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 Shinn,

I hadn’t known, or perhaps I’d just forgotten, that this book was a police procedural murder mystery. I did know that it involved priestesses so expected some religious element but I had not expected to be blown away by how wonderfully you would work that into the story. And while the book is set on a faraway planet, it features themes that are probably eternal everywhere: religion, greed, love and redemption.

From the Publisher
On a planet of barren beauty near the edge of the civilized galaxy, two religions are practiced. Both sects worship the same goddess - the Triumphantes in joy and splendor, the Fideles in solemnity and selflessness. As different as day and night, sun and shadow, joy and grief, the two sects are now bound together in death… A serial killer is stalking the priestesses, killing first a Triumphante, then a Fidele, in turn. Six women are now dead, and the planetary authorities are at a loss. Enter Interfed Agent Cowen Drake. A cunning professional, he must immerse himself in an unfamiliar world of stark spirituality to catch the killer. A world that will trap him between opulence and sacrifice, between …