Saturday Review: Above Scandal

Above Scandal

By Joan Leacott

Publisher: Woven Red Productions

Release Date: June 23, 2013

After an eleven-year absence, Cathy Rossetti returns to Clarence Bay to find her hometown has changed little. But Cathy’s life is very different from that of the pregnant teenager who left when her mother turned her back on the daughter determined to bring scandal on her family. Cathy graduated with a double degree from the University of Toronto, and she is now Director of Accounts Management for a large investment firm. But professional success is not the most significant change. That title goes to ten-year-old Haley, the daughter Cathy refused to give up for adoption, the daughter who has been a well-guarded secret from Cathy’s conservative Italian family and from the man who fathered her daughter.

Ryan Chisholm is in the middle of a campaign for mayor, fighting not only to win an election but also to be an honest politician committed to transparency in government, the very opposite of the policies of the town’s former mayor, Ryan’s father, a pragmatic politician for whom backroom deals and back-scratching methods were standard procedure. Ryan has never forgotten Cathy Rossetti, and he’s never understood why she disappeared from his life without a word. Just the sight of her is all it takes for him to realize she still affects him as no other woman ever has, and he’s charmed by her bright, outspoken daughter.

Small towns can be warm and welcoming, and Cathy finds it surprisingly easy to renew old ties with the friends of her youth. She also finds it all too easy to fall back into the familiar pattern at home: the close, affectionate relationship she shares with her aunt and the antagonistic, angry relationship with her mother. Always in her mind is the necessity of telling Ryan about Hayley. Cathy is still convinced she did the right thing in not telling Ryan, she still believes that their lives are too different for them to ever make forever work, but she knows Hayley and Ryan deserve to be part of one another’s life.

Small towns can be hotbeds of gossip, quick to judge and to revel in scandal. The identity of the father of Cathy Rossetti’s daughter is one juicy scandal, but it’s only one, and not the most shocking secret, that will threaten the Rossetti and Chisholm families before Cathy and Ryan find their way past all the obstacles to their HEA and Hayley finds a family larger and more loving than her dreams.

Joan Leacott’s Clarence Bay Chronicles is among the newest entries into the popular small-town romance genre. Above Scandal is the first book in the series. The Canadian setting makes it a standout, and Cathy and Ryan and their tangled relationships give readers an interesting story. I like novels rich in context, and Leacott generously provides that. In addition to the complex familial relationships are a host of minor characters who lend credibility to the central characters and their place in Clarence Bay. The secret baby plot is one often used in romance, but Leacott gives it a twist that will catch some readers by surprise.

On a less positive note, the dialogue sometimes came across as graceless and far removed from actual speech. Such responses are, of course, subjective, and other readers may find this quality less distracting than I did or disagree with my description. I also thought some passages were lavender tinged, but that too is a subjective call. Readers who are looking for a small-town romance series that offers an unexpected setting and a mix of characters who combine human flaws with endearing qualities may want to give Above Scandal a try.

I’ve read a number of historicals set in Canada, and I grew up reading and rereading Lucy Maud Montgomery’s books. But I haven’t read many contemporary romances set in Canada. Am I missing books? What contemporaries with Canadian settings have you read?

Tuesday Review: The Marriage Campaign

The Marriage Campaign

By Karen Templeton

Publisher: Harlequin 

(Special Edition)

Release Date: 

January 22, 2013

Karen Templeton wraps up her Summer Sisters trilogy in this book, following The Doctor’s Do-Over (Mel and Ryder’s story) and A Gift for All Seasons (April and Patrick’s story). Blythe Broussard is serving as maid of honor and wedding planner for the double wedding of the two cousins with whom she shared the summers of their childhood at their grandmother’s house on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. She’s thrilled for Mel and April, but their happiness makes her newly and acutely aware that the flip side of her treasured independence is loneliness.

Wes Phillips, a young widower with an eleven-year-old son, is one of Maryland’s congressional representatives. His wife was killed two years earlier in the same automobile accident that took the life of Ryder’s fiancée. But unlike Ryder who has mourned his loss and is ready to begin a new life with Mel and her daughter Quinn, Wes can’t imagine himself married to anyone other than Kym. He takes his responsibilities to his district seriously, in part because of his own idealism and in part to honor Kim who worked hard to see him elected. He is devoted to his son Jack, but Wes’s work in Washington means that he is away from Jack a great deal of the time and often caught up with job-related tasks even when he is home in Maryland.

Blythe, emotionally abandoned by her own parents, identifies with Jack who is still grieving for his mother and angry that his father doesn’t seem to have time for him. His grandparents live with him, but not even their loving presence makes up for what he has lost. Blythe knows from experience the dangers that such feelings can lead to. When Wes hires her to design a new, more grown-up room for Jack, she finds herself falling hard for Wes, Jack, and Jack’s black lab, Bear.

She’s not the only one. The attraction that Wes feels for Blythe from their early meetings grows into something more powerful as the two of them spend more time together. Soon Wes knows he wants Blyth in his life permanently, but Blythe is all too aware of the obstacles to that ending. Jack is not ready for someone to take his mother’s role, and even when Jack opens his heart to Blythe, her own wild-child past makes her the last person a politician needs as his wife.  

Readers will find both Blythe and Wes likable, sympathetic character and will feel invested in seeing them achieve their HEA. Jack is an important character, and Templeton makes both him and Quinn, who are tweens at that difficult stage when they are no longer little kids but are not yet teenagers, both believable and endearing. The relationship among the three cousins continues to be an important thread in the story and part of the appeal of the series. Those who read the two earlier books will certainly enjoy the glimpses of Mel’s and April’s HEAs with the men they are marrying, but The Marriage Campaign can be read as a standalone.

The Doctor’s Do-Over is my favorite of the three books, but this book is a strong conclusion to a trilogy that is among award-winning Templeton’s best work. If you haven’t read Karen Templeton, this book—or even better, this series—is an excellent place to begin.

I can’t think of many romances that feature a politician as a hero. Why do you think politician heroes are a rare breed in romance fiction?

Brenda Novak's Whiskey Creek Series

The trend for small-town romance series shows no sign of slowing so far, and I’ve given up on keeping up with all of them. Frankly, I’ve read so many that I have difficulty differentiating. I was a fan of small-town romances before the trend caught on, but I’ve reached the point that I’m limiting my reading to series set in towns that are distinctive places rather than just another generic town with a catchy name. The Whiskey Creek series qualifies.  It is different, with characters who are significantly different from one another. Brenda Novak has been one of my favorite romantic suspense authors for some time, and I’m delighted that she’s writing a straight contemporary series. I’ve read the free novella that introduced the series and the first two novels, and I am eager to see more of Whiskey Creek and its residents.

When We Touch

By Brenda Novak

Publisher: Harlequin Mira

Release Date: August 1, 2012

Olivia Arnold, a wedding planner, is pressured by her parents to return to Whiskey Creek to oversee the wedding of her younger sister Noelle. Theirs is a sisterhood characterized by Noelle’s determination to have what belongs to Olivia. This time her target was the man Olivia loved and expected to marry, Kyle Houseman, and now a pregnant Noelle and an unhappy Kyle are getting married. Olivia’s goal is to arrive, take care of the wedding, and get away as quickly as possible. She knows it’s going to be difficult, but she’s not prepared for the emotional meltdown that hits her just before she drives into town.

The only witness to the meltdown is Brandon Lucero, professional skier and professional heartbreaker, who also happens to be the stepbrother and #1 enemy of Olivia’s ex and soon-to-be brother-in-law. He proves surprisingly compassionate, and the spark that is struck when he proves a friendly refuge soon ignites into a blaze. But Olivia is a forever kind of woman, and Brandon’s profession and experience make him a for-now guy. Is love enough to overcome differences and doubts?

Novak is offering this novella as a free read. It’s a quick read, and the relationship between Olivia and Brandon is both sweet and sexy. The limits of novella length don’t allow for nuanced characterization, but Novak employs her usual gift for creating likeable characters. In this case, she creates a most unlikeable one as well. Noelle is a one-dimensional bitch who is easy to hate, and I didn’t like the Arnold parents much better. Kyle is more interesting, a guy who made a stupid mistake and is paying the price of marriage and shared parenthood with a woman he doesn’t even like very much. Neither do his family and friends. Interesting possibilities there, so maybe we’ll see more of Kyle in other Whiskey Creek books.

The novella is free in a variety of e-formats. Novak provides links on her web site. 

When Lightning Strikes

By Brenda Novak

Publisher: Harlequin Mira

August 28, 2012

Gail DeMarco may have started as a small-town girl from Whiskey Creek, California, but she’s made a success of her Los Angeles public relations firm. Her roster of clients includes some of the biggest names in Hollywood—or at least it did. When she dropped superstar bad boy Simon O’Neal after he refused to atop his self-destructive behavior, he retaliated by taking most of her clients with him to a new agency. Her firm is on the verge of bankruptcy. A heavy helping of humility and an apology offer the hope of salvaging Big Hit Public Relations.  But then a loyal employee, striking a last blow at the enemy, plants a story that Simon sexually assaulted Gail.

The one thing Simon O’Neal cares about is his son. His ex-wife has played him, and he’s unwittingly co-operated by challenging Charlie Sheen’s claim as the most self-destructive idiot in the show business. If he wants to share the custody of his son, he has to clean up his image. When he learns of the sexual assault story, he goes ballistic, promising to destroy Gail if he loses his son.

Gail decides that what Simon needs is a story that will be big enough to knock the negative news out of the headlines and improve Simon’s image in the process. What he needs is marriage to an All-American girl with a pristine reputation with whom he can project enough mutual adoration to convince the public and a certain judge that Simon is a changed man—sober, stable, and committed to one woman. Simon’s agent thinks Gail herself is the ideal candidate.

Gail refuses at first, but she eventually agrees with the provisions that Simon cut out all alcohol consumption and that their marriage remain in name only. It soon becomes clear that Simon desperately needs to get away from the world that has encouraged his worst decisions. He and Gail retreat to Whiskey Creek where her family and friends are dismayed by the news of their marriage, but, like Gail, they soon discover that Simon O’Neal at his best is hard to resist. Gail and Simon’s relationship shifts as their emotional intimacy increases. But just as happiness is within their reach, Simon leaves to return to LA. Can the life they have found together survive the plots of those who want to separate them and the media that feed on scandal?

Although the focus is on the relationship between Gail and Simon, the book introduces a cast of characters from Whiskey Creek, Gail’s father and brother and the friends with whom she grew up, including an abused wife, a woman with a troubled past, an injured athlete, and others whose stories will doubtless be developed in subsequent books. 

Gail and Simon are both flawed characters who behave in ways that make them difficult to like in the early chapters, but even then Simon’s love for his young son and Gail’s concern about her employees balance their less than admirable choices. I found Simon the more complex and more sympathetic character once he is revealed as more than just another celebrity corrupted by too much money, too much power, and too few values. There is a particularly poignant moment when he realizes the costs.

As he glanced around his son’s old bedroom, he suffered a tremendous sense of loss. That was what he’d really been hiding from—his own inadequacies and what they’d cost him...Although he’d promised himself he’d get control of his life many times in the past few months, now he had no choice. He had to hold the line without a single mistake.

Marriage of convenience stories don’t usually work for me in contemporaries, but the circumstances surrounding this one made it credible. I also liked the gradual growth of trust and liking that developed between Simon and Gail. The ending with its manipulation and betrayal seemed over the top, but perhaps in Hollywood, that is realistic. The epilogue was reassuring, and I finished the book ready for a return visit to Whiskey Creek. It turned out that I didn’t have long to wait.

When Snow Falls

By Brenda Novak

Publisher: Harlequin Mira

Release Date: October 23, 2012

Whiskey Creek was Cheyenne Christensen’s salvation. Until cancer forced Anita Cristensen (the most recent name she’s used) to settle in the small California town seventeen years ago, she dragged Cheyenne and her older sister across half the country while they lived in cheap motels and sometimes even in rattletrap cars, begging on street corners and going hungry at times. The house Cheyenne now lives in with her dying mother and druggie sister Presley may be low rent by Whiskey Creek standards, but it’s the first permanent home Cheyenne can remember. In Whiskey Creek, she had a chance to go to school and to make friends who care about her.  If vague memories of a blue-eyed blonde smiling at a little girl in a princess dress surrounded by presents sometimes leave her with questions for which she has no answers, they do nothing to lessen Cheyenne’s sense of responsibility toward her family.

Chey has had a crush on Joe DeMarco (older brother of Gail, heroine of When Lightning Strikes) since he was kind to her the day she arrived in Whiskey Creek. When he returned to his hometown five years ago after a divorce, she hoped he might notice her as someone other than a friend of his little sister. But her hope came to nothing, and she never told anyone how she felt about Joe. Now Eve Harmon, Cheyenne’s best friend, has announced that she’s interested in Joe. Eve’s happiness is important to Chey. Not only has she been the best friend anyone could ask for, but Eve’s family opened their home and hearts to Chey, giving her a job and offering the encouragement and support she never got from her mother. For Eve’s sake, Chey decides she must forget about Joe.

With Eve and most of her other friends on a cruise, Chey is feeling lonely. She soon finds herself spending time with Dylan Amos, the antithesis of Joe DeMarco. Joe is a nice guy; Dylan is the baddest of a family of bad boys. Joe is part of the right crowd; Dylan is an outsider. Joe is safe; Dylan is dangerous. Yet strangely, with Dylan, Cheyenne feels free to be herself, with no need to explain or apologize for who she is and what she has. He may be hot enough to melt all her reserve, but Cheyenne has worked too hard to earn a reputation that separates her from her mother and sister to be comfortable being publicly linked with Dylan. But there is more to Dylan than anyone knows, and Chey finds him more and more difficult to resist. Her horrified friends are planning an intervention, but Chey is beginning to think a bad boy may prove to be the perfect man for her.

Cheyenne and Dylan are far removed from the wealth and glitz that serve as the background of Gail and Simon in the first book in this series. Chey has known what it is to lack the most basic human comforts. Anita left her daughters alone or with strangers, she made them part of her scams, she even allowed a man to fondle Chey for money. Added to these horrific experiences are the memories of a very different life that make Chey question who she is and who her mother is. Although Dylan has been spared the poverty and neglect Cheyenne has endured, his background is far removed from the middle-class life that is typical in Whiskey Creek. His mother died from an overdose of sleeping pills when his youngest brother was still small, and his drunken father knifed a man in a bar and was sent to prison Dylan’s senior year. He dropped out of school to take over the family auto body shop and serve as parent to his four younger brothers.  These backgrounds give both characters a dark complexity, and it gives them common ground. They are both the responsible ones in their respective families, taking on roles the adults in their lives abandoned and fighting to save siblings who escape through alcohol, drugs, and promiscuity.

I didn’t always like Chey. She uses Dylan in the beginning with no real understanding of her power to hurt him. She cares too much about what people think.  But even when I didn’t like her choices, I understand them, and I was happy to see her grow to appreciate Dylan. The pacing seemed a bit slow in the early chapters, but once Chey and Dylan begin interacting, it picks up. The characters make this story a standout, one that I won’t soon forget.

When Summer Comes, Book #4, will be released January 22, 2013. It is Eve Harmon’s story. She meets a man on a motorcycle. I like the sound of that.

 Based on the first two books and, to a lesser degree, the novella, this group of close friends who have grown up together and continue to be close freely expressing their opinions about one another’s love lives will be a recurring thread.  Do you think such expression is one of the privileges of friendship?

Tuesday Review: That Thing Called Love

That Thing Called Love
By Susan Andersen
Publisher: Harlequin HQN
Release Date: July 31, 2012

Jake Bradshaw grew up in Razor Bay, Washington, the son of a serial father who played good dad until divorce set him free to move on to his next family. Jake hated the town, he hated being pushed around by a half-brother who used him as a target for his anger, and he couldn’t wait to leave Razor Bay and brother Max behind. Still, when his girlfriend Kari Pierce got pregnant their senior year, he married her, but a marriage between a boy who wanted to leave town and a spoiled girl didn’t have much of a chance. When Kari died shortly after their son was born and her parents offered to care for the baby while Jake took advantage of the full scholarship he had been offered to Columbia, he felt guiltily reprieved. In the thirteen years since then, he’s made a name for himself as a photographer, seen some of the world’s most exotic locations, deposited some hefty checks in his bank account, and tried to bury the guilt he feels over being a runaway dad. Now the Pierces are dead, and he has the chance to find out what it means to be a father to his son Austin. Nothing else would have brought him back to Razor Bay, and even now he can’t wait to pack up his son and get back to New York. Not even sexy Jenny Salazar is going to change his mind. She’s not his type anyway, or so he keeps telling himself.

Jenny Salazar loves Razor Bay, and she loved Kathy and Emmett Pierce. The town offered her sanctuary and friendship when her life was turned upside down by a scandal of her father’s creation. The Pierces gave sixteen-year-old Jenny a job at the Brothers Inn that allowed her to support herself and her mother. But they did much more. When her mother died, they supported and encouraged her while she went to college and welcomed her back as part of the Inn’s staff and as part of their family. She looks upon Austin as a younger brother, and she’d like nothing better than to see her temporary guardianship of him become permanent. She doesn’t have a very high opinion of the man who has decided to play daddy at this late date, even if he's the sexiest thing she's ever seen in Razor Bay. But Jenny is willing to do what’s best for Austin, but she fears that means that her relationship with Jake Bradshaw is becoming dangerously up close and personal.

This is the first book in a new trilogy from Andersen, and if the other books meet the standard set by this one, the Razor Bay trilogy is going to be terrific. I liked Jake and Jenny both. Admittedly, Jake behaved like a jerk when he abandoned his son. Even though his decision was complicated by his youth and the actions of the Pierces, he made some bad choices. But he knows he did, and he doesn’t try to justify himself. He is sometimes at a loss with Austin, but he tries his best to begin building a relationship with his son. Jenny is great. She may be small in size, but she’s mighty in her love for Austin and in the strength and determination with which she tackles whatever life hands her. She’s also sweet and smart and funny. Regular readers of Andersen will find the sexual tension and sizzling scenes they expect from this author, but there is also a lot of sweetness in this book.

Andersen also creates some of the best secondary characters I’ve encountered in contemporary romance in a while. Austin is wonderfully real. He’s a totally credible, smart-mouthed, tender-hearted thirteen-year-old boy who is crazy about baseball, loyal to his best friend, and crushing crazily on a pretty and interesting girl who is new on the scene. The love and security he feels with Jenny is evident, as is the mix of anger, longing, and vulnerability he feels toward his father. I liked Nolan, the best friend, and Bailey, the crush too. And speaking of best friends, Tasha, Jenny’s best friend, is another great character, one I’m hoping to see more of. Then there’s Max, rough and tough, former Marine, current deputy sheriff, and Jake’s half-brother. What an interesting, appealing character he is! I have a strong feeling he'll be making an appearance later in the trilogy.

I look forward to another trip to Razor Bay, and I recommend you sign up for trip #1 with That Thing Called Love.

Some readers want a romance to focus on the hero and heroine and resent being distracted by a sizeable cast of secondary characters. Others prefer romances that show the hero and heroine as part of a family and/or a community. I belong in the latter group. To which group do you give allegiance?

Special Monday Review: How to Be a Proper Lady

How to Be a Proper Lady

Falcon Club Book #2

By Katharine Ashe

Publisher: Avon

Release Date: June 26, 2012

Viola Carlyle was only ten years old when her biological father, Fionn Daly, abducted her from the Devonshire estate where she had spent the first decade of her life as the cherished daughter of a baron, Lord Carlyle, and his lady wife. Fifteen years later, Viola is Violet la Vile, captain of the April Storm, an American privateer vessel sailing for the state of Massachusetts. Beautiful, confident in her position, adored by her crew, she has buried lingering memories of her other life.

Jinan Seton owes Alex Savege (Captured by a Rogue Lord) his life twice over: the first time when he bought the freedom of the child Jin who had been sold into slavery and the second time when he had taken an angry, self-destructive adolescent aboard the Cavalier and given him a chance to grow to manhood. Alex’s purpose now it to make his wife happy, and Serena Savege clings to the belief that her younger sister Viola is alive. Nothing would add more to Serena's happiness with Alex that a reunion with her sister. Nothing will keep Jin from finding Viola Carlyle and returning her to the family who loves her. He will use all the skills honed in service to the Falcon Club to complete this search and repay his debt to Alex.

Even Captain Violet la Vile’s sinking his beloved Cavalier and having him thrown in an American jail doesn’t lessen his determination to see her become Viola Carlyle again and restored to her rightful place. If he has to sign on as her second-in-command, he will; if he has to accept a wager that she can make him fall in love with her to get her safely back to England, he will. But Jin has no idea how that wager will test him nor the price it will exact from him. And Viola has no idea that the infamous Pharaoh whose ship she sank successfully will come to rule her heart and threaten the world she has carefully constructed to replace what she lost.

Katharine Ashe continues to intrigue readers with her Falcon Club series by creating extraordinary characters with histories that set them apart from run-of-the-mill heroes and heroines and endowing these characters with intelligence, courage, and humor. Viola and Jin are memorable characters. I was rooting for them both from the beginning.

The second part of the story could easily have seemed anticlimactic once Viola and Jin arrive in England, but Ashe adds sufficient complications to keep her readers engaged. Neither the plot nor the relationship between Viola and Jin loses steam. And while I admit to some uneasy moments when Viola's feelings for Jin seem to have diminished her admirable capabilities as an intelligent, independent woman, in the end she shows that the spirit of Violet la Vile is still alive.

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Pirates seem to be enjoying a new surge in popularity, and How to Be a Proper Lady, despite its title, combines enough of the old school dash with a more contemporary flavor to be a welcome addition to the lists. If you’ve read Captured by a Rogue Lord and When a Scot Loves a Lady, you definitely don’t want to miss this one. If you haven’t read Ashe before, you will appreciate this book, especially if you like pirate stories or if you like variety in your romances. I think the book works well as a standalone, although you may miss some of the nuances. 

Falcon Club membership is now down to three. I’m wondering of that means three more books. I’m particularly eager to know more of Colin Gray and “Lady Justice.”

How do you feel about pirate books? Do you have a favorite?

Happy Christmas Reads 2: Holiday Hideout

Holiday Hideout
By Vicki Lewis Thompson, Jill Shalvis, Julie Kenner
Publisher: Harlequin
Release Date: November 1, 2011
3.5 Stars

This holiday anthology from Harlequin centers on a cottage owned by two sociology professors, Ken and Jillian Vickers, who bought it after they fell in love again there. When they began renting it out over holiday weekends, their renters routinely told them that a weekend at the cottage had renewed an old love or introduced them to a new one. So the Vickers determined to collect data in order to discover the secret of the Lake Tahoe cottage.

The Thanksgiving Fix by Vicki Lewis Thompson

Beth Tierney usually spends Thanksgiving with her parents and her siblings, their spouses and children, but she’s spending this Thanksgiving alone because she’s weary of her family’s determination to find the right man for her. Beth is not opposed to marriage, but having reached thirty with only romantic failures behind her, she’s decided to “embrace her singleness.” She has a responsible job as manager of a Reno hotel, she’s proud of her competence, and she’s not sure she has the time or energy for a permanent relationship. Coinneach “Mac” McFarland is the handyman who takes care of the Vickers cabin. He’s planning on heading to his parents for the holiday where his mother has lined up another date for him, certain that this time she’s found one who will make her son the perfect wife and give her grandchildren. When a winter storm interferes and Mac can’t make it home, Beth invites him to share her Thanksgiving, and four days later, after board games and bed games, Beth and Mac are planning a lifetime together.

The Christmas Set-Up by Jill Shalvis

Jason Monroe and Zoe Anders are assistant architects in the same firm. Everyone in the office is aware of the sexual tension between them, but neither of them is willing to act on the attraction. Then Jason’s younger brother Mike, a draftsman in the same firm, sets them up, sending Jason off to spend Christmas in the Vickers’ cabin and stealing Zoe’s memory stick with the specs for the project she and Jason are competing for—with a promotion as the carrot. Zoe, furious at what she thinks is Jason’s cheap trick, heads for the cabin. Instead of a thief, she finds a naked, vulnerable man who touches her heart and raises her temperature. Soon Jason is unwrapping an unexpected Christmas gift, one that promises year-long, life-long happiness.


The New Year's Deal by Julie Kenner

Cleo Daire and Josh Goodson were college sweethearts with big dreams of grad school and beyond, but the death of Josh’s father meant Josh had to take over Goodson Mining, the largest privately held gold mine in Nevada. Cleo couldn’t give up her dream of Harvard law school, and so they broke up but agreed to meet on December 30 five years later. When that time arrives Cleo is on the fast track to success at a D.C. law firm and needs an expert witness for a big case. Josh is growing restless under his family’s determination to oppose his ideas for expanding the company. With a little help from their former undergrad professors, they find themselves spending New Year’s at the Vickers’ cottage where they discover old dreams have a new life, one that’s worth risking everything for.

Holiday Hideout is an entertaining read. None of these stories made me want to corner friends, demanding they had to read this book, but the anthology is a pleasurable way to spend an hour or two. The Thompson story had touches of the humor I appreciate in this author’s books, but I had trouble believing in first meeting to wedding plans in four days. Readers who believe in love at first sight may not be bothered by this. Shalvis’s story has the terrific dialogue and sizzling scenes I expect from her, and I liked the workplace romance. Surprisingly, my favorite was the story by Kenner, an author I had not read previously. I always fall for reunion stories, and I thought this story had great sentimental appeal. The magic cottage seemed contrived, and the characterization of the Vickers inconsistent. I couldn’t buy them as both warm-hearted professors interested in the lives of former students and academics using these people as guinea pigs.

What are your favorite tropes for contemporary love stories? Do you believe in love at first sight? Do you read Christmas anthologies?

A Person of Influence

Going through some old notes this week, I came across a statement that made me consider my role as a blogger and a member of various online communities: “Whether posting reviews on Amazon.com, participating in book groups, or developing a web page devoted to his or her own opinions, today’s reader of . . . fiction possesses an unparalleled opportunity to influence the tastes and buying habits of others” (Botshot and Goldsmith, Middlebrow Moderns: Popular American Women Writers of the 1920s). That statement reminded me of an unrelated report that showed negative reviews have increased since Web reviewing began and that negative reviews are nearly twice as likely to influence reader purchases as are positive reviews.

Many readers of romance fiction are not part of online communities, but the number of such communities and the activity on these sites offer evidence that the web plays a big part in the reading lives of many romance fans. All About Romance boasts “millions of readers.” The Romance Reader has been reviewing romances online for more than a dozen years, and Smart Bitches and Dear Author seem to become more popular by the day. This month USA Today inaugurated Happy Ever After, a site hosted by romantic suspense author Joyce Lamb with the stated purpose “to celebrate romance novels, the readers who read them and the writers who write them.”  

When I google “romance novel blogs,” I get almost nine million hits; “romance novel message boards” adds another million plus.  In addition to reviews, the romance forum at Amazon has over a thousand threads, and B &N offers Heart to Heart (a romance blog), Romantic Reads (a message board),  and Reading Romance (a monthly column by Eloisa James). Then, there are publisher-sponsored sites such as Heroes and Heartbreakers (Macmillan), Pocket After Dark, Avon Romance, Romance at Random, and Harlequin Blog.  And in all these places--and more--readers and writers are talking good and bad about romance novels—and exerting influence.

I never intended Just Janga to be a review site. I wanted to share my ideas about what I was reading or rereading, my struggles as a yet-to-be-published writer of romance fiction, and topics related, sometimes loosely, to these activities. But I find myself doing more reviews, so many that several months ago I began posting twice a week with Tuesdays devoted to reviews. I also serve as a frequent guest reviewer at The Romance Dish, post reviews on GoodReads, and sometimes blog at Heroes and Heartbreakers. I find Facebook overwhelming, but I tweet almost every day.  I talk about books—a lot. I choose to talk only about books I like.

I respect bloggers who choose to review books that fail to meet their criteria for good books, but I prefer talking about books I’m glad I read. Not every book I review is a five star read, but those I review or include in lists on special topics are all books that I believe are worth the time and dollars I’ve invested in them. I may address disappointments or weaknesses that I see in a book, but my overall take will be positive. So call me a Pollyanna if you will. I have been called worse things. :) But if I talk about a book and give you the title and author, be prepared for me to recommend the book. I reserve my negative comments for private discussions. When someone comments here or elsewhere that he or she has read and enjoyed a book I recommended, I am delighted. I don't think I'd experience the same pleasure if someone said he or she had avoided a book to which I'd given one or two stars.

You are persons of influence too. Some of the books I have most enjoyed over recent years have been recommendations from some of you. Do you glow or glower when you talk about books on the web? Does snark make you grin or grimace? Are you influenced by reviews?