Tag Archives: romance review

So You Want to Read a (Historical, Contemporary, New Adult, Paranormal) Romance …

book reviews January 1, 2017 Comments: 20

Alternatively: The Worst Romance Novels I Have Ever Read

This recommendations list is gleaned from at least 80 authors and over 500 books.

Ten Great Romance Novellas to Get You Started

Looking for something specific? Here’s a list of authors I’ve read enough to see thematic consistencies and it’s hard to go wrong with these writers:

Tessa Dare – FUN, bring your willing suspension of disbelief, on double-secret probation right now
Laura Florand – contemporary romances set in France, great intensity
Talia Hibbert – contemporary romances set in England
Carla Kelly – lovely Regency romances, often military-themed
Lisa Kleypas  – the gold standard, also writes contemporaries
Julie Anne Long – extremely clever and funny
Courtney Milan – The very best currently publishing, one for the pantheon.
Lucy Parker – great romance, great fun
Julia Quinn – An excellent place to launch your reading. Start with The Bridgertons.
Sally Thorne – Only two books, but the linked one is a CLASSIC!

I lovehate Jennifer Ashley’s sincere romance mired in tortured heroes and overwrought plotting.

This list is an edited version of my Complete Reading List by Author. Reviewed books are linked.

Mallory, a frequent commenter, asked me to make a personal Top 5 list. I tried. I couldn’t do it.

CLASSICS

  1. Balogh, Mary Slightly Dangerous – historical
  2. Bowen, Sarina Blonde Date  – new adult novella
  3. Chase, Loretta Lord of Scoundrels – historical
  4. Gabaldon, Diana Outlander – historical
  5. Heyer, Georgette Venetia (Dameral/Venetia) – historical
  6. Jenkins, Beverly Indigo  – historical
  7. Kinsale, Laura Flowers from the Storm old school, historical
  8. Kleypas, Lisa Dreaming of You – historical
  9. Kleypas, Lisa The Devil in Winter  – historical
  10. Long, Julie Anne What I Did for a Duke – historical
  11. Milan, Courtney A Kiss for Midwinter – historical novella
  12. Milan, Courtney The Suffragette Scandal  – historical
  13. Montgomery, L.M. The Blue Castle – historical now, but not when published
  14. Quinn, Julia Romancing Mr. Bridgerton  Bridgerton Book 4 – historical
  15. Thorne, Sally The Hating Game – contemporary

Continue reading →

I Will by Lisa Kleypas

book review December 17, 2016 Leave a comment

An addendum to Lisa Kleypas’s Capitol Theatre series, I Will is a very bad Christmas novella that my friend suggested had been lying in a drawer at the author’s house for years. Dated in many elements, I had at first suspected it was ghost written, but a long abandoned manuscript makes more sense. Shortly after I began reading, I found myself wondering how I would feel about the book and quality of the writing if it didn’t have the Queen of Romance’s name on it. Admittedly, Kleypas’s last couple of historicals have not lived up to her very high standards, but I Will is a mess.

From Amazon: Andrew, Lord Drake, has been cut out of his father’s will because of his dissolute manner of living. To be reinstated, Andrew decides to pretend that he has changed his wicked ways. As part of his plan, he wants to convince his father that he is courting a respectable woman with the intention of marrying her. The problem is, he doesn’t know any decent women, except for his friend’s spinster sister, Miss Caroline Hargreaves. He blackmails the reluctant Caroline into helping him, and so the charade begins …

In addition to the extortion plot, which is disappointing, the rest of the story feels either cobbled together or shoehorned in. It’s as though significant gaps that were to be filled in later were never revisited. I’ve read virtually all of her books and the writing doesn’t even come across as Kleypas’s style, it has almost none of her spark or smolder. But these shortcomings pale in comparison to issues I had with the love scene late in the book. After a period of estrangement, the hero is delivered to the heroine handcuffed to a bed. In order to convince him they should be together, this completely inexperienced, naive young woman decides she will seduce the hero back to her. It’s an attempted rape and I found it extremely distasteful to read. Had it been written by anyone else, I would have stopped reading then and there, if I had not given up on I Will already.

Despite this effort and since she is indeed one of the best romance writers in the business, please visit my complete summary of Lisa Kleypas’s catalogue for recommendations, including two classics and a few of my personal favourites.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

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Brooklyn Bruisers: Rookie Move by Sarina Bowen

book review November 27, 2016 Leave a comment

“His heart said, This. This right here.”

I read my first Sarina Bowen title, The Year We Fell Down, a little over a year ago and since then I have both eagerly recommended and awaited her new novels. She has two concurrent contemporary romance series at the moment, True North and Brooklyn Bruisers, as well as two M/M books co-written with Elle Kennedy, and more on the horizon. Such is Bowen’s output that I have given her a catalogue post.

Readers familiar with Bowen’s Ivy Years series may remember hockey player Leo Trevi as a really nice guy. Picking up his story when he is brought up from a farm team to join the Brooklyn Bruisers franchise, he is eager to succeed and excited to discover that his high school girlfriend, Georgia, is the team Public Relations manager.They had been entirely devoted to one another until she experienced an assault and they lost their way. Breaking up six years ago when they went off to university, she is the one that got away.

Georgia Worthington is trying to put her best professional foot forward. The Brooklyn Bruisers is a fledgling NHL franchise acquired by a Tech billionaire and she has been working around the clock to take care of the PR responsibilities. To complicate matters, her father has just been named head coach, not to mention the aforementioned arrival of Leo Trevi. During the first press conference she runs, Leo arrives and is heard on a mic threatening someone when Georgia is spoken of disrespectfully, and we’re off to the races.

I enjoyed Rookie Move while I was reading it and my recollection of Leo was correct. He’s the nicest guy in the world. A bit impulsive sometimes, but very straightforward, and he absolutely adores Georgia and I am a sucker for a smitten hero. Despite that, I am not sure that Georgia and Leo had as much dimension as they could have as balanced against her personal and professional successes, Georgia’s love life seems to have been in stasis waiting for Leo to reappear and release her from it:

“In either case, she hadn’t had a boyfriend since Leo.”

“I asked her out a couple of times and got the brushoff. Didn’t know she was waiting for you.”

Leo at least had girlfriends in university. Not nice ones though because that would mean his love for Georgia wasn’t as true somehow. I guess. I never understand it in these books when people were together when they were young, break up, and then no other person is real to them until they meet again. Georgia and Leo’s separation was not a product of inherent issues in the relationship, but of youth conspiring with trauma to drive a wedge between them. They could simply have come back together older and wiser, even if they had had serious relationships with other people.

There are two more books coming in the series and I will, no doubt, read both of them.  The Ivy Years series caught lightning in a bottle and included a classic novella, Blonde Date. I haven’t had as much luck with the True North books, but the two I tried were still worth the read, and she is a really good writer and that will keep me coming back.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

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VIP Series: Idol by Kristen Callihan

book review November 26, 2016 Leave a comment

Enh. Read The Game Plan instead.

The first book in Kristen Callihan’s VIP Series, Idol features a hero who enters the story passed out drunk on the heroine’s lawn. It’s not an auspicious beginning and though Callihan is a good writer the story didn’t work for me. Admittedly, I read it months ago and am only reviewing it now, but let’s see what I remember about the book.

  1. The off-putting opening which involved a motorcycle and drunk driving.
  2. Killian has been through a trauma and stopped playing music.
  3. I was absorbed enough in the book, and by Callihan’s strong writing, that I brought it to work with me to read during my lunch, but it lost me at some point.
  4. The heroine, Libby, is a musician as well and is able to quickly gain national exposure.

That’s it. I don’t remember any romantic moments and, for comparison purposes, there’s a disappointing Lisa Kleypas book I read exactly once about four years ago and I can still remember the one genuinely romantic/interesting moment in that novel.

I’m going to re-read Idol now. Some notes as I go:

  • Yep, drunk driving on a motorcycle, also a lot more vomit than the average novel opening.
  • Callihan is a good writer, but we knew that.
  • I have a hard time imagining anyone more entitled and privileged than a rock star, except perhaps those billionaires who inhabit contemporary romances, or the aristocrats in historicals. I’ve just realised all of my complaints in this regard are hypocritical given my tolerance for spoiled heroes in other contexts.
  • Why is Libby being so nice to Killian? “Not all drunks are bad. Some are just lost.” Maybe, but drunk driving eclipses all other considerations.

Then I stopped making notes and just read. I got to about two-thirds of the way through before abandoning the story. I simply didn’t like Idol. The “rock star lifestyle” is extremely unappealing to me and almost all of the women are viewed as disposable objects in an “I shouldn’t judge, but here I go anyway,” fashion, so barring free copies, I’m passing on the rest of this book and the VIP series, but will look out for Kristen Callihan’s other work instead.

Also by Kristen Callihan:

The Game On Series – New Adult Romance
The Hook Up – really liked it
The Friend Zone – not so much
The Game Plan – LOVED it

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

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Also by Kristen Callihan:

The Game On Series – New Adult
The Hook Up – really liked it
The Friend Zone – not so much
The Game Plan – LOVED it

New Adult romance recommendations can be found here. Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

Bleeding Stars Series: A Stone in the Sea by A.L. Jackson

book review November 15, 2016 Leave a comment

I”m going to start this review with a quick plot summary, move on to a negative expostulation, and finish up with the notes I made while reading.

Sebastian (Baz) and his band members are in exile on Tybee Island, Georgia because he beat a powerful business contact “within an inch of his life” for serious non-specified harm done to his brother. Stepping out at night, Baz meets Shea waiting tables at her uncle’s local bar. They fight their attraction for 1.2 seconds… something, something,  I skipped ahead… her daughter nearly dies in a drowning accident and the press gets hold of the story. Two cops and a Child Protective Services agent show up at Shea’s house in the middle of the night to take temporary custody of her daughter and hand her over pending an investigation of the accident at the beach. In this case, and this is where  A Stone in the Sea ended on a cliffhanger, the little girl is turned over not to her mother’s uncle, but the man who happens to be the person Baz beat up before the book started. Apparently, he came to town, got the local police to pay a call in the middle of the night, and convinced Child Protective Services to surrender a four-year-old child to someone who would take her out-of-state and whom she had never met.

NOPE!

Presented without comment, the notes I took while reading:

  1. That is some seriously purple prose. Is it meant to be?
  2. Anger issues are not sexy.
  3. Fuck off
  4. privilege
  5. That’s cryptic.
  6. Oh, there’s gonna be some DRAMA.
  7. Goody! Everyone has secrets. Definitely lots of drama.
  8. Oh, dear.
  9. So, he’s a cliché. Excellent.
  10. There’s  a character named Lyrik?
  11. Inappropriate touching.
  12. Weird.
  13. He assaulted his brother, right? That’s the only excuse for this level of violence.
  14. No, you’ve served him drinks, like, four times and he’s invaded your personal space once.
  15. Not cool.
  16. How would you know?
  17. Rock star gives up career or divided family.
  18. BROKEN? (One comment: Referring to “She’s just beggin’ to be broken,” when a friend sees an attractive woman.)
  19. What if he gets mad at *her*?
  20. Oy vey.
  21. Boys will be boys?
  22. He’s still a stranger.
  23. Possessiveness
  24. Are we sure he’s not a vampire?
  25. Does he have a fear of first person pronouns?
  26. Thank you?
  27. Ewwwwwwwwwww.
  28. No, you don’t.
  29. Jesus Christ with the copy editing.
  30. Do people actually do that?
  31. If she didn’t correct it, how does she know?
  32. So she’s straight from Central Casting.
  33. After one date? Well, it is a romance.
  34. The root of her ass?

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

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L’Amour et Chocolate Series: Sun-Kissed by Laura Florand

book review September 14, 2016 Leave a comment

While it can be read as a standalone novella, Sun-Kissed was, for me at any rate, purchased so I could visit again with my favourite characters from Florand’s fantastic L’Amour et Chocolat series. Each featuring a world-renowned chocolatier/patissier and an American woman, the collection includes one of my favourite romances off all time: The Chocolate Touch. As the pretext for Sun-Kissed is the wedding of that novel’s couple – Dom and Jaime – and I really wanted to read more Florand, I surrendered and launched my money at Amazon while waiting for her to publish her next book.

Mack Corey, father to Jaime and The Chocolate Thief’s Cade, is the president of a large chocolate corporation *cough*Hershey*cough* and hosting his younger daughter’s wedding to Dom Richard at the family’s Hampton estate. His neighbour and frequent social companion, Anne Winter, is a lifestyle maven *cough*Martha Stewart meets Anna Wintour*cough* shepherding the festivities and terrifying the staff. Friends since before his wife passed away, Anne and Mack’s relationship is the subject of speculation amongst their guests, but they have not been romantically entwined despite their close bond. At least not until now when Mack decides to makes his move.

Anne is divorced with one grown son and, here’s the Martha Stewart-y bit, spent time in jail for insider trading. Guarded and intense, fear of her own emotions is what stops her from agreeing with the rightness of Mack’s suggestion that they become more to each other. The two court and spark through the wedding celebration and follow-up events before moving on to their together ever after and becoming an official team.

I’ve read a few romances with older protagonists, such as Mary Balogh’s lovely Only Beloved and Juliana Gray’s The Duke of Olympia Meets His Match which features an actual geezer, and since love is love, there is something very sweet about people who have been through life’s wringer and find a quiet, heartfelt, and passionate bond.

Laura Florand’s Catalogue gives an overview of her published works of which I recommend many. I adore her particular brand of romance. Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

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I don’t know who this is supposed to be. Anne is about fifty.

 

The Barker Triplets: Offside by Juliana Stone

book review September 14, 2016 Leave a comment

Offside is a contemporary romance featuring triplet sisters facing real world problems in a small town. Domestic reality elements aren’t something I particularly look for in a book, though the billionaires aren’t either because, apparently, there is no pleasing me, but Juliana Stone provides a middling romance with some above average charm and a wry, realistic sounding voice.

“But Billie… she had him wanting to circle the room and piss in all the corners like a dog marking his territory. What the hell was up with that?”

From Amazon: When hockey phenom Billie-Jo Barker returns home and decides to play in the local Friday night hockey league, all hell breaks loose. Not because Billie’s talent is in question, but because Billie is a woman. And though these are modern times, some of the local guys still have a problem letting a girl into their ‘men’s club.’ Soon, Billie is at the center of a small town battle of the sexes, with everyone choosing sides. Her sisters. The townsfolk. Her friends. And yet, the only person whose opinion she cares about doesn’t seem to care much at all. Logan Forest, the man who broke her heart when she was eighteen and the man she now shares the bench with ever Friday night. 

Offside  moves along with Logan and Billie finding their connection and is complicated by a Wrong Body in the Dark subplot and her familial relationships. In case it is something you wish to avoid in your escapism, please note that Billie’s father is sliding into dementia and it takes a risky and distressing turn. I admit I don’t really want to watch his continued descent in the books that follow for Billie’s two sisters. Nor was the world, however natural the writing, compelling enough for me to return to.

The novel contains the casual sexism that is found in so many of these books: “Most women he knew – or at least the ones he’d dated – spent every minute evaluating their performance, tilting their head just so…”. What sets the heroine apart in these stories does not need to be that she is better or less a sexist female stereotype than the women around her. It is the responsibility of the author to create the unique connection that sets the heroine apart. It only needs to be her. He wants her.  Stone does acknowledge that factor, but/and the casual sexism is unnecessary and annoying.

I have added the putting other women down to raise the heroine up on my list of Romance Novel Tropes That Need to Be Put Out of Their Misery.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

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BTW, her hair is black.

The Winston Brothers Series: Grin and Beard It by Penny Reid

book review September 13, 2016 Comments: 4

One of my romance compatriots and I have agreed that with this second entry into her Winston Brother contemporary romance series, Penny Reid has been moved back from triple secret probation to double secret probation, maybe even single overt probation.  Baby steps.

A family of seven children, the Winstons live in rural Tennessee. The lone sister, Ashley found a partner in a novel I like best for the siblings so far, Beauty and the Mustache, and her brother Duane has had his time at bat with Truth or Beard which was a disappointment. In this entry, older son Jethro works as a forest ranger in Great Smoky Mountains National Park and finds his partner when she gets lost on the back roads looking for her cabin. Jethro, as do his brothers, has a beard. Along with unfortunate names, it’s one of through lines of the series. Six lumbersexuals looking for love and, I have decided, all versions of this gentleman:

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This must be what heaven looks like.

Sienna Diaz, all hail a POC heroine!, is a zaftig and very successful comedian and actor. Refusing to conform to Hollywood beauty standards and thriving professionally, she is delighted to meet Jethro and more so when she realises that he doesn’t know who she is. Jethro is aware a movie is shooting nearby and becomes tasked with handling any filming challenges brought on by the local wildlife. He also ends up driving Sienna to and from the set and they grow closer in the process.

Reid does an excellent job portraying how well Sienna and Jethro simply fit and are comfortable together. He was wild in his youth and not just in a reckless way. The choices he made in his younger years had negative repercussions for himself and his family which is something he is still trying to atone for. As a result, Jethro holds himself to a very high personal standard, including a vow to keep it in his pants until he is, at the very least, engaged. He and Sienna manage to enjoy themselves in other ways.

Inevitably, Sienna’s public life intrudes on the relationship, complicating it and bringing unwelcome attention to Jethro. As these challenges are resolved, the reader can also see how the next couple of books will line up. I’m looking forward to Cletus’s book the most as he is the odd one in a family of non-conformists and that sets the bar pretty high. I didn’t pay for Grin and Beard It, I read it on loan, but I do wish I had my own copy, and will likely buy one when it goes on sale. Penny Reid is back from the brink of being given up on and I truly enjoyed this entry in the Winston Brothers series.

Penny Reid’s Catalogue gives an overview of her published works , some of which I recommend and some of which I dislike intensely.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author orAuthor Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

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True North Series: Bittersweet by Sarina Bowen

book review September 12, 2016 Leave a comment

Good lord, I need a few minutes alone with this cover.

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If I may take another moment, I should like to express my profound approbation for the return of facial hair to mainstream men’s fashion. All hail the lumbersexual!

The first book in Sarina Bowen’s new True North series, Bittersweet hits a lot of great notes, but doesn’t quite live up to her best work in her justly loved Ivy Years Series. The hero and heroine of this contemporary romance are two people trying to sort out their lives. One is tied down, the other at the end of a quickly unraveling rope.

Audrey Kidder is in Vermont looking for local sources of fresh farm products for the restaurant conglomerate she works for. Her career is not going well and this is both her last chance and a set up for failure by her employer. She needs to purchase their upcoming harvests to stock Boston eateries while convincing the farmers that the survival pricing she offers is fair. Her first stop is the Shipley Farm which, she quickly discovers, happens to be owned and run by someone she knew at university. Bowen seems to enjoy young characters weighed down with responsibility and Griff Shipley was saddled in his early twenties with the role of family patriarch. He and his widowed mother run the farm and work together to help his siblings have a solid future. Griff had been very interested in Audrey during their few encounters at university, but other than a couple of hookups, he had been unable to get her attention. He’s not sure he wants it now, but she is no longer blissfully unaware of his appeal.

Griff and Audrey come together as she is trying to figure out what she wants her place to be in the world.  She’s bright, energetic, and cheerful in counterpoint to his wry, quiet, practicality. They make a great couple and, as is often the way of things in contemporary romance, Audrey is also able to find a surrogate family to depend on and take some of the disappoint in her own away.

Characters are introduced in Bittersweet as Bowen sets up the series. She is a fantastic writer and I look forward to purchasing her books for years to come. The True North series (which is such a tease as it is not set in Canada a la “true north strong and free”, or,  I suspect, she and fellow author Elle Kennedy are Canadian,  and it’s a reference just for those of us from that home and native land) looks promising and I hope she can capture some of the lightning in a bottle as she did in previous works. She is an author to watch.

Let me again recommend Bowen’s new adult romance collection The Ivy Years Series and suggest you buy the box set, including the classic novella Blonde Date, but skip The Fifteenth Minute entirely. Sarina Bowen’s catalogue can be found here. Working with Elle Kennedy, she has published a two installment M/M romance called Him and Us, although each works as a standalone read. I suggest you check them out as well.

New Adult romance recommendations can be found here. Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

Waiting for Clark by Annabeth Albert

book review September 11, 2016 Leave a comment

Are you sitting down? Please do so.

Are you braced? It might be an overabundance of caution, but get ready.

Annabeth Albert’s contemporary romance novella Waiting for Clark features two gay men…

That’s not the part you have to prepare yourself for. This is:

Annabeth Albert’s novella Waiting for Clark features two gay men who are gay for the entirety of the book. Not questioning, not confused, not “gay for you” in that way of LGBT romances written, I suspect, for women. The heroes are both gay. Straight up gay, if you’ll excuse the pun.

FINALLY!

Aren’t you glad you sat down?

Plus the cover is what The Kids Today refer to as “adorkable”:

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Bryce and Clark were roommates in university who couldn’t quite get their timing right. They were never single at the same time or their academic and professional pursuits pulled them in opposite directions. This left both of them hurt, disappointed, and guarded. Dressed as Batman and needing a Superman to fill out his superhero roster at a Comic Con style convention, Bryce finds himself facemask to spandex with his former roommate.

Clark and Bryce find that they are still tremendously attracted to one another, each is the one that got away, and, when Bryce provides a place to stay, they are at last in the right place at the right time. Unfortunately, having been disappointed before, Bryce will take some convincing that Clark is not going to leave him heartbroken again.

Related in the present and flashbacks, Waiting for Clark moves quickly to its resolution, including the magnificent term “volcano scene” to describe the kind of go-for-broke conversation people have when they are about to die. I vote that it enter the lexicon and supplant the expression “come to Jesus” for such talks. Please submit your ballots in the comments.

 

LGBT romance recommendations can be found here. Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.