Dear Author: Romance Book Reviews, Author Interviews, and Commentary

Dear Ms. Potter:

I’m thinking that this book caught me just a few years too late. Not only is this a chick lit novel, but it is also a Jane Austen homage which seems to be the topic du jour at publishing houses these days. I can see the appeal of Darcy and the desire to draw upon the positive connotations that many readers have with the Austen ouvre, but this retelling of a classic, while sweet and well written, suffered in comparison with the original.

Emily Albright is a bookstore manager for a family owned bookstore in New York. She’s had a string of bad dates and her friend is trying to get her to run off to Mexico for New Years. Instead, Emily decides to go on a tour of Jane Austen country. Her excitement is a bit dashed when she discovers that her group is mostly older women making her rethink her decision.

Joining the group is journalist, Spike Hargreaves, sent by his paper to discover why Mr. Darcy is the fantasy dream date of most British women. Spike, of course, is the antithesis of Darcy. …

Hope this isn’t the Running with Scissors type of book where the story is based on a real family who didn’t authorize such a story.
Canadian magazine editor and journalist Elizabeth Kelly’s APOLOGIZE, APOLOGIZE!, about a wild, brilliant, wealthy, crazy Massachusetts family, to Jonathan Karp at Twelve in a pre-empt, and to Diane Martin at Knopf Canada in a pre-empt, for publication in March 2009, by Molly Friedrich at the Friedrich Agency.

I love these titles, particularly the “On the Divinity of Second Chances.”
Kaya McLaren’s HOW I CAME TO SPARKLE AGAIN, to Kendra Harpster at Viking, for publication in summer 2009, plus reprint rights to Church of the Dog and On the Divinity of Second Chances, by Meg Ruley at the Jane Rotrosen Agency (NA).

This is a middle grade book and I hope that the tone is not too youthful as the plot sounds quite interesting.
Heather Mackey’s THE WOLVES AND THE WOOD, set in an alternate reality of the Pacific Northwest of the 1900’s, in which a girl must navigate her cousin’s world of frontier settlers as they clash with the indigenous people, the Lupine; and she must discover the mystery surrounding deadly attacks that appear to be the work of five …