Grace Burrowes has gotten some great buzz here, which led me to request her book for review. I’m happy to say that I agree with previous reviewers – she’s a great author, and her characters and their relationships are interesting and well developed. A few things hold this book back, but this cross-class Christmas romance…
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 and sigh and…
This installment in the Cupcake Lovers series returns readers to Sugar Creek, Vermont to catch up on established couples and see where things stand between Luke Monroe and Rachel Lacey. What could have been a sweet, small-town romance suffers from a severe case of series-itis and a weak ending that left me thinking “That’s it?”…
My tolerance for treacle tends to be low, so it probably surprises no one when I say that small-town contemporaries tend to be a mixed bag for me. Happily for me, The Christmas He Loved Her ended up being both a wonderful read and something beyond the ordinary. In terms of plotting, it’s probably best…
Narrated by Ellen Archer I normally avoid novellas; they’re just too short for me. I like to learn more about the characters than is revealed in a novella. But in the case of a well-loved series I’ll make an exception. I’m a major fan of the Lady Julia series and have enjoyed Ellen Archer’s narration…
As a fan of Robyn Carr’s books and the Virgin River series as a whole, I wasn’t quite sure how to rate Bring Me Home for Christmas. Sometimes anticipation and expectations interfere with my perception on the first reading. So I waited a couple of weeks and reread it. This time it was easier to…
The best part of the holiday season is, for me, the holiday books. I do lots of baking, wrapping, decorating, and cooking but that is not really for me. It’s for the family. But the holiday novels are my little treat during the season. They warm my heart and keep me going, reminding me of…
I tend to stick with anthologies for my holiday reading, but I noticed a fair number of full-length holiday stories on shelves this year, so I thought I’d broaden my horizons. While it has a few cheesy Hallmark Hall of Fame-style moments, Christmas at Candlebark Farm is basically a well-written and very sweet little Christmas…
It’s not uncommon for a book to have a family tree, when it’s one in a series of connected stories focusing on a particular family – and God knows there are a lot of those. It’s never a good sign, though, when a single book needs a family tree to deal with all of the…
I’ll say this for the art department at Dutton: They have some serious love for Lauren Willig. Her covers are always attractive, but the one on The Mischief of the Mistletoe is absolutely stunning. Periodically I would find myself lost in a daze and realize I was doing it, again – staring at the cover,…
End of content
End of content