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Written in Red
RECOMMENDED BY MANY: Written in Red by Anne Bishop is $1.99! Jane talked about it in a previous podcast, and many other people echoed that recommendation in the comments.
Sarah did a series of Hanukkah giveaways in 2014 and one of the questions was which author do you wish were more widely known? Bishop was a top answer, particularly for this series.
This is the first book in The Others series, and it has a 4+ star average. Readers who loved it couldn’t put it down – and at $1.99, that’s a low-risk trial price if you haven’t read it yet, eh?
As a “cassandra sangue,” or blood prophet, Meg Corbyn can see the future when her skin is cut–a gift that feels more like a curse. Meg’s Controller keeps her enslaved so he can have full access to her visions. But when she escapes, the only safe place Meg can hide is at the Lakeside Courtyard–a business district operated by the Others.
Shape-shifter Simon Wolfgard is reluctant to hire the stranger who inquires about the Human Liaison job. First, he senses she’s keeping a secret, and second, she doesn’t smell like human prey. Yet a stronger instinct propels him to give Meg the job. And when he learns the truth about Meg and that she’s wanted by the government, he’ll have to decide if she’s worth the fight between humans and the Others that will surely follow.
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All I Have
RECOMMENDED: All I Have by Nicole Helm is $3.99! This is a contemporary romance and was a nominee in the 2015 DABWAHA tournament. Elyse reviewed this title a couple years ago and gave it an A:
If you like books where the nerdy girl grows up and the hot guy likes her or books where sexual tension sizzles across a market table brimming with cabbages, this is your bag. It’s a quick read, but an enjoyable one.
Let the battle begin
Mia Pruitt wishes Dell Wainwright would keep his shirt on. The Naked Farmer lures customers by stripping to his perfectly worn jeans while he and Mia sell vegetables from competing stands at the farmers’ market. It’s time for a showdown, and they’re each in it to win.
Yet when both farms end up in jeopardy, Mia and Dell suddenly find themselves on the same team. If their rivalry was hot, their attraction is steaming, but they can’t seem to agree on a plan. If they could only learn to grow together, they might reap the best harvest of all…
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Lover Be Mine
Lover Be Mine by Nicole Jordan is $1.99! This has some Romeo & Juliet/Hatfield & McCoy type action going on between the hero and heroine. Some felt the second half of the book didn’t quite match the first half, but many found the romance to be sweet and charming. Have you read this one?
From New York Times bestselling author Nicole Jordan comes this Romeo and Juliet-like story-the scorching second book in her wickedly sexy Legendary Lovers regency romance series, following Princess Charming.
When Lord Jack Wilde’s cousin tries to match him with Lady Sophie Fortin, he isn’t too thrilled by the prospect since Sophie’s family has long feuded with the Wildes. Nevertheless he attends a masquerade ball in disguise and when he meets Sophie, he’s drawn to her. The attraction is mutual-until she learns who he is. Angry that Jack has tricked her into lowering her guard under false pretenses, Sophie declares she doesn’t ever want to see him again. But then Jack shows up in unexpected places, driving her crazy with his seductive advances. She doesn’t want her parents finding out that she even knows him, let alone succumbed to his passionate kisses. If her father discovers Jack courting her, blood could be shed. Yet, Sophie still wants him and realizes that in order for the star-crossed lovers to be together, they must try to somehow settle the bitter feud between their families once and for all.
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The Camelot Series 4-Book Bundle
The Camelot Series 4-Book Bundle by Ruthie Knox is $8.99! Knox is definitely an author that comes up often when it comes to contemporary romance book recs. The series features all of the book in the Camelot series. All four books have an average of about 3.8-stars on Goodreads. Which one is your favorite?
Showcasing USA Today bestselling author Ruthie Knox’s signature charm and wit, these sensual, relatable contemporary romances tell the story of the Clarks of Camelot, Ohio: regular men and women whose love lives are anything but. Now available in one enchanting eBook bundle is the entire series—the novels Along Came Trouble and Flirting with Disaster and the novellas How to Misbehave and Making It Last. Here’s your chance to discover this delightful new voice.
HOW TO MISBEHAVE
What woman can resist a hot man in a hard hat? As program director for the Camelot Community Center, Amber Clark knows how to keep her cool. That is, until a sudden tornado warning forces her to take shelter in a dark basement with building contractor Tony Mazzara, a hunk of a man whose sex appeal green-lights her every fantasy. With a voice that would melt chocolate, he asks her if she is okay. Now she’s hot all over and wondering: How does a girl make a move?
ALONG CAME TROUBLEAn accomplished lawyer and driven single mother, Ellen Callahan isn’t looking for any help. So when her brother, an international pop star, hires a security guard for her, Ellen’s more than a little peeved—until the tanned and toned Caleb Clark shows up at her door. Back home after a deployment in Iraq and looking for work, Caleb expected this job to be a breeze. But guarding the willful beauty—and resisting the temptation to mix business with pleasure—is harder than he ever imagined.
FLIRTING WITH DISASTER
Fresh out of a fiasco of a marriage, Katie Clark is hell-bent on kicking butt in her new job at her brother’s security firm. But on her first assignment, Katie must endure the silent treatment from a stern but sexy partner who doesn’t want her company. Sean Owens knows that if he opens his mouth, Katie will remember him as the geek who sat behind her in high school. If only Sean can take control of his decade-old crush, they just might make a perfect team—on the road, on the job, and in bed.
MAKING IT LAST
A hotel bar. A sexy stranger. A night of passion. There’s a part of Amber Mazzara that wants one moment when life isn’t a complicated tangle of house and kids and careers. Then, after an exhausting “vacation” with her family, she receives a surprise gift: a few days on the beach . . . alone. But she won’t be alone for long, because a handsome man just bought her a drink. He’s cool, he’s confident, and he wants to take Amber to bed for days. Lucky for them both, he’s her husband.
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I’m very concerned about the Camelot lady’s back. Is it broken? Is she holding on to him because she can’t actually stand up? Also, she could use a sandwich.
New Year’s resolution day 17 one clicked into oblivion.
I read Lover Be Mine a couple of years ago. I really don’t remember anything about it. I did write a review at the time though.
I highly recommend the Others series, but I did see a comment from someone a while back saying they’d been triggered due to self harm in the series.
“Written in Red” is not available for 1.99. At least not on Amazon 🙁
Written in Red gets really bad. It starts off interesting but the heroine goes from saving herself to literally being treated like an infant and having decisions made for her own good. Plus, the same events get repeated from multiple perspectives to pad out the book which leaves me as the audience feeling like the author thinks I’m stupid. Also, the shifter characters apparently can run sophisticated operations like a town but always speak in baby talk. Plus, everything more or less gets solved with deus ex machinas.
While I do think a lot of the ideas in this book are interesting and I can see it straining for complexity, I read up to the most recent one and it was a slog.
@Alix: It’s still showing up for me. Are you outside the US, by any chance? Unfortunately, most of our vendors are linked to our geographical location, which is in the States.
The Camelot lady clearly needs a back brace. Terrible posture.
I didn’t like “Written in Red,” either, JW. Generally, I enjoy fantastical powers resulting in badassery. Except our heroine falls short in the badass department. Her superpower is fortune telling while bleeding from a cut. Wow. I was squicked out by the idea of self-harm to access one’s powers.
@ jw says — omg thank you. I can’t stand this series. I do understand that her life didn’ t give her an opportunity for any growth, but every chapter slaps us in the face with it. I thought I was the only one who didn’t who wasn’t happy this series.
I did enjoy Written in Red though with some reservations. I did feel the heroine was a bit of a Mary Sue but felt that the back story might justify that. The self-harm seemed in be inborn. I had more problem with the fact that she had been kept as a slave and harmed by others for profit (the nerd in me wanted to write for prophet). I can see that if one had been a cutter that this could be hugely triggering and it also seemed very triggering along the lines of sex slavery.
I have read a lot of Anne Bishop. I enjoy her stories and she tackles some difficult concept. Child molest, for instance, in Daughter of the Blood. I do agree with Jan that she tends to repeat, over and over again, how badly her character has been treated, how much her character is loved, etc. This is her writing style and it is a little annoying. However, the stories keep pulling me in.
I haven’t read the entire Camelot series, but I read Making it Last some time ago and I remember it being excellent. The cover copy makes it sound a bit frothy and light, and it is decidedly neither of those things. It is a story about a marriage that is in peril, and both spouses have to stand back and reevaluate what they want and what they are willing to sacrifice. It felt like an extremely genuine exploration of how people can simultaneously grow together and apart, and what it takes to make a long-term relationship work.
I kind of want to reread it now.
Love Ruthie Knox! My favorite Camelot book was probably #3 Flirting with Disaster, because hello, hot nerd alert. Hot nerds are always my favorite. I am thinking about reading the whole series again now.
I thoroughly enjoyed Written in Red and the other books in the series. I had been warned about the self-harm trigger beforehand, so maybe that was why it didn’t squick for me as much as one would expect. I did think she was a bit of a Mary Sue, but if your entire existence is based on what you can learn from books, wouldn’t that seem possible? (You can identify a coffee pot, but you don’t have any idea how to use one.)
What I really enjoyed about the story though was that the Others were not just people with a bit of supernatural thrown in. This is a re-read series for me and I can’t wait to read the next one! I do always warn people before recommending, though.
I read Written in Red after seeing it recced here and was unimpressed.
I’m struggling with Written in Red. I understand the heroine being naïve, given her circumstances, but I can’t understand why everyone else in the world is almost as naïve as she is. Human/Other conflict has been the rule since the moment of introduction, but no one ever sees it coming when it happens in real time. There’s a lot of distrustful thinking, but it disappears in thought and action as soon as it comes in contact with the object of distrust. “I suspect you of treachery, but come on in, make yourself at home, may I offer you a beverage and some sensitive information?” I can’t believe anyone is dangerous when they have the survival instincts of a box of rocks. Given the frequency with which humans test boundaries, they’re not too intimidated, either.
The cadence of every sentence is the same. My kid asked me if I was reading nursery rhymes because I was muttering, “Dah-dah dah-dah dah-dah dah-DAH. Dah-dah dah-dah dah-dah dah-DAH.” It’s monotonous.
The cutting is having no effect on me (though I admit to global emotional detachment from this story, so I doubt even a trigger personally addressed to me would have much effect), but I’m going to be disgusted when this woman described as behaving mentally half her age gets sexualized, which I have a feeling will be happening shortly because she basically had her bodice ripped a minute ago, and we all know what that means.
Wow. I initially one-clicked Written in Red but that was before anyone commented. I’m thinking maybe I should return it and get it from the library instead. Thank you ladies for the heads up.
Also, I can’t recommend Ruthie Knox enough (and what is with my auto-correct changing that to Rutherford?).
kitkat9000 – I’ve read all 3 of the books in the series so far, and loved them. (and no, Red Benton, she’s not sexualized, worry not!) YMMV indeed!
I really enjoyed Written in Red but Anne Bishop was one of the authors I devoured in my early teens so I think my reward centers must be hardwired to her prose. Compared to the following books the first one was a bit laggy and the characterisations hadn’t come quite together. She was doing a lot of set up I feel she could have more easily spaced over the next books. I get immense satisfaction in the wishfufillment that Anne Bishop delivers when her villains meet their ends because its the sort of thing that rarely happens in real life but her stuff can be mighty triggering, they need their own warning page before starting. There is this weird sexual element going on but I passed it over as it being Anne Bishop being Anne Bishop so I think a reread is in order for me since the comments have brought up some things I didn’t consider the first time around.