Genre: contemporary romance

A- #AudioBookReview: Time Will Tell by Hannah Bonam-Young

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
A- #AudioBookReview: Time Will Tell by Hannah Bonam-YoungTime Will Tell by Hannah Bonam-Young
Narrator: Victoria Connolly, Maxim Reston
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: borrowed from Amazon Kindle Unlimited
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, romantic comedy
Series: Improbable Meet-Cute: Second Chances #2
Pages: 92
Length: 1 hour and 48 minutes
Published by Amazon Original Stories on January 20, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

When a mysterious time capsule leads a Toronto teacher to England, she discovers some loves are worth crossing oceans—and decades—to find, from New York Times bestselling author Hannah Bonam-Young.
When a history teacher receives a letter from her deceased grandmother revealing a secret love affair in the 1950s, it leads her to a time capsule hidden decades ago. But it’s the charming grandson of her grandmother’s lost love who changes everything, proving that sometimes the heart knows exactly where—and when—it belongs.
Hannah Bonam-Young’s Time Will Tell is part of The Improbable Meet-Cute: Second Chances, stories for star-crossed lovers and hopeless romantics. They can be read or listened to in one sitting. Let’s do it again.

My Review:

Too much of a good thing is not always wonderful. Especially when the good thing is all about a bad thing. I’ll explain later.

Nevertheless, that’s how I found myself searching for something a whole lot lighter and fluffier than the book I had planned to close out this week. Which, come to think of it, is how I ended up reviewing Accidentally Yours, the first story in the Improbable Meet-Cute Second Chances series and what led me to pick up the second story, Time Will Tell, to finish out this week on the lighter note that it needed.

This turned out to be exactly what I was looking for – and even better than I’d hoped.

Like the first book, this is definitely a meet-cute, but it isn’t the usual sort of second-chance romance at all. Although it absolutely does represent a second chance, but it’s a second chance at a couple of removes in a way that turned out to be lovely.

Georgia Whitaker is a history teacher, who is doing her best to get her senior-year high school class to see that history is happening all around them all the time in ways both large and small, but always meaningful.

She’s also found a very personal historical project to serve as her example – and the students are more engaged than they have been for quite some time. Then again, it’s not often that a high school glass gets to dissect the history of one of their own teachers!

Georgia and her class have been diving into the history of a very special – and very personal – time capsule. Once upon a time, in the 1950s – which does make her students giggle and snort more than a bit – Georgia’s beloved grandmother Bonnie Foster found the love of her life with Martha Bennett. But in the conservative 1950s, their love was only safe as long as it was hidden.

When they parted, Bonnie and Martha put together a time capsule of their photos, letters and memories, and buried it near the Toronto apartment where they’d been so happy together for not nearly long enough.

Upon her death, Bonnie left her granddaughter, Georgia, a letter that revealed the truth she could not manage to say during her lifetime, along with the location of the buried treasure. But not its key. Martha took the key with her back to England.

Which is where Georgia and her class come in. Georgia has researched – as history teachers do – and discovered the identity of Martha’s grandchild, a Dr. Callum Lewis in Nottinghamshire England. Her class helps, hinders and snarks their collective way through Georgia’s first email to Callum, and is invested in seeing what story time will tell, seven decades after Bonnie and Martha went their separate ways..

Escape Rating A-: There’s history, and then there’s history. I chose this story because it appealed on multiple levels. I am just as fascinated with history as Georgia and her prized student Phaedra were. Time capsules are weird and fascinating in their own right as well, especially when they turn up something unexpected like Bonnie and Martha’s long-hidden secret.

The book I intended to close this week off with was also historical, and it was also a history that fascinates me, but it was dark and heavy and way too much like another dark and heavy historical fiction book I just finished. Too much historical evil too close together turned out to be too much gruesomeness even though both books were good. I’ll come back to the second one in a couple of weeks once I get rid of more of the grues.

But this was light, frothy and especially fun. Also very romantic in a way that we don’t usually have a chance to see in something this short. AND it comes full circle in a delightful way, as Bonnie and Martha’s time capsule is filled with their correspondence, while the romance between Bonnie’s granddaughter Georgia and Martha’s grandson Callum is also a romance through correspondence.

Even though the increasingly flirty emails between Georgia and Callum are facilitated through the instantaneousness of the internet this is still an epistolary romance. It’s so cute and works SO well because even in email they have the chance to think about what they’ll each say and anticipate what the other will respond. The built-in delays of their respective time zones, Callum in the UK and Georgia in Toronto, combined with their busy schedules, build in minutes and even hours of worry and wonder and waiting to see if they’re on the same page even though they’re an ocean apart.

Time Will Tell, well, tells a marvelously sweet romance that manages to build beautifully. Even though they fall in love nearly at first sight of each other’s words, they still have enough time to earn the HEA that their grandmothers were too far ahead of their time to see.

As with many of the Amazon Original Stories, this was even better in audio. Victoria Connolly was terrific as Georgia, and Maxim Reston was marvelous, including his accent, as Callum. One of the things I like best about these stories in general is that the casting is generally spot on and the stories are even better when each character has their own narrator, and that was delightfully true this production.

I’m sure I’ll be back with another one of these the next time I need a light and frothy reading/listening pick-me-up!

A- #AudioBookReview: Tiny House, Big Love by Olivia Dade

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
A- #AudioBookReview: Tiny House, Big Love by Olivia DadeTiny House, Big Love (Love Unscripted, #2) by Olivia Dade
Narrator: Joy Nash
Format: audiobook
Source: purchased from Amazon, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, romantic comedy
Series: Love Unscripted #2
Pages: 158
Length: 4 hours and 8 minutes
Published by Dreamscape Media, Hussies & Harpies Press on August 29, 2019
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads


On camera. Up close. In denial--but not for much longer...

After a relationship gone bad, Lucy Finch is leaving everything behind. Her old home, her old job, her old insecurities. Even Sebastián Castillo, her protective but intensely private friend of almost twenty years. Before she moves halfway across the country, though, she has one last request for Seb: She wants him to help her choose a tiny house on cable television. And maybe during the filming process, she can discover once and for all whether his feelings for her are more than platonic...
Sebastián would rather do anything than appear on HATV. But Lucy needs him, and he can't say no. Not when she's about to leave, taking his heart with her. Hiding how he feels with a television crew watching their every move will prove difficult, though--especially when that crew is doing their sneaky best to transform two longtime friends into a couple.
Tiny spaces. Hidden emotions. The heat generated by decades of desire and denial. A week spent on camera might just turn Lucy and Seb's relationship from family-friendly to viewer discretion advised...

My Review:

This is the follow-up to last week’s Desire and the Deep Blue Sea. I’ll admit that that first book didn’t work all that well for me, so I was hesitant about this second one. OTOH, I generally like this author’s work so I set aside my misgivings and dove right in.

While both stories are set in stories wrapped around a fledgling cable TV network and their stable of reality shows – hence that Love Unscripted series title – this second story worked a whole lot better for this reader than the first one did.

And that’s all down to the romantic trope that powers this story. The previous story was an enemies-to-lovers story that just didn’t deal with the way that only one of the enemies even recognized that they were enemies. He was just that clueless.

This time around we have a friends-to-lovers story that begins exactly where it should, with the ride or die nearly two decades-long friendship between Lucy Finch and Sebastián Castillo. They were both outcasts in high school, and they bonded together over being on the outside together. It’s a bond that hasn’t wavered in nearly 20 years, not even when they both temporarily left Marysburg for their respective colleges.

Now, Lucy is about to leave Marysburg again – and this time it’s likely for good. Her last relationship didn’t just  end, it ended after her ex pretty much cratered her confidence for nearly a decade. She’s WAY better off without him, but she’s having a hard time dealing with the memories AND the negging voice in her head that’s definitely his.

But she can’t leave without making one last try at getting the infamously taciturn Sebastián to open up about his feelings. Specifically, his feelings for her. If friendship is all he has to give, then that’s all she’ll ever ask for. But she has to KNOW before she leaves.

She also needs a home that she can carry away with her on her new job as a traveling representative for Massage Mania. She’s looking for a tiny house she can move with her as she travels. The cable TV network that sponsored Callie’s Caribbean vacation ALSO has a who about tiny house shopping. Lucy’s friend Allie is a real-estate agent looking for a leg up in a cutthroat real estate market. Lucy herself is hoping for one more chance to discover what Sebastian really feels, and sees her unscripted tiny house hunt to spend some quality time with her bestie AND get a clue about her next move – or theirs.

Either it’s the opportunity of a lifetime – or it’s a chance to burn the bridge on the most important, supportive AND frustrating relationship in her entire life. But one way or another, when the show is over, she’ll know whether her relationship with Sebastián is forever – or for never.

Escape Rating A-: This worked for me. I went into this one hopeful, and this time, that hope was fulfilled. It was also terrific in audio, and the narrator Joy Nash did a great job with all the voices.  As she did in that first book but I was just too bummed about the story to give her the shoutout she deserved. So this one goes double.

(The book is available now. The audio will be released on April 7 so if you want the audio you’ll need a bit of patience. But if this is what you’re in the mood for – and I was – it’s worth the wait.)

As I said before – and I’ll say again later this week in another review – friends-to-lovers is one of my favorite romance tropes because the tension is real and relatable. Lifelong friendships are precious whether they have the possibility of turning romantic or not. There’s nothing in this world as supportive and sustaining as having someone in your corner who knows you from the inside out and loves you anyway – even when you drive each other crazy.

But the tension in turning a friendship into romance is real and the stakes are always high. Because if it doesn’t work you’ve lost something equally precious that you know you’ll never get back. So it’s easy to feel for Lucy edging up to taking the risk of telling Sebastián how she really feels.

At the same time, it’s just as easy to understand Sebastián’s unwillingness to take that risk. He has family who do love him and vice versa, but Lucy is the only person he’s let into his core. She’s literally the sunshine in his life and he’s afraid to even take a chance on losing it. The only way he’d EVER risk himself that way is that the risk of losing her because he’s told her how he really feels is now equal to the risk that he’ll lose her because she’s leaving and not coming back.

His only way to win is to leap and hope that the net of Lucy’s love will appear. But he’s spent so much time pretending not to feel much of anything at all that he’s frozen in place until not just the bitter end but a little bit past it.

That Sebastián’s frozen emotional landscape is the result of being the recipient of some epic high school bullying is just another facet of tragedy in this story. Bullying inflicts terrible trauma on the recipients. It leaves lifelong scars and it does not make the sufferers stronger – it makes them brittle. (This is a huge soapbox for me and I felt for Sebastián a lot because of it. I sincerely hope your mileage varies on this part.)

As heavy as some of Sebastián’s inner thoughts and feelings are, the wild array of tiny houses that Lucy is shown and her laughably honest rejections of them add a delightful bit of lightness to a story that does need a bit more sunshine. (The school bus converted to a tiny house decorated in used chewing gum and magic marker dick drawings was a masterpiece of snicker-worthy giggles. Because REALLY…)

In the end – and honestly through all of the terrible tiny house showings – this romance was a lot of fun, did a great job getting Lucy and Sebastián from friends to lovers and wrapped up their story in a big, beautiful, happy ever after glow that felt delightfully earned.

And it left me hoping that we’ll get to see more of HATV and its hardworking interns Cowan and Irene, in Cover Me, a new book tantalizingly teased after the end of this one. But whichever of the author’s ongoing series Cover Me turns out to be a part of, I can’t wait to read it!

#AudioBookReview: And Now Back to You by B.K. Borison

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews> C+ Reviews
#AudioBookReview: And Now Back to You by B.K. BorisonAnd Now, Back to You (Heartstrings, #2) by B.K. Borison
Narrator: Max Meyers, Brittany Pressley
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: purchased from Audible, supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, romantic comedy, workplace romance
Series: Heartstrings #2
Pages: 464
Length: 13 hours and 3 minutes
Published by Berkley, Penguin Audio on February 24, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Two competing meteorologists are forced to find common ground in this opposites attract, When Harry Met Sally inspired romance, from New York Times bestselling author B.K. Borison.
Jackson Clark and Delilah Stewart have had their fair share of run-ins over the years, often ending in disaster. While Jackson thrives on routine and organization from the comfort of his radio booth, Delilah loves the spontaneity and adventure out in the field. When they’re partnered against their will to cover the snowstorm of the century, they find themselves scrambling to figure out how to work together.
Eager to be taken seriously as a journalist, Delilah offers Jackson a deal. If he can help her ace this assignment, she’ll help him rediscover his long-lost fun side. With an undiscovered chemistry burning beneath their clashes, the unlikely partnership quickly tumbles into an easy and surprising friendship.
But when other feelings start to enter the equation, can Jackson and Delilah withstand the storm? Or does what happens in the mountains, stay in the mountains?

My Review:

Readers of First-Time Caller, the first book in the Heartstrings series, have already met the radio station’s “weather boy”, Jackson Clark. But they haven’t really met his opposite number from the TV station that shares the parking lot, TV meteorologist Delilah Stewart. And honestly, neither has Jackson, even if they have been sharing passive-aggressive sticky notes via each other’s windshields for months.

So when this book begins, we only know Delilah through Jackson’s VERY uptight opinion, and he doesn’t know Delilah AT ALL no matter how many assumptions her truly terrible parking skills have caused him to make. And have, as Jackson discovers in this book, thoroughly handled his half of the ‘assume’ cliche. Because he’s certainly making an ass of himself when it comes to  Delilah.

Delilah, on the other hand, is already dealing with a much bigger asshole so she’s not all that bothered by Jackson’s relatively minor grumpy assholery in comparison. Her part of that particular equation is more of the sly, cutting dig variety than the rather excessive hate-on Jackson seems to have for her.

But they both report on the local weather in Baltimore. Or, Jackson certainly does, and Delilah does when her hateful asshat of a boss lets her do her actual job instead of demeaning, deflating and downgrading her at every turn.

Back to the weather – or as Delilah’s signature sign off goes, “and now back to you.” The you in this instance being the entire city of Baltimore, because the weather outside is about to get frightful even though the holidays are definitely over for the year.

It’s late March and a freak blizzard is barreling down on the city. Based on multiple weather models that both Delilah and Jackson are following, the storm is going to hit the mountains in Western Maryland with ‘the big one’ late in March with plenty of heavy, damp late season snow and gale force winds. It’s going to be the weather programming opportunity of both of their careers.

Because their respective stations need ratings and advertising dollars, her TV station and his radio station decide to team Jackson and Delilah up for a trip to tiny Deep Creek on the far western edge of the state to report on the storm as it hits. They are both excited by the opportunity but neither is thrilled for either the company OR the circumstances.

Jackson has EXTREME stage fright to the point of panic attacks. Delilah is certain that her evil, abusive boss intends to use this trip as an opportunity to do even further damage to her career – even if she can’t figure out how he’ll manage that at the distance. Jackson, for his part, is very afraid that his issues ARE the intended damage.

Once they are on the road to remote Garrett County, they have the chance to get to know the real person behind all those passive-aggressive post-its. A person who shares some of the same damage but took that trauma in utterly opposite directions.

Which means that they DO have an opportunity to meet in the middle. If they’re each willing to share the load AND step outside their respective – and opposite – comfort zones in order to get there.

With just a little bit of help from a big storm, a full hotel, and some truly evil connivance from Delilah’s boss that has some unintentionally excellent consequences for everyone involved who DESERVES a shot at a happy ever after.

Delilah’s evil boss DEFINITELY not included.

Escape Rating C+: I picked this up because I did, in the end, love the first book in the Heartstrings series, First-Time Caller. I’ll admit that that one opened with a bit of a rocky start, but it was a rocky start that was definitely a ‘me’ thing. Once Aiden and Lucie got into the radio booth, they made the kind of magic that just made the whole story shine.

And it was the hope of a similar turnaround in this second book that made me stick with it long after I might have otherwise bailed. Because I wasn’t seeing that chemistry no matter how much I wanted to. Instead, I saw a few too many similarities between Jackson and Delilah in this book and Callie and Thomas in Tuesday’s book. Which was itself a replacement review for an entirely different book that didn’t work all that well either although for entirely different reasons.

Even though I started And Now Back to You in audio, I finished in text because I was just done and needed to move on, but was still hoping that the magic would happen between Delilah and Jackson. Although I’m not sure it did.

The thing is that the start of this book reminded me a bit too much of First-Time Caller. They’re not the same situation but the situations were both very uncomfortable for me. Lucie’s situation involved an inner circle of well-meaning but overbearing and intrusive people. It was a bit of a personal nightmare but felt real and right for the story.

Delilah’s situation was outright triggering. Her workplace isn’t just toxic and her boss isn’t merely abusive although both things are certainly true. The way that he was abusing her, doing his damndest to tank her career PUBLICLY and make it so that she’d be forced out of a career that she’d worked so hard for and was so good at hit a bit too close to home. The way that she just kept sucking it up and being a mouse about the abuse, even inside the confines of her own head, wasn’t a situation I wanted to read about.

In short, her boss is an EVIL, abusive asshole, and she’s become the meat shield for the entire station through no actual fault of her own. The situation is terrible to the point of outright abuse (and let’s not forget the gaslighting) and she’s just taking it and I just wasn’t there for it even though I was, well, there in it by reading/listening to it.

OTOH the personal situations that Jackson and Delilah came out of were heartbreaking but very well done. It made both of their traumas understandable AND explained why their reactions to variations of the same damage went in such different directions. Coming out of childhood abandonment and chaos, he turned rule-bound while she turned sunshine  which are both plausible even though they’re caused by the same thing.

However, the way that we get to see the man behind the panicking mask more clearly long before we see what Delilah’s hiding under snarky sunshine made it easier to empathize with him – and made her continued digs at Jackson’s expense seem more mean-spirited for a bit too long. Their initial relationship as passive-aggressive frenemies did not work nearly as well as a road to romance as Aiden and Lucie’s first meeting.

In the end, I stuck with this in the hopes that magic would happen after all. And it kind of does, but only after the halfway point and even then it wasn’t nearly as magical as I hoped it would be. And I know I’ve been having a bad week this week, but I honestly didn’t see the purported resemblance between this book and When Harry Met Sally. Which is a real pity because a variation of the iconic scene in the diner might have been just what this story needed.

Of course, and I sincerely hope so, your reading mileage may vary.

#AudioBookReview: Desire and the Deep Blue Sea by Olivia Dade

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B- Reviews> book reviews
#AudioBookReview: Desire and the Deep Blue Sea by Olivia DadeDesire and the Deep Blue Sea (Love Unscripted, #1) by Olivia Dade
Narrator: Joy Nash
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, romantic comedy
Series: Love Unscripted #1
Pages: 142
Length: 3 hours and 20 minutes
Published by Dreamscape Media, Hussies & Harpies Press on March 10, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads


They're pretending. Until they aren't.

Thomas McKinney has never wanted a woman the way he wants Callie Adesso. Since she started working alongside him at the Colonial Marysburg Research Library, he's spent his desk shifts fumbling pencils, tripping over his own feet, and struggling to remember both the Dewey Decimal System and the existence of her inconvenient boyfriend. Now, however, Callie is suddenly single--and in need of a last-minute faux-boyfriend for an episode of HATV's Island Match. Thomas is more than happy to play the part...and in the process, convince Callie that a week together isn't nearly long enough.
Callie has never found a man as irritating as she finds Thomas. He may be brilliant, kind, and frustratingly handsome, but the absent-minded librarian also makes every workday an anxiety-inducing exercise in stress. Even seven days in paradise by his side won't change her opinion of him. Really. No matter how attentive he is. And gentle. And sexy.
One plane ride later, the two of them are spending long, hot days under the sun and on display, pretending to be in love for a television show. This may be a vacation, but it's also an act--as well as Thomas's last chance to persuade the woman of his dreams to include him in hers. And soon, the island heat isn't the only thing steaming up HATV's cameras...

My Review:

I picked this up because when I like this author’s work, I really, really like it. When it doesn’t work for me it really doesn’t. This one was short, looked sweet, and I needed an audiobook just like it to balance against the serial killer crime thriller I was reading. And it’s short, which was perfect for the time I had.

Sometimes, that’s just how reading decisions get made.

The audio interpretation of the story, read by Joy Nash, was well done. It’s just 3 hours and 20 minutes so I had high hopes for something sweet and spicy like the author’s All By My Elf holiday romance, with just a bit more length and depth.

And I realize that I’m talking all around this, which is something that both characters in the story do. Callie because exposing her feelings causes her anxiety, and Thomas because he’s trying way too hard to be subtle.

In other words, they spend a LOT of the story talking past each other – not because the other isn’t listening, but because the speaker is trying so hard not to upset the other that they’re not saying the important things they really, REALLY need to say.

The idea of this had so much potential. It’s a fake dating, forced proximity romance with a few interesting twists. Callie’s application to be on a reality cable TV show about romantic couples sampling Caribbean resorts was meant to be with her boyfriend. Who JUST broke up with her as the final arrangements are being made.

Callie wants the vacation SO BAD that she latches onto the idea of pretending that her co-worker is her brand new boyfriend. The problems with this idea are LEGION. Not just the idea of fake dating but that Thomas has made her six month tenure at the Colonial Marysburg Research Library a terrible experience. She literally cries after every shift. Not because he’s mean or a douche or anything obvious, but because he’s an oblivious mess who takes all the interesting, time-consuming reference questions and leaves her with long lines of trivia and anger.

(The description of library work is spot on. Thomas is a terrible co-worker. He may, or may not, be a terrible human being but he’s in the wrong job or at least the wrong part of the job.)

But this is who she chooses to pretend to date so she can have her vacation. I mean, the way she describes him he’s certainly a hunk, but handsome is as handsome does and Thomas, at least so far, doesn’t.

It turns out that their relationship is a ginormous misunderstandammit. He’s more than a bit single-minded, but the problem is that his single mind is fixated on Callie. He’s been in love – or at least in lust – with her from the moment they met.

But his attempts to get close to her been disastrous on multiple levels because he’s pre-decided what she would want instead of asking her what she actually wants.

And she’s incapable of telling him just how much he’s making her miserable because confrontation makes her even more miserable.

That this is who she chooses to take on her dream vacation, without expecting it to turn into a nightmare, is bound to, well, end in disaster. Or at least, middle there.

Then it gets better.

Escape Rating B-: I’ll admit that this came very close to being a wall-banger, and not in any of the good ways. The issues in their relationship are such a HUGE misunderstandammit, and I always have problems with the contrivance of those.

What saved that part of the story was that their misunderstandings could not have been resolved by any conversation that would be simple for either of them. Their respective, deep-seated issues just made opening that can of worms a dangerous idea. So they kept not doing it to both of their detriments – and to the detriment of the first half of the story.

Howsomever, there’s also something about their relationship that doesn’t make sense. On the one hand, when Thomas describes how he thinks and feels about Callie, it’s some of the most romantic stuff I’ve ever read. It’s no wonder that Callie wants to explore a relationship with a guy who’s just so sweet and sincere and obviously loves her to bits and desires her to the ends of the earth.

The problem on my other hand is that they already have a relationship as co-workers and it’s TERRIBLE. That he’s had all these feelings all along and kept them to himself makes sense because she was in a relationship with someone else. But his behavior at work resulted in multiple awful situations and feelings on her part, and nothing gets resolved before their romance starts, then he hears the truth and it stutters to a stop – as it should.

I wanted them to figure themselves – and each other – out. But it’s a big stumbling block towards that HEA that we don’t have enough background to  know what made either of them tick their particular set of uncommunicative tocks. It doesn’t feel like either set of issues is half as easily resolved as they were in the story, because they were not trivial at all.

I’m glad they did find their way towards a happy ending that involved a lot of changes on both their parts. But there’s a big part of me that thinks it shouldn’t have happened at all and I’m having a hard time letting that part go.

As always, your reading mileage may vary.

Howsomever, I’m still  hooked on this author, so I’ve got the second book/audiobook in the Love Unscripted series, Tiny House, Big Love, cued up for a near-future reading/listening adventure. Especially since it’s a book based around choosing a new home. Since we’re currently renovating ours, and that’s been an adventure all by itself, I’m curious to see how much help or hindrance an old love and a new cable TV channel can add to THAT mix!

A- #AudioBookReview: Accidentally Yours by Christina Lauren

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
A- #AudioBookReview: Accidentally Yours by Christina LaurenAccidentally Yours by Christina Lauren
Narrator: Dominique Salvacion, Andrew Gibson
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: borrowed from Amazon Kindle Unlimited
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, romantic comedy, workplace romance
Series: Improbable Meet-Cute: Second Chances #1
Pages: 93
Length: 1 hour and 44 minutes
Published by Amazon Original Stories on January 20, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

Serendipity works wonders for a woman and her seemingly unattainable crush in a funny and flirty short story by Christina Lauren, New York Times bestselling author of The Unhoneymooners and My Favorite Half-Night Stand.
When marketing consultant Veronica accidentally crashes the wrong Zoom meeting and brutally critiques their presentation, she’s shocked to receive a job offer from the company’s intriguing CEO. Their professional email exchanges quickly turn flirty, but Veronica’s mind keeps drifting to her reserved but gorgeous new neighbor. As Valentine’s Day approaches, she’ll discover that sometimes the most improbable meet-cute can lead to the perfect match.
Christina Lauren’s Accidentally Yours is part of The Improbable Meet-Cute: Second Chances, stories for star-crossed lovers and hopeless romantics. They can be read or listened to in one sitting. Let’s do it again.

My Review:

In case it’s not obvious, this week kind of fell apart for me. Or ON me. I read something really heavy over the weekend and needed something TOTALLY light and fluffy to counteract the gloom. And I sorta/kinda promised myself I’d read a romance this week – because Valentine’s Day was last weekend and it seemed like the thing to do.

Which led me straight to Improbable Meet-Cute Second Chances, the Valentine’s Day collection from Amazon Original Stories for Valentine’s Day 2026. I expected to get a short, sweet, listening treat to pick up my week, and that’s EXACTLY what I got with Accidentally Yours.

Although I’m not quite sure about the “second chances” part of this collection’s formula as it relates to this story. The “meet-cute”, absolutely. But a second chance, not exactly. The romance between Veronica Cochran and Jude Tilde wasn’t so much a second chance as two SIMULTANEOUS opportunities at their first one. Let me explain…

Veronica Cochran is a marketing genius. Really, truly. But the company who practically wined and dined her to get her onboard after her MBA program turned out to be just another gang of entitled, misogynistic, techbros who were happy to take her ideas but never give her the credit, the promotion or the BONUSES she deserved. Then they let her go with a measly six months severance which she knows she’s going to wait forever to receive.

Job hunting is brutal, and she’s pretty much down on the whole experience. Her savings are running low, her ancient refrigerator is dying, her nibling destroyed her laptop and her office chair sounds like it’s about to wheeze its last. So she isn’t exactly filled with hope when she logs into her next job interview. Which is when the situation surprisingly starts looking up.

Not because it’s her interview – but because it ISN’T. Instead, it’s a session full of techbros who sound just like the ones at her old company. The group is going through a marketing slide deck that is SO BAD, SO VERY BAD, that she takes her name off her Zoom presence and lets her inner snark monster out to play. To delightfully devastating effect.

She tells this ‘pitch’ of techbros (I had to look up the collective noun because they needed one and it’s just too apropos in this case) just how terrible the slide deck is in no uncertain – but certainly professional and absolutely on point – terms. She lets them have the full effect of her genius on their marketing lameness then drops the mic and peaces out of the chat.

Leaving Veronica feeling much better about pretty much everything. Admittedly, these weren’t the techbros that disregarded her for four years – but they were close enough for her epic vent to let off some serious steam.

She leaves the techbros slack-jawed on both Zoom and their actual Slack channel, trying to figure out who she is and whether or not she’s available to be hired as THEIR marketing genius. Because Veronica Cochran is exactly what Codify.com and its new CEO need for their company.

All it’s going to take to get her onboard is a hefty monthly consulting contract, a brand-new state of the art laptop, and the office chair of her dreams.

The chemistry between Veronica and Jude, well, that’s extra. As they eventually find out – it’s extra times two.

Escape Rating A-: This turned out to be exactly the light and fluffy and frothy reading pick-me-up I was looking for. The way that Veronica and Jude banter their way into romance meant that it worked especially well on audio, as ably batted back and forth by Dominique Salvacion as Veronica and Andrew Gibson as Jude.

The romance between Veronica and Jude happens, not in two time streams or time periods, but through two entirely different mediums at the same time. Initially, all of their communication is electronic – and mostly professional. With admittedly a bit of casual, sometimes snarky, occasionally flirty, banter. But still, they have a business relationship. I can’t say it’s a workplace romance because there’s no workPLACE. It’s potentially a bit squicky, so they take that slow because they both recognize that they need each other professionally no matter how interesting they find each other personally.

Their entire relationship is conducted through a technical intermediary. They’ve never met. They’ve never seen each other’s faces. And it’s just when they make plans to do exactly that that the situation nearly goes off the rails.

Because they have seen each other’s faces, and whole entire persons, and have very much liked what they’ve seen. They just don’t know each other’s names. They live in the same North Loop apartment building in Chicago. She’s 4C and he’s 2C. They’ve seen each other in the lobby plenty of times white seemingly their entire building gathers, waiting for their surprisingly friendly and clockwork-like mail carrier to arrive every afternoon at 2.

They don’t know each other’s names until a piece of his mail finds its way into her mailbox on their mail carrier’s day off. And it’s while she knows but he doesn’t that she hears something that makes her wonder if she’s really ever known him at all.

But she has and she does so of course in the end they figure everything out and it makes for lovely and well-earned happy ever after.

The way this story works itself out – and keeps its would-be lovers apart and unaware in a way that does actually work – reminded me a lot of stories from two of the holiday story collections, specifically All Wrapped Up in You by Rosie Danan from Home Sweet Holidays in 2025 and Only Santas In the Building by Alexis Daria from 2024’s Under the Mistletoe. So if you like this kind of story, the way that the would-be lovers manage to get to know each other without knowing each other, all three stories are sweet little treats. I’m glad I picked this one up when I needed one.

And just as glad that I have the other stories in this collection (along with last year’s Improbable Meet-Cute) to look forward to the next time I need a short and sweet romance to pick me up and tide me over a slump of any kind!

A- #BookReview: No Matter the Cost by Anna Hackett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: No Matter the Cost by Anna HackettNo Matter the Cost (Unsanctioned #2) by Anna Hackett
Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: contemporary romance, romantic suspense
Series: Unsanctioned #2
Pages: 283
Published by Anna Hackett on January 28, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

I’ll make her mine, if she doesn’t kill me first.
Bastian
I came from nothing and became known as the Reaper. The most feared CIA assassin in the business. Then I retired, faked my death, and now spend my time running my casino.
But there’s one part of my past I can’t let go—the tiny female assassin who’s vowed to kill me.
We were mentored by the same man, a man we both considered a father, but there’s nothing brotherly about what I feel for
Lark.
Now, we’re enemies and she won’t rest until I’m dead.
I won’t rest until she’s mine.

Lark
I have one mission—kill Bastian Thorne.
I lost everything when my parents were murdered. Until a grizzled CIA agent took me in and molded me into a deadly assassin.
Then Bastian executed him.
My plan: infiltrate Bastian’s luxurious life and take him down. But he proves hard to kill and forces me to face an ugly, tangled truth.
Secrets from my past collide with my blood-drenched present. I find myself in the sights of a dangerous killer. One with twisted reasons for wanting me dead.
Now, the only man I can trust is my enemy.
But I know getting close to Bastian is the biggest risk of all.

My Review:

RED was code for “Retired, Extremely Dangerous” at least according to the classic action movie (OMG only from 2010) of the same name. A movie which was based loosely on a comic book mini-series.

Both the comic series and the movie were about a group of retired assassins who were still so DAMN dangerous that their former organizations put a hit out on them. With disastrous, downright deadly, consequences for the would-be hitters. The targets emerged more-or-less unscathed.

I’m reminding you of this because those retired assassins in RED would have a lot in common with the Unsanctioned crew in Las Vegas, as they are also retired, extremely dangerous, assassins who are still willing to work the occasional side job if it’s righteous – and so far they absolutely have been.

Righteous, necessary, and damn good reads. And romances, which, come to think of it, was also true of that first RED movie.

But the story in the Unsanctioned series is even more action-packed than the movie (and that’s saying something!) because the gentlemen who own, operate and live near the Avernus casino in Las Vegas, “retired” a bit earlier than the crew in RED. So, they have had a bit harder time figuring out what to do with themselves after they’ve gotten out of the adrenaline-soaked game of killing for their respective countries and/or organizations – and even more energy to burn while they do it.

Not that everyone doesn’t have at least a bit of trouble dealing with that transition, but for these guys, it’s considerably more than just a bit. They all got out while they still had a bit of their souls left, they got out clean-ish which is as good as that was going to EVER get, and they got out with enough money to set themselves up in style. All they had to do was figure out what to, well, DO with themselves.

In the first book, Burn the World Down, their little found family of (mostly) former killers found their true calling, and one member, Nash Oakley, found that he had an option on a second chance with the one woman he could never forget. A woman who had taken the walk to the ‘dark side’ on her very own, and was more than ready to join him there.

In this second book, Sebastian Thorne is in a bit of the same quandary. The woman he can’t forget is someone he never let himself think about that way. Because his CIA mentor adopted her and trained her to be one of them. Another assassin. But when they were part of the same little killing family, Bastian was nearly a decade older and he couldn’t let himself think of her as anything but a little girl.

Lark’s not a little girl anymore – but she’s definitely still the deadly assassin that their mentor trained so rigorously. And this time, she has Bastian in her sights. Because he killed their mentor – her father-figure. Now her heart is set on revenge.

At least that’s what she told herself when she buried one of her knives in Bastian at the end of the first book. Her reasons for stabbing him in the shoulder instead of in the heart she’s certain he doesn’t have…she doesn’t want to examine those too closely because they might bring her world crashing down around her.

If someone else doesn’t get there first.

Escape Rating A-: First, I have to admit that I got into this one for the story – which is not a bad thing at all. Of course it’s not. However, as has been true for the last several of this author’s books, the original cover did not wow me. (shown at left for comparison as your ogling mileage may definitely vary). However, I have been loving the special edition covers, so that’s the one that I’ve used as the feature for this post and on Instagram.

Romantic suspense series, which Unsanctioned most definitely is, often begin with the premise that someone needs saving – and it’s usually the female main character. Whether or not a story/series with that premise works for this reader depends a whole lot on the why of that formula. Why does she need saving?

It’s not about the reason per se, but rather that the reason often runs counter to my thing for competence porn. (OMG that’s a more, well, potent pun than usual for this series, but moving right along…) What I mean to say is that both the suspense and the romance work a LOT less well for me if the FMC needs saving because she’s either #TSTL (Too Stupid to Live) or because she reacts stupidly to a situation that is obviously a dangerous trap of some kind.

I love a romance of equals, and that’s hard to achieve when one character has been too much of an idiot. (I’m not fond of the male main character being an idiot either, but their idiocy – at least in romantic suspense – tends to go down a different track, usually the “I’m not worthy” fallacy. I digress. Sort of.)

All of that means that I loved Lark as Bastian’s romantic interest/would-be assassin because she’s every bit as competent as he is at the same job on the same dark side. They’re each as worthy – or unworthy – as the other, so whatever emotional rabbit holes they go down, they go down together.

While someone in the shadows wants to put them both down – for good. Or rather, for bad. Let’s just say thoroughly and completely as “good” and “bad” don’t work in this case – at all.

Except in the sense that Lark starts out believing that Sebastian killed their mentor in cold blood. Which, in truth, he did. But his reasons for that hit were righteous – although she’s just not willing to listen. At least not at first. Reaching that point takes them from the opposite sides of a very personal conflict to the same side against a mutual enemy. An enemy targeting them both.

And the enemy of my enemy is at least my friend. Or, in the case of Bastian and Lark, something a whole lot more intimate leading to closure for some of the biggest questions in both of their lives AND a well-earned and well-deserved happy ever after.

For after that happy ever after, there’s a bit of a teaser for the next book in this series, which looks like it won’t be out until summer or later this year at the earliest. Still, I have the author’s next Hunter Squad and Langston Hotels books to look forward to in the first half of this year. Which I certainly am.

A- #AudioBookReview: You Better Not Pout by Mia Sosa

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
A- #AudioBookReview: You Better Not Pout by Mia SosaYou Better Not Pout (Home Sweet Holidays) by Mia Sosa
Narrator: Andre Santana, Gisela Chípe
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: borrowed from Amazon Kindle Unlimited
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, holiday romance, romantic comedy, second chance romance
Series: Home Sweet Holidays #4
Pages: 51
Length: 1 hour and 19 minutes
Published by Amazon Original Stories on November 20, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

A freshly broken-up couple agrees to grin and bear it for their family’s sake in a story about the healing power of the holidays from Mia Sosa, USA Today bestselling author of The Worst Best Man.

Juliana and Eric called off their engagement—but Christmas with the family is just around the corner, so things are going to get awkward, fast. Unless, of course, they pretend the wedding is still on. But the holidays are gonna holiday. And the only thing harder than pretending they’re still in love is trying not to fall for each other all over again.

Mia Sosa’s You Better Not Pout is part of Home Sweet Holidays, a cookie-sweet collection of holiday romances sure to bring color to your cheeks. Read or listen to each story in a single heart-fluttering sitting. And to fully immerse yourself in the charm of the season, don’t miss a special message from each of our holiday heroes!

My Review:

If the title of this one sounds familiar, there’s an excellent reason. The title is a line from one of the truly classic Christmas songs that has been playing everywhere since, well, Halloween. Because “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” on Christmas Eve, which is TONIGHT.

The song has been recorded by over 200 artists from Bing Crosby to Lady Gaga. You’ve undoubtedly heard somebody sing it sometime this holiday season. And probably every holiday season before and every one after.

Santa Claus may, or may not, be coming to Juliana and Eric this year. Because they’ve been naughty.

Technically, that’s not true. Or at least it hasn’t been true until the holidays. They’ve decided not to go through with their engagement. They’ve realized they STILL love each other, but that they just aren’t the right person for each other.

The naughtiness is in deciding to fake their engagement through those same holidays so as not to upset her family’s just barely righted applecart. Again, not for any nefarious reasons, just that her mother has been ill for a lot of the year, she’s just recovered, and Juliana doesn’t want to put this stress on her just when she’s feeling better.

Equally true, Juliana doesn’t want to spend the entire holiday being the center of her nosy family’s intrusive attention – and it’s hard to blame her for that. The stress of the holidays is enough without every single person in your family wanting to know what YOU did wrong and offering endless reams of unsolicited, unwelcome but utterly well-meaning advice on how to fix things.

The problem with Juliana and Eric’s deal – that he agree to fake their engagement for the holidays with her family in return for Juliana’s agreement to let him have sole possession of their rent-controlled apartment in the breakup – is twofold. Or maybe that’s three-fold. There are a LOT of folding problems, as they need to fold, together, into Juliana’s old bedroom with its too small bed for the duration of their visit. A bed that is both too close for comfort and not nearly close enough, as they both still have feelings and DEFINITELY still have chemistry.

But the real stumbling block to pulling off this deception is the same thing that also saves them. OTOH, Juliana’s family knows both of them entirely too well not to pick up that there’s something wrong. And on the other, Juliana and Eric don’t know each other half as well as think they do – or as they should.

And that’s a situation they can fix – if they’re both willing to listen, even amid the chaos of a big, LOUD, family celebration. If they can just catch a bit of quiet amid that chaos, they have a chance to make things right. They just have to hear each other over all the noise of the holidays. And the relatives.

Escape Rating A-: In the original blurb for the Home Sweet Holidays collection, we were promised cookies. There have been no cookies, but the stories have all been sweet holiday treats just the same.

Even if the treats in this particular story are Puerto Rican pasteles that are as savory as they are sweet. Which is just right for this final story in the series, as the problems that Juliana and Eric are facing definitely have the savor of reality in more ways than one – starting with the issue of splitting that New York City rent-stabilized apartment.

I listened to this story and, as is usual in this collection the narrators were EXCELLENT. The thing is that I picked it up in the middle of reading The Eight Heartbreaks of Hanukkah because I was looking for a story that would be a bit lighter throughout. At the point I was reading, I knew there was an HEA coming but the going was a big tough for the characters. That story is titled “Eight Heartbreaks” for a reason.

While You Better Not Pout is a bit lighter, if only because Juliana and Eric haven’t had enough time to pack THAT MUCH heavy emotional baggage between them, on the surface at least, the issues between Juliana and Eric are VERY similar to the issues between Evelyn and David in their romance. Under that surface, Juliana and Evelyn are coming from different places, but the way their respective traumas manifest is the same. They both bury themselves in work because it soothes their anxieties.

The difference is that Evelyn is a workaholic to avoid feeling her own feelings, while Juliana is a workaholic because it gives her a sense of safety and security. That if she earns her own money then no one can take it away from her or hold it over her head the way that her father did with her mother.

None of which is remotely obvious to Eric. He just sees that she’s too busy, too frantic and too overburdened to live her life – so it’s living her. She has no boundaries with her bosses but plenty with everyone else and its not working for either of them.

At the same time, Eric keeps trying to fix things FOR HER instead of letting her tell him what’s really going on inside her head. He means well, he’s trying really hard, but he’s barking up the wrong tree to mix metaphors completely. (Not that there’s not a literal tree in this story because it’s Christmas and of course there is.)

All of which means that their relationship – and the problems in it – felt very real. That this holiday romance, while it takes place over the short span of the Christmas holidays, is really working from two plus years of relationship history, made the rather quick holiday story have more than enough depth for them to earn their Happy Ever After.

Which made this a terrific story to wrap up this sweet – and just a bit savory – Home Sweet Holidays collection of sweet holiday romance treats!

#BookReview: The Eight Heartbreaks of Hanukkah by Jean Meltzer

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: The Eight Heartbreaks of Hanukkah by Jean MeltzerThe Eight Heartbreaks of Hanukkah by Jean Meltzer
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, Hanukkah romance, holiday romance, second chance romance
Pages: 368
Published by Mira on October 21, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Can these exes rekindle their love this Hanukkah?
Evelyn Schwartz has the perfect Hanukkah planned: eight jam-packed days producing the live-action televised musical of A Christmas Carol. Who needs family when you’ve got long hours, impossible deadlines, and your dream job? That is, until an accident on set lands her in the medical bay with one of her chronic migraines, and she’s shocked to find her ex-husband, David Adler, filling in for the usual studio doctor.
It’s been two years since David walked away from Evelyn and their life in Manhattan, and his ex-wife is still the same workaholic who puts her career before everything else—especially her health. But when Evelyn begins hallucinating “ghosts” tied to her past heartbreaks, and every single one leads to David, he finds himself spending much more time with her than he anticipated. And denying the still-smoldering chemistry between them becomes impossible.
As Evelyn revisits her ghosts of Hanukkah past, she and David both begin to wonder if they can have a Hanukkah future. But with a high-stakes production ramping up the pressure on Evelyn, and troublesome spirits forcing them both to confront their most difficult shared memories, it might just take a Hanukkah miracle for these two exes to light the flame on their second-chance at love.

My Review:

Everyone knows the story of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol – if not from the book itself then from one – or more likely more – of the many, many TV and movie adaptations. My two favorites are still Mr. Magoo’s cartoon from the 1960s and the Muppets’ version from the 1990s.

The idea of the story is eternal, that anyone can atone, that anyone can be redeemed, that anyone can learn to celebrate the true meaning of Christmas with a big enough ‘wake-up’ call. Even if it’s not really a real wake-up call as it is in the recent A Christmas Witness. Which maybe worked even better because it wasn’t exactly real.

After all, even in Dickens’ original version, it did all turn out to be a dream. Just a very powerful one.

This is the first Hanukkah version of Dickens’ classic that I’ve ever read. (If this idea has been done before, please, please, PLEASE let me know in the comments! The original Dickens’ story is one of my favorites, but Hanukkah is my holiday so more versions of this combo are VERY tempting!)

The Eight Heartbreaks of Hanukkah takes that old, familiar, much beloved Christmas classic and gives it both a Jewish twist and a whole lot more time to work its holiday magic. The spirits needed to work their magic on Scrooge in a single night, where the Heartbreaks of Hanukkah have eight whole nights to weave their spell.

And they’ll need every night of it, because Evelyn Schwartz is a really tough nut to crack and she has a lot of heartbreak to work her way through this Hanukkah. Which is, at its heart or hers (pun fully intended) a huge part of why Evelyn’s heartbreaks loom so large over the holidays. Because she’s managed her whole life NOT working her way through her trauma and grief.

She shoves it all down, each and every time, and buries herself in work instead of letting herself be buried in her grief. But this Hanukkah it’s time for her to pay the price of all that avoidance.

If she won’t let herself feel her feelings and grieve for her own losses, this Hanukkah, for eight long nights and eight painfully debilitating migraines, they’re coming for her. One night, one loss, one grief, one heartbreak at a time.

Escape Rating B: This is going to be one of those mixed feelings reviews – and I have LOTS of them when it comes to this book.

First, the concept behind this story is fantastic. A Christmas Carol, with its magical story of redemption, is a beloved classic for a reason. And the idea of putting a Jewish twist on it is so much genius I’m astonished that I haven’t found one before.

Howsomever, the same thing that makes the insta-love in holiday romances work so much better in a Hanukkah romance than a Christmas romance because it has more time to work with had the opposite effect here. Each of Evelyn’s individual heartbreaks was a LOT. Eight of them felt like too many. Not because they weren’t each heartbreaking, but because they were all, sorta/kinda, the SAME heartbreak.

Evelyn’s heartbreaks were ALL Bruno. Not a person, but the song from Encanto. As in “We Don’t Talk About Bruno.” Evelyn Schwartz doesn’t talk about her problems, or her hurts or her worries or her griefs. She pushes them down and away so that she can bury herself in her work and push them away even more.

That Evelyn is a television producer makes her self-appointed task VERY easy. There’s always another crisis, there’s always another last minute change, and there’s always another male studio executive looking for her to fail and prove him right that TV producing is a man’s job and women just can’t cut it.

So Evelyn’s eight heartbreaks, while they have different causes, all boil down to the same thing in the end. That Evelyn buries her feelings in work every single time. To the point that when she and her then-husband had to bury their baby girl, they couldn’t grieve together because Evelyn couldn’t let herself feel her own feelings and left him alone with his.

Evelyn’s eight heartbreaks visit her, night after night, because her long-buried feelings and her lifelong ambitions have had a head on collision. Literally as the situation has sent her migraines into overdrive.

She’s the Executive Producer of a planned production of A Christmas Carol scheduled to be performed and broadcast LIVE on Christmas Eve. If the program is successful in EVERY SINGLE WAY, it’s the making of her career and the fulfillment of all her professional dreams. But if it isn’t absolutely perfect, it will mark the end of those same dreams.

Just as Evelyn is gearing up and grinding towards the final rehearsals, as her expensive, mercurial, high-maintenance star is about to arrive on set – a different issue arises in the person of her ex-husband David, as the studio’s stand-in medical doctor while the regular MD is on vacation.

Their chemistry is still incendiary – like kerosene and matches. But there’s still plenty smoldering under that white-hot surface. They’ve never gotten over each other, but they’ve also never gotten past the grief over their shared loss. And they need to – whether to make a new something together or make new lives separately – because neither of them has moved on an inch in any of the ways that matter.

In the end, just as the story is Evelyn’s redemption, or at least her path towards letting people in, letting herself feel her own feelings, a somewhat healthier work-life balance AND her acceptance that therapy might help her with all of the above, the story does redeem itself. I absolutely loved its multiple twists on the message of A Christmas Carol and the way it made me rethink the whole story at the end. But it is STILL a lot. A lot of heartbreak, a lot of grief and a lot of arguments leading to a hard-fought-for happy ending.

But this is absolutely not your typical holiday romance. It’s certainly not a romcom. If that’s what you’re looking for, or if it’s not what you’re looking for right now, it may not be the right book or the right time. Because it takes a lot of heartbreak to bring about this particular holiday miracle. A situation which will put some readers in the holiday spirit while perhaps making others reach for the holiday spirits. Your reading – and possibly drinking – mileage may vary.

A- #AudioBookReview: All Wrapped Up in You by Rosie Danan

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
A- #AudioBookReview: All Wrapped Up in You by Rosie DananAll Wrapped Up in You (Home Sweet Holidays) by Rosie Danan
Narrator: Robert Hatchet, Andi Eloise
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: borrowed from Amazon Kindle Unlimited
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, holiday romance, romantic comedy
Series: Home Sweet Holidays #3
Pages: 76
Length: 1 hour and 19 minutes
Published by Amazon Original Stories on November 20, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

Holiday magic helps two oblivious neighbors discover just how close they are in bestselling author Rosie Danan’s cheerful short story about big comedy, small tragedies, and the gifts found in between.
When stand-up comedian Piper has a panic attack outside the club, it’s not funny. But Scott, a handsome ER doctor from the crowd, gives her something to smile about as he calms her down. Turns out they’re neighbors—they just don’t know it yet. When Christmas Eve presents an opportunity for them to get even closer, Scott and Piper realize they share much more than just a wall.
Rosie Danan’s All Wrapped Up in You is part of Home Sweet Holidays, a cookie-sweet collection of holiday romances sure to bring color to your cheeks. Read or listen to each story in a single heart-fluttering sitting. And to fully immerse yourself in the charm of the season, don’t miss a special message from each of our holiday heroes!

My Review:

The thing about these holiday shorts series(es), both this year’s Home Sweet Holidays and last year’s Under the Mistletoe, is that the stories are supposed to be short in length – and they are – so they often take place over a rather short time period to make things work. But speaking of making things work, while ‘love at first sight’ is a fun idea, in real life and a romance where the happy ever after needs to feel earned, somehow a bit of time needs to be shoehorned into that short time period.

Hanukkah romances, like this year’s Merry and Bright, use the eight nights of Hanukkah to their – and the reader’s – advantage. Hanukkah lasts, well, eight nights – and generally parts of the days between those nights. That may or may not be enough time to build a lifetime on, but it can be enough to set the starring couple firmly on that path.

After all, if your new love can fit in and or tolerate – or a bit of both – your family, however wacky or over-the-top or dysfunctional they might be, that’s a good start for a relationship. Also, EIGHT WHOLE NIGHTS.

Howsomever, this story in this year’s Home Sweet Holidays collection isn’t a Hanukkah story – so it needs a different method of making a short time feel longer than it is. A problem which the author solves, and delightfully so, by using a scenario similar to the setup of last year’s Only Santas in the Building.

Stand-up comedian Piper Sadler lives in a Chicago walk-up apartment building. There are only two apartments on each floor, they share a hallway and a window and Piper lives in 3B while her neighbor and secret crush lives in 3A. They’ve never met but they do exchange text messages on a regular basis to complain about the neighbor with the leaf-blower across the street at stupid o’clock in the morning, and to share in the care of 3A’s spider plant in the hallway that 3B is watering and generally keeping alive.

Even when they do meet, they don’t. Piper is outside a comedy club, going through her usual pre-performance case of jittery stage fright – outside, in Chicago, in December, freezing – when Dr. Scott Harrison opens the outside door, hears someone breathing in a pattern that is obviously an incipient panic attack, and goes out to help. Or at least be there if she needs help.

They talk. It’s the most real conversation he’s had in years, with anyone. Not because he’s antisocial or whatever, but because he’s in his third year of residency and working, sleeping, and eating are all about all he has left in him – and he often skips the latter two of those three. He keeps telling himself it will get better but himself isn’t always listening.

She goes onstage, he goes back to the audience, and they still don’t REALLY meet. They don’t meet until she turns up in his ER after a close encounter with a very large amp and a bleeding cut on her forehead.

Even then, they only sorta/kinda meet. They recognize each other from the comedy club – but still don’t know they are neighbors.

By the time they finally do meet, he’s slumped outside her apartment door, having locked himself out of his apartment in an exhausted daze. On Christmas Eve, with no locksmiths available and no friend with a spare couch – or even a spare rectangle of floor – left available that he can beg for the night.

So they haven’t met, but they already know each other. Better than they think they do. Which makes their insta-love not so instant at all. Instead, they’ve earned their holiday season meet-cute AND their hopes for a happy ever after.

Escape Rating A-: First, I loved this for it being Chicago. (I also loved that I lived in a building that sounds very much like the one in the story.) But I could feel the snow crunching underfoot and the freezing fingers of cold fingering their way through every seam of my coat and I felt nostalgic but was really happy not to be in it.

The story does a terrific job of making their brief actual acquaintance seem like a much longer, and surprisingly real, acquaintance. They don’t know each other but they do KNOW each other, and it works. (Only Santas in the Building did too if you like this trope.)

I listened to this one, and Andi Eloise (Piper) and Robert Hatchet (Scott), did a terrific job voicing their characters. The audio versions of these original stories are the perfect length for my daily drive and these stories are a perfect way to spend that drive and get a happy, sweet, pick-me-up story into the bargain.

So I’ve enjoyed this Home Sweet Holidays collection a lot. I also got a bit caught up in the original blurb description for the series (it’s changed) that described them as a “cookie-sweet collection of holiday romances.” I think they changed the blurb because they’re all sweet so far but they’re not cookies. Snow Place Like Home was the holiday fruitcake, Merry and Bright was a donut-like Hanukkah sufganiyot, while this entry in the series is a pumpkin pie. I have no idea which sweet holiday treat the final book in the collection, You Better Not Pout, is going to turn out to be, but we’ll all find out next week, because I’m planning to review that last book on Christmas Eve.

#BookReview: Christmas at the Shelter Inn by RaeAnne Thayne

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Christmas at the Shelter Inn by RaeAnne ThayneChristmas at the Shelter Inn (Shelter Springs #1) by RaeAnne Thayne
Format: ebook
Source: borrowed from library
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, holiday romance, Romance, small town romance
Series: Shelter Springs #1
Pages: 304
Published by Canary Street Press on October 3, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Come home to Shelter Springs this Christmas, where hearts are warm and hopes are bright…
Growing up at the Shelter Inn hotel, Natalie Shepherd envied guests who could come and go as they pleased. So when it was time to finally leave for college and put the lush green mountains around Shelter Springs—along with the cloud of loss that seemed to follow her family—behind her, she swore she’d never come back. But now her sister McKenna needs a favor. On pregnancy bed rest at doctor’s orders, McKenna needs a helping hand with her two young daughters and someone to take over the inn during the hectic holiday season, and Nat can’t refuse. And just when things can’t get worse, she runs into her late brother’s best friend, Griffin Taylor…
Griff has mixed feelings about Natalie’s return. She’s just as beautiful and full of life as he remembered, but there’s a secret he’s carried for years about her brother—and the guilt is eating away at him. Still, Christmas in this small town is filled with treasured traditions and new adventures that hold the promise of something sweet and lasting. From matchmaking seniors to rambunctious nieces, it seems everyone is hoping Nat and Griff will put loss behind them and find a happy new beginning…

My Review:

Last holiday season, I kicked off my participation in the #2024HoHoHoRat with The December Market by RaeAnne Thayne. It was my first readathon post EVER, but it was the SECOND book in the Shelter Springs series. So of course the first book in that series, THIS BOOK, had to appear somewhere in my readathon reads this year. It’s only fair. Or symmetrical. Or something like that.

Besides, I needed to figure out how the Shelter Springs Inn got to BE the place it is in that second book. Because the community is just marvelous. Not just the community at the Inn, but the whole town in which the story and series are set. So I’m back, even if I’m also in front, because this story takes place before The December Market, even though some of it takes place AT the December Market.

It has to because the European-style Christkindl market has become an annual tradition in Shelter Springs, and Natalie Shepherd has rushed home to be a part of it – although that’s not precisely the reason she’s back.

Natalie’s back from her carefully-crafted life as a world-wandering freelance writer, pet-minder and house-sitter because her younger sister, McKenna, needs her. McKenna is in the last weeks of a high-risk pregnancy on mandated bedrest. But keeping the new baby inside her until the last possible minute doesn’t account for Kenna already having two children, very active (and actively bickering at every opportunity) five and three year old girls, nor does it cover Kenna’s commitments as the owner/manager of the Shelter Inn senior apartment community.

She needs help. Desperately. She also needs help in feeling not quite so desperate or so useless. So she calls her big sister – and their untrustworthy dad – to come help her out. She knows Natalie will drop everything to help her. Their dad, she’s still not sure about.

Natalie, on the other hand, is a bit discombobulated at being thrust into the role of caregiver for two rambunctious little girls, but she loves her nieces. Even though she doesn’t have a clue what she’s doing, and especially because the life she’s temporarily volunteered for is the last thing she ever thought she wanted.

Of course, that’s the story. The life that teenaged Natalie imagined for herself in the wake of her mother’s death from cancer, her father’s subsequent abandonment, followed by her brother’s death from a combination of grief, substance abuse and misadventure, left the younger Nat planning to leave Shelter Springs and all its memories behind her. 30something Nat, however, is on the cusp of recognizing that she didn’t leave that pile of trauma back in Shelter Springs. She’s been dragging it around with her, and she’s keeping that world she travels through so adventurously at arm’s reach because of it.

Coming back home immerses her in all the connections she left in Shelter Springs. And even though it forces her to finally feel her own feelings, it still warms her heart and plugs her soul into the love she left behind.

Natalie finds herself immersed in her very own ‘road not taken’ – even though it’s the road that has led her back to the last place she thought she’d ever want to be – back in Shelter Springs. That coming home has also given her a chance to see if the crush she always had on her brother’s best friend Griffin Taylor – himself just back in Shelter Springs as a newly fledged physician and dealing with his own mixed memories of the place he grew up in – adds a delightful touch of second chance romance – to this delicious holiday treat of a story.

Escape Rating B: I enjoyed Christmas at the Shelter Inn quite a bit, and for many of the same reasons that I loved The December Market. The town of Shelter Springs is just so inviting, to the point where I enjoy reading about it because I’d love to live there – in spite of the cold, snowy winter. The welcome is MORE than warm enough to make up for the weather!

The characters are a delight, just quirky enough to be fun without ever going over-the-top. That the two families central to the story, the Shepherds and the Taylors, are linked by childhood friendships and deeply felt shared tragedies adds just the right note of bitter to the sweet to keep the whole thing from being too cloying.

Also, those tragedies felt real and felt like they should have real consequences – and they do. There are no misunderstandammits here, the crisis points in the relationship happen because they are exactly the sort of things that end up standing between couples in real life and I’m there for that.

(I also wouldn’t mind finding a place like the Shelter Springs Inn to live. It just seems so wonderful and I’m kinda hoping its real-world equivalents exist.)

I’ll admit that I do have a quibble, and it’s what’s keeping this story from matching the A- grade I gave The December Market. There’s a lot of this story and about the obsessive desperation of McKenna’s pregnancy and especially Natalie’s second and third thoughts about her life and where she wants it to go from this point that are wrapped around her very young nieces and her own biological clock. I didn’t need her second thoughts to be so wrapped up in the possibility of her own children for those second thoughts to power the story, but I recognize that’s very much a ‘me’ thing that might not be a ‘you’ thing. While part of the story in The December Market is wrapped around Rafe Arredondo’s son Isaac, Isaac is a bit older and that made that part of the story work better for me.

Your reading mileage may definitely vary – and I hope it does, because so far the Shelter Springs series is utterly charming and I’ll certainly be back for more with Snow-Kissed – probably for the OMG #2026HoHoHoReadathon, this time NEXT year!