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 ...
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 ...
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 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 ...
I just had the kind of month that just wasn’t good for reading. You probably know how it is - kids this, work that, family obligations here and something else going on there. So it took me awhile to really get into Lord of the Sea. Once I got into it, though, I really got into it. This one is defi ...
The Once and Future Duchess is not going to revolutionize the romance genre, but it’s not terrible either. I liked the characters for the most part, and though I evidently came in mid-series, I didn’t feel that it was much of a detriment. What worked less well? The hero’s refusal to tell the h ...
Every so often, I stumble upon a book that can be reviewed in one word. A Week in Winter is one of those books. The word? cozy. Of course, reviewers never use just one word, and cozy doesn’t quite explain the entire plot. Basically, this is a book about the owner, staff, and guests ...