I am convinced that Carla Kelly doesn’t have it in her to write a bad book, or even a mediocre one, and her latest effort only confirms that impression for me. One Good Turn marks her return after several years’ absence from publishing, and it carries all her trademarks: complex and sympathetic characterization, an unflinching…
I picked up a copy of Streets of Fire on the recommendation of Sandi Morris, AAR’s technical editor. She told me to expect a heavy read, but a good one. She was right. Sydney Foster is a successful businesswoman who has dabbled a bit in lost causes over the years. Her own history is as…
OK, what’s the Number 1 Female Fantasy? Forget sex for now. Let’s concentrate on the more imaginative stuff. In my opinion, it’s got to be one of two things: it’s either Healing the Tortured Soul or Taming the Rake. Both are delicious fantasies, and I’d say they regularly tangle with each other for the top…
Voyager, the third installment in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series, is a sharp contrast to the previous book, Dragonfly in Amber. Whereas Dragonfly began and ended with Claire and Jamie separated for twenty years, Voyager, as the title indicates, is the story of Claire’s return to the past and to Jamie. After finding out that Jamie…
When The Fiery Cross arrived in the mail, I knew it already had a leg up on the competition. I can’t remember another time when I have been so excited just to open a package and hold a book. I had another book to finish the day it came, so I kept giving it fond,…
Author Josie Litton may have chosen to be a mystery, but the success of her books isn’t. Between the brilliance of the marketing scheme surrounding her and her excellent writing – as defined by her enjoyable characters and exciting plots – little is left to chance. The finale to her “debut” medieval Viking trilogy, Come…
I spent a year and a half staring at the four installments of this story, sitting neatly on one of my shelves. Diana Gabaldon’s books are filled with plot devices I had always shied away from in romance novels. “They’re written in the first person, the heroine’s older than the hero, they’re huge,” I whined,…
I’ve always found Diana Gabaldon’s quote on the Anita Blake covers highly apropos. Despite their different subjects, Gabaldon’s and Laurell K. Hamilton’s styles resonate strongly. Both are phenomenally gifted storytellers, a double-edged sword because the hands of a great storyteller are seldom a safe or comfortable place to be. There are no cosy guarantees that…
One thing that I am learning slowly, painfully slowly, as both a reader and reviewer, is not to limit myself. When I say “I don’t like (insert type) romances,” this pronouncement invariably comes back to bite me in the butt. I used to say I didn’t like “secret baby” romances, but then I read Everyday,…
Could you use a laugh? I know I could. Let me suggest a book called Sex Tips For Girls, humorist Cynthia Heimel’s take on the state of the female/male union in the post-feminist era. Blunt and funny, it addresses such issues as “Who are we?”, a look into the psyche of a gender who no…
End of content
End of content