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. Anderson:

This is the third and last book that I have of yours that I read. I bought it back in November when it came out, still thinking about the Dangerous Cravings book. I figured that any excessive porniness that existed in Dirty Girl would surely be stamped out by the editing at Aphrodisia. I also thought that a sci fi erotic romance would be a fun read. I can safely say that every thought I had was wrong, wrong, wrong.

Sadie, the girl with no last name, is a reporter from the planet IO. She wants to make it big as a journalist, but her chauvinistic boss won’t let her investigate any good stories. She uses her vacation days to infiltrate the prostie-borg plant in hopes of writing a career making expose. This is awkward for her because she is raised in the morally upright colony of Goshen by a mean and uncaring Aunt, but her unnatural sexual desires led to her fiance leaving her.

Her plan falls apart when her “Overlook Me” chip starts breaking down (isn’t it convenient that they make a chip …

Dear Ms. Shinn,

I think Archangel is a wonderful book. One might even say heavenly.

Most of the inhabitants of Samaria are mortals, but the world also has angels who, by taking wing and praying to the god Jovah through song can ask the god for favorable weather and other aid. Once a year, the Samarian people gather for the annual Gloria, and sing prayers together to show unity and harmony. The Gloria is led by the archangel, leader of all the angels, and indeed, the most powerful person on Samaria, and his or her spouse, the angelica or angelico. Both archangel and spouse are chosen by the god Jovah himself. It is written in Samaria’s holiest text, the Librera, that if the Gloria does not take place as prescribed, Jovah will destroy Samaria.

The angel Gabriel is not only a proud man (I use the word man because except for their wings, their beautiful voices and one or two other physical abilities, the angels on Samaria are as fallible as any person), but as the leader of a third of Samaria’s angels, he is also a very busy one. …

Dear Ms. Spencer:

I think you must be a genius. I also think that Tinker, who is a genius, is a bit too much of a Mary Sue. Sure, she makes mistakes, but everybody wants her. She can do everything. She talks to dragons, defeats dragons, kills the oni, saves Pittsburgh, rebuilds gates, bridges the gap between humans and elves, and so on. This wasn’t so obvious in Tinker but becomes overt in Wolf Who Rules.

The other major flaw in your story is that you must have read Tinker in order to understand what was going on in Wolf Who Rules. There were many times in which you referenced fantasy elements in your world that really could only have been known if you had a clear recollection of Tinker. This was the major downfall. About 4 chapters in, I put WWR down and had to go and re-read Tinker.

The plot was fine. WWR had to request assistance from the other clains to work against the oni. By asking for help, WWR weakend his position as Viceroy of the Westernlands. He would have to …