If you ask Carole Barrowman, a book and a box of chocolates are the best Valentine’s gift! So she joins us with her recommendations for a little romance between the pages (two classic series and two new releases). You’re on your own with the chocolates, though!
For more information on Carole and her own books, visit BarrowmanBooks.com. And see below for her suggestions:
1. “Ross Poldark" by Winston Graham - If you’re not watching the Masterpiece Theatre adaptation of this series, you’re missing one of the most romantic stories on TV, and the books are even more suspenseful and swoon worthy. Set in Cornwall, England, in the 18th and 19th centuries, it has adventure, romance, and a strong hero and heroine. I read this series when I was a teenager and I’ve reread it many times over the years. It gets better with every reading.
2. “The Secret History of the Pink Carnation” by Lauren Willig - This is a genre-jumping novel that will satisfy the romantic reader, the history love, and the swash-buckling adventurer. The main character is researching her dissertation on an English network of spies, mostly women, operating during the Napoleonic Wars in Europe. This is the first novel in a series that is richly detailed with strong female characters, a strong sense of place and a sense of humor.
3. “Roomies” by Christina Lauren - Christina Lauren’s latest is one of her best. A charming and sexy romantic comedy with Broadway as its backdrop. Holland Bakker survives a subway attack with the help of a subway musician. To pay him back, Holland gets him an audition with her uncle, a famous Broadway director, but complications ensue on the way to his debut.
4. “Love, Hate and Other Filters” by Samira Ahmed - I loved this honest and realistic YA novel about a young Indian-American, Maya Aziz, negotiating her life and her future against the pulls of her family’s Muslim world and its expectations and the desires of her own life, to go to film school, and to love whomever she chooses all of this against a backdrop of Islamophobia. I’ve been recommending this debut to everyone I know.