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Tougher in Texas
Tougher in Texas by Kari Lynn Dell is $1.99! This is the third book in the Texas Rodeo series, though it can be read as a standalone. I’ve read the book before this one and I enjoyed Dell’s writing. She captures emotion really well, and I’m not usually a huge fan of cowboys!
He’s got five rules
And she’s aiming to break them allRodeo producer Cole Jacobs has his hands full running Jacobs Livestock. He can’t afford to lose a single cowboy, so when cousin Violet offers to send along a more-than-capable replacement, he’s got no choice but to accept. He expects a grizzled Texas good ol’ boy.
He gets Shawnee Pickett.
Wild and outspoken, ruthlessly self-reliant, Shawnee’s not looking for anything but a good time. It doesn’t matter how quickly the tall, dark and quiet cowboy gets under her skin—Cole Jacobs deserves something real, and Shawnee can’t promise him forever. Life’s got a way of kicking her in the teeth, and she’s got her bags packed before tragedy can knock her down. Too bad Cole’s not the type to give up when the going gets tough…
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Never Dare a Wicked Earl
Never Dare a Wicked Earl by Renee Ann Miller is 99c! This is a debut historical romance with some forced proximity elements. Readers really loved the writing by Miller, though some aren’t too sure about the book’s historical accuracy. It has a 4-star rating on Goodreads.
They are the infamous lords, unrepentant rogues whose bad behavior makes for good gossip among the ton. But every scoundrel has his secrets, and it takes a special touch to reveal the true hearts behind their devilish disguises.
Known as a brazen philanderer, Hayden Milton, Earl of Westfield, is almost done in by a vengeful mistress who aims a gun at a rather essential part of his anatomy—but ends up wounding his thigh instead. Recuperating in his London town house, Hayden is confronted by his new medical attendant. Sophia Camden intrigues him, for behind her starched uniform is an enticing beauty better suited for bedding than dispensing salves and changing bandages.
Unshaken by his arrogance, not to mention impropriety, Sophia offers Hayden a dare: allow her ten days to prove her competency. If she resigns in exasperation like her two predecessors, she will be beholden to this wicked seducer. As a battle of wills begins, Sophia finds herself distracted by the Earl’s muscular physique . . . and discovers that the man within longs only for a second chance to love.
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Royal Scandal
Royal Scandal by Marquita Valentine is 99c! This is a contemporary romance that I mentioned in January 2017’s Hide Your Wallet. Readers say this romance takes some suspension of disbelief, but if you can do that, you’re in for a fun-filled romance.
Fairy tales do come true—and so do tabloid scandals! Bestselling author Marquita Valentine kicks off a juicy contemporary romance series with a novel about a prince whose best-laid plans go deliciously awry when he marries the maid next door.
Forced to flee to the United States with his siblings after their parents’ assassination, Crown Prince Colin Sinclair takes it upon himself to become the caretaker of his family while hiding out near Charlotte, North Carolina. But after a decade in hiding, the secret’s out and Parliament demands that Colin wed a princess of their choosing. Unwilling to play their game, Colin decides to marry an American instead, and he has the perfect candidate in mind.
As a home-service professional, Della Hughes doesn’t believe in storybook endings. But when her best friend and secret crush reveals that he’s a flesh-and-blood prince, she doesn’t know what to think. Still, she’ll do anything for Colin, including becoming his wife—in name only, of course. But when their plans to stay purely platonic go by the wayside, their fake honeymoon turns all too real. After a week of white-hot nights, Della can no longer deny her feelings—not with a happily ever after so tantalizingly close.
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The Pryce Family: Volume One
The Pryce Family: Volume One by Nadia Lee is 99c at Amazon and Barnes & Noble! This set collects books one through three in The Pryce Family series. It seems like all three of the books feature billionaires and one of them as a secret baby plot!
The Billionaire’s Counterfeit Girlfriend
Curvaceous beauty Hilary Rosenberg doesn’t believe in love. She only goes out with nice guys who won’t expect passionate romance–until a notorious womanizer demands she repay a favor with four weeks of counterfeit dates.
Billionaire playboy Mark Pryce doesn’t do relationships. In fact, he’s never been with the same woman for more than three months. But when his matchmaking mother tries to sabotage his bachelorhood, he needs a stand-in girlfriend to deflect her. Luckily, Hilary owes him. But as they start to spend more time together, he finds himself wanting to break his first rule: never get too close…
The Billionaire’s Inconvenient Obsession
Deep in debt and stalked by a deadly conman, Jane Connolly needs a job and a safe place to stay. With no one to turn to in an unfamiliar city, she can’t refuse the kindness of a magnetic stranger.
A former mixed martial arts fighter, billionaire Iain Pryce couldn’t walk away from a small town girl in a big city, especially when it’s obvious she’s in trouble. But her sweet spirit threatens the single principle he’s been living under for the past thirteen years: don’t lose control…
The Billionaire’s Secret Wife
Having grown up in a dysfunctional family, Vanessa Pryce knows the futility of relying on a man for happiness. But there is one man who makes her want to ignore the truth: the irresistible Justin Sterling, her no-strings boyfriend since their college days together. Even after they break up, she continues to meet him for passionate encounters while keeping the relationship secret. No need to make public something that’s doomed.
Billionaire tycoon Justin Sterling understands Vanessa’s fears. But he’s about to change the game they’ve been playing… Because when one drunken night of sex leads to pregnancy, he’s going to move heaven and earth to rewrite their rules.
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“The Sandalwood Princess” by Loretta Chase is $1.40 for Kindle. It’s one of her early Regencies and the portrayal of Indians (India Indians, not Native Americans) is a pretty awful stereotype, so ymmv. I think it was a pretty decent book except for that.
I started “Never Dare a Wicked Earl” because I thought the premise was awesome (historical ladies in medicine, yay!) but I ended up DNFing about 40% of the way through because I was kind of…bored? There’s some great dialogue in the beginning of the book but once the initial sparring between the characters passed, I started to find it really generic (the hero is particularly un-compelling), and the steamy bits include a lot of tropes I wish would go away forever. Interested in what others think, especially if they’ve finished the book. Does it pick up again?
Bearly in Control by Milly Taiden is $1.99 (in KU, so most likely Amazon-only), and I’m debating. Hero is a bear shifter with amnesia, so lots of potential for delicious crazysauce… or fiery indigestion. One-stars complain of too many butt puns (puns are my love language, so quality overrides quantity) and too much sex (I do have my limits, but “too much” to some people is “any,” so this isn’t helpful without quantification). If anyone’s more susceptible to curiosity than I am, here’s a link:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01HEKF8OG
The first three books of The Paper Magician series are on sale at Amazon for $1.99 each. I’ve been dancing past this series every time it shows up on sale. It I think I might jump in for this deal. Anyone read these and have a recommendation?
Tessa Dare’s Goddess of the Hunt is $1.99 at Amazon.
The summary of “Never Dare a Wicked Earl” basically sounds like “entitled rich guy sexually harasses a woman who’s just trying to do her job.” I know that kind of set-up has a long history in the genre, but I’m just…not there for it anymore.
(I’ll admit that I feel the same way about governess/employer romance as well, which is why I liked Courtney Milan’s A Right Honorable Gentleman so much – no feelings are expressed until the governess is leaving for another position.)
@ cbackson
Yeah, and it’s so often made worse by she-really/secretly-wants/likes-being-sexually-harassed.
Someday I want to read a romance novel in which the heroine is being sexually harassed by her very hot very rich very entitled boss, and it seems like the setup for the same old story, while in fact the hero is actually like the boss’s secretary or something, and he’s a really nice dude who doesn’t sexually harass anyone and is totally on the heroine’s side about everything, but it’s set up so smoothly and hits the usual notes so well that you don’t figure that out until about halfway through the book.
They lost me at an earl named “Hayden.”
@cbackston – That seems to be the plot of a lot of the billionaire books. It seems as though the author thinks “well, where might someone meet a billionaire? They don’t go to grocery stores… probably won’t meet cute at the movies… I know! At work! She can be his secretary! And he can be a sleazeball sexual harasser!”
Or maybe not that last sentence, but that’s how so very, very many of them come across.
@Emily C: I read all three [Paper] Magician books last week. Loved the world building of the first book (in fact, in all three), but found the basic story line to be rather repetitive over the three books. But, I *did* read all three and don’t regret doing it.
That’s an oops, forgot the BC during that one time a month I’m fertile now I’m pregnant baby. It’s only a secret baby if no one, you know, knows there’s a baby.
@anonymous that’s kind of the setup to The Governess Affair by Courtney Milan. The difference is the hero doesn’t know what happened between his employer and the heroine at first (also trigger warning for rape). I haven’t read it in years, but I recall enjoying it.
@Katie Lynn: The Governess Affair is a fantastic explosion of the governess/employer trope because it hones in on the truth that most sexual encounters between governesses and their employers were rape. Being in service – at any level – was a fraught experience for many women and involved a lot of risk of abuse. I just have a hard time seeing that romanticized now – even authors I otherwise love (like Elizabeth Hoyt) can’t get me over it.
@anonymous: my version of this is a romance novel where the alpha male shifter decides the heroine is his Fated Mate and fanatically pursues her but the hero is actually her next-door neighbor, who is an accountant, plays on his company softball team, is getting into homebrewing, and totally respects the heroine’s right to choose who she wants to spend the rest of her life with.
Not sure if this is technically a sale, but I clicked on one of the sidebar ads (yay ads!) for a Scottish romance with a pretty cover and it turned out to be
HTML ate my comment, I give up. Here is what I meant to say:
Not sure if this is technically a sale, but I clicked on one of the sidebar ads (yay ads!) for a Scottish romance with a pretty cover and it turned out to be an anthology with a pre-order price of 99c.
And here is the link: https://www.amazon.com/Ladies-Stone-Scottish-Romance-Anthology-ebook/dp/B07B7P6CGF/
@MsCellanie: You’d think sometimes they could, like, have them randomly get stuck in an elevator together, or end up seated together somewhere because she won a cool contest, or hell, it’s the 10’s, they could just match on Tinder. (I know, I know, Tinder is the End of Romance As We Know It, but honestly, what does it say about our culture that we think sexual harassment in the workplace by your superior is more romantic than swiping right on a hot guy?)
@KatieLynn: I have that on my Kindle, but I’ve been saving it. (I have strict rules about TBR-pile management.) Really really really looking forward to it, though. Everything I’ve heard about it has been awesome.
@cbackson: YES. SO MUCH YES. I have an increasingly long mental list of trope-implosion plots like this, and I’m adding yours RIGHT NOW. Fuck that shifter guy.
“Never Dare A Wicked Earl” was not great. I don’t want to include any spoilers but the hero just becomes more overbearing, secretive, and kind of toxic. There are several plot points that I did not care for, and of course there’s a crazy fatal attraction subplot, which – gross. I really can’t recommend it.
@BKmeggie good to know it does not improve! I had a feeling I wasn’t going to love where it was going when I stopped so I think I probably won’t finish it.
@EllenM: No, no, don’t skip the rest, at least not in its entirety- just read the last 30 pages or so and see if your assumptions were right. It’s what I do whenever a book either doesn’t grab or loses my interest. A decent indicator for me not to bother with a particular author is if I’ve guessed correctly with no surprises. How it reads also helps with deciding whether to try another.
This way even what might otherwise be a DNF still counts as read and the ending usually solidifies my decision. I’ve only encountered a handful of books the endings of which compelled me to read what I’d skipped. This actually enables me to read more while enhancing the overall experience for me. I’ll give a book 30 or so pages to hook me before skipping to the last 30. No more duds!
Slogging through text makes no sense in this day and age (Started it, gotta finish it, ugh! Do not miss those days!) as there are simply too many books to choose from to waste the time and effort.
Y’all… if you’re not enjoying a book, for whatever reason, quit. There’s no prize for martyring through entertainment that feels like drudgery. Reclaim your time.