Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own. 🍃 Q: who’s your fave Kleypas wallflower? One brawny, sentimental Scotsman, one soothing, take charge daughter of an Earl who’s also a shipping company magnate, & a conflagration burning between them—& it’s all written by queen Lisa Kleypas. It sounds really good, right? It was. Also I have some big quibbles with it. Devil in Disguise is Kleypas’s latest Ravenels offering & it’s hot & romantic & packed with so many of those emotionally resonant Kleypas moments I love. Not to mention two leads who are immediately heart- & body- struck by the other. Throughout DID Keir MacRae & Lady Merritt Sterling can’t stay away from the other without suffering. But despite how beautiful of a writer Kleypas is & how her love stories make me feel, this romance feels lacking in moments of emotional intimacy (though the physical intimacy is 👍🏻) & two of the main conflicts feel unsatisfactorily resolved. Please see my CWs for a description of one conflict & its resolution which might be upsetting for some readers. If you believe in love soon after meeting, DID might work well for you. I still really enjoyed it but it didn’t capture me heart & soul. 4 ⭐️. Release date: today!
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Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own. 📖 Q: what’s your current read? I’m about 44% into Roan Parrish’s Lights on Knockbridge Lane. Sonia Hartl’s Heartbreak for Hire was an interesting read for me for lots of reasons, including the fact that there are things I really liked about it & some things that didn’t quite work for me. It’s bold & wry & comes out swinging at cutthroat academia—there’s also some quality steam, a hot + nerdy professor hero, & a heroine who’s adept at disguises & has a few epiphanies about her life & the direction it’s going in. Brinkley Saunders wants to own her own gallery where she can sell her artwork but in the meantime she’s helping pull off revenge schemes at Heartbreak for Hire. She targets Egos (men whose professional egos have gotten out of control & who have grossly wronged their female coworkers), although her judgmental, emotionally unavailable mom—chair of a psychology dept—thinks she’s an admin assistant. Then Brinkley is hired to target professor Markus Cavanaugh but she’s won over by his conversation & against her better judgement they end up hooking up. Until she runs away, reminded of what her job is. Later, he shows up at Heartbreak for Hire, one of its newest hires. I love how HRH goes after so many important topics including verbal & emotional abuse, toxic masculinity in the workplace, parental disappointment, & damaging behaviors & culture in academia. Also on my Very Much Enjoyed List is how Brinkley is snarky & daring—except when it comes to her gallery & confrontation—& Markus eats it up. But the book doesn’t have quite the emotional resonance I wanted in some moments & the reconciliation feels somewhat rushed (& also I was a little bothered by how some of it comes about.) On the whole I really enjoyed this one & Hartl’s style & I’m excited to see what she writes next! 4 ⭐️. Release date: 07/27
Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own.✈️ Q: how comfortable are you with flying on a scale of 1 (not) to 5 (extremely)? I can’t think of another romance author who writes really physical books like Adriana Anders does—the intensity of how the characters in the Survival Instincts series constantly combat extreme environments is relentless, the things they push their bodies to do is extraordinary, & the fact that she makes these setting-rich books feel compelling & beautiful & raw & at times, otherworldly, is really admirable. In Uncharted Leo is a pilot tasked with searching for Campbell Turner, who stole the same virus her team prevented a corp. named Chronos from stealing in the previous book Whiteout. Her team wants to find Campbell so they can keep the virus out of Chronos’s hands again. So when a local of Schink’s Station, Alaska says she knows where the man is, Leo takes off on a solo daring mission that leads to her in one dangerous situation after another with a man who is not Campbell. Who is fact Elias & who is a giant resourceful, mysterious stud. There’s steam in this book but also such an incredible sense of teamwork as Leo & Elias try to survive people trying to hunt them & cause them harm. Leo’s injuries give her a stunning vulnerability coupled with the emotional intimacy she & Elias share on the race of their lives. The hero is brawny & huge & bearded & sometimes likes to speak in grunts; he’s also been alone so long & the yearning that builds between them—as Leo processes her own loneliness—is so soft & so good. There’s a real sweetness to this book. It’s another 5 ⭐️ for me & I am so excited about where the series will go next. Release date: 08/31 [ID: A kindle tablet featuring cover is on a multi-striped hammock. Trees & river view in background.]
Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own. Q: what kind of motivational style do you prefer, gentle or “tough love”? Farrah Rochon’s The Dating Playbook gives me some of those same soft feelings I get from watching athlete human interest segments on tv. Featuring admirable characters w/ enough determination to win over a stadium, some steam, & a couple dynamic powered by heat but also friendship & compatibility, this romance is sweet. The world thinks former NFL star Jamar Dixon can’t play football anymore. Widely praised & then injured, Jamar’s now itching for a spot back on a team if he can only convince them that his body can handle it. So he contacts Taylor Powell, whom we met in book 1 of this series, a personal trainer who draws from her military dad as inspiration for her lessons. She agrees to help him, mostly because she needs the business & the funds to counteract some business-related debt she’s in. When Jamar panics at the thought of a reporter uncovering that he’s trying to get back into the NHL, Taylor pretends they’re dating. That makes everything more complicated when they realize they both want to work out & kiss. The Dating Playbook tackles a lot of big topics w/ aplomb: Taylor’s business concerns, Jamar’s guilt, her insecurities about a lack of college degree & a learning disorder, & more. Watching them both work through the things holding them back is emotionally fruitful & I really enjoyed the portrayal of Taylor, who is impulsive & regularly runs from problems & confrontation with Jamar but doesn’t hesitate with most people. Kudos also to Jamar, who’s a sensitive stud. He’s coolheaded but admires how Taylor claps back at offensive people & I love that dynamic. This book feels “real” to me—people who are trying the best they can & ultimately coming from a place of passion & love—& I really enjoyed it. 4 ⭐️ . Release date: 08/17.Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own. Isn’t it a delight when leads hook up early in the romance & the author still manages to maintain a good level of will they or won’t they (of course they will!)?! That’s what happens in Witches Get Stitches, Juliette Cross’s upcoming offering in her Stay a Spell series. Violet Savoie is a Divine Seer & tattoo artist & Nico Cruz is her business partner & also the sexy singer werewolf she hooked up with almost two years earlier. But Violet’s read her cards which seem to forecast a not so happy ending for them. Despite the high level of attraction that rages between them, she doesn’t want to pursue it—even if a big part of her does in fact want to pursue it. This book has so much of JC’s delicious trademarks: sexy sexy interactions between leads—you can feel how much they want each other. Sweetness—Nico wants Violet so bad & it’s actually painful for him even as she feels like home. Cool worldbuilding. A lovely set of ensemble characters w/ some suspense built up for future books. This series has been such an enjoyable ride & I really luxuriate in the steamy world the author offers. Though I didn’t totally appreciate one of Nico’s try-to-make-Violet-interested strategies, Witches Get Stitches is a fun, hot installment & I can’t wait to read more. 4 ⭐️. Release date: 07/20.Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own. It Happened One Summer is a dirty delight from beginning to end. I have spent time ranking my fave Tessa Bailey books & heroes before for funsies so please trust me when I say this book & Brendan + Alexis’s relationship are new faves & this book is basically a master class in romance. Socialite Piper Bellinger has just been arrested for helping to break into a pool & throwing a major party when her Hollywood stepdad gives her temporary marching orders: she’s a liability to his film funding & needs to move to Westport, Washington, the town where she was born—& the town where her fisherman father lived when he died—for three months while her latest scandal blows over. She can help with her dad’s bar while she’s at it. When Piper & her sister arrive, they find that the bar & the apartment are dumps & the people there—chiefly a hot but evidently married fisherman captain named Brendan Taggart—are less than charmed. But Brendan’s actually a widower. & against his wishes he is charmed. Relentlessly so. Where to start. Since this is a Tessa book I’m going to lead with the chemistry which is blistering. The sex scenes are filthy magic. Brendan is G O N E for Piper soon after they meet & it’s a joy seeing how different they are & yet how he doesn’t want her to change. He loves her vanity & her desire for praise & spectacle & also her giant heart & bravery & sense of humor. & three cheers for Piper, who by the end of the book knows who she is, what she wants, & who she wants it with. She’s learned what’s real & what isn’t. This book is funny too—Brendan on Insta 🤣🤣— & hit every emotional note for me. It’s a feast for my carnal soul, it made me smile, & it made me wish for a sec that a real Brendan & Piper are in Westport, living their best life…on every flat surface in their home. 5 ⭐️. Release date: 07/13Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own.If childhood friends to enemies to lovers + a redemption story is your jam, I recommend Annabeth Albert’s Out of Character. Jasper & Milo were best friends until high school, when Milo had a chance to turn popular jock & believed that necessitated leaving his best friend Jasper, a gamer who had recently attended a Rainbow Alliance meeting, behind. Throughout high school Milo’s new jock best friends harassed Jasper & Milo said & did nothing. Years later, when Jasper is in college & Milo is a college drop-out with a series of bad decisions behind him, they come back into each other’s orbit. This story is sweet & thoughtful, not unlike the main characters themselves. I love seeing how they mature individually, especially Milo, who has a lot to reflect on & who wants to put actions toward becoming the person he hopes to be, & how their personal efforts make them better partners & vice versa. The redemption story works for me, especially how Milo & Jasper have to reckon with his past behavior & figure out a productive & loving path forward, something made more difficult by the continued presence of Milo’s high school best friends—bullies—in his life & the fact that Milo hasn’t come out yet. The characterization of Jasper as someone who constantly wants to be heroic is a little heavy-handed for me but the warm fuzzies this book constantly gave me—the lack of a present-day huge crisis between them (excepting their weighty high school past)—,the loveliness of Milo’s desire to change his life & his behavior—won me over time & time again. 4.5 ⭐️. Release date: 07/06. |
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