Beachcomber is the most genuinely suspenseful romantic suspense novel that I’ve read in quite a while. A smart and genuine heroine balances a not-as-likable hero – add a downright creepy villain and you have a good read. That said, after finishing Robards’ latest, I’ve officially overdosed on romantic suspense. Attorney Christy Petrino is terrified. She…
Sharon Sala is certainly no stranger to difficult topics. Her past novels have handled subjects such as miscarriage, disfigurement, and child abuse. This novel, with its gut-wrenching portrayal of child prostitution, certainly has one of the grimmest themes I have encountered in romance. But, while I have to admire the author for her bravery in…
Men in Kilts is the second book this year that lured me in with an irresistible title (the first was Nerd in Shining Armor). I love intellectual heroes, but like any red-blooded Outlander fan, I find it hard to resist a man in a kilt. I even wrote a purple prose parody on the subject…
I’ve read some plot and character types I usually avoid as I make my way through the Family Secrets series. In Virginia Kantra’s Her Beautiful Assassin, it’s the dreaded (or depending on your preference, beloved) Navy SEAL hero. The good news is, this is the best book yet in the series, good enough that not…
Two stand-out stories are the highlight of an erotic anthology that, even at the steep price of $14.00 in trade paperback, is well worth the investment. While the entries by Susan Donovan and Nancy Warren stand head and shoulders above the rest, the four remaining stories – some more successfully than others – still, for…
I had a hard time getting through Cheryl Howe’s The Pirate and the Puritan. It has an interesting pre-Revolutionary setting and a lot of action, but a pair of aggravating protagonists and some historical inaccuracies ruined it for me. The year is 1721. Felicity Kendall is a 29-year-old spinster who flees to the British West…
Writing a trilogy can be a tricky proposition. Some authors seem to start very strongly and then lose steam – and, unfortunately, that seems to be the case with A Wedding Story, the conclusion to Susan Kay Law’s Marrying Miss Bright trilogy. While I enjoyed the thoroughly charming The Bad Man’s Bride very much, this…
A book with the words “Dewey Decimal” in the title was just too much for this librarian to pass up – luckily for me. Josephine Carr’s latest book moves her out of suspense and into the realm of chick lit, a move that appears to have been made wisely. At times funny, occasionally silly, this…
The back cover blurb for Laurens’ latest has a list of bold print Headings: The Author, The Series, The Hero, The Heroine, and The Outcome, each followed by a brief, supposedly descriptive sentence. Though I’m sure the author and publisher intended the bullet points to grab their audience quickly, what it actually did was define…
Suspicion has an interesting setting and not much else to recommend about it. Flat, unsympathetic characters, and the pace of a funeral dirge made this one a chore to finish. Scott Campbell quit his job at the Los Angeles Times and moved to Santa Catalina Island off the California coast to take over the local…
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