I’ll start with a plot overview, so you have a little context for my response to the book—I’ll try to stay neutral, but that’ll be hard. Your main characters are Rikki (the girl) who narrates the novel in first person. She’s intelligent and insightful, which makes her vapid and irrational insecurity even more painful. Then you have Sam (the boy) who is a cool, complex, sensitive teenager (where the hell were guys like him when … Continue reading Rikki by Abigail Strom →
I chose this book because I wanted to go outside my usual reading and then found comfort in the parts of the story that were familiar. Mistletoe Justice is a Love Inspired Suspense book, so it is an inspirational romantic suspense story which also happened to be set during the Christmas season. A tall order. Well-delivered, Ms. Post, well-delivered. The story included prayers for help and thanks to God for blessings received, but there was … Continue reading Mistletoe Justice by Carol J. Post →
NB: Though Qualisign gives Sweetest Scoundrel a B as a standalone, she gives it an A- if being read as part of the Maiden Lane series. For the second year in a row, I have misread the date for the first of my two RITA reviews and have had to play catch up after the rest of the participants in this section have sent in their reviews. From the wrong side of the missed deadline, I can only … Continue reading Sweetest Scoundrel by Elizabeth Hoyt →
My review takes a quasi-newspaper article type format, with each section being worth a point. Who/Why Lady Miranda Hawthorne, our heroine, has been repressed all her young life by her mother’s well-intentioned “lady lessons.” The reader is reminded, frequently, how Miranda can’t do this or that thing because such behavior’s deemed unfitting of a lady. Quite a bit of Miranda’s internal monologue is dedicated to this theme, which is irritating, for one, but also kept … Continue reading A Noble Masquerade by Kristi Ann Hunter →
I read and reviewed A Love Like Ours by Becky Wade when it was first released, and gave it five stars on my Amazon review (but only four on Goodreads. It was good, but it takes a lot to get five stars out of me on Goodreads). It has been a while, so I did the novel again and found it stood up well to rereading—although I’m not sure it would have made my list … Continue reading A Love Like Ours by Becky Wade →
Lunges, pivots, turns, spins, Salchows, loops, flips, Lutz jumps, axel jumps, singles, doubles, and triples. It’s okay if these terms don’t mean a whole hell of a lot to you. I’d consider myself a casual fan of ice skating. When I see a skating competition on television, I definitely watch. Plus, watching The Cutting Edge throughout the ‘90s was a formative romantic and figure skating touch-point—as it was for the earlier SBTB reviewer, and our author, … Continue reading Pairing Off by Elizabeth Harmon →
There is always a boy that turns those summer plans upside down, isn’t there? I was already familiar with Bennett’s work from having read her Roaring Twenties series, which has a very skillful blend of historical and paranormal. Since I already had a well of affection for those books, I was interested in this, her first foray into YA. I was also apprehensive, since YA contemporaries tend to be either very hit (Anna and the French … Continue reading The Anatomical Shape of a Heart by Jenn Bennett →
Recap: Della Tsang, a seventeen-year-old vampire who can also see and speak with ghosts, struggles with the revelation that her uncle may have murdered her aunt. In the meantime, her father acts strange and behaves coldly towards her. She is determined to solve the mystery of her aunt’s death. As if these weren’t enough problems for a teen vampire, she is inevitably stuck in a love triangle and must choose between Chase Tallman or Steve. … Continue reading Unspoken by C. C. Hunter →
This has been a rather difficult review to write, but then, Followed by Frost was a rather difficult book to read. Not because it was a bad book. Far from it: Holmberg writes with an engaging, readable narrative, and once the plot really got going I was glued to the book right up to the end. But Followed by Frost’s plot felt like it suffered from a series of false starts, which meant that it … Continue reading Followed by Frost by Charlie N. Holmberg →
Smitha is seventeen and seems to have it all: she’s one of the smartest, prettiest, richest girls in town. Sure, she can be a little bit vain and lazy and rude, but what does that matter? Then she makes the mistake of turning down the wrong guy, who curses her to be “as cold as her heart.” Now winter forever follows her, anyone who touches her skin freezes to death, and she can never, ever … Continue reading Followed by Frost by Charlie N. Holmberg →
It Started With A Scandal is the tenth in the Pennyroyal Green series. If you have read the previous nine books in the series, you will have no trouble with the references to Colin Eversea and the ballad featuring him (volume one) You will be familiar with the fact that there is a mystery attached to Olivia Eversea and Lyon Redmond, alluded to throughout several volumes of the series until it is all cleared up in … Continue reading It Started with a Scandal by Julie Anne Long →
