Reviews by Dabney Grinnan
C+
I’ve read all of Ms. Shalvis’s Animal Magnetism series and her Lucky Harbor series. So, whatever criticisms I have of her latest, it’s clear, on some level, her work is working for me.That said....Rumor Has It, the latest book in the Animal Magnetism series, echoes many of M ...
Wendy Clyde here. Dabney Grinnan and I are discussing R. Lee Smith’s The Last Hour of Gann, which was released in September.While Dabney had read Ms. Smith, this is my first book by her and I was very pleasantly surprised by the book’s quality and complexity. When Dabney suggested we have a ...
Gertrude Stein famously wrote "a rose is a rose is a rose." The plot in Ms. Neville's latest in her The Wild Quartet series, The Ruin of a Rogue, may be summed up as: A rogue is kinda a rogue is a non-rogue. I've never been wowed by the poetry of Ms. Stein and I'm wasn't wowed by The Ruin of a Rogue ...
A-
It would be easy label Alexis Hall's debut novel Glitterland as literary fiction masquerading as romance. The language he uses - his metaphors are often show stoppingly gorgeous - and his narrator, a bipolar depressive - beg to be read by those who dismiss genre fiction as lowly. The next time someo ...
Caroline Linden's Love and Other Scandals is the best historical romance I've read this summer. Joan Bennet, the spinster heroine, has a sharper tongue and a sharper mind. The louche hero, Tristan Burke, is witty and wicked. Together, they are an engaging couple whose path to true love is sweet, bel ...
It Happened One Midnight is the eighth book in Ms. Long's Pennyroyal Green series. The hero is Jonathan Redmond, the youngest of the Redmonds.This fact alone made me consider downgrading this book. I and the rest of Ms. Long's fans have been impatiently waiting since I Kissed an Earl (#5) to learn w ...
I am a fan of Ruthie Knox's works. Her books are filled with characters it's easy to care for, zingy conversations, smoking love scenes, and realistic relational conundrums. Thus I am not a whit surprised I like her latest, Flirting with Disaster, the third book in her Camelot series. This consisten ...
The last Susan Sey book I read, Money Shot (2011) was set on a remote island in Lake Superior and had deadly money laundering villain, pagan ceremonies, and a smokin' ex Navy SEAL for a hero. This book, Taste for Trouble, is set in the suburbs of DC, has a scheming Martha Stewart wannabe, and a prof ...
The first chapter of Exposed to You is so wildly erotic and intriguing I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to see how great erotica is written. The rest of the book, however, does not live up to the promise of the first twenty-one pages. The book opens with Joy Hightower, a rather p ...
I, like many readers, was entranced by the first book in Ms. Ashley's the Mackenziesseries, The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie. Ms. Ashley's latest entry into the series, The Seduction of Elliot McBride, is nowhere as strong as the first. That said, it's not as weak as The Many Sins of Lord Cameron a ...