Writing is a very personal endeavor, and every author leaves pieces of herself on the pages of her books. An exceptional novel will make you believe you’ve met its author, and I feel like I know Cat Sebastian a little after reading The Lawrence Browne Affair. There’s an emotional depth and complexity to her principal…
I cut my teeth on historicals and romantic suspense, so I always enjoy an excuse to dive back into either of these subgenres. I’d read all but one of the books in Jill Sorenson’s Aftershock series and inexplicably the one I’d neglected was the one that intrigued me most. Badlands reunites Owen Jackson and Penny…
After I DIK’d My Life Next Door by this author, I immediately went after her other books. Happily, What I Thought Was True possesses much of what I enjoyed reading that book, including a strong setting, likeable protagonists, and an intense story without teen drama. In some ways, like its respectful portrayal of a sexually…
Dirty For Me is the first story in Jackie Ashenden’s new Motor City Royals series, set on the gritty streets of Detroit. Zee escaped from his corrupt father, adopted his current name, and set out to support himself by picking up the mechanics trade. He works at a garage now with colleagues he calls his…
Nell Whitby works in an East End cigar factory and lives with her invalid mother in a tiny hovel in Bethnal Green. It’s a tough life and a hand-to-mouth existence; and making things worse, her abusive step-brother is drinking away the money that could pay for her mother’s medicine and keeps suggesting that Nell starts…
Only Beloved is the seventh and final book in Mary Balogh’s Survivor’s Club series about a group of people – six men and one woman – who sustained injuries and trauma, both physical and mental, as a result of the Napoleonic Wars. I’ve enjoyed all the books and think it’s been one of the strongest…
Everything I enjoy in a historical romance can be found in K.J. Charles’ A Gentleman’s Position, the third novel in her Society of Gentlemen series. Accurate, confident and luscious, the writing brings Lord Richard Vane and his ‘fox’, David Cyprian, to glorious life. I have awarded a richly deserved ‘A’ for this novel, one notch…
The second book in K.J Charles’ Society of Gentlemen trilogy, A Seditious Affair contains all the ingredients I enjoyed so much in A Fashionable Indulgence, which I read in the summer. I was so impressed by Ms Charles’ writing and the wonderful way she wove the romantic relationship through a gripping story of social and…
Shana Galen’s new Covent Garden Cubs series gets off to a terrific start with Earls Just Want to Have Fun which is – fortunately – a book with much more emotional depth than it’s overly cutesy title would seem to suggest. The story is, at first glance, a simple cross-class romance with a bit of…
The first book in Joanna Chambers’ Enlightenment series, Provoked is set in Regency Scotland, at a time of much political and social unrest. The author immediately evokes a strong sense of time and place with the opening of the story in which two young men – weavers wrongly convicted of treason – are publicly executed. Present…