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The Witness
The Witness by Nora Roberts is $2.99! This is part of today’s Kindle Daily Deals and one of Roberts’ romantic suspense titles. The cover of this one also boasts that it’s her 200th book, which holy hell. I thought Elyse reviewed this one previously, but my memory is failing me today.
Daughter of a controlling mother, Elizabeth finally let loose one night, drinking at a nightclub and allowing a strange man’s seductive Russian accent lure her to a house on Lake Shore Drive. The events that followed changed her life forever.
Twelve years later, the woman known as Abigail Lowery lives on the outskirts of a small town in the Ozarks. A freelance programmer, she designs sophisticated security systems—and supplements her own security with a fierce dog and an assortment of firearms. She keeps to herself, saying little, revealing nothing. But Abigail’s reserve only intrigues police chief Brooks Gleason. Her logical mind, her secretive nature, and her unromantic viewpoints leave him fascinated but frustrated. He suspects that Abigail needs protection from something—and that her elaborate defenses hide a story that must be revealed.
With a quirky, unforgettable heroine and a pulse-pounding plotline, Nora Roberts presents a riveting new read that cements her place as today’s most reliably entertaining thriller
author—and will leave people hungering for more.Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
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Indiscreet
Indiscreet by Mary Balogh is 99c! This is the first book in the Horseman Trilogy. Readers found the romance to be pretty darn sweet, though Balogh also balances these things with pretty serious issues like PTSD. However, some found the romance a bit slow going at times. This is also a rerelease, as the original book was published in 1997.
In the country visiting his twin brother, Viscount Rawleigh longs for a little diversion and beautiful young widow Catherine Winters seems like easy prey. But Rex’s target is a lady of virtue, and when she roundly rejects his improper proposal to become his mistress, Rex finds himself faced with a delectable challenge.
Catherine knows she must fight the indecent feelings the Viscount arouses within her—feelings that bring to life a past she had sought to escape—even as the handsome lord refuses to relent in his amorous attentions.
But even though she knows one kiss could bring her to ruin, temptation proves an insurmountable foe—and Catherine can not ignore the beating of her treacherous heart…
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Love Your Frenemies
Love Your Frenemies by Mina V. Esguerra is 99c! This looks like a friends to enemies to lovers romance and is part of the Chic Manila series. It is on the shorter side, at less than 150 pages, but I think the price of less than a dollar is totally worth it.
Kimmy Domingo was the kind of girl everyone hated and envied — until her fiancé dumped her a week before their wedding. Soon after, she quit her job, hopped on a plane, and just hid from everyone who knew her. A year later and she’s back in Manila to be maid of honor at a wedding she can’t miss.
Kimmy’s home because she’s ready to start over, but she also knows that some people at that wedding were responsible for the mess her life turned out to be. The first step to recovery? Cutting off the ones who caused her troubles to begin with: her best friend and her first love.
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At Your Service
RECOMMENDED: At Your Service by Sandra Antonelli is 99c! Claudia wrote a guest review for this one before becoming a staff reviewer. She gave it a B+:
At Your Service is a very well written, funny, fast-paced read, and one that offers the rare opportunity to dwell among mature characters, emotionally and otherwise. For all that and for best use of a toilet brush in a romance novel, this book gets a B plus from me.
After three years in the employ of a former British army officer turned Risk Assessment Specialist, widowed butler Mae Valentine is familiar with Major Kitt’s taste for scrambled eggs, bourbon, and brawling. Kitt knows of Mae’s fondness for order, her beloved dead husband, and the millions the man left her in trust. Their easy bond is tested the day Mae kills the man sent to murder her and the trust fund vanishes.
Soon, a volcano, a hand roasting in an oven, and a fish named Shirley accentuate sinister machinations that involve Mae and the missing money. To keep her safe from women in ugly shoes, homicidal bankers, and Mafia henchmen, Kitt risks exposing his true profession, which doesn’t trouble him as much as being in love with a woman who’s still in love with a dead man. If he can’t protect Mae, he’ll lose the best butler—and scrambled eggs—a spy ever loved.
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I recently read At Your Service and it’s very entertaining, but also very different from the usual romantic suspense. There is suspense,and there is romantic development, but I can’t put my finger on how to describe it. The plot is twisty and convoluted and given that people we are suppose to trust are lying, it’s impossible to tell what’s actually going on. I felt like the attraction and relationship is underdeveloped, but the writing is superb and clever.
The Witness is pure Nora Roberts and one of my favorites, at least on audio where Julia Whelan does an excellent job with the narration. While I think the romance could have been developed better, and I think Brooks was too quick to override Abigail’s repeated,”No,I don’t want to date you,” but I liked Brooks and Robert’s did a good job developing his character. The book starts off with a band and then let’s your heart rate come back to normal for a while. A great romantic suspense escape.
Have to try ‘At Your Service’!
I tried In Your Service during the holidays and DNF. I wanted to like this book, the idea of Daniel Craig’s James Bond having a female butler older than him was appealing. Unfortunately I didn’t find characters sympathetic (too much stiff upper lip from her, and underhanded dealings from him) and I felt no chemistry between them beyond the scrambled eggs. I’d classify this more as espionage with a significant relationship subplot, so going into the book with this in mind might make it better maybe?
Snagging Love Your Frenemies, which I haven’t read before!
Indiscreet is my favorite Mary Balough book! And I’ve read almost everything she’s written. She knows how to write a rake ! This book may be her darkest but beautiful believable connection between the main characters. I try not to reread it too often . The next in the series , Unforgiven, is good too
I really like The Witness. It has one of my favorite openings of any Nora Roberts novel.
I also DNF’ed At Your Service. The supposedly deeply competent butler does something really stupid at the beginning in order to get the plot rolling, and the whole thing was much too close for fan fic for me. I’ve come to realize that fan fic is just not my thing.
If I’m remembering the Mary Balogh novel correctly, it was a bit ahead of its time in how it handled the sexually assertive hero trope. The hero takes the heroine’s lack of interest as a challenge and has to slowly realize that he’s actually harassing her, not seducing her. I thought his change of heart and behavior were really well done.
I liked At Your Service right up until there was extremely insufficient groveling from the hero!
I am a great fan of Sandra Antonelli’s novels, including the In Service series and her earlier books like Driving in Neutral and Basic Renovation. Next to You is a hands down favorite. I love how Antonelli turns Ian Fleming on his ear with her take on the British spy novels. The heroines are in their sexy mid-midlives, the heroes are trying hard to wake up, and the dialog is delightful. I also enjoyed Mount Etna’s turn in a supporting role in At Your Service. For fans of the James Bond movies, there are little bits of homage all the way through in character names and locations. Lots of fun.
I love The Witness. It hits pretty much every beat for me. Brooks is just such a charming guy, who’s prepared to go in slow when he recognises that the woman he’s interested in has issues she needs to work through. The final revenge makes me cackle with glee every time I read it. So does the subplot.
I’ve been looking at that Balogh. I don’t enjoy it when the ‘hero’ pushes himself onto a reluctant woman, but I’ll take SusanH’s word that he learns to behave. Mary Balogh usually has a good take on things.
I was enjoying At Your Service up until the end. I thought the revelations about the Big Plot were silly and kind of ruined the book for me. IMHO the villains didn’t need to do half of the wild sh*t that they tried in the book. There were easier, less expensive, less risky crimes that they could have attempted to achieve the same ends. Like, why do all the murder if one could just file a lawsuit?
I read Indiscreet a few months ago and was shocked by how well Balogh handled the fact that the hero is absolutely in the wrong in how he treats the heroine. She is attracted to him but does everything she can think of to tell him she’s not interested (because she’s not; attraction != interest), and Balogh does not flinch from making clear how serious the consequences are for her, both emotionally and socially. The hero is very slow to understand what he’s done to her, but when he finally gets it, he genuinely gets it. It was unbelievably cathartic to read, and upon finishing it, I immediately bought a print copy despite my rule against having multiple copies of the same book. (My only other exception is Courtney Milan’s The Countess Conspiracy.)
In my opinion, Indiscreet wasn’t just ahead of its time. Over twenty years later, in an era where we’re starting to pay more attention to these types of problematic behaviours and how they hurt women (and not-women), I still don’t think I’ve ever read something that took this as seriously and dealt with it as thoroughly and devastatingly as Indiscreet.
Indiscreet is a stunning punch in the gut. Mary Balogh absolutely does not flinch in how she addresses the disparity between the consequences experienced by men and women. As the fabulous post above stated, it’s a slow evolution but completely worth it. I cannot recommend it enough.
Wow I was kind of on a Balogh furlough (just felt I was getting a little overexposed/inured to her writing after reading too much of it at once), but … these comments are glowing and I guess I’m buying Indiscreet!
I really enjoyed the first Mina V. Esguerra I read.
Indiscreet is one of my favorite Balogh books and I agree that it is one of the nest books to read that addresses ‘No meaning No’ and how the hero comes to realize what harm he causes. Great book for the #MeToo era.
Also The Witness is probably one of the best paced and interesting Roberts rom-suspense books I’ve read in a long time. It is always one of hers that I recommend to anyone who wants to try Nora Roberts for the first time. Abigail and Brooks are such opposites in personality types but they are fab together. Abigail is a type-A badass. Love her! and Brooks is such a lazy charmer. I love how he ambles.