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

Dear Ms Thornton,

“The Vagabond Duchess” winds up your trilogy about a set of cousins who all find love around the time of the Great Fire of London in 1666. As such, it’s set in one of my favorite time eras, the lusty and bawdy court of King Charles II. Men dressed like fops but carried deadly swords. Women flirted outrageously yet still lived under many societal restrictions. The Guilds of London still ruled their members and the country was still uneasily putting itself back together after the upheavals of the Civil War. I have to ask though, what’s with this cover? The women look like Restoration beauties but are the men supposed to be playing dress up in Tudor clothes?
He’d promised to return.
But Jack Bow is dead. And Temperance Challinor’s quietly respectable life is changed forever.

Practical Temperance has no time to grieve for the irresistible rogue who gave her one night of comfort in a blazing city. She must protect her unborn child—by pretending to be Jack’s widow.

A foolproof plan. Until she arrives at Jack’s home…and the counterfeit widow of a vagabond becomes the real wife of a very much alive duke!
Temperance, a member …

Dear Ms. Thornton,

After attempting the first book in this trilogy, “The Defiant Mistress,” I was pretty sure I wouldn’t go any further with the series. Then I read a good review for this book. That coupled with Laura’s positive post about it made me decide to give this one a chance. After all, I could always take it back to Waldenbooks. I love Waldenbooks’ return policy. I’m glad to say though that I won’t be using it for this book.

Lady Desire Godwin has lived a reclusive life since her father died five years ago. Before that, she helped to nurse her mother during her mother’s terminal illness. So it comes to pass that she’s now thirty years old and still unwed, despite the fact that she’s a wealthy heiress. But Desire wants a husband and children and knows that she needs a man to protect her. Just last year, a nobleman attempted to abduct an heiress and the marriage laws are such that if he had succeeded, nothing her family could have done would have annulled the forced marriage. When a stranger climbs up onto the roof of her London home …

Dear Ms Thornton,

Though I’d never tried any of your books before, I took a chance on this one when I saw it was set in Restoration Era Venice and England. Alas, it turned out to be a style of novel I’ve lost all patience for. The hero and heroine are torn apart years before by the treacherous actions of a slavering villain overcome with lust for the heroine. For 8 years, the hero then believes the worst of the heroine. Then when they finally met again he accuses her, insults her, manipulates her into his power, treats her like dirt and ensures that anyone else who might have come to her rescue believes the worst of her. And has the nerve to still accuse her of lying to him and treating him badly once he knows the truth. Here’s the woman he claims to have loved yet he’ll more easily believe the lies told to him by someone he doesn’t even know rather than listen to her. Bastard. I read the first 100 pages then flipped to the last 50 to see if his …