Posts tagged with romance
Wake, by Lisa McMann
Lisa McMann’s debut novel Wake has a lot going for it: a great premise, an intriguingly dark atmosphere, and a plausibly screwed-up heroine. Unfortunately, it’s way too short, it’s currently...
Beach reading
Several Wordcandy-approved romance novelists have released books in the past few weeks, so if you've got an economic stimulus package burning a hole in your pocket and a beach visit or a plane tri...
Romance week
Last week it was suspense, this week it's romance. We'll be featuring THREE Georgette Heyer titles on the main site this week (count 'em!), and titles from Karen Neches, David Van Etten, and Denis...
The Prince of Midnight, Seize the Fire, and Midsummer Moon, by Laura Kinsale
If you like your romance novels high on action, low on plausibility, and full of darkly tormented heroes and heroines, check out Laura Kinsale’s books: they’re imaginative, they’re well-written, and every one of ‘em features a full soap opera’s worth of hardcore drama...
Laura Kinsale 2.0
The fine people at Sourcebooks will soon be releasing three reprints of Laura Kinsale's historical romances from the '80s and '90s. Kinsale has only written one new book in the past decade (2004's...
Avon Books gets time out of purgatory
Avon Books has launched a charity called Love Gives Back. According to their website, "Love Gives Back [is] a new program where you'll get Sneak Peeks into upcoming releases and be able to read Av...
Lisa Kleypas to spice up the fall book season...
...with not one but two(!!!) new historicals, and it looks like A Wallflower Christmas will be coming out in HARDCOVER:(I'd be even more excited about this if the book didn't cost $16.99, which te...
Succubus in the City, by Nina Harper
Welcome to part two of our paranormal romance series, featuring reviews of the second installment of a young adult vampire series and a book about the exciting lives of New York succubae...
50 Ways to Hex Your Lover, by Linda Wisdom
We’ve received a number of supernatural romance novels recently, featuring everything from witches to succubae to cat-people from space, so we’ll be posting four reviews over the next two days. Ke...
Blue-Eyed Devil, by Lisa Kleypas
Lisa Kleypas has just released Blue-Eyed Devil, the highly anticipated sequel to her first contemporary romance release, 2007’s Sugar Daddy. As with Sugar Daddy, Blue Eyed-Devil features a few eyebrow-raising plot and characterization decisions, but the final product is romantic drama at its best...
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, by Winnifred Watson
Winifred Watson’s 1938 novel Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day has just been made into a movie, and—for once!—we’re totally grateful. We’re usually the first in line to complain about film adaptations, but if it wasn’t for the fine people at Focus Features we might never have heard of this charmingly optimistic romantic comedy...
Tramps Like Us Vol. 14, by Yayoi Ogawa
TOKYOPOP has just released the final volume of Yayoi Ogawa’s sublimely romantic manga Tramps Like Us, and while we are definitely going to miss seeing new installments of this story every few months, we are thrilled that Ogawa ended her fourteen-volume series on such a satisfying note...
Confessions of a Serial Kisser, by Wendelin Van Draanen
Seventeen-year-old Evangeline Logan, the heroine of Wendelin Van Draanen’s new YA novel Confessions of a Serial Kisser, has a lot in common with the eponymous star of her kid-friendly Sammy Keyes mystery series. Both girls are smart, resourceful, and fearless...
Dogs and Goddesses, by Jennifer Crusie, Anne Stuart, and Lani Diane Rich
Dogs and Goddesses, the latest collaborative novel from Jennifer Crusie, Anne Stuart, and Lani Diane Rich, has a lot of plot packed into its 388 pages. In addition to the three heroines’ romantic travails (one storyline per author), there’s also magical cookies, talking dogs, and an ancient, ruthless Mesopotamian goddess with plans of world domination...
Blood Brothers, by Nora Roberts
As someone who has never learned to appreciate delayed gratification, I was pretty excited about the one-book-release-per-month schedule Nora Roberts adhered to for her last trilogy, 2006’s...
Cotillion, by Georgette Heyer
Georgette Heyer's Cotillion is romantic, hilarious, delightfully unconventional, and one of my all-time favorite books. For some unfathomable reason, Cotillion is rarely reprinted, so I was thrilled when Sourcebooks announced that this outstanding historical romance would be one of their Fall titles...
Regency revisited
Michèle Ann Young’s No Regrets features one of the most tantalizing opening sequences I’ve seen in ages, and a plot that borrows heavily from Georgette Heyer. (Hey, if you’re going to borrow your ...
Cover-Up: Mystery at the Super Bowl, by John Feinstein
John Feinstein’s Cover-Up: Mystery at the Super Bowl offers an appealing alternative to the majority of books aimed at preteen male readers (most of which seem to feature wizards, spies, and/or laser-toting aliens). While Cover-Up includes its fair share of armed thugs and sneering bad guys, it’s basically a thoughtful, entertaining novel about the world of sports journalism...
Mine Till Midnight, by Lisa Kleypas
Lisa Kleypas’s Victorian romances are always first-rate, so it comes as no surprise that her most recent effort, Mine Till Midnight, is beautifully written, precisely plotted, and filled with appealing, fully developed characters. Kleypas cannibalizes some of her earlier stories for this book, but Mine Till Midnight is more than entertaining enough to rise above a few familiar plot twists...
The Sweet, Terrible, Glorious Year I Truly, Completely, Lost It, by Lisa Shanahan
I don’t know much about Australian entertainment. My knowledge of their popular culture is limited to Strictly Ballroom, a single episode of Kath & Kim I caught in England, and an Australian romance novel that I read a few years ago, which featured such outdated sexual politics that I originally thought it was written in the sixties...
Wicked Lovely, by Melissa Marr
Wicked Lovely, Melissa Marr’s debut novel, is a YA gothic fantasy that falls somewhere between Holly Black’s gritty, atmospheric fairy tales and Stephenie Meyer’s angst-filled Twilight series. Marr’s book has its weak spots, but this modern Tam Lin adaptation is more than entertaining enough to overcome them...
Nodame Cantabile Vol. 1, by Tomoko Ninomiya
Smart, weird, and irresistibly funny, Tomoko Ninomiya’s Nodame Cantabile is one of our all-time favorite mangas. This coming-of-age story about a group of budding classical musicians will have particular charm for readers who’ve had some musical instruction, but Nodame Cantabile is worth reading even if you’ve never so much as plonked out Chopsticks on your neighbor’s piano...