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 →
When I signed up to read Not a Fairy Tale, I was really excited about it. Celebrity scandal, “awkward wardrobe malfunction,” hot stunt man? Sounds great to me. But no. I hate to say this about any book, but it was completely unmemorable. I found myself skimming more than reading and I had a hard time convincing myself to come back to the book each day. It’s even harder to write a review about an … Continue reading Not a Fairy Tale by Romy Sommer →
This book showed me that I can really like contemporaries. I’ve been bouncing off them as the conflicts kept feeling too contrived . For this one, the reviews made me curious so I had grabbed a copy before the RITAs that I hadn’t read yet. Once I started reading, I was squeezing in as many chapters as I could when I had time. I loved how Teague and Callie’s story was one in the midst … Continue reading The Marriage Contract by Katee Robert →
You might have heard that Google is feeding its artificial intelligence romance novels to enable it to move from its stiff, factual communication style to something more realistic and conversational. Let’s hope that this novel isn’t on the menu, because it would not help the machine seem more human. The story itself is lightweight – more of a sketch of a story than an actual story. Guy from California comes to Twee Wee Town with … Continue reading A Cold Creek Christmas Story by RaeAnne Thayne →
