|
A world of options
REVIEWS BY BARBARA SAMUEL We romance readers are spoiled by the choices available in September—there is something for everyone out there this month, but I only have room to review four of the best I found in the bumper crop.
By Rosanne Keller NAL Accent, $12.95 336 pages ISBN 0451219430
A jaguar's gift
By Betina Krahn Jove, $7.99 352 pages ISBN 0515141704
Romping with Ray
By Francis Ray St. Martin's, $6.99 352 pages ISBN 0312939736
Smashing contemporary debut
By Karyn Witmer Dell, $6.99 432 pages ISBN 0553584251
Barbara Samuel won a RITA Award for her latest novel, Lady Luck's Map of Vegas.
|
The best travel is a journey that opens us to ourselves, a theme explored by Rosanne Keller in A Summer All Her Own. Anna Sandoval, widowed suddenly and unexpectedly a year ago, has traveled to Crete to escape the oppressive reminders of her grief. She has traveled alone, without expectation and against the protests of her children and best friend. Sunning there in the clear light, and swimming in the even clearer waters, her soul begins to clear. A passion for art, left behind in youth, resurfaces after her arrival, and Anna makes friends with a local artist of much renown, who takes her under his elderly wing. As the summer passes, Anna uncovers the delights of a life lived solely to one's own call—but even as she learns to revel in it, fate offers her even more choices, and she must examine, once again, what she values and what she will leave behind. A Summer All Her Own is Keller's debut novel, and aside from a slightly clumsy start, it is an intelligent and lusciously textured book with a comfortable worldliness that feels like donning a good pair of walking shoes—you know they'll take you where you want to go.
Support your 
The Book of True Desires by Betina Krahn features an adventure of another sort—this one to the steamy jungles of Mayan Mexico in the late Victorian era. Beautiful, stubborn Cordelia Blackburn has been all over the world on expeditions, and now she's come to her tycoon of a grandfather to finance an expedition—hoping to punish him for disowning her father—to find King Solomon's mines. Her grandfather turns the tables on her and sends her on a different quest, with his butler in tow. Said butler, an indentured servant with a mysterious past, is British, arrogant and entirely too annoying, but Cordelia has no choice. As the pair makes their way through the jungle, stalked by a jaguar and seeking the treasure of a lifetime, they peel away the layers of civility to reveal the raw and vulnerable nature of human beings, and how we fall in love. A fast, sparkling, beautifully crafted historical romance.
Another total escape is Dreaming of You by Francis Ray, a new installment in the Grayson series. Highly successful hotelier Faith McBride has been in love with the devastatingly handsome Brandon Grayson since they were high school buddies in Santa Fe, but as a rather plump and ordinary looking woman, she's sure she has no chance to turn their friendship to love, especially now that Ruth Grayson is determined to marry him off—she's been quite successful thus far in finding a match for her sons. Ray is known for writing cheerful fairy tales, and Dreaming of You, with an ordinary, immensely likable heroine, a sexy man with a heart of gold, and touches of glitz and color, is as unapologetically escapist as Cinderella. Lots of fun.
Former historical romance writer Karyn Witmer (Elizabeth Grayson, Elizabeth Cary) has turned her attention to the contemporary world with A Simple Gift. When headstrong, brilliant teenager Fiona Montgomery throws away a half-completed degree in astronomy to run away with a musician, her mother is heartbroken, her father furious. When she returns 18 months later with a secret and a daughter, she sets in motion a rift that affects her whole family in unforeseeable ways—particularly her mother, Avery, who finds her marriage in trouble, her heart tested, her business strained. A Simple Gift carries Witmer's trademark grace of language, delicate skill in tracing the cobweb of human entanglements and the compassion of an old, old soul who knows there are no wrongs that cannot be righted, no heart that cannot be mended. A beautiful story rendered by a master storyteller.