Books by Karen Harper
I don’t think I’ve ever said anything like this before, but I’m honestly not sure I have the ability to convey how dreadful a book The Queen’s Secret is. I’ll start with some basic math: I can read a good book in a day. It took me thirty-three days to read this one.
In 1939, Queen Eliza ...
One of the more disappointing reading experiences must be that in which one gets drawn into the promising opening of a book, only to find the quality of the story drops off rapidly. Worse still is the situation in which one is assigned to review the aforesaid book and, therefore, must stick with it ...
Historical romances have always seemed more incredibly romantic to me than any other subgenre because there is just something about a big meaty historical saga that fires my imagination. However, a good historical must have not only a well-told story but also must have characters who capture the rea ...
I've been a fan of Karen Harper's writing since she wrote Harlequin Historicals under the name of Caryn Cameron, and have been enjoying her Elizabeth I series for a while. For some reason, I'd not yet read any of her contemporaries until now and remain undecided as to whether I'd try another of her ...
Jenna Kirk followed her older sister Mandi out into the night to get a glimpse of Mandi's boyfriend, Mace MacCaman, who is also the love of Jenna's life. Instead she walks into a kidnapping: both Jenna and Mandi disappear. A few days later, Jenna is dumped at home, drugged and alone, with few memori ...
While I enjoy mysteries and love Elizabethan history and politics, I have to say that The Twylight Tower never really got off the ground for me. It manages to be interesting without being engaging, and the pacing is entirely too slow for a story involving multiple mysterious murders that seem to be ...
As a romance, this book fails totally. The hero is absent from most scenes and his relationship with the heroine is almost an afterthought. The publishers have labeled Shaker Run a Romantic Suspense, but the suspense was in wondering when I might accidentally run across some romance. It's not tha ...
Many books (some of them mysteries) are set in Elizabethan England but there aren't any others that can claim to have Queen Elizabeth herself doing the investigating. What amazed me in Karen Harper's first historical mystery, The Poyson Garden and this one, is that Elizabeth's sleuthing actually ma ...
Rachel Mast is a young Amish widow struggling with a very fundamental problem. While she loves and reveres her tight-knit community, she's frustrated by its unwillingness to allow a woman to be independent. One year after her husband, Sam, was crushed and impaled by the hay hook in their barn (all t ...
This book is a great example of how a bad choice for a cover blurb can spoil a book for some readers. The blurb on the front cover of The Baby Farm gives away an important plot point - one that is hinted at but not revealed until many pages into the book. Readers who don't like spoilers will be upse ...