Not one character within Cheryl Holt’s Double Fantasy had any redeeming qualities, not the evil incestuous twins, the cruel hero, or the gullible heroine. When I finished reading, I felt as though I needed some sort of cleansing, something beyond that of an ordinary shower. Oh, and by the way, I don’t find the terms…
Everybody Loves Evie was a tough book to review. While I enjoyed parts of it and actually laughed aloud at times, the book also was a bit of a mess. This is the second in Beth Ciotta’s Chameleon Chronicle series featuring Evie Parish and, though I haven’t read the first book, this one provides the…
I keep a running list of available books for AAR reviewers, most of which have a brief description. Over the years, I cannot count how many times I’ve typed something like the following: “When Heroine __________ (gets divorced, loses her job, has a death in the family) she is forced to go back to _________…
Anatomy of a Boyfriend wants to be like Judy Blume’s Forever, but it just ends up being a kind of boring novel where the reader gets the sense that the author is only writing in order to describe a sexual relationship. Dominique is a senior at a private school and has never met any boy…
The Jewel Trader of Pegu was a very difficult book for me to grade. On the one hand, it features a truly unique setting and story – and beautiful writing. However, at times I felt as if the main story had more to do with the hero’s love of himself and his newfound sense of…
I have to give Shaken and Stirred credit for one thing: It has one of the most believable plots I’ve ever seen in a Harlequin Blaze. All too often, the Blaze stock-in-trade seems to be an outlandish plot that exists solely to give the hero and heroine a reason to get hot and heavy. In…
Jenna Kernan’s Outlaw Bride is a tough book to grade. It has many truly likable aspects, but there are others that distracted me. As in others of her stories, Kernan writes about characters who’ve been hit hard. Three years ago, when coming to California, Cole Ellis’s wagon train got trapped in the early snows on…
Reading Distracting the Duchess is like breathing in wonderful, fresh air. The book features well-delineated characters – both primary and secondary – and subplots that actually added to its richness. The storyline itself? When an artistic duchess hires a nude model to pose for her latest canvas, she gets more than she bargained for. And…
Shannon McKenna’s books rate as guilty pleasures. Her heroes are barely civilized sex machines, her heroines are nice enough but hardly memorable, and she can write some very nasty torture scenes. Also, her prose is deeply, darkly purple. And yet, I love her books and buy them in trade paperback. Extreme Danger is her latest,…
I have always liked tales that have a little touch of the paranormal or fantastic to them, and I’ve enjoyed the Thrall series from the writing team of C.T. Adams and Cathy Clamp, so I eagerly picked up Timeless Moon, part of their Sazi series. Unfortunately, the shapeshifting Sazi just didn’t work as well for…
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