It's all about character

REVIEWS BY BARBARA SAMUEL

The avid reader knows there's rarely a new plot anywhere, and the joy of the telling is in the characters, the language, the situation. Even the most jaded of romance readers will be swept away by the highly original characters featured in this month's offerings, two by beloved icons of the genre, two by newer authors worth getting to know.

Nora Roberts is the empress of romance and romantic suspense for a reason—she's a natural. Natural pace, natural storytelling and some of the best-written characters around. I know her people. They live next door. They work at my grocery store and I go out to dinner with them and drink too much wine. I like them. In Angels Fall, Reece Gilmore skids into a tiny Wyoming town on a bad radiator and decides to stay for a week. Or so—she's taking things one day at a time, challenging herself to do things as simple as sleep with a few less lights on every night. The survivor of a horrific crime in Boston, the former chef is both fragile and determined to find a new life. She finds a possible niche at the local diner and makes friends in town—including the prickly and alluring writer Brody, who has a few issues of his own. But when Reece witnesses a murder, her new life is threatened, and it's going to take all she has to keep moving toward the future. Angels Fall showcases Roberts' acute eye for the perfect detail and her unerring sense of what makes a hero—and a heroine, the very elements that make Roberts so very, very readable and beloved.


The dazzling Quinn

Julia Quinn has also built an estate on the bestseller lists, where she lives with her clever, intelligent romps set in Regency England. On the Way to the Wedding, the final installment in the enormously popular Bridgerton series, is sure to set down roots there, too—and you don't need to have read the whole series to take enormous pleasure in the tale of youngest brother Gregory and his endearing search for true love, which he's sure he'll find if only he's patient. He's also sure he'll know it when he sees it. Only he's wrong. No one captures the lively, sparkling dialogue of the ton like Quinn, and it's impossible to read On the Way to the Wedding without grinning, page after page.


Finding redemption

Characters also bring to life the evocative and sensual Vanquished, a lusciously dark and original historical romance by Hope Tarr. Suffragette leader Caledonia Rivers, the so-called Maid of Mayfair, has attracted an enemy who wants her reputation destroyed. Photographer Hadrian St. Claire, the son of a whore who has scrabbled to a halfway decent life, is facing both bodily and financial ruin after a streak of disastrous luck at the tables, and reluctantly accepts the commission. He'll seduce her into a nude photograph, which, when published, will destroy her. Both Callie and Hadrian have suffered from the social structure of 1890s London, and both are stunned at the blaze of sensual, binding attraction they feel. Trapped by the cruel scenario, the two grapple with the past and the lies between them, seeking redemption in love, not only for themselves, but the society they live in. A galloping pace, heady sexual tension and an elegant touch with period detail make this a delicious read.


Becoming a swan

What could possibly motivate a sane, smart woman to participate in an extreme makeover for a reality television show? The answer is more complicated than it first appears. In Karyn Langhorne's remarkable and intelligent romance novel, Diary of an Ugly Duckling, Audra Marks has had just one too many bad days as a "fat, black, and ugly" prison guard when she sees an advertisement for the reality series "Ugly Duckling." At odds with her exasperating mother, worried about her sister who is serving in Iraq, and longing to catch the eye of the one man who seems to really understand her, Audra impulsively makes a tape and is chosen for an extreme makeover. The emotional landscapes of beauty and racial identity are explored with a sharp and tender eye, challenging—with both humor and quiet insight—the ideas of what we find beautiful and why.


Barbara Samuel is a four-time RITA winner whose most recent novel is Madame Mirabou's School of Love.

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