A 5th Avenue Christmas didn’t work for me. At all. Though the premise is interesting, the actual execution falls short. Part of the problem is that the book itself is short, but it’s also crippled by characters who would be annoying in a book of any length. Meryl Carrington is the youngest daughter of a…
A Summer Affair suffers from slow pacing and a problematic beginning. Neither main character is easy to warm up to, and that the heroine’s last name is so odd it jerked me out of the story every time she appeared didn’t help. A widower with a soft heart – for most people – Dr. Blue…
If you like westerns and all the action that goes with them then you will surely enjoy the reissue of Joan Johnston’s second book, Colter’s Wife, originally published in 1986. Set in Wyoming territory in 1875, Johnston tells the story of a half-breed woman desperately trying to survive in the male-dominated world of ranching. Just…
Merline Lovelace has written more than 40 historical (in settings as varied as ancient Egypt, Rome, and Greece) and contemporary novels. When she’s at her best, as she was in His Lady’s Ransom, The Horse Soldier, and The Captain’s Woman, her characters are honorable and engaging and her research is impeccable. But when she’s not…
Johanna Lindsey’s newest, and her first for Simon & Schuster after a very lengthy association with Avon, is a witty western romance that made me smile as I turned the pages. The heroine is likable, and the pretending-to-be-plain premise fun, which makes up for a plot that isn’t particularly realistic. But after all these years,…
Let me confess up front that I have a weakness for historical romances set in colonial Virginia. I’ve lived in Virginia most of my life, and for four of those years I lived in Williamsburg, the colonial capital. Not surprisingly, I’ve also long been fascinated with the history of colonial Virginia and felt it to…
Cheryl Howe’s debut novel, After the Ashes, is a rare find in more ways than one. Aside from being a Western Romance, a category which is somewhat underrepresented in the current market, it showcases the kind of tightly woven storytelling and solid characterization that are at times equally elusive. Bounty hunter Christopher Braddock meets Lorelei…
Of all the romance sub-genres, the one that instills in me both anticipation and dread is the historical Native American romance. Native American men are some of my favorite heroes, but if the story is to come across as realistic, then it most likely contains some gritty elements that make me uncomfortable, history and racial…
A Place Called Rainwater is the second in the Jones family series that began with The Edge of Town and tells the story of Jill, youngest of the Jones clan from Fertile, Missouri. Jill has come to Rainwater to help her widowed aunt Justine, whose “creeping paralysis” is gradually eroding her ability to manage the…
I’ll give props to Elizabeth Butler for tackling a sticky subject: the truth about slavery and attitudes toward it in the Border States just before the Civil War. The conflict at the center of the book is pretty strong, too: two people embarked on a Noble Cause who feel they must not fall in love…
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