I love our end of the year lists in part because, later, I can look back and see what we loved. In 2014, Meljean Brook’s novella Frozen made my #Bestof2014 list. (2014 produced several books on it I still adore: Three Weeks with Lady X, Rogue Spy, No More Mr. Nice Guy, Having Her, Off…
Set in New South Wales, Australia in 1885, The Landowner’s Secret provides a slow-moving but captivating tale of a marriage of convenience between classes. Alice Ryan is awakened in the night by intruders lurking outside her modest cabin. Her parents are dead and her brother, currently absent, has a history of involvement with criminals. Alice…
Reading Beautiful Wreck in 2014, I was blown away by Larissa Brown’s dreamlike writing style and the romance within. When I read the first part of the follow-up in 2016, I enjoyed the story but wasn’t left with that lovely breathless feeling I craved. Luckily, while I wasn’t floating weightless in the writing like with…
In Ms. Crews’ first book in Harlequin’s new Dare line, American professor Margot Cavendish is a skeptical sex researcher exploring Icelandic attitudes towards sex. Her final point of data collection is at Hotel Viking (a little on the nose there, but I’ll allow it), which is essentially tourist destination for sexual fantasies. Its owner is…
What do you do when your well-meaning but overly intrusive family can’t stay out of your love life? Well, you invent a fake boyfriend of course! Then you have to find someone to play the part. That’s the theme in Sara Rider’s new romance Real Kind of Love, the first in her Books & Brews…
A DIKlassic originally published on February 7, 1998 Happy holidays to all! We all dream at one time or another of that handsome knight riding in on a white charger and rescuing us, but did you know that there really are modern day knights out there, just ready to rescue that damsel in distress? Meet…
An AAR Top 100 Romance originally published on January 21, 2001 Anyone who has even a passing knowledge of soap operas knows that doomed love is the most interesting. A couple who face insurmountable obstacles, whose time together is limited, whose love is forbidden by law or society will always tug at my emotions. I…
Imagine is the story of a wide variety of characters, all bottlenecked onto an island thanks to a shipwreck just before the turn of the 19th century. First of all there’s our hero and heroine – Margaret “Smitty” Smith, a hard-working attorney who was hoping to take a refreshing cruise in the South Seas, and…
I enjoyed this romance by Elyse Springer. I admire the way she confounds the reader’s expectations in the first part of the book. Whiteout begins with a mystery and a well-used trope when Noah Landers awakens with a head injury, and no idea where he is or who he is. Outside it is snowing heavily,…
At first glance, Let it Snow appears to be a fairly typical holiday romance, using the forced proximity trope to put two people in a position where an attraction between them is likely to lead to some sexual shenanigans. But the book has a surprising depth of emotion to it, making it not quite as…