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

Dear Ms. Meyer,

While I didn’t think it was perfect, I did enjoy your first young adult novel, Twilight. So when my fellow blogger Jia was unable to get too far into The Host, a genre-bending speculative romantic thriller and your first book for adults, I agreed to give it a try. The premise of The Host, that of an “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” type story but told from the viewpoint of a body snatching alien, sounded interesting and different to me.

I must admit at the outset of this review that I almost never read books this long (600+ pages), because they can seem more like monumental tasks than like invitations for enjoyment. It took me around 120 pages to get caught up in The Host, and for those 120 I feared that a monumental task was what the book would turn out to be. Happily, The Host eventually revved up, and I enjoyed it more than I expected I would in the beginning.

The Host opens with a scene in which an alien known as Wanderer is inserted into the body of her host, a human woman named Melanie. …

Dear Ms. Giffin,

Exactly one hundred days to her marriage to her husband Andy, Ellen Graham literally crosses paths with her ex-boyfriend Leo. Ellen describes their encounter this way:
From the outside, say if you were a cabdriver watching frantic jaywalkers scramble to cross the street in the final seconds before the light changed, it was only a mundane, urban snapshot: two seeming strangers, with little in common but their flimsy black umbrellas, passing in an intersection, making fleeting eye contact, and exchanging stiff but not unfriendly hellos before moving on their way.

But inside was a very different story. Inside, I was reeling, churning, breathless as I made it onto the safety of the curb and into a virtually empty diner near Union Square. Like seeing a ghost, I thought, one of those expressions I’ve heard a thousand times but never fully registered until that moment. I closed my umbrella and unzipped my coat, my heart still pounding. As I watched the waitress wiped down a table with hard, expert strokes, I wondered why I was so startled by the encounter when there was something that seemed utterly inevitable about the …

Dear Ms. Briggs,

I’ve been putting off writing this review for some time. As readers, we each have our own preferences and quirks in what we like to read. We also have our personal hot buttons with regards to what we don’t. While I liked the first two-thirds of Iron Kissed, the last third hit my biggest hot button hard and it’s taken me this long to work through my distaste and articulate why.

Jane posted a favorable review a few weeks ago, which contains a good summary of the book, and I encourage interested readers to look at it if they’ve not done so already. I found it beyond my ability to write about the book without mentioning significant spoilers, so let that be a warning to people who haven’t read the book yet and wish to remain spoiler free. This second half of this review is not vague.

First, the good part. I admit I don’t particularly care for the Fae when it comes to urban fantasy, or any fantasy for that matter. I don’t actively dislike them the way many readers do vampires; …

Dear Ms. Shinn,

You’ve written some of my favorite romances (Yes, I know that they are published in the SF/Fantasy and YA genres, but I consider many of your books romances). General Winston’s Daughter, your latest YA fantasy novel, may not be my most cherished among your works but it’s still an unusually good book, a tale of a young woman’s coming-of-age, a powerful depiction of a society that chafes under colonialism, and the story of a romantic triangle that is quite unlike most of what I usually come across in my reading.

Averie Winston is the only child of General Winston, the highest General in the Aeberelle Army. Averie’s mother is long dead, but Lady Selkirk, her very proper and widowed chaperone, is accompanying Averie to Chiarrin, where Averie will be reunited with her father and with her fiancé, Colonel Morgan Stode, both of whom are stationed in Chiarrin as part of a military campaign.

At eighteen, Averie is curious and adventurous, and very much looking forward to her first visit to a foreign land. Averie hopes to be married in Chiarrin, and there to begin her happy life with …

Dear Ms. Wolf:

You hate writing these romance books, don’t you? I can see your boredom throughout your entire book as you cobbled together a story stealing scenes and characters from previous books. The whole story is uninspired.

Diana Sherwood is an impoverished young woman who lives with her mother, Louisa, in a cottage on the estate of the Louisa’s cousin. Diana lost her father in the Pennisula wars. While she and Alex, the heir of the Earl of Standish, grow up together, they fall in love. This love is tested when Alex chooses to go to war instead of marrying Diana. When he comes back three years later, Diana is about to embark on a season to find a stable husband and completely rebuffs Alex. Ultimately, Diana gets herself engaged to a nice man while Alex is left grappling with Diana’s abandonment. But the love story is between Alex and Diana. Do you see the problem here? Yes, one person is going to get the shaft. Even beyond the cavalier treatment of characters, the worst sin you commit is your blatant lifting from …

Dear Ms. Briggs:

So where have you been all my reading life? Oh, hanging out in the sci/fantasy aisle? Well, get your pub to move you to the romance aisle. You get tons more traffic. And paranormal romance right now? Very very hot.

I bought your book based on the banging cover and the cool blurb. I am a sucker for the urban fantasy since the seminal work by Emma Bull, War of the Oaks (which all you romancelandia fans should definitely read).

Moon Called features Mercedes Thompson who is a walker, a natural born shapeshifting coyote. She has no magic to speak of. She is not super strong, merely fast. Her trade is a mechanic and she has a number of interesting friends. Her next door neighbor is the local Alpha. She fixes the vw bus of a vampire. Her mentor is a gremlin.

The plot revolves around the kidnap of Jesse (the Alpha neighbor's daughter) and the severe maiming of Adam. Mercy thinks that there may have been a coup attempt and instead of calling his pack for help she takes Adam to the Marrock. The Marrock is the leader of all werewolves in North America. …