I have been previously underwhelmed by Laura Florand, but was heartily encouraged to try, in particular, this and one of her other novels as a better representation of her potential. I’m now very scared I am going to be shunned. Here is the plot summary — it’s basically You’ve Got Mail — in Goodreads’ words: “Welcome to La Maison des Sorcieres. Where the window display is an enchanted forest of sweets, a collection of conical hats delights the eye and the habitues nibble chocolate witches […]
Love as thou wilt, and I love this book
All in 2016 I was going on and on about Captive Prince (and one of the things that I’ve been going on about is how I am just going to have to change my rating for the series, because they are one of my top 3 most favorably remembered books/series of that year and 3/5 stars for any of them just seems unreasonable) and how, along with probably every other modern day epic fantasy series, it’s a wonderful spiritual successor to A Song of Ice […]
Probably not THE definitive Steinem, but good nonetheless
3.5 stars Gloria Steinem is a giant in American feminism, and someone I only truly know about from secondary sources. She’s written a lot, and I had read none of it until her most recent work, My Life on the Road. Regarding her own life, it’s not comprehensive: it’s a series of vignettes from, appropriately, encounters she had while on the road. It does start with a bit of background into her fascinating childhood, which saw her family endlessly traveling from place to place, driven […]
Something good happened in 2016
Everyone who writes a lot of book reviews is aware of the phenomenon where it’s often a lot easier to talk about books that you hated than books that you loved. Something about the fire of rage makes it much easier to write at length. But when everything just falls into place, what is there to say? It seems reductive and passionless to just list all of the things the book did well and why. But if I had enough talent in writing to describe, […]
Another romance that doesn’t exactly know how consent works
Editorial note: I read this back in July, and wasn’t planning on reviewing it for CBR, but now that I’m trying to get to 104, you get a rambling rant. Enjoy! I had been excited for this one because it’s an erotic romance set in the regency era, in the US! Which is not something I have read before! The hero was immediately disappointing. He barely seemed to like the heroine at all, except for sexual/possession purposes. And I guess that therefore I didn’t really […]
In which I write meandering reviews for forgettable books, in a desperate bid for the double cannonball
I believe it was Mrs. Julien who Malin once said that billionaires and/or rock stars are the Dukes of contemporary romance. That is to say, that there seems to be an endless supply of young, handsome Dukes, rock stars, and billionaires in romance, an abundance which was not and is not supported in real life. (To be pedantic, of course there are still young, handsome musicians, but the rock stars in these books are of the arena sell-out variety that evokes images of the Beatles […]
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