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

Dear Mrs. McLeod,

I have a soft spot for the unheralded people of the world finding love. People not as beautiful or dazzling, not as charming or glib as those who easily command the spotlight. Yet at the same time, I don’t want authors to pour misery on the head of a lead character thereby making me pity them more than sympathize with them. “Carolina’s Walking Tour” handles my concerns nicely.

Miss Carolina Finmere is one of those who hug the edges of a party, who might take a minute to formulate a reply to a comment but who notices much and dares to dream. Lord Alexander Quainton is one she notices but whom she would never have approached except for her commanding grandmother’s insistence. Long acquainted with his mother, her grandmother serves as a source of information about Alexander’s wartime injuries.

Quiet Carolina is astonished when he asks her to accompany him on a walk through Bath. Thus begins their summer long rambles through and around the resort town. And slowly, almost unperceived by Carolina herself, she begins to blossom into a woman of a little more confidence, a …

Dear Ms McLeod,

What a delightful regency novella. It’s sweet but not saccarine, has a nice period feel, and characters who felt true to times. When they meet, Peter Trevayne and India Pottersby feel an attraction yet neither acts on it since India is busy as the sister of the young vicar of the village and Peter is the newly arrived nabob still cautiously feeling his way through the pitfalls moving into said village presents him. One must move slowly, not push and wait to be accepted into rural English society. Peter, determined that this will be his home after so many years in India, is content that it be so. I like that he is pleasantly surprised by his discovery that India isn’t the older, slightly dried up spinster he expects yet that he slowly gets to know her before delicately showing his hand.

India has her own reasons for not moving too quickly after meeting the handsome newcomer. Her orphan childhood of being passed from one relative to another slightly echoes Jane Austen’s “Mansfield Park.” Now that her brother has his own living, they finally have a home of their own …