I’ve read several books by Stefanie London (I particularly liked the ones she wrote for the now defunct Harlequin DARE line), including Kissing Lessons, the introduction to her Kissing Creek small town romance series. Kissing Games, the second entry, has a fairly typical plot – an injured baseball star who is nursing himself back to…
Note: The sensuality rating of these stories ranges from Kisses to Burning If you liked the movie Love Actually but wished more of the characters had gotten happy endings, Amor Actually, which re-imagines every plot thread from the movie, might be the anthology for you. Like the original, the characters are interconnected, in this case…
Post-apocalyptic adventures? With librarians? Sign me up. Ever since I heard about the new Mercenary Librarians series, I knew I wanted to get my hands on it. And with 2020 being, well, 2020, post-apocalyptic fiction felt very on point for me right now. While not perfect, Deal With the Devil is a strong series opener…
Maybe at a different time in my life, my slightly cynical self might have given Charlie Sunshine the side eye. But this is April 2020, I’m spending entirely too much time cooped-up with my husband and two boys, and Lily Morton’s brand of sunshine is just what the doctor ordered. Charlie Sunshine is a saccharine-sweet…
If you’re like me, a lighthearted contemporary romance is always appreciated, and the third story in Sara Rider’s Books and Brews series, Right Kind of Wrong, delivers a comfort read with likable characters and plenty of laughs to make for an enjoyable reading experience. It’s especially so if you like grumpy, Scottish, male librarians –…
Sometimes I find myself slowing down as I read a book because I truly want to savor it, and Hearts on Hold is definitely a book to savor. This tale of a literature professor and a children’s librarian finding love is one of the more romantic novels I’ve read in a long time. By turns…
Jenny Holiday takes her funny, sparky contemporary romance voice into Matchmaker Bay in her new book Mermaid Inn. Librarian Eve ‘Don’t-Call-Her-Evie’ Abbot has been named the owner of her grandmother’s beloved Mermaid Inn. She plans on getting it repaired and turning it right around so she can get back to her busy (read: disastrous) life…
This Wicked Gift is, I believe, Courtney Milan’s first published work, and is an introductory novella to her Carhart books. In it, Miss Lavinia Spencer is caring for her sick father and her younger brother as well as running their family business, a circulating library. Money is incredibly tight, but Lavinia has been scrupulously saving…
Promise Me a Dream is a gentle, tender story about two people coming together at a turbulent time in American history. Unsparing when discussing racial violence, it also tells a lovely story of community and first true love. And while I had a couple of issues with the stiffness of its prose, overall it is…
In 1936, Alice Van Cleve, newly married to the son of one of Kentucky’s wealthiest and most influential coal miners, finds herself at loose ends. Life as Bennett Van Cleve’s wife is not the fairytale she was led to believe it would be, and she is in desperate need of a cause to lose herself…