Reviews by Enya Young
If I were being charitable, I would blame the length of the story for the D grade. Is seventy-five pages enough, I ask, to introduce two characters and their assorted relatives-with-books, reveal their political ideologies and practices, establish conflict stemming from said ideologies and practice ...
So I was reading Looking Inside more or less swimmingly until I came across this: “Her long, slightly bent legs slid along his suede bedspread.” Suede? Suede?? As a BEDSPREAD??? That was it. I totally lost it. It goes without saying that I’d suspend reality for a story about a voyeuristic i ...
It’s hard to imagine that Angel’s Blood, the first of Nalini SIngh’s Guild Hunter books, was originally just a stand-alone, (according to an FAQ I read). There’s such a wealth of world building that one could believe that the author had conceived of vampire kisses (not what you think), Co ...
One of the nice things about AAR is that with so many different reviewers, you're bound to get at least two different perspectives on any one single author. Even seemingly universal praise, like for Lord of Scoundrels, can have a dissenting voice. I love that. Now, Amy Raby is no Loretta Chase, but ...
The renewed interest in recent years in all things interwar and post-war means that those who used beg for more cultural artifacts from 1914-1950s need beg no longer. I, personally, am having a blast on the audiovisual front — not a fan of Downton Abbey, but I love Parade’s End and Foyle’s War ...
You know what I like about Carla Kelly’s books? They have real people. I don’t just mean that she doesn’t pull out the marquesses and dukes, although she has eschewed the nobility in the last decade. I mean her characters act and speak like actual complex human beings. They don’t just shriek ...
Okay, here’s my confession of the week: I don’t like cheesecake. Every so often, I try it because I wonder if my taste will change and I’ll finally cotton on to what half the world seems to love. But I don’t. I find it cheesy and filling and slightly nauseating and kind of gross — sweet ch ...
For those who don’t know, the HarperCollins Austen Project is reimagining the Jane Austen novels under the auspices of “six bestselling contemporary authors”. (As opposed to, like, the thousands who do it on FanFiction or who aren’t bestselling contemporary authors.) First up is Joanna Troll ...
As titles go, Talent for Trouble is quite apt, because I found this book chock full of contradictions. By turns hilarious, engaging, boring, and over the top, the book is the epitome of a hot mess. But there was a point where the book took a turn into permanent bizarro territory, and it lost me....
I came into Thankless in Death from a slightly odd perspective: With two exceptions, I haven't read a single book in months, which is a very long sabbatical for me. When I came back in to read the latest Eve Dallas, the re-entry shock almost gave me whiplash. You see, I've read every single one of t ...