Jane Litte's Blog, page 960

GUEST REVIEW: BadAss by Sable Hunter

All right, so I may have gone overboard with the length of my last review. Smarminess levels were appropriate, but I freely admit I have difficulty shutting myself up sometimes.

[image error]To avoid a repeat of that tl:dr trauma, and because I am a Geek and a Nerd and a Dork with NO LIFE, I decided take the opportunity to use a social media site I’ve been dying to try. Because this is ALL. ABOUT. ME.

Read With Me Vicariously: Live-Tweeting & Storifying Badass by Sable Hunter

Prologue and Chapter 1

In which a...

What Jia Read in March and April

Wow, has it been a long time since I last put one of these lists together! And I think I promised to be better about it in my previous post too. Obviously I need to learn not to jinx myself.

The Scholomance by R. Lee Smith.

Since lots of people were talking about Smith, I decided to give one of her books a try. While I definitely agree her work isn’t for everyone, I really enjoyed my first foray into her works. It had an intensity to it that I feel has been lacking in other books, and I liked t...

JOINT REVIEW: Sheltered by Charlotte Stein

Dear Ms. Stein:

I’ve always been fond of your voice but often found the narrative running away. In Sheltered, the balance between the deep point of view and the emotional arc of the characters was better tuned here and for the most part this emotional journey was engaging. DA January and I engaged in an email discussion about this book and thought we would present a joint review.

[image error]Evie is a nineteen year old who lives with her parents. She is sheltered, as the title suggests, but not in a comfor...

Friday Film Review: The Wrong Box

[image error]The Wrong Box (1966)

Genre: Historical black comedy

Grade: B

I’ve been meaning to watch and review this one for ages but got the boost I needed when I saw it’s being shown today on TCM. Used to be it was impossible to find this one on DVD but recently both a region 1 and region 2 version have been released. The full movie can also be watched at IMDB and on youtube. With the recent use of Victorian England as a popular historical romance era, “The Wrong Box” can slide in right between your readi...

REVIEW: Her Best Worst Mistake by Sarah Mayberry

Dear Ms. Mayberry—

I think your novel Hot Island Nights is splendid—I love the rapport between Elizabeth and Nathan—and I was happy to learn your new self-published novel Her Best Worst Mistake is a companion/sequel to that tale. Her Best Worst Mistake chronicles what happens between Elizabeth’s wild best friend Violet and Elizabeth’s stuffy ex-fiancé Martin when the latter is dumped by Elizabeth eight weeks before their wedding. Violet and Martin loathed each other in Hot Island Nights… or so...

What Sunita was reading in March and April

The Starving Years by Jordan Castillo Price

This is a dystopian story set in the near past (1960) in New York. A new type of genetically engineered food, Manna, has ended starvation by providing basic nutrition to people all over the world. But something has gone wrong, leading to riots in Manhattan and implicating the company that makes the food. A handful of people who were attending the company’s job fair join forces to stay alive and to try to figure out what is going on. This is an m/m/m...

Thursday Midday Links (and Deals!): Adult Fiction eBook Sales Nearing 30% at Hachette; Amazon Gets Potter Books in Kindle Lending Library

News

Dear DOJ: Agents Speak Out | Publishers Lunch – “The 13-member board of the Association of Authors Representatives has sent a letter to the Department of Justice opposing the proposed agency ebook pricing settlement with Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster. In a separate email, the AAR called on members “to express their views on the settlement to the DOJ and we hope you will also urge your clients to do the same. Your note might address whether you feel the settlemen...

My Sunday at the 2012 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, Part 3

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On Sunday, April 22, I attended the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.

Part 1 of my report on the festival

Part 2 of my festival recap

And now for Part 3:

Fiction: Love, Actually

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My friend Bettie and I left the Anne Rice panel while Anne Rice was taking questions from the audience and snuck into the only romance genre panel at the festival, “Fiction: Love, Actually.” The moderator was Dee J. Adams and the panelists were Tessa Dare, Jill Sorenson and Deanna Cameron. For those among our readers w...

REVIEW: Wicked Burn by Beth Kery

This review is reposted from December 2008 when it was originally released in trade paperback. I thought I would revive the review because the book is being released in mass market, four years later.

Dear Ms. Kery:

I had really been down on erotic romance as a sub genre for the past few months. So much of what I had attempted to read was sex without emotion. That type of story gets tired quickly and with many of the mainstream romances heating up, it seemed that erotic romance might be a su...

REVIEW: Overseas by Beatriz Williams

Dear Ms. Williams:

I read this book for one reason only. Lydia H, your publicist at Putnam, said I would love it. Lydia H, though, is not a romance reader (but we do share a love for the PJ Tracy series, Monkeewrench) and I’m always a bit leery of non romance reader recommendations. Plus, this book was a time travel and anyone who knows me knows I am not a fan of time travel books. But Lydia was so excited about this book and she never recommends anything to me that I had to give it a try. I p...