all book related reviews
Think of eating white rice without any kind of seasoning or accompaniment, and that pretty much sums up reading A Matter of Time. It’s certainly not a bad book, but while I wasn’t cringing in horror, I wasn’t enthralled either. Douglas MacKendimen is hunky doctor with a strange heritage. His parents claim to have time-traveled…
When Venus Fell is one of the best books I’ve read all year. Venus Arinelli, former child prodigy and concert pianist, now plays in dives all around the country, lives in an RV and avoids the government. She also protects her fragile sister Ella. Venus distrusts the government because her father felt that it had…
The Wild Rose of Kilgannon is part two of a set of novels centered around the 1715 Jacobite uprising. It’s important to know that it is not just a sequel; it’s a continuation of the same story. So if you are interested in reading it, you absolutely must start with the first book for this…
The Least Likely Bride is the third in Jane Feather’s trilogy about three seventeenth-century English friends who, as girls, make a pact that they will never marry. (The second, The Accidental Bride, is a Desert Island Keeper.) This wonderfully enjoyable romance tells the story of the youngest of the three, bookish Olivia Granville, who wants…
Romance novels, by their very nature, are prone to repetition. There are certain conventions, like the HEA ending, the London Season, and the arranged marriage, that you see again and again. It’s a joy to find a novel that uses these conventions in a fresh and interesting way. Regrettably, Highland Spirits is not one of…
The Baron is an ambitious project, based on an idea that’s so good I don’t know why no one ever thought of it before. Tré Devaux is the Norman baron of Brayeton. The avaricious King John seizes his lands on a pretext because he (rightly) doubts Tré’s loyalty. The King appoints Tré to the lesser…
The Pygmalion myth gave George Bernard Shaw the idea for his play Pygmalion which was turned into the wonderful musical My Fair Lady. Judith Ivory takes this story and gives it a twist, (and a lot more romance than grumpy old GBS did). Edwina Bollash, linguistics expert and tutor of gauche young ladies in the…
Morgan’s Woman is an average read. There’s nothing horrid about it, but nothing really sets it apart from the pack either. It’s a road romance with a fairly well developed hero and heroine, but the plot contains few surprises. When Tamsin MacGreggor’s husband dies, she is left with nothing but two valuable thoroughbred horses. She’s…
I love nothing more than what people call a “hidden treasure” – a book, movie, singer, actor, what have you, that not many people know about but that I cherish. This author’s Gather the Stars, is one such book for me – one of those perfect, tortured love stories that makes me cheer at the…
Double Deceit is the aptly named story of a hero and heroine who both hide their identities while they are courting. I’ve read a lot of books in which one of the main characters assumes a false identity, and they can be tricky; it’s hard to build upon a relationship based on deception. Fortunately, Lane…
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