Bitchin' Blog Posts
: Hero
November 21, 2011 | Monday | 54 Comments
So many readers have recommended this book to me. SO MANY. It has a 4.49 average after 1,728 ratings on GoodReads and 4.5 stars after 100 reviews on Amazon. Readers on Twitter have told me how much they adore this book, how they love the hero, love the story, love every one of the 200k pages of this book (which ends on a cliffhanger and continues in volume two, Fifty Shades Darker). Alas, this book didn't work for me. I kept trying, and going back to it more than I normally would because of the number of people who adore…
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June 19, 2011 | Sunday | 73 Comments
Nina is looking for a book that sounds HOLY CRAP INTERESTING. I would like to find a book I read at least 25 years ago. It was a historical set in England, maybe in the Regency or Victorian period. It featured a young lady who for some reason has to seek employment. She’s not working class, but a well-educated girl whose family has perhaps fallen on hard times. Anyway, she ends up becoming a companion to an older woman out in the country, I think. (I’m hazy on some of the details.) The lady who hired her is very kind,…
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May 09, 2011 | Monday | 59 Comments
I started reading this book because it contained some tropes I like, and a setting I thought I would enjoy. Vineyards! A winery! A small town/small community setting with a character returning home for whatever reason - I usually enjoy this kind of story. The problem here is that most of the characters go too far into negative territory and I was afraid that the author wouldn’t be able to get them out. About halfway through I was worried enough that I went seeking a review to see if the story would have a happier resolution than I thought would…
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January 10, 2011 | Monday | 85 Comments
Kay and a few others have alerted me to this Carla Kelly cover, and it’s prompted me to ask for your opinion: Not a bad looking cover - except that the hero has a hook for his left hand. He lost his hand in an accident at war and while it doesn’t bother the heroine in the least, it’s a part of the story in a big way. That there, as Kay pointed out, is his left hand. It’s not even a plot twist - it’s in the third paragraph of chapter one! Bright stared at his rapidly cooling cup…
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January 06, 2011 | Thursday | 44 Comments
My much awaited copy of One Con Glory arrived on the same day that I was supposed to be preparing for my daughter’s seventh birthday party. Let me give you some context here. This is my only child. She is a girl so beautiful that I can’t believe she’s real, a kid who can take on five boys at recess during a spirited game of Star Wars and whup them all into submission while wearing pink sparkly tennis shoes that light up. So, when the book arrived in the mail, I did what any good mommy would do and set…
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December 14, 2010 | Tuesday | 22 Comments
I tweeted about this book after I finished the ARC, and I still think about this book, AND remember the title - which is totally odd for me. Blake did a number of really interesting things that made this book different from a lot of contemporary romance: The heroine, Tessa, has Crohn’s disease, which means she has periods where she’s very weak, nauseated, and ill, and she’s on a very strict diet to try to control the intestinal inflammation. Crohn’s disease is not a sexy disease, but it does profoundly affect the people who have it, often severely. If there’s…
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November 02, 2010 | Tuesday | 64 Comments
Anonymous forwarded the following to me, and of course, I have to inflict it on the rest of you. Enjoy. Kerrelyn Sparks’s Eat Prey Love is, in my opinion, a What Not to Write, but the “werepanther spooge” part sticks out. Some background: Our hero is a shapeshifting werepanther, and when he is killed, he comes back to life and kinda goes up a level in strength, abilities, etc. all Marty-Stu-like. And when he comes back to life, he needs sex. The first time he dies, he hasn’t quite hit that point with our heroine yet, so he has to…
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October 09, 2010 | Saturday | 126 Comments
Question for you: which do you think are the most memorable scenes from a romance novel wherein the hero or heroine (or both!) reveal how they feel about one another? Which scenes do you adore wherein the hero or heroine confesses how they feel - or asks openly for the other person to be with them? I remember being breathless when I first read the final scene between Jason and Victoria in Judith McNaught’s Once and Always, where he thinks she’s dead and doesn’t quite believe she’s in the room with him. Seeing his misery and what it reveals about…
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October 09, 2010 | Saturday | 3 Comments
Diana is looking for a book featuring a love so powerful, the Mississippi flowed backwards. One of the main events that happened and should set the story apart is the New Madrid earthquake of 1811, when the Mississippi flowed backwards. Young woman fleeing home, Southeastern seaboard I think. ...Had been raped and was pregnant, [so she] pretended to be a widow. Might have went to Natchez and convinced hero to take her in his boat upriver to the town where her father was living. Along the way she suffers a miscarriage and the hero helps her through it. They arrive…
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September 24, 2010 | Friday | 4 Comments
Oh, the challenges of setting a schedule for yourself and then facing technological fuckwittery! But now that the poll software and I are getting along, LET THERE BE VOTING. Below, the finalists I selected (wait, you wanted a poll of over 200 entries? No? DIDN’T THINK SO.) for your voting pleasure in the Contemporary Series Name Generator contest. Voting will close Sunday, so click and enjoy. The entries are below the poll. Entry 1 For discriminating readers who love football and despise no-talent starlets, see Heidi Montag repeatedly demolished by bloodthirsty offensive linesmen in…The Football Hills Entry 2 Hero escapes…
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June 10, 2010 | Thursday | 39 Comments
Audrey asks: So I have a HABO book I’ve been trying to track down for a while now, and I would enormously appreciate your help. The reason for my attachment to the book is a bit embarrasing but feel free to print if you use this: it got me all in touch (hehe) with my lady parts when I was 15. Apparently the love scenes were quite descriptive because I remember reading it and a lightbulb flashing THIS IS HOW YOU DO IT! So this is what I remember: it was a single title historical, most likely set in the…
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May 26, 2010 | Wednesday | 31 Comments
Megan is looking for a book that’s haunted her for awhile. There’s virgins! (What, you’re surprised?) This isn’t a particularly interesting one, so I forgive you if you don’t put it on the blog. It’s just that it was the first romance novel I read (at, like, 12), and it haunts me. Although, I have this horrible feeling I won’t even particularly like it if I ever find it and read it again. I think the hero was tres old skool, which I tend to find repulsive. Well, soft-core old skool is sometimes titillating. So, it’s a Harlequin from the…
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February 25, 2010 | Thursday | 67 Comments
From Faye, you have to read this one to believe it: Can you help a bitch out? I’m trying to track down a book with a contender for possibly the best internal dialogue of any hero I’ve read: “Sure, he loved pot roast, but he was careening completely out of control here.” Even my husband remembers this line. I believe it was published with another short book (maybe by HQN? I think?). I’m pretty sure the hero is dating his secretary, and the above brilliance occurs when he goes to her house for dinner (pot roast, of course) and realizes…
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February 20, 2010 | Saturday | 12 Comments
Lura writes: Looking for a historical romance I’d read a few years ago (mid-late 1990’s or early 2K’s) that *may* have “Cowboy” in the title. I had run across a large-print edition, if that matters. But onto the actual plot. The male protagonist is tangled up in dealings that may be somewhat shady (he might be a spy?) and then runs into the heroine. To continue his charade, he “marries” her in a ceremony that he doesn’t intend to be “real.” Well, subsequently, of course the two fall in love and while they’re hiding out with a wagon train the…
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January 27, 2010 | Wednesday | 15 Comments
Melissa writes: Ok-so, I have been looking for a book/author for maybe 6 months now and it’s keeping me up at night! Someone suggested that I come here for help! Here’s the story: I stumbled upon an excerpt from this particular book maybe a year ago or so, thought it was sort of interesting, but at the time-was really not into reading everyday contemp romance..so, I made a mental note to go back one day and get the book….well, my mommy brain decided that was a memory that was not important and here I am today—searching non stop for this…
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