It takes extraordinary authors to make extraordinary books out of ordinary people. Fortunately, Cara McKenna has what it takes. Erin Coffey earned her LPN while nursing her dying grandmother, so Larkhaven Psychiatric Hospital is her first professional position – one she only took to be close to her disastrous sister and beloved nephew. Kelly Robak…
Adriana Herrera takes on workplace romance with her usual sense of verve and style in Here to Stay, a fun take on the rivals-to-lovers trope. Julia del Mar Ortiz is having a difficult month. Working as a program director for the Sturm Foundation, the charity division of a high-end department store operating under the same…
The problem with Suzanne Park’s The Perfect Escape is that it’s two different books weirdly glued together. The first half is a rich girl-poor boy YA across-the-tracks story which I was really starting to get into, when WHAM! The rich girl and the poor boy are suddenly in a Hunger Games-style survivalist zombie competition. There’s…
It’s hard for me to write a review that is as enthusiastic and upbeat as this book deserves, because things are so tough everywhere right now. But that means when I tell you it transported me out of my home and made me extremely happy for a few hours of coronavirus social distancing, you should…
Christina Lauren’s spring release, The Honey-Don’t List, with its coworker hero and heroine who don’t like each other until they love each other is – and I mean this in a complimentary way = a less intense, and in some ways more thoughtful, if lower-grade, The Hating Game. Carey Duncan works for Rusty and Melissa…
Part women’s fiction and part romance If I Never Met You is wholly delightful. A novel about second – and third – chances and falling in love with whom you least expect it, this gem of a book is funny, sweet and charming. Barrister Laurie and her significant other Dan have been together since they…
(This is now back in print–ebook only–so we’re running the review again!) What could be better than an Australian coworkers-to-lovers romance with a promotion rivalry, and family disappointed that their kid didn’t grow up to be a doctor? No, I’m not talking about The Hating Game – which I loved. Sarah Mayberry did a similar…
In 2019, my romance reviews frequently ranked as either ‘hot’ or ‘burning’ on AAR’s sensuality scale. I’ve decided to shake things up in 2020 by reading more novels on the ‘closed-lip kisses’ end of the sexy spectrum. Book seven in Anna J. Stewart’s small-town romance series Butterfly Harbor Stories, The Firefighter’s Thanksgiving Wish, is an…
I’ve read a few of Vanessa North’s romances before, my favorite being The Lonely Drop, an LGBTQ friends-to-lovers novella written for a photo prompt in a Goodreads readers’ group. It put the author on my radar, and this latest story solidifies that spot. Hard Chrome is the first in her small town American Heavy Metal…
How to Hack a Heartbreak is a delightful book – a breezy read that grabs the reader from the first page. What amazes me is although I know that Rockaway could not possibly have written Heartbreak yesterday, it reads that way; it’s so of-the-moment. I can see readers juggling Ronan Farrow’s Catch and Kill with Rockaway’s…