Hearts on Hold
RECOMMENDED: Hearts on Hold by Charish Reid is $2.99! Catherine gave this a Squee review, though the comments definitely brought up some ethics issues.
Really, if you like sweet, sexy heroes who are completely supportive of their heroines, and if you like smart, ambitious heroines who are really good at what they do, and if you love libraries and teasing and friends and kindness, not to mention innuendo that manages to be both silly and seductive at the same time, then you will love this.
What happens in the stacks stays in the stacks…
Professor Victoria Reese knows an uphill battle when she sees one. Convincing her narrow-minded colleagues at the elite Pembroke University to back a partnership with the local library is a fight she saw coming and already has a plan for. What she didn’t see coming? The wildly hot librarian who makes it clear books aren’t the only thing he’d like to handle.
When a tightly wound, sexy-as-hell professor proposes a partnership between his library and her university, children’s department head John Donovan is all for it. He knows his tattoos and easygoing attitude aren’t quite what she expected, but the unmistakable heat between them is difficult to resist.
And then there’s the intriguing late fee on her record. For the Duke’s Convenience… A late fee and a sexy romance novel? There’s more to Dr. Reese than she’s letting on.
John might like to tease her about her late fee, but when he teases her in other ways, Victoria is helpless to resist. Mixing business with pleasure—and oh, it is pleasure—always comes with risks, but maybe a little casual fun between the sheets is just what Victoria needs.
Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
This book is on sale at:
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!Under His Kilt
Under His Kilt by Melissa Blue is $2.99 at Amazon and *whispers* FREE elsewhere! This is a hot contemporary with a Scottish hero and was previously recommended on a podcast episode Sarah did with Alyssa Cole.
Jocelyn Pearson is determined to spend her last month as a twenty-something doing everything she’s too busy or scared to try. Her imagination runs wild and then fixates on Ian Baird. He’ll be working at the Langston Museum for a short stint as a consulting curator. He’s Scottish. He believes sex is fun to be had. He’s the perfect choice for a fling. She only has to get him break his rule about sleeping with co-workers. Seducing a man was on her bucket list…
Ian is no one’s fool and knows exactly what Jocelyn wants—him. If she didn’t work for the Langston Museum, he’d be more than happy to oblige any and every fantasy she desired, but she’s the curator. She’s sweet, inexperienced and well liked by everyone including the museum owner and director. Ian can’t risk losing such an important contact for his consulting business. Not even when everything within in him craves a taste of her.
When Jocelyn sets her sights on him, there’s no way Ian can deny her. They agree their affair will end in thirty days. No emotions, no entanglements, just sex. The closer the end date looms, they start to question if it’s possible to walk away. They’ll either have to come to terms of what they’ve become or stick to their original agreement.
Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
This book is on sale at:
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!What to Do with a Duke
What to Do with a Duke by Sally MacKenzie is $1.99! This book was previously mentioned on a podcast with then Kensington executive editor, Esi Sogah who had this to say:
I edited it in a day because I couldn’t stop reading it. I was supposed to be doing other stuff that day that didn’t get done. There’s definitely high jinks and people sort of, like, scheming behind the scenes but in really sort of delightful ways, and there’re gossipy old biddies, and the heroine in this book has ten siblings, which is why she wants to move into the Spinster House.
Welcome to the charming, fatefully named village of Loves Bridge, where a woman destined for spinsterhood can live a life of her own choosing—or fall unexpectedly, madly in love…
Miss Isabelle Catherine Hutting would rather be lounging in the library than circling the ballroom in search of a husband any day. So when Cat hears that the town’s infamous Spinster House is open for a new resident, she jumps at the chance to put all this marriage business behind her. But first she must make arrangements with her prospective landlord, Marcus, the Duke of Hart—the most handsome man she’s ever seen, and the only man who’s ever impressed her in the least…
With her wit, independent spirit, and not least of all her beauty, Marcus can’t help but be stirred by Cat. It’s terribly unfortunate he’s not looking to marry, given the centuries-old curse that left his family with the Spinster House to begin with. No duke shall live to see his heir’s birth. But is there a chance the curse could be broken—in true fairy-tale fashion—by an act of true love? The race to Happily Ever After is about to begin…
Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
This book is on sale at:
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!How to Date a Douchebag: The Studying Hours
The Studying Hours by Sara Ney is $2.99! Series name aside, I really enjoyed this one back when the Audible Escape package was around. I also recommended it in our Seduction as a Bet Rec League and for Ready Set Go: Double Features. This book reminded me a lot of Kristen Callihan’s The Hookup in terms of vibe.
CRUDE. ARROGANT. A**HOLE.
No doubt about it, Sebastian ‘Oz’ Osborne is the university’s most celebrated student athlete—and possibly the biggest douchebag. A walking, talking cliché, he has a filthy mouth, a fantastic body, and doesn’t give a sh*t about what you or anyone else thinks.SMART. CLASSY. CONSERVATIVE.
Make no mistake, Jameson Clarke may be the university’s most diligent student—but she is no prude. Spending most of her time in the hallowed halls of the library, James is wary of pervs, jocks, and douchebags—and Oz Osborne is all three.She’s smart, sarcastic—and not what he expected.
…EVERY DOUCHBAG HAS HIS WEAKNESS.
He wants to be friends.
He wants to spend time with her.
He wants to drive her crazy.He wants…
Her.
Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
This book is on sale at:
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!
Don't want to miss an ebook sale? Sign up for our newsletter, and you'll get the week's available deals each Friday.
I had a real problem with Hearts on Hold. Based on reveiws I had been looking forward to reading this story: sexy Viking Librarian and a University Prof- wow. However awkward flirting and innuendo started at their first meeting and it felt a bit icky to me – it felt too soon as they had just met minutes before, and it was inappropriate in an initial work meeting. Then what was supposed to be sexy flirtation at their next encounter while she was job shadowing him, became squicky for me. She had just shown up to begin the work activity and he asked about her shoes and then suddenly:
“The more he gazed at her body; the more naked Victoria felt. It was as if he was discarding one article of clothing at a time before settling on her shoes. “They’ll do just fine.”
Then a few minutes later while filing books in the stacks, there were numerous incidents of ‘accidental’ brushing and touching. Also at one point he is standing very close behind her, while being a foot taller than her, that in another circumstance could be potentially intimidating. In my professional life I have worked establishing workplace harassment guidelines and these activites are strong examples of inappropriate behaviour that should NOT be allowed in the workplace.
Women have been fighting this type of behaviour in workplaces for years – isn’t this partly what the Me Too movement is raising awareness about? While this book is a romance, and in the story the Heroine enjoyed it, at the start of this behaviour they had not yet acknowledged there was an attraction, nor was there explicit verbal consent to physically touch. WHAT IF SHE HAD NOT LIKED THIS GUY??? WHAT IF HIS ATTENTION HAD BEEN UNWANTED?? They barely knew each other and all the touching and kissing and grinding in the stacks were not sexy to to me, they were just ew. I had to DNF after Chapter eight.
I just went to order Under His Kilt on AppleBooks and got the message that it is no longer available there.
Someone to Hold by Mary Balogh is 2.99
The Lost Lieutenant by Erica Vetsch is 2.99
I am reading The Lost Lieutenant and loving this Moc story about a former soldier who is given an earldom and a wife who has never known kindness by any male in her family. It’s Christian fiction with a wonderful characters.
@Carole: I kept hearing good things about Hearts on Hold, so I tried it not once but twice, DNFing both times. There are the points you made, but also a lot of the library stuff was just plain wrong and pulled me out of the story. I’ve been a librarian for 30 years, and this just didn’t work for me.
Doug Johnstone’s A DARK MATTER is free at Amazon US. I enjoyed this book about a family of women who take over a mortuary and PI business in contemporary Edinburgh. They are each dealing with a ton of baggage–divorce, death of a patriarch, disappearance of a roommate–and it works really well, none of it easily. The end was also a surprise, so highly recommended. The second book, THE BIG CHILL, is .99.
Thanks for that rec Darlynne! I one-clicked that and it’s free at amazon.ca too 🙂
How to date a douchebag was a solid DNF for me. It was super juvenile and the hero and his friends are not just douchebags but horribly misogynistic slut shakers.
Argh slut shamers* not shakers.
The “What to Do With a Duke” link isn’t working for Kobo, but I found it on my own. Thank you!
@Egged Huh, interesting. I read How to Date a Douchebag back in November in the middle of a reading rut, and while I didn’t love it, I didn’t notice that the hero was a slut shamer… yikes, brain. I will say that I found the book a little weak because there wasn’t much conflict– it was just the heroine saying ‘I won’t be your girlfriend’ and the hero saying ‘but WHYYYY’ (and the heroine pointing out that he’s not good at monogamy, which is a dealbreaker for her).
@Carole, thanks for this. I am feeling increasingly put off by workplace romances unless they handle consent/harassment issues very well, and it seems like this one doesn’t. I’ll be avoiding it.
I would love to see a rec league of workplace romances that really do take consent/harassment issues seriously. Last weekend, I read Earth Bound, the Emma Barry/Genevieve Turner book set at Fake NASA in the early sixties, which I thought handled this extremely well — so well I found myself actually angry, because I want to read more books like that!, and in what seems like a sea of workplace romances, there are so few like it. The hero in that book thinks when he hires the heroine that he’s going to have to strangle his attraction to her because OBVIOUSLY he’s going to hire her, she’s brilliant; and OBVIOUSLY he needs to keep his pants feelings to himself because they’re not her problem. Then he does exactly that. He’s a hard-ass, but he always treats her with genuine professional respect, and she’s the one who initiates the not-so-professional part of their relationship.
I was surprised by Hearts on Hold for both negative and positive reasons. I did feel the interaction was rushed, which was off-putting (I was okay with the workplace situation, it’s not a trigger for me, though I respect that it would be for a lot of people) – even though Ms Reid established right away that the heroine was HOT for the librarian, his behavior seemed a bit rushed. She tried to smooth that out a few pages in, but wasn’t completely successful.
But! it resolved itself for me halfway through the book, as emotion started taking hold, reminding me of Cecilia Grant’s ‘A Lady Awakened’, with its reverse courtship. The subplot of Victoria’s military upbringing, coupled with the ongoing drama of her strained relationship with her tiresome mother, made this a much more understandable situation, especially for a POC.
And… since I’m into close combat (no longer active, as I’m closer to Victoria’s mother’s age now) the gym scenes were amazing! Making a guy nearly twice your size tap out is….well… hot! doesn’t begin to describe it.
I’m still reading Hearts on Hold, and while understanding of the negative reviews, I tend to like my romances as escapism of the highest order where suspension of belief is at times necessary. I don’t think we should ever encourage a world where first encounters – especially in a professional context! – take on the form in the book. But I think there is a fantasy out there where a man does approach a woman in this manner, and oh coincidences of coincidences, it is welcome wholeheartedly because she is attracted to him. Romances can cater to fantasies so I am totally fine with this, while acknowledging ymmv.
Also, while I don’t go for contemporaries usually, her challenges navigating her career/life as a female and black woman resonate with me.