"Believe me when I tell you that you are exquisite. I do not flatter. I do not fawn. I will tell you the truth. Always."
Oh and he goes on to omit the truth from her a few times to protect her.
Long winded.
A man came back from Egypt with apoplexy and is bed-ridden. His intellectual daughter tries to investigate by laying her hands on her father's journals which are encrypted with his special code which she could interpret. Her mother died an unexplained death when she was young and her father feared that her brain would be overstimulated and she would die like her mother. Really, seriously? Her father is supposedly an intellectual and he could be so easily influenced by this kind of crap logic? In the end the journals were not really useful, but it was alright, because she bumped into a handsome duke who happened to be investigating his missing brother who was on the same trip as the sick man. Blah blah, married, found the dead body, while the villain lurks around so obviously, I'd wish they would just end the story early.
Believability - 2/5; Romance factor - 2/5; Readability - 2/5 (quite boring); Yummyness of male protagonist (YMP) - 2.5 (can't decide whether he is a git, or romantic, but he was quite boring)
Earl to a dukedom trying to hide from his well-meaning parent by hiding in plain sight. At his London home where his young and wonderful housekeeper adds loving touches to his home with bouquets on his cold heat and mazipans, lemonade and all sweet stuff galore. I have never seen the words "lemonade", "marzipan" and "candied violets" littered all over the pages with such willful abandon before. Of course the man has to go fall in love with the woman who was trying to murder him with early on-set diabetes. The sex part was actually quite funny to read, there is actually a buildup and lots of foreplay. Interesting and very new. Though I don't think the word "fuck" and its variations "fucking", "fucked" are part of a 1800s vocabulary.
Every book has to have its assholes, and the female protagonists have some very curious villians of a unbelievably evil brother and his sex predator of a friend and co-conspirator. And the part about the grandmother makes me wish the author spend more effort on the plot than the planning of the sex scenes.
Believability - 4/5 (who am I to judge on the authenticity of a period romance, but seriously the Heir to a Dukedom wants to marry his housekeeper who conveniently turns out to be an Earl's granddaughter. The buildup to sex is extremely believable than most romances' "I came I saw I conquered fucked" or technically to be more correct, "I saw I fucked I came"); Romance factor - 3/5 (I thought there was a nice buildup, though the part from where the antagonists appear and especially after the climax was EXTREMELY UNNECESSARY AND LAME. Just get to the point already instead of dragging and extra 44 pages. The last part undid whatever early enjoyment I had at the beginning from reading); Readability - 4/5 (I stomached the shaking on the bus to read the book. Lost 1 pt for stupid extra 44 pages); Yummyness of male protagonist (YMP) - 4/5 (I love sexy, powerful men who are full of quiet strength and look after their families).
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| [image source: spl225.wordpress.com] Author: Susan Elizabeth Phillips |
Blue Bailey has abandonment issues. Dean Robillard has abandonment issues. When their paths cross on a roadside involving a beaver suit and her ex boyfriend, they fell together on the journey Dean is taking to his new farm. Throw in a crotchety old woman who owns the small town, Dean's estranged father and mother and half-sister, a tangled love story with murals of unicorns and cute little creatures. Awkward anticlimax.
For once Phillips does not go on and on about American football, having exhausted all of it in her earlier books.
Believability - 2/5 (likelihood of a gorgeous, rich man stopping to talk to a human beaver, unbelievable); Romance factor - 2.5/5 (too many side stories); Readability - 3/5 (I was more interested in the interaction between Blue and Nita); Yummyness of male protagonist (YMP) - 2/5 (don't like the guy.)
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| [image source: fantasticfiction.co.uk] Author: Lynn Michaels |
Mia is the best designer at her father's wedding boutique design company. She wants to join the trousseau line and ironically on the same day, her father's greatest rival company releases a secret design she did for the governor's daughter's wedding. In comes a handsome PI and duh, they fell in love.
Ironically I was more intrigued by who is the person who stole the design and what tore apart the relationship between the protagonist's parents and ex-employee (now business rival) rather than the actual love story.
Believability - 2/5; Romance factor - 2/5; Readability - 3/5 (due to the rivalry); Yummyness of male protagonist (YMP) - 0/5 (the idea that a single man can adopt his dead fiancee's daughter from another marriage seems highly unlikely to me. Also ALL her relatives are conveniently dead? What are the chances of that? Also, this girl could be the Human Plague).
A rich sculpture artist and a Ivy League professor (conveniently her half-brother's BIL) get thrown together over misunderstanding over an apartment rental. She offers to teach him how to become a domesticated god. He makes her breakfast in bed.
Believability - 3/5 (too many characters from earlier books), Romance factor - 3/5 Readability - 2/5 (I took my time to finish it); YMP - 2 (unbelievable)
Ok read. Initially I wanted to say it was interesting, but there was too much product placement in the form of characters from earlier books, which is extremely distracting, especially when the other plot promises to be even more exciting. Author harmed her own book.
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| [image source: mobiepocket.com] Author: Sherry Thomas |
A marquess passes himself off as a idiot while spying for the country. He suspects her uncle of swindling with fake diamonds, and gets ensnared by the desperate girl instead.
A 5 star read. I am totally amazed by the quality of plot and the twists. However I am not especially enamored by the bombastic words that the author throws in at random.
One thing I find a bit funny, was the "Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo". To my knowledge, it's a poem about gay love...
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| [image source: HarpersCollin] Author: Susan Elizabeth Phillips |
A genteel English lady principal of St Gert's goes to the States, ostensibly to do a book on a ex St Gert's lady student, but actually is trying to escape marriage to a odious, pompous English Duke. She gets conned by a semi-famous golfer who is on suspension and under coercion by her acquaintance (previously seen in other book, Fancy Pants) to escort her while she conducts her research.
Two interesting unexpected twists. Not bad.
Believability - 2/5 (the climax was totally lame, and a British principal who is so innocent and silly, is impossible in this day and age), Romance factor - 3.5/5 (two couples, the other story was more believable, but read like Jayne Ann Krentz); Readability - 3/5 (not too bad, it did hold my interest for a while); YMP - 4/5 (her usual speciality: the incorrigible rogue)
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| [image source: fantasticfiction.co.uk] Author: Janet Dailey |
Seriously boring. So boring I cannot be bothered to rate it. It's more like a story about cowboys, and their lonely wives than a romance novel.
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| [image source: fantasticfiction.co.uk] Author: Virginia Henley |
Fictionalisation of the true story of the Gunning sisters, particularly Elizabeth Campbell nee Gunning, the 1st Baroness of Hamilton. Total bullshit. I was really pissed when I cross-referenced with history books.
Believability - 0/5 (she had three children with the late Duke of Hamilton, instead of cuckolding him with Campbell's son), Romance factor - 2/5; Readability - 2/5 (too bombastic for me, as typical of historical romances sometimes); YMP - 2/5 (too many males. The only one worth admiring was William Cavendish, and he wasn't even the male protagonist and his story wasn't true either, other than the same basic facts.)
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| [image source: breezingthroughbooks.blogspot.com] Author: Meredith Duran |
This ambitious, filthy rich, supposedly very nice girl is abandoned at her altar twice. After the second humiliation, she runs off with her brother's rakish friend, and blah blah blah, they fall in love.
Believability - 0/5 (nice?! Read no sign. 3 millions pounds in old England, and she's running around single?) ; Romance factor - 2/5; Readability - 1/5 (Boring as hell, and I am only half way through. It reads like a script, rather than as a novel) ; YMP - 1/5 (Long-winded bull. For a male protagonist, he talks too much.)
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| [image source: photobucket] Author: Jennifer Crusie |
Right wing lawyer tries to get his left-wing do-gooder ex to go with him to suck up to a famous author at a weekend party. Lawyer alternates being a naked-ambition mercenary and the sweetest, considerate boyfriend. Side story of her aging dancer friend and his narcissistic colleague is unbelievable. Still entertaining.
Believability - 3/5 (side story unbelievable) ; Romance factor - 4/5; Readability - 4/5; YMP - 4/5 (the male protagonist is delicious)
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[image source: thefirstbook] Author: Eileen Cook
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Written in first person, girl gets dumped by boyfriend of 6 years who swiftly moves onto a beautiful journalist with paranoid mind. Protagonist stalks him and gets helped out of a sticky situation by his neighbour who investigates psychic behaviour, and starts to manipulate the new girlfriend as a fake pyschic. A lucky prediction makes her a rising star on the radio, until she gets uncovered by the new girlfriend. But she gets her boyfriend back, then decides during the engagement party that he is an asshole and she likes his neighbour more.
Believability - 4/5 (being dumped is ubiquitous situation, plot is predictable) ; Romance factor - 2/5; Readability - 3/5; YMP - 0/5 (male characters are too under-developed in comparison with the female protagonist, in fact all the major characters behaved weirdly towards the end of the book)
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| [image source: Trashionista] Author: Phillipa Ashley |
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| [image source: fantasticfiction] Author: Jude Deveraux |
Believability - 0/5; Romance factor - 10/5 (the last part - I am such a sucker. Cried and cried reading the ending); Readability - 3/5; Yummyness of male protagonist (YMP) - 2/5 (bearded , hairy and yucky)
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| [Image Source: goodreads] Author: Debbie Macomber |
Two stories, My Funny Valentine and My Hero. By Debbie Macomber. Surprisingly not annoying, though very unbelievable.
My Funny Valentine - Divorcee locks herself out of her car and meets a tow truck dude, hires him for a Valentine dinner at community centre.
Believability - 2.5/5; Romance factor - 3/5; Readability - 4/5; YMP - 3/5
My Hero - Sad apply writer-wannabe stalks an architect who looks like male protagonist in her book. Weirdly the guy does not haul her to court but decides to flesh out the character for her.
Believability - 1/5; Romance factor - 3.5/5; Readability 4/5; YMP 4/5
