Simply Cheris. . .

Remember your first time? Not that first time. . .but the first time you got really excited about someone else's opinion of your work? As much as we authors (some of us anyway) try to take reviews with a grain of salt and then pretend we don't cry in our wine when someone says our book was trash. Oh, that's just me? Well, today, I saw that Rumor Has It , received a starred review in Publisher's Weekly . Here's the review:  Rumor Has It Cheris Hodges, Author DETAILS Hodges ( Love After War ) infuses this contemporary with complex and vivid love, friendship, and loyalty. Public-relations professional Liza Palmer is never off duty, so she ditches a wedding planning session with her best friend, Chante, and heads to the office of Chante’s fiancé, Robert, to discuss an idea for his North Carolina senatorial campaign. When Liza interrupts Robert having sex with a woman on his desk, she is outraged by his behavior, and then hurt by Chante’s r...

I'll admit it, reviews make me nervous. I get all up in my feelings about reviews -- not enough to become one of those authors behaving badly , though.  So, when I was alerted to Publisher's Weekly review of Love After War ,  I was a little nervous. Then I read it. This neatly plotted and well-written urban romance is packed with Hodges’s trademarks: sensuality, standout characters, and sophisticated drama. While on assignment in Los Angeles, photographer Dana Singleton runs into her charming ex-boyfriend Adrian Bryant, who owns a club there. An unexpected kiss arouses old longings, but Dana wonders whether Adrian will break her heart again. He wants to come clean with her about his side of their breakup and his plans to exact revenge upon the wealthy father who abandoned him and his mother, but Adrian always stops short of the full truth. Then, I was feeling like this:              ...