Blythe Smith, Author at All About Romance

About Blythe Smith

I've been at AAR since dinosaurs roamed the Internet. I've been a Reviewer, Reviews Editor, Managing Editor, Publisher, and Blogger. Oh, and Advertising Corodinator. Right now I'm taking a step back to concentrate on kids, new husband, and new job in law...but I'll still keep my toe in the romance waters.

Pride and Prejudice: A Discussion

An AAR Top 100 Romance

review originally published on December 18, 2000

Blythe: Few people who knew me in high school would have guessed how much I loved Pride and Prejudice. The image I cultivated was more sarcastic and smart alecky than romantic, and I definitely preferred jeans to prom dresses. But deep inside I was really a closet romantic who knew every word of Mr. Darcy’s first proposal by heart. I first read Pride and Prejudice when I was a young teenager, plowing through my own self-guided tour of the classics. When I picked it up I knew almost nothing about it, which I think is an advantage, because I was in for a wonderful surprise. I quickly came to love the story of Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet, and over the years it has stood up to frequent re-readings to become a cherished keeper.

The appeal of Pride and Prejudice is so widespread that it […]

By Blythe Smith|2022-02-07T16:14:38-05:00March 23rd, 2018|11 Comments

An Inquiry into Love and Death

An Inquiry into Love and Death is a mystery/ghost story set in 1924 England – perhaps capitalizing on Downton Abbey’s popularity. But if we have Downton to thank for the fact that we now find a new period of history interesting (and therefore marketable), then thank God for it.

Jillian Leigh is the daughter of a famous chemist, and she attends Oxford in a time when women were a decided oddity at the university. When her Uncle Toby dies in an isolated town in Cornwall, she must leave Oxford to identify the body and put his affairs in order. It’s an unusual job for a young, unmarried woman – something more than one of the locals remarks upon. But her parents are tied up in Paris, and really aren’t much like other people’s parents anyway. And Toby was not like other people’s uncles – he had the very unusual occupation of ghost hunter. And his death – apparently from a […]

By Blythe Smith|2022-04-22T18:53:43-04:00March 6th, 2013|2 Comments

Tarnished Rose of the Court by Amanda McCabe

Oddly enough, while I was reading Tarnished Rose of the Court I also happened to be reading Meredith Duran’s At Your Pleasure – which has a very similar plot. Both have sisters whose brothers are or were involved in treasonous plots, both have heroes and heroines who were in love in the past and were driven apart. Both also have heroines who were then married to abusive husbands.

<!– var browName = navigator.appName; var SiteID = 1; var ZoneID = 4; var browDateTime = (new Date()).getTime(); if (browName=='Netscape') { document.write('~~‘); document.write(”); } if (browName!=’Netscape’) { document.write(‘~~‘); document.write(”); } // –>~~~~

I’m not suggesting at all that either copied the other, merely that they had very similar arcs and I happened to be […]

By Blythe Smith|2021-11-20T10:35:43-05:00November 7th, 2012|0 Comments

A Gentleman Undone by Cecilia London

When I started reading A Gentleman Undone, I could tell almost immediately – within a page, really – that the writing was simply a cut above. It’s just that good. It’s not necessarily my favorite premise (war-scarred, ex-military hero meets and falls in love with life-scarred, ex-prostitute/current mistress of another man), but when a book is as well crafted as this one, it just doesn’t matter.

Will Blackshear owes George Talbot a debt he can never repay. He considers himself responsible for Talbot’s death, and has plans to invest in a shipping venture so he can support Talbot’s widow and child. But Will is a younger son with few prospects. In order to raise the money for the investment, Will plans to gamble, carefully and conservatively. He sets out on this mission, landing at a higher class establishment. He notices Lydia almost immediately: ”Three of the courtesans were beautiful. His eye lingered, naturally, on the fourth.” There’s something about her […]

By Blythe Smith|2022-04-28T19:59:59-04:00June 13th, 2012|0 Comments

My Fair Concubine by Jeannie Lin

My Fair Concubine – as the title might suggest – is a Tang Dynasty take on My Fair Lady. The heroine is a tea shop girl, and the hero talks her into impersonating his sister – who is supposed to be a peace bride, a gift to a warrior in a distant province, but has run away with her lover. I found it to be a fun and unusual twist on a classic romance theme.

Yan Ling has worked as a servant at a small, provincial tea house for as long as she can remember. Abandoned by her mother, she has few skills beyond serving tea and cleaning up afterward. She meets Fei Long when he comes to retrieve his errant sister. Fei Long is too tender-hearted to kill his sister’s lover, so he lets them go, then sulks […]

By Blythe Smith|2021-10-18T20:07:46-04:00May 28th, 2012|0 Comments

A Week to Be Wicked by Tessa Dare

Tessa Dare had me at hello. Or rather, at A Week to Be Wicked’s dedication, which reads: “For all the girls who walk and read at the same time.” Like the book’s heroine, Minerva…or me. For the record, I only walked into a utility pole that one time. And there might have been a few street signs. Anyway, it’s a terrific start to a terrific book. The characters and the dialogue are smart and funny, and it’s a joy to read from start to finish.

Minerva Highwood is determined to stop Lord Colin Payne from proposing to her sister Diana. Diana is beautiful, and Colin is rich and handsome, but there’s no love between them, and Minerva wants something more for her sister. She knocks on Payne’s door late at night with a daring proposition in mind, and discovers him distractingly half-naked. Nonetheless, she makes her offer: If Colin will pretend to elope with her and journey to the Royal […]

By Blythe Smith|2022-04-24T08:49:18-04:00March 21st, 2012|4 Comments

11/22/1963 by Stephen King

Before I picked up 11/22/63, I hadn’t read a book by Stephen King in over twenty years. (I read The Tommyknockers in college, and let’s just say it put me off.) A chance comment by someone who I don’t even know well who “heard it was good” and a free Klout perk copy led me to give it a chance. And what do you know? I loved it. Aliens fueled by batteries may not be for me, but when it comes to time travel and alternative history, you can count me in. I could hardly put this book down.

You might think from the title and the cover that this book is about the Kennedy assassination. It is, and it isn’t. It’s about time travel and all the big “what ifs,” but it’s also about a Maine English teacher who travels back in time and falls in love in small town Texas. That wasn’t at all what I was expecting, […]

By Blythe Smith|2022-04-22T10:05:50-04:00December 7th, 2011|0 Comments

The Lady Most Likely…: A Novel in Three Parts by Julia Quinn, Eloisa James, and Connie Brockway

The Lady Most Likely… is not really an anthology so much as one story about the same house party, written by three different authors. But since each author focuses on a different couple – and writes one section of the book – I’ve reviewed it as an anthology. If you like Brockway, Quinn, and James, it’s one you’ll likely enjoy.

The set up for the book is that Hugh Dunne, the Earl of Briarly, has finally decided to take a wife. His sister Carolyn hosts a house party, inviting several eligible women. Hugh is somewhat rough around the edges – not in the rake sense, but in the horse-mad-seldom-pokes-his-nose-out-of-the-stables sense. His first two prospects meet their matches at the house party, and in the final portion of the book Hugh finally gets his turn.

Julia Quinn writes the first portion of the book, which focuses on Gwendolyn Passmore – a woman of incomparable beauty who also happens to be very […]

By Blythe Smith|2021-11-22T08:12:19-05:00December 24th, 2010|0 Comments

The Mischief of the Mistletoe by Lauren Willig

I’ll say this for the art department at Dutton: They have some serious love for Lauren Willig. Her covers are always attractive, but the one on The Mischief of the Mistletoe is absolutely stunning. Periodically I would find myself lost in a daze and realize I was doing it, again – staring at the cover, mesmerized by its beauty. If ever there was a book to buy for the cover alone, this is it. Oh, and did I mention that the book is good, too

If you’ve been keeping up with the Pink Carnation series, you’ll know Turnip Fitzhugh. Nice, lovable guy who’s a bit of a dolt. He gets his own book here, and interestingly enough, the second half of it takes place at the same time and setting that figured in The Temptation of the Night Jasmine – The Dowager Duchess of Dovedale’s Christmas house party (hence that gorgeous, holly-strewn cover). It features events we’ve already seen, but […]

By Blythe Smith|2021-08-10T20:49:35-04:00October 19th, 2010|0 Comments

A Hellion in Her Bed by Sabrina Jeffries

A Hellion in Her Bed features a hero who just won’t be tied down. This is the sort of plot device that can really get on my nerves when it isn’t handled well – and usually it isn’t. However, Jeffries approaches what is usually the tiredest of cliches in a thoughtful manner, and the result is an enjoyable, quirky read.

Annabel Lake is desperate. Her family brewery is teetering on the edge after losing a lucrative Russian market, a development that sent her usually-responsible brother into a drunken tailspin. She can see one way out, but it’s a long shot: She has to convince Hester Plumtree to work with her in a joint venture to sell their October brew to the East India captains. Unfortunately, when Annabel arrives at Plumtree Brewery, she finds Hester’s grandson, Lord Jarret Sharpe, instead. Jarret is running the brewery for awhile while his grandmother recovers from […]

By Blythe Smith|2022-05-02T08:34:41-04:00October 1st, 2010|0 Comments

12 Next