When I wrote a blog post for AAR called “Male fatphobia in romance novels,” I didn’t dare hope or ask for the bigger guys I find attractive to be heroes; I just begged authors to avoid stereotyping them as pathetic losers. Clearly, I had to try Jessa Kane’s short story Husky, which stars an overweight…
I haven’t read too many début stories this year, but I heard good chatter on social media about Cara Bastone’s Just a Heartbeat Away, the first full length novel in her Forever Yours series. (Technically her first book is a prequel novella to the series, When We First Met, but this is her first full…
Narrated by Greg Boudreaux Counterpoint, book two in Anna Zabo’s trilogy about rock group Twisted Wishes, focuses on the band’s lead guitarist, Domino Grinder, a mouthy, tatted-up, leather-clad Rock god who struts about the stage shirtless, oozing sex appeal and attitude. Domino may be the most recognisable member of the group, but he’s also fiercely…
Inked with a Kiss is a wonderful, sweet and chemistry-laden tale about two ordinary women falling in love under the ordinary pressures of real life. Thirty-seven-year-old Jamie Winston is a tattoo artist and shop manager with a dysfunctional family – a twelve-year-old-daughter, Riley, whom she adores but clashes with occasionally, her ex-wife, and two helpless,…
I read and enjoyed a couple of books by Jay Hogan last year, so I was more than happy to jump into Powder & Pavlova, the first book in her Southern Lights series of m/m romances set in and around Queenstown, New Zealand. This is a May/December story featuring a pair of engaging and well-rounded…
In the Carla Kelly tradition of holiday shorts that make you smile, these three sweet short stories (set in the Edwardian Caribbean across Christmas, New Year, and Reyes Magos) are a lovely addition to any holiday romance fan’s library. These are gentle, realistic stories about the holidays of ordinary or even poor historical people; it’s…
Closed-off businesswoman Carrie Morgan’s sister, Emmie, requires a favor of her. Emmie has decided to jazz up the exterior of her nightclub with a mural – in this case, with her gorgeous sister as the subject. Carrie agrees and is stunned to learn the muralist is Edwin Prince, the handsome artist whose gleaming red hair…
Talia Hibbert’s A Girl Like Her was one of my favorite books in 2018. I initially doubted the story could or would appeal to me – as I mentioned in my review, it featured a heroine alternately described as rude, awkward, and, according to everyone in town, bad news. But I was completely won over…
A smile and a tear – that’s what you’ll produce as Talia Hibbert scores another win with Work for It, the angsty but deeply romantic story of two men who fall in love in spite of their emotional scars. Olu Keynes is a tart-tongued but handsome man who has been numbed emotionally thanks to a…
Professor Nikki Barber is starting over with a new job after drawing a firm boundary with her mother, and a tattoo feels like the right way to mark this new chapter in her life. Dean Shaw, six years her junior, offers to stay late at the tattoo parlor to work on her. But the tattooing…