Recently, AAR’s Maggie Boyd reviewed the book Starlight on Willow Lake, and one of the reasons it received a C- from her was the unrealistic depiction of the heroine’s career. This got me thinking about romances and careers. We are all (mostly!) experts on our own day jobs, from stay-at-home parenting to freelance journalism to…
Welcome back to Winsome or Loathsome, the column in which AAR staffers lobby for and against controversial heroines. Today’s heroine is the leading lady of Loretta Chase’s Lord of Scoundrels, Jessica Trent. Jessica is cool under pressure – her grandmother calls her “magnificently objective” – and does things like calmly looking at a naughty watch…
I’m a huge fan of Kathleen Gilles Seidel. Back when we did our reviewer Top Ten posts, I chose her Again as my top romance novel of all time, and mentioned how it frustrated me to love and want to recommend a book that’s out of print. Thank goodness for ebooks, because now Again, and…
If I were more organized, I’d have written a graphic novel retrospective at the one-year anniversary. But I’m not, and I didn’t, so here it is now: reflections on nearly a year and a half of graphic novel reviewing for AAR. Since starting graphic novel reviews in March 2014, I have reviewed fourteen, and Melanie…
The first time I fell in love with the wrong man, I was a teenager, and the man was Victor Laszlo. Now, Laszlo is only “the wrong man” by weird convoluted cinema logic. He’s been thwarting the Nazis across Europe for years; he’s articulate, bold, dedicated, noble, loyal, and let’s face it, a heck of…
In honor of the FIFA Women’s World Cup I thought I’d write about some of my favorite romances starring female athletes. It’s not a huge subgenre (certainly not in comparison with male athletes), but they’re out there, and in larger numbers all the time. I’m interested in how athlete heroines’ bodies are depicted. In Jennifer…
Commenters in the forums posed an interesting question: How do AAR Annual Poll results hold up over time? I went back to explore the winners and honorable mentions for Favorite Romance for the first five years, figuring those gave enough distance to see which books remain popular today. I used subjective measures (do I feel…
There’s an obscure little film called Fifty Shades of Grey out for Valentine’s Day–today!– this year. Maybe you’ve already bought your tickets. Maybe you’re waiting to see it on Netflix. Maybe you’re waiting until hell freezes over. While we do have some staffers who are planning to see it and write a review, in the meantime,…
Despite the fact that I read a large number of books this year, and that I posted several DIKs, I can’t contribute to “Best of 2014” lists. Why? Most of my reads aren’t from 2014. Nearly every 2014 romance I read this year was for for review here, and I didn’t have enough that I…
Happy Fifty Shades of Grey readers are all alike; each Fifty Shades of Grey hater is a hater in his or her own way. Well, not quite. I’ve identified at least five species of Fifty Shades Hater and classified them here on the basis of the argument at the core of their hate. So haters,…
End of content
End of content