Jane Litte's Blog, page 935

REVIEW: Bear Necessities by Dana Marie Bell

Dear Ms. Bell,

I decided to read Bear Necessities after seeing the cover for book 2 in the Halle Shifters series, Cynful, which features a truly beautiful American Indian man with long hair. It’s a striking cover, and was enough to pique my curiosity about the series.

Alexander Bunsun is a grizzly bear shifter. He’s worried that something serious is going on with his cousin Chloe, who has been living in Halle, Oregon. Her family thinks she might be mated, but Bunny, as he’s called, thinks that...

First Page: Title Impaired / YA contemporary

Welcome to First Page Saturday. Individual authors anonymously send a first page read and critiqued by the Dear Author community of authors, readers and industry others. Anyone is welcome to comment. You may comment anonymously. You can submit your own First Page using this form.

CHAPTER ONE

My parents first had me committed when I was six years old. They found me floating above the tiled bottom of the pool, with the pockets of my sundress filled with rocks. The second time, I was eleven. I jum...

Daily Deals: Regency, Victorian and YA, all under $2.99

The Unwilling Heiress: Signet Regency Romance by Sandra Heath. $ 2.99

Pre order. August 14, 2012. The one review I found was on Amazon and the reviewer said the setup was “very plausible” with great descriptions of the scenery and clothing.

From the Jacket Copy:

A classic from Signet Regency romance…

Is she an aristocrat–or an impostor?

Janine Oldfield’s life is changed utterly when her mother declares with her dying breath that Janine is more than the daughter of the most notorious actress in...

REVIEW 2: Insurgent by Veronica Roth

Note to readers: The following review of Insurgent contains major spoilers for Divergent, the prequel to the book, and more minor spoilers for Insurgent itself.

Dear Ms. Roth,

Many readers have fallen in love with your Divergent series. This YA series is set in a dystopian society divided into five factions by personality: Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Dauntless, and Erudite. The first book chronicled Tris Prior’s transfer from Abnegation to Dauntless and was a riveting read.

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I myself adored Diverg...

REVIEW: Face the Music by Andrea K. Robbins

Dear Ms. Robbins,

I adore books about rock stars falling in love with “regular” people, so when you submitted Face the Music to Dear Author, I knew I had to request it. What I found was a frustrating combination of an extreme (and distressingly inert) Mary Sue heroine, a slow-moving plot, and an authorial voice that I actually liked.

[image error]When Allison Banks arrives at her boyfriend’s apartment to find it packed and him getting ready to leave without telling her, she’s somehow surprised and unsurpris...

Friday News: Pretending to fall in love leads to actually falling love; Amazon hosts contest for Kindle Fires

Image from Big Stock Photo

Win One of Ten Kindle Fires – Enter by July 23 for a chance to win one of 10 Kindle Fire devices, each accompanied by a $100 Amazon.com Gift Card. Use the Gift Card to load up your Kindle with the year’s best books, or choose from millions of other items at Amazon.com. We’ll randomly select the names of 10 winners on or about 7/24/12. Good luck! Amazon.com Facebook

Fake it ’til you make it in love – “A new study, published in the book, Rip It Up, has found that playi...

FILM REVIEW: Guilty Pleasures

On Thursday July 11, at 10pm, PBS’s POV showedGuilty Pleasures, a documentary by British filmmaker Julie Moggan. This film followsfive people connected with the romance industry: three reader: Shumita in India, Hiroko in Japan, and Shirley in the UK; cover model Stephen in NYC, and male author Gill Sanderson, also from the UK.

Shumita at the beauty salon
Credit: Julie Moggan

I saw this film at the Durham Full Frame documentary film festival last year. Librarian extraordinaire, Jennifer Lohmann,r...

Daily Deals: Old school historical, New school paranormal

Untamed by Elizabeth Lowell. $ 1.99

Lowell is one of the keystone romance writers of the late 80s and early 90s. This title is the first in her medieval series. PW describes this as “fanciful but banal” and ends by saying “If Dominic gives Meg “great pleasure” in bed, he will earn himself a daughter, but it takes “great love” to produce a son.” Romantic Times describes it as “Wonderous…Riveting… Powerful and Sensual” Why stop at only four hyperbolic adjectives?

From the Jacket Copy:

Returning...

REVIEW: Bared to You by Sylvia Day

Dear Ms. Day,

After listening to the latest DBSA podcast, in which Jane and Sarah interviewed you as well as your Berkley editor and publicist, I decided to try your immensely popular erotic romance, Bared to You. Jane had recommended the book both here and in the podcast, and Bared to You sounded like it had the whole package – a sexy, magnetic hero, a likeable heroine, an interesting cast of side characters and lots of hot sex.

Bared to You is narrated in first person by Eva Tramell, a recen...

REVIEW: Deep Autumn Heat by Elisabeth Barrett

Dear Ms. Barrett:

This book wasn’t badly written and it was plenty sexy but I found the hero to be overbearing douchebag for the first third of the book and the heroine was a complete coward in the last quarter. I didn’t really like either of them enough to feel invested in the story. I felt the emotional relationship between the heroine and her sous chef/grill master/head line cook was deeper and resonated more strongly than the romance she had with the hero. I ended up feeling sorry for the...