4.5 stars I think Dirty came to me at the right time, as it had been some time since I had read even a passable (non-paranormal) contemporary romance. Kylie Scott has always been reliable for me, and she keeps getting better, particularly in the feminism department. Her heroines are gradually becoming more and more fully realized, behaving less like romance archetypes and more like regular human women. Her heroes, while definitely starting from a recognizable template, are drawn with flourishes that make them more three-dimensional […]
Too rich
2.5 stars There is no way that this isn’t going to sound like splitting hairs given the genre, but The Chocolate Rose is a very, very hearts and flowers romance novella that is… too romantic? Everything is expressed so very ardently, and I totally get the appeal, but it’s not for me. This book is very But I’m more here for So, like, witticisms and sarcasm. The level of romantic proclamations on display go a long way to mask the fact that, for me, there […]
I think rock stars may be the earls of contemporary romance
Liberty “Libby” Bell (yes, her parents named her Liberty when their surname was Bell, I don’t know why you’d do that to a child either!) has been living as a veritable recluse in her grandparents’ old farmhouse on an island in the Carolinas (I think, there’s an author’s note about how the place obviously doesn’t really exist blah blah) since her parents died in a car accident the year before. She apparently makes her living as a book cover designer (cool job – not one […]
Trust Me, I Was There, It’s “Secret Baby”
I have peered into a new corner of the contemporary romance genre with these two novels, one known as “secret baby”. Once Upon a Half-Time and Bad Boy’s Bridesmaid both feature a player and a sensible woman whose precipitous actions lead to an absolutely conventional conclusion. These Sosie Frost books also happen to have an African-American heroine and a Caucasian-American hero. HUZZAH! for diversity, especially when it means that a romance novel looks more like the real world. The race issue is not particularly highlighted in Once Upon […]