Meredith Duran

What I’m Reading This Week

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For some bizarre yet wonderful reason, I’ve actually been able to carve out some reading time the last few weeks.  Historical romance has really been on my radar and I’ve been reading some darn good ones.

The first is Meredith Duran’s latest release, At Your Pleasure.  One word – phenomenal.  Duran’s books are always beautifully crafted, with gorgeous prose, fascinating characters, and cool settings.  And her men are to die for.  The hero of At Your Pleasure, Lord Rivenham, is dark, dangerous, and sexy.  Smart, too – way smart.  It’s a killer combination.  And two thumbs up for the setting, which is the early Georgian period.  It was a dramatic, intriguing, and dangerous time, and I wish we’d see more historical romances set in this era.

Shifting now to the American West and the books of Jo Goodman.  I used to read cowboy romances quite a bit when I was younger, but I’d drifted away from them to the Regency period.  Well, Goodman could pull anyone back to cowboy country in no time flat.  The Last Renegade is a character driven romance with a particularly engaging hero and heroine. Goodman has a way of taking old tropes and making them fresh, and writing strong, fairly silent heroes who are very masculine but always smart and thoughtful (again with the smart heroes!).

The beauty of Goodman’s writing is often best realized in the quiet moments between the hero and heroine, and The Last Renegade dishes up plenty of those moments.  A very romantic, lovely book with great dialogue and even a bit of a mystery plot.

My third pick this week is The Dragon and the Pearl, by Jeannie Lin.  Set during the Tang Dynasty in China, this book sucked me in from page one.  I was riveted by the setting and the history, and how Lin made it such an integral part of the story. The Dragon and the Pearl was the opposite of a wallpaper historical and, as a writer, I was blown away by Lin’s skill and level of craft.  The Dragon and the Pearl is a beautifully written story with deep, heart-wrenching emotion and a spectacular hero and heroine.  One of the best books I’ve read in 2012.

Obviously the last few weeks have provided me with some great reading, but how about you?  I’d like to continue my streak – any books that you’d particularly recommend?  And if you’d like more of my book recommendations, please join me on goodreads!

 

Breaking Out Of The Box

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It probably won’t surprise you to learn that I read a lot of historical romance novels.  I love the genre, of course, and have ever since my big sister introduced me to the delights of Georgette Heyer when I was just a tween.  And there are so many historical romance writers to love, monster talents like Loretta Chase, Teresa Medeiros, and Eloisa James, not to mention all the newer talent like Anna Campbell and Meredith Duran. Their books are marvelous reads and, as a writer, I always learn from them.

But sometimes, as both a writer and reader, I need to break out of the box.  It’s important to cross-pollinate ideas and themes – to not get stuck in the rut of doing the same thing over and over again.  I do that by reading other romance sub-genres, other types of fiction, and lots of history.  In doing so, I become a better writer and, I think, a more thoughtful person.

Two new-to-me authors that I’ve just discovered are Kelly Hunter and Meljean Brook.  I recently read a book by Hunter called Red-Hot Renegade, put out by Mills and Boon.

Hunter is really, really good.  Her writing is smart, sexy, and well-crafted, with surprising turns of phrase that, as  an author, had me seething with appreciative envy.  Her characters are engaging and sympathetic, and the emotion is intensely and movingly portrayed.  This book is category length, but Hunter packs a big punch into a shorter book.

Meljean Brook’s The Iron Duke made it onto many best book lists of 2010, and rightly so.  It’s a phenomenally creative story that took the Steampunk genre by storm.  One of the things that first attracted me to the book was the riff on the Duke of Wellington’s nickname, the Iron Duke.  When Wellington was Prime Minister, he went through a period of extreme unpopularity.  His house was the target of window-smashers, which compelled him to have iron shutters installed to protect the glass.  In the case of Brook’s hero, the Iron Duke actually has iron in his bones.  That’s just one of the many cool details in the hugely imaginative and thought-provoking alternate reality that Brook creates.  If someone were to lock me in a dungeon and force me to name the best book I read last year, it would probably have to be The Iron Duke. It’s that smart, that thoughtful, and that damn enjoyable.

So, anybody else read something outside her usual box, lately?  Discovered any new-to-you authors that you want to share?

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