Like many these days, I have been longing to escape into a good, light-hearted, fun book, and the romantic comedy Mad About Maddie looked like just the ticket. Unfortunately, the combination of cardboard characters, un-funny situations, and awkward writing left me feeling frustrated instead of refreshed. Maddie Copeland gets more than she bargained for when…
You Never Can Tell is a thoroughly researched and well-written story, as you would expect from Kathleen Eagle. Unfortunately, I felt shortchanged by the human aspects of the story and let down by a lack of romance conveyed. Eagle has been moving away from genre romance for some time now and this book continues that…
Surrender had a very pleasant hero and heroine. If it had stuck with their story, I would have enjoyed it very much, but too many secondary characters and a couple of really silly scenes made it a bit of a chore to get through. Netherland Brooms owns a successful restaurant and has many friends. She…
The cardinal rule of good storytelling is, “Show, don’t tell.” Reading Buffalo Valley, the fourth installment in Debbie Macomber’s Dakota series, I got the feeling that I was being told the story, not shown it, and my reading experience suffered because of it. Moreover, a good part of the story was told in awkward flashbacks…
The fourth and final installment in Lynda Sandoval’s interconnected Hispanic-American romances, Thief of Hearts, is a quirky and touching romance that manages to generate heat without the characters exchanging a single kiss. The characters are realistic, the plot simple yet involving, and the language enhanced, rather than distracted, from the story. Graciela Inez Obregon had…
Quirky characters can be highly amusing when done well. But too many quirks piled on in an attempt to deepen the humor only make a book everything but funny; instead the characters become caricatures and the plot suffers. Charlotte Hughes excels at writing three-dimensional characters who have enough quirks to be interesting. She adds depth…
I’m extremely partial to young adult fiction. I am, of course, a children’s librarian, so that’s not surprising, but I don’t think that you have to be a young adult or a young adult librarian to enjoy YA literature. It’s quite often well written, but almost never pretentious. It often deals with serious subjects or…
If I could get a bodyguard like Matt Hawkins, I’d say sign me up for trouble right now. Wowee!! Her Bodyguard was a welcome relief for me after reading a very bad suspense book and an “ehh” book of fiction. This was an actual romance with likable characters and an intriguing mystery. If only I…
Ordinarily, action-packed books (or movies for that matter) just aren’t my thing. Shoot-em-ups, hijackings, SEALS and the like seldom sustain my attention for any length of time. My husband will never understand my desire to read a romantic comedy while he has the latest action/adventure/suspense flick blaring. So why did I choose to review Suzanne…
Kentucky Rich brings us new characters from the families featured in Fern Michaels’ Vegas Rich and Texas Rich, neither of which I have read. Will I read them? Only under threat of extreme torture. Teenager Nealy Coleman lives on a horse ranch with her brutal father, her two brothers Rhye and Pyne (where did Fern…
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