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

One Night with His Virgin Mistress by Sara Craven. 19 year old heroine bedsits a flat while trying to write a historical adventure romance (reads like a classic bodice ripper btw). Hero is a quazillionaire who foregoes his fortune to work as a troubleshooting engineer. The two end up living together because she was conned into bedsitting and hero takes pity on the forlorn chickie. Standard HP angst drama with a bit of a twist because what ended up being the basis of the Big Misunderstanding was not what I had expected. A couple of things to note, however, is that the heroine does read older than 19 but the age of the heroine was frequently noted to be 19 no matter how I tried to push that from my mind. The core of her emotional trauma is that men she liked didn’t like her because she wasn’t sexually experienced enough and so she tries to get the quazillionaire hero to divest her of her virginity. In this, I thought the storyline was a bit. . . offputting. I am not entirely sure why …

If you have ever wanted to get in the mind of an editor the new podcast from Harlequin may be your ticket.  Harlequin plans on producing 20-minute “Meet the Editor” podcasts.  The first podcast is  with Melissa Jeglinski  who is the senior editor for Silhouette Desire, and Diana Ventimiglia,  associate editor for Silhouette Desire and Silhouette  Romantic Suspense.    A new podcast will  be released every two weeks.

You can access the podcast through Harlequin, Itunes or other podcasters.

Via Fox Business

Dear Ms. Grady:

I thought that I had read you before and that you were jmc’s secret pleasure which was why I bought this one. Unfortunately, this was a case of mixed up names. I was thinking of Robyn Donald but must have fixated on Robyn, forgetting the last name. It’s not the first time, I’ve gotten authors’ names mixed up and it won’t be the last.

Donna Wilks is a psychologist who does work for the criminal justice in Sydney including giving profiles of accused individuals. She is appointed by the courts to be an impartial party.

Tate Bridges, Australian broadcasting mogul, is thrilled when Donna is assigned to his recently arrested brother’s case. He comes to a fundraising party to seduce Donna into giving his brother a favorable report. Bridges is not shy about the fact that he’ll use whatever power and influence he has to game the system.

Donna and Tate were engaged five years ago but Donna broke it off after realizing that she would always come second to Tate’s business ambitions. Tate begins by blackmailing Donna …

Dear Ms. Betts:

I have been gaining newfound respect for category authors of late and when I saw that your book, Fortune’s Forbidden Woman, was selling like hotcakes I thought I better see what the fuss was about. After all, Keishon had very good luck with buying one of the e-Harlequin bestselling titles’ Billionaire’s Bidding by Barbara Dunlop. I had determined, prior to reading this book, that perhaps the cringe-worthy titles of the Harlequin/Silhouette Categories were the only thing that were bad about these books. Alas, Fortune’s Forbidden Women is one of those stereotypical romances that give fodder to its critics and provide no footing for its supporters. In fact, my head hurts from all the desk banging that went on during the reading of this book. (I had to give up throwing my e-reader around whenever I was unhappy with a book).

Maya Blackstone is a 25 year old virgin who has been dating a very nice young man for over a year. While she sometimes has some physical feelings toward Brad …