Genre: romantic comedy

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- #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!

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.

A- #AudioBookReview: Merry and Bright by Ali Rosen

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
A- #AudioBookReview: Merry and Bright by Ali RosenMerry and Bright (Home Sweet Holidays) by Ali Rosen
Narrator: Barrie Kreinik, Eric Nolan
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: borrowed from Amazon Kindle Unlimited
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, Hanukkah romance, holiday romance, romantic comedy
Series: Home Sweet Holidays #2
Pages: 63
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

What starts as a Hail Mary fake romance scheme turns into the real deal in this delightful story of holiday deception from Ali Rosen, author of Alternate Endings and Recipe for Second Chances.
Miriam Brody is dreading Hanukkah with her overbearing family in Charleston. Ditto for dreamy pro football player Cal Durand and Christmas. After sharing a few flirty drinks on the flight there, the strangers conspire to tackle the holidays together, posing as a couple. But as shenanigans unfold, Miriam realizes her feelings are anything but fake. Uh-oh. Are they headed for a holiday miracle—or a holiday disaster?
Ali Rosen’s Merry and Bright 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:

Merry and Bright was every bit as delightful as last week’s Snow Place Like Home, and not just because of the cute title.

I am seeing that one of the treats of this year’s collection is the way that the stories extend the time the featured couple knows each other in order to make the instant romance seem not quite so instant. So far, it’s working for me.

But of course, with Merry and Bright, that’s at least in part because this is a Hanukkah story every bit as much – if not a bit more – than it is a Christmas story. This particular fake romance has eight nights to perform a Hanukkah miracle before it’s all set up to be fulfilled on Christmas.

It also helps that even though Miriam Brody and Cal Durand don’t know each other, they sorta/kinda do. They certainly know all the same people, and even the same neighborhood. They seem to have grown up within walking distance of each other in Charleston even though they must be just far apart enough in age to have not been in the same cohort growing up.

But that childhood proximity leads to some much more interesting adult proximity in the first class section of an airplane on its way to Charleston from New York City. It’s just over a week before Christmas, Hanukkah is about to begin, and neither Miriam nor Cal are looking forward to their family holidays.

Miriam was a VERY unexpected late-in-life child, and her parents, sisters, and in-laws all interrupt her, talk over her, ignore her, and generally treat her as though she’s still TWELVE when she’s nearly 30 and the owner of a VERY successful business. That she is almost the only introvert in a family of extroverts makes being home for the holidays less than fun no matter how much she loves her family. Which she does.

Cal isn’t looking forward to going home to his parents for his holidays because he’s been avoiding it and them for four years for reasons that he just doesn’t want to get into with ANYONE.

They both need buffers from their well-meaning but clueless families, even if those families are clueless for entirely different reasons. They’re both single, and they’ve had a grand time on the plane keeping their various hurts and tender places at bay.

So why not keep going? Why not be each other’s buffer with each other’s family? It’s only to get through the holidays, and then they can go their separate ways back in New York. They can help each other out. It’ll be fun!

Unless all that fake dating turns into real feelings. Dealing with THAT won’t be any fun at all. Unless they can somehow, in spite of their respective holiday baggage, work their way toward an even happier New Year.

Escape Rating A-: Just as in Snow Place Like Home, I got into this because I really, really felt for Miriam and her family dilemma. They do love her, and she does love them. But she’s been the only introvert in a family of extroverts all her life, and it’s only recently that one of her young nephews has joined her in the introvert section of the party.

(Also like Snow Place Like Home, the narrators for this story, Barrie Kreinik as Miriam and Eric Nolan as Cal, did a marvelous job of bringing these characters to life.)

Miriam’s family is loud and boisterous, and she doesn’t fit. That’s uncomfortable but okay. The way they treat her is teeth-grittingly unconscionable, but what works is the way that Cal instantly gets it – and her – the moment he steps into the room. (I did want her to have a big, pardon me considering which holidays we’re talking about, come to Jesus moment with her oblivious family, but, well, baby steps on that score are way more likely to work. Dammit.)

I loved seeing all the Hanukkah details and celebration in a story that is tailor-made for a Hallmark movie. (The delights of feeling seen are very real.) AND the eight nights of Hanukkah provide just enough time for the relationship between Miriam and Cal to get a firm hold on their – and the reader’s – hearts.

Which is when the story runs right into Cal’s family Christmas and the reason he’s been avoiding it. Everyone in that family is on pins and needles, walking on eggshells, living in stasis, all of the above, because Cal’s young wife was killed in a skiing accident four years before and everyone is waiting for Cal to start living again – even though he doesn’t feel like he deserves to.

Just as Cal made her feel seen among her family, she helps him feel heard among his own. Again, he loves them and vice versa, but he and his late wife grew up together and memories of her are EVERYWHERE in that house. Miriam gives him space to breathe and not just start to move on, but accept that it’s okay for him to do so.

If the stories in this Home Sweet Holidays collection represent holiday treats, just as Snow Place Like Home was the holiday fruitcake, Merry and Bright is a Hanukkah sufganiyot, a pillowy donut filled with a sweet jelly center, just as this story is has a lot of holiday light and a big, soft, sweet heart at its own.

I’m having a great time with this collection – and it’s just the perfect length for my daily drive! So I’ll be back next week with the third story, All Wrapped Up in You, and finishing up with You Better Not Pout on Christmas Eve. I’m looking forward to figuring out which holiday cookies match the themes of those stories!

A- #AudioBookReview: Snow Place Like Home by Laura Pavlov

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
A- #AudioBookReview: Snow Place Like Home by Laura PavlovSnow Place Like Home (Home Sweet Holidays) by Laura Pavlov
Narrator: Abigail Reno, Sean Masters
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: borrowed from Amazon Kindle Unlimited
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, holiday romance, romantic comedy
Series: Home Sweet Holidays #1
Pages: 57
Length: 1 hour and 8 minutes
Published by Amazon Original Stories on November 20, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

After a devastating breakup, a sunny veterinarian goes home to the mountains to lick her wounds—and savor a holiday snack—in this heartfelt story from Laura Pavlov, author of the Blushing series.
At her brother’s wedding, Goldie Jacobs brushes shoulders with Ace Bonetti, his childhood best friend turned Hollywood hotshot. Ace has been crushing on Goldie ever since high school, and seeing her again reminds him exactly why. They spend one toe-curling night together, then part ways, expecting nothing more. But when those moments under the mistletoe felt so right, how can they ever let each other go?
Laura Pavlov’s Snow Place Like Home 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 blurb for this year’s series of Amazon’s holiday originals collection, Home Sweet Holidays, proclaims that what they have in store for readers – and listeners, is a “cookie-sweet collection of holiday romances.”

This series opener, Snow Place Like Home, is plenty sweet – but it’s definitely the fruitcake of the collection. It’s a bit crazy, a bit spicy, and has more than a bit of whatever it will take to make the reader/listener a bit tipsy with delight.

Goldie Jacobs’ brother Jack, his fiancée Holly, and, in fact, the rest of her family, are what Goldie calls “those people”. Not in a bad way, not at all, but maybe just a bit much and over-the-top for Goldie.

Jack and Holly are getting married on Christmas Day, because they’re names are, well, Christmas-y. Every single thing about the wedding, from the date to the theme to the OMG costumes required for the rehearsal dinner, all have to be holiday-themed and all have to be pre-approved by the happy couple.

This isn’t bridezilla-ness, they’re like this for every single possible occasion all the time. They’re just that picture perfect and happy about it and want to share it with everyone around them. Whether the people they’re sharing with, like Goldie or Jack’s best friend Ace, are remotely into that sort of picture perfect planning and presentation or not. In Goldie’s case, definitely not.

It’s not that everyone, including Goldie, doesn’t always have a good time and won’t this time. Jack and Holly – and also Goldie’s parents Suzie and Joe – are really good at this kind of thing. But it’s not what Goldie would choose and she certainly wouldn’t choose to be in the spotlight – which is inevitable at least for a bit, because people who love the spotlight don’t always get that not everyone does.

As much fun, perversely fascinating, and often laugh-out-loud worthy the setup of this story is, the heart of the story is about the maid of honor and the best man, Goldie Jacobs and her brother’s lifelong bestie, Ace Bonetti. Back in the day, they had crushes on each other, never admitted it for real-life reasons, but equally never got over it.

Now they’re both adults, they’re single at the same time, and Ace’s brief visit back home is a chance for both of them to finally put their cards on the table. If they have the courage to take that chance to see if the dreams they’ve each kept so close to their hearts can turn into a real-life happy ever after.

Escape Rating A-: If this had been told from Jack and/or Holly’s perspective, I wouldn’t have enjoyed the story half as much as I did. Because I’d be on the sidelines with Goldie in this one, snarking at the over-the-top-ness of it all. What made it work for me is that both Goldie and Ace think the whole thing is ridiculous but they love these people and they’ll deal to be part of their celebration. But it’s not their thing and they both think it’s crazy. And it is crazy that their approved costumes were Rudolph for Goldie and The Grinch for Ace. (At least they’re both warm enough on this very cold and snowy Christmas Eve!) I loved their commentary, and also loved that they both let themselves go with it even if it’s definitely not their style.

It helped a LOT that I listened to this one, because the story is told from Goldie and Jack’s alternating first-person perspectives. It felt like I was perched on their shoulders, listening to their voices, telling me their thoughts. And Abigail Reno as Goldie and Sean Masters as Ace both did terrific jobs with the characters.

While the setup of the story is what earns the fruitcake, the heart of the story – what’s been in both Goldie’s and Ace’s own hearts all these years – is what makes the story such a sweet treat. While the romance straddles the line between two romantic tropes beautifully, specifically the best friend’s little sister taboo and the friends into lovers storylines, what makes this one special is that it’s the friends into lovers trope that wins the day. Back in high school, Ace did see Goldie as off-limits because he didn’t want to involve her in his family’s mess. She didn’t try to cross the line from friends into more because Ace is already an unofficial member of her family and she didn’t want to ruin that with a possible rejection.

Also, of course, they were teenagers and clueless, but it’s the friendship angle that sticks. HER family is HIS primary support, throwing a messy rejection into that wouldn’t have been fair to him. Now that they are adults there’s a real chance but her reluctance to rock the boat feels very realistic.

Which made the happy ever after just that much more delicious when it happens! Snow Place Like Home turned out to be the perfect holiday story to kick off this year’s collection. Now I can’t wait to start the next story, Merry and Bright, and not just because, in spite of the title, it’s a HANUKKAH STORY!

#AudioBookReview: First-Time Caller by B.K. Borison

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B Reviews> book reviews
#AudioBookReview: First-Time Caller by B.K. BorisonFirst-Time Caller (Heartstrings, #1) by B.K. Borison
Narrator: E.J. Bingham, Hathaway Lee
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: borrowed from library
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, romantic comedy
Series: Heartstrings #1
Pages: 420
Length: 11 hours and 54 minutes
Published by Berkley, Penguin Audio on February 11, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A hopeless romantic meets a jaded radio host in this cozy, Sleepless in Seattle-inspired love story from beloved author B.K. Borison.
Aiden Valentine has a secret: he's fallen out of love with love. And as the host of Baltimore's romance hotline, that's a bit of a problem. But when a young girl calls in to the station asking for dating advice for her mom, the interview goes viral, thrusting Aiden and Heartstrings into the limelight.
Lucie Stone thought she was doing just fine. She has a good job; an incredible family; and a smart, slightly devious kid. But when all of Baltimore is suddenly scrutinizing her love life-or lack thereof—she begins to question if she's as happy as she thought. Maybe a little more romance wouldn't be such a bad thing.
Everyone wants Lucie to find her happy ending... even the handsome, temperamental man calling the shots. But when sparks start to fly behind the scenes, Lucie must make the final call between the radio-sponsored happily ever after or the man in the headphones next to her.

My Review:

Lucie Stone and Aiden Valen make real magic in the radio booth – but first they have to get there. And that takes some doing on the part of practically every single person in Lucie’s life – including her twelve-year-old daughter.

Which is pretty much the dichotomy that powers this entire grumpy-sunshine romance.

The first part of the story is the setup. Aiden Valen – who broadcasts as Aiden ValenTINE, is the host for a romance hotline on an independent Baltimore radio station. A station he is literally tanking, all by himself, because he’s fallen out of love with love and is spreading his disillusionment all over his show.

Obviously, Aiden is the grump in this pairing.

Lucie, on the other hand, is the sunshine, even though her life doesn’t have quite as much sunshine as it ought to have. At least not according to her daughter Maya, her daughter’s dads, her coworkers, her bestie, and seemingly everyone else in her life.

And that’s where the conspiracy comes in, the fun begins, and the magic happens. Because Lucie is all about the magic of love, even if she’s never managed to find it for herself. Which is why her daughter concocts a scheme to call into Aiden’s radio show on her mom’s behalf, in the hopes that Aiden can help Lucie find what she’s looking for.

Lucie hears her daughter on the phone in the middle of the night talking with a man. From under the covers, the better to muffle the sound. At first, Lucie goes ballistic on both of them, not unreasonably so. But it’s late and she’s tired and she’s more tired of being lonely than she wants to admit.

So she ends up talking with Aiden for the rest of his shift, and she’s honest about life, dating, the universe and pretty much everything. And it goes VIRAL. Lucie’s struck a chord with the entire Eastern Seaboard. With Aiden along for a ride he never thought he’d EVER want to take.

Because Lucie still believes in magic, while Aiden doesn’t even believe in love. Until he does.

Escape Rating B: I ended up with an epic amount of mixed feelings about this one. The second half of the book – once they get into the booth together and start talking to each other and to the people of Baltimore who are shipping it like mad – it really is magic.

But getting there, that first half of the book, was a bit of a slog. It seemed as if every single person in Lucie’s inner circle was a boundary-stomping jerk. While this setup may have been exactly what Lucie needed, the way it happened and the way they all, collectively, went about it was absolutely NOT what she wanted or how she wanted it.

The relationship that Aiden and Lucie develop once they get into the booth – and out of it – was all about consent. Specifically hers. But getting her there was the absolute opposite, a campaign conducted by the people who did love her and did mean the best for her with their interference. But does that mean it’s okay to ignore someone’s expressed wishes because you ‘mean well’ and where does that end? It’s a situation that I find triggering and others may as well, but your reading mileage hopefully varies.

Once they interact directly with each other, the whole thing is utterly magical. I adored their banter, I loved the way they played off each other, and it was extra fun that it seemed as if even though we were experiencing this story through their alternating first-person perspectives, that Aiden didn’t have a clue about his own feelings, while Lucie steadfastly avoided getting a clue that the entire city was shipping the relationship that neither of them recognized they were having.

I also adored that Lucie was in a male-dominated profession (she’s a car mechanic), that she’s doing it well and is well respected by her co-workers, and that all four of her somewhat grumpy, older, male coworkers are shipping it along with the rest of Baltimore just added to the fun – and to the magic.

Speaking of magic, the audiobook is magical, and it’s also a terrific medium for experiencing this particular story. The experience is all the better because the alternating perspectives are voiced by not one but two narrators, Hathaway Lee for Lucie and E.J. Bingham for Aiden. Because we’re so deeply inside their heads for this, it worked so much better that each had their own narrative voice to go along with their own internal voice.

In the end, the good outweighed the ‘less good’ parts of this story, although I have to confess that I’d probably have bailed if so many friends hadn’t talked both the book and the author up so much. It also helped that the radio show parts of the story reminded me very fondly of Turn It Up by Inez Kelly, a story I read a while back that was also about co-hosts on a radio program that talk their way into romance with the same kind of banter.

Which leads to one last comment. According to the author, this book is meant to invoke fond memories of the movie Sleepless in Seattle. Whether it does or not is certainly in the eye of the beholder. Howsomever, a second book in this Heartstrings series has been announced, And Now, Back to You, inspired by When Harry Met Sally. I can’t wait to see if the iconic scene from that movie is replicated – and how!

#Spotlight + #Excerpt: Beach Reads and Deadly Deeds by Allison Brennan

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | blog tours> Excerpts> Spotlight
#Spotlight + #Excerpt: Beach Reads and Deadly Deeds by Allison BrennanBeach Reads and Deadly Deeds by Allison Brennan
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, romantic comedy, romantic suspense
Pages: 400
Published by Mira on June 17, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

In this sun-dappled mystery from New York Times bestselling author Allison Brennan, a risk-averse bibliophile gets in over her head when strange notes in a book draw her into a real-life investigation.
Mia Crawford is responsible to a fault. She has to be. Between her high-demand job and taking care of her grandmother and her cats, she has little time for anything else. What time she does have, she pours into reading. Mysteries, romances, thrillers…books filled with women who are far more impulsive than she would ever dream of being. Now, forced into taking a long-overdue vacation, she finds herself on a luxurious private island where she just might have a chance to reinvent herself—for a little while, anyway. She can explore the island. Flirt shamelessly with a cute bartender. Have a vacation fling. Live like a heroine in one of her favorite novels.
Or she can curl up with a good book on the beach. Turns out reinventing yourself is easier planned than done. But when gossipy notes written in the margins of an old book turn out to be clues to the disappearance of another guest, Mia finds herself diving headfirst into a dangerous adventure. With everyone at the resort hiding secrets of their own, she’ll have to solve this real-life mystery before she becomes the next target. 

Welcome to the blog tour for Beach Reads and Deadly Deeds by Allison Brennan. I discovered the author through participation in an earlier blog tour, so I’m happy to be back again with a new book and tour. That earlier book was in her Quinn & Costa thriller series, a series I’m still eagerly following. This book is a bit different, a combination of romantic comedy, romantic suspense and cozy mystery. I hope that you’ll be as intrigued by this excerpt as I am!

Excerpt from the PROLOGUE of Beach Reads and Deadly Deeds by Allison Brennan

“Death is so terribly final, while life is full of possibilities.”
—George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

DIANA HARDEN HAD A plan, and the plan was good.

This little hiccup in her plan was merely an annoyance, not a roadblock. Sending her on a wild goose chase to St. John was childish and petty.

Ethan Valentine would pay dearly for wasting her time.

It was near dark when the water taxi returned her to St. Claire. The driver was barely more than a kid, but Diana paid him well. She’d had enough of this cloak-and-dagger bullshit, so she had the kid take her straight to Valentine’s private dock in a sheltered cove on the southwest side of the island.

“Remember,” she said, putting her fingers to her lips in the universal be quiet sign. She didn’t want Ethan to know she’d figured out his ridiculous game.

The driver nodded and grinned, and she waved him off.

Ground lights lined the wood stairs from the dock to Ethan’s house built on top of the cliff. The height dizzied her as she trudged up. The cool ocean breeze chilled her through the sheer scarf that she’d wrapped around her shoulders.

Ethan would pay first, and then she would tell him where she’d hidden the files. When she went out of her way to help someone, to give them information that would put them on top of the world, and they treated her like dog shit on their shoe? No way would she tolerate such disrespect.

The man had to be half-crazy to live like a hermit in the middle of the Caribbean. All because he’d lost in a business deal? Coming here to lick his wounds and feel sorry for himself? He should be thrilled that she had proof he’d been cheated. Instead, he’d shunned her.

If someone had told Diana ten years ago that she’d fallen head over heels for a gold-digging con artist, she would have been grateful. Sad, angry, sure—who wouldn’t be? But she would never have lost everything over it. Ethan Valentine should have been thanking her for the information that she had been willing to give to him practically for free yesterday.

Now the jerk would pay top dollar.

Diana stopped to catch her breath when she reached the top of the stairs. The view was breathtaking—the sun sinking into the ocean to her right, and the distant lights of St. John to her left. Almost as if on cue with the falling sun, several soft white LED lights flickered on, showcasing the house and garden, but darkening the jungle beyond.

Though the house was lit, she couldn’t see through the privacy screens. She adjusted the oversized bag on her shoulder, then approached the frosted glass door and rang the bell twice. The chime sounded like a bird call. When no one immediately came, she rang again. And again. Nothing. She tried the door; locked.

Frustrated and angry after her crappy wasted day on St. John, she walked around the deck. The downstairs was almost completely enclosed by glass doors. She was looking for a way inside when a voice, heavy with an accent that sounded not quite Mexican, said, “Are you looking for something?”

Diana stumbled and knocked over a chair. “Who are you?” she demanded.

Squinting, she barely made out an old man reclining on a chaise lounge on the far corner of the deck. He had brown skin and a white beard so long and thick she could barely see his face. She’d seen him at the resort, an annoying busybody. What was he doing at Ethan’s house? How long had he been watching her?

“¿Quién crees que soy? ¿No has sentido curiosidad?”

She didn’t understand Spanish.

“No one is home,” the old man said, in English this time. “Do you need help finding your way back to the resort?”

“This is Ethan Valentine’s house,” Diana said. “He said he would be here.”

“He did? Odd.”

Who was this strange man?

“When will Ethan be back? It’s important.”

“Volverá cuando vuelva. Perhaps you’d like to wait?” the man said. “It might be a day or two before he’ll come by. Or a week. A month?” He lifted his hands in the air and shrugged.

Where the hell was Ethan? At the resort? Oh, that would be just her luck.

Irritated, she said, “I’ll find him myself.”

“Very well.” The man leaned back into the chair and closed his eyes.

With an infuriated sigh, Diana traipsed along the gravel road that led to the main lodge, wishing she’d asked the kid with the water taxi to wait.

She didn’t relish the two-mile hike to the resort, especially going over this mountain. Her flip-flops crunched on the gravel. She had wasted far too much time because of Ethan Valentine. He wanted to play games? Oh, she would play. And Diana was much better at it than he was. Her price had gone up tenfold.

The narrow road was poorly lit with sporadic ground lights. She didn’t have a flashlight and her cell phone was dead, so she stayed in the middle of the path, knowing that there were sheer drops all over the place. Diana had never considered herself squeamish or afraid of the dark, but she couldn’t even see the stars because of the thick canopy of bushy leaves hanging over the road.

Rodents ran from the trees right in front of her, then scurried down the cliff. She forced herself to breathe evenly. There were no dangerous animals on the island. The rustling leaves? Probably gophers or rabbits. She started talking out loud to herself, feeling silly, but hearing her own voice calmed her fears.

She stumbled and caught herself with a vine that was hanging from one of the trees, cursing Ethan. He thought a hundred thousand was too much? How about a million, Ethan? Pay up or she’d out him. Tell everyone what he had really been doing since disappearing from the United States. She’d start with the Wall Street Journal and Variety. Then maybe Forbes or The Economist. Hell, the New York Times might be interested in the scoop. See how Ethan liked the publicity. His ridiculous behavior certainly wouldn’t help Valentine Enterprises.

She stepped into a clearing on the top of the mountain. Packed, flat earth free of rocks and bushes and lined in bright lights. Ethan’s helipad, though there was no chopper here now. That jerk. That asshole. Chalk this up to one of the many lies he’d told.

Maybe she wouldn’t sell him the documents at all. Maybe she’d sell them back to the man she’d stolen them from, and Ethan could continue to wallow in misery.

Angry but wholly determined to make these miserable men pay for the havoc they had wreaked in her life and the lives of those she cared about, she strode across the helipad.

The trees swayed in a sudden gust of wind, and a chill ran up her spine. She rubbed her arms and cursed.

Then the lights went out.

She froze in the sudden black. The jungle closed around her, and the trees groaned as if they knew something she didn’t. Rustling to the left, then to the right. “Who’s there?” she called out. “Show yourself, you prick!”

She heard the flapping of wings first. Then dozens of bats flew right at her. She screamed and dropped to the ground, her arms over her head, as the flurry of flying rodents rushed by. She could feel the air shift and change around her as they dipped so low she thought for a moment that she was prey.

Then the flapping faded into the distance, and Diana found herself huddled on the ground, filthy and sore.

“For shit’s sake, Diana!” she said out loud. “Get up.”

Determined not to let creatures of the night terrify her again, she stood, and her eyes readjusted to the dark. The lights flickered on, then went off again, but on the far side of the clearing, she spotted a wooden sign. She made her way there and came upon a forked path with two arrows. The path to the left was marked The Falls, and the path to the right went to St. Claire.

Finally! She hurried to the right, down the path toward the resort. All she could think about was stripping off her disgusting clothes and inspecting the cuts and bruises she felt all over her body.

Ten minutes later, faint music filtered up through the trees, and she thought about all her potential paydays—the conniving con artist with the super-rich, clueless boyfriend? Diana had had her pegged a mile away. Don’t try to con a con, she thought with a smile. Or maybe she’d focus on the security guy with the gambling habit? The cheater? The thief?

So many to choose from . . . and then she got an idea, as if a light bulb went bright above her head. She slowed and reached into her bag to glance through her notes, then realized she’d left the book in her room this morning. No worries. It wasn’t like she’d forget the most brilliant idea she’d had all week. After all, she was the heroine of this story—as strong and beautiful and smart as the treasure hunter in the novel she was reading. She laughed out loud. That’s what she was, a treasure hunter! Only she hunted secrets, not gold.

Secrets that turned into gold. She loved the imagery.

She picked up her pace, eager to get back to her cottage. Her feet hurt, her head pounded, and all she wanted was a large glass of wine and a long soak in the hot tub with her book.

The path wound around as she descended. Diana avoided the main lodge because she didn’t want to see anyone, especially when she looked like something the cat dragged in. Security lighting brightened the private patio of her cottage. She searched for her card key and as her hand grasped it at the bottom of her bag, she heard a voice behind her.

“Diana.”

She jumped, whirled around. Fear bubbled up in her chest until she saw who it was. Annoyed and tired, she said, “What do you want?”

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

“We’ll talk tomorrow. I’m beat.”

She turned her back on her uninvited guest and started to insert her card key, but before she could open the door, she was grabbed from behind.

“Wha—” She tried to speak, but her words were cut off. Her scarf tightened around her neck. She couldn’t talk. Then she couldn’t breathe.

Her vision blurred. Grabbing at the scarf, she scratched her neck. Her knees grew weak. Her vision faded.
Scream!

No sound escaped her throat. She heard nothing except for her own pounding heart, fear wrapping itself around her like a vise.
Then, darkness.

Excerpted from BEACH READS AND DEADLY DEEDS by Allison Brennan. Copyright © 2025 by Assemble Media. Published by MIRA, an imprint of HarperCollins.

About the Author:

ALLISON BRENNAN is the New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling and award-winning author of over forty novels. She lives in Arizona with her husband, five kids and assorted pets.

SOCIAL LINKS:
Author website: https://allisonbrennan.com/ 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AllisonBrennan 
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Allison_Brennan 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/abwrites/ 
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/52527.Allison_Brennan

A- #BookReview: Love You a Latke by Amanda Elliot

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Love You a Latke by Amanda ElliotLove You a Latke by Amanda Elliot
Format: eARC
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, Hanukkah romance, holiday romance, romantic comedy
Pages: 368
Published by Berkley on October 8, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Love comes home for the challah-days in this sparkling romance.
Snow is falling, holiday lights are twinkling, and Abby Cohen is pissed. For one thing, her most annoying customer, Seth, has been coming into her café every morning with his sunshiny attitude, determined to break down her carefully constructed emotional walls. And, as the only Jew on the tourism board of her Vermont town, Abby's been charged with planning their fledgling Hanukkah festival. Unfortunately, the local vendors don’t understand that the story of Hanukkah cannot be told with light-up plastic figures from the Nativity scene, even if the Three Wise Men wear yarmulkes.
Desperate for support, Abby puts out a call for help online and discovers she was wrong about being the only Jew within a hundred miles. There's one Seth.
As it turns out, Seth’s parents have been badgering him to bring a Nice Jewish Girlfriend home to New York City for Hanukkah, and if Abby can survive his incessant, irritatingly handsome smiles, he’ll introduce her to all the vendors she needs to make the festival a success. But over latkes, doughnuts, and winter adventures in Manhattan, Abby begins to realize that her fake boyfriend and his family might just be igniting a flame in her own guarded heart.

My Review:

It may be “beginning to look a lot like Christmas” – but it’s beginning to look a lot like Hanukkah, too. Particularly this year, as Hanukkah begins on the evening of December 25, 2024 – yes, that’s Christmas Day – and ends at sunset on Thursday January 2, 2025.

Hanukkah is not “late” this year – or in any other year. It’s EXACTLY when it’s supposed to be, the 25th day of the month of Kislev according to the Hebrew calendar – which is a LUNAR calendar based on the phases of the moon with a bit of a fudge factor to keep the months in line with the seasons of the solar year. The secular calendar, otherwise known as the Gregorian calendar, is a SOLAR calendar, based on the Earth’s orbit around the sun – with its own bit of fudge factor (leap years with leap days) to keep months lined up with the seasons. They aren’t the same.

And this is just the kind of thing that Abby Cohen finds herself attempting to explain – a LOT – as the only Jewish small business owner in her tiny town in Vermont. The one who has been voluntold that she’ll be planning a Hanukkah Festival/Market in less than a month, in the hopes of helping the town to stand out a little in the midst of the more ‘traditional’ Holiday Markets – meaning Christmas – in the neighboring towns. Even though the planned date for the ‘Hanukkah Festival’ is going to miss the actual holiday by more than a bit.

Abby’s coffee/pastry/lunch place isn’t doing well, financially – and neither are any of the other shops on the town’s Main Street. They ALL need a boost. The idea for the Hanukkah Festival isn’t bad – it’s just that the head of the town’s business association is a real steamroller who really wants a traditional holiday market but recognizes the market – ahem, so to speak – is saturated.

And who both doesn’t want to do all the work involved in any festival AND is most likely planning on using Abby as a scapegoat when people complain – either that the festival is too Jewish – or much more likely considering Lorna’s plans for the Festival – not nearly Jewish enough.

A problem that Abby is already having plenty of trouble with herself. She’s disconnected herself from the Jewish community in general – and from her parents in particular – for reasons that are far from apparent as the story begins.

But it’s clear she’s running away from something – or someone, or her own feelings about one or the other – and this little town in Vermont is far enough from her native New York City to be an escape from whatever trouble she left behind. Even if she brought the trauma of it with her.

Which is where her best and possibly least favorite customer comes in – and helps her out. Seth’s not a bad or troublesome customer in any single way. It’s just that he’s an effusive, cheerful, morning person – annoying so – and Abby is neither. He seems a bit of a pollyanna, always seeing the brighter side of everything – while Abby sees all the glasses, and cups, and plates, as half full AT BEST.

A best she is never, NEVER at first thing in the morning. (As a fellow non-morning person, I feel for her. Seriously. Morning people are TERRIBLE and need to stay far, far away – and be quiet about it – until after serious applications of caffeine.)

But Seth turns out to be the only other Jewish person in town. And he has a brilliant idea. A way they can help each other. Abby needs to go to New York City – in spite of just how much the very thought of running into anyone from her past gives her the heebie-jeebies – to find vendors willing to come for the festival.

And Seth needs to bring a nice Jewish girl home to his parents for Hanukkah in just a few short days. If Abby is willing to fake a relationship for the eight days of Hanukkah, Seth will help her make all the connections she needs to make the festival a success.

What could go wrong? Everything. What could go right? EVERYTHING!

Escape Rating A-: This is the second book in my personal participation in the 2024 Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon. If you are playing along with my Holiday Bingo Challenge, Love You a Latke checks off the box for either “Other Winter Romance” or “Seasonal but not Xmas” as well as “Snow on the Cover” but you’ll have to pick just one. I was specifically looking for a holiday romance centered around Hanukkah instead of Christmas because there just aren’t as many of those as I’d like to see.

Like Abby in the story, I often get just a bit annoyed that saying “holiday” this time of year is simply a coded way of saying “Christmas” that doesn’t acknowledge any of the MANY other holidays that are celebrated this time of year.

And a part of this story is Abby pushing back against that nearly overwhelming tide. The organizer wants to have her cake and eat it too, a “Holiday” Festival that’s labeled as Hanukkah so it stands out but is really Christmas after all. I was a bit astonished that Abby never thinks that Lorna isn’t getting kickbacks or trading favors with all of the ‘friends’ she expects Abby to hire to work on the festival she doesn’t want to plan and carry out herself.

But maybe I have a more suspicious nature than Abby does.

I’ll get down off my soapbox now – or at least I’ll try. Because the heart of this story is, of course, the will they/won’t they/can they/should they fake romance between Seth and Abby. Fake relationship romances are always so much fun because of the tension between what the couple is pretending to be versus what they think they really are and how easy the fake becomes real.

And that oh-so-very-much worked between Abby and Seth. Because his mother, as much as she is meddling, is actually right. Abby and Seth belong together because they make each other better people through challenging each other to be their best and most honest selves.

But the soul of the story is Abby’s internal conflict – and did I ever feel for her in that. She grew up in a close-knit Jewish community in New York City – a community that she loved BUT that she couldn’t really trust because her parents were lying, gaslighting, abusive assholes, and they poisoned everyone against her to make themselves look like perfect parents.

So she’s lost touch with her roots because it felt like the only way to excise the cancer in her soul. She misses being a part of the community so much, of being in on the jokes and sharing the history and all of what makes it a comfort to be among one’s own people no matter how that group is defined.

And she’s afraid of it at the same time because her parents have poisoned it for her and she fears – not unreasonably – that if she trusts anyone with her true self, with her fears and weaknesses and hopes and dreams – that they will either weaponize her feelings against her or betray her to her parents and their clique – or both. Letting Seth in AT ALL, even just as a friend, is a HUGE leap for her – and it’s so understandable that she very nearly doesn’t make it.

I felt SO MUCH for Abby’s journey. Both her disconnect and her need and desire to reconnect. But I kept waiting for her confrontation with her parents. She needed it and so did I as the reader. It felt like she couldn’t really have a happy ever after until at least some of that boil got lanced – no matter how painful THAT operation might be.

But I’m not sure it did. And I’m caught on the horns of a dilemma about that because the way it went felt more real. Not satisfying, because I was hoping for a big blowup and a huge catharsis – and that’s not how life works. Which is honestly a pity, but that’s the way things go.

I think the question for readers – and it’s the one I’m still puzzling over – is whether the way it does go is enough for Abby to start healing. In the end, I think so. I hope so. But I’d still love to have seen some just desserts get served.

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
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.