By Caroline Russomanno|2022-05-25T20:03:24-04:00May 24th, 2022|Categories: Best of List, Romance reading|Tags: AAPI heritage month, AoC, https://allaboutromance.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=114311&action=edit#, PoC|0 Comments
the ask@AAR: What’s the greatest work of art you’ve ever seen?
Yeah, yeah, I know. This is not a romance topic. BUT. I am on vacation with Dr. Feelgood and we spent some time today in the British Museum where we goggled again at the Elgin Marbles. (We’re headed to Greece on Friday–I look forward to seeing Greece’s claim to the artifacts evinced there.)
Tonight, we got to talking about art we’ve seen in person that was a gut punch. The time, in 1989, we wandered into the room where the David was housed–there were maybe 20 people in the place. I’ve never forgotten the power of Michelangelo’s 17 foot miracle. In 2013, we stumbled upon The State Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg–the art there was both something we didn’t knew existed and astonishing. Five years ago, in Madrid, our daughter who was doing a semester abroad there took us to the Sorolla Museum–I still think about his portrait of his wife right after she’d given birth.
Some art, when you see […]
TBR Challenge May 2022 – Tales of Old
For someone who started out their romance reading career with historicals, a prompt like “Tales of Old” is the perfect catnip. Lynn and Caz took this prompt in rather different directions, with Lynn heading way back into the past with a tale of ninth century Vikings carving out a living in what is now Scotland, while Caz headed for Victorian England. So, where do you like to travel for your Tales of Old?
Tempted by Her Viking Enemy by Terri Brisbin
The prompt Tales of Old made me think of medieval right off the bat. I hit my TBR piles eagerly – and ended up DNF-ing a few medievals, so after that experience, I just wanted an author whose books normally work for me. Terri Brisbin’s books usually hit the spot, and while not my favorite […]
Shiver me Timbers–I love Our Flag Means Death!
The buzziest romance show streaming this spring turned out not to be season 2 of Bridgerton, but HBO Max’s pirate comedy Our Flag Means Death (you can watch the trailer on HBO’s site here). OFMD stars Rhys Darby as the foppish and massively unqualified “Gentleman Pirate” Stede Bonnet and Taika Waititi as the legendary Blackbeard (Edward Teach, or ‘Ed’ to Stede). Along with a crew of generally incompetent misfits, the two men misadventure their way across the 1700s Caribbean, and find themselves in the most unlikely of opposites-attract romances.
The show has been praised for its inclusivity. It rejects the common TV practice of queerbaiting, and actually allows Stede and Ed to explicitly fall in love. I watched with my husband, and when we hit the episode where Ed kisses Stede – well, I’d never heard a grown man squee before. (I told […]
Will authors keep their e-books alive?
Disclaimer: I am not an author and have only a generalized sense of what is involved in regaining the rights to one’s work.
I keep, at Amazon, lists of books I care about. I plumb these lists for Steals and Deals, use them as resources for recommendations and for blogs. Currently, I am keeping track of almost 2000 ebooks and lately, they’ve been vanishing. Books that were available as ebooks suddenly are no longer for sale.
This has happened to several of my favorites: Shannon McKenna’s Extreme Danger (There’s good news here–she is republishing this and others in the McCloud series on her own this year.), to Madeline Hunter’s all five fabulous medievals including By Arrangement, By Design, and Lord of A Thousand Nights, to Sarah Mayberry’s Suddenly You and She’s Got It Bad, and to several of Theresa Romain’s books including Fortune Favors the Wicked, just to name a few.
It upsets me […]
How to use tags instead of our Special Title Listings
We haven’t updated our Special Title Listings since 2016, but that doesn’t mean we’re not committed to making AAR the best place to find the kinds of stories you want. It’s more searchable and more up-to-date to put this function into our new tags. Many of the tags correspond to the old Special Title Listings categories. Sometimes it’s a tidy exact match; sometimes there are multiple tags for one former Special Title Listing, and sometimes, well, there isn’t a tag that matches up. We’re all volunteers and we can’t get to everything!
If you liked the old STLs, here is a list of tags most likely to help you find the romance novel you’re looking for. The best way to search for these is to go to our new Power Search 2.0 and just type the tag into the search bar! You can also scroll down on the left where you see list of tags and check […]
What’s your favorite opposites attract romance?
A while back, a friend who doesn’t didn’t read romance asked me to recommend a historical romance. I suggested Laura Kinsale’s Flowers from the Storm. I ran into her this weekend and she raved about the book. I asked what she liked most and she said–more or less–that in a polarized world she loved reading about people who were opposites in every way finding love with each other.
I’d never thought about Flowers from the Storm as an opposites attract love story but sure enough, it’s tagged as such at AAR. So is another book I adore, Meredith Duran’s Bound by Your Touch. Looking through our tagged books, I saw I’ve written ten DIK reviews of books tagged as opposites attract. That’s almost a quarter of all my DIK reviews. Clearly, this is a trope I like.
Of the books, I’ve reviewed, I’d have a hard time picking a single favorite opposites attract. Reckless by Anne Stuart, […]
Heroes and Heroines in Romance Novels with Unusual Occupations
I’ve been developing our “unusual occupations” tag, and I need your help!
I stated by visiting our old Special Title listings for Unusual Professions. Let me tell you, some of those jobs are a LOT more popular than we evidently thought. We have characters on that list who are, for example, archaeologists, paleontologists, and botanists. Well, it turns out that these professions are actually so common in romance that they can fill out their own tags! “Prostitute,” “male escort,” and “gigolo” are currently captured by our sex worker tag. Even tattoo artists and coffee shop owners are romance novel leads more frequently than you think!
The list did turn up a few awesome and original careers, such as the […]
TBR Challenge April 2022 – Location, Location, Location
When your prompt is simply “Location, location, location,” the TBR Challenge can go all kinds of places (I know, I know…) Caz took this prompt and went for a romance set in a faraway corner of the world. Lynn went for romantic suspense featuring a code and an old house where the setting is practically a character in the story. What are some of the books you think when you hear the word “location?”
Galaxies and Oceans by N.R. Walker
N.R. Walker’s Galaxies and Oceans is a gently moving May/December romance between two damaged, lonely people who have good reason to be wary of falling in love. It’s one of those books where, honestly, not very much happens apart from a couple of emotionally bruised people finding and falling for each other, but it’s so beautifully done, […]
Coming Soon – The Romances We’re Most Looking Forward to Reading in May 2022
It’s time to have a look through the myriad of new books coming out in May and, hopefully, point our readers towards the ones we think are likely to be the most engrossing and entertaining. As usual, it’s an eclectic selction and by no means a comprehensive list, so drop by and tell us what YOU’RE most looking forward to reading over the coming weeks.
Happy Reading!
Releasing week of 2nd May 2022
