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

Dear Ms. Monroe:

Basically, every month I go over to the eHarlequin site and I randomly pick books based on title and cover. That’s it. I think of it kind of as a book Russian roulette or something like that. Yours was a November read that I picked because I had never read you before.

The title is a complete misnomer since the hero might be tall and dark but is not filthy rich. His lack of riches, in fact, is part of the conflict. For some reason, though, I became fixated on the idea that the title simply did not fit the book and that bothered me the whole time I was reading.

Jessie Huell specializes in catching cheaters; sometime she is hired to catch people who are in it for the thrill but most of the time, she stakes out spouses and significant other to see if they are straying. She’s asked to do an interview on a local TV show called “Just Between Us”. Jessie would like to drum up some business and she agrees only to find an old high …

Dear Ms. Roberts:

Most readers say the same thing about you and that is you consistently deliver good, solid reads. But as with all authors, particularly those with ginormous backlists (and yes, ginormous is now an official word), some books are better than others. When I started this book, I was a little apprehensive wondering if this was Eve Dallas redone. While I saw hints of Eve Dallas, mostly in language idiosyncracies, Lt. Phoebe MacNamara is a character all her own and High Noon is one of the best Roberts books I’ve read.

Phoebe MacNamara is a negotiator whose life has been marred by tragedy. You wouldn’t know it to see her in action, talking jumpers off the edge and hostage takers into the light. While Phoebe is out saving strangers everyday, she can’t seem to save her own family. When Phoebe was a young girl, she and her family were taken hostage. She was able to prevent physical harm to her family but her mother became agoraphobic and has not left the house for decades. …