Holiday Homecoming is one of the most oddly paced books I’ve ever encountered. It starts off well, introducing the characters and conflict, and then nothing happens until the second-to-last chapter when suddenly it becomes a thriller. It’s marked as “wholesome.” There’s no sex, and by the end everyone is getting along with each other, so that’s pretty wholesome, I guess? I kind of loved this book, and I kind of hated it. It’s a mess, … Continue reading Holiday Homecoming by Pamela Tracy →
The Unconventional Governess is a funny, touching Regency romance. Set in England in 1814, it involves a woman who wants to be a doctor and a man who finds himself with an estate to run, a niece to raise, and a case of epilepsy to manage. The book is short, the emotions feel true, and the characters are lovely. Our heroine, Henrietta, is an orphan. Her uncle, a doctor, raised her and he took her … Continue reading The Unconventional Governess by Jessica Nelson →
I read this book on the plane to RWA last week after JenReadsRomance recommended it most assiduously on Twitter. I won’t embed the thread as it’s a bit spoilery (here is a link if you wish), but there was one quote that sold me on this novel. The heroine’s mother is a former supermodel, and when her daughter Dani, the heroine, calls her after a bad breakup (more on that in a moment), they have … Continue reading A Taste of Pleasure by Chloe Blake →
Anything But Vanilla is a Harlequin Kiss romance about Alex and Sorrel, who bicker over running an ice cream shop. The ice cream added a nice comfort read quality to the book, but tragically all the parts of the book that did not involve ice cream were sexist, nonsensical, or both. Sorrel runs Scoop!, an ice cream catering, entertainment, and delivery company. Sorrel gets the ice cream for her business from Ria, who owns a gourmet … Continue reading Anything but Vanilla by Liz Fielding →
His Forever Family by Sarah M. Anderson is a billionaire/boss-assistant/Cinderella/adoption story (please let that be a category on Jeopardy someday) that features a pretty substantial conversation about race, class, and privilege. All of that is packed into 256 pages, but somehow it works. Also it’s about finding your family which is a theme that almost always works for me. Marcus Warren (billionaire and one of The Warrens) is jogging with his assistant Liberty Reese, like they … Continue reading His Forever Family by Sarah M. Anderson →
It’s not often that I find myself loving the heroine in a novel more than I love the hero. The best scenario is when I love them both equally flaws and all, knowing that they are perfect for each other. While I did feel the h/h got their deserved happy ending, it wasn’t until the very end that I began to soften for the hero and even then, I felt there should have been more … Continue reading Starting with June by Emilie Rose →
My review takes a quasi-newspaper article type format, with each section being worth a point. Who/Why Hannah Shaw is a young, attractive widow with an almost-school-aged son, Evan. An orphan who never knew any family of her own, she took the loss of her husband, and then his father, hard. She inherited his family’s ranch and, damn it, she’s going to make a success of that godforsaken thing if it kills her! (And it’s in … Continue reading Her Cowboy Hero by Tanya Michaels →
First, because it’s most important: I picked up Starting with June by Emilie Rose late morning, planning to read about half of it before doing chores and heading to work that evening. I never put it down. I ended up outside, still reading while walking my dogs. I finished it five minutes before I absolutely had to leave for work. I don’t usually have trouble putting books down. On to the less perfect parts: … Continue reading Starting with June by Emilie Rose →
I first discovered Sarah Mayberry last year with her self published novel Satisfaction . I enjoyed that so much that I started picking up some of her earlier backlist. When I saw this one was up on the RITA Reader Challenge list, I had already picked up a copy but hadn’t had time to read it yet. I’m delighted to be able to review it for SBTB (and knock another book off of Mt.TBR in the process). … Continue reading Her Kind of Trouble by Sarah Mayberry →
Usually when I approach a book for review, I carefully analyze the positive and negative qualities of said book and then determine a grade, often with a great deal of to-ing and fro-ing. In the case of Her Kind of Trouble, I knew from the first that the grade was going to be a nice, solid B. For one thing, I’ve read a lot of Sarah Mayberry, and she’s a go-to comfort read for me. … Continue reading Her Kind of Trouble by Sarah Mayberry →
I decided to read this book as it’s part of the Harlequin mini-series entitled “At Cain’s Command” for which I had read one of the prior books. The underlying storyline tying the books together is the search for a previously unknown illegitimate Cain daughter, the half sister to the male protagonists in the books. “A Bride for the Black Sheep Brother” starts with a strong prologue that solidly establishes the moment our hero, Cooper Larson … Continue reading A Bride for the Blacksheep Brother by Emily McKay →
