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

Dear Ms Moyer,

When Jane told me that she’d received an advanced copy of your latest book, Heartbreak Town, I was thrilled. I love the first in the trilogy The Second Coming of Lucy Hatch” I really like The Last of the Honky-tonk Angels and was eager to see what’s in store next for Lucy, Ash, Denny, Jude and the citizens of Mooney, TX. You’d left me with a ton of questions at the end of “Angels” and I needed answers.

It was good to see old friends and faces back in Mooney. Some had changed and others hadn’t changed at all. What had happened in the few years interval since book two was Ash’s meteoric rise and fall on the Nashville music scene. Initial success hadn’t translated into lasting fame for him and the bottle was eroding the wonderment of Ash and Lucy’s marriage. When she thought it was the only option left to her, Lucy had packed up their son Jude, …

Dear Ms Barrett,

When I read the pitch for your book The Men’s Guide to the Women’s Bathroom, I was intrigued by the slight weirdness of it. Okay, who hasn’t laughed at bathroom humor at one point in their lives. But I wondered if the concept of what really goes on when women head to the loo/toilet/washroom/bagno/Ladies/Sheila’s/WC would be enough to carry an entire book. The answer? Yes, when the book is really a Texas Chick Lit.

Claire St John has returned to her hometown of Austin, TX to lick her recent divorce wounds and decide what to do with her life. Being a lawyer no longer appeals to her now that she’s broken from the NYC “my life is making partner” rat race yet there’s not much else she’s qualified to do. Not much, she realizes, until the breakthrough moment when it hits her that much of the best advice she’s ever gotten or overheard has been while in that place in which total strangers seek and offer pearls of wisdom, The Ladies Room, the place to which woman go in pairs while they dissect …

Dear Ms. Kleypas:

After 20 plus historical novels, you’ve decided to change course and write a first person contemporary woman’s fiction novel. Sugar Daddy is billed as a big story featuring a plucky innocent heroine and her dilemma between two rich, alpha businessmen. The narrator, Liberty is a charming and sweet girl who would have made a great Young Adult heroine.

Unfortunately this is not a young adult book, but rather a woman’s fiction novel. I had a hard time buying into the idea that Liberty Jones had grown up by the age of 24 when the book ended. Had the story focused on the female protagonist, her struggle to cope as a mother figure for her 2 year old sister and her mixed race heritage, rather than the choice between two rich men, it would have had greater meaning. Or perhaps if it had explored, in depth, the real emotional issue of being in love with two men, it would have resonated more. Instead, it is just an accounting of Liberty’s short life, from age 13 to 24, her two loves, and ending with a contrived …

Dear Ms. Jeffrey,

When I started reading your book, I was so glad that I work with a woman who’s owned horses for years and who has taken me out to ride her horses many times because I immediately caught one of your first clues that something wasn’t right about the crime scene. “Whoohoo,” I said. “I know why the sheriff and the EMT are giving each other significant looks as they realize that the victim, an experienced horsewoman, was wearing flip-flops in a riding arena.” And when I told my friend about this, she was so proud of me! From that point on, I had a good feeling that you were going to do right by us readers.

Sheriff Rusty Joplin realizes early on that this is going to be one of those mornings when he wishes he could turn the clock back and start it over. By chance his experienced assistant catches the call made for an ambulance to be dispatched to the home of the daughter of one of the wealthiest families in west Texas. And when he gets there, he discovers that the …