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Forbidden Promises
Forbidden Promises by Synithia Williams is $2.99! This was a previous Hide Your Wallet pick and the first in the Jackson Falls small town romance series, which features a lot of complicated and dramatic family dynamics, judging from the comments last time it was on sale.
What do you do when you want the one person you can never have?
Get in and get out. That was India Robidoux’s plan for this family visit. But when her brother needs her help with his high-profile political campaign, India has no choice but to stay and face the one man she’s been running from for years—Travis, her sister’s ex-husband. One hot summer night when Travis was still free, they celebrated her birthday with whiskey and an unforgettable kiss. The memory is as strong as ever—and so are the feelings she’s tried so hard to forget.
Travis Strickland owes everything to the Robidoux family. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for them—his divorce could never change that. Still, he has one regret. Impulsive and passionate, India always understood him better than anyone else. And the longer they work together on the campaign, the more torn he is. Coming between her and her sister is out of the question. But how can he let love pass him by a second time?
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A Taste of Sage
A Taste of Sage by Yaffa S. Santos is $1.99! I thought we ran a review of this, but couldn’t find anything when I searched. The hero and heroine work in the same kitchen and don’t exactly get along. Have you read this one?
Lumi Santana is a chef with a gift: she can perceive a person’s emotions by tasting their cooking. Despite being raised by a mother who taught her that dreams and true love were silly fairy tales, she puts her heart and savings into opening her own fusion restaurant in Upper Manhattan. The restaurant offers a mix of the Dominican cuisine she grew up with and other world cuisines she is inspired by.
When her eclectic venture fails, she is forced to take a position as sous chef at a staid, traditional French restaurant owned by Julien Dax, a celebrated chef known for his acid tongue as well as his brilliant smile. After he goes out of his way to bake a tart to prove her wrong in a dispute, she is so irritated by his smug attitude that she vows to herself never to taste his cooking.
But after she succumbs to the temptation and takes a bite one day and is overcome with shocking emotion, she finds herself beginning to crave his cooking and struggling to stay on task with her plan to save up and move on as soon as possible. Meanwhile, Julien’s obsessed secretary watches with gnashed teeth as they grow closer and becomes determined to get Lumi out of her way permanently.
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Summer is for Lovers
RECOMMENDED: Summer is for Lovers by Jennifer McQuiston is $1.99! This is the book two in the Second Sons series. Elyse enjoyed this one and found it better than the previous book in the series. It earned an A grade:
I recommend Summer is for Lovers as a break from the ballrooms of London scene in historicals, and as a way of reliving the best parts of summer vacation—rescuing a handsome Simon Baker look-alike from the ocean and then making out with him.
His heart is unavailable. Luckily, her interest lies in the rest of him…
Though she was just a girl when they first met, Caroline Tolbertson’s infatuation with David Cameron remains undimmed. Now fate has brought the handsome Scotsman back to Brighton for what promises to be an unforgettable summer. Soon, Caroline will have to choose a husband, but for now she is free to indulge her curiosity in things of a passionate nature.
That is, if David will agree to teach her.
Past mistakes have convinced David he’ll make a terrible husband, though he’ll gladly help the unconventional Caroline find a suitor. Unfortunately, she has something more scandalous in mind. As the contenders for her hand begin to line up, her future seems assured…provided David can do the honorable thing and let them have her.
When a spirited young woman is determined to break Society’s rules, al a gentleman can do is lend a hand…or more.
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The Derby Girl
The Derby Girl by Tamara Morgan is $1.49! This is an opposites attract romance between a derby girl (whose derby name is Honey Badger!) and a doctor. Readers loved how different the characters seemed, but some say that nothing really happened in the book. This is the second book in the Getting Physical series and you can grab all three books for around $4.50.
Roller derby girl Gretchen “Honey Badger” Badgerton lives in the moment, no apologies. Like every woman in Pleasant Park with a pulse, she finds Dr. Jared Fine irresistible, but she’s taken by surprise when her unattainable new neighbor asks her out.
On paper, Jared is the perfect man: gorgeous, wealthy and charitable. But his golden image is just that, and opening an upstate practice is a welcome chance to start a new life. When Gretchen stops to help him with a flat tire, he’s intrigued by her feisty attitude—and her sexy body art. There’s something refreshing about being with a take-charge woman who doesn’t expect him to be anything but himself.
Though Gretchen is hesitant to shatter Jared’s “bad girl” illusion of her, she has to face facts: she’s fallen for the good doctor. She’s used to putting everyone else’s needs before hers, but as their relationship heats up, can she handle having someone take care of her for a change?
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I was reading the summary of A Touch of Sage with interest, and then I got to the part about the “obsessed secretary […] determined to get Lumi out of her way permanently” and became a lot more apprehensive.
Also, I did the biggest double take when I thought I was reading that the heroine of Summer is for Lovers had a crush on former British PM Cameron. I was like, what an… interesting personality quirk?? Lol!
@Annie: I remember when that book first came out and everyone was like, she named her hero David Cameron, wtf?? Apparently, iirc, the author claimed she did not know who David Cameron was when she created her hero. But, apparently, there wasn’t one person in the editing/production stages who said, ummm, hold up.
It reminds me of a situation I encountered a few years ago when I picked up a book I’d been looking forward to reading and saw that the hero had the exact name, first and last, of one of my daughter’s former boyfriends. I knew there was absolutely no way I could read that book with image in my head!
@DiscoDollyDeb
Names aren’t usually too much of a sticking point for me (often when I’m writing myself a review right afterwards I have to go check because they don’t really register for some reason), but every so often I hear about the feature to ‘find and replace’ a name using Calibre if your ebook copy doesn’t have DRM attached. So I decided to try it out a few days ago when I knew a book used one of my siblings’ names as the hero.
It was an easy process, but I was reading along and all of a sudden I came across a ‘Dave’ (if the character’s name was ‘David’), which obviously wouldn’t be changed but threw me off for a second before I realized who they were talking about. (It reminded me of that episode of The Office when they’re reading Michael’s script and he changed Dwight’s name, but a rogue ‘Dwigt’ didn’t get picked up.)
Long story short, there are options if you really want to read a book with a name you can’t get over for whatever reason, but it’s not always seamless!
@Erin: I work with special-needs students, and many years ago we had a new student transfer into our school from another school district. When we reviewed his Individualized Educational Plan (IEP) from his previous school, we couldn’t figure out how it reflected him doing things like counting aloud to ten when he was non-verbal or using a computer when he could not visually attain to a screen. As we continued going through “David’s” IEP, we saw a reference to “Cralos” and the penny dropped! We figured his previous school had simply used “Carlos’s” IEP and run a search/replace so that every incident of “Carlos” was replaced by “David”, but of course they did not catch the misspelled name.
@DiscoDollyDeb Oh no, that’s awful! I guess it wasn’t so individualized after all…
Re: character names. My husband has a relatively common first and last name (to the point that when we were first dating, an altavista search of his name was useless–google wasn’t a thing yet). And then about a year ago, I read a book where the hero had his exact name. It was a little weird to see it in print and hear my internal narrator deliver it in the story’s context. Luckily, the character went by a less common nickname most of the time, but I did get to torture my husband by reading a couple passages with his name in it aloud!
I recently read one of those billionaire books – I liked it a fair deal but the hero’s name was Cole Porter and, yeah, sometimes it threw me out of the story. Maybe it wouldn’t bother the younger generation who don’t know who that is. Still, I think it might do authors good to google their characters names before they go with them.
It could be worse, it could be Boris!
A number of novels have used my father’s name (which isn’t very common). Very unsettling for me!
Remember when Dukakis was a hero’s last name a few years ago? Similar to David Cameron, a US politician whose name no one in editing caught, but most of us just stopped in our tracks.
I suppose there’s something to be said for names that will never appear in any book ever. Thanks, Mom.
@Darlynne: the heroine of Tessa Bailey’s IT HAPPENED ONE SUMMER is named Piper Bellinger. Perhaps only an avid baseball fan like yours truly would immediately make the connection to the Dodgers star outfielder (even though batting-wise he’s not having a good season right now) Cody Bellinger, but every time “Bellinger” came up in the story, I had to blink away the image of Cody launching a homerun into the stands.
I remember a couple of years ago, I read two books almost back-to-back, one with a hero named Lyle Tate, the other with a hero named Tate Lyle. For someone who spent her childhood in England, I couldn’t help but think of Tate & Lyle’s Golden Syrup (in its iconic tin with a lion on the label)–the very last word in sweet stuff when I was a child.
I don’t read a lot of contemporaries, but I liked the Synithia Williams. I like romance series like the Lisa Kleypas’ Travis brothers books where the plots involve knotty, tricky family dynamics.
I just started laughing again at the David Cameron romance. Americans, imagine trying to enjoy a romantic scene where the hero’s called Mitch McConnell. You just couldn’t.
I know this isn’t Cover Snark, but the head doesn’t match the body on the cover model for Derby Girl. Her head is 30- or 40’s-era high society matron, and her body is 20-year-old skater girl. I assume they’re trying to show the dichotomy of a person who participates in roller derby, that they can be both feminine and tough without sacrificing either side of themselves. And the face, while stunningly gorgeous, doesn’t quite look real, it looks more like a painting. And I know that sexy is in the eye of the beholder, but couldn’t they have photoshopped a more original tattoo on the model? The one she has looks like every college girl rebelling against her parents by getting a half sleeve of roses and butterflies. How about a reticulated python, or a dragon, or koi and lily pads?
Apparently I have notes on this cover . . .
@Wait, what?, thank you for putting into words the reason I find the cover of Derby Girl so unsettling. I knew it was something more than the juxtaposition of roller skates and maquillage.