B Reviews / Book Reviews#ownvoices / anxiety / Bangladeshi-American / being true to oneself / Contemporary / diversity / epistolary novel / expectations / fake relationship / high-school / immigrants / multicultural romance / music / Muslim / parents / poetry / South-Asian / star-crossed lovers / YA5 Comments
Dear Tashie Bhuiyan, I picked up your romantic contemporary YA novel, Counting Down with You, after it was nominated for the Goodreads Awards in the Young Adult Fiction category. It didn’t win but I am glad it was nominated because I wouldn’t have found it otherwise. Karina Ahmed is a ... more >
B Reviews / B+ Reviews / Book Reviews / Recommended Reads1950s / assassination attempt / bisexual characters / Cold War / FBI agent / investigation / joint review / Russian / secret agent / Soviet Union / star-crossed lovers19 Comments
Content warnings: Sirius and I reviewed Aster Glenn Gray’s f/f novella, The Wolf and the Girl, early this year. We decided to reunite for her new m/m novel, Honeytrap. Both works feature Russian characters so I’m especially glad to have Sirius, who lived in what was then a part of ... more >
A- Reviews / B+ Reviews / Book Reviews / Recommended ReadsAgent/Spies/Undercover / enemies to lovers / epistolary novel / f/f romantic elements / LGBTQIA+ / POC / POC author / queer heroine / Science Fiction / star-crossed lovers / Time-Travel / war10 Comments
Dear Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, One look at this 209-page time-travel novel’s blurb and I had to preorder it, so I’m reproducing that blurb here: Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. And thus begins an ... more >
Reading Lists / Recommended Reads / Top Ten ListsBest of 2017 / best of list / Boxer / Contemporary / erotica romance / escaped slave / Glasgow / Great Depression / historical romance / inspirational / knitting / LGBTQIA+ / Literary fiction / Love-Triangle / magical powers / migration / Nigeria / novellas with romantic elements / Soldier / star-crossed lovers / suprise pregnancy / Urban-Fantasy / YA fantasy7 Comments
I was a cranky reader on social media this year, so I was surprised to discover that like Jayne’s, my top ten list runneth over. In hindsight, I think some my crankiness was due to the difficulty I had finding satisfying reads in historical romance, traditionally my favorite genre. Please ... more >
A- Reviews / B+ Reviews / Book Reviews / Recommended ReadsCEO / Contemporary / Erotic-Romance / family feuds / POC / POC author / psychological insights / Reunited Couple / star-crossed lovers / Tattoo Artist2 Comments
Dear Ms. Rai, Every year since the decade-old rift between their once close-families opened up, Nicholas Chandler and Livvy Oka-Kane have met in secret on Livvy’s birthday, each time in a different location, to spend one night together. Every year but the last, when Livvy did not text Nicholas the ... more >
Letters of OpinionBig-Misunderstanding / England / family feuds / historical romance / kidnapped heroine / long separation / Pennyroyal Green series / pirates / Regency / reunited-lovers / series conclusion / slavery / Spain / star-crossed lovers48 Comments
Trigger warnings: Janine: When Julie Anne Long’s much-awaited The Legend of Lyon Redmond came out recently, Robin, Jennie and I decided to hold a SPOILERIFIC roundtable discussion of the book. Below is the back cover description: Bound by centuries of bad blood, England’s two most powerful families maintain a veneer ... more >