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

Dear Ms. Chapman:

Maybe in my salad days a story about an innocent, vulnerable, walking mess of a woman, and all the men that love her (only bad guys want to harm her) might have appealed to me. However, now that I am a hardened cynic, I can only respond with eye rolls, groans and sighs, along with a few WTFs.

“That Man Must Marry” started out inauspiciously with a contrived and likely illegal conditional will bequest. “Either get married to one of three people and have child within a certain amount of time or my entire estate is given over to the man I hated most when I was alive”. Willa, the heroine, protests this and instead of giving actual sound advice, the lawyer in the book says “Oh no, this will stand up to a challenge.” Um, no and no. Conditional will plots seem a very lazy way to go about setting up conflict and tension particularly when they are accompanied by bad lawyering. As someone I know once said, there is a resource out there called “Wills for Dummies.” (This is a WTF …

I’ve mentioned before that the contemporary romances that doesn’t feature vampires, campy vampires, werewolves, immortal peril, mortal peril, suspense out the wahoo, or extraordinary extraterrestrial extraneous circumstances seem to be fewer and far between. Every now and again I hear declarations that the contemporary romance is a dying subgenre and it’s harder and harder to find, and that if you’re not an established name, you’ll never get anywhere, because fewer people want to read contemporary romance.

So when Sarah and I read Flat Out Sexy by Erin McCarthy, we were both blathering to each other about how awesome it was and how refreshing to have actual conflict between people caused by realistic tension stemming from ordinary life experiences between two marvelous characters. Contemporary romance done right? More please! So, following this review, read more about a multi-level contest sponsored by Dear Author, Smart Bitches, Berkeley and Erin McCarthy, a contest we …

Dear Ms. Holquist:

I almost didn’t write this review because it was such a struggle for me to pinpoint why I didn’t respond well to it given that I liked The Sexiest Man Alive so much. Ultimately, I think I failed to connect to the hero and heroine in a “it’s not you, it’s me” manner.

Amy Burns is a psychic who went on to Oprah to reveal Oprah’s one true love. Unfortunately, Amy and her psychic voice Maddie have had some communication problems of late and just when Amy needs her (in front a live Oprah audience), Maddie decides to stop talking to Amy altogether. Amy’s goal, notwithstanding her humiliation in front of Oprah, is to find Maddie.

Amy tracks Maddie to a gypsy named Roni to a restaurant in Philly called Les Fleurs. There she finds the hot chef/owner James LaChance but no Roni. Amy expends a huge amount of effort to find Roni which is extraordinary in that Amy’s only other huge expenditure of effort in the past is related to doing nothing, being a ne’er do well.

James LaChance’s claim to fame, other than his …

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 Delicious affected my enjoyment of it, but I found the chemistry in Delicious to be a bit tepid. (Of course, PW gave it a Starred Review, so what do I know?) However, there was a lot to like in the story and didn’t stall my 6 book Mallery gorging.

Delicious is a second chance at love story where Cal Buchanan and Penny Jackson, formerly married to each other, reunite, fall in love all over again, and get to take another stab at the elusive HEA. Three years ago, Penny walked out on Cal and he never fought to get her back. Ostensibly Penny walked out because she didn’t believe that Cal loved her and Cal never convinced her otherwise. One thing that Penny wanted more than anything was to have children but Cal was …

Dear Ms. Howard:

I was ruminating about this book as I polished up the review. At first I thought, this is a departure for you because it is such a dark book, featuring a very different type of heroine. But you’ve had darker books before (Cry No More) and you’ve featured different types of heroines (Duncan’s Bride) so it’s not really those attributes that set this book apart from the others in the Linda Howard library. I can’t pinpoint it, but this read like a different Linda Howard. Not bad different, just different.

Drea Rousseau is smart woman who made some poor decisions and ended up being the girlfriend of a drug lord. She’s used her body as currency most of her life and when her boyfriend, Rafael Salinas, hands her over as payment to an hired assassin, she’s broken.

It’s not that she loved Salinas nor that she thought of herself so highly. It’s that in the four hours in which the assassin beds her, she feels more and wants more than she has ever in her whole life. She begs him to take her with him …

Dear Ms. Malone:

Thank you for submitting your debut Samhain Red Hot, “Lady Sings the Blues,” a short story featuring an interracial Romance between club owner Alina Gabriel and Blues musician Joshua Hanover. I am a big fan of short stories and novellas, because when they are done well, they are a perfect portion of character and plot, able to be read and enjoyed in one sitting. While “Lady Sings the Blues” didn’t blow me away, it was competently written and had some interesting elements.

Alina Gabriel has named her club “The Scarlet Lady” after her alter ego, a seductress par excellence who was trained in the exotic dance clubs and who still emerges on occasion to strut on top of the bar in a red corset and sexy boots. She has some serious lust for Joshua, whose good looks, guitar skills, and sensual voice make him a favorite at the club. Although Alina doesn’t realize it, Joshua shares her feelings, having even written her a song, “Red Letter Woman,” which he hopes will encourage her to dance during its performance. Joshua can’t actually see Alina dance, since he …

Dear Ms. Apodaca,

I’m not sure where to begin with this letter. Just moments ago I finished your newest release from the Brava line, Extremely Hot. I should mention that I’m a fan of Brava books. I find that I’ll forgive those that are a little light on plot if they make up for it with teh sex. While, I can’t say that Extremely Hot was light on plot, the problems I had with the book weren’t made up for with sex either.

It’s hard for me to explain exactly what was going on in Extremely Hot, mainly because I’d only be able to read a couple a pages before wanting to alternate between throwing my copy against a wall and pluck my eyelashes out one by one. I gather that this gist of things is that there’s a radio talk show host neé accountant named Ivy Somethingorother. Years ago she was an accountant and when some money came up missing all fingers were pointed at her. She wasn’t the thief, but the man she had been sleeping with was. Ruined as an accountant, Ivy used her experience to become the host of …