Romance Reader on a Quest!!!

Sometimes I just don't know what I want to read. I'm tired of some of the authors I've followed for years. In my quest for some new ones, I checked out the RT Book Reviews website, the online companion to the magazine we use here at the library. They have a lovely search engine there that is worth blogging about. Check it out here.

You can search by keyword, author and title, of course. You can even search by the RT star rating. But the part that will have you all swooning (c'mon, we/re romance readers after all!) is the genre/type search capability for every category of romance you can think of.

Like paranormals? You can narrow your search to everything from your favorite type of creature to psychics.

If you want to control how hot the scenes can be, you can search first in either "Erotic Romance" or "Inspirational" and then break them further into categories.

Historicals especially are divided into all kinds of time period, style and locale you can think of. Imagine being able to come up with a substantive list of a specific sub-sub-subgenre! I was a little disappointed not to find anything in a category search for "Historical Romances: Gothic". (My grandmother is a fan of them so I'm always on the lookout.) However, a straight keyword search came up with a ton of hits where the word "Gothic" was used descriptively in reviews, several of which were categorized as "Top Picks".

A category search for "Romantic Suspense: All Romantic Suspense" came up with an overwhelming 1177 titles. But I was able to sort them by review date, RT star rating, or relevance to the search terms I used which made it a little more useful. RT also does reviews on other genre fiction you can search - mystery, thriller, sci-fi and suspense to name a few.

This website is also excellent for keeping up with the romance field in a broader sense. The main page of the website contains links to a daily blog, RT video interviews with authors and the newest "Top Picks" in several categories. You never know when you might find the next jewel of an author lurking there.

Check it out! I'd love to hear what you think.

~Michele

Strawberry Hill, the Gothic revival style manor built by Horace Walpole. Walpole authored The Castle of Otranto considered by many to be the first Gothic romance, making Walpole the founder of the genre.