Jackie Lau’s lighthearted romantic comedy series Holidays with the Wongs concludes with A Big Surprise for Valentine’s Day. I’ve enjoyed all the titles in the series as each of the Wong siblings has found a partner and now it’s youngest sibling Amber’s turn. Amber lives in Stratford where she works in marketing and is happily…
Although Tales from the Gunpowder Chronicles features three separate steampunk novellas, I only read and reviewed the third novella, Love in the Time of Engines. The other two novellas are standalone stories; LitToE is a prequel to Gunpowder Alchemy, published in 2014. LitToE is tough to grade. Not because I didn’t enjoy it. I did. …
Skye Warren’s dark romance, The Bishop, is the newest standalone novella in the long-running 1001 Dark Nights series. It introduces readers to the wealthy alpha males of the Den, a social club in Tanglewood, Illinois that doubles as an “underground hub for illicit activity.” Even though Warren writes compelling narrative, I couldn’t quite get a…
The Mad Countess by Erica Monroe is billed as an edgy, atmospheric Gothic Regency Romance that’s not for the faint of heart. Sadly, however, it was about as edgy as a bowl of cold rice pudding, and seemed to be suffering from an identity crisis. The romance is a friends-to-lovers affair, the two protagonists being…
This Wicked Gift is, I believe, Courtney Milan’s first published work, and is an introductory novella to her Carhart books. In it, Miss Lavinia Spencer is caring for her sick father and her younger brother as well as running their family business, a circulating library. Money is incredibly tight, but Lavinia has been scrupulously saving…
Happy sigh – that’s how I finished Night of the Scoundrel. Ms. Bowen’s readers have been calling for a story about the intriguing King ever since he was first introduced in her Season for Scandal series. King showed up again in Bowen’s last Devils of Dover book, A Rogue in the Night, leaving us all…
I loved Lorraine Heath’s Texas Glory, heartbreaking though it was at times, so when I discovered one more book to carry on the story told by her Texas trilogy, I couldn’t wait to read it. Unfortunately, while Texas Legacy often felt like a reconnection with old friends, it didn’t quite live up to the standard…
Mr. Right Now is a sweet, sexy novella featuring neighbours – a former marine and actor-turned-event planner – that takes place between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I’m not the biggest fan of novellas as I often find them rushed and lacking in characterisation and relationship development, but fortunately, that isn’t the case here, and Annabeth Albert…
Shannon Stacey’s Cedar Street series continues along with this brisk novella, One Christmas Eve. Now that Zoe Randall’s divorce is over, done and in the can, she’s setting out to enjoy life for herself for once. Back in her home town, she and her cousin Carly have opened a bookstore together, and she seems to…
Sarah Mayberry is an author well known to those who read contemporary romance. It’s been a while since she’s released anything new so when I saw that she had a romantic comedy novella coming out, I made sure to pick it up. She’s good at evoking a lot of emotions in both her characters and…