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Flare Up
Flare Up by Shannon Stacey is $1.99! This is a price-matched Kindle Daily Deal and part of the Boston Fire series. As the description notes, the heroine has some abuse in her backstory, which may or may not work for you as a reader. Personally, I am a little over it, but YMMV.
Meet the tough, dedicated men of Boston Fire – and the women who turn their lives upside down.
Nursing a broken heart while everybody around him seems to be drowning in happiness has Grant Cutter wondering whether staying with Engine 59 – or even Boston Fire – is in his future. It’s tempting as hell to pack up what fits in his Jeep and hit the road. But then a 911 call brings the woman who shattered his heart back into his life, and he knows he won’t ever be able to fully leave her in his rearview mirror.
For a few months, Wren Everett had thought the nightmare of her past was behind her and she might live happily ever after with Grant. Until she got the phone call letting her know the time her ex had spent in jail for assault hadn’t cooled his temper or determination that she belonged with him. Cutting ties with Grant was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do, but it was also the only way to keep him safe.
Now that Grant is back, he’s not letting Wren push him away again. Even with the trust issues between them, Wren dares to hope she and Grant might have a future together after all…if they’re willing to fight for it.
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Prince Charming
Prince Charming by Rachel Hawkins is $2.99! This is the first book in the Royals series and it’s since undergone a cover redesign. Some UK readers felt a few of the details were wrong in terms of setting, while others say this one left them with a huge smile on their face. I thought it was cute.
Meet Daisy Winters. She’s an offbeat sixteen-year-old Floridian with mermaid-red hair; a part time job at a bootleg Walmart, and a perfect older sister who’s nearly engaged to the Crown Prince of Scotland. Daisy has no desire to live in the spotlight, but relentless tabloid attention forces her join Ellie at the relative seclusion of the castle across the pond.
While the dashing young Miles has been appointed to teach Daisy the ropes of being regal, the prince’s roguish younger brother kicks up scandal wherever he goes, and tries his best to take Daisy along for the ride. The crown–and the intriguing Miles–might be trying to make Daisy into a lady . . . but Daisy may just rewrite the royal rulebook to suit herself.
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When the Duke was Wicked
When the Duke was Wicked by Lorraine Heath is $1.99! This is the first book in the Scandalous Gentlemen of St. James series. Though Heath is a favorite to some romance readers, I do get the sense that she’s also largely underrated compared to the bigger names. Do you have a favorite Heath?
They are England’s most eligible bachelors, with the most scandalous reputations. But for the right woman, even an unrepentant rogue may mend his ways…
Lady Grace Mabry’s ample inheritance has made it impossible for her to tell whether a suitor is in love with her—or enamored of her riches. Who better to distinguish beau from blackguard than her notorious childhood friend, the Duke of Lovingdon?
With no interest in marriage, Lovingdon has long lived only for pleasure. He sees little harm in helping Grace find a proper match. After all, he’s familiar with all the ploys a scoundrel uses to gain a woman’s favor. He simply has to teach the lovely innocent how to distinguish honest emotions from false ones. How better than by demonstrating his wicked ways. But as lessons lead to torrid passion and Grace becomes ensnared in another man’s marriage plot, Lovingdon must wage a desperate gamble: Open his heart fully—or risk losing the woman he adores…
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Darling Rose Gold
Darling Rose Gold by Stephanie Wrobel is $3.99! This is a pretty recent release and one that was on my to-buy list. It has “ripped from the headlines” plot, which many of you probably recognize if you were as obsessed with the Gypsy Rose Blanchard case as I was.
Mothers never forget. Daughters never forgive.
In her compulsive, sharply-drawn debut, Stephanie Wrobel peels back the layers of the most complicated of mother-daughter relationships.
For the first eighteen years of her life, Rose Gold Watts believed she was seriously ill. She was allergic to everything, used a wheelchair and practically lived at the hospital. Neighbors did all they could, holding fundraisers and offering shoulders to cry on, but no matter how many doctors, tests, or surgeries, no one could figure out what was wrong with Rose Gold.
Turns out her mom, Patty Watts, was just a really good liar.
After serving five years in prison, Patty gets out with nowhere to go and begs her daughter to take her in. The entire community is shocked when Rose Gold says yes.
Patty insists all she wants is to reconcile their differences. She says she’s forgiven Rose Gold for turning her in and testifying against her. But Rose Gold knows her mother. Patty Watts always settles a score.
Unfortunately for Patty, Rose Gold is no longer her weak little darling…
And she’s waited such a long time for her mother to come home.
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FYI, the Rachel Hawkins book was originally called ROYALS (in addition to the cover redesign).
Wow, a lot of these are on my TBR pile!
Darling Rose Gold is called the recovery of Rose Gold in the UK. I prefer the US title
That top-rated review of Prince Charming is a thing of beauty. There’s nobody like a pissed-off Scot for creative vocabulary.
I only read two Lorraine Heath books because I thought the descriptions for others didn’t sound like my thing (and I confirmed that scanning one of them), but I really liked the two I read, Beyond Scandal and Desire (illegitimate son of a duke seeking revenge but falling in love with the woman he’s trying to use for that) and especially Lords of Temptation, which was recommended here (he’s a nobleman who’s now a boat captain because of Reasons (and she only knows the captain part), and incredible drawn to the lady he’s taking to Crimea – he thinks it’s to see her fiance, but it’s a lot more complicated and sad and beautiful. And, of course, they fall in love).
The writing and stories reminded me of Meredith Duran. In fact, Beyond Scandal is similar to Luck be a Lady, if anyone is looking for a similar story – I enjoyed both even though revenge plots are tricky and I don’t often root for the HEA. This one sounds pretty good – I’ll have to try a sample and see!
Brooklynaire by Sarina Bowen is free on Amazon and iBooks. This was a 4-star book for me.
I have liked some of Lorraine Heath’s books a lot, especially her westerns, but that particular book isn’t one of them.
I just started reading Lorraine Heath in the last month, and I am enjoying her books. I’m on book 5 of her A Sin for All Seasons series, that is the series @OK mentioned, Beyond Scandal and Desire being the first one. I’m excited to read more of her work!
Sorry to go OT, but since I know there are more than a few WEBTOON readers here, I think others might want to join my rant, lol. So I looked at their “Greenlight” section, where the 3rd chapter in a pilot needs to have at least 60k likes within a week to get greenlit to be a full series. The latest one, Madame Outlaw, is about an heiress who wants to escape her fiance (in the stupidest way possible, but that’s beside the point).
The setting, at least in these 3 chapters, is Fredricksburg, VA in 1842. So I’m already like, uhhhh, are they actually going to show slaves? Narrator: No. Even the stableboy is white. In an estate in Virginia, 1842. And this series is on-track to be greenlit. I normally love WEBTOON, but I’m just sighing so hard at this series right now.
Re Prince Charming, I always have a difficult time when the main love interest is so young! Am I supposed to root for a 16-year-old girl to fall in love and get married? In historicals I can suspend my discomfort, because it was pretty much the norm to marry so young back in the long ago. But a modern book? Makes me very uneasy!
When the Duke was Wicked was my first Heath and made me a fan. I think it’s a good introduction to her writing and is at the start of a new series, with the next generation from another series,
Heath has this way of writing in a way that feels like the good parts of old school romance without (most) of the bad parts. Her books will often give you moments of both sad and happy tears; there’s a depth of emotion that is somewhat lacking in recent historical romance. She also has genuinely surprising twists in some of her books.
@Wait, what: I found the ending to be believable. It was more of an HFN that satisfied me!
“Mermaid-red” since when is this a colour of hair?
@Jazzlet: Since 1989.
I want to know what a bootleg Walmart is. How do you out-cheap cheap?
Prince Charming was so cute and fluffy. I confess to skimming the first few chapters until they arrived in Scotland because gimme all the castles and kilts NOW. It’s like a Scottish vacation with your high school BFF.
Seconding Kathleen’s comment on the top rated review (on goodreads) – it’s a manifesto on what modern Scotland is, and what being Scottish is, in the context of books. Amazing. I ‘heard’ it in my head in the voice of Sarah from Netflix Giri/Haji … wow.
(The comment that turned into a review)
Lorraine Heath is a treasure (whose books/series I can and do easily mix up with Loretta Chase’s – anyone else do that?). Her current series (the family-by-choice created from the group of unwanted babies left to die with the “baby farmer” who instead raises them all together with great love) has been hit or miss for me, but still, all of those books have been more emotionally involving and satisfying than a lot of the other HR authors I read. “When the Duke Was Wicked” is probably the one book of hers that sticks with me the most. The cover blurb does it no justice; it makes it sound like a ton of other HRs we’ve read. But when I see this cover, I remember exactly what this story entails and especially what all of the feels were.
The flow of this story is not perfect (there is the villain-with-villainous-plans who takes up too much valuable book-real estate), and there are quite a few standard tropes to be maneuvered around (i.e., age difference has always made him see her as a younger sister vs. her longtime crush on him; life-defining tragedy in both of their recent pasts; his drunken manwhoring as a result of his), but what Heath does with those tropes is to create an atypical piece of heartbreaking and ultimately inspiring HR. There really needs to be TW/CWs (but I don’t know how to hide them), so be warned that:
before this story begins, he has lost his wife and child, and she has almost lost her life to an illness that quite honestly shocked me, because I’d never read another HR that addressed it in the heroine’s history & I don’t think I have again since this one.
This is not one of the many romances where they just needed to use their damn words to overcome their misunderstandings and then all is fab with the world. These two have to go through (not around, above, under or any other preposition of avoidance) the agonizing work it takes – in one of them – to want to rejoin the living and to accept that another horrible loss will always be a possibility of that renewed life, and in the other, to demand the love that goes with living, no matter the duration of that life. Chase meshes these two survivors into a couple who never simply just “fall” into love, but instead grow to accept that their sorrows have had a large part in creating the people that they have become now: people who deserve to love – and be loved by – the other. If you can handle a challenged HEA, the $1.99 is a great investment.
See – I did it again:
Heath, NOT Chase!
Heath, Heath, Heath!