The Hacienda has been described by the publisher as “Mexican Gothic meets Rebecca”. Being a big fan of both those books I was naturally excited to read it, but unfortunately, the novel does not live up to the publisher’s hype. Beatriz lost her home when her father was executed during the Mexican War for Independence….
Has anyone ever chronicled (and added magic to) the lives of women with such grace and beauty as Isabel Allende? If you’ve read one of the author’s books you don’t need me to tell you what you’ll find between the beautiful covers of Violeta. Magical realism. And the story of one woman’s life and loves….
Book four in Toni Anderson’s Cold Justice: Crossfire series, Cold Cruel Kiss is a nail-bitingly tense, superbly plotted romantic suspense novel set in Buenos Aires, which finds Supervisory Special Agent Max Hawthorne of the FBI’s Crisis Negotiation Unit called in after the seventeen-year-old daughter of the US Ambassador to Argentina is kidnapped whilst on a…
Find Me in Havana is a difficult book to grade. Startling, original, frank and powerful, it spellbinds and breaks a reader’s heart. The book tells the tale of Estelita Rodriguez, a Cuban actress whose time in the spotlight led to a supporting role in Rio Bravo and a series of Roy Rogers films. Estelita had…
I had been prepared for Leonie Mack’s debut romance My Christmas Number One to be a ‘Hallmark-esque’ holiday romance complete with Christmas tree-lighting, cookie-baking, and enough snow to cool me down during California’s heatwave. Surprisingly, the fresh plot is largely unpredictable and largely set in tropical locations. I quickly realized that this poignant, interracial love…
In a rural Latin American village called Sabana, Trinidad Torralvo and her sister Ines grew up alongside a young man named Victor, who is kidnapped by guerrillas. Fast forward a few years through Ines’s love story (just a few pages at the hectic pace of this book), and Ines’s daughter Clara is born and grows…
I’m not a huge fan of military romances. SEALs and the like don’t hold much appeal for me, and those stories tend to be so over-the-top I spend the entire book rolling my eyes. While Tempted Into Danger an ICE: Black Ops Defenders book does stray into the ridiculousness territory more than once, it also…
It’s hard to know where to begin when discussing this book. On the one hand, it tells an interesting if tragic tale, made more immediate by the fact that it’s based on a true story, and told by the person who lived it. On the other hand, it’s a garbled narrative with ambitions toward the…
Despite a few minor problems, Glenna McReynold’s River of Eden is a pulse-pounding thrillride, a sensual love story, and a surreal adventure into the mystical unknown, all rolled into one. And this page-turner will hold you in its thrall long after those minor problems are forgotten. Dr. Annie Parrish is an ethnobotanist on a mission…
Rebecca Brandewyne used to be one of my favorite authors. Boy, have my tastes changed! At first, though I didn’t buy into the reincarnation subplot, I enjoyed And Gold Was Ours as I might enjoy a campy movie serial. Then, I came upon the scene where the evil nun tried to force herself on the…
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