Reader Kris recently commented that when she reread Lisa Kleypas’ Dreaming of You it DID NOT hold up at all. She wrote:
Similar Posts
The ask@AAR: Are you excited for Bridgerton Season Three?
I’m starting to see ads for the third season of Bridgerton and I’m not sure if I’m excited or not. I very much enjoyed Season One but struggled with the choices made in Season Two. Romancing Mr. Bridgerton is my favorite in the series and, thus far, the chemistry between Colin and Penelope has been…
the ask@AAR: Have you seen our new Power Search?
We have a new Power Search. Have you tried it? It’s–in my opinion–amazing. You can find it under the Reviews tab. For starters, you can now search by tags. Caroline Russomanno has spent the past few years improving the tag system on our reviews and now, you can search by them. You can…
the ask@AAR: What song is YOU?
Lately, Dr. Feelgood and I have been listening to a lot of music. I think it’s because he retired and we can’t TALK ALL THE TIME. When we want to jam, I go to Spotify and think of a song and scroll down to song radio. It is THE BOMB. Yesterday, I put in the…
the ask@AAR: What’s your favorite medieval romance?
I just reread Madeline Hunter’s marvelous By Possession. (It, like all her Medievals, is no longer available as an ebook, something I hope changes.) I loved the immersion in a time so very different than our own. I’d like to read more set in that era. What is your favorite Medieval romance? Why? And what…
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: What’s the best romance, thus far, of the year?
It’s astonishing to me there are just two months left in 2024. That adage about parenting–the days are long but the years are short–gets truer for me every year. Time is just a great WHOOSH racing by–I feel as though I’ll look around tomorrow and it will be Christmas Eve. I woke up this morning…

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?