all book related reviews
I’ve heard many good things about Nancy Butler’s Regency Romances, so I gave The Prodigal Hero a try. I have to say that, despite some minor problems, I thoroughly enjoyed this story of “the cripple and the malcontent” as our hero describes himself and his heroine. Alexandra Prescott has fought her cousin Darwin Quincy’s attentions…
I don’t know how many female entrepreneurs there were in medieval England, but I bet they were smarter than Linet de Montfort, the wool merchant heroine of My Champion by Glynnis Campbell. The first thing Linet does is publicly humiliate an evil Spanish pirate. Duncan de Ware, a nobleman, sees the incident and instantly vows…
Sally Harrington, introduced in Exposé, returns in what is a hard-to-classify novel. It’s a mystery, which echoes some of the humor of Evanovich and Cruisie, by an author who more recently has been doing romantic suspense. Set in the world of national news stations (a la CNN) The Last Lover also brings to mind Sparkle…
Mistletoe Mayhem is a Regency Romance that tries to have it all. It’s a house party book – and also a cabin romance. It’s full of characters, including the hero’s four young wards and two couples from previous books. On top of it all it’s Christmas time, and everywhere you look there’s mistletoe. Although at…
The Star King, Susan Grant’s second novel, proves that her first terrific romance, Once a Pirate, was no fluke. This is an author who writes romantic and exciting books that conjure up exotic locales and peoples. Grant is equally at home creating an advanced civilization light years away as she was conjuring up a pirate’s…
The title of this book is a puzzler, since Aubrey Fairgrieve, the hero, spends relatively little time actually courting Susannah. Instead, both of them are constantly Remembering Julia, Aubrey’s late unlamented wife and Susannah’s childhood best friend. It’s an off-center focus in an unremarkable story. This book is a passable time-killer, but nothing more. Susannah…
This story contains one of my biggest personal peeves: the hostile heroine. You know her. No matter how wonderful the hero is, she yells at him, fights with him, and belittles him practically the entire book. I like a little strife and conflict in my books, but constant arguing gets old quickly. The heroine in…
At first, all of the lead characters in The Chance are so insecure that it’s like traveling back to Regency High. Happily, the book quickly improves from its shaky beginning to become an interesting character study. Though never very dramatic, The Chance gives insight into some unusual people. Rafe Dalton is a type familiar in…
Lindsey McCullough is a paraplegic who works in a museum, cleaning and arranging priceless ancient artifacts. She comes across a copper jar from a “Treasures of Arabia” exhibit, which emits a jinni when she polishes it. At first she is skeptical, but he soon convinces her of his powers by vaporizing her telephone. Kasim offers…
This was not the worst book I have ever read, but it’s in contention for the most exasperating. There’s a lot of promise here, including a terrific backstory and acceptable prose, but it’s consistently undercut by illogic, anachronisms, and head-scratching inconsistencies. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a decently-written book shoot itself in the foot…
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