Hello, and welcome back! The fall weather here is absolutely lovely, with evenings cool, but not too cool to sit outside underneath the maple tree with a good romance. I'm looking forward to some of the books scheduled for later in the season, but still planning a trip to the bookstore later this week to take a peek at what's out now. My local Waldenbooks has a wonderful romance section, and a great, romance-friendly staff.

Well, enough rambling about shopping for more books. I've got two new historical romances to share with you this week, so let's get started.

First up is Lynn Kurland's From This Moment On (Berkley). Alienore of Solonge is hiding in plain sight from the man who was to be her groom two years ago, Colin, the Butcher of Berkhamshire, a fierce warrior. So far, she's managed to avoid her family and evil stepmother, and the man who should be her husband, but in her current guise as Sir Henri, guard to Sybil of Maignelay-sur-mer, she finds herself not only face-to-face with Colin, but being trained by him. I don't mind a really good, well-written hidden identity story. But it takes Colin two hundred pages to figure out Henri is a girl, and nearly another hundred pages to figure out that she's his girl. That doesn't make him look very heroic, just dumb. It also makes it difficult to believe that a man that dumb would know love when it smacks him with a two-by-four. Of Cupid's five arrows, this one only gets two.

The other book I have to share with you is Bertrice Small's Rosamund (NAL). Rosamund Bolton is the very young heiress of Friarsgate, and a widow twice by the time of her thirteenth birthday. She's got a greedy uncle who covets her estate, plotting always to get his hands on it any way he can manage. Yet her second husband has outwitted her nasty uncle, but Rosamund still must fend off her uncle in future years. Not to mention the suitors. Knowing only that this is a Bertrice Small romance, you expect sexy, erotic romance, no? Maybe more than one husband or lover for the heroine, but definitely the erotic aspects of the romance. If you love that as much as I do, you may as disappointed as I with that aspect of this one. The other thing that disappointed me was the ending. I know this is the beginning of a new series, but the ending of this one is definitely not the happy ending romance readers expect. I'm sorry to say I'm only giving this one three arrows. I hope the second part of her story is more like Bertrice Small romances in the past.

Look on Amazon.com for From This Moment On and Rosamund