Reviews by Blythe Smith
a Retro Review
originally published on July 25, 1999
There are no two ways about it - Duchess for a Day is a book that defines the word "cheesy." The love scenes could be entered in the Purple Prose Parody Contest. The plot relies on contrivances like fake amnesia and an unrealistic marriage of co ...
A Retro Review
originally published on November 26, 2000
Are you looking for some cozy, feel-good holiday reading? Johanna Lindsey's latest book, Home for the Holidays is a pocket-size hard cover with a Currier and Ives-esque cover that just might tempt you to give yourself an early Christmas pres ...
I was intrigued by Hot & Heavy because of the yoga teacher heroine. A veteran of many a meat-market yoga class, I thought perhaps these were my people - falling in love (or something else) in downward dog. The description is somewhat misleading, though. The book really isn't about yoga, and the ...
An AAR Top 100 Romance
review originally published on December 18, 2000
Blythe: Few people who knew me in high school would have guessed how much I loved Pride and Prejudice. The image I cultivated was more sarcastic and smart alecky than romantic, and I definitely preferred jeans to prom dresses ...
Around the holidays, I sometimes just can't resist a Christmas romance. Cowboy, It's Cold Outside appeared on my doorstep and filled a reading void. It's pretty Christmassy as holiday romances go, but not really anything groundbreaking or fabulous as far as contemporary romances go.Paige MacGreg ...
An AAR Top 100 Romance
originally published on January 11, 2011
It's always such a thrill when a long anticipated book lives up to expectations. Readers who loved It Had to be You and Nobody's Baby But Mine have been waiting a long time for Kevin and Molly's story, and I'm so glad to say that this ...
An AAR Top 100 Romance
originally published on July 10, 2000
We don't title our reviews here at AAR, but if we did this one would be called Georgette Heyer: Impressions of a Neophyte. Many readers grew up reading Georgette Heyer and came to love romance and Regencies in particular because of their ...
Are books read on vacation just better? While I wouldn't say an awful book would suddenly become riveting when read in the shade of a palm tree, I do have some particularly fond memories of vacation reads. I read Courting Carrie on a cruise ship, on my honeymoon. So, you know, it's kind of hard to t ...
Harbor Island sounded kind of fun. The heroine is the granddaughter of a famous art detective, and she’s an FBI agent on the trail of a serial art their. The hero is part of the same FBI team. Stolen art! Dead bodies! Boston! Ireland! It’s sounds great, but it’s actually convoluted and, more t ...
Winning Ruby Heart was pretty hard for me to resist. First of all, I like unusual characters, and it’s hard to top a disgraced Olympic runner - and the paraplegic sportscaster who exposed her - in the unusual department. Secondly, the heroine is a runner. I run recreationally, work with runners an ...