Jay Hogan marks the beginning of her new Style series with Flare, a story set in the world of high fashion featuring talented up-and-coming designer Rhys Hellier and Beckett Northcott, an English professor who wouldn’t recognise haute couture if it asked him out for a drink and then got up and danced on the bar. …
Lauri Robinson’s Marriage or Ruin for the Heiress is the first in her new miniseries The Osterlund Saga. This book is set in Chicago during the Great Depression and features a hero and heroine who are both determined never to fall in love. This is a delightful and easy read, with the tiniest bit of…
If the Shoe Fits is a charming, modernized reimagining of Cinderella with a strong body positive message and an emphasis on inclusiveness. Cindy Woods is headed from NY to LA when she meets Prince Charming. She’s pretty sure he has another name but that’s what she privately calls him as they share a flight, conversation,…
I cannot tell you how badly I wanted to like Preslaysa Williams’ A Lowcountry Bride. I’m a fashion and design geek, I love ambitious heroines, and I like to read about diverse characters, including those with illness or disability. On paper, this book should have been everything I wanted. Unfortunately, on Kindle, it wasn’t. Maya…
Sometimes I’m shallow when I pick out my books. I’ll admit that I ordered His Convenient New York Bride based 100% on the cover. When I got to this month’s prompt and saw that it was “dressed for success,” current me was thanking January 2020 me for getting a book that would actually fit the…
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…
How about a fairy tale where the heroine is the fairy godmother and the prince needs a beautiful gown? Prince Sebastian of Belgium is hiding a secret: he loves wearing gowns, and dreams of donning something more bold and glamorous than his mother’s old castoffs. When he sees a ballgown by seamstress Frances, he immediately…
“I don’t want to talk to you.” “Ah. You are a lesbian.” – Matteo meets Kimber, Ache For You The above quotation was the harbinger of bad things to come, like thunder before a tornado. J.T. Geissinger’s Ache for You continues her Slow Burn series of rewritten fairytales, this one a Cinderella pastiche with a…
Maya Rodale opens up her new series set in Gilded Age New York with Duchess by Design. Brandon Alexander Fiennes, the brand-new Duke of Kingston, has inherited an impoverished estate and has no idea what to do about it. He desperately wants to restore Lyon House to its former glory, but with his tenants suffering, the…
Kianna Alexander’s The Southern Gentlemen series continues charmingly with the story of a fashion designer and the textile manufacturer who falls in love with her. Alexis – Lex – Devers lives, breathes, sleeps and eats fashion. She’s the kind of girl who spends hours in a hardworking daze, only taking time out for life’s bare…