What are you reading? Watching?

Now that I have been vaccinated–yay!–I have been doing less reading and watching than during the pandemic. For the past year, I’ve read several books a week (The best: Bench Player and Ten Things I Hate About the Duke and binged what seems like, in retrospect, countless shows. (The best: A Place to Call Home followed by The Queen’s Gambit.)

However, even though I’m reading and watching less, I am still doing both!

I am currently reading Last Hope Island and The Heiress Hunt. The first is taking me a while because I so rarely read nonfiction. The second, well, the jury’s out on this one. I loved the set up but, halfway into the book, want to send Maddie, the heroine, to Golden Rule School. Next up, is Klara and the Sun by Ishiguro and–I can’t wait–The Devil and the Heiress by Harper St. George. I’m watching, for the first time, Mad […]

By |2021-03-14T18:35:36-04:00March 15th, 2021|Categories: Dabney AAR|56 Comments
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Over the Big Mis

Last night my mom and I watched the 1995 rom com While You Were Sleeping and…. well, let’s just say it was not for us. (My mom, every 15 fifteen minutes: This makes no sense.) What we disliked the most about it–and there is a list–is its premise. None of the film would have been necessary–and that would have been a good thing–if Sandra Bullock’s Lucy had just said, with her famous I really just want to be loved smile, “Sorry, there’s been a big misunderstanding.” […]

By |2021-03-08T08:05:11-05:00March 8th, 2021|Categories: Dabney AAR, Movies|Tags: , , |43 Comments
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the [email protected]: What’s your favorite romance featuring musicians?

Even before COVID-19, I worked at home. I’d get the kids ready and to school, wave my husband off to work, walk the dog and then settle down with my laptop. Many days, around ten, I’d realize the silence was bumming me out, and I’d turn on tunes. For me, music is a basic mental health need. Every day, I listen to at least an hour, from all genres and eras. I sing in the shower, the kitchen, and while exercising. For me, musicians are akin to benevolent gods.

And yet, I haven’t read that many romances I love that feature them as leads. […]

By |2021-02-25T15:20:59-05:00February 26th, 2021|Categories: Dabney AAR, the ask @AAR|Tags: |68 Comments
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the [email protected]: Do we need to change our name?

This week an author we’ve reviewed frequently declined to discuss her latest work of women’s fiction with us. Her reason?

….AAR is not the place to discuss this book, simply because of it being called All About Romance. This book, we feel, is really mainstream….

I don’t think she’s alone in thinking the name is too freighted for where the industry would like to go. […]

By |2021-02-19T08:33:49-05:00February 19th, 2021|Categories: Dabney AAR, the ask @AAR|Tags: |136 Comments
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Words on Love… for Valentine’s Day

Ever since the start of 2020, I’ve been–more or less–posting a poem a day on Facebook. It’s been a wondrous gift. A poem, short and searing, takes just a few moments of your time to read. I’ve shared poems from across the centuries, happy poems, crushingly sad poems, hopeful poems, and poems about random things. I am addicted. […]

By |2021-02-13T14:10:42-05:00February 14th, 2021|Categories: Dabney AAR|Tags: , |9 Comments
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How’s everyone doing?

Incredibly, we are well into 2021.

We, more or less, survived 2020. So that’s good.

 

So, now that that dumpster fire is done, how are you doing? What’s bringing you joy? What’s still hard? What are you hopeful for?

By |2021-02-10T06:57:45-05:00February 10th, 2021|Categories: Dabney AAR|35 Comments
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The Best of 2020 – Dabney’s list

Here, in no particular order, are the books I enjoyed the most this year.

The Searcher by Tana French

I’ve been stanning Tana French since reading her first book, In the Woods, although her last, The Witch Elm, wasn’t to my taste. I was worried that I might not love The Searcher either given that it too is apart from her wildly brilliant Dublin Murder Squad books. My fear was for naught. The Searcher is a meditative tale about Cal Hooper, an American cop who impulsively retires to a small Irish village and becomes entangled in a missing person case. French’s writing has never been better–even the rooks who haunt Cal’s yard have more personality than the leads of many a lesser book. The plot is a slow burn tour de force and you’ll ponder this story’s resolution long […]

By |2021-01-08T16:10:35-05:00January 7th, 2021|Categories: Best of 2020, Best of List, Dabney AAR|Tags: |20 Comments
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Winsome or Loathsome: Daphne Bridgerton

Given the phenomenal interest in Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton series, we thought it would be fun to republish this!

originally published on March 2, 2015

Welcome to our new column, Winsome or Loathsome. (I was rooting for Dreamgirl or Disaster but was outvoted.) Like its counterpart, Dreamboat or Douchebag, this column will look at well-known heroines and ask the pointed question: Winsome or Loathsome? We will reserve our critique for heroines who are not universally loved or who are known for behaving badly at some point in their stories. […]

By |2021-01-02T06:58:42-05:00January 2nd, 2021|Categories: Characters, Dabney AAR, Heroines, Winsome or Loathsome|Tags: , , , , , |59 Comments
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