Match Made in Manhattan is a novel that chronicles a twenty-something-year-old woman’s year of dating using Match.com. It’s not a romance, although obviously there’s a lot of romantic content. People looking for a fun book about modern dating might enjoy this book, but the characters are flat and the story doesn’t go anywhere. Alison restores old buildings under the eye of a disapproving boss. After a multi-year monogamous relationship that isn’t going anywhere, she and … Continue reading Match Made in Manhattan by Amanda Stauffer →
This book was at turns thrilling and heart-wrenching in an exciting way (Oh, wow!) and exhausting and heart-wrenching in a cringe-filled way (Oh, honey…). Beck Dorey-Stein’s memoir focuses on the time she spent as a stenographer in the Obama administration. Her job required her to record and then transcribe every word that the president said, which means long hours in a job that can take over one’s entire waking life, monster loads of travel all over … Continue reading From the Corner of the Oval by Beck Dorey-Stein →
How to Forget a Duke is a delightfully tropey Regency featuring a hero who goes from loveable curmudgeon to joyfully in love. It was a lovely departure from some of the truly awful heroes I’ve been encountering lately. So how tropey is it, you ask? We’ve got enemies-to-lovers, forced proximity, matchmaking, and–hell yeah–amnesia. All of it works, and honestly, this romance is just so fun that it made my day. Jacinda Bourne and her sisters … Continue reading How to Forget a Duke by Vivienne Lorret →
The first book in this series, Death Below Stairs, was a SBTB Book Club Pick, and I was so excited to receive the sequel. This is easily one of my favorite new series, and I adore so much about it. Happy for me, just about everything I love about this world is present in the new book, and I’m immensely satisfied, making all the Good Book Noise one might expect. I read it while walking on … Continue reading Scandal Above Stairs by Jennifer Ashley →
Bad Bachelor is a contemporary romance with two main characters who are a lot like Transformers. Not in the sense that they are robots in disguise, but there is definitely more than meets the eye. There is some amazing banter and some fantastic sex scenes, though I had to overcome one major hurdle. Darcy Greer is a goth librarian who is desperately trying to get more funding for her branch. Reed McMahon works in PR. … Continue reading Bad Bachelor by Stefanie London →
Song From the Sea is what vacation reading is all about. It almost, but not quite, reaches Windflower levels of wonderful absurdity. The heroine has AMNESIA! (that’s how I type ‘amnesia’ as a matter of principle) and sings with a “clear, high voice” and communicates with animals. Remember the animated Cinderella? That’s our girl. By page 36 she’s in the home of a brooding hero, being fed broth by a motherly housekeeper as she recuperates … Continue reading Song From the Sea by Katherine Kingsley →
Mary Shelley is on iTunes and Amazon, so I finally got to watch it. It’s not great. The casting is perfect but the history is inaccurate, even though the historical truth is so scandalous that it begs to be made into a movie. Seriously, any Mary Shelley movie that doesn’t show her losing her virginity to Percy Shelley on her mother’s grave is a waste of time and talent. That really happened. It’s a true … Continue reading Movie Review: Mary Shelley →
The always-reliable K.J. Charles outdoes herself with The Henchmen of Zenda, a retelling of the 1894 pulp classic The Prisoner of Zenda from a secondary character’s point of view. It looks like a m/m romance, and to a certain degree it is, but it has a more unconventional ending than most romances (I’ll address that in more detail later). On the way to the ending there is swashbuckling, double and triple crossing, intrigue, a moat, a castle, … Continue reading The Henchmen of Zenda by K.J. Charles →
Though Amanda recently read and enjoyed The Kiss Quotient, we welcome this thoughtful and amazing squee from Brooke Winters. Brooke is an autistic reader, writer and activist who loves romance novels. You can find her on Twitter – @BrookeWinters33. …. As an autistic reader of romance I feel like I’ve been waiting for The Kiss Quotient forever. I love romance novels but until recently I never read one that accurately represented me. The Kiss Quotient … Continue reading Guest Squee: The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang →
NB: This guest review is from Reader Tara Scott. If you want to read her previous guest reviews (and we highly recommend that you do), you can see them all here. Tara reads a lot of lesbian romances. You can catch her regularly reviewing at The Lesbian Review, Lambda Literary, 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 (@taramdscott). … … Continue reading Guest Review: Daughter of Mystery by Heather Rose Jones →
Heavy Vinyl is a comic book series set in New Jersey in 1998. The premise is that four teens/young women run a record store and fight crime. If that doesn’t make you stop reading this review and one-click immediately, then you are dead to me. For a few minutes, at least. The central protagonist is Chris, a new employee at Vinyl Destination. She has a crush on her coworker, Maggie, but is afraid to tell … Continue reading Heavy Vinyl by Carly Usdin →
