The Sunday edition of The Washington Post Book World was dedicated to Love and Heartbreak (their title, not mine). In addition to the regular love books - you know, the one about Castro and the other about Bin Laden - Book World reviewed a few actual romances. All except one had a Biggie author. Of the listings, the reviewer said:

Every Breath You Take by Judith McNaught - “The romance comes with a convoluted yet oddly compelling mystery as its backdrop, its power diminished somewhat by a surfeit of coincidences that would choke even Charles Dickens.” She lost me at “surfeit”…

All Night Long by Jayne Ann Krentz - “The plot is ridiculous but fun, while the prose, when you are able to notice, is flabby and slows down the action.” Never heard of “flabby” prose before, but okay.

The Instant When Everything Is Perfect by Jessica Barksdale Inclan - The storylines seem to include adultery and breast cancer. The review also says: “The air-brushed perfection of the main characters that is requisite for the genre is mitigated by the more realistic portrayal of bearing witness to a loved one’s battle with cancer.” No one told me I’m supposed to be writing about perfect people.

Heart Divided an anthology by Debbie Macomber, Katherine Stone and Lois Faye Dyer - “The characters tend to be two-dimensional, but the structure of the linked stories is clever.” That’s kind of positive.

Just Rewards by Barbara Taylor Bradford - I loved this part: “It’s the sort of novel where the women are apt to be named India, the men Gideon, and the houses Pennistone Royal.”

The only one I own is All Night Long. It’s probably the only one of these I’ll ever own or read.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 13th, 2006 at 7:46 am and is filed under About Authors, About Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.