I first read Anna’s Book in 1998, before once again starting to read romance. I’d recently made my way through almost all of Stephen King’s oeuvre, and I remember asking the librarian if she had any good recommendations for fiction. She handed me this book, and I took it home and quickly became enthralled by…
Like other novels in Silhouette’s new Bombshell line, A Perfect Cover is not a romance. It’s a suspense novel starring a smart and resourceful female heroine, working undercover to solve a series of ugly murders. It’s pretty darn good. The book opens with a couple of episodes out of the life of our first-person-narrator, Lacie…
A Countess Below Stairs was the first Eva Ibbotson romance I ever read, and I’ve been an avid fan ever since. Why? Because her stories are so vivid. In A Countess Below Stairs, Anna Grazinsky, a White Russian in exile goes to work as a housemaid in a beautiful mansion called Meersham. The owner is…
One can argue that this is but one of a million love stories ever written. A tall, brave soldier and a diminutive blonde nurse; the heartbreak and terror of World War II; sex, partings and reunions, deaths. And yet to say that Tatiana and Alexander is a love story is like saying that Niagara is…
I was 12 the first time I read Mrs. Mike. Like all book lovers, I have keepers…and then I have keepers. Mrs. Mike is in my sacred keeper pile – the kind of book that begs to be re-read every few years – and only gets better every time. The story is about Katherine Mary…
The Nightingale’s Song is author Kathleen Eschenburg’s debut book, and as debuts go it is quite encouraging. Taken as a whole, though, it’s no more than average; the pacing is off, especially in the first half of the book, and the hero and heroine engage in some aggravating behavior towards the end. Still, there are…
Sophie’s Heart qualifies as one of the most frustrating books I’ve read in a long time. The story is interesting and at times, highly engaging, but there are a number of inconsistencies and so many preachy moments that I couldn’t enjoy it. These inconsistencies, which forward the plot at the expense of character, and the…
If you’re tired of the same old westerns and regency-set historicals, you might find a respite in Tracy Sumner’s Tides of Love. Set in turn of the century North Carolina, this book has a strong sense of place, and it’s a place and time we don’t often see. Adding to the originality is the hero’s…
One of the reasons I seldom read American westerns is because the characters and situations are so consistent. The cowboys, ranchers, spinsters and schoolmarms, all seem to have been born and raised on the prairie or on the plains. I wonder where the immigrants are. Willa Cather or Laura Ingalls Wilder often wrote about the…
I am thankful for buzz. Good or bad, it often draws my attention to books I’d otherwise overlook. There was so much buzz about the horrid cover of Rio Grande Wedding that I couldn’t resist picking it up when I spotted it to see whether it lived up to its bad rep. Yikes, it was…