Category: Mini Review

2013 In Reading and Reviewing: The State of MBRR and The Year’s Favourite Romance Reads

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Miss Bates started MBRR with the idea that she’d blog for herself, as a way of keeping track of what she read and how she felt and thought about romance fiction.  She assumed she’d sporadically pick up readers researching a title, stumbling on Miss Bates’s musings via a search engine.  She’d entrenched the endeavour with a blog-name that served as an amusing persona; the loquacious spinster fit perfectly. 😉

What ensued took her completely by surprise.  Pleasantly surprised, but surprised nonetheless.  Within weeks of writing her first posts, she did not accumulate hundreds of followers, or have publishers and authors clamoring for her reviews.  What she felt was championed by the spirit of generosity extended to MBRR by these wonderful writers/bloggers/thinkers and lovers of romance fiction:

Pamela at Badass Romance

Liz at Something More

Jessica at Read React Review

Emma at Emma Barry

Gen at Gen Turner

Natalie at The Radish

and Janine at Dear Author

Being championed beats all.  Miss Bates thanks you for encouraging, commenting, and supporting.  She is privileged and humbled to be in your company.  And your company is a lot of fun!

Many thanks to everyone who dropped by, read, mused, followed, commented, and returned time and again.  Miss Bates hopes you’ve been entertained, amused, and found the reviews/readings interesting, thought-provoking, and considered.  It’s been a wonderful year and the state of Miss Bates Reads Romance is happy, healthy, and looking forward to another year of reading and reviewing.  In the spirit of the genre that we love and love to debate, as every hero/heroine avows, “You [dear readers] are perfect for me.”

To follow are Miss Bates’s favourite romances  and posts of 2013.  Some are new, some old, some historicals, some contemporaries, some you’ve read, some might spark your interest.  Miss Bates briefly comments on each and links to the original review.

Released in 2013

Historical Romance: is Miss Bates’s first romance reading amour and it scored some coups this year.  Grant’s A Woman Entangled followed upon Miss Bates’s love for A Lady Awakened and A Gentleman Undone.  Her other two favourites were by new-to-her authors: Emma Barry’s Brave In Heart and Tracey Devlyn’s Nexus Series. Continue reading

MINI-REVIEW: Grace Burrowes’ ANDREW, or The Hero As Nursemaid

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AndrewMiss Bates read Burrowes’ latest “lonely lord,” Andrew, in hopes that she’d get the original pleasure of reading her first Burrowes novel, The Heir.  If Andrew had been her first Burrowes, she might have written this review more positively?  However, for Miss Bates, as well as romance readers who find themselves beset with an author’s work near-monthly, reader fatigue has set in.  Burrowes exhibits the same smooth, competent prose, the same caring characters and sexy scenes, the same concerns with family, love, and children, but it feels so very the same.  This is because Burrowes’ Lonely Lords, or Lords of Despair as the cover subtitle indicates, are “ensemble romances,” romance novels whose concerns are not with the singular courtship and eventual HEA/marriage of a couple, but with the creation of a family saga made of couples in various HEA stages, between incipient and established.  (Many a contemporary, small-town romance is guilty of this too.)  Maybe Miss Bates’ romance-reading tastes are a tad passé, but she rather enjoys an old-fashioned antagonistic, sparring romance narrative like, let’s say for argument’s sake, Pride and Prejudice.  Burrowes’ Andrew is not like that at all, with its surfeit of family politics, married couples, in utero offspring, or toddling around … and way too many clinical details about parturition. Continue reading, as Miss Bates finalizes her verdict

MINI-REVIEW: Isabel Cooper’s LEGEND OF THE HIGHLAND DRAGON, Or Brogue Meets East End

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Legend Of the Highland DragonMiss Bates has read only a handful of paranormal romances.  For example, she read J. R. Ward’s Lover Eternal, #2 in the Blackdagger Brotherhood, and enjoyed it, but never returned to the series, or any others from one of the romance genre’s most popular incarnations.  Isobel Cooper’s Legend Of the Highland Dragon, though well-written and worthy of praise on certain levels, reminded her why she didn’t, and doesn’t, read paranormal romance, or does so rarely.  It’s not that paranormal romance is less worthy of her attention; it is, for Miss Bates, a matter of sensibility: and there’s something about these transforming/shifting heroes/heroines that she finds … well, silly and unconvincing. 

On the  other hand, she acknowledges that paranormal romance, more than any other romance sub-genre, confronts and explores the encounter with the “other”: its hyperbolic, and/or fantastical nature brings into the foreground the foreignness of another person/creature and the sheer miracle of recognition, of the romantic assertion that “I know you.  I see you. You are my equal, my companion, my familiar friend,” to quote the psalm.  Cooper’s novel does this no less and no less well than any well-written, tongue-in-cheek, witty paranormal romance … yet, it fell a little flat for Miss Bates and she often had trouble buying into the narrative. Continue reading

MINI-REVIEW: Amanda Flower’s A PLAIN SCANDAL, and Wherein A Little Malaise Sets In

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A Plain ScandalLong before Miss Bates was ever a spinster, she read all the Pippi Longstocking books she could get her hands on. It was with a nostalgic smile that she read Chief Greta Rose’s assessment of our romance heroine and amateur sleuth, Chloe Humphrey, in Amanda Flower’s first Appleseed Creek cozy mystery, A Plain Death, “You’re like the Pippi Longstocking version of Nancy Drew.” Our red-haired geek girl and wanna-be detective continues to eavesdrop, interview, investigate, and fight for truth, justice, and the Amish way in Flower’s second cozy mystery, A Plain Scandal. In this case, she’s in pursuit of the culprit who is cutting off the beards of Amish men and Amish girls’ long hair … until these nasty shenanigans turn to murder, the murder of a successful young Amish man, Ezekiel Young. Continue reading for a rare look at a surprisingly succinct Miss Bates

A Smidgeon of a Review for a Mite of a Book: Jill Sorenson’s STRANDED WITH HER EX

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Stranded With Her ExCategory romance is an appetizer. Miss Bates reads it as a bridge over to something more substantial, a breather in the race to a longer historical, or contemporary. There are category writers that she would never treat this way: Karina Bliss, the divine Sarah Mayberry, Molly O’Keefe, Janice Kay Johnson, Karen Templeton, Carla Kelly, and Cheryl St. John. She quite likes Sarah Morgan and India Grey, sometimes Jessica Hart, Liz Fielding, and Donna Alward. So, not all category romances are treated cavalierly by Miss Bates; in Sorenson’s case, however, she carelessly brandishes a sword of disapproval. You can read on, if you’re interested