Well Matched is my favorite among Jen DeLuca’s three volume series about renaissance fair attending nerds falling in love in Willow Creek. A single mom, a kilted dude, and some intense passion brings to life an enchanting romance that stands as one of DeLuca’s best thus far. April Parker is a single mother who’s looking…
It’s hard to take on a workplace romance between a boss and an intern, but in Hot Copy, Ruby Barrett succeeds with something sexy that also manages to have a firm emotional grounding and clear consent. While the heroine is challenging to like, that’s not always a bad thing. On his first day at his…
The Ex Talk is a contemporary romance about a woman on the brink of thirty, trying to figure out how to fulfil her career aspirations without killing one of her unfairly hot coworkers or being way too dishonest. It’s an amazing rivals-to-lovers romance, with some serious depth and intense emotional range. I initially picked it…
Beth O’Leary’s 2019 début The Flatshare was just marvelous – our reviewer gave it an A-, and it was an A for me personally. But the sophomore slump has struck more than one début star, so it was with both hope and nervousness that I volunteered to review The Switch, about a grandmother from the…
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…
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…
Completely is the third installment in Ruthie Knox’s New York series, but can be read as a standalone. It tells the story of Rosemary and Kal, two folks from very different worlds and in very different places in their own lives, who find themselves slowly and inexplicably weaving a life together. Though a slow read,…
The Temporary Wife is one of those perfect romances, where the emphasis is on romance rather than a lot of extracurricular activity. And within the scope of the category-sized story, Balogh delivers a master class on how to write a Marriage of Convenience plot. Anthony Earheart, the Marquess of Staunton looks for a wife under…
In The Last in Love, Abby is a widow who has just barely put her life back together. Justin is a volunteer firefighter who has the hots for her, but he’s five years younger and she is super skeeved out by that. Justin isn’t discouraged, and pursues her until she agrees to date him. Problem…