Cat Sebastian’s A Little Light Mischief is well-characterized, romantic and fun, but has a few bumps and flaws along the way. Banished from her family, estranged from her abusive vicar father, genteel but down-at-heel Alice Stapleton has her eye on Molly Wilkins, the maid of the woman to whom she acts as a companion. Alice…
With the recent fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, it was about time that I caught up on the Fly Me To The Moon series, which fictionalizes the astronauts, techs, and families of 1960s NASA into the imaginary American Space Department (or ASD). I’m completely thrilled that I did. In book one, Star Dust,…
Want a cute second chance romance where the hero and heroine loved the person they were with before long and hard – but are willing to try for love again? Shelly Shepard Gray does a good job of successfully bringing a realistic working class blue collar romance to life in Hold on Tight. Jackson Koch…
“Nice Southern girls did not make money baking penis cakes” Some romance novels are just nice times spent with pleasant people you want to see succeed in life. Gimme Some Sugar fits that bill beautifully. Six months after the death of her husband Wayne, Lucy Bowman Garten is trying to start over by moving from…
Shana Galen’s Unmask Me if You Can reminded me of The Phantom of the Opera – minus the stalker-ish behavior of the hero, and plus a whole lot of tender romance and tropes I adore. Jasper Grantham, third son of the Marques of Strathern, had once been the most handsome man in all of England,…
If you’re a fan of slow-burn romances, I suggest you jump into First Time at Firelight Falls. I can’t think of the last time an author pulled this trope off so well – or the last time I was able to read so much meaning into just a few lines of dialogue. This book took…
I don’t read many category romances—I like longer stories. Sarah Mayberry’s, however, are the outstanding exception to that rule. I’ve read twenty of her novels. Suddenly You is my favorite. It’s funny, sexy, feminist, and wonderfully real. Harry is a nice guy who likes to take it all easy. He’s got a cool car, a…
In the mood for something spicy as the dead of winter surrounds us? Jackie Ashenden gives us a heated but somewhat difficult story in Ruined, her first release for Harlequin’s new Dare line, about a will-they-or-won’t-they relationship between two childhood friends who fake a relationship to protect her daughter. Cat Livingston is in deep, deep…
An AAR Top 100 Romance originally published on March 26, 1998 So often heroes and heroines of romances are larger-than-life characters. Lords, ladies, knights, cowboys, and swashbuckling types in general. There’s nothing wrong with that, we all like a little wish fulfillment and fantasy in our reading. After all, if we read nothing but books…
Fans of gritty, blue-collar romance will enjoy Wait For It, a dark and sexy look at a woman emerging from an abusive relationship. Tiffany married Blake’s abusive brother Phil, whose messes Blake has been cleaning up for decades. Blake is wealthy, thanks to managing the racecar inventions of his friend, and the first time he meets…