Friends, there is nothing like reading a debut romance and loving it. Surprising, funny, sexy and original, The Roommate is on my shortlist of favorite books of 2020. It’s excellent. Clara Wheaton has loved Everett Bloom since they were small children. Their families, part of the Connecticut east coast elite, are close friends, and their…
In her biography, Julia Bennet says she writes historical romance with passion, intrigue, dark humor and the occasional animal sidekick. She does! The Ruin of Evangeline Jones has passion and intrigue in spades. Not so much the humor, but we do get a memorable cat. I like all of these things, and I hoped to…
I’ve been anxiously awaiting the next installment in the Lizzie Hardwicke series and it does not disappoint! Ms. Clarke has another winner on her hands. The Corpse Played Dead is just as intriguing and brilliantly written as the first book in the series, Death and the Harlot. The Corpse Played Dead picks up two months…
In an industry more known for its women, superstar Logan O’Toole is the male face of porn. Years earlier, he filmed a scene with Devi Dare, and he can’t get her out of his mind. After a chance meeting at a party, he offers her the co-starring role in his new project, a reality-style web…
Yay! A new historical mystery author with a great start to a series! Death and the Harlot, by Georgina Clarke, is book one in the new Lizzie Hardwicke series and it’s a riveting beginning. Lizzie Hardwicke is one of the luckier harlots in Georgian London; she has a roof over her head, regular meals, decent…
A slammerkin is a loose dress, and also a loose woman. Emma Donoghue, author of Room, based this book on the true story of a girl who was executed in 1763 for murdering her mistress, and who apparently did it from a longing for ‘fine clothes’. While this wasn’t exactly a pleasant read, it was…
I tend to have pretty tepid feelings towards secret clubs in romances, whether they’re historical or contemporary. There’s something about the idea of all these sex clubs, gaming hells and what have you operating in secret and yet always making gobs of money and never seeming to require much – if any – work to…
If you’ve been dialed into Romancelandia over the last few months, then I’m sure you’ve been hearing a lot of buzz around début author Helen Hoang’s The Kiss Quotient – and I’m here to tell you the book lives up to the hype. It feels a bit like a gender-swapped take on Pretty Woman, but in addition to…
In LaVyrle Spencer’s The Endearment, newly-orphaned Anna Reardon arrives in Minnesota to marry a farmer called Karl Lindstrom. She saw his advertisement for a wife, and they’ve been corresponding since then. But Karl is in for a number of nasty surprises, and as a reader, I was cringing on his behalf. Why? Well, let me…
Marguerite Kaye’s research glimmers in a well-told, engrossing and tender story from her Matches Made in Scandal series, about a courtesan who’s never (really) been kissed seeking to leave behind a past she had no say over, and a man running from a (possibly) falsified betrothal. In From Courtesan to Convenient Wife, Ms. Kaye has…
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