A.J. Maguire

Tag: romance novels

  • Book Review – Six Scorched Roses by Carissa Broadbent

    SO, I have been reading and I have a backlog of reviews I need to post up here. My husband recently introduced me to BookTok on TikTok and I have discovered a ton of books that I want to read.

    Six Scorched Roses was one of the books that kept popping up and it caught my attention. I should preface this review with a disclaimer — This is a romance novel. It has explicit scenes.

    I knew it was “Romantasy” when I picked it up but I had no real knowledge about what world I was walking into, so color me surprised when I discovered vampires were still going strong. I have strong feelings about vampires in the romance genre, which I haven’t been shy about in the past. There are some discussions to be had about the psychology behind death and sex walking hand in hand, but I never saw the appeal of a predatory half-corpse giving me the come hither look.

    Necrophilia, much?

    That said…

    I loved this book.

    The vampires were not the undead – not that I could tell anyway? Her other books may delve deeper into the worldbuilding behind them. They had two distinct species (feathered wings versus bat wings) and while they did feed on blood and have weakness to the sun, they did not fit neatly into the cookie cutter stereotype we’ve come to know for vampires.

    This was enough of a difference that I was able to move past the idea that Vale – our curmudgeon antihero – was a vampire. I enjoyed him as a character. And I enjoyed how Lilith – our protagonist – interacted with him.

    But what I really enjoyed was the language.

    This book is beautifully written. And the story itself – outside of the romance – is just classical enough (scary vampire in the manor at the top of the hill) without crossing into cliche (we have a medical crisis that has to be solved and a loved one on the line if it isn’t solved soon) and… yes. I loved it.

    Again, this book has spice. Explicit scenes. So if you prefer clean romance, this might not be for you. For everyone else, I do recommend it.

    You can find Six Scorched Roses on Amazon Kindle Unlimited.

  • Love and Relationships – February 2019 Round Robin

    Not to sound too much like a prude but I blushed my way through my first intimate scene. All I could think was that my mother was going to read this and the next time I see her there will be that long, awkward moment when she tells me she liked the book and then won’t look me in the face.

    Which is probably why that scene lasted all of two paragraphs in Sedition. The sequel had a much longer scene, but after Saboteur I came to a place in my writing where I recognized that as much as I enjoy love stories, I did not enjoy explaining what 100% of the adult reading public already knows how to do.

    Granted, there is a HUGE market where authors are making bank on steamy scenes. I even read some of them.

    Are there boundaries I think shouldn’t be crossed in writing?

    Well… That depends on if you’re asking professional-writer-me or happy-reader-me.

    Professional-writer-me understands that the moment we censure fiction is the moment we’ve crossed into someone’s freedom. That said, there are things that even romance publishers express as tasteless and wrong, and I agree with them.

    Because I don’t want to trigger anyone who may have suffered from trauma, I will leave it at that.

    Happy-reader-me skips over steamy scenes.

    I just do.

    It’s nothing against the writing. If I’ve made it to that scene, it means the relationship in the novel has progressed enough and engaged me enough to keep me going. The steamy-scene is just sort of… obligatory?

    I also do not enjoy writing the typical romance novel where strangers meet and grow into lovers. This is probably because I have a general fear of meeting new people – Introverts Unite! – and all my experiences have been full of anxiety and paranoia.

    BUT…

    I am a romantic.

    My stories are full of characters who love each other, but it is a love that has grown naturally over the course of the story . And honestly, I am more interested in seeing how that love defines the lives of the characters and shapes who they are both as a couple and as individuals.

    I like stories about marriages.

    Nelek and Trenna, who star in the Sedition Series, are a marriage.

    In the Tapped series, Seach and Jorry grew into a romance after many years together.

    Cordon and Tessa, who will be in my upcoming novel The Soul Between Us, were married young but military/life pulled them apart. Their story is about mending a bridge.

    So where does that leave me in the romance/relationship aspect of storytelling?

    I want my readers to love how my characters love each other, and that goes beyond the bedroom. It goes into the sacrifices they make for the other person, the decisions they make as a team, and ultimately the story they have to tell.

    I can pretty much guarantee that my intimate scenes will fade to black. They exist because intimacy is a part of every relationship, and without it there would be some serious alarm bells going on for every marriage counselor out there, but sometimes even fictional characters deserve some privacy.

    See what my fellow authors have to say about relationships in fiction…

    Margaret Fieland http://margaretfieland.wordpress.com
    Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
    Victoria Chatham http://www.victoriachatham.com
    Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/
    A.J. Maguire  https://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/ (YOU ARE HERE)
    Marci Baun  http://www.marcibaun.com/blog/
    Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-1vP
    Rhobin L Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com

  • Book Review – Maybe This Time by Jennifer Crusie

    All right, so I’m a Crusie fan.

    Actually, so is my Dad, which I find very funny because I remember when I was a teenager he refused to read fiction and tried to impress upon me the need to only read nonfiction.  (Pffft!  Ha!  Like that worked at all!)

    As far as Romance novels go, Crusie is my favorite.  I know Diana Gabaldon is sort of listed in the romance genre, but I really view her works as “historical fiction with time travel” rather than romance.  Just look at the size of one of her books and you’ll understand.  No romance novel was ever that big.

    So Jennifer Crusie holds the number 1 position for me in the romance genre.  She’s funny.  She’s realistic.  And she gives me hope since half her characters are almost exactly like me by way of quirks and general off-beat-ness.

    Maybe This Time was very enjoyable for me.  I got through it in a day — I always go through her books in a day — and laughed through a lot of it.  Her characters really came alive for me, even the dead ones — you’ll have to read the book to understand — and there were at least three places where I was seriously not sure how the plot was going to end.  As far as stories go, it is the highest pleasure for me to be surprised in the end.

    So, if you like romance novels, I highly recommend her books.  Not just this one, but all of them.