This is easily my favorite book of 2015. What makes it absolutely perfect to me are the likable, intelligent characters, the superb handling of the subject matter and the excellent writing.Most people I have recommended it to have loved it as well, which sort of doubles my pleasure. I hope this review will introduce it…
Brilliant in piano and violin, Chiaki Shinichi aspires to be a conductor, but his career will be limited as long as his fear of travel traps him in Japan. After he breaks with his professor and his girlfriend on the same night, he gets drunk and wakes up in the squalid apartment of his next-door…
Caroline Linden follows up one of my favourite books of last year, Love and Other Scandals with another beautifully written, character-driven romance which, while loosely linked to the earlier book, is very different in tone. In it, we become reacquainted with Abigail and Penelope Weston, and, of course, privy to more of the sexual exploits…
Wendy Clyde here. Dabney Grinnan and I are discussing R. Lee Smith’s The Last Hour of Gann, which was released in September. While Dabney had read Ms. Smith, this is my first book by her and I was very pleasantly surprised by the book’s quality and complexity. When Dabney suggested we have a Pandora’s Box…
Narrated by Nicholas Boulton One of the first books I read when I got back into reading romance a few years ago was Flowers From the Storm. I remember being caught up in heart pounding fear for Jervaulx as he was mistreated in the asylum; of feeling rage on his behalf. I remember being so…
I find that books are like expensive boxed chocolates—they all look delicious, but there’s really no telling what’s inside each. Some look normal but have hidden inside a strange neon green substance that doesn’t taste all that good. Others hide a caramel or truffle filling that’s just delicious. Faking It was a book of the…
Amazon said because I liked Sarah Mayberry, I would like this Random House Digital book. Skeptically, I decided to take Amazon up on its challenge, but since I haven’t had much luck with some of the music services that pick tunes for me, I didn’t hold out a lot of hope. I was pleasantly surprised…
Ms. Grant’s excellent debut should really be titled A Lady and a Gentleman Awakened. Both the heroine, repressed Martha, and the hero, feckless Theo, are, by this novel’s end, alert to possibilities unimaginable to both prior to their relationship. In A Lady Awakened, opposites don’t merely attract; two strongly disparate people are transformed into a…
“Move your bleedin’ arse,” Miss Charlotte Spenser’s maid, Meggie, said to her.” With these opening words, Ms. Stuart, in the second book in her historical Rohan trilogy, pulls the reader in and doesn’t let her go until the very lovely last line. The series tells the story of three generations of Rohan men. The sexy…
This fourth and last of Madeline Hunter’s Rarest Blooms series, tells the tale of Tristan, the Duke of Castleford, and Daphne Joyes, the proprietor of The Rarest Blooms, an unusual nursery. Theirs is a grand romance. Tristan is a splendid character — a smart as hell duke who spends all his days drinking and whoring…