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One to Watch
One to Watch by Kate Stayman-London is $2.99! This has been mentioned a couple times on the site in things like Hide Your Wallet and podcast episodes. I feel like I’ve heard mixed things about this one, but do take note that the heroine’s weight seems to play a big factor in the narrative.
Real love…as seen on TV
Bea Schumacher is a devastatingly stylish plus-size fashion blogger who has amazing friends, a devoted family, legions of Insta followers–and a massively broken heart. Like the rest of America, Bea indulges in her weekly obsession: the hit reality show Main Squeeze. The fantasy dates! The kiss-off rejections! The surprising amount of guys named Chad! But Bea is sick and tired of the lack of body diversity on the show. Since when is being a size zero a prerequisite for getting engaged on television?
Just when Bea has sworn off dating altogether, she gets an intriguing call: Main Squeeze wants her to be its next star, surrounded by men vying for her affections. Bea agrees, on one condition–under no circumstances will she actually fall in love. She’s in this to supercharge her career, subvert harmful anti-fat beauty standards, inspire women across America, and get a free hot air balloon ride. That’s it.
But when the cameras start rolling, Bea realizes things are more complicated than she anticipated. She’s in a whirlwind of sumptuous couture, Internet culture wars, sexy suitors, and an opportunity (or two, or five) to find messy, real-life love in the midst of a made-for-TV fairy tale. In this joyful, razor-sharp debut, Bea has to decide whether it might just be worth trusting these men–and herself–for a chance to live happily ever after.
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It’s Getting Scot in Here
It’s Getting Scot in Here by Suzanne Enoch is $1.99! This is the first book in the Wild Wicked Highlanders series. It has a 3.9-star rating on Goodreads. Enoch loves writing about Scots. I’ve always been curious about her titles. Have you read any? Do you have a favorite?
HAPPILY-EVER-AFTER
London socialite Amelia-Rose Baxter is nobody’s fool. Her parents may want her to catch a title, but she will never change who she is for the promise of marriage. Her husband will be a man who can appreciate her sharp mind as well as her body. A sophisticated man who loves life in London. A man who considers her his equal—and won’t try to tame her wild heart…IN THE HIGHLANDS
Rough, rugged Highlander Niall MacTaggert and his brothers know the rules: the eldest must marry or lose the ancestral estate, period. But Niall’s eldest brother just isn’t interested in the lady his mother selected. Is it because Amelia-Rose is just too. . . Free-spirited? Yes. Brazen? Aye. Surely Niall can find a way to soften up the whip-smart lass and make her the perfect match for his brother for the sake of the family.JUST GOT A WHOLE LOT HOTTER.
Instead it’s Niall who tempts Amelia-Rose, despite her reservations about barbarian Highlanders. Niall finds the lass nigh irresistible as well, but he won’t make the mistake his father did in marrying an Englishwoman who doesn’t like the Highlands. Does he have what it takes to win her heart? There is only one way to find out..Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
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The Business of Blood
The Business of Blood by Kerrigan Byrne is 99c! This is book one in the Fiona Mahoney historical mystery series. It was recommended by Renee Ahdieh on the podcast and she mentions that it takes place during the time when Jake the Ripper was active.
London, 1890. Blood and death are Fiona Mahoney’s trade, and business, as they say, is booming.
Dying is the only thing people do with any regularity, and Fiona makes her indecorous living cleaning up after the corpses are carted away. Her childhood best friend, Mary, was the last known victim of Jack the Ripper. It’s been two years since Fiona scrubbed Mary’s blood from the floorboards, and London is no longer buzzing about the Ripper, but Fiona hasn’t forgotten.
And she hasn’t stopped searching for Jack.
When she’s called to a murder in the middle of the night, Fiona finds a victim mutilated in an eerily similar fashion to those of the Ripper, and only a few doors down from Mary’s old home. The relentless, overbearing, and irritatingly handsome Inspector Grayson Croft warns her away from the case. She might have listened, if she hadn’t found a clue in the blood. A clue that will lead her down a path from which there is no return.As a killer cuts a devastating swath through London, a letter written in blood arrives at her door, and it is only then that Fiona realizes just how perilous her endeavor is. For she has drawn the attention of an obsessive evil, and is no longer the hunter, but the prey. Fiona Mahoney is in the business of blood.
But she’s not the only one.
With intriguing twists, blood-chilling discoveries, and dazzling prose, USAToday Bestselling author Kerrigan Byrne shows that a woman’s work is never done, even when she is sleuthing out a serial killer.
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The Pact
The Pact by Karina Halle is 99c at Amazon! This is a contemporary romance with a marriage pact between friends! If that’s your catnip, it’s your lucky day with book sales. While readers loved Halle’s writing, they warn that the couple spends more time apart than they preferred.
It all started with a pinky swear…
Linden McGregor is tall, rugged, and gunslinger handsome; a helicopter pilot with a Scottish brogue and charm to spare. He’s also one of Stephanie Robson’s best friends and has fit into that box for as long as she’s known him.
Beautiful, funny and an ambitious businesswoman (with one hell of an ass), Stephanie Robson is one of Linden McGregor’s best friends and has fit into that box for as long as he’s known her.
But some relationships can’t be boxed, can’t be classified, can’t be tamed.
Back in their mid-twenties and tired of the competitive hit-or-miss dating scene of San Francisco, Steph and Linden made a pact to marry each other if neither one of them were in a serious relationship by the time they hit thirty.
It sounded like fun and games at the time but as the years to thirty tick past and lovers come and go out of their lives, the pact becomes larger than life.
Sex is inevitable. Friendships are tested. Hearts are on the line.
The pact is about to change everything.
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Why is a McTaggart wearing what looks like a Stewart clan tartan?
(sorry pendantry rules)
I had no idea KB wrote mysteries!
The Enoch and One To watch are both good.
Such a bummer that Karina Halle’s books are only on Amazon! I don’t buy books there anymore. 🙁
I really enjoyed The Business of Blood. I read it in one sitting and stayed up way too late that night. Supposedly book 2 comes out this summer.
One to Watch was a disappointment for me. Essentially the entire book is about using the heroine’s pain from being treated poorly as a fat woman for entertainment. And so, so many shitty men.
I just can’t get into the idea of marriage pacts in contemporaries. With the different societal rules in historicals, fine sure I guess (still not a fave trope). But in contemporaries it rankles me. Not married by 30, and goodness me we can’t be SINGLE in our 30s (!!!) so I’m gonna honor a marriage pact…I really don’t like what it implies regarding age, marital status, and where you ought to be relationship-wise in your 30’s. Raises my hackles a bit.
I haven’t read The Pact, and its entirely possible that the plot is executed wonderfully. But the whole “contemporary marriage pact” puts me off so much I don’t even want to give books like it a chance. Is this just me being angry and stubborn, or do others feel this way (about this trope or any other trope)? I’m hoping not to learn I’m just grumpily bitter though, haha.
One to Watch is a parody of the Bachelor/Bachelorette series franchise, and I loved it. Read it if you’re familiar with the series, so that you’re ready for how this book looks at toxic masculinity, colour and body casting, manufactured drama, multiple dating, that this series carries. This is more women’s fiction, it’s the heroine’s journey.
@Ashley M, you are not alone! I don’t think this works well in most contemporaries. It could be done well in a setting where an arranged marriage is expected maybe?
I don’t think the marriage pact is meant to be the equivalent of a contract or betrothal in an historical, it’s just friends agreeing to marry each other if they’ve not found anyone else. However, it still seems kind of silly, as if one has to be married to be happy, especially when the agreed-upon age is 30. I’d almost find it more believable if they agreed to have a child together if they’d not found other partners by a certain age, as there is a time limit on fertility (and I know a couple who did that, even though they weren’t a romantic couple, just best friends). Years ago the TV series Murphy Brown had her make a similar agreement with a male friend, but I think the age was 40, and when they reached that age they decided it wasn’t really a good idea.
In the Enoch the brothers have a taxidermied stag that they keep in the front hall and dress up. I don’t remember much else about the book, but that stag was highly entertaining.
For what it’s worth, the preview seems to suggest that the marriage pact in “The Pact” is going to be basically a catalyst. It looks like they have actually been attracted to each other for quite some time (although they don’t seem to be aware that the attraction is mutual) but have both deliberately avoided acting on that attraction.