Medieval romances aren’t exactly crowding the shelves of bookstores nowadays, so I was happy to pick one up for review. With Heart of the Dove, Laura Adrian/Tina St. John concludes her Dragon Chalice series. Rand of Greycliff has only one purpose in life now: revenge. Two months ago, the evil knight Silas de Mortaine sent…
I discovered Margo Maguire last year when I read her two Victorian-set historicals. I enjoyed them enough to search for her backlist, but she wrote for Harlequin, which has notoriously low print runs, and so have had difficulty finding them. The Bride Hunt, a very good Beauty and the Beast story, is her first book…
Lisa Jackson’s Temptress is a medieval romance where the main focus is on the suspense plot, while the love story almost seems like an afterthought. I’m not a reader who minds when a romance novel is actually more suspense than romance, so that wouldn’t necessarily be a problem. But while it is a reasonably efficient…
The books in Jocelyn Kelley’s Knight series certainly have eye-catching titles. The series focuses on women raised and trained at St. Jude’s Abbey, where, in addition to the usual spiritual training, they are taught to be skilled fighters pledged in service to Queen Eleanor. As the name of the abbey would suggest, the Queen calls…
This book gave me a terrible feeling: that I’ve become completely jaded as a romance reader. The Unwilling Bride is a Medieval – one of my favorite subgenres – and it’s about two people betrothed as children, but separated ever since, finally marrying – a plot I really enjoy. So why did this book almost…
In the past I have lamented what I see as a disturbing sort of sameness in recent historical romance releases. Lately I have been craving something a little less light and fluffy, a little more dark or unusual. In Helen Kirkman’s latest romance, I think I have found it. Though parts of the middle of…
Looking for a medieval romance with historical accuracy and characters who belong in their time? Joan Wolf delivers in satisfying fashion with To the Castle. Eleanor de Bonevile, daughter to the Earl of Lincoln, was raised in a convent and is set to take her vows when she turns eighteen in six month’s time. When…
As the husband of my grandmother, I am my own grandpa! That novelty ditty kept running though my head the entire time I read this book. And honestly, if I hadn’t signed up to review Only for a Knight, I’d have stopped reading it about two chapters in. After an absence of a decade, Robbie…
I’m really sorry I’m not giving Beyond Temptation a better grade. The author, Mary Reed McCall, wrote a wonderful segment for a recent ATBF column. Also, she took a chance on an unusual conflict of honor between the hero and heroine. Unfortunately, that conflict didn’t work for me; it just kept me from getting engaged…
In this month’s Pandora we look a Lord of the Isles, a Medieval Scottish romance. Hector Maclean takes one look at Lady Mariota Macleod and falls like a ton of bricks. He offers for her on the spot, but Mariota’s father is a superstitious man who insists that his older daughter, Cristina, marry before any…
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