Meet The Book Reading Gals

It has been an amazing year for us here on The Book Reading Gals. We’ve had a lot of fun getting to know the reading tastes of our readers and ourselves. I know that I have personally expanded those that I read, and Melanie as well is now reading books that she wouldn’t normally read either.

We hosted the RomCon Reading Challenge, and from what we heard at RomCon a lot of people participated. We’ve had most of our favorite authors on to talk about their books, and even gotten to talk to a couple of them on the phone, fulfilling something on my bucket list. And then there have been all the amazing books that we’ve had the chance to read and review.

To say that it has been an adventure is an understatement.

As we reached our one year mark, can you believe it has been one year Melanie realized that we needed to add some more reviewers as there were so many books we wanted to read and talk about but we didn’t have enough time read them all, well we did if we gave up sleep,and our family begged us not to do that. So we asked a couple of people to join us. So now we have more Reading Gals and so far we are loving it.

We’ve decided to re-introduce you to Melanie and I and also to our new reviewers Janon, and Angela, so that you know who is reviewing these books we are telling you about.

Heather, who am I? Well first I’m a wife, I married my best friend and personal hero, and I’m a  mom to two amazing boys. I’m a foreign language and literature teacher, even if I’m not currently working as a teacher.  I’m an avid reader, aspiring author, future world travel, eternal student, and a book pimp. My sister claims that if I had a nickel for every time I told someone to read a book or an author I would be a multimillionaire.

If my husband and kids had to describe me they would say languages and books. I love to learn new languages, and well I can and do disappear into books on a fairly regular basis. I’v recently gone back to school to get an MS in ED focusing on Teaching English Language Learners.

I don’t remember exactly what the very first romance books I read was but I know I was 13 and it was a Harlequin Romance, I can even still tell the entire plot of the very first two books that I read. I then devoured every single HQN that my little library had. When I was 14-15 I discovered Johanna Lindsey and her book Brave the Wild Winds, and that was that. From then on I read the bodice ripper romances with Fabian on most of the covers (not that I cared who was on the cover it was all about the story). I will read just about anything now, if you were to look at my bookshelves you would see a very eclectic mix of romance books. I read them all contemporary, historical, paranormal, urban fantasy.  Nora Roberts, Julie Garwood, Nalini Singh, Alyssa Day, Erin Kellison, Jessa Slade, Delilah Marvell, Lauren Dane, Stephanie Laurens, Melissa Schroeder, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Kerrylnn Sparks, and of course Johanna Lindsey are just a few of the many books on my bookshelf.

I’m Janon and I’m a Colorado Native.  I’ve been a book worm since I was very young and started reading romance in the 7^th grade.  Now I read most sub-genre’s of romance and can’t get enough of it.

My first and true love in reading is Historical Romance.  It’s hard to pick a favorite author in this one but I’ve loved all books that I’ve read by Julia Quinn, Lisa Kleypas and Lorraine Heath.  My favorite all time historical romance book is The Game by Brenda Joyce – it’s a total bodice ripper romance written in the late 1980’s.

I really enjoy Urban Fantasy and Paranormals. Karen Marie Moning is one of my favorites, I took the day off from work when the last book in her Fever Series came out. Kim Harrison and Jeaniene Frost are also favorite reads. Sherrilyn Kenyon is one my favorite authors, I have Acheron’s symbol tattooed on my back. Jennifer Ashley and JR Ward are favorite reads as well.

I love to read Contemporary’s that have a sports theme, and count Jill Shalvis, Robyn Carr and Kate Angells as top picks.  I’m a big Janet Evanovich fan.  The Stephanie Plum series is my guilty pleasure.  Whenever I need a good laugh I go back and reread Chapter 13 from Hard Eight.  It cracks me up so much that it makes me cry.

Hi! I’m Angela, another sister-in-law!  I’ve been married for eight years and have two daughters, Ella is five and just started kindergarten and Zoe is almost three.  I’m a SAHM (stay at home mom) and I love it!  It gives me time to do two of my favorite things, read and play video games. My favorite is The Sims series! I also sell romance products (lotions, potions, lingerie and more) at parties! My website is www.SlumberPartiesbyAngelaSands.com, check it out!

I’ve been reading romance novels since I was about thirteen.  My mom let me borrow some of her books and I started reading Harlequin’s and Gothic Romance books. You know the ones… on the cover is a huge house with a light on in one window and a girl running for her life away from it in the dark.  I still remember some of the plots from those books <sigh with nostalgia>.  As I got older I discovered other genre’s and my favorite is Sci-Fi/Fantasy, with Piers Anthony, Douglas Addams and Mercedes Lackey leading the way as my favorite authors.  Then I discovered Jacqueline Carey and Anne Bishop and found a new love, Fantasy Romance.  I never forgot my love of Romance and I would borrow the new Nora Roberts books from Melanie when I was between series.  I love Paranormal Romances and I’m glad that my favorite genre’s have collided!

First off let me start out by thanking everyone who stops by to visit us, you have made this last year so enjoyable.  For those newbies out there my name is Melanie and I started this adventure with Heather who is my sister-in-law.  I can’t believe it has been a year already! It has been so much fun and I must admit a little stressful at times but overall I have loved doing this!  Right now I am even more excited as we have a couple more people joining us, our friend Janon who we met at RomCon last year and our other sister-in-law Angela.  I have to say it is nice to have others in my family who love books as much as I do.

I wish my life revolved around the books I want to read, but alas I need money to pay for my addiction, and the numerous things I love to do with my nieces and nephews, working towards being the best aunt in the world so watch out. When I am not at my day job I am doing homework, gasp, still can’t believe I decided to go back to school, I question my sanity daily.  Working on getting a degree in Accounting than possibly on to Business Management, some day I will put all of this experience and knowledge to good use.

My love of books started at an early age; in fact I can’t remember a time when I was not surrounded by books.  It was probably around the age of thirteen when went to the library and discovered the romance section, the library quickly learned who I was and would groan whenever they saw me coming, it never failed I would check so many books in and out that their computers would freeze up.  I don’t remember the first romance I picked up but I do know I was transported to another world.  I was able to escape for a few hours and visit other times and countries.  I could learn about our history, other cultures, solve a mystery, or get a little scared by some paranormal activity, all with a happy ending.  That is the key, a happy ending, because really who does not want one of those.  As I got older I tended to gravitate towards the historicals and contemporaries more than anything else and pretty much stuck with that for a few a while.  Now I am venturing out a little, I love to find debut authors and I am not quite as picky about the genre, in fact if I were to look at my favorite books from this year they would be paranormals: Here are some of my faves: Virna de Paul, Erin Kellison, Erin Quinn, Leslie Parrish, Jude Devereaux, Lisa Kleypas, Johanna Lindsey, Brenda Joyce, Melissa Mayhue, Carly Phillips, Kristin Higgins, Catherine Coulter, to just name a few.  I guess to sum it up I love romance and I am grateful for the chance to read as much as I possibly can.