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When a Scot Ties the Knot
RECOMMENDED: When a Scot Ties the Knot by Tessa Dare is $1.99! Elyse loved this book so much and gave it an A:
Everything about When a Scot Ties the Knot by Tessa Dare worked for me. Everything. Bust out the squee mop, y’all because this review is just going to be a flappy-hands Good Book Noise® mess.
Things this book has:
1. A sexy Scot hero I pictured as Sam Heughan.
2. A heroine who is a naturalist and illustrator.
3. Tons of UST.
4. A completely crazy sauce plot that Dare pulls off flawlessly.
5. A missing lobster.On the cusp of her first London season, Miss Madeline Gracechurch was shyly pretty and talented with a drawing pencil, but hopelessly awkward with gentlemen. She was certain to be a dismal failure on the London marriage mart. So Maddie did what generations of shy, awkward young ladies have done: she invented a sweetheart.
A Scottish sweetheart. One who was handsome and honorable and devoted to her, but conveniently never around. Maddie poured her heart into writing the imaginary Captain MacKenzie letter after letter … and by pretending to be devastated when he was (not really) killed in battle, she managed to avoid the pressures of London society entirely.
Until years later, when this kilted Highland lover of her imaginings shows up in the flesh. The real Captain Logan MacKenzie arrives on her doorstep—handsome as anything, but not entirely honorable. He’s wounded, jaded, in possession of her letters… and ready to make good on every promise Maddie never expected to keep.
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Spoiler Alert
RECOMMENDED: Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade is $1.99! Shana reviewed this one in October and gave it a B+:
Spoiler Alert is tropey wish fulfillment, but at its heart, it is a quiet contemporary with a #couplegoals relationship where both characters offer comfort, create beautiful art, and help each other overcome insecurities. Spoiler Alert is also a love letter to fandoms, that will make you want to chase your romance novel with a shot of fanfiction.
Olivia Dade bursts onto the scene in this delightfully fun romantic comedy set in the world of fanfiction, in which a devoted fan goes on an unexpected date with her celebrity crush, who’s secretly posting fanfiction of his own.
Marcus Caster-Rupp has a secret. While the world knows him as Aeneas, the star of the biggest show on TV, Gods of the Gates, he’s known to fanfiction readers as Book!AeneasWouldNever, an anonymous and popular poster. Marcus is able to get out his own frustrations with his character through his stories, especially the ones that feature the internet’s favorite couple to ship, Aeneas and Lavinia. But if anyone ever found out about his online persona, he’d be fired. Immediately.
April Whittier has secrets of her own. A hardcore Lavinia fan, she’s hidden her fanfiction and cosplay hobby from her “real life” for years—but not anymore. When she decides to post her latest Lavinia creation on Twitter, her photo goes viral. Trolls and supporters alike are commenting on her plus-size take, but when Marcus, one half of her OTP, sees her pic and asks her out on a date to spite her critics, she realizes life is really stranger than fanfiction.
Even though their first date is a disaster, Marcus quickly realizes that he wants much more from April than a one-time publicity stunt. And when he discovers she’s actually Unapologetic Lavinia Stan, his closest fandom friend, he has one more huge secret to hide from her.
With love and Marcus’s career on the line, can the two of them stop hiding once and for all, or will a match made in fandom end up prematurely cancelled?
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Role Playing
Role Playing by Cathy Yardley is $2.49 on Amazon! Many of you were excited for this one and we had Yardley on the podcast to talk about it. Did any of you pick it up? What’d you think?
From Cathy Yardley, author of Love, Comment, Subscribe, comes an emotional rom-com about two middle-aged gamers who grow their online connection into an IRL love story.
Maggie is an unapologetically grumpy forty-eight-year-old hermit. But when her college-aged son makes her a deal―he’ll be more social if she does the same―she can’t refuse. She joins a new online gaming guild led by a friendly healer named Otter. So that nobody gets the wrong idea, she calls herself Bogwitch.
Otter is Aiden, a fifty-year-old optimist using the guild as an emotional outlet from his family drama caring for his aging mother while his brother plays house with Aiden’s ex-fiancée.
Bogwitch and Otter become fast virtual friends, but there’s a catch. Bogwitch thinks Otter is a college student. Otter assumes Bogwitch is an octogenarian.
When they finally meet face to face―after a rocky, shocking start―the unlikely pair of sunshine and stormy personalities grow tentatively closer. But Maggie’s previous relationships have left her bitter, and Aiden’s got a complicated past of his own.
Everything’s easier online. Can they make it work in real life?
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Sapphire Flames
RECOMMENDED: Sapphire Flames by Ilona Andrews is $1.99! Many of us romance readers can’t recommend this series or this author enough. You can pick this one up without read the story arc of the previous three, but why would you want to deprive yourself of Ilona Andrews goodness.
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Ilona Andrew comes an enthralling new trilogy set in the Hidden Legacy world, where magic means power, and family bloodlines are the new currency of society…
In a world where magic is the key to power and wealth, Catalina Baylor is a Prime, the highest rank of magic user, and the Head of her House. Catalina has always been afraid to use her unique powers, but when her friend’s mother and sister are murdered, Catalina risks her reputation and safety to unravel the mystery.
But behind the scenes powerful forces are at work, and one of them is Alessandro Sagredo, the Italian Prime who was once Catalina’s teenage crush. Dangerous and unpredictable, Alessandro’s true motives are unclear, but he’s drawn to Catalina like a moth to a flame.
To help her friend, Catalina must test the limits of her extraordinary powers, but doing so may cost her both her House–and her heart.
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Ayla Asher is one of my favorite authors and is extremely underrated! Manhattan Holiday Loves is a collection of three novellas. She is very body positive especially in the first story.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0886JMKDF?_bbid=163133111
Free Sports Romance: Falling for the Player – anthology with a lot of big name hockey authors
https://dl.bookfunnel.com/8nen03n6h4
I have reread When a Scot Ties the Knot at least three times! Seeing it featured makes me want to go back and read it again, but I think I’ll have to check out Role Playing first.
$.99:
– Sea Creatures Prefer Redheads: a Romance Novella from the Phoenix Pictures Vault by Brianne Gillen
– The Mimosa Tree Mystery (Su Lin Series Book 1) by Ovidia Yu
$1.99:
– The Kiss Curse: An Ex Hex Novel (The Graves Glen Series Book 2) by Erin Sterling
– Prince of Air and Darkness (The Darkest Court) by M.A. Grant
– It Takes Two to Tumble: Seducing the Sedgwicks by Cat Sebastian
I highly recommend ROLE PLAYING. It was one of my favorite books read this year. If you’re looking for a book with older MCs and excellent bi rep, you can’t go wrong with ROLE PLAYING.
I liked SPOILER ALERT at the time I was reading it and then I just felt gross for all the fat-shaming content that’s in there
With SPOILER ALERT’s cover, I am always trying to figure out how the lower half of her body is posed. I keep looking at it and my eyes can’t make it make sense. Is he standing slightly behind her and her hips are canted towards the viewer, while her top half is twisting towards him? Nothing else seems proportionally right. Color me confused. It looks like an uncomfortable way to stand.
@HeatherS Is she maybe twisting a little, like he’s almost dipping her? I saw it as kind of swoony? But now I am not sure. I liked that book, but the fat shaming definitely stayed with me more than the romance, unfortunately.
I quite like Ilona Andrews, but Tessa Dare gets my vote out of these. WaSTtK is not her best, plus I am not into Scottish romance, and it’s still just great.
I remember liking all four of these!
WHEN A SCOTT TIES THE KNOT – I must be in the minority here because I found it fun and light without being fabulous. 3 stars.
SPOILER ALERT – I really enjoyed this one! I’m not a fanfic person, but I felt this book helped explain to me why people enjoy it. 4 stars.
SAPPHIRE FLAMES – Yes!!!!! This is such a fun world. I actually liked Nevada’s story better (books 1-3), but Catalina is a good character.
I scored a copy of Cathy Yardley’s ‘Gouda Friends’ at Steamy Lit Con and liked it a lot, so I’m delighted to nab ‘Role Playing’ here. 🙂
I enjoyed “Role Playing.” Good grumpy-sunshine. The MCs felt young for their ages to me (I think because of the heavy emphasis on online gaming, maybe? And I say that as a gamer), which I think was my biggest quibble. I enjoyed Yardley’s “Gouda Friends” quite a bit more.
I’ve read a few of Dade’s books, including “Spoiler Alert.” There’s a lot to enjoy in them, but I often feel like there’s TOO MUCH GROVEL from the male MC. Too much grovel for things that sometimes…don’t seem that bad? At all?
Anyway, just my opinion, and I know lotsa folks love her books!
RUBY FEVER, which is book 6 of Hidden Legacy/Book 3 of Catalina’s trilogy is also on sale for $1.99 on Amazon US. I’m with @Magical Trees – I liked the first trilogy better, but this trilogy has some really unusual magic in it, which makes it a regular re-read for me. And even a less-than-amazing Ilona Andrews series is better than many other books.
All good choices. I will vote for Catalina as she shows growth through her trilogy!
@Kim – Thank you for this comment — I decided to stop reading Dade after 1.5 books because the amount of groveling demanded seemed excessive to me, but I felt weird about it because no one else seemed to feel that way, so I’m relieved that it’s not just me.
It’s the rare occasion where I’ve read all of these. My top two are Role Playing and the Dare book.