This guest review comes from Claudia. Thanks, Claudia! At sixteen, Claudia found her older cousin’s stash of Barbara Cartlands and assorted Harlequin-type romance housed in an old sewing cabinet and life was never the same! She loves history, so she mostly reads historical romance. Favorite authors include Meredith Duran, Mary Balogh, Miranda Neville, Elizabeth Kingston, and Rose Lerner. … CW/TW for attempted rape First off, the cover! To me, it pays homage to some of … Continue reading Guest Review: Rebel by Beverly Jenkins →
Now THIS is how it’s done! Ayesha At Last is a lovely loose retelling of Pride and Prejudice, with a perfect mix of humor, heartbreak, misunderstandings, and humor. It’s a contemporary set in Canada and the characters are described with empathy and with plenty of surprises. Upon somber reflection it has some flaws, but the reason the flaws are so glaring is that most of the book is so perfect. The Darcy of the book is … Continue reading Ayesha at Last by Uzma Jalaluddin →
TW/CW: Potentially disordered eating. Somewhere Only We Know is an adorable YA romance that feels very much like a modern Roman Holiday retelling between a K-Pop star and a freelance tabloid photographer. It’s light and incredibly sweet. This isn’t to imply that it lacks substance; there were just deeper issues that could have used extra exploration. Lucky is a K-Pop superstar who has just wrapped up a multi-city tour ending in Hong Kong. The following … Continue reading Somewhere Only We Know by Maurene Goo →
The Bride Test is very much a Cinderella story. It’s tender and so flippin’ sweet. As a book that I was really looking forward to since finishing The Kiss Quotient, it didn’t disappoint. Granted, there were more things that might bug some readers, but I loved this one even more than The Kiss Quotient. I didn’t even think that was possible. Khai Diep is the cousin of The Kiss Quotient’s hero and he has a … Continue reading The Bride Test by Helen Hoang →
This guest review is from Aarya Marsden. Aarya Marsden is a pseudonym for an Indian-American college student and long-time romance reader. Her favorite authors include Ilona Andrews, Nalini Singh, Lucy Parker, Kresley Cole, Alisha Rai, Lisa Kleypas, Alyssa Cole, Tessa Dare, Meredith Duran, Mina V. Esguerra, Kate Clayborn, and many more. You can follow @Aarya_Marsden on Twitter, where she gushes about romance novels and laments about her senior honors thesis. … It took me an … Continue reading Guest Review: The Takeover Effect by Nisha Sharma →
The Takeover Effect is Nisha Sharma’s (My So Called Bollywood Life) first published contemporary romance novel, and focuses on three Punjabi Sikh brothers. This is the first in the series and the hero is the eldest brother. As one of my most anticipated books for the first half of 2019, I was eager to get started. While there are some really fantastic elements, I experienced confusion at the setup, a hero I didn’t warm to … Continue reading The Takeover Effect by Nisha Sharma →
It frustrates me that I didn’t like Pride more than I did, because the concept is awesome. In this modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice, teenager Zuri Benitez, who is Afro-Latino, lives in Bushwick, New York, with her family. They live next door to a run-down mansion that is purchased and remodeled by a Black family from Manhattan. Zuri can’t stand her new neighbors, especially Darius Darcy. With his rich ways, he doesn’t fit in … Continue reading Pride by Ibi Zoboi →
I loved A Duke by Default so freaking much. This is the second book in Alyssa Cole’s Reluctant Royals series and it focuses on Portia, the best friend of the heroine of the first book, A Princess in Theory. A Duke by Default is fine as a stand alone although characters from the first book do show up. In the first book, Portia was introduced as a party girl who couldn’t stick to anything and who frequently … Continue reading A Duke by Default by Alyssa Cole →
Jennifer Prokop is here with another guest review of a highly anticipated new contemporary romance. If you want to see Jennifer’s other guest reviews, you can see them all here! Jennifer has been reading romance ever since she found a bag of remaindered paperbacks in her grandmother’s basement when she was a teenager. She writes romance reviews for The Book Queen and you can find her on Twitter @JenReadsRomance. She’s also created a website to help … Continue reading Guest Review: Intercepted by Alexa Martin →
Startup Fiancé by Shilpa Mudiganti is a short contemporary romance that features an arranged marriage, corporate rivals, and an enemies-to-lovers storyline. It’s a quick read, but the length inhibited all of the emotional development I craved. Arav Shetty and Nisha Jain are rivals; both are founders of successful app start-ups, Tech Notes and Note Nirvana, respectively. Reading about characters who developed note-taking apps made me realize how much my loves-planners-and-lists brain wants a good note-taking … Continue reading Startup Fiance by Shilpa Mudiganti →
The Lotus Palace is a historical romance/mystery set in Tang Dynasty China. It is the first in the short but fantastic Pingkang Li Mysteries Series. I adore the setting, the characters, and the delicate way that the issue of consent is handled given the many forms of inequality within the society in which our characters live. This is a slow-paced book, but one that allows a relationship to mature over time in a believable way … Continue reading The Lotus Palace by Jeannie Lin →
