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

Midnight Rising by Lara Adian

Dylan Alexander is a talented journalist who is overseas enjoying a vacation with friends of her mothers. During a walk, she wanders away from the group and encounters a cave with strange markings. She has photographed these and a homeless man she observed in the caves before said homeless man frightens her away.

Rio is hiding in the caves having volunteered for the job of sealing in evidence about his kind - a group of vampires created by an alien race. Rio has been engaged in a battle against the Rogue vampires for much of his life. In book one, Kiss of Midnight, Rio’s mate betrayed him, causing the death of one of his blood brothers and causing irreparable physical and emotional damage to Rio. He takes on the duty of sealing the cave because he sees this opportunity to end his miserable life. But instead of discharging his duties, he’s been wrestling with his decision. Something is preventing him from taking that final step. He’s in stasis, growing half mad.

He felt dizzy with anger, his head spinning so badly it …

Dear Ms. Campbell:

I realized reading your new release Untouched that for me your books are fundamentally a revisiting of older Romance motifs, with both retro and current elements. At your best, your work brings out the best of both past and present Romances, because you are often examining some of the more provocative elements in the genre, making them both larger than life and relatable at the same time. And because of that, perhaps, when something in your book misses, it really misses. Claiming the Courtesan is a book that hit much more often than it missed for me, while Untouched is a book with more misses than hits.

Impoverished in widowhood and banished from her wealthy and titled family, Grace Paget is kidnapped on her way to meet her uncle, mistaken for a common prostitute and nabbed for the pleasure of Matthew Lansdowne, the reclusive Marquess of Sheene. Having lost his parents as a child, and not seen in society since he was fourteen, Matthew is a prisoner of his greedy and conniving uncle, Lord John, who uses a fever Matthew contracted at fourteen to have …

Dear Ms Haseloff,

Years ago I read the DIK review at AAR for this book. I was interested and purchased it. I read it and was blown away by it. I contacted you and you were gracious enough to email with me a little about this book and others you’d written. I’ve always meant to go back and write a review for it and now’s the time.

I love books which make me want to know more about the people and times presented in them. I knew you had based this on the real raid carried out by Kiowa and Comanche warriors against settlers on the Elm Creek in Texas that took place in 1864 while most of the soldiers and young men from the area were back east fighting the Civil War. I didn’t realize you had changed the names of the main characters and assume this was to allow for a little artistic license in telling the story. It seems that the basic facts are the same. The raid was launched on the few settlers remaining in the area, some managed to fight the Indians off while others, …

Dear Ms Black,

One thing that has always bothered me about reading Westerns in which Indians and Whites come into conflict is that usually the white heroine gets captured by the noble Indian hero, falls in love after being humiliated by him numerous times, completely accepts the Indian culture and lifestyle while repudiating her white heritage then has some final showdown with Evil Whites after which she and her noble hero ride off into the sunset. And I just can’t buy it. Because I don’t think someone raised their whole life one way can all of a sudden change. Because usually these books come off as more Stockholm Syndrome than true love. Because generally one side is portrayed as Pure and Wonderful while the other is nothing but Evil and Loathsomeness. And because these authors usually don’t acknowledge that the life of the Plains tribes was on the way out and that the future for most of these couples was probably life on the run or on a Reservation. Thank you for not writing one of those books. Instead we get a realistic portrayal of a captive white woman’s return to white civilization and …