One of my favorite romance novel tropes is friends to lovers. Best friends to lovers? Even better. But one of the things I hate about that trope is when a book starts off with all that “We’re proof that men and women can just be friends, contrary to what everyone in our lives keeps saying” nonsense. If there are still people in the world who don’t believe that men and women can be in platonic relationships, I do not want to spend time with them […]
A Contemporary Romance with 19th Century Romance Elements
This right here is a contemporary comic Gothic romance novel. Equal parts Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Northanger Abbey, and likely other nineteenth century novels, mostly British, that I should have read while at university, Heroes Are My Weakness features a tortured hero, an innocent in over her head, schemes, machinations, a forbidding landscape, and a surprisingly unannoying plot moppet. Unemployed, impoverished, sick, and freezing, Annie has arrived on an island off the coast of Maine in January to take up temporary residence in a small […]
A Contemporary Romance Review Mostly About Furniture
Low Tide Bikini was free and yet somehow overpriced. I genuinely respect people who complete writing a book, and in this case a series, but the accomplishments of writing a book and writing a good book are two very different things. Lyla Dune’s writing is clichéd and facile, the plot and characters sophomoric. If it is the work of a teenaged writer, I commend the effort, if not, it’s unsuccessful escapism, a Lifetime movie of a novel. From Amazon: Sam Carlisle is the double bass […]
“Without Benefits”? More Contemporary Romance
These are books two and six from Penny Reid’s Knitting in the City series: Neanderthal Seeks Human Friends Without Benefits – see below Neanderthal Marries Human (novella) Love Hacked Beauty and the Mustache Scenes from the City: A Knitting in the City Surprise (novella) – also below Happily Ever Ninja – 2015 Friends Without Benefits I enjoy the unrequited love trope, especially as the romance genre always allows for the besotted character’s vindication, but having said that, Friends Without Benefits was just okay and not as […]
Promise to never leave me, I won’t believe you if you do.
There are some romance novels that are soothing and comforting, like a soft quilt on a cold night. Sometimes, I need a big cushion of romance to buffer me from the world. Laura Florand’s The Chocolate Touch is pretty perfect for cushioning, buffering, and soothing. Dominique Richard is big, rough and survived an abusive and disadvantaged childhood. He looks more like a brawler than one of Paris’ top chocolatiers. Jamie Corey has just been through a trauma and is trying to regain her strength and […]
Three romance novellas, and I’m deciding how I feel about novellas
I haven’t read an overwhelming number of novellas, and at least one which you lovely folks seem to love has been on hold at my library FOREVER. So, in my limited experience, I’ve found them to be, mostly, pleasantly diverting but lacking true staying power. There are two — Courtney Milan’s A Kiss for Midwinter and Unlocked that I have liked a lot, but otherwise I’ve felt that the stores suffer from their shortened length. We lose characterization, or the conclusion feels rushed, or the driving conflict is either […]
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