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are taken from books I myself love, and heartily recommend you should read. Every month readers can post comments below the current review – it’s my own Book Club! Please feel free to join in and do check the archives!
~ Eloisa

 

 

It’s In His Kiss by Julia Quinn

December 2011

Its in His KissIt’s In His Kiss opens with a prologue from the hero’s point of view, which is absolutely appropriate because after reading this book, I ended up thinking it was one of the funniest portraits of a man I’ve ever read. Gareth is a guy—a real guy. How unusual is that in romance these days? I read far too many books about men who aren’t men at all — either because they are really werewolves (all very well in their own way, but with little relevance to my home life), or they are pure alpha male with the surprising ability to convert overnight into a sensitive, loving beta (alas, also irrelevant to my home life). In fact, almost all the heroes I read about are shape-shifters of one sort or another.

I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing. My husband is ruthlessly himself, and I can’t help wondering if werewolves are especially nice because they de-stress loping around the woods. Perhaps they survive the stress of going out to dinner two nights in one week without baying at the moon? (Because my husband doesn’t, she said sourly.)

But I digress.

What Julia has done in this book is create a hilarious, heart-rending, sexy picture of a real man: Gareth. I’ve read all of Julia Quinn’s books, and I’m putting on my literary critic hat for a moment to tell you that this is definitely one of the best books she’s written. It’s brilliant, screamingly funny, and yet manages to have a tender, deep side to it. Plus Hyacinth and Gareth squabble in a far more clever way than most of us do—and I loved that!

Now for a moment of prideful revelation: I actually had a hand in the book. Not in the writing, obviously, but there’s a mystery here that has to do with a diary written in Italy which Hyacinth wants to translate. Since Hyacinth isn’t fluent in the language, Julia needed the passage to go from English to Italian, and then back into English in a non-fluent translation. No problem! My husband is from Florence and (obviously) fluent. I’m from Minnesota and (alas) not terribly fluent. So Alessandro took the diary entries from English to perfect Italian, and I played Hyacinth and took them back from perfect Italian to an awkward English translation. I wish it had been a struggle to suppress my perfect knowledge of the language, but I am the person who politely snoozed through an entire dinner party in which the other couple detailed their experiences at a sexy “tantric” weekend for married couples. I thought they’d done a weekend of marriage counseling and couldn’t figure out why my husband was so fascinated.

Buy this book — it’s terrific!

Posted in Historical Comments (2)

 

Snobs by Julian Fellowes

November 2011

Julian Fellowes wrote the script for Gosford Park, though why I’m telling you that I don’t know, since I’ve never seen the movie. Skip the movie: read this novel. It’s absolutely hilarious. Snobs is about a blue-blood actor who runs around among the upper classes in England and, in the process, introduces his friend Edith to an earl. And Edith marries the earl! If this novel was a romance, the whole thing might end there…but it’s not. Before long Edith is married and bored, and along comes an actor named Simon, with a beautiful chin and a roguish face. Disaster! Except it’s all such incredibly funny disaster, and so ironically put, that you enjoy every moment of it.

So described, Snobs sounds like an ironic take-down of modern life – and so it is. But the novel surprised me. It’s also the story of a true, fierce and abiding love, the kind that each of us would be glad to brush up against.

~ buy this book on Amazon ~

Posted in Literary Fiction Comments (1)

 

The Perfect Kiss by Anne Gracie

October 2011

I get asked advice all the time by beginning romance writers. “What can I do to get published?” they ask me, their faces strained with earnest passion. “If I write every day…If I take twelve writing courses…If I pay for an editor?” They want me to tell them the secret handshake, the formula, the way to get that prized book – and I can’t.

The truth is that the secret formula is so individual that it can’t be passed on. What an author needs is an incantatory mix of old and new, of surprises and romance. To be published – and stay published – a romance author needs to have an individual footprint. Her own way of writing. Think about one of Teresa Medeiros’s books. Now think about one of Susan Elizabeth Phillips’s book. It’s almost as if they were totally different species, both wonderful in their own way, both mapping out a different terrain within the way men and women fall in love with each that is absolutely theirs, created by an imprint as individual as their own voices. Can you imagine SEP writing a book about a charming witch? Or Teresa Medeiros writing a book about a contemporary football player?

People are always describing the secret as a “voice.” To me, it’s not only a question of voice. One area that Anne Gracie is staking out as her own, from what I’ve read, is a funny, sweet romance that has a truly dark undertow to it. In other words, these novels rocket from being near farce – to suddenly dealing with very serious subjects indeed. And they deal with them in an unflinching manner. For example, in The Perfect Waltz, the hero believes that his little sisters have been abused. Right there the book turns on a dime: from farce, froth, delicious sexual innuendo, to something deeper and more subtle.

The Perfect Kiss has everything of the earlier Perfects – and more. It’s my favorite in the series. A good deal of the time she engages in a deft, hysterical parody of Gothic novels (which happen to be some of my favorite childhood reads!). But put together the huge gothic castle, the cobweb-strewn gargoyle, the brooding hero returned from former parts – and add in the signature Anne Gracie touches. The heroine’s best friend is not only falling in love with the hero (possibly) – but engaged to him. The heroine is carrying a knife in her boot and has good reason to feel unlovable. There’s one moment when the heroine sighs and says to herself: It was all getting horribly complicated.

But not for the reader – in which case, all those horrible complications, and all the fabulous Gothic-esque characters, and the surprising moments, are fabulous, funny and totally entertaining.

~ buy this book on Amazon ~
~ buy this book on Barnes & Noble ~

Posted in Historical Comments (1)

 

The Passionate One by Connie Brockway

August 2011

I’m a huge fan of Connie Brockway’s McClairen’s Isle series. Every detail plays to one of my favorite romance themes: the island in Northern Scotland, the proud rakish men (and their fascinating and witty sister), the dissolute castle nicknamed “Wanton’s Blush.” I recommend all three novels, but my favorite of the series is The Passionate One, the story of Ashton Merrick. The book opens when Ash’s ruthless father bribes him into escorting Rhiannon Russell, his father’s ward, to McClairen’s Isle—so that the perverted old man can make Rhiannon his fourth wife. And his father has a nasty habit of losing his wives to early graves.

Ash is notorious in London as a rakehell gambler and the last thing he wants is to tangle with an innocent, lovely girl like Rhiannon. But tangle he does. As befits its name, The Passionate One is incredibly hot. Ash tries to stay away from Rhiannon, but the moment when he says “We’re near a place where there is no return…I am not a nice man, Rhiannon.  I’ve little honor and less restraint,” I dare you not to be turning the pages as fast as you can. The Beltaine night scene is one of the most deeply romantic (and passionate) scenes in any historical romance: you must read it.

~ buy this book ~

Posted in Historical Comments (2)

 

Kiss an Angel by Susan E. Phillips

July 2011

I absolutely adore books in which the hero does something so awful that he knows–knows!–that he can never recover what he lost. Judith McNaught wrote some brilliant versions of this plot (personally, I think my Potent Pleasures is a pretty good version). Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ Kiss an Angel is one my absolute favorites in this genre.

For one thing, even though it’s a contemporary, it’s a forced marriage plot. Daisy Devreaux is the ultimate airhead–but now she either marries the man her father has chosen or she goes to jail. But it’s not as if Daddy chose a millionaire. Alex Markov works for a run-down circus and lives a nomadic existence in a trailor. And he really, really, doesn’t want to marry Daisy.

The story of how Daisy stops being a silly rich girl and finds her feet, and how Alex stops being a cold-hearted, nasty tyrant and falls in love is just wonderful. But the best part of all is when Alex fails to trust Daisy yet again, and she leaves him. What’s more, she doesn’t just run home to Daddy: she’s gone, and Alex can’t find her.

She’s heartbroken; you’ll be heartbroken; Alex is heartbroken. Reader heaven!

~ buy this book ~

Posted in Contemporary Comments (5)

 

Love in the Afternoon by Lisa Kleypas

April 2011

I love Lisa Kleypas’s novels: she writes some of the smartest, most heart-felt romances I’ve ever read. There are a lot of romances in which the stakes don’t seem very high. There’s passion—but not that fierce sense that this time, it’s not going to work out. Love in the Afternoon is one of my very favorite novels by Lisa.

The novel transforms the erstwhile lover, Cyrano de Bergerac—he who writes love letters to the beautiful Roxane on behalf of ignorant friend—into an odd, animal-loving young lady from the 1700s. Miss Beatrix Hathaway has claims to the title of lady, but no ambitions; as Christopher Phelon once said disdainfully of her (within her hearing, naturally), she is more suited to the stables than the drawing-room. Yet when her friend Prudence, a reigning beauty, announces that writing letters to Christopher, now fighting in the Crimea, is more tedium than she can bear, Beatrix picks up her pen. She writes letters about wayward donkeys and rapscallion dogs; Christopher writes back with wrenching, heart-broken stories of war. Lisa transforms Cyrano’s reputation as a swordsman to Christopher’s reputation as a war hero. But she tackles a problem that Edmund Rostand avoids: the ability to kill is a devastating accomplishment. Christopher is haunted by the men who died at his hands, and he must find Beatrix—his true letter-writer—in order to recover his balance and his soul.

Love in the Afternoon is a beautifully wrought version of this classic tale; on the surface, it takes an unhappy ending and makes it joyous, but just as importantly, it picks up an aspect of the swashbuckling hero and makes it relevant to our time, to a country at war.

~ buy this book ~

Posted in Historical Comments (2)

 

Amaryllis by Jayne Castle

January 2011

I absolutely adore Jayne Castle books.  In case you don’t know, JC is also Jayne Ann Krentz, who is also Amanda Quick.  In short, she’s a wildly talented author.  While Krentz and Quick are on my auto-read lists, Jayne Castle is my favorite pseudonym.  These books are set on St. Helen’s — a planet that was settled by humans and then cut off from Earth.

If you’re not into space operas, don’t worry.  The other-planet situation allows Jayne Ann Krentz to do what she does best: create a masterful, Wild-West type hero paired with a strong, intelligent heroine. The planet is rugged, so the heroes are not PC metrosexuals, for sure.  Plus, something about the planet led to everyone developing psychic powers, so there’s a fun edge of paranormal (without getting into vampires or anything bloodthirsty). Amaryllis is a very early Castle, and still one of my favorites.

The heroine, Amaryllis Lark, is one of the best psychic detectives on the planet, and Lucas Trent is the head of Lodestar Exploration.  She’s all prim and proper, and he’s a rugged cowboy (essentially).  But he needs her to catch a thief in his company.  Add in some fierce sexual attraction, and the fact that both of them are registered in a marriage registry (think Match.Com of the future), and obviously, would never select the other person as a spouse, and you have a totally fun romance in hand.

Honestly, if you’ve never read the Jayne Castle books, I’m jealous.  I would love to find a whole stash of them that somehow I had missed.  Lucky you!

~buy this book~

Read my review of Lost & Found by Jayne Anne Krenz.
Want to read my other paranormal reviews?

Posted in Paranormal Comments (4)

 

Billy Bob Walker Got Married by Lisa Brown

July 2010

I’ll say this right up front:  Billy Bob Walker Got Married is out of print.  A reader recommended it to me, and she was so convincing that I bought a used copy from Amazon.  Go forth and do likewise!  I’m not kidding—this is a wonderful romance, a keeper, one that made me happy for two days.

It’s set in the South, and it’s the archetypal bad boy meets good girl story: but the long, luscious, fabulous length kind that we don’t find all that much anymore.  Shiloh Pennington is the daughter of the richest man in her small southern town.  Billy isn’t anybody’s child because he’s illegitimate, prone to trouble, and good for nothing.  They have a tiny bit of a past between them, just enough so that when Shiloh has no one else to turn to she grabs a handful of bills, marches up to the jail where Billy is locked up (for a bar fight, natch) and makes him an offer he doesn’t refuse.

Can’t, really.

That’s just the start of the story.  This is one of those novels that alternate between heartbreak and joy.  Billy and Shiloh have serious obstacles, not the least of whom is Shiloh’s enraged father who will do anything to get her back.  They’re young and wild, and yet serious too.  The way they learn to be together reminded me of Love Story –but without the tragedy.

~buy this book~

Posted in Contemporary Comments (9)

 

A Kiss To Remember by Teresa Medeiros

May 2010

Memory loss is one of the biggest plot clichés – the more so because it never really seems to happen in real life. One hears about people losing their memory of an accident or a mugging, but only very rarely do they lose memory of everything. But in fiction?

Bring on the amnesia!

Over the years, as memory-less men and women pile up on the paperback shores, it’s become more and more difficult to write this plot well. But Teresa Medeiros does it brilliantly, and her A Kiss to Remember is probably my all-time favorite amnesiac plot. Sterling Harlow, Duke of Devonbrooke and a notorious rake, wakes up to find a lovely girl hanging over him. Since he doesn’t know his own name, she tells him that he’s Nicholas Radcliffe, her long-lost fiancé.

The truth is that Laura Fairleigh needs a husband, because if she’s not married pronto, she and her siblings will lose the roof over their head…to a duke. Yes, the Duke of Devonbrooke. Medeiros gleefully piles unlikely event on unlikely event – but what carries the readers straight through this page-turner is the utterly charming love story between Laura and Sterling. Told that he’s a well-mannered, honorable man, the rakish Nicholas conforms. He doesn’t like it when Laura arranges for him to be the new rector of the parish, but he doesn’t explode. He saves his rage for the moment when his memory comes back.

This is one of Medeiros’s most charming and most unput-downable novels, the perfect rainy afternoon read.

~buy this book~

Posted in Historical Comments (2)

 

The Demon You Know by Christine Warren

April 2010

Has anyone besides me noticed how many of the baddest of all bad boys are out there these days—i.e., demons and devils as heroes in romances? It’s really not unexpected, of course. Ever since Milton made his brooding Satan the most attractive figure in Paradise Lost, the die was cast. Bad boys are sexy – so why not the baddest of them all?

The hero of Christine Warren’s The Demon You Know doesn’t, in fact, rival Milton’s hero. His name is Rule, and he’s more like a demon cop than a fallen angel. But still, he’s got the devilish pedigree (though not the cloven feet). He’s actually a good cop, hunting around in the human world for an escaped little demon, a naughty type, though said naughty demon ends up redeeming himself beautifully by saving the world (hope that isn’t ruining the plot).

I had a great time reading this novel. The heroine, Abby Baker, is a Catholic, and obviously her attraction to a demon goes against quite a few of her most dearly-held precepts. Abby tries very hard to extract herself from her unfortunate situation (that nasty little demon Rule is hunting? Yup…she’s possessed), but without any luck. There are a lot of jokes about an old priest and a young priest and head-twirling exorcisms.

This is a rollicking, sometimes silly but still very sexy and fun novel. If you’re going to be stuck on an airline, or watching a little league game, you couldn’t do better than pick this up and give yourself a romantic thrill and a smile at the same time.

~buy this book~

Posted in Paranormal Comments (1)