In the Face of the Sun is an engrossing family saga filled with heartbreak and love, victory, forgiveness, and loss, and a wonderful character study of several unforgettable women. It is 1968, and a pregnant Frankie Saunders is leaving Chicago, abandoning an abusive marriage to the violent, controlling Jackson with the help of a ride…
The Lost Son is a very straightforward women’s fiction novel centering around – you guessed it – a woman’s quest to find her missing child. Julia Kruse’s mother died in childbirth. Her father, a famous chef at a luxury hotel, fears his demanding job will keep him from spending time with his two young daughters,…
Allie Therin’s Magic and Manhattan series concluded earlier this year with Wonderstruck, leaving Rory and Arthur in a good place, disposing of the evil Baron Zeppler and nicely tying up the major plotlines. Despite a few quibbles, I enjoyed all three books, so I was pleased to learn the author was writing another novel set…
I have been blown away. Chloe Gong set a high bar with These Violent Delights, a 1920s fantasy version of Romeo and Juliet which transports the story’s action to Shanghai. Our Violent Ends is the first book’s equal. Gong’s talent remains unstinting. You need to read this book. It’s now 1927, and Juliette Cai is…
Transporting Shakespeare’s The Tempest into a 1920s setting and retrofitting the story into one of an established blood family versus a found one is not an easy feat – and its one Samantha Cohoe attempts with limited success in Bright Ruined Things. The tension in the mystery plot is palpable and the hero is interesting,…
The blurb for A Blues Singer to Redeem Him, promising a perilous interracial romance between the son of a Mafioso and a blues singer in a Jazz Age speakeasy amid the looming threat of the KKK, earned this title an instant high place on my TBR. Sadly, it failed to live up to my expectations…
The Show Girl is my greatest disappointment of 2021 thus far – well, in terms of reading anyway. Presenting us with a memorable heroine, it plunges her into the dullest, most predictable Ladies Home Journal plot I’ve ever read in my life, leading to obvious conclusions and dull let-downs all around. Minnesota native Olive McCormick…
At Summer’s End is a lovely historical novel with a sense of fresh purpose. It’s both a careful portrait of the pageantry of life in the 1920s and a lovely drama capturing the mores and manners of the era. Ellis knows how to give us glossy soap, and glossy soap we are given. Unfortunately, the…
Blind Tiger is a classic Sandra Brown romantic suspense story and if you are a fan of this author or that genre at all, you will definitely want to pick it up. The Great War is over but almost two years after armistice, Thatcher Hutton is still finding his way home. Lack of money and…
Romance, drama, skulduggery and edge-of-the-seat adventure abound in this rip-roaring tale that brings the Will Darling Adventures to an absolutely magnificent close. In Subtle Blood, KJ Charles delivers everything I wanted from this series finale – a fast-paced, tightly-plotted mystery and a well-deserved HEA for Will and Kim – with her customary wit, razor-sharp insight…