Hi Everyone,

It's gone live over at Booktopia, so here is my full top-ten list of the year for 2009!

Kate's Top Ten Romance Novels of the Year

10. Branded by Fire, Nalini Singh. For true passion, heat, and conflict. For having a heroine that shows strength, and for creating a believable compromise and happy ending. For being a strong enough love story to carry a book that also moves the series' plot forward.


9. Poison Study, Maria M. Snyder. For creating an atmosphere both beautiful and deadly. For creating a love story both subtle and strong.  For a world that is both intensely familiar and utterly foreign. For the hours of sleep lost while reading it. For having my favourite cover of the year.


8. Not Quite a Husband, Sherry Thomas. For excelling at prickly, flawed, thoroughly three-dimensional characters. For taking risks with plot, character, and setting. For having a heroine who recognises her limits and doesn't do anything stupid in the middle of a battle. That last point especially. For redemption.

7. To Catch a Bride, Anne Gracie. For an interesting twist on setting and locale. For memorable, loveable, almost-touchable secondary characters. For depicting power in a historically accurate manner, and making it understandable and palatable to a modern reader. For the laughter. And for pirates.


6. "This Wicked Gift" in The Heart of Christmas, Courtney Milan. For a full story with character and plot development. For a despicable bargain that somehow manages to be romantic. For characters outside the sphere of balls and gowns. For fully fleshed-out characters that learn and grow. For doing it all in a novella.

 

5. What Happens in London, Julia Quinn. For reminding me why you remain my favourite auto-buy. For the wit and charm and lightness that infuses the writing and makes characters sparkle to life. For the laughter. For delivering.


4. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Jane Austen and Seth Graeme-Smith. For taking the most revered romance story and turning it completely on its head. For doing so irreverently. For doing so hilariously. For finding new ways to display Eliza's strengths. And for the readers' group questions at the end. (Though I don't think we'll thank you for the sheer amount of copycats that are going to follow!)

3. Dogs and Goddesses, Jennifer Crusie, Anne Stuart, and Lani Diane Rich. For the fun the authors had, which shows in every word. For making me laugh out loud and having to put the book down just so I could catch my breath, only to lose it the second I started reading again. For having an 'older' heroine and not making a big deal about it.  For making dogs talk. For making dogs talk and making it so completely realistic that I didn't even bat an eyelash.

2. Shadowfae, Erica Hayes. For lyrical, lush, beautiful writing. For playing with tenses and tones - and making it work! - to differentiate between characters. For setting it in Melbourne, and making it come alive in a way that I'd never seen it before. For a secondary character so vivid that emotional attachment was inevitable, the end of his plotline devastating. For an impossible choice, and a satisfying ending. For having a multicultural romance and not making a big deal about it. For sex and blood and poison and life.

 

aaaaand....number 1:

 

1. Beyond Heaving Bosoms, Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. For actually reading romance novels and loving them. For straight talk and gushing (but only when deserved). For being able to laugh at the genre, while still respecting the hell out of it. For making it easier to say 'yes, I love romance novels, and there's nothing wrong with that'. And for the Choose-your-own-adventure.