Dls’s Comments (group member since Sep 14, 2010)

Dls’s comments from the Fans of Eloisa James & Julia Quinn group.

The other two are The last Hellion and Captives of the Night. I don't particularly like the first in the series but captives of the night makes more sense if you've read the other.

This is one of four connected books-- I love it and two of the others. This one is considered a classic of the genre....

I have no idea but I'm fascinated!

I just read the bakery sisters trilogy by Susan Mallery. I liked Nicoles story best. Loved how the high school sportskids come over to her house to protect her. Also love that he stages the big public proposal at football game after being a jerk and she walks away and her sister says it's not romantic . I am so sick of public proposals making a jerk ok

She's become such an interesting author. I am curious what she will do next.

I love my Nook from B and N: I know someone on this group had a really bad experience with them but for me its worked out really well. I pre-order all my auto-buys and have them in hand the day of release--for an addict like me, that's wonderful. I must have 30 pre-orders on it right now. (I assume you can also do this with Kindles.)
I don't know how you can check out Kindles in person, unless someone you know has one; Nooks you can check out at any B and N.

Oh, yes, I really liked this book. Its like the hero and heroine are from two different books with completely different styles (he:grim; she: bright and charming) with hysterical culture clash. Great choice.

Thanks!

Is that ok Aly?

Here's the new puzzler schedule:
Aly, 11/14
Janga, 11/21
Monica, 11/28
Okie, 12/5
Kasey, 12/12
DLS, 12/19
Aly, 12/26
Janga, 1/2/12
Monica, 1/9
Okie, 1/16
Kasey, 1/23
DLS, 1/30

If you can't do one of those days, let me know and I'll swap it around.

Just realized the scene where we meet the heroine in The Virtuoso makes no sense in the plot. Sigh

Aly, aren't ANne Mallorys new books great?
I feel like I should always rate Grace Burroughs on an iceskatking or gymnastics scale--you know, high marks for artistic interpretation and low marks for technique. The quality of the rleationships she builds is wonderful, but she just tromps all over basic facts about social relations of the period--and she clearly knows them. So at one point she has her heroine say she can't go stay in hero's house because it would be inappropriate--when he's not there--but that's after she stayed there for days or weeks with him and lots of bachelors and as far as I can tell not even a single female servant.
And she doesn't think things through--so the whole plot depends on heroine believing she could have carried a child to term except for certain things that she did, and yet early on she tells hero (in a context where presumably she is telling the truth)that she was married for five years and couldn't have kids. Just completely inconsistent.
I'll keep reading her, but I really hope she gets a good editor. I have this theory that she had all thes e books she just wrote (I know she had about 20 before she gotpublished)where she just built all these things so deeply into the plot that it was either publish as is or start over, and they published as is but put in little comments to suggest she knows what teh deal was. And that maybe her new books won't have those problems. I certainly hope so becaus ethey are annoying, and yet she writes so lyrically about relationships that I keep buying her books.

Its Meredith Duran's latest, A Lady's Lesson in Scandal.
I love this book, but it really is fairly dark, and so this little scene of levity is wonderful. Usually we see what the HEA will look like at the end--here, I don't know if she did it intentionally but she offers it in the middle.

About to read The Virtuoso by Grace Burroughs. And then Heart of Steel by Meljean Brooks.

Hi
I guess I never did introduce myself, so here goes:
I'm a 50 + mom and policy/communications consultant--I have a 20 year old in college and a 14 year old starting high school. And I recently realized that I have no desire to read romances that sound like my daughter's social life...I want adults! I like to cook, knit, watch ballet, walk, hike, swim, entertain (mostly in small groups.) My husband travels at least 3 months a year so I spend a lot of time reading w hile he's gone. I occasionally scribble down scenes for romances but I kn ow that doesn't make me an author--I never see the saem character in more than one scene, for one thing. I love reading Jo Bourne's blogs about writing, but I couldn't do it.

I stumbled on the EJ website and then the EJ/JQ website about 3 years ago, and got completely sucked in, so when it closed I came here.

I started reading Georgette Heyer back in the Mezozoic period (when I was a young teen, I think, and had read my way through the children's library in my town.) I read fomances on and off until I had kids--at which point while I kept reading I had no time to browse in bookstores to find romances I would like. Then about 3 years ago while recuperating from surgery I started reading them again and found the world of romance had completely changed--and gotten infinitely better. (Although I still love Heyer, and Joan Wolf, and a few other Regency authors from the 1980s). Favorite authors, besides EJ and JQ, include Joanna Bourne, Meredith Duran, Sherry Thomas, Laura Kinsale, Joan Ross, Julie Anne Long, Jennifer Crusie, Mary Balogh, Tessa Dare, Loretta Chase, Courtney Milan, Carla Kelly, Rose Lerner, Eileen Dreyer,... . I'm less fond of contemps but Robyn Carr, Lisa Kleypas, Jill Shalvis are autobuys. I don't read many paranormals but I really like Thea Harrison.

I like many story lines--I'm a sucker for kids, and for people figuring out how to make marriages work, and virgin heroes, and courtesan heroines. On the other hand, rakes don't appeal to me.

What I really dislike is authors who ignore the societal conventions of the period. Its fine to have characters knowingly violate those rules and pay the price, but it drives me nuts to read books where the host and hostess are introduced at their own ball or the unmarried hero and heroine drive around the countryside for days without a chaperone. Why write about the period if you are not interested in the things that make relationships different then? Just write a contemp and be done(ok, climbing off hobby horse now.)And I have a few authors I will never read again because they can't write complete sentences or all their characters are exactly alike.

I am about to read Virtuoso by Grace Burroughs and Heart of Steel by Meljean Brooks. After which I will probably succumb to temptation and reread Black Hawk by Jo Bourne for the 3rd time in a week.

I really did love Beauty Tamed the Beast and Just Like Heaven. But I can't stop thinking about Black Hawk. They will all be Keepers and rereads for me.

I think its harder to recognize because it really does come from a fairly dark book. I'll post teh answer tomorrow.

I put the Peach Keeper in for Fiction, Snuff for Fantasy (although I'm not really sure that's where I would put it...), and The Black Hawk in Romance. As much as I loved both When Beauty Tamed the Beast, and Just like Heaven, and would have voted for them in an ordinary year, I just had to vote for Black Hawk.

I will put it up Friday. Would you like to do next Monday, November 14? That way you'll have time to prepare.
D

Oops--if you posted on this already before, I'll put you on. That means you, Janga, Monica, Okie, Aly and Kasey! I forgot that people had posted that before.