Dear Author: Romance Novel Reviews, Industry News, and Commentary

FTC disclaimer: I won this ARC in the competition to write a review of Jane’s nonexistent weregerbil novel.
Review disclaimer: I don’t read a lot of paranormals, so take my judgments of the worldbuilding, mythology, etc. with a grain of salt.
Husband’s comment on the ARC cover: “‘Maybe bad girls do have more fun’? [...]

Dear Ms. Teglia:
Okay, some background about this review. I had hoped that you would send Wicked Hot as you had all of your other books but I swore I hadn’t received it and when you sent me your contribution for the DA iPhone bookshelf, I tried to hint around that I [...]

Dear Ms. Mead,
I don’t share Jane’s reservations about the succubus story, even in novels billed as romances. These days I take the romance label on spines with a grain of salt since there are an increasing number of books shelved in the romance section that are anything but. So I had no problem with the [...]

Dear Ms. Mead:
Thank you for sending us a copy of this book. I know that Jia will be reading it sometime so you may get a different review from her than from me and won’t regret sending it. Overall I think that I am not well suited for the succubus story, particularly one that [...]

Dear Ms. Kessler:
I think The Road to Hell suffers from a mistaken identity. It is a book that would be better as a straight urban fantasy rather than trying to shoehorn into the romance genre. The ostensible conflict in this story is the female protagonist trying to maintain her relationship with her boyfriend [...]

Dear Ms. McCarthy:
I have liked your lighthearted works in the past but I wasn’t at all disturbed that you were exploring a darker side of your writing. On a superficial level, this book worked and I thought it took chances, but a deeper examination revealed some character trends that I found unappealing.
The story [...]

Dear Ms. Mead:
When I pulled up your book out of the stack to read, I thought that if I had to read one more female first person narrated paranormal that I I may poke out my eyes and never read again. Then I began to read and remembered why I had read so many [...]