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

Dear Ms. Ford,

When you offered us a chance to read your novel, the title gave me pause. “Oh dear,” I thought. This is going to be about some spoiled heiress who has to act silly and ends up falling for a poor hero all told against a backdrop of weddings. Which goes to show how deceptive a title can be. Delaney isn’t rich, Mike isn’t poor, they’re both in line to inherit some pretty nice goodies if they, and several other people, meet the terms of a will but yes, there are lots of weddings in the story.

Oh, the will. This would send Jane into orbit no matter if the plot says the hero (a lawyer) and the heroine (who checked with a lawyer) know it’s insane. How could the will as they know it be ironclad? Okay, I just ended up accepting then forgetting this part of the plot to get to the better stuff. The ultimate revelation about the terms of the will also helped me to swallow this. However, why does the villain pay no price for what was done? What they did is literally laughed off despite the time, …

Dear Ms. Cabot:

This is the third in the Queen of Babble series featuring Lizzie Nichols, a wedding dress restorer and designer. I’ve read the first one but not the second (I have no explanation for not reading the second). The book begins with Lizzie confused about an encounter with her good friend, Chaz, and about the end of her relationship with French dreamboat, Jean Luc. (Is French dreamboat redundant?) Jean-Luc shows up unexpectedly in New York and brings with him a huge engagement ring and before she can say yes (or no), she finds herself engaged to Jean-Luc.

As Jean-Luc’s fiancée, though, certain things aren’t quite up to snuff like her Midwestern background and her dreams of a backyard wedding. Jean-Luc expects her to conform herself to fit in with his aristocratic family and then there is his reluctance to live in New York and his affinity for a job in Paris.

Lizzie doesn’t understand why everyone including Chaz and the maid of honor isn’t thrilled with her. She’s even taking flak at work from her co-workers (who kind of hired themselves) and her socialite client who is …

Dear Ms. Alers,

Long Time Coming is the first book in your trilogy about the Whitfields of New York. For the Whitfields, weddings and other celebrations are a family business. The book’s heroine, Tessa Whitfield, is an event planner and owner of Signature Bridals, the company through which she orchestrates dream weddings. Tessa’s sister, Simone, is a floral designer, and her cousin Faith is a baker who specializes in wedding cakes. The three have a warm personal and working relationship, although tension sometimes flares up between Faith and Simone, requiring Tessa to play the role of peacemaker.

As the book opens, Tessa arrives at her home and business (a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights) and finds a message from Bridget Sanborn on her answering machine. Bridget, a young bride, was to come by that evening for a wedding planning session, but can’t make it because she is on a sequestered jury. The problem is that it is now mid-October, and Bridge’s wedding is scheduled for New Year’s Eve. The meeting with Tessa was an important one, so Bridget sends her brother Micah in her stead.

Micah, an assistant DA …

AMC Video Wedding Blog posted a video of a toast made to Amy and Brad. It is the best toast ever. Ever. No hyperbole. Sit down and grab a kleenex.

The man giving the toast, I think, is the best man. Amy and Brad (both actors) are sitting together.

Via Angela James.

Ladies,

Thank you for that hilarious trip down memory lane. I’m a born and bred Southerner and have attended Dixie weddings my whole life (starting when I was a darling four year old flower girl and got to wear my first long dress - yellow silk with lace trim- and sashay down the aisle. I decided I wanted to keep some of those lovely smelling rose petals for myself so I stopped dropping them at the between the pews and the alter!). This book brought to mind a lot of them. Well, maybe not so much the entire wedding parties getting smashing drunk as most of us in my family are Methodists and we don’t do that. At least we don’t do that when the receptions are held at the Church. But I did hear tell of one wedding rehearsal that got a bit out of control thanks to some bottles of Wild Turkey that required all the groomsmen and most of the bridesmaids to wear sun glasses on The …