TBR Challenge 2013: Classically Romantic

heidelbergwedding I’m away at RWA Nationals this week, but before I got there, I did get my TBR Challenge book read for the month. This month we’re reading a romance classic, whether that be a classic book, author, trope, what have you. Betty Neels’ 1984 Heidelberg Wedding was my pick because Neels is certainly one of the classics. Her books from Harlequin stand out not only because she took certain plot points and made them her own, but also because she has an idiosyncratic voice. I find her writing hit or miss, but this particular story was a very fun read and I’d probably give it a solid B.

Anyone familiar with Neels will guess that this book is a medical romance with some kind of tie-in to the Netherlands – and you’d be half right. Eugenia Smith serves as Ward Sister in a London Hospital, […]

By |2017-06-23T08:30:42-04:00July 17th, 2013|Categories: All About Romance, Reading|Tags: , |3 Comments
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TBR Challenge 2013: Into the RITA Wayback Machine

rendezvousatgramercy This month’s theme for the multi-site TBR Challenge had me scratching my head a little. We’re supposed to read a RITA winner or runner-up. Now I have to admit that, at least in recent years, my reading tastes and the RITAs have diverged somewhat. I also noticed as I scrolled down the list of RITA winners that the books I did have from that list were almost all books I’d already read.

Then I got to the real oldies – books I would have been too young to read the first time around. My mother and grandmother both enjoyed Candlelight romances and I’ve ended up with a big box of their former keepers (some people get silver and china, some get antiques, I get old category romances and gothics – no wonder I write on a romance site). Sure enough, I managed to dig […]

By |2017-06-23T08:30:43-04:00June 19th, 2013|Categories: All About Romance, Lynn AAR, Romance reading|Tags: , , |7 Comments
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TBR Challenge 2013: Too Much of a Good Thing?

unclaimed Given that our “assignment” for the TBR Challenge this month involved reading an author who’s represented more than once in our TBR piles, I couldn’t wait to jump into Courtney Milan’s 2011 release, Unclaimed. If you enjoy strong, character-driven romance, this book is an amazing treat. Definitely a DIK read for me.

This book comes second in the Turner Brothers trilogy, and while it can be read on different levels, it’s deeply satisying no matter how far you want to let your mind dig into it. On the surface, Milan tells an emotional story of two painfully misunderstood people who somehow manage to figure one another out enough to make the other whole. And underneath the surface? Well, Courtney Milan devotes more than a little bit of time to skewering the “keeping up appearances” school of morals. The musings on morality and hypocrisy that run through […]

By |2017-06-23T08:30:45-04:00May 15th, 2013|Categories: All About Romance, Lynn AAR, Romance reading|Tags: , |11 Comments
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TBR Challenge 2013: New-to-Me Author

sleepwalker There are so many authors out there that one simply cannot keep up with them all, so finding a book in my TBR pile from an author I’d never read before seemed like an easy way to start this month’s TBR CHallenge.

And it was. Karen Robards has been writing romance for almost as long as I’ve been alive, but somehow I’ve never actually read one of her books. I must have gotten curious at some point because I had her 2012 thriller, Sleepwalker sitting in my stacks of TBR books. Robards’ chase across wintry Michigan has its moments, but it also frustrated me more than a little bit at times. Taken as a whole, I’d call it a pretty uneven and ultimately frustrating read, and I’d give it a C- if it were a review book.

The sleepwalker of the title is the heroine, Micayla Lange, and […]

By |2017-06-23T08:30:47-04:00April 17th, 2013|Categories: All About Romance, Lynn AAR, Reading|Tags: , , |13 Comments
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