This week is an eclectic mix - some old-school type stuff, some already-played-out stuff, and zombies.
I loved the movie Lost In Translation, and this sounds like a literary parallel. I’d buy it.
Malena Watrous’s REPEAT AFTER ME, in an effort to outpace her grief, a young American woman moves to rural Japan shortly after her [...]

Okay, the random winners are
11 AB
16 Staci McClellan
27 Lam
Email me Jayne @ dearauthor.com with your snail mail addresses. It will probably be mid next week when I get them mailed out.

Dear Mrs. O’Reilly,
You came close to a trifecta. You really did but it’s with sadness that I’m going to have to grade this book down. Don’t worry, it’s not a D grade because so many things are still right about it that were right about the first two books in the series. But a few [...]

Magic Burns by Ilona Andrews. Both Jane and Jia would recommend this sophomore effort by newcomer, Ilona Andrews. The “Magic” series features a smart mouthed, sword wielding Kate Daniels who helps to enforce the law in an alternate universe Atlanta. For the crossover genre reader (i.e., the romance reader that likes to cross [...]

Dear Mrs. O’Reilly,
How do you do it? How do you make accountants sexy? No offense to any number crunchers out there, especially at this time of year, but the profession isn’t up there on the sexy-job-o-meter. Daniel’s brothers, the lawyer and the bartender, have jobs that could be considered babe-magnets but it takes a [...]

Dear Ms. O’Reilly,
As with the first book of your last trilogy, this one is a winner for me. Straight from the beginning and all the way through. I enjoyed all the characters in this book, the plot, the setting…in fact everything. At first I was a little leery about the setting. I mean, an [...]

Madhouse by Rob Thurman is recommended by Jia. (Thurman is a woman if that matters to you and I have to admit I have a pro-female author bias so I thought I would throw that out there). Madhouse is a continuation of a series about two brothers which started with Nightlife and its [...]

Dear Ms. O’Reilly,
Jane and I mentioned in our reviews of “Beyond Daring” that Mercedes (who we knew would be the heroine of your next book) needed some work before we could like her. You promised that she would undergo some growth in the year since the setting of the last book and earn our [...]

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Kathleen O’Reilly first came to my attention in the anthology, Hell with the Ladies, but it wasn’t until my blogging partner wrote her review of O’Reilly’s Harlequin Blaze, Beyond Breathless, that had me moving O’Reilly from an author I should buy someday to an author I should buy now. [...]

Dear Ms O’Reilly,
Sequels can be a dangerous thing. If I enjoyed the previous book, will the next one live up to it? Or will it bomb for me and somehow taint what I feel for the one (s) I previously liked? Will secondary characters be twisted out of recognition when it’s their turn at bat? [...]

Dear Ms. O’Reilly,
When Jane sent me this arc I have to admit that I wasn’t that thrilled. Oh look, another series about three siblings. And my, it’s set in New York City so it’ll read like a “Sex in the City” clone book. It’s a Harlequin Blaze, we’ll get tons of inappropriately timed lust/sex scenes. [...]

Dear Ladies:
Here’s the sttory behind how this book was chosen for the dueling review and why it’s late (it’s supposed to be a November dueling review). Jayne and I were tossing around ideas. I suggested Drop Dead Gorgeous but Jayne confessed to not having read Linda Howard in years. Billionaires Prefer Blondes [...]

Ladies,
I think most romance readers view anthologies as a mixed blessing. Readers get a chance to read favorite authors or try new ones in a short format. Sometimes the stories work but usually there’s at least one which doesn’t. I’ll cut short your suspense and say that in “To Hell with the Ladies” that usual [...]

Dear Ms. O’Reilly,
We’re having paranormal week here at Dear Author so I pulled “The Diva’s Guide to Selling Your Soul” out for a reread. If the Devil ever got a foothold in my household, it would be for the ability to munch out on chocolate truffles and deep fried foods with no guilt or [...]