Tory Duncan, a former Miss America contestant, now runs a bar in the small Oregon town of Sullivan City. Joe Brigham is a logger turned rising star in the union. When Joe’s kid sister Lisa enters the Miss Sullivan City pageant, they turn to Tory for help. But Tory’s pageant past isn’t exactly a success…
Laine Carrington, an FBI agent wounded while breaking up a cult/pot farm, rents a house in Thunder Point while she recuperates and takes stock of her life. Eric Gentry, ex-con made good as a specialist mechanic, catches her eye in the local diner. Soon, the two have moved in together, but their HEA has to…
Is predictability the kiss of death for a novel? Is knowing what is going to happen comforting and familiar or fatally formulaic? With romance novels this can be an especially hard question to answer because we know what is going to happen at the end. For many of us the HEA defines the genre and…
Like many other readers, I long for books that have unique settings. While small town USA in 1918 is not an exotic location, it is a most under-utilized one. When I saw that Alexis Harrington’s Home by Morning was written around World War I and the influenza epidemic of 1918, I knew I had to…
DIKlassic Review originally published on December 13, 2007 This year I’ve discovered several new writers whom I plan to put on my auto-buy list. One whose books I have particularly enjoyed is Lisa Marie Rice who is fast becoming my very favorite erotic romance author. Her books are scorching hot, but her characters don’t just…
Just when I thought I’d read almost every variant of Western romance, along comes Lynna Banning’s latest. Forget cowboys and ranchers, this is the tale of a town fundraiser and a mail-order bride competition. While the initial set-up of the story is rather contrived, the story does have some rather unexpectedly touching moments. Leora (Lolly)…
Although Patricia Gaffney has since moved on to women’s fiction, her 1997 western has just been reissued in trade size. Outlaw in Paradise is the first I’ve read by her, and while I enjoyed it, it left me feeling somewhat ambiguous. Cadence “Cady” McGill owns a saloon in Paradise, Oregon, and does fairly well for…
I was so impressed and intrigued by Wen Spencer’s debut book, Alien Taste, that I couldn’t wait to read the next book in the series, Tainted Trail. So when it came in the mail, I dropped everything else I was reading and gobbled it up in one sitting. I was happy to spend some more…
I selected this book by Catherine Anderson for review, not because I’m a fan, but because I’ve never read her. Before I was halfway through Sweet Nothings, I was down at my local UBS picking up as many of her backlist as they had on their shelves. Other than a teensy little quibble at the…