I’m not a big fan of anthologies, mainly because the limitations of the short story format mean I am typically short-changed on the romance. However, being a huge fan of Ms. Williams, I decided to make an exception for Love and Other Flight Delays. Like many collections, this one offers a mixed bag of stories,…
Four of Harlequin’s most popular contemporary romance authors spin a tale about the four violet-eyed Hathaway Sisters in Sweet Home Cowboy. Each of the romances is lovely, with heroines worth loving, but some repetitive plot tropes got to me after a while. Also, would it have killed one of these authors to make one of…
It’s that time of year. Snow’s falling, Christmas decorations have been up for months, and Cleis Press has released its annual compendium of erotica written by female-identified authors. This year’s umbrella theme is ‘play,’ which encompasses everything from playing an instrument to playing a game to watching some theatre. As always, the book encapsulates a…
A standout read of my recent Sarina Bowen binge was the delightful novella Blonde Date, which used to be available by itself but is now only available in the Extra Credit anthology. Blonde Date Grade: A Sensuality: Warm If you’ve kept up with The Ivy Years series, you’ll remember…
By now, y’all know the drill. It’s December, so that means it’s time for another volume of the Best Women’s Erotica of the Year. In 2021, editor Rachel Kramer Bussel has, as usual, included pieces from several well-known romance authors (Adriana Herrera, Angelina M. Lopez and Holley Trent in this edition), but news names abound. …
In Romancelandia, Christmas means brand new romance anthologies. The folks at St. Martin’s Paperbacks have collected stories by some of their best-known historical romance authors into a single anthology, and they’re here to warm your hearts. For the most part they succeed, although one of the stories is rather cheesy. Great Scot! by Suzanne Enoch Grade: B- …
My love of Carla Kelly Christmas novellas means of course I was going to give this anthology a try. While her novella is solid, it isn’t her best, and the other stories are so lackluster that A Victorian Family Christmas is simply a disappointment. A Father for Christmas by Carla Kelly Grade: B …
A Yuletide Kiss features three interwoven stories about a group of travelers who find themselves stranded at a rural inn at Christmastime by an unexpected winter storm, and the romances that follow their forced proximity. When We Finally Kiss Good Night by Sabrina Jeffries Grade: B+ …
When it comes to anthologies, it pays to keep your priorities straight. This is how I square it: Entertainment + No Real Problems + Happy Feelings = Satisfaction. So after reading Avon’s latest anthology and doing some calculations, I can conclude that it works. And the cover is not bad either. Sophia Nash’s contribution, Catch…
We all know Historical Romancelandia has a surfeit of dukes. However, never has that fact hit me so hard as while reading this anthology. The stories are set in different eras (the earliest is Georgian, the last is late Victorian), but it’s not the idea that these dukes might exist simultaneously that causes the problem….
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