Books by Karen Ranney
At the beginning of Karen Ranney’s new romance, A Borrowed Scot, the hero, Montgomery Fairfax, is at a London club surrounded by Latin-chanting men dressed in hooded robes. He’s there because he’s curious about the provenance of a numinous diamond-ringed mirror he’s inherited. Montgomery is ...
I admit to a certain degree of wilful ignorance. If I’m taking a walk and I see road kill fifty feet away, I’ll go past it and just not look. Now, to me A Highland Duchess is crammed with literary road kill, a series of circumstances and plot devices that are too over-the-top to believe. But as ...
The basic set-up for Sold to a Laird is rather contrived and unrealistic. However, the story itself is surprisingly sweet with a strong romantic connection between the characters. Lady Sarah Baines is the daughter of a duke, but a cruel and abusive one. So when Douglas Eston com ...
For me, comfort reads often involve a lot of angst. Something about the theme of love as redemption, and seeing love heal characters and help free themselves from their suffering reaches me on a deeply emotional level. That's one of the reasons I enjoy Karen Ranney's work; she does tortured characte ...
It’s been a long time since I reviewed an historical romance (or read one for that matter) and happily, the first historical romance after my long absence turned out to be a very good one. Karen Ranney is one of those wonderfully dependable buried treasure authors who seem to always deliver, even ...
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As a long time romance reader, sometimes I find myself forgetting why I love this genre so much. At times titles, plots, and characters all blend together until all I can say is "love prevails in the end". But at other times I read a book that refreshingly, uniquely, and unequivocally reminds me jus ...
Great historicals are quickly becoming the Woolly Mammoths of Romanceland, but books like Karen Ranney's The Scottish Companion give me hope for the future. The bare bones plot is nothing new: cold nobleman with certain death looking over his shoulder must wed with all haste and produce an heir. ...
Autumn in Scotland is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, Ranney's usual sure hand is at play in her creation of complex characters and stirring emotions. On the other hand, these characters are done a disservice by a couple of inexplicable and extraneous plotlines.
Charlotte dutifully married ...
Though An Unlikely Governess is a satisfying enough gothic-tinged romance, the truth is that it's a lot more satisfying before the reader is subjected to incredibly annoying TSTL behavior by the heroine in the book’s final pages. As a word of warning, if you’re as creeped out as I am by extreme ...
Nicholas Sparks says that "Romance novels have happy endings while love stories are not bound by this requirement. Love stories usually end tragically or at best, on a bittersweet note." One of the best love stories ever written is Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, which is bittersweet indeed. Re ...