NB: We have a great guest squee review from Reader Tara Scott! The review is also perfect to tie in with yesterday’s Internal Women’s Day and our current political climate. Tara reads a lot of lesbian romances. You can catch her regularly reviewing at The Lesbian Review and Curve Magazine and hear her talk about lesbian fiction (including romance) on her podcast Les Do Books. You can also hit her up for recommendations on Twitter … Continue reading Guest Squee: The Liberators of Willow Run by Marianne K. Martin →
Passing Strange is an odd but lovely novella that involves fantasy, history, art, and romance in 1940s San Francisco. It’s not very tightly constructed, but it does have a beautiful romance and a lovely, dreamlike tone. The story begins in the present day as Helen, an American woman of Japanese descent, sells an original art work by an artist known as Haskel. Haskel painted covers for pulp fiction novels and magazines, and over time the … Continue reading Passing Strange by Ellen Klages →
Cathy Pegau wrote two of my favorite science fiction romance novellas: Deep Deception and Rulebreaker. Now she has a series of mysteries which I am madly binge reading. Set in Cordova, Alaska, in 1919, the Charlotte Brody Mysteries are as cozy as possible given that they involve lethal crimes, with just a smidge of romance and a lot of atmosphere. Charlotte Brody is introduced in Murder on the Last Frontier, the first book in the … Continue reading Murder on the Last Frontier by Cathy Pegau →
NB: Welcome to Flashback Friday! Because of Carrie’s Four Weddings and a Sixpence anthology review, we wanted to run another anthology with a similar grade that we enjoyed. The Brightest Day has one of Sarah’s favorite novellas of 2015! This review was originally published June 17, 2015. Reviewing anthologies is always difficult for me. I’m never sure if I should give a grade for the collection as a whole, even if some of the stories didn’t grab … Continue reading The Brightest Day: A Juneteenth Anthology by Kianna Alexander, Lena Hart, Piper Huguley and Alyssa Cole →
As we near the end of this long national campaign (I’m sorry, non-USAians, someday this ridiculous campaign will end and it might even be November 9th), and the historic choice in front of us, it’s important to remember that while women in the US gained the right to vote in 1919, the movement championed by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton was at the expense of Women of Color. Black women fought their own … Continue reading Daughters of a Nation: A Black Suffragette Historical Romance Anthology →
Reading Tiffany Girl, I discovered pretty quickly that I’m not the audience for this book. This came as an unfortunate surprise. I was promised women with cool jobs, turn-of-the-century New York, the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition that anyone who’s read The Devil in White City knows all the (literally) gory details about, plus romance? Yes, please, I love all of those things! Alas, it did not deliver on these premises in the way I was … Continue reading Tiffany Girl by Deeanne Gist →
Plum Bun is a classic novel from the Harlem Renaissance. This book is a pretty optimistic story that features the lives of mostly middle-class African Americans. Its subtitle is “A Novel Without a Moral,” and the book is realistic without being preachy or tragic – in fact, the ending is quite a “happy sigh” moment. Plum Bun is about an African American woman, Angela, who is able to “pass” for white. As a child, she … Continue reading Plum Bun by Jessie Redmond Fauset →
I picked up “Toward the Sunrise” fully expecting to enjoy it, but ended up wanting to hurl my Kindle into the ocean like a frisbee of rage. On its face, this is actually a well crafted novella with strong characters, emotional nuance, and a premise that seemed almost tailored to bring me joy. I genuinely believe that most people who read this will rate it highly—as the other SBTB reader who reviewed it did—but I … Continue reading Toward the Sunrise by Elizabeth Camden →
Wake of Vultures is not a romance (although there’s a romance in it) and it ends on a cliffhanger. Seriously – the characters are left on the edge of a literal cliff. I realize that cliffhangers are a non-starter for many readers, but keep this in mind: Wake of Vultures is also an excellent, gritty, terrifying and fantastical Western about Nettie, who dresses as a boy and who is both bisexual and biracial (African American … Continue reading Wake of Vultures by Lila Bowen →
“Toward the Sunrise” is a novella that I wished was a novel as then it would have had the space to show everything that was told. Ashton and Julia felt like a couple that would work due to a previous correspondence and shared dreams to travel. These letters were one of the many aspects of the story that was mentioned but not truly shown, as was the incident that prompted Julia’s being expelled. When Camden … Continue reading Toward the Sunrise by Elizabeth Camden →
Before reading this, I had only heard good things about this novella. Scratch that – amazing things. So I was prepared to be either blown away or severely disappointed. Thankfully, it was the former. This book induces Good Book Noise™ something fierce. It is both deeply harrowing and one of the sweetest books I have read in a long time – and both those aspects are melded seamlessly throughout the story. The story is set … Continue reading Let It Shine by Alyssa Cole →
