A Complicated Premise Done Well

I wonder why Brad Boney decided to write such a complicated story for his second outing as a novelist.  No matter the reason, however, he does a very good job keeping the characters and plot lines easy to follow in The Return, reviewed today at AAR.

There are so many places where the two sets of four gay friends (eight characters in all) could have been so entangled especially since the pivotal character of Stanton Parrish is so critical to both groups.  Not only that but having Stanton's love interest in both stories named Christopher could have become such a tangled mess despite one being nicknamed Hutch and the other Topher.

When I was writing my review, an image of a juggler riding a unicycle came into my head for some reason, and I realized this is the literary feat Boney pulls off without dropping the balls in the air or falling off the unicycle.  Nice!

As an aside: AAR has been running the reviewers' Top 10 romance lists since the beginning of the summer.  Today my Top 10 list ran.  Check it out.  Have you read any of the books?  Hope so!

A Writer Writes about Love

Okay, I'll freely admit it:  I love Lisa Kleypas' writing.  I think I first fell in love with it when I read Suddenly You, which to this day is one of my top 10 favorite romances.  Kleypas doesn't make life easy for her lovers, and often bringing them together comes a little too close to real life.  Jack in Suddenly You isn't always the nicest of guys, but when he falls, he falls hard and will do anything for the one/s he loves.

But Jack is purely Regency as were all the other books I'd read.  So I was surprised when Kleypas ventured into contemporary country.  Sometimes authors who go from one to the other show facility in one but become clunky in the other.  Not Kleypas.  Sugar Daddy begat Blue-Eyed Devil, and while neither is an easy book, both are beautifully written and worthwhile reading.

Now comes Rainshadow Road, which I reviewed for AAR.  Kleypas adds a bit of magical realism that enriches the story and makes what might have been just another women's romance tale about an idyllic small town a memorable waltz between two people who discover that love is a mystical binding agent.

Sam from Rainshadow is my newest Jack. 

Off on a Tangent

One of the nice things (among many nice things) about reviewing for AAR is the ability to go off on a tangent now and again with the daily blog or the daily After Hours blog.  Today I roll with the lie I used to tell myself about what kind of romances I prefer.

I do read a lot of Western romances, both historical and contemporary, as well as series and contemporary romances.  On my personal Top 100 book list are a smattering of everything as the top 10 books illustrate:

1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: classic
2. Slightly Dangerous by Mary Balogh: Regency
3. The Temporary Wife by Mary Balogh: Regency
4. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger: time-travel / fantasy
5. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: classic
6. Suddenly You by Lisa Kleypas: Regency
7. The More I See You by Lynn Kurland: time-travel / Medieval
8. The Older Woman by Cheryl Reavis: contemporary
9. She's Got It Bad by Sarah Mayberry: contemporary
10. A Reason to Live by Maureen McKade: Post Civil War America

So no one type of romance really rules, which I hadn't realized until I sat down and looked at my list.