Welcome back! Hope you´re all doing lots of reading. I have to admit to not getting as much reading done as I´d like, as my growing stack of TBR´s will attest to, but I do have the excuse that I´m working on my new book. The last one is making the rounds of agents at the moment and still sitting on the desk of an editor I met in October. Wish me luck when I call her next week to find out if she´s looked at it yet.

One of the featured links this week is to a survey about romance novels. This is for a post-grad student, who´s working on a paper on this subject so near and dear to us. It won´t take you long, and there´s no personal info required to fill out the survey. I hope you´ll check it out.

Now, onto business. The first book I read this week is
Magnolia by Ginny Aiken (Tyndale, available now). This is the inspirational story of Maggie Bellamy, middle child of the southern "Bellamy Blossoms" and Clay Marlowe, a Yankee of all things. From day one, this pair clashes over even the tiniest detail while sending smoke signals anyone could see announcing their attraction. Well, anyone but them, that is. They have huge trust issues as well as past hurts to overcome, not to mention the vandalism on the old house they´re both working to restore. Toss in the Bellamy Garden Club, a group of older ladies whose mission is matchmaking, and you have a touching, humorous tale. this one gets three and a half of Cupid´s five arrows. Great characters, and it´s the first of a trilogy.

The second book I read this week is
Impossible Dreams by Patricia Rice (Ivy, available April). I have to say I had a hard time getting into this one. I had a very difficult time connecting with the characters, and the heroine, Maya Alyssum, is described as the kind of character I usually enjoy. The hero, Axell Holm didn´t do much for me until about two-thirds of the way through the story. He´s the widowed father of a little girl who adores her teacher, the pregnant Maya. Someone wants her school gone, enough to resort to sabotage. The pair teams up, both personally and professionally, to keep that from happening. I will say that I really liked Maya´s sister, who you´ll hear about all through the book but doesn´t make an appearance until the last third of the book. I sincerely hope that she´s going to get her own story told at some point in the future. In the meantime, I´m giving this one only two of Cupid´s arrows. Much as I wanted to like this story, I just couldn´t.

Till next week, happy reading.