Romance Is the New Hotness!

I'm not sure how it happened, but romance is the new hotness.  Declaring your love for romance is awesome!  I mean, Lindsay Ellis did it on her newest PBS video and now the Mary Sue has jumped in with this article (which includes the above video).
I love romance, especially historical romance.  I have so many favourite romance authors who I will review in the next few posts or if you're lucky, a YT video.  I'm working on it!
I love romance for so many reasons!  If you read a good historical romance, the author will leave you notes and you can go and have research fun.  But, let's face it...the reason to read a historical romance is to, well, romanticize the past.  I love historical romance!  Medieval, Tudor, Regency, I don't really care!  It let's me escape into the past.  Since Romance is the new hotness, I will be posting reviews of some of my favourite authors with book (or series) specific suggestions.

Author Review: Jane Ashford

Let's face it:  I love reading romance.  As with any genre, you have so many subgenres that it can be hard to figure out what you truly like.  Although I have a fondness for any historical romance, I particularly adore Regency romances!  The glamour of the ton, the clothes and the food all simply make a wonderful background for a good story.  There were also so much important events happening during this period that you can have a variety of plots as well.  However, sometimes you get so tired of spies and injured war heroes that all you want is a simple, sweet romance story.

This is where Jane Ashford comes in.  Although some of her earlier works are a little too simple (i.e. the main characters fall in love because they are supposed to), I simply adore her more recent works.  She doesn't include explicit sex scenes, but still conveys chemistry between the love interests.  I found that the earliest example of this was in The Headstrong Ward, where the ward butts heads with her guardian as the two slowly fall in love as well as correction misconceptions about each other.  Her newest book, Brave New Earl, has a wonderful plot and the two main characters have wonderful chemistry which she manages to convey without any explicit sex scenes.  I can't wait to see what happens in the next book!

Review: My Little Pony: Ponyville Mysteries

If you know me, this shouldn’t come as much of shock, but I LOVE My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
I enjoy individual episodes, especially the episode where Rainbow Dash realizes that she loves reading.
That’s the librarian in me I guess.

During the summer, I had my niece staying with me and wanted to get her books from the library.  I was
delighted to see that they had thin chapter books called Ponyville Mysteries, so I picked up the first in the
series.  My niece didn’t read it, but I did. I really liked the book and now I want to read more of the series! Sadly, the ebook versions are only available in Kindle, so I’ll just have to read the paperbacks.

I loved the book because it featured the Cutie Mark Crusaders who are some of my favourite characters
(the episode where they actually get their cutie marks makes me cry EVERYTIME).  It was a quick read
for me, but for a new reader it would take longer. The vocabulary is simple enough to understand for
older readers, but requires prior understanding of the show. As for continuity, it would take place after
Season 5, but it is harder to place it more accurately than that as I don’t believe that Lilymoon has shown
up in the show (as of Season 7 at any rate) and I'm not really sure how canon these books are.

I would suggest this for ages 7+ who have a familiarity with the series because you need prior
understanding of the show.