all book related reviews
I love history (especially social history) and I like my historical and Regency romances to be accurate. If a book uses too-modern phrases or if a character’s title is given wrong, I have been known to brood as I read the book. But given the choice between a book that is historically accurate but shallow…
How do you feel about romance novels where one of the parties is in disguise? Stephanie Lauren’s A Secret Love has two distinct parts. In the first part, which lasts for about two hundred pages, hero, Gabriel Bar Cynster falls in love with a mysterious disguised woman, who is, in reality, an old friend, Lady…
When I started this book, I thought I had never before read anything by Bertrice Small. But with each new plot development I became convinced that many years ago I had read one. That book, I believe, was A Love For All Time, third in the Skye O’Malley series. I remember it so clearly because…
Jake McCoy wanted to be in a branch of law enforcement where he’d find simplicity, predictability, and no morally ambiguous choices. So he became an agent with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Make sense to you? Me neither. That’s just one of the details that don’t add up in Tori Carrington’s latest novel. Jake doesn’t…
Friends of the Library booksales are wonderful places to browse for unusual titles. I had read and enjoyed several Sharon Sala books before, but I had never heard of this one. I went ahead and bought this book anyway and was glad I did. Although the opening was overly coincidental, Always a Lady settled down…
I’ve always wondered what made me avoid reading certain authors, even those who have come highly recommended to me, until the last minute. For some reason, I’ve put off reading them, much to my own detriment. It’s one of the reasons why I’ve only just discovered such wonderful authors as Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Kathleen Korbel,…
When Sammy Davis, Jr. sang “I Gotta Be Me,” he could have been singing about witches in romance novels. Whenever a witch is prevented from being herself (i.e. witchlike), disaster lurks. Sometimes it’s personal disaster for the witch who may become desperately unhappy and sometimes the disaster is much larger in scope. Merely Magic falls…
The Observatory is boring. It is whiny. It’s characters are lifeless and dull. The cover blurb insists it is written “In the romantic tradition of The Bridges of Madison County and The Notebook…” Well, I should have slammed the cover shut right then and there. Liz and Harper Mallory are twins. They are thirty-six. They…
Harper’s Moon is a nice cross between a romance novel and women’s fiction. It’s more of a romance because the main point of the book is the relationship between Jud Harper and Annie Taylor, but there are many secondary characters and a substantial portion of the book is devoted to the unravelling of the character…
Falling Hard and Fast had all the elements of great romantic intrigue: a wonderful backdrop in the mossy South, a thrilling mystery with all the sordid, intriguing details, a terrific hero and compelling supporting characters. But two things prevent this book from living up to its promise – a lackluster heroine and an overstuffed story…
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