I didn’t realise until I took a close look that Annabelle Costa’s The Boy Next Door was first published in 2012. But then again, I have not read much contemporary romance until the last year or so, and started picking it up because so much historical romance (my first love) has not made me very…
Jay Hogan returns to her Auckland Med. series with Against the Grain, which features a romance between sassy spitfire pathologist’s assistant Sandy Williams (who appeared as a key secondary character in the last book, Up Close and Personal) and Miller Harrison, a member of the Wheel Blacks elite wheelchair rubgy team as well as a…
Ruby Heart was the Olympian distance runner who lost everything by doping, and Micah Blackwell was the reporter who broke the story. Five years later, Micah (who is paraplegic) spots Ruby at an ultramarathon and wonders if who Ruby has become could be even better for his career – and for himself. Also, there’s a…
Winning Ruby Heart was pretty hard for me to resist. First of all, I like unusual characters, and it’s hard to top a disgraced Olympic runner – and the paraplegic sportscaster who exposed her – in the unusual department. Secondly, the heroine is a runner. I run recreationally, work with runners and ultra-runners, and am…
Prospero’s Daughter is a beautifully written and tender love story with an underlying message about the need for acceptance and unconditional love which is both powerful and sensitively delivered. Morgan Pearce has recently sold his commission and returned to England to work with his ailing uncle in his publishing business. He is inveigled by his friend,…
Narrated by Julia Gibson The touching story of a paraplegic finding a man who worships her and is determined to make her life better, Phantom Waltz reads like a fairy tale at times. A DIK when I read it some years ago, the listening experience didn’t rate as high for me. It may be the…
Lake Henry, New Hampshire was the backdrop for Lake News, which first introduced the characters in this, Ms. Delinsky’s latest offering, An Accidental Woman. Since the story follows the fates of two of the local residents, I’m not sure which of them was “accidental” or if the title alludes to both women; I’m not even…
A Marriage to Fight For was first released in the UK (where I live) in 2001 and was, for me, one of the best books I read last year. This superb book, which is an example of series romance at its absolute best, moved me greatly. It is the story of a family in crisis…
Fay Robinson makes a strong debut with A Man Like Mac, which features one of the best heroes to come down the romance road in a long time. John “Mac” McCandless is a teacher, a coach, a world-class athlete and a paraplegic. When paraplegics are featured in a romance, the plot often consists of the…
In Her Secret, His Child, Paula Detmer Riggs confronts the delicate issue of date rape head-on when she brings hero Mitch Scanlon, disabled now but still potently attractive, back into Carly Alderson’s life. This book earned its place on my keeper shelves because in Mitch, Riggs created a hero so poignant, so lovable, that I…