MaryH reviewed Lovers in Their Fashion on Amazon.com, and I’m so delighted. This is what she wrote. Thank you, Mary!

This is the kind of book I became a reviewer for, July 29, 2013      

I wrote this review for Manic Reviewers, for whom I write three or four reviews each month. I’m reproducing it here because I loved this book more than almost any and I wanted to give it as wide an audience as possible. When I first became a Manic Reviewer, I saw myself finding unknown gems on the Web and bringing them to a wider public. I know now that I was mistaken. Like unusual vegetables, unknown books are mostly unknown for a reason–they’re not very good. After two reviews with so few stars I didn’t want them published for fear of hurting the writers’ feelings, and having taken myself off the reviewer list for what turned out to be the worst book I had ever read, I adopted a different approach. Now, I look for the authors who have shown they can write good English and the publishers who (a) exercise some kind of selection over what they publish and (b) make sure the book is properly edited before it reaches the public. Lovers in Their Fashion is the second Mandrill Press book I have reviewed, and the second book by S F Hopkins. I’m not sorry I chose to review it because I’m giving it the full five stars–something I almost never do.
This is not an erotic book–there is some sex in it and it’s very satisfying sex, but primarily this is a contemporary romance between two people who come fully to life in Hopkins’s hands. Alice Springer started out with not very much but by the age of 30, through her own talent and hard work, is the retail director of high fashion company House of Pharaoh. John Pagan is about to become chief operating officer of a multi-national company. As it happens, I am PA to the chief operating officer of a multi-national, which may be why Lovers in Their Fashion and I connected so well, and I can say with certainty the world he moves in is extremely well portrayed–it’s authentic. Of the other characters, Alice’s American friend Merrill and the villainous Martin Planer are also very well drawn. When reading a story like this there is a natural assumption that the central two characters will go through a few ups and downs before getting to the inevitable happy ending. I was astonished by the size of the wall S F Hopkins throws up between them and the apparent impossibility that they could climb over it. My heart was in my mouth till the last page–but, my word, I was rooting for them. I don’t expect to read many books this good this year.