Romantic Parvenu

Book Review: Ruby by Cynthia Bond

April 28, 2015

Ruby asks how a group of people can turn a blind eye to systematic sex abuse, asks how people become abusers, and how a woman can come back to herself after the brutality she’s endured. The stories Ruby has to tell are horrific and almost ...

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Book Review: Lead Me On by Victoria Dahl

April 25, 2015

I felt this book was very strong and well-done, and (so far) the best I’ve seen from Victoria Dahl, though I’ll certainly read more from her at some point. Lead Me On is a great romance with complicated and three-dimensional characters who have ...

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Book Review: Start Me Up by Victoria Dahl

April 25, 2015

The second novel in the Tumble Creek series, Start Me Up, was a fun, breezy novel that I had a good time with. There were a few moments of gender essentialism and “not like other girls” that gave me pause, but overall, I find Victoria Dahl’s ...

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Book Review: The Tiger Queens by Stephanie Thornton

April 22, 2015

My fairly recent discovery of Stephanie Thornton has been one of the highlights of my historical fiction reading career. Her novels about women forgotten by history are wonderfully written and imagined, and I was absolutely anticipating The ...

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Book Review: Where All Light Tends to Go by David Joy

April 19, 2015

This is a book written by a white Southern man about another white Southern man who does manly stuff like fix cars and help deal his dad’s meth and get rid of anybody who looks like they might squeal to the cops. I get that. Where All Light ...

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Book Review: Talk Me Down by Victoria Dahl

April 19, 2015

This was a good book. It won’t reach favorite status, but it was an enjoyable way to spend an evening, and there’s evidence that Victoria Dahl has a lot of potential for improvement (this is one of her early novels). Talk Me Down was ...

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