May TBR Challenge – Contemporary Romance
My twelve-year-old self might have enjoyed this book, but as an adult? Um…train-wreck would be a good term to use here. I actually read it in one sitting, but as I read, […]
Fond First Times… Our first experiences with romance novels
Most of us remember when we first started reading romance, who introduced us to it or how we discovered it ourselves, and – perhaps even – which book we first read. […]
April TBR Challenge – Kickin’ it Old-Skool
This month for the TBR Challenge, we were challenged to read a book at least 10 years ago. We both went further than that, with each of us choosing a Harlequin Historical from the 1990s. Our picks had different settings and tones to them, but we each enjoyed our reading, with Caz reading a Regency from a popular author for the line and Lynn picking a somewhat unusual historical set in the early Georgian period.
The Vicar’s Daughter by Deborah Simmons
For my ‘old-skool’ read, I chose a Harlequin Historical from 1995, the first in Deborah Simmons’ Regency Quartet. The Vicar’s Daughter is one of those ‘stuffed-shirt meets wild-child’ romances (although the heroine isn’t really a wild-child as such), and while it’s fairly predictable, it’s a light-hearted, fun read and the two central characters are well-drawn and endearing. Maximillian […]
Congratulations to the 2018 RITA and Golden Heart Finalists!
March is an exciting month for romance writers, as it’s when the Romance Writers of America announces their finalists in the RITA and Golden Heart contests for published books and unpublished manuscripts, respectively, submitted in the fall of the previous year. Excitement builds up over the day of the announcement as writers get calls from the RWA board and readers eagerly watch the RWA site to see if their favorite books made the cut. This year, the finalists were announced on March 21. Award winners will be announced on July 19 at the 2018 RWA National Conference in Denver, Colorado.
Here are the finalists that AAR’s staff read last year:
The title is a play on words from Shakespeare’s Richard II and is the first book in a new series based […]
March TBR Challenge – Sugar and Spice (Naughty or Nice!)
This month’s TBR challenge called upon us to go to extremes in terms of sensuality ratings – either bedroom door firmly closed or anything goes. Unintentionally, Caz and I both picked books from the milder end of things. I just came off of reading a couple of more intense review books (reviews to be posted soon!), and I thought a category inspy romance might be a nice change of pace. Caz went with a Patricia Veryan classic.
Yukon Wedding by Allie Pleiter
Don’t be fooled by that cover. If you can get past the overdose of pink… um… something and what looks like a turtle shell on that poor heroine’s head, you will be treated to a rather endearing story. This is a good marriage of convenience story. How good? I’m not even a giant fan of […]
February TBR Challenge – Backlist Glom
This month’s prompt for the multi-blog TBR Challenge is one that is fairly simple for a lot of voracious readers. We simply have to choose a book from an author represented more than once in our TBR towers (let’s get real – who has a small pile anymore?). Both of us went with historical picks this time – one set in England, one set in the American West. And as you will see, we both had mostly positive experiences this month.
TBR Challenge, January 2018: We Love Shorts!
Thirst by Jacquelyn Frank
Thirst came out in 2017, and it’s the first book in Jacquelyn Frank’s Energy Vampires series. One of my best friends offline is a huge fan of the author, so I thought I’d give her books a try. If you like vampire stories, this one feature more originality than the average in the worldbuilding. I’m not sure it’s quite as hot as the cover suggests, but the romance was definitely […]
The Best of 2017 – Lynn’s List
2017 wasn’t my greatest reading year of all time, but it was far from being my worst. I read some really good books this year, but a lot of my best reading came from the depths of my TBR pile. Even so, I did find some current year winners that I love to share with other readers. So, without further ado, here are the top five books I’ve read that were published this year.
For pure charm, this book was a winner for me in 2017. It’s been a rough and wild year, and this book was whimsical and happy enough to just make me smile at a time I truly needed it. The characters are likable, and all the moving parts in […]
Deck the Halls… with the December TBR Challenge!
For December’s prompt of a Holiday Read, I went with this Traditional Regency which is, on the surface, your basic fairy-tale type story of a plain-Jane who finds love with a handsome rake. But Donna Lea Simpson has turned that familiar plotline into something that transcends the trope. Our sometimes not-at-all likeable hero really IS a rake; a self-absorbed, all-round selfish bastard, until he falls in love with a young woman whose goodness and unconditional love set him on the path to becoming a better man. Ms. Simpson took quite a chance in making him so unpleasant at times; prone to self-deception, he will always take the easy path if there is one – but St. Claire’s many faults somehow make him more real, even though there were times I […]
November TBR Challenge – A Recommended Read
For some reason, the “recommended read” prompt for the TBR Challenge always gets me tied up in knots. I think that’s because it doesn’t fit in very well with how my books are (not all that) organized. Since I was talking recently on Twitter about my trip to RWA in New York several years ago, I remembered that I had several books in what was left of my RWA crate that had been recommended to me by others. One of them, Crystal Caress by Zuri Day, was passed to me by an excited conference attendee who had just finished reading it. This was my first time reading this author and I definitely enjoyed myself.
The heroine, Teresa Drake, comes from a prominent African-American family in California. While her family is in the wine […]