There isn’t a lot I didn’t like about this book. I’ve read a few of Liz Talley’s books before and her voice and style generally work well for me. Her characters seem human, she has an ear for dialogue and the issues facing the protagonists seem realistic and serious, but not too angsty or over the top. The Harlequin Superromance format and length also provides high enough word count to let the author really explore … Continue reading The Sweetest September by Liz Talley →
The Place I Belong is the third volume of Herkness’ Whisper Horse series (I can’t call it a trilogy as there is a novella winding up another character’s arc). This book involves many secrets and a few lies and I really enjoyed it. Although it is part of a series, it can easily be read as a stand-alone book. The thread running through the series is the idea of a Whisper Horse – that there … Continue reading The Place I Belong by Nancy Herkness →
Sanctuary, West Virginia, is one of those places I would love to visit if it were real town rather than the product of a writer’s imagination. It’s a small town where friends and acquaintances bring the new veterinarian in town chicken soup when she comes down with the flu. An internationally known chef is said to bribe locals with food from his acclaimed restaurant on the mountaintop, The Aerie. Most of the houses in town … Continue reading The Place I Belong by Nancy Herkness →
I must admit, after writing three reviews for novels in three genres that I don’t tend to seek out, I was pretty excited to see a novel come up that was not just a Regency-set historical, but one with smugglers and spies and a heroine who runs around in breeches. Sign me up! Alas, while The Smuggler Wore Silk wasn’t a bad book, it didn’t really thrill me. In fact, of all the books I’ve reviewed, … Continue reading The Smuggler Wore Silk by Alyssa Alexander →
I started reading this novella on an unusually cool spring day in Los Angeles when it was actually overcast and spitting rain—pretty much as close to Christmas weather as you can get in that part of the country. I made tea, curled up on the couch with my iPad and everything was lovely. Then life intervened (like, twenty minutes later, as it does), we moved three hundred and fifty miles north and I’m finally getting … Continue reading A Yorkshire Christmas by Kate Hewitt →
This is a hard review to write. I read this book several weeks ago. It had the misfortune of coming to the top of my TBR list at a time when I was crazy busy at work and could only read in fits and starts. I would get through only a few paragraphs at a time before keeling over in exhaustion. So I felt like I never got any momentum going and the book didn’t … Continue reading Midnight Action by Elle Kennedy →
First time reviewer hoping to give back to the community. As a reader, I will pick up any book off the shelf (or download into my Kindle) without regard to the author or the book’s placement in a series. So I am looking for books that will hold my interest without too much referencing of previous books in a series and authors with whom I would be happy to visit again. The book starts with … Continue reading You’re Not Safe by Mary Burton →
Romantic suspense is my favorite genre. However, I am usually drawn to books with International Espionage or Military/Black Ops scenarios that are heavy on romance. That being said, Mary Burton’s You’re Not Safe could be described as suspense with romantic elements. While I hoped that the relationship between our hero and heroine would be more integral to the story, the author nevertheless kept me engaged and guessing from beginning to end. The prologue certainly set the … Continue reading You’re Not Safe by Mary Burton →
I almost stopped reading when I got to the end of Chapter One and found out the Heroine is half Arapaho and has Magic Native American healing powers. Magic Indian! I took a deep breath and gave it the benefit of the doubt. There are a lot of non-Magic-Indian paranormal elements in other novels, so it’s not always Magic Indians. In fact, the team leader Zane (the hero of Book 1 in this series) is … Continue reading Forged in Ash by Trish McCallan →
I really wanted to like this book. I generally like romantic suspense in general, and I think it can be one of the more difficult branches of the genre to write in. There is so much balancing to do, with making the heroine vulnerable and yet feisty but not too stupid to live; the hero commanding but not crossing the line into domineering, the problem to be solved realistically suspenseful but not crossing into extreme … Continue reading Forged in Ash by Trish McCallan →
Before I start this review, let me make it clear that I am not a music person. I can’t play an instrument, I can’t read notes, I just know what I like. As a result, a lot of the scenes that used music as the catalyst for expressing emotions didn’t ring the bell with me that they might with someone who knows more about the subject. When I saw the title, I thought Fever Pitch … Continue reading Fever Pitch by Heidi Cullinan →
