We call this annual column The Best Romance Novels of a given year and it is, but with a caveat. Each reviewer picks a single book she thought was the best – defined as excelling all others. Thus this is a list of individual choices rather than a voted on list by the staff. […]
Like many an AAR reader, I was a child repeatedly decried as “lost in a book.” I am a swift reader and, while growing up, read a book every two days. In 2019, I read 87 books (for the first time) and reread countless others. And, fortuitously, I lost myself in many. […]
2019 was a strange reading year for me. On the one hand, I did read a lot of books I enjoyed. However, they tended to be of the backlist variety. Something about packing two new babies and two job changes into four years took something out of me. […]
Like many of my fellow reviewers, I’ve had a decent – if not outstanding – reading year. A quick look through my reviews shows a good number of B and B+ grades and a handful of DIKs, although my favourite genre – Historical Romance – made a pretty poor showing (again), with many of my previously “must-read” authors failing to deliver the sort of engrossing, emotionally satisfying stories I’d hoped for. Like last year, I’ve looked more and more often to other genres to feed my reading habit (!), and happily have found a number of other authors to add to that list. […]
2019 was my year of the B romance novel. Book after book it was a case of “I love everything about this story except. . . .” or “This novel was almost a DIK but. . . .” Fortunately, there were just enough exceptions to that list that I could come up with ten truly fantastic romances that I think almost anyone will love. […]
When it comes to romance, my criteria for greatness – or “best-ness” – is whether the story lingers with me. There are scenes or quotes that are so romantic and/or sexy that I can’t shake them and they’ll make me shiver happily when I recall them standing on a street corner waiting for a light to change, and make me think “oh, gracious, that’s life goals right there.” The books on this list are ones that lingered with me in 2019. […]
I hate making these lists, because I always feel like I can’t possibly judge the “Best of 2019” without reading at least, oh, another hundred or two hundred books. So I’m going to call this “The best books I managed to read by AAR’s internal deadline in 2019” and let you know that many well-loved books, from Bringing Down the Duke to Proper English, are still sitting on my TBR. But what are you going to do? […]
It’s always difficult to put together a ‘Best of’ list, and as usual I’m sure I forgot a few. But after much thought, here are the books which stood out for me this year. […]
2019 was full of great reads for me, and choosing my favorites was no easy feat. Even so, here are some of the best books I’ve read this year in no particular order. […]
Full disclosure – 2019 was a fairly light reading year for me. My TBR pile is still overflowing! When making this list, I didn’t refer to anything but my memory – which books were the most memorable. After all, that is probably the best criteria for making a “best of” list. […]