The Lion trilogy, a Scots medieval trilogy Suzanne Barclay published in 1995 and 1996 as part of a larger series, was riveting, exciting, and romantic. Knight’s Rebellion, the final installment of the second Sommerville trilogy, falls somewhat short of a the B level grades I awarded to each of the Lion stories. Suzanne Barclay crafts…
The first novelist to grab me by the throat and drag me into the world of romance was Barbara Cartland. I was fifteen years old, trapped in a car driving through the Black Forest and bored. My parents kept pointing out the lovely settings but, hey, I was from Minnesota. Big trees didn’t impress me…
Jane Ashford has lived up to, indeed surpassed, the promise she showed in her first historical, The Marriage Wager, with her second historical, The Bargain. If, as I do, you love historicals set in the regency era, filled with great wit, funny family relations, and a beta hero to die for, you will simply want…
For those of you looking for a book by Catherine Coulter that you can love, I have just the book for you – Night Fire. In a departure from her usual arrogant verging on (or surpassing) abusive hero, she has created instead Burke Drummond. Burke is part warrior and part gentle man. A magnificent specimen…
When I read Laura Kinsale’s unique and startling first novel, I remember thinking either it was a fluke or I had just come across one of the best writers in the history of the romance genre. Her subsequent works proved that she was no fluke, but in my opinion it wasn’t until The Shadow and…
Mary Balogh’s The Famous Heroine is an amusingly lighthearted Regency romance. The author manages to imbue her witty writing with some surprising and moving emotional intensity and has written wonderfully well-rounded characters to boot. The author gives the hero and heroine elbow room to define themselves and their growing feelings for one another. There are…
Dance by Judy Cuevas is set in France at the beginning of the 20th Century, which doesn’t sound particularly romantic, but is. Everything we consider modern was just beginning to pop: Freud, Picasso, automobiles, motion picture photography, electronic communication, feminism! And to see all these issues rolled out against a backdrop of turn-of-the-century, hub-of-the-universe Paris,…
Lord Sin is a captivating Victorian tale of a jaded gentleman and a vicar’s daughter. As with two of the other Catherine Archer books I have read and enjoyed (Velvet Bond being my favorite Medieval), enjoyment in this book is found in the strongly-written characterizations of the hero and heroine. Readers who like a bit…
The second book in this trilogy, Love Me Not, earned a B- from me and had one of the best endings I’d ever read. Deceive Me Not does not live up to its predecessor. There’s some good stuff going on here, but the behavior of the heroine is so difficult that the author simply lost…
In White Heather, author Jaclyn Reding has brought together many elements beloved by readers of historical romance. There is the beautiful and rugged Highlands of Scotland, peopled by simple folk who love the land. There is England during the Regency era, and those cynical, wealthy members of the ton who all too easily will believe…
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