Jane Litte's Blog, page 97

REVIEW: A Match Made for Thanksgiving by Jackie Lau

A Thanksgiving rom-com with lots of food and interfering family!

Advertising executive Nick Wong enjoys living in Toronto. He loves late nights partying and taking women back to his penthouse. And so it is with great reluctance that he returns to his boring hometown of Mosquito Bay for Thanksgiving.

This year, however, is even worse than usual. His parents and grandparents, frustrated with the lack of weddings in the family, have invited blind dates for him and his three siblings. Nick’s broth...

Review : Cross (The Formicary #2) by S.E. Harmon

I thought getting shot, losing my memory, and being hunted by people I didn’t know for reasons I couldn’t remember was rock bottom. Turns out I was wrong. I found a shovel, dug a little deeper, and found a whole new sublevel of suck.

Apparently, I took something from the Formicary that doesn’t belong to me. The boss, Petar Dobroslav, is willing to do just about anything to get it back. Making an enemy of a super-secret organization of assassins might seem like a bad idea and…well, it absolutely...

REVIEW: Awaken the Kitten Within by David Michie

As kittens we feel it often. All it takes is a wind-blown feather, an unexpected delicacy, or the alluring rush of water and instantly we are caught up in it: Wonderment. Enchantment. Being fully absorbed in the here and now.
By the time we reach senior status, way beyond the point of being impressed by such trivia, we have become knowing and indifferent.

But we have lost something, have we not?

Which begs answers to some intriguing questions. Is it possible to recover the unaffected zest for ...

REVIEW: Summer Escapade by Charlotte Louise Dolan

Marigold Kinderley’s uncle kept her wrapped in cotton wool. So Lady Sylvia found a way to take Marigold home with her for summer break. When Terence Kinderley discovered Marigold missing, he assumed she had fled to the border with the dancing master. Sylvia’s mother Alicia discovered the deception. Though Alicia and Terence were attracted to each other, she kept her secret when he returned.

Originally published in the anthology “A Regency Summer”

Dear Ms. Dolan,

I bought this novella a year...

REVIEW: Kingscastle by Sophia Holloway

Captain William Hawksmoor of the Royal Navy never expected to inherit Kingscastle and finds himself all at sea when he does so. Especially when he learns that he must marry within a year or be forever dealing with trustees.

As the new Marquis of Athelney, the captain takes command of Kingscastle and discovers much to be done to set it in order. He must also contend with his aunt, Lady Willoughby Hawksmoor, who is determined that her daughter will be his wife. When she discovers he is far more ...

CONVERSATION: Protection and Birth Control in the Romance Genre

READERS PLEASE NOTE: When we discuss the risk of pregnancy here, we are referring to individuals who can become pregnant, but not necessarily to M/F cis couples alone.

Janine: I’ve been pondering sex scenes in nineteenth-century historical romances and how it bothers me that birth control so frequently isn’t deployed there, despite the high risk posed by death rates and extreme social censure.

Married couples of the aristocracy needed an heir and a spare, but unmarried, aristocratic women were e...

REVIEW: Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky

In Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Elder Race, a junior anthropologist on a distant planet must help the locals he has sworn to study to save a planet from an unbeatable foe.

Lynesse is the lowly Fourth Daughter of the queen, and always getting in the way.

But a demon is terrorizing the land, and now she’s an adult (albeit barely) and although she still gets in the way, she understands that the only way to save her people is to invoke the pact between her family and the Elder sorcerer who has inhabited t...

REVIEW: Miss Eliza’s English Kitchen by Annabel Abbs

Before Mrs. Beeton and well before Julia Child, there was Eliza Acton, who changed the course of cookery writing forever.

England, 1835. London is awash with thrilling new ingredients, from rare spices to exotic fruits. But no one knows how to use them. When Eliza Acton is told by her publisher to write a cookery book instead of the poetry she loves, she refuses—until her bankrupt father is forced to flee the country. As a woman, Eliza has few options. Although she’s never set foot in a kitc...

REVIEW: All the Feels by Olivia Dade

CW: Domestic violence themes, fatphobia

Dear Olivia Dade,

First off, may I just say that the cover is perfect. It’s entirely true to the book and just staring at it makes me happy. Leni Kauffman (the artist) is such a talent.

Alex Woodroe is an actor on the Game of Thrones-esque TV show Gods of the Gates. They’re just finishing the final season which was written by the showrunners rather than being based on books by the author as the earlier seasons were (sounds familiar). Alex, whose opinion, it...

REVIEW: Miss Moriarty, I Presume? by Sherry Thomas

Dear Sherry Thomas:

I have been a fan of this series since the first book, even though byzantine plots sometimes confuse me. This book, the sixth in the series, features the highly anticipated meeting, at last, between Charlotte Holmes and notorious baddie Moriarty.

There’s a lot going on in this book; I’ll try to summarize as best I can.

Charlotte and part of her Scooby squad (her lover Lord Ingram and her friend and mentor Mrs. Watson) have been aware of surveillance on 18 Baker Street by Mor...