What I Read This Week

I will buy anything with Virginia Kantra or Nalini Singh's name on it.

I love Kantra's Children of the Sea series. Her writing is lyrical and lovely and her stories always tug at the heart. They're extremely literate and if I could find another L word that means finely crafted, I'd use it.

And Singh's Psy-Changeling series makes me lose hours of sleep as well as hours of daylight when I fall into her world. It's intricate and completely engrossing, and her love stories are hot as hell.

I haven't yet read the Angela Knight story, but her Jane's Warlord was one of my first erotic romance and I will always adore her for that.

Now, Meljean Brook was new to me and I didn't really know what to expect. I was not expecting to be up until almost 2 a.m. reading the first in her new steampunk series. I was absofreakinglutely fascinated. Amazing worldbuilding, great romance. Cannot WAIT to read The Iron Duke, the second book in the series, which will be out later this year.

Great job, ladies. Thank you so much for the hours well spent with your characters.

Now, I had another book on my bedside table that I started more than a week ago and finally had to put down because I had to force myself to pick it up at night. It should have been right up my alley. Paranormal, kick-ass heroine, alpha male and by a new author...which turned out not to be true. She's already an established romance writer.

And right there I had the answer to my biggest question when I finally put the book aside. Why had this been bought? From my standpoint, she didn't bring anything new to the paranormal genre she'd chosen. There was so little world building, I reread the back cover to make sure it actually was a paranormal because it read like a standard romantic suspense for the first several chapters before you even get to the paranormal element.

In contrast, the worlds created by Singh, Kantra and Brook are so fully realized, you can't strip out the paranormal elements and still have a book. Or in their cases, wonderful books. Can't wait for the next books in their series. Bring them on, ladies.