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

Dear Ms. Vincent,

Like Jane, I found myself disappointed by your debut, Stray. I think my expectations had been raised so high by the pre-publication buzz that there was no possible way the actual product could have met them. That’s a danger I sometimes encounter with the internet, which offers up so much information about books well before they ever hit the bookstores. But while I agree with most of Jane’s criticisms, I wanted to give your werecat series another chance. From past experience, I know it can take a couple books for an author to hit her stride and when it comes to paranormal series, often times the writer simply needs space to develop the world.

Rogue picks up where Stray left off. Faythe Saunders has returned to the suffocating environment of her werecat Pride, taking up the responsibility of being the next generation’s mother as well as beginning her training as the first female enforcer from a North American Pride. Complications arise when strays start turning up dead. When they discover there’s a connection between the dead strays and a …

Dear Ms. Laurenston:

For those readers who are looking for stronger and sassier women in Romance, your Magnus Pack series may be a perfect match. When I got Here Kitty, Kitty, the third and final installment in the paranormal adventures of best friends Sara Morrighan, Miki Kendrick, and Angelina Santiago, I hadn't even heard of you, so I decided to read the series from the beginning, allowing me to appreciate and enjoy Here Kitty, Kitty that much more.

And enjoy it, I did. Although this review is technically for the third Pack book, I did not treat it as completely independent in my reading, and cannot in my review, either. Also, I should clarify that the first two books in the series, Pack Challenge and Go Fetch!, were published first by the now defunct Triskellion and then by Samhain. If you initially read or purchased the Trisk versions, I recommend re-investing in the Samhain editions, which I found to be significantly stronger.

At the center of these books are three incredibly strong women, assertive and present in the way I often want the women of …

Dear Ms. Vincent:

I was excited about your book after Angie W blogged about it a few months ago. It is an urban fantasy, shapeshifter romance and I really like those books. It’s told in the first person. With a first person narrative, we readers have to WANT to root for the character’s successes and sympathize with her failures. When the reader finds that she would rather have the villians do away with the heroine, there is a problem.

Faythe Sanders is a female member of a Pride. While at grad school, she is attacked by a “stray”, a werecat not belonging to any Pride. Faythe is soon after summoned home by her father, the Alpha. The attack she suffered was just one in a string of attacks on the tabbies in the North American Prides. Faythe is resistant to returning home but in the face of her father’s enforcer, Marc, she obeys.

Marc is Faythe’s former lover. She knows that he still has feelings for her but she didn’t like the manipulativeness in which her family manuevered her into being engaged to Marc. It wasn’t …