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Sleepless in Manhattan
Sleepless in Manhattan by Sarah Morgan is $1.99! This is the first book in a new series and readers loved how fun it was and note there’s some pretty great female friendships. However, others mention slow pacing and the lackluster chemistry between the hero and heroine.
USA TODAY bestselling author Sarah Morgan introduces a sizzling new trilogy about three best friends embracing life—and love—in Manhattan
Cool, calm and competent, events planner Paige Walker loves a challenge. After a childhood spent in and out of hospitals, she’s now determined to prove herself—and where better to take the world by storm than in the exhilarating bustle of Manhattan? But when Paige is let go from the job she loves, she must face her biggest challenge of all—going it alone.
Except launching her own events company is nothing compared to hiding her outrageous crush on Jake Romano—her brother’s best friend, New York’s most in-demand date, and the only man to break her heart. When Jake offers Paige’s fledgling company a big chance, their still-sizzling chemistry starts giving her sleepless nights. But can she convince the man who trusts no one to take a chance on forever?
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Maybe This Christmas
Maybe This Christmas by Sarah Morgan is $1.99! This is a contemporary holiday romance. The hero is a former champion skier and single dad and the heroine is his best friend. Friends-to-lovers catnip, ahoy! A few readers weren’t too fond of the hero, but many loved how the transition in the couple’s relationship was handled. It has a 4.1-star rating and is the third and final book in the O’Neil Brothers trilogy.
This winter, ex-skiing champion, reformed heartbreaker and single dad Tyler O’Neil has only one mission—making sure his daughter, Jess, has the best Christmas ever. The fact that his best friend, Brenna, is also temporarily moving into his chalet at the overbooked Snow Crystal resort is a delicious distraction he’s simply going to have to ignore. Theirs is the one relationship he’s never ruined, and he’s not about to start now.
Ski pro Brenna Daniels knows all about the perils of unrequited love—she’s been in love with Tyler for years. But living with him is absolute torture…how can she concentrate on being his friend when he’s sleeping in the room next door? Then when Tyler kisses Brenna, suddenly the relationship she’s always dreamed of feels so close she could almost touch it. Could this be the Christmas her dreams of a happy-ever-after finally come true?
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Game Play
Game Play by Lynda Aicher is 99c! This is the first book in the Power Play series. While I gave it a C grade, I’ve heard that the subsequent books are better:
The book started off wonderfully. I immediately took a shining to Sam, our heroine. Samantha Yates is the only child to a hockey-loving family. She’s played for most of her life – childhood, college, even for the women’s team at the Olympics. The woman has a damn silver medal, and makes me feel totally guilty for eating Haagen Das for dinner. Used to operating in a boy’s club sport, Sam is a tomboy, and I found it refreshing.
What follows next is a series of circumstances (injuries, training sessions, etc.) that all lead back to the same argument. Sam doesn’t want anything serious because of the above reasons, but Dylan can’t ignore their chemistry.
Over and over and over again. For me, it really bogged the book down. They’d play house while Dylan is healing and they’d have this argument. They’d go out on a date and they’d have this argument. They’d have sex, then have this argument.
One night, one time, nothing more. That’s all it was supposed to be. They’d agreed their first night together would be their only night together—and Minnesota Glaciers defenseman Dylan Rylie was fine with that. Giant hickeys and claw marks on his ass had never been his style, even if the very memory of Samantha Yates’s merciless sexual energy gets him hard within seconds. He needs to focus on getting a better contract, not mind-blowing orgasms.
One night, one time, nothing more. Fresh off representing the US at the Games and with nowhere else to play, Samantha gave in to one night of frantic passion with the Glaciers’ brawny hotshot. She couldn’t get hurt—not if she controlled the outcome. And she planned to leave Minnesota soon, anyway. She didn’t expect to be recruited to coach Dylan after they’d gotten down and dirty.
When brutal on-ice workouts lead to kinky locker room sessions and “one night” falls by the wayside, Samantha insists on keeping things casual, despite Dylan’s quiet hope for more. But when Dylan goes down—hard—and his career is in jeopardy, Samantha is the first one by his side. What will it take to keep her there after he’s healed?
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An Untamed State
An Untamed State by Roxane Gay is $2.99! This is a highly recommended piece of contemporary fiction. It’s harrowing and emotional as it chronicles a woman’s kidnapping, rescue, and recovery. This is Gay’s debut novel and there are definitely some trigger warnings for this book. For those who have read it, what did you think?
Roxane Gay is a powerful new literary voice whose short stories and essays have already earned her an enthusiastic audience. In An Untamed State, she delivers an assured debut about a woman kidnapped for ransom, her captivity as her father refuses to pay and her husband fights for her release over thirteen days, and her struggle to come to terms with the ordeal in its aftermath.
Mireille Duval Jameson is living a fairy tale. The strong-willed youngest daughter of one of Haiti’s richest sons, she has an adoring husband, a precocious infant son, by all appearances a perfect life. The fairy tale ends one day when Mireille is kidnapped in broad daylight by a gang of heavily armed men, in front of her father’s Port au Prince estate. Held captive by a man who calls himself The Commander, Mireille waits for her father to pay her ransom. As it becomes clear her father intends to resist the kidnappers, Mireille must endure the torments of a man who resents everything she represents.
An Untamed State is a novel of privilege in the face of crushing poverty, and of the lawless anger that corrupt governments produce. It is the story of a willful woman attempting to find her way back to the person she once was, and of how redemption is found in the most unexpected of places. An Untamed Stateestablishes Roxane Gay as a writer of prodigious, arresting talent.
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I DNF’d Sleepless in Manhattan because I thought the hero was a massive douchenozzle, I couldn’t see what the heroine found appealing about him, and I could not imagine them ever achieving a HEA because he was such an asshole. I also found his “reasons” for them not being together to be patronizing and ludicrous, and his subsequent behavior childish and frankly insulting, so the conflict felt totally forced. I did love the friendship between the three women, but unfortunately it wasn’t enough to make up for the hero. I normally adore Sarah Morgan’s work, but that book was so off-putting that I have no intention of continuing the series.
That said, I really enjoyed the previous O’Neil Brothers books I read, so I’m going to buy Maybe This Christmas.
Sleepless in Manhattan is one of the only romances I’ve ever read where I found the heroine’s job fascinating (she and her friends launch their own event-planning firm) and skimmed/skipped all interactions between the hero and heroine. I honestly don’t remember their relationship very well because I didn’t a —- but Dread Pirate Rachel’s description above sounds about right.
Also, at least two or three times, one of the characters fawned over what a clever phrase “Sleepless in Manhattan” was. The author oohing and aahing over her own title felt really strange (doesn’t help that I don’t find the romantic-movie-plus-area-of-New-York series title conceit particularly clever myself.)
I have no plans to read anything else in the series (the romantic setups of the other books sound like they’ll have similar issues to those of this one) but the library copy I read of Sleepless in Manhattan had a short, charming story at the end about one of the secondary characters, called “Midnight at Tiffany’s.” I think the brief format worked well for a kind of “spontaneously explore the city and fall in love” thing.