The Bodyguard
The Bodyguard by Katherine Center is $2.99! I mentioned this one on a previous Hide Your Wallet and was tempted by the bodyguard heroine. However, it’s still in my to-read stack. Have you read this one?
She’s got his back.
Hannah Brooks looks more like a kindgerten teacher than somebody who could kill you with a wine bottle opener. Or a ballpoint pen. Or a dinner napkin. But the truth is, she’s an Executive Protection Agent (aka “bodyguard”), and she just got hired to protect superstar actor Jack Stapleton from his middle-aged, corgi-breeding stalker.He’s got her heart.
Jack Stapleton’s a household name—captured by paparazzi on beaches the world over, famous for, among other things, rising out of the waves in all manner of clingy board shorts and glistening like a Roman deity. But a few years back, in the wake of a family tragedy, he dropped from the public eye and went off the grid.They’ve got a secret.
When Jack’s mom gets sick, he comes home to the family’s Texas ranch to help out. Only one catch: He doesn’t want his family to know about his stalker. Or the bodyguard thing. And so Hannah—against her will and her better judgment—finds herself pretending to be Jack’s girlfriend as a cover. Even though her ex, like a jerk, says no one will believe it.What could possibly go wrong???
Hannah hardly believes it, herself. But the more time she spends with Jack, the more real it all starts to seem. And there lies the heartbreak. Because it’s easy for Hannah to protect Jack. But protecting her own, long-neglected heart? That’s the hardest thing she’s ever done.Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
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Reel by Kennedy Ryan is $2.99! This is a romance set in Hollywood, if that happens to be your catnip. It has also gone a cover redesign (which I don’t love) and a bonus epilogue as been added. The ISBN has been updated and I wonder what happens to copies of the former edition. Do they poof off your ereader?
This beautiful edition of a heart-searing epic romance has metallic cover effects and an all-new 7000-word bonus epilogue!
Neevah Saint is ready for the spotlight. After months as an understudy, this is her night to shine. She never imagined he would be in the audience. Canon Holt. Famous film director. Fascinating. Talented. Fine.
Before she can catch her breath, everything is changing. Neevah goes from backstage Broadway to center stage Hollywood. From being unknown, to having her name on everyone’s lips when Canon casts her as the lead in a star-studded Harlem Renaissance biopic.
But forbidden attraction, scandal, and circumstances beyond Neevah’s control soon put her dream in jeopardy. Could this one shot—the role of a lifetime, the love of a lifetime—cost her everything?
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The Duke at Hazard by KJ Charles is 99c! This is the second book in the The Gentlemen of Uncertain Fortune series. It came out last summer. Shana was excited for this one because of the road trip element.
Don’t miss the second thrilling Regency romance in the Gentlemen of Uncertain Fortune series by KJ Charles…
The Duke of Severn is one of the greatest men in Britain.
He’s also short, quiet, and unimpressive. And now he’s been robbed, after indulging in one rash night with a strange man who stole the heirloom Severn ring from his finger. The Duke has to get it back, and he can’t let anyone know how he lost it. So when his cousin bets that he couldn’t survive without his privilege and title, the Duke grasps the opportunity to hunt down his ring-incognito.
Life as an ordinary person is terrifying…until the anonymous Duke meets Daizell Charnage, a disgraced gentleman, and hires him to help. Racing across the country in search of the thief, the Duke and Daizell fall into scrapes, into trouble-and in love.
Daizell has been excluded from polite society, his name tainted by his father’s crimes and his own misbehaviour. Now he dares to dream of a life somewhere out of sight with the quiet gentleman who’s stolen his heart. He doesn’t know that his lover is a hugely rich public figure with half a dozen titles. And when he finds out, it will risk everything they have…
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PODCAST RECOMMENDED: The Love Contract by Steph Vizard is $1.99! Dr. Jodi McAlister recommended this one on the podcast, saying:
…genuinely the best, most legitimate excuse for fake dating I’ve ever heard of, and it’s the most delightfully Melbourne book as well.
Can she (pretend to) love her neighbour?
An award-winning modern rom-com for all fans of fake dating, enemies-to-lovers stories.
I didn’t know the guy next door. And given he was now my daughter’s manny, the person apart from me she’d be spending most of her waking hours with, and my fake boyfriend, I needed to find out.
Zoe had a plan – love, marriage and a baby carriage. But when she’s ghosted by her boyfriend of seven years (note to don’t think about Adam), she decides to have a baby sans partner. There’s just one sticky Zoe has to return to work and there’s a childcare drought.
Enter Will, Zoe’s nemesis and frustratingly handsome neighbour. When Will isn’t shutting down thirtieth birthday parties or overseeing the world’s longest renovation, he’s a corporate lawyer angling to make partner.
After Will’s boss mistakenly assumes Will is the father of Zoe’s baby and insists he take parental leave (to make the firm look progressive), it seems like a simple white lie could help both Zoe and Will to get ahead.
But life with an adorable toddler – and a growing attraction between Will and Zoe – is never as tidy as their agreement’s bullet points and dry clauses suggest. As they get deeper into the lie, the lines between truth and fiction blur.
But Zoe’s hiding a secret and when it comes out, the consequences for all of them could be devastating.
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The Bodyguard is a great read (and re-read)
I find it unsettling that the look of the book, rather than the content, is often given priority these days ~ “This beautiful edition of a heart-searing epic romance has metallic cover effects and an all-new 7000-word bonus epilogue!”
Contemporaries and especially celebrity romances aren’t usually my thing but I tried The Bodyguard because I’m a sucker for fake dating and I ended up really liking it and have re-read it a few times!
Can anyone spoil if there’s a third act breakup for the bodyguard?
Reel is a great read (and the the previous edition is still in my Kindle library). Also recommended both The Bodyguard and The Love Contract (alhough The Love Contract made me feel a bit old as I went to school with the author’s mother).
@ProfessionalLurker – They don’t actually get together for real till fairly late in the book, so there’s a brief separation at one point, but not a breakup as they’re not actually together yet.
They both have feelings but Hannah is taken off the job guarding Jack before either of them really acknowledge anything and has to leave in a rush. But he reaches out pretty quickly and they figure things out. There’s an even briefer moment on their first “real” date where she’s made to doubt he really cares for her, which would require major plot spoilers to explain, but that’s resolved almost immediately.
@Kareni: Many of us are visual creatures and with the number of books being published, something has to grab your attention first. Often, that’s the cover. It’s always been that way for me, but I don’t rely just on the cover unless it’s a cover model I collect (well, I used to do that) to make a final decision. I check at least the blurb (but will not pick up a book with a poorly written blurb) and perhaps a page or two.
The cover is important to me and I need some quick way to decide on new authors. So if it’s a cartoon or object cover and an author I don’t know, it’s a “no click” for me. I move on to a book with a more adult and appealing cover. If it’s an author I do know, then I get it from the public library. In a recent essay Maya Rodale helped explain why I don’t like the new covers:
trendy illustrated covers, which make romance seem cute, chic, cool and thus “safe.”
I have been describing them as “infantilizing” women.
$.99:
– Stacked: An MM Best Friends to Lovers Romance (Mars Fitness Book 2)
by Linden Bell
– Bounce (Outback Boys Book 3) by Becca Seymour
– The Far Horizon (The Pirate Wolves Series Book 4) by Marsha Canham
– Beyond the Fringe: An Arcana Imperii Collection by Miles Cameron
– Behind the Veil: A Fake Marriage Romantic Suspense Story (Codex Book 1) by Kathryn Nolan
– An Unlikely Proposal (Love Inspired) by Toni Shiloh
– Courtesans Tales, Boxed Set Books 1-3: Second Chance Romance (The Girlfriend Experience, Payback, Triple Play) by Jasmine Haynes
– Name From a Hat Trick by L.A. Witt
– An Earl Unmasked (Ladies of Risk) by Rachel Ann Smith
– If His Kiss is Wicked (Lady Rivendale’s Connections, Book Three): Regency Romance by Jo Goodman
$1.99:
– Butterfly Swords (The Tang Dynasty Book 1) by Jeannie Lin
– Good Boy: A Friends with Benefits Hockey Romance (WAGs Book 1) by Elle Kennedy, Sarina Bowen
– Terribly Tristan (Bad Boyfriends, Inc 3) by Lisa Henry, Sarah Honey
Free:
– Sapphire Nights (Crystal Magic Book 1) by Patricia Rice
– Sweet Home Cowboy: A Small-Town Western Romance (Love at the Chocolate Shop Book 9) by Marin Thomas
– The Savior (Aces Book 1) by Cristin Harber
– Prince of Cats: Autumn Court #1 (Rosethorn Valley Fae Romance) by Tasha Black
– Falling in Fate (Hope Falls: Brewed Awakenings Book 1) by Melanie Shawn
THE LOVE CONTRACT
Ooo! I haven’t read this one, but I’m a sucker for fake dating. Worried the toddler might be a plot moppet, which can be irritating. Has anyone read this?
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THE BODYGUARD
This is such a good book! I’ve re-read it several times. The book has both great main characters and great side characters. Agree with @Loramir on the 3rd act breakup question.
THE DUKE OF HAZARD
I know that it’s heresy to say this, but I don’t personally love every book KJ Charles has ever written. Some I adore, some I can barely finish. THE DUKE OF HAZARD was enjoyable, but really draaaaaaaged for me in the middle before getting more interesting again at the end.
I highly, highly recommend REEL, which I adored. And the original version, with the original cover, remains available on my Kindle. Kennedy Ryan is consistently great. Though her first, recently re-released series didn’t do that much for me, I have loved all her books since then. They have a satisfying emotional complexity.
I agree with everyone on THE BODYGUARD–loved it, and it started me off reading Katherine Center, and I’ve now read all her books. She has a couple I like less (her upcoming release was readable but not re-readable for me) but THE BODYGUARD was great.
@Loramir thanks so much!! Really appreciate it
@Karen H near Tampa ~ thank you for sharing your thoughts. I suspect that all of us here are actually interested in reading what is between the covers, and I can appreciate that the cover art can draw readers to a book. My unsettled feeling is that books sometimes seem to be marketed as decor rather than as something to read.
Love the KJ Charles because of course I do. If you’re a Heyer fan it’s a gay mashup of the one with the Duke of Sale (The Foundling?) and the one with Pen (The Corinthian maybe). My vote is always going to be for magic, but even the ones like this without magic delight me.
Clearly a minority opinion but I could not stand The Bodyguard, I mean it was well written and engaging and I loved it in theory but the way the supposedly super competent bodyguard was actually repeatedly… not, it just incensed me. Because a woman in a rom com has to be humiliated for it to be funny apparently, idk, I don’t even remember the details at this point just that I was very disappointed how gendered this sort of bullshit still is, when the bodyguard is the male character he gets to be good at his job (aside from dangerboners I suppose)
I remember liking but not loving Reel, I think it was solid. Actually, hilariously, apropos the above conversation, I remember thinking it was a rare instance of the cover being more appealing than the book, which is no longer an issue.
I’ve owned a bunch of KJ Charles books for ages and never actually read them even though they’re my kind of thing. For some reason this post inspired me to finally start one and I stayed up till 3:30am reading both books in this series. Oops.
Absolutely loved them both, maybe loved The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting a *tiny* bit more than this one, but both are absolutely fantastic. Funny, sweet, hot, some genuine barriers to being together resolved in ways that made me cheer with delight. I’d put them up there with Cat Sebastian for amazing m/m historicals.
I have a bunch more KJ Charles on my Kindle so there may be some more Bad Decisions Book Club nights coming up…
I have now, multiple times, read the title of this post as “Fake Dating KJ Charles” and had to do a double take.
@Kareni — it’s not just you. I think it’s the fact that the cover is being verbally pumped up in a blurb: why should it require that when it’s supposed to be the lure? Isn’t the cover itself supposed to speak to you? I’m definitely both attracted to and put off by books because of the covers (especially the illustrated ones), but text about the cover is never going to be what changes my mind about the book.
I guess this isn’t new, though. It’s kind of the modern version of people buying fake books to make their libraries look cultured back when books were a higher level of luxury item than they are for a us now.