The books AAR loved best in 2016

By |2017-06-23T08:30:01-04:00January 28th, 2017|Categories: Romance reading|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |

This year the AAR staff posted 16 Best of 2016 Lists. We chose books from every genre and, in romance, from every sub-genre. And while it’s safe to say we don’t all share the same taste in books, there were some books that appeared on more than one list.

As will surprise no one who has been reading these lists, Sally Thorne’s debut novel The Hating Game is AAR’s Book of the Year. (Our DIK review is here.) Eight of us put it on our list. We call it: charming, witty, sexy, smart and refreshing. It gives the enemies to lovers trope new life and reveals paintball for the dangerous game it truly is. We loved it.

A/iB/BN/K

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Midweek Minis

By |2017-06-23T08:30:10-04:00May 12th, 2016|Categories: AAR Shannon, Caroline AAR, Caz AAR, DIK, Heather AAR, Maria Rose, Mini reviews|Tags: , , , , |

Here’s another in our occasional series of mini-reviews.  We’ve got five DIKs here along with three B reads!  Here’s what Caroline, Caz, Maria, Heather, Shannon and E.B. have to say about some of their recent reads:

Caroline’s Read:

I just finished The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon. It’s a fantasy/dystopia novel about Paige Mahoney, who can spirit-walk in a world in which paranormal talents are illegal, and whose life using her abilities for an underground syndicate is disrupted by her arrest. She finds out that the entire structure of her world isn’t what she thinks, and she’s placed into the custody of the mysterious and powerful Warden. I have a guilty love of prisoner-captive books, and this is an interesting one, with solid sexual tension and a couple that plausibly has to work through some […]

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DIKlassic: Never Love a Cowboy by Lorraine Heath

By |2017-06-23T08:30:10-04:00May 11th, 2016|Categories: DIK, DIKlassic|Tags: |

Reviewed on April 20, 2000

Grade: A

Setting: Post-Civil War Texas

Sensuality: Warm

Never Love a Cowboy is the kind of book that makes me wonder why I’m not more familiar with Lorraine Heath’s name. Why is everyone buying that latest glossy big-name hardback when they could be reading this little jewel? Between these inexpensive green paper covers is a book with more emotional depth than anything I’ve read in a long time.

Harrison Bainbridge is one of a trio of exiled British noblemen who find themselves in the dusty little frontier town of Fortune, Texas. He is a charming clothes-horse with a gift for poker, but beneath his well-groomed exterior lies a man who believes that he is incapable of love. He was gravely […]

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The Weekend DIK: The Earl Takes All

By |2017-06-23T08:30:10-04:00April 29th, 2016|Categories: Caz AAR, DIK|Tags: , , , , |

I’ve been desperate to read The Earl Takes All since I finished Falling into Bed With a Duke, the first book in Lorraine Heath’s Hellions of Havisham Hall series. Even though at that point no synopsis had been published, I had an inkling of where this story might be going – which says a lot for Ms Heath’s ability to bury hints and subtext in whichever story she happens to be telling at the time – and I have been really, REALLY curious as to how she was going to pull off such a difficult premise. […]

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Steals and Deals

By |2017-06-23T08:30:11-04:00April 12th, 2016|Categories: Dabney AAR, Steals and Deals|Tags: , , , , , , , |

This week has great steals and deals. Click on the book covers to go to Amazon.

Thanks and happy reading.

Caroline Linden’s I Love the Earl is just 1.99. We haven’t reviewed this one but we’ve given many of her other works high marks. Here’s the description from Amazon. Many other books are currently 4.99 which is still a good deal!

Margaret de Lacey has accepted her unmarried state with dignity, if not delight. She had no suitors when she was young and starry-eyed, though regrettably poor, and it’s unlikely any man will court her now that she’s older, wiser, and still just as penniless. Until, that is, her brother unexpectedly inherits the dukedom of Durham and settles an enormous dowry on her, making her the most eligible heiress in town. No gentleman in London is more in need of a wealthy bride than Rhys Corwen, Earl of Dowling. […]

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TBR Challenge: You Can't Have Just One

By |2017-06-23T08:30:19-04:00June 17th, 2015|Categories: Book news, Caz AAR, Lynn AAR, Romance reading|Tags: , , |

iwantitthatway Shamefully huge TBR pile? Oh check. And yes, I am waay behind on my non-review reading and so finding an author with more than one book on the stack for this month’s challenge was no problem. I’m not a huge NA reader, but I do like Ann Aguirre’s writing and so I had picked up I Want It That Way last fall. My Kindle got stolen while I was still about a chapter and a half shy of finishing the book, so I hesitate to give this book at proper grade. However, unless things go seriously off the rails at the ending, so far we’ve got a solid B. I’ll no longer be e-readerless after tomorrow, so this book is the first thing I’ll be finishing and I’ll do a final grade/review on my Goodreads page.

This book is first in a trilogy about college […]

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AAR Staff Top Ten Favorites – Haley's Picks

By |2019-05-10T13:11:59-04:00August 20th, 2013|Categories: All About Romance, Haley AAR, Romance reading|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |

texasdestiny When I sat down to put this list together, I thought this would really be a piece of cake. Well, I was wrong. It turns out, I had more like a top twentysomething list and narrowing it down was not all that easy. Another thing I noticed is that so many of the books represented were some of the very first I ever read. My love of the romance genre began when I was a pre-teen and started pilfering books off my mother’s bookshelf. I knew she wouldn’t be happy with me reading them because I was so young, so I hid them under my bed or in the window seat. I got caught once while reading a book I loved, but now I can’t remember the title, and was told I was forbidden to read the romances. That didn’t stop me. I only grew more and […]

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