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

This review comes to us from guest blogger, Yapaway Jay who has given up her fiction books for law books. Go Jay, only one semester left?

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Dear Ms. Day,

I fell in love with the first book I read by you, The Stranger I Married, and ever since then you’ve been on my auto-buy list. In fact, you’ve become one of those authors where I break my neck to get your books but then don’t read them because I’m saving them for a proverbial rainy day - times when none of the other books I have are holding my interest, and are annoying me. At times like this, I pull out one of my rainy-day authors and know I’m in for a treat. So when I first started A Passion for Him, I found I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to read it yet. I had to put it to the side and wait for the right time. A few weeks later, it was time. I picked A Passion for Him back up and devoured in it a matter of hours.

Amelia Benbridge is betrothed to her longtime …

Dear Ms. Joyce,

I've been reading your books since The Veil of Night came out. I thought it was a bit above average for a debut, but conventional. The two books that followed were somewhat stronger in my opinion. All three showed a talent for conjuring an atmosphere, and main characters of diverse personalities and backgrounds. But in the first half of your fourth book, Voices of the Night, you have for the first time succeeded in riveting me.
Fog pressed down upon the city, smothering it, pulling the smoke down from the chimney pots to swirl in the streets under the weight of the brown and breathless sky. It was a black fog, a killing fog, and Maggie and the other chavies had coughed up soot every morning that week when Johnny kicked them awake.
This bit of description on page one was the first clue I was reading something truly different. Here was a London not often seen in the romance genre, a tough, sooty metropolis in which the weak often perish and even the strong don’t …

Dear Ms. Hoyt:

At first blush, this isn’t a book I would buy. The back cover blurb reads as follows:

Widowed Anna Wren is having a wretched day. After an arrogant male on horseback nearly squashes her, she arrives home to learn that she is in dire financial straits. What is a gently bred lady to do?

The Earl of Swartingham is in a quandary. Having frightened off two secretaries, Edward de Raaf needs someone who can withstand his bad temper and boorish behavior. Dammit! How hard can it be to find a decent secretary?

When Anna becomes the earl's secretary, both their problems are solved. Then she discovers he plans to visit the most notorious brothel in London for his “manly” needs. Well! Anna sees red—and decides to assuage her “womanly” desires . . . with the earl as her unknowing lover.

Frankly the blurb reads like some idiotic erotic romance book that publishers seem to think are so popular. Virginal heroine turns skanky ass prostitute like in order to sate her newly discovered passions. What it turns out to be is a believable love story between two lonely …

Dear Ms. Ames:

I hope this letter gets to you as I do not see that you are publishing any longer. Or it may be that you are publishing under a different name. Your book was recommended to me after I had finished reading Almost a Gentleman by Pam Rosenthal. I had expressed dissatisfaction at how certain parts of AAG played out. I wanted to see more of how the masquerade affected the lives of the participants. Teller of Tales is AAG only much, much better.

Jenner Page was raped as a young girl. She became pregnant and subsequently lost her baby rendering her incapable of having children. Based upon those two factors, Jenner was simply not marriagable material. She was allowed to go her own path. This lack of coddling made Jenner self reliant and very different than the average Regency female. When she was on the way to London, disguised as a male, she was nearly run over by a carriage driven by Lacey Raines.

Let me stop here for a moment and let me tell you how genius it was for you to provide Jenner with the manly name and Lacey with …

Dear Ms. Goodman:

I love your writing. If every historical was written with the depth, emotion and passion of your stories, I don’t think the historical genre would be faltering. The pacing and the absurd ending is the only thing that keeps me from giving this book an A.

One Forbidden Evening features the sister of the hero of a Season to Be Sinful. While I remember reading and enjoying STBS, I can’t honestly recall much about the plot. There is nothing in the previous story which greatly impacts OFE so I think it is safe to say that it stands alone. Cybelline Caldwell, the daughter of a viscount and the widow of a scholar. Nicholas Caldwell killed himself, quite unexpectedly two years ago. Cybelline hasn’t quite recovered from her husband’s suicide.

Cybelline is having erotic dreams and it shames her. Her body longs for another and to appease the longing, she sets out to seduce a known rake, Earl of Ferrin. Ferrin is the midst of marrying off one of his many stepsiblings. He holds a masquerade ball and Cybelline appears, disguised, and Cybelline …

Dear Ms. James:

I am just a simple reader. I understand that you like to write books with subtle clues and hints as the character evolution. But because I am a simple reader, your subtle clues and hints went way past me. Let’s look at your recent contribution to the historical romance market. Your writing is superb. You have a deft hand with dialogue and intersister relationships. But the relationship between the hero and heroine left me dissatisfied and with questions that should have been resolved in the story. The plot is thus: Imogen arrives at the Duke of Holbrook’s home to find his illegitimate brother and the brother’s child living there. Imogen determines that Gabriel is the perfect man with which to engage an affair. Rafe, of course, is madly jealous.

Gabriel is not interested in Imogen. He feels his illegitimacy keenly knowing that Imogen sees him worthy only of an affair and not marriage. Besides, Gabriel has fallen in lust with another woman. When Imogen makes advances, Gabriel rebuffs her but realizes that in doing so, he hurts her feelings. He invites her to a masked outing and then goes to …