AoC
How To End a Love Story
How to End a Love Story is billed a romance shaped by grief and healing. It delivers a shallow, joyless hash instead. I’ve read it–you probably shouldn’t. This is a…
Read Review
Take What You Want
Every damn day I search for Steals and Deals for AAR’s readers. Recently, Take What You Want showed up. I remembered loving it years ago so I bought it and…
Read Review
Her Husband’s Harlot
Her Husband’s Harlot, a 2011 debut by Grace Callaway, is a story you’ve read before: innocent young lady weds a sexually voracious, morally iffy rake. That’s OK–this telling is a…
Read Review
A Madness of Sunshine
I’ve not read much Nalini Singh – just her Rock Kiss series – so, if you’re a lover of her paranormals, I can’t tell you whether this book is on…
Read Review
Unlocked
Stephen King once said that publishers disliked novellas because they “they were too long to be short and too short to be really long.” And it’s not just publishers, is…
Read Review
Trade Me
Trade Me by Courtney Milan is the first thing I’ve read by Ms. Milan that didn’t work for me. I am an unabashed fan girl of her historical romances and…
Read Review
The Governess Affair
Perhaps my favorite novella in romance is This Wicked Gift, written and published by Ms. Milan in 2009. In it, Ms. Milan presents a hero who forces the heroine to…
Read Review
Beguiling the Beauty
Whether described by Sappho — “she that far surpassed all mortals in beauty” — or Marlowe — “the face that launch’d a thousand ships” — there’s not a woman in…
Read Review
Capturing the Silken Thief
There’s a line in Jeannie Lin’s novella, Capturing the Silken Thief, that evokes the effortless, lyrical beauty of her tale. A man – a scholar – and a woman –…
Read Review
Unraveled
Over a rainy post-holiday weekend, I read – back to back – Courtney Milan’s Turner series. The series comprises three books and a novella and tells the tale, novella excepted,…
Read Review
Seven Years to Sin
Seven Years to Sin commences (and concludes) with coitus. At its start, Lady Jessica Sheffield, on the eve of her wedding, is walking her dog on her fiancé’s estate. The…
Read Review