Reviews by Dabney Grinnan
D+
Why did I opt to read a pirate ménage à trois romance? I blame Alexis Hall. His review of Sea of Ruin, which may be found here, is so engagingly hilarious I had to check out the book for myself. That's five hours of my life I'll never get back. Sigh.As a rule, I am all for the suspension of di ...
Serena Bell wraps her her Wilder Adventures series with a frenemies to lovers story. This quintet of books, set in the nicest town in Oregon, Rush Creek, features five brothers (their sole sister got a short story), all tall, gorgeous, and in need of the love of a good woman. Four have found their s ...
I am thrilled to see Julia Bennet again publishing historical romance. Her first two novels, The Madness of Miss Gray and The Ruin of Evangeline Jones, are four star reads for me and, were I awarding points for simply being more interesting than the vast majority of historical romances I've read in ...
C
from The New York Times in October 2022:Colleen Hoover has sold more books this year than Dr. Seuss. She’s sold more books than James Patterson and John Grisham — combined.
To say she’s currently the best-selling novelist in the United States, to even compare her to other successful aut ...
The Dark King, Gina Maxwell's urban fantasy romance, invokes the rockstar Meatloaf's immortal words: "Two out of three ain't bad."The novel has a delicious love story, satisfying plot, and skimpy world-building. Given that this is fantasy - in this imaginary world, the Dark Fae rule Las Vegas - ...
Holly Black's marvelous trilogy The Folk of Air is so damn good that when I heard she was continuing to explore the world of Elfhame, a kingdom of magical islands, I was thrilled. And cautious. Black's novel after the trilogy, Book of Night, was a hot mess. Would a return to Elfhame be a return to t ...
A-
Have you read Ninth House? Because if not--and you're a loon if you haven't--this review is a waste of your time. Hell Bent is the second book in Leigh Bardugo's Alex Stern series and will likely to confuse those who haven't read the first. But for those of you who have... here goes.Our story be ...
In romance novels, the heroine is almost always under thirty. When older women - those over fifty - appear in romance, it's usually as a secondary character who, if she's very beautiful and has either a fortune or a heart of gold, might be lucky enough to have a lover of her own. Romance novels wher ...
On Saoirse Island, a rain soaked isle in the Pacific Northwest, a murmuration of starlings portends death and the leaves on the trees may burst into color all at once. Here, magic is as real as greed and first love can bind two souls together forever.Emery Blackwood and August Salt were born on ...
Anne Stuart's Return to Christmas is startlingly sentimental for the author while still--for better and worst--having the hallmarks of her work. I enjoyed it but didn't love it.It's December in 2020 (this is a Covid free tale) and Madison Simcoe is furious. Yet another asshat at work has groped ...