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

Dear Ms. Mallery:

When I was a kid, my brothers got the Boys’ Life magazine and on the back of the magazine, next to the Sea Monkeys advertisement (Oh, how I wanted that!) was the ubiquitous Charles Atlas 97 pound weakling ad. It was a cartoon that showed some guy getting sand kicked in his face and then, after enduring the Charles Atlas body building program (not help in a bottle like today’s advertisements), the 97 pound weakling gets revenge on the bully and ends up with the beautous beach babe.

Sweet Trouble reminded me of that ad, only the once nerdy hero transforms from a weakling into a suave sophisticate whose clothes, demeanor, and checkbook balance befits that of a Harlequin Presents hero. Matthew Fenner had fallen in love with a wild, outrageous girl who he had perceived to be outside his grasp. Indeed, his fears were confirmed when Fenner finds out that his love, Jesse Keyes had cheated on him and was pregnant with another man’s child. It was enough to transform the geek boy into Bond boy. Handsome, deadly, and not very nice, except in bed with the …

Dear Ms. Mallery:

The benefit of reading books out of order is you don’t get all that messy character build up. Yes, that is a bit tongue in cheek, but the truth is, if I had read Sweet Talk first, I don’t know if I would have liked Sweet Spot as much (again with the virtually meaningless titles).

Nicole, the heroine and oldest sister of the Keyes trio, appeared in Sweet Talk and was pretty mean. The things that she told her sister Claire (I wish you had died instead of our mother) might have been honest, but were super painful for Claire to hear and for me to read. Nicole is fairly intractable and has an always right demeanor (those two traits are reportedly commonly found together in the homo sapien species according to a MTV study called Real World: Bakery).

Yet for all Nicole’s faults, I found her to be very likeable. Nicole’s fraternal twin, Claire, left the family at age 6 which was a loss that Nicole never really got over. This loss was compounded by the fact that her mother left the …

Dear Ms. Mallery:

July, August, and September sees the release of your Keys’ Bakery sisters series. The series begins with Claire, a piano virtuoso. Claire has been estranged from her family since, well, almost forever. When she was 3 years old, she walked up to a piano and started playing and her life changed forever. She began lessons and practicing and at age 6 left the home with her grandmother to start her career as a classical pianist. When she was older, her mother left her family to be with Claire. Nicole and Jesse were left behind and Nicole, at age 12, had to be mother, daughter, and bakery worker. Jesse was the irresponsible one. They both blamed Claire for the failure of their family and want nothing to do with her.

But then Jesse calls and tells Claire that Nicole is going to have surgery and that Nicole wants Claire to come and help. Claire thinks this is a chance, an opportunity to reconnect with the only family she has. She’s also got some performance issues so running off to help her sister is …

Dear Ms. Mallery:

This is Book 3 in the Buchanan series and it features youngest brother Reid who happens to be a famous former baseball player who suffered a career ending shoulder injury the previous year. He’d rather be playing ball than tending bar at one of the Buchanan’s restaurants, but at least he can salve the pain with a bevy of willing women.

Reid loves women and they love him back or so he thought until one morning an apparently disgruntled female reporter does a personal piece on Reid accusing him of being bad in bed. His life goes down hill as every gossip and news agency in the country wants a piece of him. There is no way for Reid to rebut the reporter’s claim of his between-the-sheets ineptness without looking totally classless. He decides to go and hide out at his grandmother’s house.

Lori Johnston had been hired as the day nurse for his convalescing grandmother. Gloria Buchanan, the matriarch, is as cruel and hateful as they come. Lori is convinced that Gloria is lonely, needy, and just acting out. Lori also is unconnected to the sports …

Dear Ms. Mallery:

This is the first Buchanan book that I read but the second in the series. I think its my favorite Mallery book I’ve read in my recent glom.

Elissa Towers is a woman who has made some past bad mistakes and is still paying for them, but she’s righting her ship and trying to make a life for herself and her daughter, Zoe. She lives in a poorer part of town, sharing an apartment complex with Mrs. Ford, an elderly woman, and a newcomer, Walker Buchanan.

All Elissa knows about Walker is that he was in the military and doesn’t appear to have a job. She doesn’t really want to know more because men are a bad thing and she’s done with bad things. But one day she’s struggling with her taking the tire off her car and Walker shows up and lends a hand. One thing leads to another and Walker has bought her a new tire.

This makes Elissa unhappy and she proceeds to tell him that not only does he not have the right to buy a new tire, but she also has no interest in going out …

Dear Ms. Mallery:

I’ve gone on a bit of a Mallery glom and the readers here will have to suffer along with me. Delicious is the second book I read in the Buchanan series. I read book 2, Irresistible, first. I’m not sure whether knowing the outcome of the story in Delicious affected my enjoyment of it, but I found the chemistry in Delicious to be a bit tepid. (Of course, PW gave it a Starred Review, so what do I know?) However, there was a lot to like in the story and didn’t stall my 6 book Mallery gorging.

Delicious is a second chance at love story where Cal Buchanan and Penny Jackson, formerly married to each other, reunite, fall in love all over again, and get to take another stab at the elusive HEA. Three years ago, Penny walked out on Cal and he never fought to get her back. Ostensibly Penny walked out because she didn’t believe that Cal loved her and Cal never convinced her otherwise. One thing that Penny wanted more than anything was to have children but Cal was …

Dear Ms. Mallery:

Accidentally Yours relies on the premise that it is okay for a mother to do anything to save her child. And by anything, I mean, extortion, bribery, and emotional blackmail. The biggest problem with this book is that it plays off the mother’s actions as cute and endearing rather than reprehensible, but morally conflicting. Because there was no recognition that the mother was engaged in something morally, ethically, and even legally wrong, the entire tone of the book was offensive.

Kerri Sullivan’s son is dying from Gilliar’s Disease, a rare disease that killed the son of billionaire Nathan King. One researcher was on the verge of making a breakthrough when a fire destroyed his workplace, rendering his scientific study nearly impossible to continue. Kerri is determined that Nathan King will pay for the continued research. She first accosts him in a restaurant with a DVD of her son and then attempts to play on his own son’s death as a way to manipulate him into funding research for her son. King refuses but Kerri will not be deterred. She sends out …

Dear Ms. Mallery:

In an effort to broaden my horizons and understand the appeal of the category romance and to support Harlequin’s phenomenal digital effort, I’ve taken to buying two or three series books a month. A while back I purchased The Sheik and The Virgin Secretary because the title exemplified two of the most villified but standard tropes within the series genre plus it was a play on the Boss/Secretary theme. I had to read it.

Prince Rafiq of Lucia-Serrat is the standard issue prince from some unknown principality overlooking the Indian Ocean. He’s very rich and tends to be a serial monogamist. When his assistant of two years, Kiley Hendrick, is in her office on Monday morning instead of her honeymoon, Rafiq was surprised but even more when Kiley suggests that since he gave his last mistress her conge, she fill that position.

Kiley is a very practical and direct person. She lays out all the reasons that she would make a good mistress. She doesn’t make unreasonable demands; she understands his need to work; she “clean[s] up pretty well”; is smart, and has a sense …

Ashley
Rhonda

First one to email me at jane at dearauthor dot com gets choice of paper or ebook.

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