all book related reviews
If you’ve read Linda Howard’s Duncan’s Bride, the setup of this book may remind you of it. Both books have as a hero a rancher who doubts the heroine is right for the job, not to mention the hero’s past includes a woman who was completely unsuitable for ranch life. In this case, Montana rancher…
Now that Scotland’s been done to death, it looks as if it’s time to read romances set in Ireland. A Bright Idea takes place in Victorian Dublin, and while I commend Cindy Harris for not overdoing the setting to the point of caricature, or going to the other extreme by pretending that the setting doesn’t…
Phantom Waltz is my contender for the most romantic romance I’ve read this year. After flirting from behind the counter of her father’s store, Bethany Coulter expects Ryan Kendrick to turn tail and flee the moment he realizes that she is in a wheelchair. Bethany, a former champion barrel racer, was injured in a rodeo…
Emma Holly is known for her erotic stories in the Secrets anthologies and her erotic novels for the Black Lace publishing company. With Beyond Innocence she turns her hand to historical romance and gives us a very good story with hotter than average love scenes. However, if you are looking for erotic scenes that push…
You know that obnoxious female character, so common in romance (usually the spoiled younger sister or cousin) who hasn’t a thought in her feather-light brain aside from her newest dress and whichever knight (or knights) in shining armor she’s in love with this week? The kind that never thinks about anyone or anything but herself,…
If I took my copy of Sweet Success and cut it in half at its midpoint, I would be left with two books of very unequal quality. The first book would be a nuanced, entertaining study of characters I want to know better. The second book would be an irritating depiction of psychologically inconsistent people…
About That Man features many themes you’ve probably read before: a quaint close-knit little town filled with busybodies, a workaholic contemporary hero in need of redemption, a modern day spinster with a painful secret, and a rambunctious orphan to bring them all together. These same-old, same-old elements typically don’t bother me if the relationship swelters,…
I’m told Iris Johansen used to be a romance novelist. You wouldn’t know it from her latest effort, Final Target, which falls clearly into the suspense genre. It contains a minor romance subplot, but no one would mistake it for a romantic novel. It excels as a suspenseful read with pulses pounding and pages turning,…
The Warrior, a sequel to The Trickster, which was quite favorable reviewed here at AAR, suffers from a bad case of sequel-itis. But instead of the usual symptom, bloated sections of boring back story, this one assumes the reader has read the prequel and will read the forthcoming sequel and leaves out too much information….
One of the good things about being a reviewer at AAR is that you quite often read books that you otherwise might not have picked up. I have been exposed to a number of new authors and new sub-genres of romance in this way. Elizabeth Berg writes fiction, women’s fiction, and I don’t tend to…
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