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…
Mayra Cuevas’ Salty, Bitter, Sweet is a sharply etched and unforgettable tale of an expat American teenager trying to find her way in France. It’s a beautifully done life study that knows what it’s talking about when it speaks of food, family and love alike, with a heroine who’s unforgettable. Isabella Field’s life revolves around…
(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…
As soon as I saw the blurb for The Worst Best Man, I thought it sounded like it could be a very fun read. And I’m generally up for very fun reads. In the end, this book did have its good moments, but overall, it just didn’t quite work for me. In the prologue, we…
Sandhya Menon opens a brand-new series of fairytale retellings centered around an elite academy with a magical secret with Of Curses and Kisses, a lovely re-take of Beauty and the Beast. Book-loving Rajkumari Jaya Rao of the Imperial House of Mysuru enters St. Rosetta’s International Academy in Colorado with one mission – to break the…
Sandhya Menon breathes new life into the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale with her diversely cast Of Curses and Kisses. The author’s humor creates a nice balance to her look at serious issues like teen loneliness and parental expectations in this fun YA novel. The Emersons and Raos are the English/Indian equivalents of the…
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…
In Headliners, the fifth book in her London Celebrity series, author Lucy Parker shifts her focus from London’s Theatreland to the world of television, to bring readers a wonderfully sharp, funny, sexy and grown-up romance between a pair of rival TV presenters who profess to hate each other’s guts, but who, of course, doth protest…
Having really enjoyed Jay Hogan’s Digging Deep when I read it last summer, I was eager to read more of her work. First Impressions – the first in her Auckland Med. series – is her début novel (recently republished), an enjoyable enemies-to-lovers romance with an element of suspense/crime drama thrown in. The central characters are engaging…
Sarah Mayberry is an author well known to those who read contemporary romance. It’s been a while since she’s released anything new so when I saw that she had a romantic comedy novella coming out, I made sure to pick it up. She’s good at evoking a lot of emotions in both her characters and…