Reviews by Guest Reviewer

A
The One and Only

The One and Only was a New York Times #1 bestseller and deservedly so. It’s the story of thirty-three-year-old sports reporter Shea Rigsby and her gradual realization that her lifelong hero-worship of football coach Clive Carter might go deeper than friendship. However, he’s twenty-two years old ...

A-
Dark Highland Skies

Using Power Search, it seems that there have been no reviews of Lizzie Lamb’s books at AAR. That’s a surprise. She is a buried treasure in my view who deserves some attention.Her newest book, Dark Highland Skies, was particularly poignant for me because one of the central themes is bereaveme ...

F
First Love, Take Two

I loved Patel’s debut The Trouble With Hating You and picked up First Love, Take Two expecting the same wonderful reading experience. Unfortunately, 33% of the way in, I gave up. I just couldn’t stand another moment. But I’m getting ahead of myself.Here is the book’s summary: On the ver ...

C+
Kit McBride Gets A Wife

I picked up writer Amy Barry’s latest romantic western on a whim. I’ve never read anything by this Australian author before (nor her akas Tess LeSue and Amy T. Matthew) but the cover and title were cute, and the mail order bride premise appealed.The book opens with: Well, spit. How was June ...

A
Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone

The past may seem the safest place to be . . . but it is the most dangerous time to be alive. . . .Jamie Fraser and Claire Randall were torn apart by the Jacobite Rising in 1746, and it took them twenty years to find each other again. Now the American Revolution threatens to do the same.   It ...

A+
The Time Traveller's Guide to Regency Britain

Those of us who love Historical Romance, especially the Regency Historical Romance (RHR) have had numerous discussions here over the years about all sorts of things.  Most recently there was an exchange of views on whether the RHR comprises a ‘canon’.  Some said yes; others no.  Over the year ...

B+
Where the Allegheny Meets the Monongahela

Warning: this book is filled with serious discussions about, and memories of, various characters’ domestic abuse. There are no active descriptions of abuse on page (everything is related via memories or off-page), but one of the minor characters does die at the hands of her abuser.This is one ...

D-
A Blues Singer to Redeem Him

The blurb for A Blues Singer to Redeem Him, promising a perilous interracial romance between the son of a Mafioso and a blues singer in a Jazz Age speakeasy amid the looming threat of the KKK, earned this title an instant high place on my TBR.  Sadly, it failed to live up to my expectations in almo ...

B-
Such a Pretty Face

I have read each and every book by Annabelle Costa and for me all have been A-/B+ reads.  Until this one.  This story, told by Emily, a twenty-seven-year-old virgin, tells how she finally finds love with Brody.  We first meet Emily as she undergoes a physical exam by a doctor as part of her emplo ...

A-
The Boy Next Door

I didn’t realise until I took a close look that Annabelle Costa’s The Boy Next Door was first published in 2012.  But then again, I have not read much contemporary romance until the last year or so, and started picking it up because so much historical romance (my first love) has not made me ver ...