Rosie is a romance novel lover & Aiden is a romance denouncer & when they’re paired together for a class assignment (bc their acrimony is too much for the class dynamic!), things do not go smoothly at first. 

I wasn’t initially sure what to make of Katie Holt’s Not in My Book. The leads’ enemies to lovers relationship is intense & hair-trigger, for one thing, & that tumult rises between them at the beginning of the book & at the end, in the 3rd act break-up. 

But this contemporary ended up really winning me over, & I loved the moments of vulnerability & steam between Rosalinda & Aiden, how they engage with each other’s families, & the friendship that ends up being so important to them both. 

This isn’t a flawless romance for me but it is a romance with a lot of heart & I was definitely rooting for the leads to stop fighting so HARD already & channel that passion into something more productive for all of us lol.​

Hannah Tate, Beyond Repair by Laura Piper Lee started off a bit wobbly for me—the voice is too much IMO at first—but by the end l was cheering for this heartfelt book that’s a bit women’s fiction, a bit romance, with some quality steam & a definite HEA.

At the beginning of the book Hannah is a mom to baby Bowie & in a long-term relationship with his dad, who routinely calls her a “mess” (supposedly affectionately). But they soon break up & she takes Bowie to her mom & step-dad’s mountain cabin, despite her reservations about taking on the stress they inevitably cause her.

Newly fired & single, Hannah Tate has plenty of motivation to decide what she wants to do with her life. Helping her renovate her mom’s horror AirB&B is River, a relaxed, kind, & very attractive contractor who prefers to live outside of society’s dictates.

This book delves into some big topics—inadequate parenting, technology reliance, not respecting FMLA in the workplace, & more are covered in this book—& on the whole it’s skillfully done.

I ended up leaning into the quirky, adorable, & imperfect characters, the theme of renewal & finding joy, & the love & acceptance that permeates the book.

There are things in this one that I wouldn’t enjoy as much written by another author in a different style, but I think Laura Piper Lee writes it successfully & with obvious heart & good intentions.

If you can get past the beginning chapters, which come across a bit too aggressively IMO, I think you’ll find a shining story about a woman who drops the shitty things in her life & chooses happiness.

Sparks fly when an occult expert and a disgraced archeologist become rivals with benefits in this steamy opposites-attract romance from "go-to author" Rosie Danan (The New York Times Book Review).

Riley Rhodes finally has the chance to turn her family’s knack for the supernatural into a legitimate business when she’s hired to break the curse on an infamous Scottish castle. Used to working alone in her alienating occupation, she's pleasantly surprised to meet a handsome stranger upon arrival--until he tries to get her fired.

Fresh off a scandal, Clark Edgeware can’t allow a self-proclaimed “curse breaker” to threaten his last chance for professional redemption (or his traitorous heart). After he fails to get Riley kicked off his excavation site, he vows to avoid her. Unfortunately for him, she vows to get even.

Riley expects the curse to do her dirty work by driving Clark away, but instead, they keep ending up on top of each other. Turns out, the only thing they do better than fight is fool around. If they’re not careful, by the end of all this, more than the castle will end up in ruins.

​While other women inherited a knack for singing or swearing from their grandmothers, Riley Rhodes received a faded leather journal, a few adolescent summers of field training, and the guarantee that she'd die alone.

Okay, fine, maybe that last thing was a slight exaggeration. But a unique talent for vanquishing the occult, passed down from one generation to the next like heirloom china, certainly didn't make dating any easier. Her matrilineal line's track record for lasting love was . . . bleak, to say the least.

Curse breaking-the Rhodes family talent-was a mysterious and often misunderstood practice, especially in the modern age. Lack of demand wasn't the problem. If anything, the world was more cursed than ever. But as the presence of an angry mob in any good folktale will tell you, people fear what they don't understand.

To be fair, Gran had warned Riley about the inherent hazards of curse breaking out of the gate. There was, of course, the whole physical danger aspect that came part and parcel with facing off against the supernatural. Riley had experienced everything from singed fingertips to the occasional accidental poisoning in the name of her calling.

As for the personal pitfalls? Well, those hurt in a different way.

She'd grown up practicing chants at recess and trying to trade homemade tonics for Twinkies at lunch. Was it any wonder that, through middle school, her only friend had been a kindly art teacher in her late fifties? It wasn't until tenth grade when her tits came in that guys decided "freaky curse girl" was suddenly code for "performs pagan sex rituals." Riley had been almost popular for a week-until that rumor withered on the vine.

It was like Gran always said: No one appreciates a curse breaker until they're cursed.

Since she couldn't be adored for her talents, Riley figured she could at least get paid. So, at thirty-one years old, she'd vowed to be the first to turn the family hobby into a legitimate business.

Still, no one would call her practical. She'd flown thousands of miles to a tiny village in the Scottish Highlands to risk life and limb facing down an ancient and unknowable power-but hey, at least she'd gotten fifty percent up front.

Hours after landing, strung out on jet lag and new-job nerves, Riley decided the village's single pub was as good a place as any to start her investigation into the infamous curse on Arden Castle.

The Hare's Heart had a decent crowd for a Sunday night, considering the total population of the village didn't break two hundred. Dark wood-paneled walls and a low ceiling covered in crimson wallpaper gave the already small space an extra intimate feel. More like an elderly family member's living room than the slick, open-concept spots filled with almost as many screens as people that Riley knew all too well back home.

Hopefully after this job put her services on the map she could stop picking up bartending shifts in Fishtown during lean months. For now, her business was still finding its feet. The meager income she managed to bring in from curse breaking remained firmly in the "side hustle" category-though it was still more than anyone else in her family had ever made from their highly specialized skills. Riley had always thought it was kind of funny, in a morbid way, that a family of curse breakers could help everyone but themselves.

Whether out of fear or a sense of self-preservation, Gran had never charged for her practice. In fact, she'd kept curse breaking a secret her whole life, serving only her tiny rural mountain community. As a consequence, she'd never had two nickels to rub together. She and Riley's mom had weathered a few rough winters without heat, going to bed on lean nights-if not hungry, then certainly not full.

Riley had never faulted her mom for ditching Appalachia and the family mantle in favor of getting her nursing degree in scenic South Jersey. It was only because she'd never been good at anything practical that Riley found herself here in the Highlands, hoping this contract changed more than the number in her bank account.

If word got out that Riley had taken down the notorious curse on Arden Castle, she could go from serving small-time personal clients to big corporate or even government jobs. (She had it on good authority they'd been looking for someone to remove the curse on Area 51 since the seventies).

Perching herself on a faded leather stool at the mahogany bar that divided the pub into two sections, Riley had an excellent vantage point to observe the locals. Up front in the dining room, patrons ranging in age from two to eighty occupied various farm tables brimming with frothing pints and steaming plates.



Excerpted from Do Your Worst by Rosie Danan Copyright © 2023 by Rosie Danan. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.