Reader Kris recently commented that when she reread Lisa Kleypas’ Dreaming of You it DID NOT hold up at all. She wrote:
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the ask@AAR: Wanna make some recommendations for the AAR Top 100 poll?
The AAR Top 100 Poll has always been a readers’ poll. It’s not a list of what AAR staffers, critics, libraries, or the media thinks are the Top 100 romance novels ever written–it’s what OUR readers think those books are. Over the years, our readers have created different Top 100 Romances lists–the list changes as…
the ask@AAR: What’s the funniest romance you’ve ever read?
I’ve spent the past two weeks first moving and then unpacking and unpacking and unpacking. I have the bandwidth of a plinth and the patience of a nap-deprived toddler. I’d could us a good, easy laugh. What have you got? What’s the funniest romance you’ve ever read?
the ask@AAR: Where do we go from here?
Since 1996, All About Romance has been where readers come to swoon, to squabble, and to share the joy (and occasional outrage) of a genre that never stands still. For almost three decades, we’ve written about the books that made us laugh, sigh, roll our eyes, and, sometimes, want to throw them against the wall….
the ask@AAR: Do you read prize-winning fiction?
I’m feeling like a heathen–I have no idea who Han Kang is, the author who was just awarded the Pulitzer Prize in literature. Yesterday, writing about the prize, A. O. Scott wrote in the NYT: “The great books are the ones you’re supposed to feel bad about not having read. Great writers are the ones…
the ask@AAR: What were your favorite TV shows of the year?
This year I discovered TV Time, a well-designed app that makes it easy to keep track of the shows you’ve watched and want to watch. Thus, I can tell you with complete confidence that my favorite TV show of 2024 is Hacks…. or Black Doves … or The Diplomat. I CAN’T CHOOSE–2024 was a year of so…
the ask@AAR: What love scenes make you swoon?
Back in 2017, we ran a set of columns asking our reviewers what love scenes in romance novels made them swoon. Reading over them now–you can find Part One here and Part two here–was a lot of fun. The one I picked, from one of my favorite historical romance novels by the great and very…

This is an experience we’ve all had. There are romances we loved back in the day that now make us shudder or, at the very least, wonder what on earth we were thinking.
Earlier this year, I tried and failed to reread Devil’s Bride by Stephanie Laurens. The prose was absurdly purple, Devil is kind of a dick, and Honoria is just plain silly a great deal of the time. Today, it is a hard pass and yet, when I look at Goodreads, I see that in 2013 I gave it four stars which, for me, is high praise.
How about you? What are books that really no longer work for you? Why?