Blogcritics Category: Books: Romance

Book Review: The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

Wisteria Leigh — Sat, 3 Jan 2009 18:59:00 EST

Captures the difficulties anyone faces in a forbidden relationship.
The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is a historical novel that takes place during WWII on the West Coast, when fears are acute and spies are imagined everywhere. President Roosevelt has signed Executive Order 9102, passed by Congress, giving the government the authority to relocate first and second generation Americans of Japanese descent...

Book Review: Before the Season Ends by Linore Rose Burkard

Jennifer Bogart — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 16:48:30 EST

Not one to read romance, this novel waylaid me until the wee hours, proving itself to be the most addictive novel I have ever read.
Though Jane Austen was raised in a devoutly Christian home, her novels dealt with matters of the faith on a peripheral level. Certain characters were engaged in the ministry as a career, and church attendance, belief in God, and a high moral standard were givens. Christian culture was the assumed setting; personal struggles, growth and dependence...

Book Review: Deadly Harvest by Heather Graham

Katie Trattner — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 19:21:55 EST

Kept me guessing until the end about who the killer might be.
I’ve been looking for some good romantic suspense lately. Halloween has come and gone, the weather is getting colder and it’s the time of year to sit snuggled in a blanket with a cup of tea. Romantic suspense is perfect for this kind of weather. But everywhere I’ve looked lately it just seems like the same old thing; tepid and...

Book Review: The Seamstress by Frances de Pontes Peebles

Lisa Solod Warren — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:54:10 EST

Frances de Pontes Peebles' first novel is a remarkable feat of research, industry, writing, and beauty.
Emilia and Luzia are orphaned teenage sisters living in the late 1920s in the interior of northern Brazil. It’s a simple life but not without some small luxuries—whitewashed walls on their small but several-roomed home, an outhouse with a wooden door out back, plenty to eat, and work for the two girls and the aunt who is raising...

Book Review: Dark Highland Fire by Kendra Leigh Castle

Robin Kavanagh — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:06:21 EST

Between the vampires, dragons, daemons and other supernatural creatures, this book gives a healthy dose of the unusual and romantic.
I’ve read my share of paranormal romance over the years, and though my tastes run to the more traditional vampire/werewolf stories, I’m always up for checking out something new. When Kendra Leigh Castle’s Dark Highland Fire caught my attention, I thought that her unusual twist of pairing a Highland werewolf with a...

Book Review: Blessed Are the Meddlers by Christa Ann Banister

Jill Hart — Tue, 4 Nov 2008 15:42:16 EST

Christa Ann Banister�s sophomore novel brings us back into the life of Sydney Alexander, aka "Lucy for the Lovelorn."
Christa Ann Banister’s sophomore novel Blessed Are the Meddlers brings us back into the life of Sydney Alexander. She is happily married to the man of her dreams and she’s pretty sure that she can just find just as great guys for her friends. She's already a matchmaker (okay, just once), seeing as how she set up her friend and...

Interview with Karen Wiesner, Author of Woodcutter's Grim Series

Mayra Calvani — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 06:38:37 EDT

"I do love a good scare... and that�s what I write - stories that will make you scared of your own shadow."
Prolific, multi-genre, award-winning author Karen Wiesner has written over 55 books in the past 10 years, many of which have been nominated or won awards. She's a member of Jewels of the Quill, a group of 12 award-winning women authors from the Midwest who help to promote each other. Karen’s books cover such genres as women’s...

Book Review: Revolution by Alex Tamayo-Wolfe

Jill Hart — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 01:37:01 EDT

Revolution's storyline and theme of salvation will stick with you long after you finish the book.
Revolution, a beautiful tale of love, loss, and salvation, begins on a vineyard near Vienna. Helene Marie Neumann and her family own and run a small vineyard. When her father makes a deal with the wrong man -- her best friend's father no less -- their lives are forever changed. Her family is separated and Helene finds herself in an orphanage....

Book Review: Now Silence - A Novel of World War II by Tori Warner Shepard

Jordan Richardson — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 20:48:25 EDT

A compelling, smart, and witty World War II novel.
Our experiences shape who we are. In the case of author Tori Warner Shepard, her early life laid out a path for her that could only be expressed properly in art and in writing. Having grown up in the tumult of World War II, she experienced the chaos through the confusion of the Pearl Harbor attacks and the unrelated loss of her father. With her...

Book Review: Home Another Way by Christa Parrish

Jennifer Bogart — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 04:10:05 EDT

Descriptive and decisive writing detail feelings of pain, loss, and new hope in this debut novel from Christa Parrish.
Sarah Graham is a wounded woman. Daughter of an adulteress, father convicted of murder and raised by her emotionally distant grandmother from the age of one, Sarah understandably has some issues. However difficult her childhood, her own foolish, self-centered mistakes have compounded her general sense of betrayal; the world has let her down and...