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Lizzie and Dante
Lizzie and Dante by Mary Bly is $1.99! Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe this is Eloisa James’s pen name or rather real name. This is more women’s fiction than a contemporary romance.
The insightful, audacious, and deeply romantic story of a woman whose life turns upside down after she meets an enigmatic chef on vacation in Italy–perfect for fans of Beautiful Ruins or Under the Tuscan Sun .
On the heels of a difficult break-up and a devastating diagnosis, Shakespearian scholar Lizzie Delford decides to take one last lavish vacation on Elba, the sun-kissed island off the Italian coast, with her best friend and his movie-star boyfriend. Once settled into a luxurious seaside resort, Lizzie has to make big decisions about her future, and she needs the one thing she may be running out of: time.
She leaves the yacht-owners and celebrities behind and sneaks off to the public beach, where she meets a sardonic chef named Dante, his battered dog Lily, and his wry daughter Etta, a twelve-year-old desperate for a mother. While Dante shows Lizzie the island’s secrets, and Etta dazzles with her irreverent humor, Lizzie is confronted with a dilemma. Is it right to fall in love if time is short? Is it better to find a mother briefly, or to have no mother at all? And the most difficult question of all: What if falling in love inevitably leads to broken hearts?
A transporting, all-consuming story about love, courage, and Italian wine, Lizzie & Dante demands to know how far we should travel to find a future worth fighting for.
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I Think I Love You
I Think I Love You by Lauren Layne is $2.99! This is part of the Oxford series and has a friends to lovers romance. Some readers wished the hero and heroine did more communicating about their feelings, while others recommend this for a quick, sexy read!
A game of seduction between two best friends goes deliciously wrong in an irresistible Oxford Novel that brims with wit and sexual tension. Library Journal hails Layne’s work as “exemplary contemporary romance.”
Brit Robbins knows that dating in New York City is hard—she just hoped to have it mastered by age thirty. But after yet another promising suitor says they have no sparks, Brit decides it’s time to torch her dating game and try a new plan. And who better to coach Brit through the art of seduction than the guy who first gave her the “let’s be friends” card?
Hunter Cross has always figured there’s nothing his best friend Brit can do to surprise him. But Brit’s request is a surprise he doesn’t see coming—and one he’s definitely not prepared for. Hunter and Brit have always been careful to keep things perfectly platonic, but the fake dates and faux flirting are starting to feel like the real deal. And soon Hunter realizes he has taught Brit too well. Not only has she become an expert at seduction, the man becoming thoroughly seduced is him.
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The Bone Orchard
The Bone Orchard by Sara A. Mueller is $2.99! This is a fantasy novel with a witchy main character. I love this cover, especially how the hand appears to be crossing its fingers.
Charm is a witch, and she is alone. The last of a line of conquered necromantic workers, now confined within the yard of regrown bone trees at Orchard House, and the secrets of their marrow.
Charm is a prisoner, and a survivor. Charm tends the trees and their clattering fruit for the sake of her children, painstakingly grown and regrown with its fruit: Shame, Justice, Desire, Pride, and Pain.
Charm is a whore, and a madam. The wealthy and powerful of Borenguard come to her house to buy time with the girls who aren’t real.
Except on Tuesdays, which is when the Emperor himself lays claim to his mistress, Charm herself.
But now—Charm is also the only person who can keep an empire together, as the Emperor summons her to his deathbed, and charges her with choosing which of his awful, faithless sons will carry on the empire—by discovering which one is responsible for his own murder.
If she does this last thing, she will finally have what has been denied her since the fall of Inshil—her freedom. But she will also be betraying the ghosts past and present that live on within her heart.
Charm must choose. Her dead Emperor’s will or the whispers of her own ghosts. Justice for the empire or her own revenge.
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The Tourist Attraction
The Tourist Attraction by Sarah Morgenthaler is $1.99! I’m curious about this one and sounds super cute. However, some reviews I’ve read mention it lacks some chemistry and oomph. Have you read this one?
He had a strict “no tourists” policy…
Until she broke all of his rules.When Graham Barnett named his diner The Tourist Trap, he meant it as a joke. Now he’s stuck slinging reindeer dogs to an endless parade of resort visitors who couldn’t interest him less. Not even the sweet, enthusiastic tourist in the corner who blushes every time he looks her way…
Two weeks in Alaska isn’t just the top item on Zoey Caldwell’s bucket list. It’s the whole bucket. One look at the mountain town of Moose Springs and she’s smitten. But when an act of kindness brings Zoey into Graham’s world, she may just find there’s more to the grumpy local than meets the eye…and more to love in Moose Springs than just the Alaskan wilderness.
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Warning that in The Bone Orchard, the lab-grown sex workers are subjected to violence, and one of them is in the form of a 14-year-old.
LIZZIE AND DANTE by Mary Bly (aka Eloisa James) was the book I chose as having made the biggest impression on me in 2022. I read it as a clear-sighted romance involving a community who surrounded and loved Lizzie through her (admittedly abbreviated) HEA. It really makes sense that Mary Bly wrote it under her own (and academic) name rather than a pseudonym. It’s a tough book, but excellent.
I DNF’ed The Tourist Attraction. My review:
“No chemistry. Unpleasant characters. Illogical actions (locking an assaultist in a cell with the assaultee?). I pushed through to 21.7%, and my TBR pile is too big to give it any more of my time.
“Audiobook narrator Elise Arsenault does the best she can with what she was given. This book isn’t her fault.”
The Tourist Attraction started out cute/fine. Then I just stopped reading at some point because it didn’t really seem to be going anywhere.