What a lovely book to break me out of my reading slump. Juliet Marillier’s single-title offering is a Medieval Irish Beauty and the Beast fantasy, with a small dash of history, a medium dose of romance, and a whole heap of bloody good storytelling. Caitrin is an unusual and beautiful young woman. She can read…
In When Beauty Tamed the Beast, Eloisa James’ second fairy tale based novel, our hero is Dr. Gregory House, the TV doctor with the crotchety brilliant medical mind. OK, so our hero isn’t actually Gregory House. He’s Piers Yelverton, the Earl of Marchant, and he practices his snarky, deductive medicine in a huge castle in…
Beauty and the Beast is a very old tale. The roots of the story go back to the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche, and it has furnished the plot for many romance novels – Ravished by Amanda Quick and Mary Jo Putney’s short story, The Black Beast of Belleterre are two of my favorites….
I hate to say this, but fond as I am of a nice long historical romance, Once A Rake would have been so much better had it been a lot shorter. The characters were very nice, very likable, and I always enjoy a Beauty and the Beast story, but it rambled on and on and…
I discovered Margo Maguire last year when I read her two Victorian-set historicals. I enjoyed them enough to search for her backlist, but she wrote for Harlequin, which has notoriously low print runs, and so have had difficulty finding them. The Bride Hunt, a very good Beauty and the Beast story, is her first book…
Midnight Angel is the third book in Lisa Marie Rice’s fabulous Midnight series, following Midnight Man and Midnight Run. It takes place two weeks after Midnight Man ends and stands alone well, but I’d recommend reading the books in order because this newest release contains spoilers for the older one. I was delighted when I…
Nighttime Sweethearts is an unexpectedly effective little romance. With a nice fantasy feel and a touch of Beauty and the Beast, it tells a sweet story I enjoyed more than I thought I would. This is the fifth book in Silhouette Romance’s In a Fairy Tale World… miniseries, although it’s the first I’ve read. It…
This is the Teresa Medeiros that I love. This book has my favorite element in a romance, internal conflict, and a bond between the characters based on emotion, not a bunch of annoying external circumstances. There is no distracting subplot to remove focus from Gabriel and Samantha, the supporting cast plays an integral, yet secondary…
The Silhouette Shadows line probably took more risks than any other line of romances, series or mainstream. While this did result in some bombs, it also led to some truly singular books being published, including this one. Whispers in the Woods is one of the most unusual romances I’ve ever read. This is a Beauty…
The Vampire Viscount manages to be a number of interesting things in a brief 224-page space. This is a book that may sneak its way onto a number of AAR’s Special Title Listings. It’s a vampire story, which is unique enough for a Regency. It’s also a redemption story, an arranged marriage romance, and it…