About This Blog


This blog was started as a place to post book reviews. The books reviewed here will be mixed. Science Fiction, Fantasy, Romance, General Fiction, NonFiction and more. Both positve and negative reviews will be posted, as well as reviews for books written for all ages and all reading levels.

Many of the books reviewed here are ones that I have purchased for my own reading pleasure. Some, I receive free in exchange for reviews. Beginning in December, 2009 you will know which are the free ones if you read the final paragraph of my reviews.

Also of note: I choose what I will read, attempting to avoid the books on which I would end up writing a negative review... but I have been known to make mistakes. Thus you see some one and two star reviews here. Since I don't enjoy writing negative reviews, I only write them if the review was promised, or if the book was so exceedingly bad, I just had to say so. Regardless of the percentage of positive to negative reviews on this blog, I give my honest opinion each and every time, and have never received financial compensation for posting my reviews.

Note that, except for fair use portions quoted from some of the books reviewed, all copyright in the content of the reviews belongs to Lady Dragoness.


Thursday, January 15, 2009

Suspenseful and Entrancing

Seven Tears for Apollo
By Phyllis A. Whitney
Hardcover: 305 Pages
Publisher: Appleton-Century Crofts (1963)
Rated 4 stars of 5 possible

This romantic suspense novel is largely set in the Greek island of Rhodes. The beauty of this country comes through the author's descriptions of the places to which Dorcas, the story's main character, travels. The characters are realistic, the background believable enough that the reader is immediately transported into the story's gripping and suspenseful action. Dorcas is given reason to believe her husband has been killed in a plane crash near the beginning of the story. Not long after, strange things begin happening to her which she attributes to the people with whom her husband had been working.

One thing that might detract from the story for some is that Dorcas is overly impressionable for her age (early 20's) and that she's somewhat of a doormat - easily manipulated. Yet, if she were not that type of character, the rest of the story would not be as realistic or as captivating. While Dorcas does not always make the best choices for her situation, those choices are made somewhat more credible by her character type. If she were the strong, independent type of woman, the hair-brained choices she sometimes makes would not be as believable.

In all, I found Seven Tears for Apollo to be an enjoyable arm-chair voyage to the Island of Rhodes and recommend this book to readers of romantic suspense novels, with the caviat that there are a few scenes (mostly near the end of the novel) with a bit of violence.

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