Are you looking for some cozy, feel-good holiday reading? Johanna Lindsey’s latest book, Home for the Holidays is a pocket-size hard cover with a Currier and Ives-esque cover that just might tempt you to give yourself an early Christmas present. But beware: the hero is worse than Ebenezer Scrooge and the Grinch put together, and…
While reading Rainbow’s End by Rebecca Brandewyne, I mentally played a little game called “Who Would I Throttle?” Would it be the hero, who seems not to be able to perform sexually unless he threatens and dominates the heroine? Or would it be the heroine, who (to her mortification) loves him? Someone has been sabotaging…
Beauty Like the Night wins the Henry James Award for Endless, Redundant Internal Musing. It starts out delightfully enough with a witty narrative voice reminiscent of Heyer or Chase. It ends on the same charming, neo-classical note. In between, though, it sags under the weight of its own non-story, and no amount of engaging prose…
From reading some of the comments posted to the AAR Message Boards, I know that there are readers who miss the long leisurely historical romances that were the norm back in the days when Jennifer Wilde was writing. I cut my romance reading teeth on those and, while I do love a quick read, there…
The moment that Randall Clayton, the 7th Duke of Beldon, hears American Cait Harmon laughing, he knows that he wants her. This doesn’t surprise him. What does is the force of his emotions. The fact that she’s American is appealing to Rand because in his experience “American women didn’t seem to abide by the same…
The plot of Julia Justiss’ second book is reminiscent of Mary Balogh’s More than a Mistress, with a touch of Lisa Kleypas’ Where Dreams Begin thrown in. This is no way detracts from the story’s appeal. In fact, though the first part of the story happens a little too abruptly, it was more believable in…
The Duke of Ashcott is upset because his father left sixty thousand pounds to his mistress, known to him only as Lucinda. He’s determined to track down the trollop and make her renounce the legacy. He and his friend, Viscount Chandler (Chan to his friends), encounter Elizabeth Merriman, who looks just like Lucinda. Elizabeth is…
When I first heard the title The Ruthless Charmer, I envisioned an amusing regency-set historical about a witty hero determined to use his charisma selfishly. To put it mildly, this is not the case for this book. Far from being a diverting, roguish Cary Grand-like hero, the title character of Julia London’s new book is…
The Passion is aptly titled. The hero and heroine of this book share a great deal of passion for each other, and get to indulge that passion in creative ways on many and various occasions. Unfortunately, the end result is more like an erotic Hallmark card than a believable romance. Lady Aurora Demming first meets…
Like Blythe and Linda (see Pandora’s Box), I enjoyed Rules of Engagement by Christina Dodd. A well-written, amusing, and sensual romance, it makes for fun reading, though its secondary suspense plot is irrelevant and extraneous. Queen Victoria has demanded that the Earl of Kerrich demonstrate that he is a respectable family man. So he hires…
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