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

Dear Ms. Bunkley:

I was really intrigued by how this story began. The heroine, Riana, and hero, Andre, met in an Small Business Administration class in Houston. Riana planned to return to San Antonio and didn’t want to continue a long distance relationship. Andre took her denials to be that she didn’t want to be with someone who was as poor as he was and that he couldn’t provide for her in the “way she deserved.”

Fast forward four years and Andre is an up and coming architect/builder and Riana owns her own up and coming head hunter firm. Riana is contracted to find an architect for a major developer who has a contract to build a concept federal prison for women and juveniles. Riana presents several candidates to the developer the developer picks Andre. Riana has to deliver Andre or lose the biggest contract of her business.

One thing that was frustrating was that the build up of the first few chapters pointed to a different type of conflict than was presented. In fact, there was little conflict until the last third of the story …

Dear Ms. Heath:

This is the first book of yours I’ve read in probably 4 years or so. I really liked your Western historicals and was disappointed when you moved to write Regency romances. It’s clear, though, that you aren’t going back West so I decided to give your books another try.

Some of the story relies in cliches (Devil Earl named Lucian?) and contraventions (independent society miss?) and some rises above it. On the whole, it’s a better historical than most on the market but there were issues that prevented me from embracing the book wholesale.

Catherine’s best friend’s husband needs killing and unlike Jane Krakowski and Lauren Holly (Dixie Chick’s Goodbye Earl) they can’t do it themselves. Catherine seeks out Lucian Langdon, Earl of Claybourne, a man who grew up with a band of thieves and who is purported to have murdered his own uncle. She offers him money to kill someone for her but refuses to tell him who it is.

Lucian declines. He has no desire to kill anyone and in fact tries to explain to Catherine that killing someone would take a piece of his soul. …

Dear Ms. Ibbotson,

When Azteclady asked me to review one of your romances, I was both excited and challenged. You pack so many irresistible characters into less than three hundred pages that it is difficult to do justice to these delightful folk. And how would I explain the magic by which you can take me from a lump in the throat to tears of laughter in the space of a few sentences? And yet, how could I refuse? Your books are the meringue kisses of romance novels: simple and sophisticated at once; rich and sweet and awfully charming.

A Countess Below Stairs is no exception. The story takes place in 1919 and centers, as much as it does, on Anna Grazinsky, a Russian Countess. As a child, Anna is a joy to her parents, and though they shower her with gifts, she is so tenderhearted that she never becomes spoiled. Her father calls her his “little star,” but when he is killed in World War I, Anna’s heart, as well as her mother’s and her younger brother’s, are broken.

The family is dispossessed of their fortune when the servant …

Dear Mrs. Cobb South,

I’ve been a fan of yours since “The Weaver Takes a Wife” and was delighted to hear that a new book was coming out. I can now happily say that “Of Paupers and Peers” will take its place beside my other Cobb South keepers. I just wish that 1) it was a lot cheaper so more people might buy it and enjoy it and 2) your books were available as ebooks. Any chance of that?

James Weatherly’s greatest hopes in life were to win the hand of the Peerless Miss Prescott and to aspire to the living in the small village of Fairford. When Miss Prescott laughed at his proposal, he lowered his sights to earning his keep as a Latin tutor and vicar. It was then that Fate, in the form of an unbroken male descent from the disinherited second son who ran off with a milkmaid, changed his life. James suddenly finds himself a wealthy Duke traveling to his vast Surrey estate when Fate hits him over the head again, only this time literally. Beset by two robbing ruffians, he’s lying in the middle of a dusty road when Miss Margaret …