B Reviews / Book Reviews1930s / arranged-marriage / businessman / dysfunctional family / family relationships / fashion designer / Great Depression / marriage-of-convenience2 Comments
A pretend marriageA passion that’s anything but… The great depression has left heiress Jolie Cramer’s family destitute! To save them, Jolie must abandon her dreams of independence and marry wealthy Randal Osterlund. Thank goodness Randal only wants a wife to secure a business deal and shares her feelings about love—nothing ... more >
B- Reviews / Book Reviews1820s / arranged-marriage / disability / Disabled Heroine / England / inheritance / inspirational / neurodiverse / Regency / teacher heroine2 Comments
Hazel Stillman is a woman of rare independence and limited opportunities. Born with a clubbed foot, she was sent away as a child and, knowing her disability means a marriage is unlikely, she devoted herself to scholarship and education. Now working as a teacher in an elite private girls’ school, ... more >
B+ Reviews / Book Reviews / Recommended Readsarranged-marriage / business / Business woman / England / London / matchmakers / non-fiction / World War II5 Comments
A riveting glimpse of life and love during and after World War II—a heart-warming, touching, and thoroughly absorbing true story of a world gone by. In the spring of 1939, with the Second World War looming, two determined twenty-four-year-olds, Heather Jenner and Mary Oliver, decided to open a marriage bureau. ... more >
B Reviews / B+ Reviews / B- Reviews / Book Reviewsarranged-marriage / Asian characters / class-difference / historical romance / Historical-China / Lotus Palace series / mystery / POC / POC author / Reading lists / scholar / Tang Dynasty6 Comments
Several years ago I fell in love with Jeannie Lin’s Lotus Palace novels. Whether you consider them romances or mysteries (I think of them as romances), the setting, a pleasure quarter called the Pinkang Li, part of the Tang Dynasty capital, Chang’an, during the 840s CE, is beautifully rendered and ... more >
Book Reviews#ownvoices / arranged-marriage / California / Chef / coming-of-age / cops / m/m mystery / Missouri / Muslim / POC / POC author / police procedural / Reading lists / revenge porn / South-Asian / YA8 Comments
More Than Just a Pretty Face by Syed M. Masood Jayne’s review of this #ownvoices YA novel got me to pick it up and I was glad I did. Danyal Jilani is a good-looking and sweet nineteen-year-old in his senior year of high school (he was held back a year ... more >
B Reviews / Book Reviewsarranged-marriage / dystopian / First-Person / Humor / Science Fiction / Time-Travel2 Comments
Welcome to the end of time. It’s a perfect day. Nobody remembers how the Causality War started. Really, there’s no-one to remember, and nothing for them to remember if there were; that’s sort of the point. We were time warriors, and we broke time. I was the one who ended ... more >