the Way Back on Wednesday: Family Ties

By |2021-06-08T18:21:33-04:00June 9th, 2021|Categories: Characters, Lynn AAR, Romance reading|Tags: , , , , |

(originally published on September 24, 2010)

Judging by what I see on shelves, romance readers love seeing everyone in a family falling over each other to get married. Just about every subgenre seems to have more than its fair share of series about brothers and sisters finding love. I enjoy a good story world, but I have to admit to puzzling over why so many series had to be about sets of siblings. Perhaps it’s because in real life, very few siblings I know fell in love and married one right after the other. Don’t get wrong; I don’t DISLIKE family series. I just never understood the overwhelming popularity. […]

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November 2020 TBR Challenge – Series

By |2020-11-17T15:30:36-05:00November 18th, 2020|Categories: Caz AAR, Lynn AAR, Romance reading, TBR Challenge|Tags: , , , |

This month the TBR Reading Challenge prompt invited us all to dive into our series reads. While Caz used this month to catch up on a series by an author she’s enjoyed, Lynn decided to jump into a new-to-her series because she was craving an angsty historical. And fortunately for both of us, the books we chose delivered. What series are you all enjoying now? […]

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Our Favorites: The Best Romance Novels of 2019

By |2020-01-26T16:29:42-05:00January 27th, 2020|Categories: Anne Marble, Best of 2019, Best of List, Best of Romance, Caz AAR, Charlotte AAR, Dabney AAR, Evelyn AAR, Lisa F, Lynn AAR, Maggie AAR, Maria Rose, Romance reading|Tags: |

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. […]

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A List of RWA Chapters Issuing Statements in the Wake of Recent Events

By |2020-01-05T11:56:25-05:00January 5th, 2020|Categories: Lynn AAR, Lynn Spencer, Romancelandia, RWA|Tags: |

Many of our readers have probably been following recent events in RWA. In the wake of these developments at the national level, RWA local and online chapters have started to weigh in with statements both official and unofficial. I have reviewed each of the chapter websites I could find, and below I have compiled as many statements as I could locate. […]

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Has RWA Lost Its Way?

By |2020-01-07T21:03:56-05:00December 27th, 2019|Categories: Lynn AAR, Lynn Spencer, Romance reading, Romancelandia, RWA|

Many readers have been busy with celebrations for various holidays this week and many more do not spend much time on Twitter, so some may have missed the news that dropped on December 23, 2019. To get started, I would recommend checking out this thread of tweets from Alyssa Cole. Here Cole lets the public know that RWA (Romance Writers of America) has taken action to suspend author Courtney Milan as a result of an alleged ethics violation. […]

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Jan 2019 TBR Challenge – Looking For Something Short.

By |2019-02-10T06:13:45-05:00January 16th, 2019|Categories: Caz AAR, Historicals, Lynn AAR, Romance reading, TBR Challenge|Tags: , , , , |

It’s that time again – TBR Challenge is on! Wendy the Superlibrarian is hosting again, and Lynn and Caz are joining the group to challenge one another (and you!) to go through your stack of books and shop your bookcase at least once each month. This month we’re looking for something short – a category romance, a novella or short story, something in that vein. One pick was a little more successful than the other, but hey, we each knocked down something from the TBR mountains.

Smoke and Ashes by Danica Winters

I love category romance and novellas, so the January TBR prompt is usually easy-peasy for me. This time, though, I struggled. I DNF-d first one book and then another. Finally, I happened upon a Harlequin Intrigue from 2016, Smoke and Ashes, that held my […]
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September TBR Challenge – Anyone for Historicals?

By |2018-09-19T04:33:18-04:00September 19th, 2018|Categories: Caz AAR, Historicals, Lynn AAR, Lynn Spencer, Romance, Romance reading, TBR Challenge|Tags: , , , |

Some months the TBR Challenge leaves us scratching our heads and digging deep into our overflowing TBR piles to find a book that fits the prompt. However, this month is historical romance month, and both of us found ourselves with an embarrassment of riches from which to choose. While we both ended up with European historicals, Lynn picked an oldie-but-goodie from the 1990s while Caz went with an entry from a beloved series of more recent vintage. […]

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The Book Blind Taste Test #3

By |2017-09-27T09:03:52-04:00September 27th, 2017|Categories: Historicals, Kristen D, Lynn AAR, Reading, Romance, Romance reading|

It’s time for another go-round in our occasional series of AAR’s adventures in blind book taste testing.  This time,  Lynn and Kristen describe two success stories and books they’d recommend.

Lynn:

Dangerous Games by Tess Diamond

Romantic Suspense

Summary: The hero and heroine are both outsiders of a sort. Maggie Kincaid survived a childhood kidnapping and went on to become one of the FBI’s top hostage negotiators, but left law enforcement after a hostage situation ended tragically. Jake O’Connor was a soldier who now works private security. When a Senator’s daughter is kidnapped, the two are brought into the investigation by their respective mentors and now they must work against time to rescue a child whose medical condition dictates that she be found quickly. Not surprisingly, they have to deal with their own personal demons as well as everything […]

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September TBR Challenge – Historicals Galore!

By |2017-09-20T10:12:28-04:00September 20th, 2017|Categories: Caz AAR, Historicals, Lynn AAR, Reading, Romance reading, TBR Challenge|Tags: |

My Lady Thief by Emily Larkin

The Historicals prompt in the TBR Challenge is my Busman’s Holiday, but it can nonetheless be quite difficult to choose a book from the many still sitting unread on my Kindle.  In the end, I decided to go for something I was pretty certain would be a winner and picked up Emily Larkin’s My Lady Thief, a standalone title that was first published as The Unmasking of a Lady in 2010, under her Emily May pen-name.  Every book I’ve read by this author has proved to be extremely enjoyable and well-written; she creates attractive, well-rounded characters and puts them in interesting situations and her romances are always well-developed and laced with sexual tension.  My Lady Thief most ably continues that impressive track record.

Miss Arabella Knightley is beautiful, poised, intelligent, self-assured and the […]

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