Essays & Musings
What We’ve Been Thinking About
Thoughts on books, reading, culture, and the literary life.
The Best of All Worlds: A Guest Post by Sherry Thomas
June 6, 2017Judith of Binge on Books and Open Ink Press emailed me February of last year and told me about an unusual project she was planning. The aim of the Sight…
Read Article
Romantic Gestures: It’s the Thought That Counts – by Roan Parrish
June 5, 2017I’ve never gotten a Valentine from anyone except my parents and my first through third grade classmates, back when you had to give a card to everyone, and I’ve been…
Read Article
Table-Rapping: The Secrets of Victorian Spiritualism by K.J. Charles
June 2, 2017available at Amazon, iBooks, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo It was tough being a Victorian. In the nineteenth century, change—technological, scientific, cultural, religious—was accelerating at a previously unthinkable pace. Alfred,…
Read Article
Is Hot the new Warm?
May 18, 2017One of the things readers consistently tell us they like are our sensuality ratings. They’ve been a part of AAR since its inception and we think they help readers find books they…
Read Article
A Love for American Historical Romance: A Guest Post by Holly Bush
May 12, 2017I confess, I’m a complete sucker for a Regency romance. Give me a duke, a marriage of convenience, or a governess to lover trope, with all the accompanying bothersome rules…
Read Article
All About the Money: A Guest Post by Santino Hassell
May 2, 2017I have a complicated relationship with wealth. Instead of being intrigued by characters who are cool or sexy or likeable because of their money, power, and social status, I love…
Read Article
The Neverland of Vermont: A Guest Post by Sonja Yoerg
April 30, 2017When I tell people I grew up in Vermont, they often smile dreamily, as if I had claimed Neverland as my home state. In a sense, they are right. My…
Read Article
Blame your family! A guest post and a giveaway by Caroline Warfield
April 14, 2017Family—can’t live with them, can’t kill them. It seems to me that family is the cradle of our profoundest emotions: love, tenderness, jealousy, anger, envy, and, yes, hate. No one…
Read Article
Rereading Elizabeth Essex’s Dartmouth Brides
April 8, 2017In 2011, I read the first of Elizabeth Essex’s Dartmouth Brides books, The Pursuit of Pleasure. This is Ms. Essex’s debut novel and, especially for a first book, quite good. In…
Read Article
A DIKlassic Bookclub: Thumbs up or thumbs down?
April 6, 2017As part of our site reboot, we’ve been publishing DIKLassic reviews. These are books that, in the past (at least five years), were DIKs–this means they got an A-, an…
Read Article
Paige Tyler on unique characters. Plus, a giveaway!
March 20, 2017In Her True Match, the feline-shifter heroine Dreya has always felt like a “freak.” She’s surprised—and relieved—when she learns that there are others just like her. There are lots of…
Read Article
Susan Sands: A Guest Post and a Giveaway
March 17, 2017Hello Friends, I’m thrilled to be a guest today on All About Romance. Thanks to Dabney for inviting me! The third novel in my Alabama series, Forever, Alabama, is due…
Read Article