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Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake
RECOMMENDED: Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake by Alexis Hall is $1.99 and a Kindle Daily Deal! Carrie and I jointly reviewed this one and agreed on a B+. As a bisexual woman, I definitely felt seen by this book and I’m here for all the baking romance reads.
Fans of Casey McQuiston, Christina Lauren, and Abby Jimenez will love this scrumptious and sweet romantic comedy from the “dizzyingly talented writer” of Boyfriend Material (Entertainment Weekly)!
Following the recipe is the key to a successful bake. Rosaline Palmer has always lived by those rules—well, except for when she dropped out of college to raise her daughter, Amelie. Now, with a paycheck as useful as greaseproof paper and a house crumbling faster than biscuits in tea, she’s teetering on the edge of financial disaster. But where there’s a whisk there’s a way . . . and Rosaline has just landed a spot on the nation’s most beloved baking show.
Winning the prize money would give her daughter the life she deserves—and Rosaline is determined to stick to the instructions. However, more than collapsing trifles stand between Rosaline and sweet, sweet victory. Suave, well-educated, and parent-approved Alain Pope knows all the right moves to sweep her off her feet, but it’s shy electrician Harry Dobson who makes Rosaline question her long-held beliefs—about herself, her family, and her desires.
Rosaline fears falling for Harry is a guaranteed recipe for disaster. Yet as the competition—and the ovens—heat up, Rosaline starts to realize the most delicious bakes come from the heart.
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Fated Blades
Fated Blades by Ilona Andrews is $1.99! Lots of Andrews fans here! This is book three in the Kinsmen series, which I’m not familiar with. Previous sales posts mention these don’t have to be read in order.
An uneasy alliance between warring families gets heated in this otherworldly novella from bestselling author Ilona Andrews.
At first glance, the planet Rada seems like a lush paradise. But the ruling families, all boasting genetically enhanced abilities, are in constant competition for power―and none more so than the Adlers and the Baenas. For generations, the powerful families have pushed and pulled each other in a dance for dominance.
Until a catastrophic betrayal from within changes everything.
Now, deadly, disciplined, and solitary leaders Ramona Adler and Matias Baena must put aside their enmity and work together in secret to prevent sinister forces from exploiting universe-altering technology. Expecting to suffer through their uneasy alliance, Ramona and Matias instead discover that they understand each other as no one in their families can―and that their combined skills may eclipse the risks of their forbidden alliance.
As the two warriors risk their lives to save their families, they must decide whether to resist or embrace the passion simmering between them. For now, the dance between their families continues―but just one misstep could spell the end of them both.
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Scandalous Desires
Scandalous Desires by Elizabeth Hoyt is $1.99! This was one of the best Maiden Lane books to listen to on audio and Charming Mickey starts off as a bit of a villain. You’d definitely have to read the previous two books to fully understand his relationship to the characters, but it still operates fine as a stand alone.
Can a pirate learn that the only true treasure lies in a woman’s heart?
Widowed Silence Hollingbrook is impoverished, lovely, and kind–and nine months ago she made a horrible mistake. She went to a river pirate for help in saving her husband and in the process made a bargain that cost her her marriage. That night wounded her so terribly that she hides in the foundling home she helps run with her brother. Except now that same river pirate is back…and he’s asking for her help.
“Charming” Mickey O’Connor is the most ruthless river pirate in London. Devastatingly handsome and fearsomely intelligent, he clawed his way up through London’s criminal underworld. Mickey has no use for tender emotions like compassion and love, and he sees people as pawns to be manipulated. And yet he’s never been able to forget the naive captain’s wife who came to him for help and spent one memorable night in his bed…talking.
When his bastard baby girl was dumped in his lap–her mother having died–Mickey couldn’t resist the Machiavellian urge to leave the baby on Silence’s doorstep. The baby would be hidden from his enemies and he’d also bind Silence to him by her love for his daughter.
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The Family Plot
The Family Plot by Megan Collins is $1.99! I believe Elyse has mentioned this on previous posts, like Whatcha Reading. Definitely all sorts of her catnip!
When a family obsessed with true crime gathers to bury their patriarch, horrifying secrets are exposed upon the discovery of another body in his grave in this chilling novel from the author of Behind the Red Door and The Winter Sister .
At twenty-six, Dahlia Lighthouse has a lot to learn when it comes to the real world. Raised in a secluded island mansion deep in the woods and kept isolated by her true crime-obsessed parents, she has spent the last several years living on her own, but unable to move beyond her past—especially the disappearance of her twin brother Andy when they were sixteen.
With her father’s death, Dahlia returns to the house she has avoided for years. But as the rest of the Lighthouse family arrives for the memorial, a gruesome discovery is made: buried in the reserved plot is another body—Andy’s, his skull split open with an ax.
Each member of the family handles the revelation in unusual ways. Her brother Charlie pours his energy into creating a family memorial museum, highlighting their research into the lives of famous murder victims; her sister Tate forges ahead with her popular dioramas portraying crime scenes; and their mother affects a cheerfully domestic façade, becoming unrecognizable as the woman who performed murder reenactments for her children. As Dahlia grapples with her own grief and horror, she realizes that her eccentric family, and the mansion itself, may hold the answers to what happened to her twin.
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$.99:
Embracing His Shame: A Small Town Kinky M/M Romance (Naughty in Pendleton) by Brigham Vaughn
The best I can say about SCANDALOUS DESIRES is that it’s brisk. Among my complaints: I didn’t really appreciate the premise, there’s this weird moment where the heroine decides she’s going to just change the hero’s name because he’s now redeemable, there’s an unnecessary plot twist regarding the hero’s nemesis, and there is use of the phrase “randy member.” But I finished it and it wasn’t so bad that I noped out of the Maiden Lane series (that was DUKE OF SIN.)
I apparently gave ROSALINE PALMER four stars on GR, but I don’t remember liking it that much? I think perhaps it had to do with the fact that I read it at a rooftop pool and it was an earlier entry in the “books with insecure MCs,” trend.
THE FAMILY PLOT is a mad, mad book, which just…does not make sense. Even in fiction world, it does not make sense.
Cherie Priest’s The Family Plot, meanwhile, is excellent.
Absolutely hated Charming Mickey (and I loved at least two other Maiden Lane books); I found his character to be a glorification of abuse.
I enjoyed Rosaline Palmer but it was SO much darker than I anticipated from the cover. I’m really over these cartoon-y covers that are like shiny candy coatings on a Brussels sprout. (Thinking about the brutal, explicit assault I was ABSOLUTELY not ready for in Lessons in Chemistry. Screw you, publisher.) Sometimes I love a Brussels sprout, but I want to know what I’m eating.
I loved Scandalous Desires, and have enjoyed every Elizabeth Hoyt book I’ve read. I find unusual premises in Historical Fiction refreshing, and she writes so well. Still hoping for more books from her.
P.S. I will say that the Maiden Lane series should be read in order, with breaks between not too long as the characters do mix and mingle throughout.
Now I had a different problem with Scandalous Desires. I DNF’d not because of Mickey, but because of Silence. She was too perfect, and had all these hard-assed river pirates willing to go behind their boss’s back to do whatever she wanted without any thought to the consequences.
I feel bad because of the two books on this post that I’ve read, I didn’t care for either of them. I didn’t like Rosaline because of the way she lied to Alain when they first met at the train station. He does turn out to be an abusive creep later in the book, and his sins were significantly worse than hers. When we first meet them, however, he is quite charming yet almost every word out of her mouth is a lie. She is insecure, but I couldn’t help but feel that if a hero had lied so extensively about himself he would no longer be considered hero material, and I felt the same way about Rosaline.
As for Scandalous Desires, I’m with Sandra that it was Silence who annoyed me. I read the book years ago so the details are fuzzy, but I remember thinking that some of her actions endangered the people and the foundling home that that she professed to love. She therefore put the children and her family, almost all of whom were involved with the home in some way, at risk. Not the actions of a heroine I could root for.
The Ilona Andres as usual is top notch and full of action. However Silver Shark in this series remains my favorite.
The Family Plot was deeply weird, atmospheric and well written. It should come with a lot of trigger warnings: when the blurb says the family is obsessed with true crime, it goes beyond that. True crime is the whole identity of the family. They wallow in their grief and fascination with death. I spent half of the book swinging wildly between “that’s so obvious it has to be a red herring” to “but that person has to be the bad guy!”.
I love, love, love Fated Blades, but like FlikChik, Silver Shark remains my favorite. Definitely worth picking up at this price!
I liked the Maiden Lane series apart from the final book, which felt phoned in and isolated from the larger narrative, but I’m not sure that I liked any of the books as romance, if that makes sense. I like the series more as a complex melodrama with lots of moving parts, which I have different standards for. Case in point, one of my favourite installments is the one with the psychotic duke, which I think everyone else hated, not because I believed in the romance (I didn’t, and I didn’t believe in most of the others either) but because it was weird and dramatic and blessedly different and because I have a weakness for sadistic psychotic weirdos with their own weird brand of logic, especially when the latter involves “take care of my own.”
This one is another good example, although it’s one of my least favourite installments. I didn’t like either Mickey or Silence and thought their whole everything was an absolute mess, but it’s an interesting mess, and it entertained me.
Now that I’m thinking about it, I think this series does for me what ridiculous over the top trashy TV shows do for a lot of other people. I haven’t quite figured out what it is about it that allows one to read it this way (it’s deeeeeeefinitely not the case that I do this with all romances that don’t work for me), but I think the whole thing works better if you do, except for the final book.