I put off writing this review while I tried to unravel my feelings about the characters, the plot, and its execution. I was hooked right from the get-go and based on the strength of Szpara’s writing, I couldn’t put the book down. So it was something of a disappointment when I retrospectively learned that although…
John and Jackie first meet when they are twelve years old. Now, seventy-one years later, Jackie prepares to give his beloved husband the ultimate gift. In the story, set over the course of a single afternoon, they relive key moments from their lives together. This includes their first meeting and first kiss, through the violence…
Chasing Forever is the third and final book in Kelly Jensen’s loosely-linked This Time Forever trilogy of novels in which the protagonists are all older (late thirties – fifty) men who find true love and happy ever afters. As soon as I learned this book would feature Brian Kenway, whom I met and didn’t much…
Kelly Jensen continues her This Time Forever series about couples in their forties finding love and happiness with Renewing Forever, a beautifully written, reflective and somewhat wistful story about childhood friends whose lives went in very different directions, and who must work out if the forever they’d envisaged three decades earlier might now be possible. We…
I tend to either wildly love Roan Parrish’s books or dislike them intensely, and Rend, my friends, falls squarely in the ‘wildly love’ category. Although much of its subject matter is somber and heavy, the author deftly balances the darkness with a passionate romance that’s heartbreakingly tender, romantic and moving. Rend takes the second chance…
I’ve come across Kelly Jensen before as an author of m/m Sci-Fi romance (I’m thinking of the Chaos Station series she co-wrote with Jenn Burke) but haven’t so far managed to read anything of hers. When I saw that her new contemporary romance series, This Time Forever would feature protagonists a bit older than the…
People leading politically progressive lives under the administration of President Crosby (read: a not at all veiled Donald Trump) are the “rogues” of this lackluster anthology. Unfortunately, the tails wag the dogs of these stories, as the political agendas, themselves oversimplified, overwhelm superficial characters and snoozer plots. The writing is uneven as well. On the…
Though romances starring rock star heroes or heroines aren’t usually on my list of favorites, I may have to make an exception after reading this latest romance by Jenny Holiday. On the strength of my enjoyment of previous stories of hers, in particular the 49th Floor series of romantic comedies, I ended up reading Famous…
His Fateful Heap of Days is the eighth – and possibly last – book in John Wiltshire’s amazing More Heat than the Sun series. It is not a standalone novel. I think the best way to open this review is with the poem John Wiltshire has used at the beginning – There is a destiny…
How dare this book make me love it so much? It had a slow start, and the premise seemed a bit like Harry Potter fan fiction, so I was all ready to toss it aside and give up. I am so glad I didn’t. Rowell’s first foray into fantasy has all of the heart and…