse the comments of any poster. We do reserve the right to moderate comments but most of the time will not, believing, as Justice Brandeis did, that the greater good is in “more speech, not enforced silence.”
