Practice Makes Perfect, by Julie James is one of those breezy, banter-y contemporary romances about a smart woman trading barbs with a borderline chauvinist man’s man, and the sexual tension therein. So, basically, it’s like reading a Rachel Gibson book…except that I’d actually recommend you read a Gibson book instead! James has a decent set-up… Read More Practice Makes Perfect, by Julie James

As I stood in the airport bookstore with the daunting task of picking some in-flight reading, my eyes began to glaze over. Bestsellers, entirely too many choices from the Twilight saga, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck’s books, etc. And it came down to Iris Johansen’s The Treasure and Nora Roberts’ Bed of Roses. I loved Johansen’s early… Read More Bed of Roses, by Nora Roberts

 The new urban fantasy anthology Unbound, featuring short stories from Kim Harrison, Jeaniene Frost, Jocelynn Drake, Vicki Petterson and Melissa Marr kind of left me cold. Harrison’s young adult novel Once Dead Twice Shy presupposed that the reader knew the heroine from the anthology Prom Dates From Hell. And that’s the feeling that I got with several of the… Read More An unsatisfying experience with Unbound

Liz Carlyle’s 2008 release Never Deceive a Duke, leaves me with the same conundrum as Wicked All Day did: I can’t figure out what the title has to do with anything. Yes, there is a duke, but who’s doing the deceiving? Not that I’m necessarily in favor of titles that tell you exactly what’s going on.… Read More Never Deceive a Duke, by Liz Carlyle

Sometimes, when a book or a move are overhyped, I brace for impact, expecting my experience with it to be a letdown. Thankfully, this was not the case with Melina Marchetta’s critically acclaimed Jellicoe Road, which was released in 2006 in Australia and then in 2008 here in the States —interestingly enough, the Australian release is… Read More Jellicoe Road, by Melina Marchetta