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Wild Rain
RECOMMENDED: Wild Rain by Beverly Jenkins is $1.99! Catherine wrote a Lightning Review for this one and gave it a B+:
I enjoyed this story a lot. It contains many of the elements that feel like a traditional Western to me – scenes of blizzards and horse-breaking, confrontations in the local saloon, slick shysters from out East come to take advantage of the locals – but the central characters buck the stereotypes in numerous ways.
The second novel in USA Today bestselling author Beverly Jenkins’ compelling new Women Who Dare series follows a female rancher in Wyoming after the Civil War.
A reporter has come to Wyoming to do a story on doctors for his Black newspaper back east. He thinks Colton Lee will be an interesting subject…until he meets Colton’s sister, Spring. She runs her own ranch, wears denim pants instead of dresses, and is the most fascinating woman he’s ever met.
But Spring, who has overcome a raucous and scandalous past, isn’t looking for, nor does she want, love. As their attraction grows, will their differences come between them or unite them for an everlasting love?
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Spinning Silver
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik is $2.99! This is a lovely fantasy with romantic elements. My friend and I recently discussed Novik and comparisons between Uprooted and Spinning Silver. We feel Spinning Silver was the better of the two, but both are still REALLY GOOD. What are your thoughts?
Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders… but her father isn’t a very good one. Free to lend and reluctant to collect, he has loaned out most of his wife’s dowry and left the family on the edge of poverty–until Miryem steps in. Hardening her heart against her fellow villagers’ pleas, she sets out to collect what is owed–and finds herself more than up to the task. When her grandfather loans her a pouch of silver pennies, she brings it back full of gold.
But having the reputation of being able to change silver to gold can be more trouble than it’s worth–especially when her fate becomes tangled with the cold creatures that haunt the wood, and whose king has learned of her reputation and wants to exploit it for reasons Miryem cannot understand.
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Don’t You Forget About Me
Don’t You Forget About Me by Mhairi McFarlane is $1.99! This is a second chance contemporary romance, though the hero doesn’t seem to remember the heroine. Maybe there’s some amnesia here too? Have you read it?
Internationally bestselling author Mhairi McFarlane delivers a funny, romantic, heartfelt novel perfect for fans of Josie Silver or Sally Thorne, and anyone who loves Bridget Jones or Fleabag!
You always remember your first love… don’t you?
If there’s anything worse than being fired from the worst restaurant in town, it’s coming home early to find your boyfriend in bed with someone else. Reeling from the humiliation of a double dumping in one day, Georgina takes the next job that comes her way—bartender in a newly opened pub. There’s only one problem: it’s run by the guy she fell in love with years ago. And—make that two problems—he doesn’t remember her. At all. But she has fabulous friends and her signature hot pink fur coat… what more could a girl really need?
Lucas McCarthy has not only grown into a broodingly handsome man, but he’s also turned into an actual grown-up, with a thriving business and a dog along the way. Crossing paths with him again throws Georgina’s rocky present into sharp relief—and brings a secret from her past bubbling to the surface. Only she knows what happened twelve years ago, and why she’s allowed the memories to chase her ever since. But maybe it’s not too late for the truth… or a second chance with the one that got away?
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A Stitch in Time
RECOMMENDED: A Stitch in Time by Kelley Armstrong is 99c! Ellen read this one and gave it a B:
If you like time travel or gothic romance I think there’s a lot to like here. However, gothic romance fans should note that romance itself is fairly sweet and light and the gothic elements are more embedded in the various ghost and murder subplots.
Thorne Manor has always been haunted…and it has always haunted Bronwyn Dale. As a young girl, Bronwyn could pass through a time slip in her great-aunt’s house, where she visited William Thorne, a boy her own age, born two centuries earlier. After a family tragedy, the house was shuttered and Bronwyn was convinced that William existed only in her imagination.
Now, twenty years later Bronwyn inherits Thorne Manor. And when she returns, William is waiting.
William Thorne is no longer the boy she remembers. He’s a difficult and tempestuous man, his own life marred by tragedy and a scandal that had him retreating to self-imposed exile in his beloved moors. He’s also none too pleased with Bronwyn for abandoning him all those years ago.
As their friendship rekindles and sparks into something more, Bronwyn must also deal with ghosts in the present version of the house. Soon she realizes they are linked to William and the secret scandal that drove him back to Thorne Manor. To build a future, Bronwyn must confront the past.
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TW for Don’t You Forget About Me: harrowing and detailed flashback description of sexual assault of FMC. The romance is pretty much secondary to her emotional journey. As usual, the blurb is incredibly misleading.
Thank you @SusanS because now I will definitely be avoiding it.
I liked WILD RAIN and DON’T YOU FORGET ABOUT ME (though I get @SusanS’s warnings). I have mixed feelings about SPINNING SILVER and liked UPROOTED much more. What didn’t work for me about SPINNING SILVER? The constant switching between character’s stories. I felt like I didn’t get enough of any one character to feel fully invested in them before the book switched to another ongoing story. Sometimes that works for me, but here I was left constantly wanting just a little more of the characters so the payoff didn’t have enough resonance for me. I really liked the concept and had really liked UPROOTED and was looking for more of that kind of *these characters* reading experience so it was especially frustrating to me. In fact, I’m still annoyed enough about it to write this.
Mhairi McFarlane was a new-to-me author in 2023. I encountered Don’t Forget About Me first in the audiobook and was absolutely hooked. In the space of a month I went through McFarlane’s entire backlist. Between the skilled narrators and McFarlane’s vivid voice, I felt I’d spent the weeks among new friends in Sheffield and surrounding English counties. Her books are decidedly about overcoming obstacles and punching through. The dialog is brilliant, witty, revelatory, sometimes wrenching. And worth every challenging moment. Don’t You Forget about Me has laugh/snort moments along with steamy scenes. It’s a book I will remember, reread, and recommend fondly despite the rough spots. Do try to take advantage of the audiobooks if you can. The regionalisms and accents are delightful.
It looks like the stuff your ereader event is still going on (not sure for how long since it was advertised as just 12/27) – https://www.romancebookworms.com/
I have a couple recommendations for queer romances.
Five Sunsets by Frances M Thompson, m/f bi romance by a bi author. I haven’t read the one on sale but I enjoyed the one I’ve read, which was a lovely, sexy low stakes romance with more emotional depth than I was expecting.
Misha Horne – her book on sale is very niche but if you like m/m daddy kink with a lot of pathos and spanking, you’ll probably love this one.
Three out of the four titles mentioned were five star reads for me. Absolutly loved Don’t you forget about me, Spinning Silver and A Stich in Time. Some of my all time favorite books.
I have been a sucker for time travel books since I read my mom’s copy of Mirror in the early 80’s. A stitch in Time is fantastic! I may need to reread it.
Dragonblade has a number of their first-in-series free: https://www.dragonbladepublishing.com/promotion-page/
The Shadow and The Sun (Militess & Mage Series Book 1) by Monica Enderle Pierce is currently free, and books two and three are $.99 each (A Castle to Keep, The Bones Beneath).
In contrast to Neile, I found Uprooted to be rather frustrating while Spinning Silver instantly became one of my favorite books over the course of the Sunday I read the whole thing on. It’s the only ebook I’ve turned around and bought in paper too (hardcover!).
It’s true that if you’re really looking for an experience where you sink in with just a few key players, this isn’t the book to read. I also wouldn’t class it as a romance at all (two of the viewpoint characters do have plots that basically include “making an arranged marriage work,” but the focus isn’t on the romance per se and the third viewpoint character rather pointedly has no romance at all).
However, in my view all three viewpoint characters are very vividly realized and have their own clear arcs that are connected by themes of responsibility, community, and family. It’s also a book that strikes you with Jewish joy as well as persecution. And if you, like me, couldn’t care much about Uprooted because the heroine was unbelievably dense for long stretches and you found the trite romance got in the way of the much more emotionally realized and interesting female solidarity, I’ve got great news. Spinning Silver is a book for you.
I love Uprooted and Spinning Silver, although Silver more. It’s not a romance per se, but the romantic pairings did really work for me and were a huge part of why I love the book.