Nicholas Sparks says that “Romance novels have happy endings while love stories are not bound by this requirement. Love stories usually end tragically or at best, on a bittersweet note.” One of the best love stories ever written is Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, which is bittersweet indeed. Read it or watch the movie sometime…
Rebecca Hagan Lee’s fourth book in the Free Fellows League series, about a boyhood club whose members took an oath to be heroes for England in the fight against Napoleon, suffers from two of the most dreaded maladies in romance: Implausibility Syndrome and Sequelitis. Daniel, Duke of Sussex, has always pined to be included in…
If I had to use one word to describe A Woman’s Innocence, that word would be shallow. Shallow characterization, shallow historical detail, shallow plotting: this book has it all. It’s a paint-by-numbers job. I could hand this book to any reader as an example of why I’m currently so dissatisfied with the historical romance market….
Ride The Fire is a rather intriguing read and a sweet romance. Almost at odds with the sweet romance, though, are its graphic scenes of war and torture. This book is not for the faint of heart. Elspeth Stewart lived a nightmare of a childhood, abused by her stepfather and stepbrother. She is almost relieved…
Are you up for a good gothic novel? One with a labyrinthine medieval castle set in the deep, dark woods, complete with mysterious noises in the night, and a Saturnine, masked earl issuing warnings not to wander the castle? Sounds good, doesn’t it? Well, Wicked, a gothic-wannabe, is not good. Not by a long shot….
One of the first things I thought as I read Emmaline was that I just had to let go and enjoy the ride. The airiness of the writing gave it a fairytale feel and that’s a good thing. From start to almost finish I was engaged in the charming, if admittedly unreal, relationship between the…
You never know what you are going to get when you pick up a new author, especially with a European Historical; at times I have wondered if the entire sub-genre isn’t just a played-out mine. Happily, The Veil of Night, Lydia Joyce’s debut, is promising. Thoughtful writing, insightful characters, and a fluid style make for…
I enjoyed Julie Anne Long’s debut novel The Runaway Duke, though I felt it sagged a bit in the last third. I was looking forward to reading her second novel, and while I felt it also had some problems toward the end, I liked To Love a Thief, a Regency-era Pygmalion story, even more. Gideon…
If you are reader of romance, chances are you have read a book like Ashes of Dreams before. It’s not all that original, but it is certainly entertaining. There’s something quite pleasant in reading a well loved story. Amanda Jeffrey and her husband Shane dreamed of starting a horse farm in Kentucky. They had a…
Lessons In Seduction is the first in a trilogy about three sisters who were abandoned as children, but rescued and raised by the kind Lady Greentree. I enjoyed the story, but didn’t find the characters particularly likable. Vivianna Greentree is a passionate reformer. She has never forgotten her experience as a lost and homeless child,…
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