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It Takes Two
It Takes Two by Jenny Holiday is 99c! I don’t think we’ve featured this one on sale before. It’s the second book in the Bridesmaids Behaving Badly, and I know we’ve had book one and three on sale. Well now you can complete the trilogy with this one! For those who have read all three, do you have a fave?
In this hilarious romantic comedy, USA Today bestselling author Jenny Holiday proves that what happens in Vegas doesn’t always stay in Vegas…
All’s fair in love and war
Wendy Liu should be delighted to be her best friend’s maid of honor. But after years spent avoiding the bride’s brother – a.k.a the boy who once broke her heart – she’s now trapped with him during an endless amount of wedding festivities. Luckily she’s had time to perfect her poker face, and engaging Noah Denning in a little friendly competition might just prove that she’s over him for good…Noah Denning is determined to make his little sister’s wedding memorable. But it seems Wendy is trying to outdo him at every turn. Challenging each other was always something he and Wendy did right, so when she proposes they compete to see who can throw the best bachelor or bachelorette party in Sin City, Noah takes the bait – and ups the stakes. Because this time around, he wants Wendy for keeps. And when you’re fighting for love, all bets are off.
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The Wall of Winnipeg and Me
READER RECOMMENDED: The Wall of Winnipeg and Me by Mariana Zapata is a $1.99! At a previous RT (RIP), SnarkyWench and I gushed about sports contemporaries over some wine for a good twenty minutes, and she highly recommended this book.Readers loved the slow burn between the hero and heroine, but found it a little too slow. Any Zapata fans in the Bitchery?
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Mariana Zapata’s most beloved book, The Wall of Winnipeg and Me—now with new exclusive content!
Vanessa Mazur refuses to feel bad for quitting—she knows she’s doing the right thing. The thankless job of personal assistant to the top defensive end in the National Football Organization was always supposed to be temporary. She has plans for her life, and none of them include washing extra-large underwear one more day for a man who could never find it in him to tell her good morning, congratulate her on a job well done, or wish her a happy birthday—even when she was spending it working for him.
The legendary “Wall of Winnipeg” may be adored by thousands, but after two years Van has had enough.
But when Aiden Graves shows up at her door begging her to come back, she’s beyond shocked. Mr. Walled-Off Emotions is actually letting his guard down for once. And she’s even more dumbstruck when he explains that her job description is about to become even more outrageous: something that takes the “personal” in personal assistant to a whole new level.
What do you say to the man who is used to getting everything he wants?
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The Mere Wife
The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana Headley is $2.99 and a Kindle Daily Deal! I’m so curious about this one because it’s a Beowulf retelling set in the suburbs. I’m also obsessed with the cover. However, readers seem divided on whether it delivers on its Beowulf claims. Headley also wrote the first Beowulf translation done by a woman and it was fascinating. Definitely a focus on the women in the story!
Two mothers—a suburban housewife and a battle-hardened veteran—struggle to protect those they love in this modern retelling of Beowulf.
From the perspective of those who live in Herot Hall, the suburb is a paradise. Picket fences divide buildings—high and gabled—and the community is entirely self-sustaining. Each house has its own fireplace, each fireplace is fitted with a container of lighter fluid, and outside—in lawns and on playgrounds—wildflowers seed themselves in neat rows. But for those who live surreptitiously along Herot Hall’s periphery, the subdivision is a fortress guarded by an intense network of gates, surveillance cameras, and motion-activated lights.
For Willa, the wife of Roger Herot (heir of Herot Hall), life moves at a charmingly slow pace. She flits between mommy groups, playdates, cocktail hour, and dinner parties, always with her son, Dylan, in tow. Meanwhile, in a cave in the mountains just beyond the limits of Herot Hall lives Gren, short for Grendel, as well as his mother, Dana, a former soldier who gave birth as if by chance. Dana didn’t want Gren, didn’t plan Gren, and doesn’t know how she got Gren, but when she returned from war, there he was. When Gren, unaware of the borders erected to keep him at bay, ventures into Herot Hall and runs off with Dylan, Dana’s and Willa’s worlds collide.
A retelling of Beowulf set in the suburbs, Maria Dahvana Headley’s The Mere Wife turns the epic on its head, recasting the classic tale of monstrosity and loss from the perspective of those presumed to be on the attack.
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Darling Rose Gold
Darling Rose Gold by Stephanie Wrobel is $1.99! This is was Wrobel’s debut 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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I loved Darling Rose Gold until I found out it was a *very* thinly veiled retelling of the Gypsy Rose case. I picked it up blind from the library and had no idea.
It’s very well written and compelling, true crime/based on true crime just isn’t something I enjoy.
The whole Bridesmaids series is great, would definitely recommend, especially at the sale price.
Wall of Winnipeg is good but it is slow, as warned. Also there’s a baby epilogue if you avoid those.
Outlawed by Anna North is 4.99
The Wall of Winnipeg was the second Zapata book I read. There was lots of raving around her books, I tried one, didn’t really like it, read The Wall of Winnipeg and really didn’t like it. I found the romance more glacial pace than slow burn, and the heroine was “one of the boys”, the kind that fit perfectly with the hero’s friends/colleagues and it felt as if she looked down on everything branded as feminine – including other women. Haven’t worked up the courage to read another Zapata since then, even tough Lingus is waiting on my bookshelf.
I agree with Arijo that it is glacial paced and I didn’t make it to the end. I couldn’t warm up to the male lead character. I had heard such good things about this book, so it motivated me to give it a try in audio. But ended up not being for me.
I think this second book was my favourite of the Bridesmaids trilogy! Although I had some issues with the ending, because I have a personal pet peeve when authors decide to have the leads behave kind of badly (i.e. hijacking someone else’s wedding) only it’s cute because they’re the protagonists, and that’s a constant for this trilogy; I also had some issues with the backstory. But overall, I liked this one, largely because of Wendy. Wendy is great. She’s allowed to be a lot of things that romance heroines usually aren’t (things that often get a heroine branded “unlikeable”, like preferring casual sex, being very career-focused, and being somewhat prickly and guarded) and is not required to sacrifice her personality, which was very refreshing.
I’ve tried a few Zapata romances, and the ‘cool girl’ archetype who other women (bitches) hate because they’re so jealous is very much a Thing with her. I am not a fan.
@Arijo: I like many, if not most, of Zapata’s books BECAUSE of the slow burn aspects and DESPITE the caveats already given, especially the “not like other girls” trope, but I thought LINGUS was awful. Be warned.
My thoughts align with those of @Qualisign. Lingus is my least favorite of the Mariana Zapata books I’ve read.
@Star, I also enjoyed the Bridesmaid book I read, but I share your pet peeve! I had to suspend my disbelief that the people getting married would not be annoyed about how their wedding was a vehicle for someone else’s relationship issues.
The cover and title for The Mere Wife are amazing, but I found the book was disappointingly White Feminist (TM), complete with some unpleasant racism and homophobia at the beginning and end that really marred the reading experience for me. It works tolerably well as a Beowulf reworking, hitting most of the main points of the story, but it changes a lot and I personally didn’t like the choices the author made. I’m still intrigued by her translation of Beowulf and want to see what it’s like, but The Mere Wife has honestly put me off getting a copy.
In lieu of struggling through LINGUS and its weird take on porn, try LOVE HIM FREE (On the Market #1) by E.M. Lindsey which is about a gay virgin 36-year-old Jewish baker and a Deaf porn star (m/m).
@Qualisign: thanks for the heads up, re: Lingus. I think I’ll give up the idea that one day, I might read it and deletecit from my kindle.
Love Him Free on the other hand sounds awesome. I’ll definitely try it!
@Sydneysider – glad it’s not just me! I kept mentally yelling at them to please just wait to deal with the problems in their four-day relationship for another two hours. Like, seriously, guys, it’ll keep!
@Redling
The Irish poet Seamus Heaney did a beautiful version of Beowulf – you constantly want to read it out loud.
Sorry to hear about the problems with The Mere Wife.
I love Jenny Holiday, so that’s my pick this time out.
You kind of get the feeling with Lingus that the publisher was so desperate to make more from Zapata’s success that they went with publishing anything, an-y-thing she’d written and had stored on a USB stick somewhere. I’m a big fan of Kulti, I adore From Lukov with Love and Luna and the Lie, and liked the Wall of Winnipeg and Me enough to re-read it. I just think Lingus is an early piece and not of the same quality (same for Rhythm, Chord and Malykhin).