When a romance author is recced by Ros Clarke, I seek her out. That’s how I came to new-to-me-inspirational-romance-author Kara Isaac’s One Thing I Know. It was like no inspirational romance I’d read. Hero and heroine, Lucas Grant and Rachel Somers, come with heavy baggage; how their paths cross and they fall in love is a fraught journey. Looking back, they’ve got things to work out, looking forward sometimes seems impossible. That’s the genre’s beauty: all things are possible even when they seem highly improbable.
Rachel has a most unusual profession. She ghostwrites her aunt’s, Dr. Donna Summerville’s, advice-to-the-lovelorn books. Together, they make a lot of money, money that was once most necessary to Donna (when her husband left her to bring up their sons) and now is necessary to Rachel because she pays for her father’s care in a chronic-care facility. Though to all appearances Rachel and Donna are deceiving their vulnerable audience, their actions are understandable, even sympathetic, to the reader. (more…)
No matter the claims to originality, no matter how new and fresh the voice, 99.9% of romances follow the narrative pattern of encounter, attraction, obstacles, false Eden, betrayal/estrangement, and resolution/HEA, and all centring solely, exclusively on the central couple, their conflict, their feelings, and their between-the-sheets time. But Bliss always manages to surprise me, always twists that old familiar, comfortable pattern to make me stand up and notice. In historical romance, only Rose Lerner has managed to do the same (see especially my review of 
Miss Bates was uncertain about Karina Bliss’s “rock star” series, being more madrigal-girl than black-kohl-rimmed-eyes rocker-chick. Nevertheless, given that Bliss’s A Prior Engagement is one of MissB’s favourite category romances, she was willing to take on the raucous. Instead, she found a moving, funny romance, believable characterization, and engaging, trope-twisting genre-bending. At first, Fall is harmless enough. Picking up from the riff Bliss set up in Rise, she moves the action from rocker-millionaire-bad-boy Zander Freedman to his PA, Dimity Graham, and drummer, Seth Curran. The band’s fortunes and future are awry and Dimity is in full powerhouse damage-control mode. Zander’s reputation in tatters and recent throat surgery has put the band at risk of ever “rising” again. Dimity finds herself at the local watering-hole near Zander’s LA mansion with Seth, still mourning the loss of his high school sweetheart to another man, the news of Mel’s engagement putting the heart-broken icing on the proverbial non-wedding-cake for him. They drink too much, Seth cries on Dimity’s shoulder, and – yada yada yada – they do the beast with two backs. Dimity offers to play pretend-girlfriend when they return to New Zealand to help Seth get Mel back (while Dimity also machinates to save Zander’s career and the band). 
Miss Bates Reads Romance 