For a time, I could feel the mist on my face, smell the clean, cool air of Scotland, and hear the voice of the bard as he spun his tales. The sheer beauty of the legends, beliefs, and majesty of Scotland jump from the pages of this book. Very rarely does a book absorb me…
Maybe it was the build-up. I know all of Jo Beverley’s fans have been breathlessly waiting for Rothgar. I can’t think of another book in the last few years whose arrival has been so eagerly anticipated. But while I enjoyed many aspects of Devilish, I’ve got to confess that it left me just a little…
There’s nothing actually wrong with Bridget, the first novel in Linda Lael Miller’s new series, The Women of Primrose Creek. I can’t pinpoint any specific plot contrivance or writing flaw; it just seems unfinished. At just under one hundred and fifty pages, Bridget reads like the summary of an idea for a novel, one that…
“Psst. Can I talk to you for a minute?” Even though I’ve awarded a grade, Robin Schone’s latest book, The Lover’s, can’t really be explained so easily. This book is not for everybody and that includes some readers who enjoyed her previous, far more romantic book The Lady’s Tutor. While much of The Lover’s is…
This is an example of a book that I knew better than to finish. The writing left lots to be desired, the dialogue was stilted and clumsy, and my palms itched to slap some sense into the heroine. But the plot was just intriguing enough to keep me reading, long after those elements should have…
Reading Kit Dee’s Brit’s Lady is the equivalent of eating fast food – it’s quick but unmemorable. While the story reads at a brisk pace and the lead characters have possibilities, neither seems terribly realistic. The villain has that Snidely Whiplash aura, and the love scenes are marred by the. . . over-exuberant use. ….
Have you ever been at a play, maybe a high school performance, and it’s not working very well? All the props look fake, the rigging is showing, and the lead keeps missing his cues. The audience is left to try to indulge the performers and grit their teeth and get through it. That’s what reading…
I can tell what I think of a book I’ve just finished reading by counting the number of page corners I’ve turned over, because that’s how I mark places where something happened to jar me out of the story. The fewer the folder-over pages, the better. Unhappily, there are lots of them in my copy…
The Maiden’s Revenge offers two bigger-than-life characters, an overdose of lust, and a modicum of action as pirate meets merchant, neither ever to be the same again. Although the book is competently written and possesses an intriguing story concept, the characters lack the multi-dimensional quality that lends life and appeal, and the action bogs down…
Indiscretion is a very lusty farce and an altogether wonderful romance. It’s far more sexual than any of author Jillian Hunter’s books of which I am aware. It also features a fairly daring plot structure, which reveals the hot and heavy past relationship between hero and heroine right at the start. If, as I do,…
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