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Something About You
RECOMMENDED: Something About You by Julie James is $1.99! This is the very first James book I read and it’s the first in the FBI/US Attorney series. James does competence porn really well and this ranks high on my enemies to lovers catnip.
There’s something about the New York Times bestselling Julie James…
FATE HAS THROWN TWO SWORN ENEMIES…
Of all the hotel rooms rented by all the adulterous politicians in Chicago, female Assistant U.S. Attorney Cameron Lynde had to choose the one next to 1308, where some hot-and-heavy lovemaking ends in bloodshed. And of all the FBI agents in Illinois, it had to be Special Agent Jack Pallas who gets assigned to this high-profile homicide. The same Jack Pallas who still blames Cameron for a botched crackdown three years ago—and nearly ruining his career……INTO EACH OTHER’S ARMS
Work with Cameron Lynde? Are they kidding? Maybe, Jack thinks, this is some kind of welcome-back prank after his stint away from Chicago. But it’s no joke: the pair is going to have to put their rocky past behind them and focus on the case at hand. That is, if they can cut back on the razor-sharp jibes—and smother the flame of their sizzling-hot sexual tension…Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
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The Stranger
The Stranger by Anna del Mar is $1.99! This is book two in the Wounded Warriors romantic suspense series. There’s some hefty catnip here with a grump hero and a couple stranded together in the Alaskan wilderness. However, despite the suspense elements, some readers found it to be a little boring.
When a mysterious stranger is your only hope…
The scars of the past have left their mark, both physical and emotional, on former military pilot Seth Erickson. Off-grid in the far reaches of the bitter Alaskan wilderness, he wants only to be left alone with his ghosts. But he can’t ignore a woman in need—beautiful, stranded and nearly frozen with fear.
Summer Silva never imagined that the search for her missing sister would leave her abandoned on a wintry back road, barely escaping with her life from a cold-blooded killer for hire. Now, hiding out in the isolated cabin of the secretive wounded warrior who saved her, Summer knows she must do what she fears most. Putting her trust in a stranger is all she has left.
All defenses are down
After a fiery first night together, Seth and Summer are bound by a need as powerful as a Bering Sea superstorm—and vulnerable to enemies just as fierce. For Seth, reawakened by desire, there is no sacrifice too great, no memory too dark, to keep Summer safe. But murder and treason lurk everywhere and Summer may not survive Alaska’s ruthless winter.
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The Dry
RECOMMENDED: The Dry by Jane Harper is $2.99! I read this after Elyse’s review and found it to be a quick read. Elyse really enjoyed this mystery and gave it an A in a Lightning Review, there is a content warning though:
The Dry is an excellent, solid mystery. I loved the setting of a rural community struggling through a drought that sets everyone on edge and amplifies tensions.
A small town hides big secrets in this atmospheric, page-turning debut mystery by an award-winning new author.
After getting a note demanding his presence, Federal Agent Aaron Falk arrives in his hometown for the first time in decades to attend the funeral of his best friend, Luke. Twenty years ago when Falk was accused of murder, Luke was his alibi. Falk and his father fled under a cloud of suspicion, saved from prosecution only because of Luke’s steadfast claim that the boys had been together at the time of the crime. But now more than one person knows they didn’t tell the truth back then, and Luke is dead.
Amid the worst drought in a century, Falk and the local detective question what really happened to Luke. As Falk reluctantly investigates to see if there’s more to Luke’s death than there seems to be, long-buried mysteries resurface, as do the lies that have haunted them. And Falk will find that small towns have always hidden big secrets.
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Two Steps Forward
Two Steps Forward by Graeme Simsion and Anne Buist is $1.99! Sarah read this one and gave it a B- grade:
While I can see and enumerate the flaws I found in my own experience with this book, I also very much enjoyed it, and feel honored to have experienced the Camino with the characters, and the journey within the story itself.
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Rosie Projectcomes a story of taking chances and learning to love again as two people, one mourning her husband and the other recovering from divorce, cross paths on the centuries-old Camino pilgrimage from France to Spain.
“The Chemin will change you. It changes everyone…”
The Chemin, also known as the Camino de Santiago, is a centuries-old pilgrim route that ends in Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain. Every year, thousands of walkers—some devout, many not—follow the route that wends through quaint small villages and along busy highways alike, a journey unlike any other.
Zoe, an artist from California who’s still reeling from her husband’s sudden death, has impulsively decided to walk the Camino, hoping to find solace and direction. Martin, an engineer from England, is road-testing a cart of his own design…and recovering from a messy divorce. They begin in the same French town, each uncertain of what the future holds. Zoe has anticipated the physical difficulties of her trek, but she is less prepared for other challenges, as strangers and circumstances force her to confront not just recent loss, but long-held beliefs. For Martin, the pilgrimage is a test of his skills and endurance but also, as he and Zoe grow closer, of his willingness to trust others—and himself—again.
Smart and funny, insightful and romantic, Two Steps Forwardreveals that the most important journeys we make aren’t measured in miles, but in the strength, wisdom, and love found along the way. Fans of The Rosie Project will recognize Graeme Simsion’s uniquely quirky and charming writing style.
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I love Julie James’ FBI/US Attorney series! (Full disclosure: I wanted to be an FBI agent – I’m a CPA, so financial crimes would have been a natural fit for me – but was too nearsighted to pass the physical. My nephew’s now hoping to join.) “Something About You” isn’t my favorite in the series (that’s “It Happened One Wedding”), but they’re all good reads.
Ahh, Julie James. I adore the competence porn in her books, and the peek she gives into a wealthy, privileged version of Chicago that I’ve never personally encountered in my own time as a resident. Her women are fierce, her men are smart, and both are good at their jobs.
Most of her books delight me, and I’m looking forward to trying this one. I will say I had to hard DNF (read: threw it at the wall) another book in this series, SUDDENLY ONE SUMMER, because her heroine was obsessed with living at Trump Tower and… look. I’m from Chicago. Most of us have feelings about that building. It’s a local thing. But it was still damn fine writing and I’m always tempted to give it another try when it pops up on sale. She’s just THAT good.
I love Julie James. I’m always wondering when she’ll put out another book – I don’t think she’s published anything since 2017.
Here to say that I also love Julie James, but I hate that new cover! It looks more like a women’s fiction book, not like the fun, sexy great book it is!
My favorite Julie James is PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT, which is pre-FBI/AUSA series, but still takes place in Chicago and is competence porn about attorneys as well. She definitely takes dramatic license for some of the technicalities about the industry, but overall gets the law right, which is important to me.
@NomadiCat, word on SUDDENLY, for the same reasons.
Also the coffee snob in me gets annoyed that they keep going to Starbucks, instead of Intelligentsia, which would be closer to the FBI and AUSA offices in the federal buidling and court house.
The Dry is really good.
I haven’t been able to read Julie James since Practice Makes Perfect. That “hero” was such an irredeemable misogynist that it made me see all her other characters in a new, and unfavorable, light. If seeing a wealthy white man from a Good Family use his privilege and lies to undermine and sabotage a woman from a modest background personally and professionally while claiming that he lives in a meritocracy is going to fill you with rage, give that book a HARD pass.
I read Something About You first, and mostly liked it, but in retrospect, that hero is a jerk too.
@NomadiCat: A number of romances written and published prior to the 2016 election feature T—-p as a reference or cameo character. I’m sure most writers would eliminate those references if they were republishing their books.
@DiscoDollyDeb: Many years ago now, I read a book with a billionaire titled British hero who dabbled in real estate, and the author compared him to he that shall not be named in her author notes. Even then I wondered why not Richard Branson… he has the money, the title, the nationality, and he’s a good looking man. Plus her hero had a house on Palm Beach on a hill. (Palm Beach is an overgrown sandbar. West Palm Beach on the mainland is built on swamps. Not a hill in sight.) Dropped that author from my must-read list.
I do love Julie James though. Maybe time for a re-read.
@DiscoDollyDeb: I’m currently re-reading GOING POSTAL by Terry Pratchett and delighting in the prospect of the villain, Reacher Gilt (who owns “Tump Tower”), getting his comeuppance at the end. At least one book that needs no post-election edits!
Glad I’m not the only one who’s been irritated by a geography error. I once got annoyed when I read Soulless by Gail Carrier where Canterbury (in the UK) being described as a port! It’s Inland, I think she meant Dover. Anyway these errors can be avoided by simply looking it up on Wikipedia so no excuses.
Please the romance God’s, can we have a new Julie James?! My personal favorite would be It Happened One Wedding which is much a love letter to Chicago as it is a romance.
Also, it is becoming a bit of a thing for people visiting Chicago to take pictures of the tower with their middle finger obscurng the T.
Also, big thumbs up for Two Steps Forward. I really enjoyed it. It has a versimilitude that movies about the Camino de Santiago lack.
The Dry is fantastic, though my favourite Jane Harper is The Lost Man. Harper has a real skill in capturing the desolation and isolation of rural Australia.
@Michelle, you’re right about the hero in PRACTICE being a privileged @$$hole. I think I overlook it because I’m a sucker for the “I’ve liked you this whole time, but I thought you didn’t like me so I was defensive” storyline. Also a little bothered by the legal aid lawyer being portrayed as not “manly” enough. A problematic fave, I guess.
I recently reread “Something About You” for the first time since it was published and I was struck by how much it’s aged. The hero is a jerk with caveman moments, and the subplot about a woman making a false claim of workplace sexual harassment left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. (Also the ending did not seem remotely believable to me, but that’s a different complaint.) I would still say I overall really like James, but I see more flaws in her books than I used to.
(Oops, meant I reread “Just the Sexist Man Alive,” not “Something About You.”)
If that was a typo, Emma, it’s a great one!