Genre: contemporary romance

Review: Beach Read by Emily Henry

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Beach Read by Emily HenryBeach Read by Emily Henry
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Chick Lit, contemporary romance, relationship fiction, women's fiction
Pages: 358
Published by Berkley on May 19, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters.
Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast.
They’re polar opposites.
In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they're living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer's block.
Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. Really.

My Review:

Beach Read has been in the virtually towering TBR pile ever since I read – and fell in love with – Book Lovers early this year. I’ve been “playing along” with the Kindle Achievements every quarter, so when the list of possible titles to fulfill that last badge included Beach Read, it seemed like the universe was telling me that now was the time. So here we are.

Both January Andrews and Augustus Everett are best selling authors – but most definitely NOT in the same genre. January writes women’s fiction (not all that different from the author herself), while Augustus Everett is famous for his dark and gritty literary fiction.

Their characters and worlds do not even begin to intersect – but they do. They are both graduates of the same University of Michigan Creative Writing Program. In fact, they attended together and graduated at the same time, spending four years competing for every single award and critiquing pretty much every single one of each other’s works.

Saying they are familiar with each other is hardly a stretch – even if they have nothing in common. Or believe they have nothing in common. At least not until they find themselves next door neighbors in a northern Michigan beach community, wanting nothing to do with each other.

But needing each other all the same.

They’ve each fallen into some really deep ruts, and they are separately having a damn hard time crawling out of those ruts. January has stopped believing in happy ever afters, after the one she believed her parents had found turned out to be based on a lie. A year after her dad’s death, she has a book due, an empty bank account, and a severe case of writer’s block.

Leading her to her dad’s old home town and the house he shared with his childhood sweetheart at a point considerably after either of their childhoods.

Gus has never believed in happy ever afters. Or even happy for nows. He’s always looked on the dark side and is in the throes of his third book, this time about death cults and their few survivors. But he’s going through his own case of writer’s block, for reasons that he isn’t willing to share with January. Because sharing isn’t something that Gus does easily. Or at all.

Still, they’re both writers and they’re both stuck and they have a whole lot of common ground to build on – even if that ground is more than a bit shaky on both sides. So they challenge each other as a way of breaking their writer’s block.

And it turns into the making of a happy ending for everyone – including sorta/kinda – the protagonists of not one but two surprising new books.

Escape Rating A-: I enjoyed Beach Read, but not quite as much as Book Lovers, because it’s a bit too much like Book Lovers. Which isn’t fair to Beach Read, as it was published first even though I read it second. Still, if you like one you’ll like the other – although it probably isn’t a good idea to read them too close together.

Like Nora and Charlie in Book Lovers, January and Gus are not just both in the book business, but in the same end of the book business as each other. (Nora and Charlie were both editors, January and Gus are both authors). Which means that both books, in addition to being just the kind of stories that January writes, are steeped in the book business – merely different aspects of that business.

And both stories begin when the protagonists meet when both parties are in the midst of a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.” What makes both stories fun to read is the way that they get themselves and each other past the horribleness.

We’re in January’s head in this story, so we know what she’s been through, what she’s thinking, and what she’s feeling. Because she and Gus knew each other fairly well – and very nearly better than that – once upon a time, we are also aware of all of her pre-conceived notions of who Gus is and what he thinks of her and in both of their situations.

Which gives Beach Read a very strong sense of “assume makes an ass out of ‘u’ and ‘me’” because January’s assumptions about Gus were and are too frequently wrong, wrong, wrong. But this steers clear of misunderstandammit territory because Gus has a damn hard time communicating his thoughts and feelings in any way other than expiating the worst of them through his writing.

While it was a given from the outset that January and Gus were going to reach at least the kind of happy for now that both the character January AND the author usually write, what made this book interesting and different was the books that January and Gus each produced on their way to it, and how those books managed to be both a departure from their usual styles while still expressing the core parts of their personalities and their reasons for becoming writers in the first place.

So a good reading time was definitely had in Beach Read. Because it was most definitely a good reading time, and because one of the other possible titles for that last achievement was the author’s People We Meet on Vacation, I bought that too. I’m pretty sure I’ll be picking that up and meeting those people the next time I’m looking for a feel-good read!

Review: Hex by Anna Hackett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Hex by Anna HackettHex by Anna Hackett
Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: action adventure romance, contemporary romance, romantic suspense
Series: Sentinel Security #6
Pages: 256
Published by Anna Hackett on June 13, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

She’s the genius hacker known as Hex.
He’s a ghost—the deep-cover spy known only as Shade.
They generate a dangerous level of white-hot sparks, but he needs her help on a deadly mission.
Jet “Hex” Adler loves being a goddess of all thing tech. She provides her team at Sentinel Security with intel and comms, and she’s good at it. No, brilliant. Sure, sometimes it’s hard to be stuck in the office while her guys are in the field, but computers, tech, and drones are her thing. If only she had the same luck with men.
And that does not include a certain hot, cocky, annoying spy.
Cain aka Shade is dedicated to his country. He does the hard, dangerous work so others don’t have to. He came from nothing, he’s alone, unattached. A man like him has nothing to lose. For Cain, life is always about the mission. It can never be about a certain small, smart, feisty hacker.
But now he needs Jet for an important assignment to stop high-tech drone schematics falling into enemy hands.
Of course, Jet will do anything to help save the world…okay, not the entire world, but a lot of innocent lives. Even if it means going undercover with the man who knows how to push every one of her buttons. But as they work together, dodging danger and bad guys, their scorching attraction explodes…and Cain will realize that for the first time in his life, someone is more important to him than his mission.

My Review:

This last book in the Sentinel Security series has been teased – as has its heroine Jet “Hex” Adler – from the earliest days in the series when she, and we, were introduced to CIA undercover operative Shade, as he gave the occasional assist to his former CIA colleagues Killian “Steel” Hawke and Devyn “Hellfire” Hayden on their way to their HEA in Steel.

When her story opens, Hex is the only member of the Sentinel Security team who hasn’t found somebody to love. She’s been burned more than once by too many men who only seem to be interested in her for the ways they can change her, with Brandon the douche having been the worst of the lot.

Brandon left her psyche with a few scars, and left Hex with the uncompromised desire to find someone who will love her exactly as she is, smarts, sass, petite cuteness and everything else in her sometimes contradictory package.

She doesn’t think Cain Cavanaugh, AKA Shade, could possibly be that man. Which doesn’t explain why, in spite of his dark codename, he lights up her hormones every time they cross paths or even just exchange annoying texts.

But there’s a job to do, as there always is for Sentinel Security. And for once in her career, both with the CIA and now with Sentinel Security, Hex is going to be the one going undercover instead of staying safe and managing all the tech that keeps the rest of her team and found family as safe as she can make them.

She’s off to an international tech conference to exchange a stolen data chip for a high-level sting on the evil broker who plans to sell it to the highest – and equally evil – villain. With Shade as her partner keeping her safe from everyone who is out to get her – especially himself.

A job at which he is both not exactly successful and utterly unsuccessful at the same time. But that’s OK because Hex is perfectly capable of rescuing herself from the bad guys – and doesn’t feel any need whatsoever to protect herself from Shade.

Escape Rating A-: The previous book in this series, Excalibur, just wasn’t the tropes I was looking for, for reasons that I don’t need to get into here.

Very much, and very happily, on my other hand, Hex turned out to be EXACTLY what I was hoping for, with its badass hacker heroine who rescues herself, and the even more badass man who is certain that he’s got too much blood on his hands from too many dark places to be remotely worthy of her.

Of course, he’s right and wrong at the same time. He might not quite be worthy of her, and possibly no one is – I really loved Hex – but he is a worthy man and he’s what she wants and he should definitely know better than to stand in her way. It was terrific watching him figure that out – finally – so they could both take a chance on love. Just like the rest of the members of the Sentinel Security team have done through the course of the series.

Now that Killian Hawke (Steel) and his handpicked team have finally found their HEAs, the action shifts to the Fury Brothers in the author’s next action-adventure romance series, coming in September.

In the meantime, I’m looking forward to her next science fiction romance (always my personal faves), Knighthunter, book 2 of the Oronis Knights series, coming OMG NEXT MONTH! Squee!

Review: Famous in a Small Town by Viola Shipman

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: Famous in a Small Town by Viola ShipmanFamous in a Small Town by Viola Shipman
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, relationship fiction, women's fiction
Pages: 352
Published by Graydon House on June 13, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

"Full of summertime delight…and sweet, nostalgic charm, Famous in a Small Town is a beautiful reminder to…fully embrace the magic that lives inside you." —Heather Webber, USA TODAY bestselling author of Midnight at the Blackbird Café
For most of her eighty years, Mary Jackson has endured the steady invasion of tourists, influencers and real estate developers who have discovered the lakeside charm of Good Hart, Michigan, waiting patiently for the arrival of a stranger she’s believed since childhood would one day carry on her legacy—the Very Cherry General Store. Like generations of Jackson women before her, Cherry Mary, as she’s known locally, runs the community hub—part post office, bakery and sandwich shop—and had almost given up hope that the mysterious prediction she’d been told as a girl would come true and the store would have to pass to…a man.
Becky Thatcher came to Good Hart with her ride-or-die BFF to forget that she’s just turned forty with nothing to show for it. Ending up at the general store with Mary is admittedly not the beach vacation she expected, but the more the feisty octogenarian talks about destiny, the stronger Becky’s memories of her own childhood holidays become, and the strange visions over the lake she was never sure were real. As she works under Mary’s wing for the summer and finds she fits into this quirky community of locals, she starts to believe that destiny could be real, and that it might have something very special in mind for Becky…
Bursting with memorable characters and small-town lore, the enchanting new novel from the bestselling author of The Clover Girls is a magical story about the family you’re born with, and the one you choose.

My Review:

In the summer of 2023, “Cherry Mary” Jackson is eighty years old and holding both a record and legacy in Good Hart, Michigan.

Mary Jackson has held the world record, officially certified by the Guinness Book of World Records, for the furthest distance a cherry pit (from a Michigan cherry, of course) has ever been spit. By anyone, male or female, man, woman or child. It’s a record she’s held since 1958, when she was 15 years old and cherry spitting was considered to be utterly unladylike.

But Mary has never thought of herself as a lady – and neither did either her mother or grandmother.

Which relates to the legacy that Mary is holding. She’s the latest in a long, unbroken line of female owners of the Very Cherry General Store in the heart of Good Hart. It’s not exactly an untarnished legacy, as Mary is all too aware. That Mary’s grandmother was able to pass the store intact to her daughter, who was, in her turn, able to pass it intact to Mary herself, had a rather active hand in making it happen in more ways than just the obvious.

Mary has always known she’s supposed to pass the store to another woman in her family when it’s her time to go. At age eighty, Mary is all too aware that her time is coming sooner than she’d like to think. But her only child was a son, and now, her son’s only child is a son in his mid-30s who seems to be following in his father’s footsteps far away from Mary and the store.

Meanwhile, just-turned-forty Becky Thatcher (yes, her parents really named her that and the inevitable schoolyard taunts and bullying were every bit as awful as one might imagine) has also always known that she had a destiny out there waiting for her to find it. A destiny she learned about when she was a child, spending summers with her beloved grandparents on the shores of Lake Michigan.

They’re gone now, but the memories remain, including Becky’s memory of a dream, or a vision, or a Fata Morgana mirage out of the lake, of a group of three women coming towards her and herself walking towards them.

This summer of 2023, after breaking up with her long-term utter douche-sponge of a boyfriend, Becky and her BFF Monique (AKA Q) take a ride back through time. Not time travel, more like a reboot. They take a ‘Girl’s Vacation’, just like they used to before adult responsibilities sucked them under, and they drive to Lake Michigan, back to where Becky’s grandparents used to take her, to take a summer off from real life to decide if the real life they have to go back to is the one they really want for the next forty years.

Becky and her fate run straight into “Cherry Mary” and her legacy – along with Mary’s yummy grandson – and it finally all comes together. For all of them. In the ‘Blue Hours’ and ‘Golden Hours’ of one beautiful Lake Michigan summer.

Escape Rating A: Famous in a Small Town is an utterly charming take on “we are too soon old and too late smart” applied across multiple generations, from 80-year-old Mary to 40-year-old Becky while in between Mary’s parents are trapped in their own fears and expectations and need to drive a cherry red convertible out of their damn garage and into a life they can both love.

But to give the story a bit of spice (and body!) it also includes just a pinch of the bad decisions and ruthless practicality that seasoned those Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe.

It’s also a marvelous if sometimes bittersweet tale of the power of women’s enduring friendships – as well as the lifelong enmity that can be spawned when those friendships go sour. As much as the laughter in this story is buoyed by the rock solid, lifelong sisterhood between Becky and Q, it is salted with tears over the even longer relationship between Mary, Francine and Virgie, who now in their sunset are celebrating both the support that Mary and Francine have always given each other as well as the once-upon-a-time kick-in-the-pants that Virgie administered to Mary when she needed it the absolute most.

Sometimes friendship involves standing side by side, and sometimes it manifests as a boot up the backside – even if that boot pulls that friendship apart.

I picked up this book because I loved the beautifully “sad fluff” of the author’s earlier novel, The Clover Girls. (I’ve liked the author’s subsequent books but I just haven’t loved them the way I did The Clover Girls.)

At least not until now.

The very cherry flavored fluff of Famous in a Small Town isn’t nearly as sad as The Clover Girls. There is a touch of bittersweetness in the chocolate the cherries are enrobed in, but the story as a whole is considerably lighter – even though there are some absolutely appropriate and completely justified dark spots.

Then again, I like dark chocolate considerably better than milk because it has just the bit more bite.

I think that’s because the characters in this one, especially Mary and Becky, are at much better places in their lives than any of The Clover Girls were when their story begins. That Becky’s part of this one begins just as she’s kicked her dead weight of an ex to the curb starts her part on a bit of a celebratory note – even as she’s kicking herself for having tolerated the situation for so long.

But still, this one starts out at a point where no one is in dire straits. Things could be better, things will be worse on the horizon, but they’re at a point where they begin by being open to something good happening, so the fact that it does and that the good happening is the story bakes the whole thing into a delicious Cherry Chip Cake with Cherry Vanilla Buttercream Frosting – the recipe for which is included at the end!

Guest Review: Chef’s Kiss by TJ Alexander

Posted on by Amy Daltry | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews> Guest Review
Guest Review: Chef’s Kiss by TJ AlexanderChef's Kiss (Chef's Kiss, #1) by T.J. Alexander
Format: paperback
Source: publisher
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, queer romance, romantic comedy
Series: Chef's Kiss #1
Pages: 308
Published by Emily Bestler Books on May 3, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A high-strung pastry chef’s professional goals are interrupted by an unexpected career transition and the introduction of her wildly attractive nonbinary kitchen manager in this deliciously fresh and witty queer rom-com.
Simone Larkspur is a perfectionist pastry expert with a dream job at The Discerning Chef, a venerable cookbook publisher in New York City. All she wants to do is create the perfect loaf of sourdough and develop recipes, but when The Discerning Chef decides to bring their brand into the 21st century by pivoting to video, Simone is thrust into the spotlight and finds herself failing at something for the first time in her life.
To make matters worse, Simone has to deal with Ray Lyton, the new test kitchen manager, whose obnoxious cheer and outgoing personality are like oil to Simone’s water. When Ray accidentally becomes a viral YouTube sensation with a series of homebrewing videos, their eccentric editor in chief forces Simone to work alongside the chipper upstart or else risk her beloved job. But the more they work together, the more Simone realizes her heart may be softening like butter for Ray.
Things get even more complicated when Ray comes out at work as nonbinary to mixed reactions—and Simone must choose between the career she fought so hard for and the person who just might take the cake (and her heart).

Note from Amy: I realized as I was writing this that I’ve been gone from these pages since the beginning the COVID-19 pandemic; my last review was for Melanie Yaun’s PsyTek. In the early days of the pandemic, just weeks after that review was posted, we lost Melanie, so the rest of that story, sadly, is lost to us, as is her brilliant work at our shared day job, her joyous wit, and her dear, dear friendship.  In the time since then, I’ve not been as much of a reader or writer as I have been in the past. But the subject of today’s post, perhaps, marks a turning point for me, where I can get back at the keyboard.

Guest Review by Amy: Two people, who get a crush on each other and spend most of the book circling around that fact through an assortment of tribulations, until one of them apologizes and says they’ll never mention it again, and the other says, “wait, what?” and they ride off into the sunset together.  Tropey as it comes, right?  That’s the basic recipe for a rom-com, isn’t it?

When I saw a queer romance, involving a chef, I was all-in. I love to cook (ask Marlene!) and I love queer romance almost as much as I love sci-fi.  If there’s ever a queer romance set on a spaceship involving the ship’s cook, I may spontaneously combust. (Marlene’s comment: Ryka Aoki’s marvelous Light from Uncommon Stars is more cooking than cheffing, but there’s a spaceship and a queer romance and donuts and it’s marvelous. I’ll be prepared to pick up your pieces if you combust upon reading.) 

Escape Rating: A+:  One of the things that makes a whole lot of romances work is that they draw the reader – usually a female – into identifying with the – usually a female – protagonist.  It’s a formula that has driven Harlequin’s success since before Marlene or I were born.  But what happens when the reader is not drawn into the world of the protagonist from whose eyes we are seeing the story, but to their love interest?  In my case, that is what happened in Chef’s Kiss.  Our protagonist, and the lens through which we see author TJ Alexander’s New York City setting, is Simone, a trained chef, who works at a fairly staid old media company producing recipes in a test kitchen. She’s happy with her situation; it’s her dream job!  Sure, it doesn’t pay as well as it could, perhaps, but the magazine has been losing subscriptions for a while now, because 21st century, you know…

Other reviewers, and indeed, the book’s back cover, call Simone “high-strung,” but to my eyes, that is kind of a cheap shot, as no one calls her that between the covers of the book, and I’m just not seeing that. She’s a bit uptight, perhaps, something of a perfectionist, and rather resistant to change, certainly.  So when the publisher of the magazine calls her in and tells her their whole business model is changing to creating video content, and then she discovers that the long-time kitchen manager has been replaced by a much younger and more energetic person who is going to change literally everything in her orderly world, she is, to put it mildly, kind of agitated about it. I get that, and I don’t think that classifies as “high-strung.”  She’s just behaving…well, like I might, in her shoes.  And I’m not high-strung.  Am I? (Marlene’s comment: No, you’re not. Or I am too and we’re NOT going there because cheap shot is still cheap.)

It doesn’t take long, of course, until the bisexual Simone falls for the tall, good-looking and energetic new soul in the kitchen, though – Ray is super-cute, enjoys wearing a leather apron, and looks really good in it. But they’re just colleagues, you know…then, just friends, of course…

The publisher’s video guy accidentally posts a clip of Ray being hilarious and awesome on the magazine’s channel, and it goes viral, and all of a sudden, the strategy for media is changed, and Simone and Ray are co-hosting a hit show on YouTube, much to the chagrin of the company’s arrogant social media manager.  Things rock on pretty well, until…

Okay, I’m going to have to level with you here. I’m not an unbiased reader; Ray is non-binary, tending toward masculine, and I’m non-binary, tending feminine. When Ray comes out at work, they have mixed results. While Simone and the other kitchen staff are supportive, management (including that snooty social media maven) are not, continually dead-naming and misgendering them. And Ray tells their allies in the kitchen to not make a fuss, because they cannot lose this job – and when we as readers are informed of why, when Ray tells Simone, my heart just broke for them.

Yes, this story is a rom-com. And yes, it’s got all the classic elements of one – the not-quite-understanding each other’s subtexts, the “I said things when I was drunk” night, the “we’ll never mention this again.” But there is a second story here, and it’s one that Simone shows us in some pretty sharp detail – Ray’s struggle for their identity and acceptance. Simone is there for Ray, as they are Going Through It, tending to them through what – for both Ray, and for me – are some of the toughest moments of their life. Ray’s path, because it mirrors my own, resonated forcefully with me, even though the details of their path are quite a bit different from my own. It’s the same struggle, really: the struggle to be themselves.  It is a struggle I have lived with for over a decade now, and seeing Ray’s life through Simone’s eyes brought me back to some of the difficult moments of that period.

Simone is going through her own struggle, too, being a mostly-closeted bisexual woman, and when she outs herself to her manager (in the discussion over Ray’s coming-out), you see her own frustration with the struggle she sees coming. It’s not on the scale of Ray’s, but it’s there, and we get to see her respond to that in a really rewarding way when she points out to her boss that “You’re the only straight person in the room.”

Cisgender and/or straight readers might not get that resonance, and for those readers who don’t, this is still a fantastically cute, sassy, well-crafted rom-com with a little steam and some great food for thoughtful reflection. If you’re one of those readers, that’s okay, though this reviewer’s hope is that seeing Ray and Simone’s struggles educate you a bit, and give you a better feeling for those people around you who may not fit in the same mold you do. For queer folk and their allies, though, there’s so much more to see and feel here. My one gripe about this book is that the ending came too quickly, the resolution a little bit deus ex machina for my tastes – the happy-for-now ending came quite abruptly, even though it was a good end to the tale. This was TJ Alexander’s first work, and I am going to read their second work, the follow-on Chef’s Choice, right away. I’m hungry for more.

Review: The Boyfriend Candidate by Ashley Winstead

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: The Boyfriend Candidate by Ashley WinsteadThe Boyfriend Candidate by Ashley Winstead
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, Romance, romantic comedy
Pages: 384
Published by Graydon House on May 9, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

“Charming, swoony, and utterly unputdownable. I LOVE this book!”—LYNN PAINTER, New York Times bestselling author of Better Than the Movies
A laugh-out-loud rom-com about learning to embrace living outside your comfort zone.
As a shy school librarian, Alexis Stone is comfortable keeping out of the spotlight. But when she’s dumped for being too meek—in bed!—the humiliation is a wake-up call. She decides she needs to change, and what better way to kick-start her new more adventurous life than with her first one-night stand?
Enter Logan, the gorgeous, foul-mouthed stranger she meets at a hotel bar. Logan is audacious and filterless, making him Alexis’s opposite—and boy, do opposites attract! Just as she’s about to fulfill her hookup wish, the hotel catches fire in a freak lightning storm—and in their rush to escape, Logan is discovered carrying her into the street, where people are waiting with cameras. Cameras Logan promptly—and shockingly—flees.
Alexis is bewildered until breaking news hits: pictures of her and Logan escaping the fire are all over the internet. It turns out Logan is none other than Logan Arthur, the hotshot politician challenging the Texas governor’s seat. The salacious images are poised to sink his career—and jeopardize Alexis’s job—until a solution is proposed: to squash the scandal, he and Alexis could pretend to be in a relationship until election day…in two months. What could possibly go wrong?

My Review:

We’ve probably all done some really weird, out of our comfort zones things while getting over an ex. Or getting vicarious revenge on said ex. Most of us don’t get struck by lightning while we’re doing those things. Or get caught on camera, whether in deshabille or not, while doing said things. Whether or not we’ve been doing those things we might someday regret with someone currently running for governor – of our state or any other.

Not that both Alexis Stone AND Texas gubernatorial candidate Logan Arthur don’t look fairly ungoverned in the pic that has taken the internet by storm. And thrown Logan’s candidacy in a tempest of its very own – one that the opposition is guaranteed to take advantage of – unless Logan’s people get ahead of it first and very, very fast.

Both Logan and Ashley are single and unattached. This isn’t THAT kind of political scandal. It’s just that in the looks department Logan makes Justin Trudeau look like he isn’t really trying, AND he has a well-deserved reputation as a playboy. His older, settled, highly respected opponent has made a great deal of political hay over Logan’s inability to commit to a relationship with anyone and questioned whether he’s mature enough to commit to a relationship with the entire state. Of Texas.

Logan’s campaign wants Alexis to agree to a fake relationship with the candidate until after the election is over, win or lose. If Logan wins, they can break up quietly and he can go on to become the first Democratic governor of Texas in entirely too damn long. If Logan loses, it won’t matter anyway.

Or so everyone believes. Whether it’s going to matter to either Logan or Alexas after two months of fake dating in front of seemingly all the cameras in Texas is a question that no one seems to have asked.

Whether a shy, downright introverted school librarian is willing or able to put herself in front of those same ever-present cameras and put her entire life on display on the campaign trail is a huge, ginormous ask.

Whether Ashley can keep her heart to herself while she’s doing it is something that she needs to ask herself. Seriously. Before it’s much too late. For her heart. And, much to Ashley’s surprise, for his.

Escape Rating B: The Boyfriend Candidate starts out with one of the most sizzling meet-cutes ever. As Alexis and Logan are seducing each other with words over an increasing number of drinks and over-the-top stories they tell each other, the steam practically rises off the page. To the point where it’s not all that surprising that the sparks they strike from each other result in an actual lightning strike.

And that’s where the story really heats up!

The fun part of this one is the way it tackles the “fake dating” trope and then uses it to say a whole lot of really important things about how important it is to love yourself first and figure out what you really want in life before you inflict yourself on anyone else.

Both Logan and Alexis have dreams to fulfill but both of them have been too caught up in being what other people want to take the necessary hard look at what they themselves really want. They are both, in entirely different ways, people pleasers. For Alexis that means twisting herself into an emotional pretzel out of fear that if she rocks the boat even a little bit people will leave her. As her father left her mother – and then was killed in a car crash. As her sister emotionally abandoned her after those same events. Although their relationship is better now the stress of those dark days still lingers. On Alexis at least.

Logan wants to do good. Really, truly, seriously. He knows that being governor will give him the kind of reach and influence, not to mention the really tall bully pulpit, that he can use to make good things happen. But being a candidate is making him squeeze his outsize, blunt, profane and argumentative personality into a tiny, meek, mild-mannered little box. And it’s not working for either him or the campaign.

But to make his campaign work, Alexis needs to get on board. To make that work for her, she has to find a voice of her own no matter how much it scares her. And Logan needs to own his own truth to have a real chance, both with the voters and with Ashley.

There’s a lot to love in The Boyfriend Candidate. While Ashley’s journey is the toughest, and the one we’re most intimate with as she’s the one telling the story, Logan’s journey is just as important to making the whole thing work, both for them and for the reader.

There’s also a lot that gets said about the state of politics in general and in Texas in particular. Especially about the state of libraries and education and education funding, as those issues become Ashley’s platform in a huge and necessary way. The best and worst thing is that all of the issues that Ashley raises in her platform, from decreasing funding for education, year after year, to increasing book bans everywhere, are all substantially true. For this librarian, the inclusion of those issues was a huge plus. Some readers may not and your reading mileage may vary.

Howsomever, as a reader I did have one issue with this story, and it’s an issue that took me completely out of the story to the point where the grade landed on B. It’s clear throughout the book that whatever Ashley and Logan might be saying out loud, neither of them has managed to keep their hearts to themselves. There’s going to be a crash before the final HEA. The way that crash came about, when Ashley’s sister forced her between a rock and a hard place in a way that was guaranteed to explode all over Ashley, Logan, and his campaign, read like the kind of sabotage that was not part of Ashley’s current relationship with her sister. It came out of left field in a way that didn’t work for me at all.

Which doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy the book as a whole, because I most definitely did. (It also reminded me quite a bit of Jasmine Guillory’s Party of Two, and I adored that book and the whole Wedding Date series it’s a part of, so I was a bit pre-determined to like The Boyfriend Candidate. And I did. I just wish there’d been a way to stage that inevitable explosion that felt more organic to the story.

Review: The Beach Reads Bookshop by Lee Tobin McClain

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: The Beach Reads Bookshop by Lee Tobin McClainThe Beach Reads Bookshop by Lee Tobin McClain
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, relationship fiction, women's fiction
Series: Hometown Brothers #3
Pages: 352
Published by HQN Books on April 25, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Running a bookstore on a quaint Chesapeake island is exactly the life Deena Clark would have chosen for herself--but helping billionaire businessman Luis Dominguez figure out fatherhood is part of the package. Can bonding over books and one little girl help them open their hearts to each other?

My Review:

“When one door closes another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” At least according to Alexander Graham Bell. But what if, as occurs in – and at – The Beach Reads Bookstore, it’s not the looking forward and back that does you in, but rather looking next to you at the person who needs to walk through that new door with you – and not trusting them well enough – or at all – when it comes to crossing that next threshold with them at your side.

Two doors have shut behind 50something Carol Fisher. She lost her job and her husband on the same day to the same cause, stupidity. Institutional stupidity on the part of the college where she is suddenly no longer employed in the tutoring center – which is slated to go online. Testosterone-induced middle-age midlife crisis stupidity on the part of her soon-to-be ex-husband, who she caught carrying his nurse through the house on the way to some hanky-panky. A piece of stupidity he’s going to pay for in more ways than one, as he’s currently collecting disability that is going to stop the minute his duplicity is revealed.

An entirely different set of doors has closed for Deena Clark. Her best friend and roommate has died, leaving Deena with custody of her friend’s baby girl, who shows signs of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Deena loves Willow, and wants more than anything to be her mother. But she’s also at the end of her rope. She was barely scraping by financially when she was sharing the apartment, but now that she’s on her own and responsible for a baby who needs extra care, she knows that she doesn’t have the resources to get Willow the help she needs. And that’s just not good enough for little Willow.

Deena sees only one option – to take Willow to her sperm donor and hope that the rich entrepreneur will provide the child support he didn’t know he was responsible for. But Luis Dominguez, once he accepts that Willow is incontrovertibly his, has no plans to pay Deena to make the baby and her caregiver go away.

He intends to be Willow’s father – and he’s willing to cajole or connive in order to make that happen. With all the best intentions – because he’s that kind of Type-A steamroller who believes he always knows best.

His plan is to buy the old, dilapidated bookstore on Teaberry Island, the place where he grew up and where his family still lives, and pay Deena an exorbitant amount of money to manage the bookstore and take care of his daughter – with the able and conveniently nearby assistance of his mother, his two brothers and their wives. His plan keeps Deena with him, gives him something to do on Teaberry Island, and most importantly, gives him time to be a real father to his little girl. All he has to do is tear himself away from his high stakes, high pressure, big time consulting firm in DC.

That his plan to open a door for Willow, Deena and himself runs headlong into Carol’s plan to reopen that same dilapidated bookstore that her family still owns isn’t even on his radar – and he wouldn’t care if it was and doesn’t care when he finds out.

But Teaberry Island is a small town, and everybody pitches in to get the bookstore open again under Luis’ plan for Deena. Except for Carol and her new-found friends, who have plans to take things in an entirely different situation.

Let the games begin!

Escape Rating B: At first it seems as if Carol – along with her friends – is being set up as the villain of this story. Which is entirely unfair, as she’s in every bit as big of a mess when the story begins as Deena is.

But the “A” plot in The Beach Reads Bookshop is Deena’s slow-burn romance with Luis and their pretty inevitable shift from being strangers to becoming a family. It’s cute and it’s sweet and they each have some lessons to learn along the way – but where they’re going to end up is obvious from the beginning so it’s not exactly a surprise when they get there.

Carol’s story, that “B” plot, on the other hand, had a few more twists and turns. (It also went into one nasty corner that I’ll get to in a minute). Carol is the character who is doing a lot of that “regretting the closed door” at least at the beginning, that the quote is talking about. It’s not just that she misses her job and is mourning the end of her marriage, but she’s looking back even further, all the way back to when her grandfather owned the bookstore and the world was just a bit different.

But her sister sold the bookstore out from under her before she even knew Carol wanted it. Which is the point where Carol barged into Deena’s life.

At first it’s that long ago nostalgia that Carol is really trying to recapture – no matter how badly she goes about it. And no matter how much trouble it gets her into. It’s only as she embraces the new life she’s creating on Teaberry Island that her situation really gets interesting – even as it nearly takes a sharp left turn into “grand theft bookstore”.

Once she starts looking forward instead of back she realizes what a fantastic opportunity all of the doors that slammed behind her really were. And while it wasn’t a surprise that her soon-to-be-ex tried – badly – to get her back, it was great that she did not let herself get sucked back into that boring, unfulfilled and unsatisfactory life.

That her journey brings her around to a point where she and Deena are running that bookstore together – and enjoying it and each other’s company – brought everything full circle and tied the story up with a pretty – and somewhat unexpected – bow.

Reviewer’s Note: There was one fly in the sweet-smelling potpourri of this story, at least for this reader, that lies in the way the conflict over the bookstore played out. As ironic as this may sound, in the beginning, both Carol and the local librarian indulged in more than a bit of reader-shaming over the idea that the bookstore would focus on light, fluffy, “beach read” type books. There is a debate, even in library circles, over the question of whether libraries should push people to read “better” books, or if it’s just terrific that people are reading and enjoying it no matter what they choose to read. It’s a debate that was resolved long ago in favor of being happy that people are reading and that it is REALLY bad karma to shame people for what they read. So it left a really bad taste in this reader’s – and librarian’s – to see that debate played out in a rather snide fashion in the earlier parts of this book, especially the way the local librarian was reader-shaming her own patrons. Your reading mileage, of course, may vary. But I hope that whatever you read and love, that we all stop trying to shame other readers for their choices. 

Review: The Comeback Cowboy by Jackie Ashenden, Caitlin Crews, Nicole Helm, Maisey Yates

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: The Comeback Cowboy by Jackie Ashenden, Caitlin Crews, Nicole Helm, Maisey YatesThe Comeback Cowboy by Maisey Yates, Caitlin Crews, Nicole Helm, Jackie Ashenden
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: contemporary romance, western romance
Series: Jasper Creek #4
Pages: 384
Published by HQN Books on April 25, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

They may not have been friends when they were younger but now, they’ll work together to save the camp that saved them and, maybe, even find love in the process…
The alumni of Camp Phoenix, a summer program for at-risk youth, went their separate ways, but now they’ve been called back to help the camp reopen for a new crop of kids. Now successful adults, the four women pledge to restore the grounds to their former glory, if long-standing rivalries and old flames don’t get in the way first…
Bree White fought hard to get away from her criminal family and all of the reminders of her past until Sheriff Flint Decker brings all those feelings back and more. Attorney Violet Cook owes her life to Camp Phoenix and is determined to save the camp…but who’s going to save her from the temptation of long-time crush US Marshal Lincoln Traeger? Kinley Parker never left Camp Phoenix, dedicating her life to it, and has no time for pushy cowboys like Jackson Hart until butting heads leads to sparks. The daughter of the camp’s founder. Clementine McClain has always wanted to follow in her law-abiding father’s footsteps, but her father’s protégé and former bad boy Duke Cody has her breaking all the rules.  

My Review:

The image of the phoenix is a powerful one, a being of flame, rising from the ashes of its previous self. That’s the image that Sheriff Bill McClain of Jasper Creek invoked when he built Phoenix Camp. He made the camp into a place where teens who were heading down bad roads would have a chance to take a breath in a safe place and look hard at their past selves and, with support and understanding, choose to rise from their own ashes.

When The Comeback Cowboy opens, Bill has passed and the camp has been neglected for years. It’s going to take time, money and more than a bit of elbow grease to bring the place back from its own ashes.

Just as both McClain and the camp he created once helped its alumni pick up their pieces and move on, so now it’s their turn to bring the place that helped them back so that Camp Phoenix can help a new generation of kids who need it as much as they did.

So there’s not just one “comeback cowboy” in this book, there are four; Flint, Lincoln, Jackson and Duke. All are now in their early 30s, and they all “graduated” from the school of hard knocks but, thanks to McClain, found a better path than their lives had originally intended them for. Jackson Hart, forced to retire from the DEA after a career-ending injury, now owns the old camp. And he’s determined to turn it back into the saving place it once was – and to save himself as well.

His friends all come back to help him with the many, many dirty jobs that will be needed to make that happen. And he coaxes, persuades, orders, whatever, a group of the successful women who once walked that same misguided path that he and his friends did. Women who owe their success to Bill McClain and Camp Phoenix every bit as much as those comeback cowboys do.

The story in The Comeback Cowboy is the story of putting, not the band – because this bunch was never all that together – but the camp back together. It’s about restoring the place and the traditions that made them each what they became.

A restoration that takes place in the background as the four women; Bree, Violet, Kinley and Clementine – who all hated and envied each other as teenagers – bond into a sisterhood that surprises them all. And find the love that none of them ever thought they would have or deserve – after the pasts they all share.

Escape Rating A-: The Comeback Cowboy is both one story and four stories at the same time. It’s about what the camp meant to them in the past, and what they hope it will mean to others in the future. It’s about giving back and not giving up.

And its four romances – all taking place at the same time and in the same place. But each of them just a bit different in spite of those similarities.

Bree and Flint’s romance is absolutely enemies-to-lovers. It’s hard to think of a situation that would create more enmity in the past – as well as embarrassment in the present – than their original not-cute-at-all meeting. When Bree was 14, and Flint was a newly fledged police officer, he arrested Bree for shoplifting. Instead of booking her he brought her to McClain which led to the camp which put her on the path to a much brighter future.

But she’s never forgotten and is not too sure she’s forgiven either. Falling in love with the man who arrested her was NOT in Bree’s plans. Stealing his hat, on the other hand, sparks off something special.

Each of the women ‘steals’ something from one of the men. An important something, like Flint’s hat. Or an annoying something, like Jackson’s ever-present and frequently squawking bullhorn. As love languages go, it’s certainly different.

At the same time it’s emblematic of who these people are and what parts of their lives they still need to re-think before they are ready for their own future. In other words, each of them needs to rise up like the phoenix one more time, and those so-important items are symbols of what they need to let go of to make that climb.

Violet and Lincoln’s romance is a bit of a second-chance one, as she had a huge crush on him back in the day, while he noticed how much she pretended to hate him but didn’t see her as more than a little girl – because she was much too young. Now they’re both adults, and both of them have traumas in their pasts that they need to let go of, symbolized by Lincoln’s grandmother’s locket that Violet makes off with.

In their different ways, both Kinley and Jackson need to, as his friends tell him, unclench. He can’t always be in control, and has to learn to let go of the facade that he can, while Kinley needs to let herself stand up for herself. Their ‘bone’ of contention is that damnable bullhorn that Jackson keeps putting between himself and the world that no one can truly control.

Clementine McClain and Duke Cody have known each other for years. She’s McClain’s daughter – and now she’s Duke’s cop partner. Their romance has the flavor of the ‘best friend’s little sister’ vibe, as Duke has watched Clementine grow up and does feel protective of her. That she’s his mentor’s daughter adds the spice of the forbidden to the whole thing. Once she was forbidden, but not anymore.

Three out of the four romances worked really well for this reader. It didn’t seem like Jackson and Kinley’s romance had quite enough time for it to not seem a bit too fast and more than a bit convenient, but the others had more than enough history to make what would otherwise be insta-love really zing. Clementine’s story had the added bonus of her personal journey from ‘one of the boys’, because that was the only way her dad could deal with her, to accepting herself as she is. That it’s all wrapped in how much she loves her dad, misses him, and still resents just how much he made her feel like her being female was an embarrassment to him added an interesting layer of complexity to her story.

In summary, because this does need one, I loved three of the romances, thought the fourth was OK, and found the story of the camp and its rise from its ashes to be delightful. If you love any of the included authors, or are looking for a bit of a contemporary western romance sampler, The Comeback Cowboy is a treat!

Review: Happy Place by Emily Henry

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: Happy Place by Emily HenryHappy Place by Emily Henry
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Chick Lit, contemporary romance, relationship fiction, women's fiction
Pages: 400
Published by Berkley on April 25, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Harriet and Wyn have been the perfect couple since they met in college—they go together like salt and pepper, honey and tea, lobster and rolls. Except, now—for reasons they’re still not discussing—they don’t.
They broke up six months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends.
Which is how they find themselves sharing the largest bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blue week they leave behind their daily lives; have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood; and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most.
Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. They can’t stand to break their friends’ hearts, and so they’ll play their parts. Harriet will be the driven surgical resident who never starts a fight, and Wyn will be the laid-back charmer who never lets the cracks show. It’s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses). After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week… in front of those who know you best?
A couple who broke up months ago make a pact to pretend to still be together for their annual weeklong vacation with their best friends in this glittering and wise new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.

My Review:

Ironically, Harriet’s “happy place” isn’t all that happy when she arrives – no matter how much everyone, including Harriet, tries to recapture the happiness they all always feel when they get there.

Once upon a time, all the way at the beginning of their freshman year at Mattingly College, the algorithm that matches up roommates matched three girls who, on the surface, couldn’t have been more different.

A serendipitous match that gave Harriet, Cleo and Sabrina the ‘sisters from another mister’ that none of them had ever had. They belonged together in a way that was so profound that it took them through college, graduate school, and beyond, culminating every summer at Lobster Fest in a tiny coastal town in Maine where Sabrina’s extended birth and step-family owned a gigantic, fully stocked summer house. (Honestly, more like a summer mansion or a compound. It’s vast and sprawling and perfect – except for one teensy little problem which we’ll get to in a minute.)

Every summer, the girls share one fantastic week together, a tradition that has not wavered as they have each found other roommates, friends and lovers along life’s way. As this summer visit begins, the three have been six for several years, and they are all thirty years old or on the cusp of it.

Sabrina, the great organizer of the group, has pulled them all together – in spite of more than one person’s reluctance – because this is going to be the last summer of their happy place. Her dad has sold the house.

But that’s not the only rain on this particular parade. On the one hand, there’s the good news that Sabrina and her lover, Parth, are getting married that weekend, on the beach near the house, with all their besties around them.

Sabrina and Parth’s good news – if it actually happens – is overshadowed by whatever is eating at Cleo and her girlfriend Kimmy – which is in its turn eating at Sabrina. Harriet, in the second year of a medical residency, has pushed everyone away, partly out of exhaustion but mostly in denial over her own depressing secret.

A secret that greets her at the door, when her long-term ex-fiance is waiting, intending to help her keep up the deception that they are still together. When they’re not. And haven’t been for several months but haven’t managed to tell anyone.

Because they fear it will affect the dynamic of the group – a group which has become a family they both need – whether separately or together.

And because they don’t really want to let each other go – no matter how much they each believe the other is better off without them.

Escape Rating B+: I went into Happy Place hoping for another Book Lovers – which I utterly adored. When I didn’t get that, I found this to be a tough read for most of its length, but now that I’ve finished the book I keep thinking about it and it’s turning out to be one of those cases where the whole is absolutely greater than the sum of its parts.

The story as it progresses seemed like a giant misunderstandammit for the longest time. But the thing about those kinds of books is that what makes them so awkward is that it’s obvious to the reader that all it would take would be one frank conversation to clear up the mess.

That’s not true here. While a bit of frankness would go a long way, it would take WAY more than one conversation to clear things up. All of them are bottling up how they really feel or what is really going on in order to keep the peace – and it’s not working for anyone.

Just as occurred in Book Lovers, this mess needs to build up to an explosion for that air to get cleared. It just takes a week of heating up before it all boils over.

On top of that, what really got to me about this story as I looked back at it was just that, the looking back. Because this is the last summer at their ‘happy place’ they are all aware that an era is ending. That, in combination with all of them turning 30 this year, makes all of them realize that life is changing and that this family that sustains all of them could come to an end if they don’t figure things out and learn to adapt to the changes they are all going through.

And yet, with the secrets hanging over them, they are in danger of not figuring things out. With all the nostalgia on tap on this trip, and with all of the music they play because it is the background of their lives together, (and because they mention Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” playing on the radio) I realized that this is the summer where they are all aware that whatever happens next for any of them, the years they spent together are the “Glory Days” they will be looking back on for the rest of their lives.

The question in the story is whether they can get beyond what’s driving them apart to find a new way to hold each other together – no matter where the future takes each of them.

In the end, I didn’t love Happy Place the way I did Book Lovers. But once I finished I realized that I liked it quite a bit more than I initially thought!

Review: The Sister Effect by Susan Mallery

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: The Sister Effect by Susan MalleryThe Sister Effect by Susan Mallery
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, relationship fiction, women's fiction
Pages: 416
Published by Hqn on March 7, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Beloved bestselling author Susan Mallery brings readers an emotional, witty, and heartfelt story that explores the nuances of a broken family’s complex emotions as they strive to become whole in this uplifting story of human frailty and resilience.
Finley McGowan is determined that the niece she’s raising will always feel loved and wanted. Unlike how she felt after her mom left to pursue a dream of stardom, and when the grandfather who was left to raise them abandoned her and her sister, Sloane, when they needed him most. Finley reacted to her chaotic childhood by walking the straight and narrow—nose down, work hard, follow the rules.
Sloane went the other way.
Now Sloane is back, as beautiful and as damaged as ever…and she wants a relationship with her daughter. She says she’s changed, but Finley’s heart has been burned once too often for her to trust easily. But is her reluctance to forgive really about Sloane or worry over losing what she loves the most? With the help of a man who knows all too well how messy families can be, Finley will learn there’s joy in surrendering and peace in letting go.
 

My Review:

Supposedly, “love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things and [it] never fails. But love is a feeling. It’s not the emotion that does anything. It’s PEOPLE who love and do all the other things in this famous list from the Bible.

In dysfunctional families such as the ones in this story, it’s the strongest members of the family who do most of that bearing and enduring – even after their hope is gone. The story in The Sister Effect (technically it should have been The Sibling Effect but that’s not nearly as catchy a title) is told from the perspective of that person in two initially separate families, that one who stands tallest and is supposed to forgive everyone else all their many and very real trespasses – even as they deal with the trauma that bearing inflicts. On top of dealing with the original trauma and the dysfunction and broken trust that followed it.

Jericho Ford is still grieving the sudden loss of his father as well as having to assume the helm of the family construction company a couple of decades before he thought he was ready. He thought his family had finally found their way to the other side of that grief when their dysfunction manifested in a way that honestly deserves its own episode of the Jerry Springer Show.

Jericho’s wife Lauren and his brother Gil didn’t just have an affair, they managed to fall in love and get pregnant. Jericho is supposed to forgive, forget, give his blessing AND be his brother’s best man. Jericho’s lack of grief over the end of his marriage is so easy to get past that he realizes that it had been over for a long time.

The way that his brother betrayed his trust is a LOT harder to get over. And he’s having a LOT of trouble over it. That betrayal cut deep, and he’s still righteously angry about the whole thing. His mother wants peace in what remains of her family, while Jericho wants to stop having to be the bigger man about damn near everything.

But Jericho’s righteous anger provides the lighter moments in this one. The bigger trauma, the larger betrayals, and the huge tragedy in the story belongs to Finley McGowan as she is forced to keep her own trauma and broken trust at bay every single day.

Because Finley’s sister Sloane is an alcoholic whose last great binge before entering rehab derailed all of Finley’s plans for a future that she was working damn hard for. At least until Sloane stole Finley’s pickup truck filled with $100,000 of supplies for the house she was flipping, sold off those supplies and wrecked the truck. Along with Finley’s credit rating, her job and her relationship with her fiance. (He turned out to be no great loss, but still…)

And left Finley, always the responsible one, to take guardianship of Sloane’s then 5-year-old daughter Aubrey while Sloane tried to accept both her alcoholism and the steps she’d need to take to deal with it for the rest of her life. An acceptance she’s having difficulty reaching no matter how hard or how faithfully she performs the steps to achieve it.

Like Jericho’s mother, Finley and Sloane’s mother expects Finley to accept the apologies and keep on believing that Sloane will turn her life around no matter how damn tired Finley is of having to pick up the pieces of the wreck Sloane makes of Finley’s life – over and over and over.

Both Finley and Jericho begin the story in a place of being resentful as hell. They’re both right. It’s not fair to them. They’re the ones who have to set their own emotions aside, over and over again, for the benefit of people they’re not really sure ARE sorry for what they’ve done. And they’re both really tired of their respective messes – which are SO not their fault.

But holding on to their anger and resentment isn’t doing either of them any good. It’s only when they reach out to each other that they find much, much better feelings to hold onto.

Escape Rating A-: So often, stories like this one focus on the journey of the person who has committed the wrong or is on the road to recovery from their issues. Stories that focus on redemption and healing. What I really liked about The Sister Effect was that instead of focusing on Sloane’s redemption arc or Gil’s transgression turned epic romance (not that both aren’t important parts of this story), the story instead focused on the people picking up the pieces of their destruction, Finley and Jericho.

Their anger, resentment and distrust felt oh-so-righteous. It’s a perspective that’s sometimes missing in redemption stories, that the people wronged are entitled to their feelings and that “sorry” doesn’t wipe it all away. Their trust has been abused and broken, and they have to process that loss before they can move on with their lives.

They both need to forgive, if not forget, for their own healing, but it’s a hard journey and the difficulty of it made the characters shine – even while they ranted and vented and cried.

While Finley’s story was so much more traumatic and heartbreaking, Jericho’s was a necessary part of the whole. The farcical nature of his family’s difficulty both managed to balance out the heavier nature of hers while giving them common ground for reaching their own happy ever after with their respective – and combined – dysfunctional families.

The Sister Effect turned out to be a wonderful story about the ties that bind – and sometimes strangle – within families that have been to hell and back together and separately and still manage to find a way forward – more or less together. That their journey resolves into just the right mix of hopeful ‘happy for now’ for Sloane’s on her journey while giving Finley and Jericho as well as Gil and Lauren the happy ever after they’ve finally earned.

Review: Full Exposure by Thien-Kim Lam

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews
Review: Full Exposure by Thien-Kim LamFull Exposure: A Novel by Thien-Kim Lam
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, romantic comedy
Pages: 320
Published by Avon US on February 21, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Happy Endings author Thien-Kim Lam is back--with a rom-com set during the divine madness of Mardi Gras as two lovers ask: Can a Big Easy fling become the real thing?
Boudoir photographer Josie Parks never ever takes a vacation. But when a client cancels a New Orleans shoot at the last minute, she decides to fly out from her Washington, D.C., studio anyway. Maybe the trip will reawaken her recently stagnant muse. After all, it's Mardi Gras season...
Spencer Pham has come home after twelve soul-sucking years in corporate hell to pursue his passion: making a docu-film on his family's history as the first Vietnamese Mardi Gras krewe. The last thing he expects is getting whacked in the head by a beautiful woman trying to snag some parade beads.
During a long night at urgent care, Spencer and Josie connect over their artistic pursuits. He offers to show her the real New Orleans, if she'll help him with the camerawork for his film. Despite Josie's type-A personality clashing with Spencer's laissez-faire attitude, they seem to make a great team, and soon, the good times are rolling both on and off camera. But Josie has a life in D.C., and they both have big dreams they're chasing. When this Big Easy fling starts feeling awfully serious, can they find a way to choose between personal and professional passion?

My Review:

Mardi Gras was just this past Tuesday, making this the perfect week for a visit to New Orleans – at least between the pages of this sparkling romance. There’s always magic in New Orleans, whether at Mardi Gras or not – even if it’s just the magic of the beignets at Café du Monde.

Although the description of the messy, yeasty, sugary goodness of the beignets on Josie and Spencer’s first date will certainly make every reader’s mouth water nearly as much as Josie’s when she first checks Spencer out.

Just after she hits him in the head with the parade beads she’s just caught. It’s either a painfully cute meet cute – or just downright painful. Because either Spencer is seeing stars and little birdies after Josie clocks him – or there are some serious sparks between them from the very beginning.

Jodie’s mortified – but not concussed – and she’s feeling them too. Definitely sparks.

Over a couple of plates of those iconically delicious beignets, Spencer and Josie discover that they have more than sparks and less than a whole lot of time to see where those sparks might lead.

Josie’s in town for a mere seven days before she needs to return to her successful but stressful boudoir photography business in Washington DC. Spencer is back home in New Orleans for an unspecified while, after a dozen years in a high powered, high stress and highly detested job in – of course – Washington DC.

Spencer is more than willing to go with the flow and see where it takes them. Josie has always been constitutionally incapable of taking a step without not just A plan, but Plans B through at least F or G as well. But just this once she’ll try.

For as long as she can stand it. Or until fate intervenes. Or love walks in. Or out. Or all of the above.

Escape Rating B+: The meet-painfully-cute kicks this one off with a bang – or at least with a clonk to the noggin. The banging comes later. But this isn’t just a romantic comedy, although it certainly has plenty of the elements to make it qualify as one.

(Which is honestly kind of a relief. I read several books last year that were promoted as romcoms that turned out to be anything but. So the truth in advertising is a welcome change.)

Howsomever, Full Exposure isn’t just a romcom and it’s the not-so-funny bits that tug at the heartstrings after the final page is turned.

A big part of what both Spencer and Josie are dealing with outside of all the sparkly banter between them are real cases of burnout. Both are/were under pressure in stressful jobs and both have issues with saying enough is enough. In Spencer’s case that’s a result of family pressure and a lack of open communication, while in Josie’s case it’s because she selflessly sacrificed both her savings and her dreams when her younger sister was in a severe accident and needed long-term, expensive, hospital care and physical therapy.

While the reasons for it may be different, both of them feel intensely responsible for supporting their birth families and neither of them are able to open a space in those feelings for their own artistic dreams – because art doesn’t make money they both believe their families still need.

As much as Josie and Spencer have their artistic dreams in common, their romance is definitely a case of opposites attracting. Josie is Type-A down to her toes, while Spencer has a bit more of the New Orleans attitude of “laissez les bons temps rouler” – or at least a bone deep ability to be spontaneous that Josie planned out of her own life in the wake of her sister’s accident.

But Spencer needs a bit of Josie’s organizational magic as much as she needs a touch of his spontaneity. (Not to mention as much of his touch pretty much everywhere as she can get!)

So this is a romance of letting go, letting things out, letting things unfold, and not giving up on the best thing that’s ever happened to either of them without one hell of a fight.

One of the other terrific things about this story is that, in spite of some bumps in the road, both Josie and Spencer are functional people who have terrific support networks behind them that they both truly appreciate.

In Spencer’s case it’s his sometimes intrusive but always loving family and the New Orleans Vietnamese community of which they are an integral part. In Josie’s case it’s her best friends, the Boss Babes, who are with her through thick and thin and crisis and resolution and everything in between.

Josie’s Boss Babes are terrific, but it seemed terrifically obvious that we weren’t getting the whole picture of who they were and how they all fit together in this story. The Boss Babes, including Josie, first appeared in the author’s debut novel, Happy Endings. (In other words, while Full Exposure isn’t exactly the second book in a series it isn’t exactly not, either) So if you enjoy Josie and Spencer’s story, and I definitely did, and if you’re wishing for a gang like the Boss Babes of your very own, check out Happy Endings the next time you’re looking for a fun, sexy read with a whole lot of heart. I certainly plan to!