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Review: Gouda Friends by Cathy Yardley

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: Gouda Friends by Cathy YardleyGouda Friends (Ponto Beach Reunion #2) by Cathy Yardley
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, relationship fiction, romantic comedy
Series: Ponto Beach Reunion #2
Pages: 304
Published by Montlake on March 22, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Two high school BFFs reunite and endeavor to fix each other’s lives in this geeky romance from the author of Love, Comment, Subscribe.
Tam Doan dumped her boyfriend after he threw away her gourmet cheese. Sure, it’s a little more complicated than that, but the point is, he had it coming. Newly single and unemployed, Tam calls up her best friend from high school and utters the emergency code word—goldfish. Next thing she knows, she’s on a plane back home.
Josh O’Malley was a troubled, unconfident teenager. Now he’s the successful owner of a multimillion-dollar ghost kitchen. Tam, his high school BFF and fellow member of the Nerd Herd friend group, was instrumental in building his self-esteem. When she calls him out of the blue, he jumps at the chance to return the favor.
Josh and Tam immediately get to work fixing her life—but again, it’s complicated. Their close friendship was always a lifeline between them; a blooming romance might confuse things. Still, at least one thing is for certain: their chemistry is un-brie-lievable.

My Review:

The question isn’t “Who Moved My Cheese?” when Tam Doan trudges into the apartment she’s been sharing with her boyfriend for the past six years after a “terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day” with a suitcase she never got to use for a business trip she got to arrange but not take with a company that has burned out her last nerve.

She expects to find her extra-special treat, her saved for emergencies gouda cheese shipped to New York City from her favorite premium cheese maker in Seattle in the back of the refrigerator. She does not expect to find her boyfriend of six years sleeping with his ex in their bed.

Howsomever, she finds the douchecanoe in the bed and no cheese in the fridge. And it’s the last of all the damn straws and her give-a-fuck is completely broken. She’s too tired, hangry AND pissed to notice whether her heart is broken as well.

All she’s certain of is that she’s outta there – for good. And that she feels free. Also broke, lonely and not sure where she’s going to spend the night because her ex has isolated her from all of her friends and she rightfully doesn’t trust their mutual friends – meaning his – as far as she can throw them. Or him.

So she calls her ride or die bestie from childhood, high school AND college, the one person who not merely promised to always be there for her but who has always delivered. She calls Josh O’Malley back home in Ponto Beach California (near San Diego) and uses their codeword for “Need help NOW!” And Josh delivers, as he always has and always will.

In this case a plane ticket from NYC to San Diego. She has the weekend off, he has a place she can stay. Along with 48 hours to help her figure out who moved her cheese in the metaphorical sense, help her figure out what her cheese actually IS these days, and give her the space and tools she needs to find it and get it back.

Just like she did for him when he sent the code five years ago. It’s not so much that he’s paying it back or forward, because their friendship is much deeper than that. It’s that he’s always been there for her, she’s always been there for him, and that’s the way it’s always going to be.

Even if part of the cheese that both of them still need to find is whether they can navigate their way into the relationship that everyone they grew up with has thought they had all along.

Escape Rating A: This friends into lovers with just a slight touch of fauxmance turned unexpected romance was a delight – and the inevitable cheesy lines and even cheesier jokes just added to the fun!

As funny as it is that Tam leaves her douchecanoe ex more over the cheese than the cheating, it’s not really about the cheese. Well, as it turns out, it kind of is about the cheese. In all the best ways all along the way of this delightful romance.

First, it’s about his lack of respect for Tam’s stuff, which is really just a symptom of his lack of respect for Tam’s whole entire self. It just takes the cheese to make her finally see it. Or finally admit it to herself. The relationship has been toxic all along, while Tam has made excuse after self-effacing, self-sabotaging excuse rather than admit that everything about her life in New York was a poor choice she backed into out of fear of failure.

Taking that impulsive, life-saving trip back to Ponto Beach is Tam’s chance at making a fresh start. All she has to do is find a new job and a place to live while ignoring her ex’s attempts to drag her back into his mess, along with the voices of her family telling her that she has to take any job in order to be safe and secure if never as successful as she should be. No pressure!

But what Tam NEEDS is to figure out what she really wants. It’s exactly what she did for Josh five years ago, when Josh hit rock bottom and she helped him find his own bliss. Now it’s his turn to help her – and he’s all in for it.

All they both have to do is find a way to preserve their life-saving and soul-deep friendship while moving it to the next level. A possibility that scares both of them more than half to death.

I picked up Gouda Friends because I loved the author’s Fandom Hearts series (start with Level Up and be prepared for a sweet, funny, geeky blast!). Gouda Friends feels like it takes everything I loved about that series and well, leveled it up. Josh and Tam – and their entire Nerd Herd – are geeky and nerdy in all the best ways, but now they are adults doing their best at adulting and still relying on the friends who have seen them through EVERYTHING in their lives.

One of the things I loved about this romance is just how huge a role friends and friendships play in their HEA. This is a romance with a GINORMOUS side of relationship fiction and the combination was just wonderful. It’s also terrific that as much as I loved the Nerd Herd, it’s not necessary to have read the first book in the series (Love, Comment, Subscribe) in order to get right into Gouda Friends. But now that I have read this one, I definitely want to read that. And the next book in this series, Ex-Appeal, hopefully later this year. There are plenty of Nerds in that Herd who still need to find their HEAs and I’m definitely here for it!

Review: Game of Hearts by Cathy Yardley

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
Review: Game of Hearts by Cathy YardleyGame of Hearts (Fandom Hearts #3) by Cathy Yardley
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, romantic comedy
Series: Fandom Hearts #3
Pages: 236
Published by Cathy Yardley on January 30, 2018
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Kyla Summers has been offered the opportunity of a lifetime to get her cosplay business off the ground, and only one thing stands in her way. She needs someone to take over the auto shop, and there’s only one person she can think of to call…

Jericho Salomon hasn’t been back in his home town since he joined a biker gang and rode off nine years ago. When his best friend’s kid sister calls begging for help, he knows that he owes the family a debt and he intends to pay. This is easier said than done once he finds that the kid is all grown up…

She needs a pair of skillful hands. He needs to keep his hands off. When sparks begin to fly, can they keep things strictly business, or will their hearts get hopelessly tangled? No more games, it’s time to play for keeps.

My Review:

In the first two books in this series, Level Up and One True Pairing, the fandom in the heroine’s heart was pretty much front and center in their lives. But Kyla Summers’ love of cosplay reads as more like an afterthought in hers – because that’s the way that Kyla treats it.

Or rather, that’s how she lets other people, particularly her brother, guilt her into treating it.

Then again, Kyla lets her selfish and self-centered brother Billy guilt her into pulling all of her weight and most of his in the operation of the family auto repair business that they inherited from their parents.

Not that their parents are dead – it’s not that kind of inheritance. But their parents are off RV’ing on their earned and deserved retirement, leaving both the business and the operation of it to Kyla and Billy.

The problem is that Kyla is the one doing the lion’s share of the work. Not that Billy and Kyla aren’t both excellent mechanics. But Kyla has to be both mechanic and business manager, while Billy is the one who takes vacations while telling Kyla that whenever she wants to take a couple of days its never a good time.

And yes, there’s a problem there in that Billy TAKES vacation while Kyla ASKS for vacation – and gets shot down every single damn time.

Obviously, I don’t like Billy much and nothing that happens in the story makes me warm up to him at all. He’s not evil, but he’s self-absorbed and self-centered and it takes a mammoth amount of swallowing her justified and utterly righteous indignation for Kyla to finally call him on all his shit – of which there is a metric buttload.

When Billy comes back to town a day late after yet another vacation and with a broken arm, no less, Kyla is pretty much at her wit’s end. He can’t work on cars one handed, and the place needs two mechanics to keep up with the business they have and honestly need.

But Kyla was planning on taking every spare minute she could to work on costumes ahead of a Con that’s only a month away. There’s a costume contest, and if she wins it’s $10,000 and publicity for her dream costuming business AND an in with a big costume and geekwear company like Her Universe, but not actually them, of course.

With Billy’s broken arm, along with his unwillingness to learn any of the business side of the garage, Kyla knows it will take her every waking minute – along with any minute she might collapse from exhaustion – to keep the business afloat.

Like always, Billy minimizes and dismisses her cosplay. And pretty much everything else that Kyla wants, needs, or says. So, after a night of drinking and crying on the shoulders of her besties, the sisters who run the bookstore and collectibles shop that serves as an anchor for this entire series, Kyla drunk calls her teenage crush, Jericho Salomon.

Not because it’s a drunk booty call or even just a maudlin, drunk call to an ex-lover, because they never were that, but because Jericho spent his growing up years right beside Kyla and Billy in the Summers’ auto repair shop, and learned how to fix engines right beside them.

With Billy out of commission, Kyla needs another ace mechanic to keep up with the garage and maybe let her carve out enough time to finish the costumes she needs for the contest.

When Jericho comes back to Snoqualmie to help her out, she gets a whole lot more than just a great mechanic, and even more than a man who is willing to work on Kyla’s personal engine until it’s humming a very happy tune indeed.

As much as Jericho and Kyla enjoy each other’s company, both in bed and out, and as much as he wants to support her, not just with the repair shop but with everything in her life, he has too many bad memories in Snoqualmie and too many commitments outside it to ever plan on staying.

And Kyla is much too used to having no one to rely on to trust that he’ll ever come back once he’s gone.

Escape Rating B: I read the second book in this series, One True Pairing, a few years back and absolutely adored it, so I was all in to go back and read Level Up a few weeks ago when it popped up for a tour, and I’m back in Snoqualmie for Game of Hearts.

The title of which, I just realized this minute, is a play on Game of Thrones. Not that there is a Red Wedding or anything remotely like one, but rather that the signature costumes that Kyla works on for that contest are based on GoT.

As I said, I loved One True Pairing, and really liked Level Up. But I had some seriously mixed feelings about Game of Hearts for at least half of the book. Because I wanted to rant and rave about the patriarchy that had conditioned Kyla to believe that her wants and needs always had to take second place to Billy’s.

Not that Kyla isn’t a grown-ass woman who needs to take control of her own life and put herself first because no one else is going to, but I was watching her internal dialog and desperation and wanted to shake her until some backbone filtered in – which it finally did and hallelujah for that.

Let’s just say I REALLY didn’t like Billy because he just never gets hit by a big enough clue-by-four – and not that both Kyla and Jericho didn’t try. Billy’s sense of entitlement was pretty epic.

So this was a really hard read for me until Kyla started to use her own voice and take charge of her own life and stand up for her own self when it came to her brother.

Once Jericho enters the picture the story changed for me, a whole lot and very much for the better. Because Jericho believes in Kyla and does his level best to enable her to fulfill her dreams. That he also falls in love with her and vice versa was just delicious icing on what suddenly became a rather tasty cake, because his belief and real support was the most important thing.

When he does fall down and does disappoint her and doesn’t fulfill all of his promises – which becomes the central dramatic tension in the story, he still never minimizes her dreams or her desires. Which doesn’t mean he doesn’t screw up and screw things up, but it happens because he has a lot of his own crap to deal with and doesn’t handle it well at times because he’s human like the rest of us and not ever because he thinks she’s less than.

So, as much as my teeth ground on this one in the beginning, I was definitely cheering for Kyla and Jericho by the end. So now that I’m three books in, I’m hoping that the rest of this series is going to turn up on tour in the months ahead. It feels a bit like someone is capitalizing on the overwhelming success and utter wonderfulness of Olivia Dade’s Spoiler Alert, and I’m just fine with that if it means more books like the Fandom Hearts series get more attention.

Meanwhile, I’ll be looking forward to the next book in THIS series, What Happens at Con the next time my own fannish heart needs a bit of a tune-up.

 

Review: Level Up by Cathy Yardley

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: Level Up by Cathy YardleyLevel Up (Fandom Hearts, #1) by Cathy Yardley
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, romantic comedy
Series: Fandom Hearts #1
Pages: 154
Published by St. Martin's Press on April 11, 2017
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Geeky introvert Tessa Rodriguez will do whatever it takes to get promoted to video game engineer– including create a fandom-based video game in just three weeks. The only problem is, she can't do it alone. Now, she needs to strong-arm, cajole, and otherwise socialize with her video game coworkers, especially her roommate, Adam, who’s always been strictly business with her. The more they work together, though, the closer they get…
Adam London has always thought of his roomie Tessa as “one of the guys” until he agreed to help her with this crazy project. Now, he’s thinking of her all the time… and certainly as something more than just a roommate! But his last girlfriend broke up with him to follow her ambitions, and he knows that Tessa is obsessed with getting ahead in the video game world.
Going from friends to something more is one hell of a challenge. Can Tessa and Adam level up their relationship to love?

My Review:

I reviewed the second book in the Fandom Hearts series, One True Pairing, several years ago for Library Journal. I loved it so much that I gave it a Starred Review. While that review may be behind a paywall, a variation of it is here on Goodreads.

I also enjoyed it so much that I bought the first book in the series, Level Up, certain that I would get a round tuit eventually. When the notification for this tour popped up I decided that eventually was finally here.

And I have to say that Level Up was just as much geeky fun as One True Pairing.

The title of Level Up is a bit of a pun. Both Tessa and Adam work for the game design company MPG, whose name is also a pun but stands for Mysterious Pickles Games – not that anyone really calls the place that.

And they’re roommates. Adam owns the house, Tessa rents a room and shares the public spaces. They’re friend-ly rather than friends, as Tessa is very much of an introvert while Adam has a whole coterie of male friends that he works with and spends time gaming with outside of work.

The thing is that both Tessa and Adam need to do some leveling up in their lives and neither of them are quite ready to acknowledge it. Both are a year out of long-term relationships that went badly, and that’s a lot of it.

But Tessa in particular is in more than a bit of a “pickle” of her very own. She’s an excellent coder, she has serious skills in coding and design, but she’s a woman trying to break into a profession, a company and a gang that is an entirely male preserve.

She knows that she’s ready to level up her career and move from being merely the audio coder to a member of the engineering team. She’s been keeping her nose to the grindstone nearly 24/7 in the hopes that her talents will be recognized.

And it just doesn’t work that way. It should, but it doesn’t.

If Tessa wants to be recognized, she needs to put herself into a position where she can be known – at least a little bit. She needs to spend some time with her colleagues and co-workers and not holed up in her cubicle or her room.

Stepping outside of her comfort zone – and her walls – brings her the friendship of the geeky women who operate the geeky bookstore around the corner from the house. Tessa finds friendship and sisterhood with a group of women who are every bit as nerdy and geeky as she is herself. She belongs.

And she can help them as much as they can help her.

They need to win a fandom contest to say the bookstore. Tessa needs a gaming project that she can spearhead to bring herself the right kind of attention at MPG. And Adam needs to get over his high-maintenance ex by getting himself a girlfriend.

Those things shouldn’t quite go together. But they do. And it’s awesome, geeky romantic fun every level along the way.

Escape Rating A-: There is just so much to love in the Fandom Hearts series, especially for anyone who is a bit of a geek themselves. The portrait of life at a game developer in Level Up, and the way that One True Pairing speaks to the heart of “shipping” are just so much fun.

This story succeeds on multiple levels – and they’re all a lot of fun.

The romance here is a geeky version of friends to lovers. Tessa and Adam are platonic roommates. They’ve worked together for a while and shared a house for a year. They’ve had a chance to get to know each other and they’re friend-ly without being close friends. It also seems like their bad breakups have insulated them from each other, keeping them from seeing each other as possible romantic partners.

There are, after all, plenty of professional pitfalls for Tessa if she gets romantically involved with a co-worker or even dresses like anything other than “one of the guys”. She’s in an awkward spot. And it’s a very real kind of awkward. Software development companies of all types are known to be sausage-fests. All guys, all the time, to the point where measuring whose is biggest is practically a daily event.

That the team lead of this particular development group is a known asshole to everyone but especially to women makes this scenario feel especially true to life. Tessa still wants in, but knows that she’ll have to prove herself every single day and pay for it with her career if she ever falls a bit short – even if that shortfall is something that a man would be forgiven for instantly.

So Tessa’s spearheading of this project for her new friends is ballsy. Necessary for her career. And a tightrope walk every minute. And we feel for her.

The romance is glittery icing on top of Tessa’s hard-working and hard-won cake. Adam has to both get over his ex and see her for the user that she really is. And that he and Tessa are good for each other because they already like each other for who they really are and not anyone they need to pretend to be.

And it’s lovely that they figure that out while snowbound – even if that particular part of the scenario felt a bit too close to real life this month!

For those of us who are geeky girls, Fandom Hearts is a series that demonstrates that we can be just exactly who we are and still meet cute and find romance without compromising on our love of all things nerdy.

BTW if the plot of One True Pairing reminds readers a bit of last year’s marvelous Spoiler Alert, just remember that One True Pairing was originally published in 2017. So if you like one you’ll love the other and definitely vice-versa. After all, we’ve all shipped the story of a romance between one of the characters we love – or the actor who plays them – and a real-life person more than a few times in our fannish lives, haven’t we?

Review: The Marriage Game by Sara Desai

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: The Marriage Game by Sara DesaiThe Marriage Game by Sara Desai
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Chick Lit, contemporary romance, women's fiction
Pages: 352
Published by Berkley on June 9, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

A high stakes wager pits an aspiring entrepreneur against a ruthless CEO in this sexy romantic comedy.

After her life falls apart, recruitment consultant Layla Patel returns home to her family in San Francisco. But in the eyes of her father, who runs a Michelin starred restaurant, she can do no wrong. He would do anything to see her smile again. With the best intentions in mind, he offers her the office upstairs to start her new business and creates a profile on an online dating site to find her a man. She doesn’t know he’s arranged a series of blind dates until the first one comes knocking on her door…

As CEO of a corporate downsizing company Sam Mehta is more used to conflict than calm. In search of a quiet new office, he finds the perfect space above a cozy Indian restaurant that smells like home. But when communication goes awry, he's forced to share his space with the owner's beautiful yet infuriating daughter Layla, her crazy family, and a parade of hopeful suitors, all of whom threaten to disrupt his carefully ordered life.

As they face off in close quarters, the sarcasm and sparks fly. But when the battle for the office becomes a battle of the heart, Sam and Layla have to decide if this is love or just a game.

My Review:

To kick this off, just let me say that if you like Sonali Dev and Nisha Sharma you’re going to love Sara Desai, and very much vice versa – all the way around.

I had The Marriage Game in the virtually towering TBR pile but managed to lose track of having signed up for this blog tour. The reminder came just in time and I am SO GLAD it did.

Because this was lovely and awesome with just the right amount of fluff overlaying just the best amount of serious to make this both a terrific summer read and an absolutely wonderful book for getting my reading mojo back and taking me away from all the crap going on in the world.

Mental breaks are good for the soul.

And that’s kind of where this story begins, because Layla Patel definitely comes home to her parents’ and their Michelin-starred restaurant in need of some family TLC, a mental break from the mess she left behind in New York City, and a bit more than her vague plans to open her own recruiting agency.

Then it all goes pear-shaped, in some ways even more so than the events that led to her rather abrupt departure from New York City.

Her father has a heart-attack. Her parents’ restaurant is in financial trouble. And the office that her father planned to let her occupy rent-free to get her business started is already occupied – by the most uptight, order-driven, stick-up-his-ass but gorgeous man that Layla has ever met.

Not that Sam Mehta isn’t having a similar set of thoughts about Layla. She is chaos, she’s a trouble-magnet, she’s free-thinking and free-wheeling, she’s disorganized and unprofessional and utterly captivating.

They are complete opposites. And they get along like kerosene and matches – absolutely combustible every two-steps-forward and one-step-back of the way.

Escape Rating A: This marvelous piece of contemporary romance is one of those stories that absolutely brims with witty, snarky and frequently panty-melting banter. Well, at least Layla’s panties certainly end up melted on more than one occasion – even the gray granny panties. It’s an opposites-attract/frenemies-to-lovers romance that really pulls out all of the stops on both of those well-loved tropes.

It’s also a story NOT to read if you’re hungry. Layla’s family owns a restaurant, her office is above said restaurant, the food is frequently described in loving detail and it all sounds absolutely delicious. To the point where I’m pretty sure I’ve already decided on exactly where we’re getting takeout from this weekend. But I digress. Slightly. But I also repeat: DO NOT READ WHEN HUNGRY!

There’s also more than a touch of relationship fiction mixed into this romance, as Layla’s family is a big part of the story – as is Sam’s lack of relationship with his.

Although this one begins with Layla pretty much hitting rock bottom, her journey in this story is, while not easy, fairly straightforward. For her it’s about getting out of her own way, stepping out of her late brother’s very long shadow and determining what she wants out of life – then reaching out for it and settling for nothing less.

She’s Buttercup whether Sam is Westley or not, and she just needs to figure out how to save herself from the evil prince – even if that evil prince turns out to be Sam.

Sam actually has the much harder road. He has to forgive himself for something that wasn’t his fault but that he blamed himself for. He’s been running away from that guilt and that grief by telling himself that his current pursuit is vengeance. But he’s made himself a monster in order to catch the monster, and only he can make himself step back from the abyss before it’s too late.

Before he loses Layla.

There is just so much to love about The Marriage Game. Except Sam’s business partner Royce. He’s a real piece of work. But possibly redeemable if the author ever returns to this family. There are plenty more stories here, and I would love to read them all!

Review: Good Time Cowboy by Maisey Yates

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: Good Time Cowboy by Maisey YatesGood Time Cowboy (Gold Valley, #3) by Maisey Yates
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, western romance
Series: Gold Valley #3
Pages: 474
Published by Hqn on August 21, 2018
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

In Gold Valley, Oregon, forbidden desire just might turn into the love of a lifetime…

When Lindy Parker lost her cheating husband, she gained a vineyard. She’ll do anything for Grassroots Winery, including teaming up with the hottest devil she knows, rancher Wyatt Dodge. Wyatt is her ex’s friend and has an ego as big as the bulls he rides. But in spite of that, disciplined Lindy has always wanted him…

Lightning struck Wyatt Dodge the first time he saw Lindy Parker. But there were two problems with that: she was married to his friend, and Wyatt doesn’t do strings. But now Lindy is free, and the two of them can finally explore the heat that’s burned between them for so long. But can Lindy make this good time cowboy decide on forever?

My Review:

Maisey Yates is the cowgirl queen of the angsty western romance. What I love about her books is that the difficulties that get in the way of the happy ever afters between her characters always feel real and never contrived. There are no misunderstandammits, just interesting people with too much baggage who get in the way of their own happiness by being human but not by being stupid.

That’s been the story through the Gold Valley series and through the series it spun off from, Copper Ridge. The two small towns are neighbors in Oregon. Their fates are tied, and so are the people who live there. The individual books in each series do stand alone, but it is fun to read them all and get to know the entire gang.

The Gold Valley series has been featuring the Dodge family as they get their once-and-future destination ranch back into shape for a new generation of both Dodges and tourists. In this third book in the series, we finally get around to oldest brother Wyatt Dodge. I say finally because Wyatt is the prime mover and shaker behind this resurrection of the family ranch, so the story so far has circled around him even though he hasn’t been the featured player until now.

There’s angst in this romance on both sides of the equation. Wyatt is keeping a big secret from his sister and brothers. They are all (except local vet Bennett Dodge, see Untamed Cowboy) throwing not just their money but also their time, energy and hearts into getting Get Out of Dodge Ranch back into shape. They all think Wyatt owns the ranch, but he doesn’t. Their dad still owns the ranch, and if the ranch doesn’t succeed immediately after its grand re-opening, dad is going to sell it out from under all of them.

Wyatt is sure that dear old dad is punishing him for his long past sins, not that there weren’t plenty of them. But Wyatt is all in, he can’t resist a challenge and he isn’t willing to let his sister and his brothers down – no matter how willing he might be to tell their father to go to hell and not bother with the handcart.

Wyatt is so far in that he’s willing to partner with the one woman in town who has proven completely resistant to his charms. Lindy Parker is the one woman he has never managed to get out of his head, even if, or perhaps especially because, he’s never managed to get her into his bed.

Lindy, the current owner of Grassroots Winery, wants to make the winery a success to spite her ex-husband and ex-inlaws. She got the winery in her divorce from her cheating ex. As much as she doesn’t want to work with Wyatt – because he drives her crazy for reasons she can’t articulate even to herself, having the winery partner with the ranch makes good business sense even if it makes lousy personal sense.

Lindy’s been divorced for two years, which is just long enough for her to be able to start getting a much clearer picture in her own mind of the truth about not just her marriage but about her part of what went wrong. And about the twists and turns in her life that have brought her to the place she is now.

And that if she wants her own happy ever after, with or without any man in general or surprisingly Wyatt Dodge in particular, she needs to drop her own baggage, get her head out of her own ass and finally get out of her own way.

Even if Wyatt isn’t ready to get out of his.

Escape Rating B+: Unlike many of the previous books in this series (and Copper Ridge) this doesn’t feel like it really follows any of the familiar tropes. Wyatt and Lindy initially are far from friends. At the same time, they are not enemies, or even frenemies. While it becomes clear that they have both always been way more aware of each other than either of them was willing to let on, the relationship they actually have had doesn’t fit into any neat little boxes.

What it does remind me of is the French phrase that is usually translated as “love at first sight”. But love at first sight is not what they have. What happened to them at the very beginning, back when Lindy was still married to her cheating ex and Wyatt was still a champion bull rider on the rodeo circuit, feels more like the literal translation of that French phrase. Their first meeting was a “coup de foudre” or thunderbolt, that left scorched earth in its wake. And it’s the sudden intensity of that first meeting that neither of them has ever gotten past – no matter how much time they’ve both spent paddling that famous river, De Nial.

Their business partnership has forced Wyatt and Lindy into each other’s proximity on an uncomfortably frequent basis – and that original thunderbolt still has plenty of sparks left in it. There’s a big  problem, with sticking your finger in a light socket over and over – electricity hurts.

Both Wyatt and Lindy have become experts at keeping other people away from their true, core selves, and are very good and not letting themselves need other people, because both of their foundational experiences, although very different in their particulars, made them learn back when they were children that they had no one to rely on but themselves. Other people always let them down.

That’s a hard lesson for a child to learn, and it leaves scars that affect adult relationships. Wyatt feels like he has to shoulder the entire burden of their father’s demands alone, that he can’t let his siblings know their futures are riding on the grand opening.

Lindy feels like she can’t ever let her uber-calm, ultra professional ice princess ever falter, because she’s certain that people will judge her for upbringing and her choices. And while she’s right, they will judge, she needs to learn that it doesn’t have to matter. Not being her authentic self is her part of what broke her marriage, and her inability to be her real self keeps her from relationships, including one with her brother.

And both of them have things they need to forgive, both to forgive themselves, and to forgive others. Those are hard lessons to learn, and painful ones. But ultimately freeing.

Also totally real. And that’s what makes Maisey Yates’ angsty romances so terrific to read! Speaking of angst, the next book in the Gold Valley series is going to be chock-full of it. I can’t wait to read Grant Dodge’s story in A Tall, Dark Cowboy Christmas this fall.

 

Maisey Yates’ GOOD TIME COWBOY – Review & Excerpt Tour Schedule:

August 22nd

Always a happy ever after – Review

I Love HEA Romance Book Blog – Review

Melena’s Reviews – Review & Excerpt

August 23rd

Inside the mind of an avid reader – Review

Moonlight Rendezvous – Review & Excerpt

Sascha Darlington’s Microcosm Explored – Review & Excerpt

We Do What We Want Book Reviews & More – Review & Excerpt

August 24th

Lover of Big Books Cannot Lie – Review & Excerpt

Southern Vixens Book Obsessions – Review

TBR Book Blog – Review & Excerpt

August 25th

Ginreads – Review

Meme Chanell Book Corner – Review & Excerpt

Smut Book Junkie Book Reviews – Review

August 26th

Jax’s Book Magic – Excerpt

Kari’s Book Reviews and Revelations – Review & Excerpt

Renee Entress’s Blog – Review & Excerpt

August 27th

All Things Dark & Dirty – Excerpt

Reading Reality – Review

Sweet Red Reads – Review & Excerpt

August 28th

Adventures in Writing – Excerpt

Devilishly Delicious Book Reviews – Excerpt

Literary Misfit – Review & Excerpt

OMGReads – Review & Excerpt

August 29th

Aaly and The Books – Review & Excerpt

Booknerdingout – Review

Jen’s Reading Obsession – Excerpt

Read more sleep less – Review & Excerpt

August 30th

books are love – Review & Excerpt

It’s All About the Romance – Excerpt

Naturally Nerdy Books – Excerpt

Tfaulcbookreviews – Excerpt

August 31st

Reading Between the Wines Book Club – Excerpt

Vivi’s Messy Kitchen – Review

What Is That Book About – Excerpt

What’s Beyond Forks? – Review & Excerpt

Review: Impostor’s Lure by Carla Neggers

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: Impostor’s Lure by Carla NeggersImpostor's Lure (Sharpe & Donovan #8) by Carla Neggers
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, romantic suspense
Series: Sharpe & Donovan #8
Pages: 320
Published by Mira Books on August 21, 2018
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Master of suspense and
New York Times
 bestselling author Carla Neggers delivers an exhilarating page-turner where the disappearance of a federal prosecutor launches the latest high-stakes case for FBI agents Emma Sharpe and Colin Donovan.Newlyweds Emma and Colin are suspicious when prosecutor Tamara McDermott is a no-show at a Boston dinner party. Matt Yankowski, head of HIT, Emma and Colin's small, elite Boston-based team, is a friend of Tamara's, and he needs them to find her.In London, a woman who was supposed to meet Emma's art-detective grandfather to talk about forgeries is discovered near death. Her husband, who stayed behind in Boston, has vanished. The couple's connection to Tamara adds to the puzzle.As the search for Tamara intensifies, a seemingly unrelated murder leads Emma, Colin and HIT deep into a maze of misdirection created by a clever, lethal criminal who stays one step ahead of them.As Emma draws on her expertise in art crimes and Colin on his experience as a deep-cover agent, the investigation takes a devastating turn that tests the strengths of their families and friendships as well as their FBI colleagues as never before.
Impostor's Lure
 is full of clever twists that will keep readers guessing right to the stunning conclusion!

My Review:

The Sharpe & Donovan series is somewhere in that borderland between romantic suspense and mystery. Sorta/kinda like a contemporary version of In Death, but in a different place on the romantic suspense/mystery divide than the futuristic series.

At the beginning, Sharpe & Donovan hewed a bit closer to romantic suspense side, as FBI Agents Emma Sharpe and Colin Donovan meet in the middle of an investigation near their hometowns on the coast of Maine. Colin is undercover, and Emma is in the middle of a case that is already much too personal.

Impostor’s Lure takes place a year (and 7 books) after that first meeting in Saint’s Gate. Emma and Colin are now married, and wondering just how long they will be able to continue working art crimes together before Colin gets tasked with yet another long-term undercover mission – his dangerous specialty. And now that their romance has reached its HEA, the story is more about the mystery and less about the romance. However, like many long-running mystery series, there is a “gang” of friends and family that surrounds Emma and Colin – and they have a big part to play in this particular story.

While they are worried about that medium-term problem, something happens much closer to home that puts them in the thick of a case that touches all of their friends and family both in Maine and Ireland.

On the other side of the pond, Emma’s grandfather Wendell, founder of the family art detective firm, discovers the comatose body of a woman who wanted to consult him about forgeries. The case looks like a drug overdose, but Wendell is shaken enough to worry both friends and family.

Over here, Emma and Colin as well as their boss Matt find themselves both shaken and alarmed when a friend who is also a federal prosecutor stands them up for dinner. While the woman could just have decided to start her long-overdue vacation a bit early, she’s also standing up her daughter on the young woman’s one-and-only 21st birthday.

This doesn’t seem right to anyone involved, especially once it turns out that Tamara might have been looking into some very alarming things that her daughter told her about her recent trip to Ireland – a trip that included both a murder and a developing friendship with the woman that Wendell found comatose.

Something is definitely not right. Actually lots of things aren’t right – on both sides of the Atlantic. As the bodies start piling up – and occasionally spilling over – it’s up to Emma and Colin to unravel the mystery and light the darkness at its center before it is too late.

Or at least before it’s more “too late” than it already is.

Escape Rating B: I finished this in one sitting. This is literally true as I was on a flight from California to Atlanta while I read it! This was a good, absorbing mystery to while away about half the flight.

This is definitely not the place to start this series. While, as with all the books in the series, the mystery is solved within this volume, an awful lot of the background revolves around the circle of friends and family that Emma and Colin are very much in the middle of. By the time this story ends, pretty much every one of their friends and most of their family have at least had a walk on part in the solution – and there’s a piece of that solution that only has resonance if you’ve at least read some of the previous books. I don’t think you need to have read them all to enjoy Impostor’s Lure, but at least the first one and one from the middle. Harbor Island and Liar’s Key are a couple of my favorites from the midpoint in the series.

The mystery in Impostor’s Lure is definitely a convoluted one. The perpetrator is certainly a sociopath, which makes that person both very organized and totally without scruples or conscience. They’ve been pulling off a lot of stuff for a very long time, and really only get caught because events have caught up with them and they are forced to act without their usual level of planning.

As a reader, I did not guess the perpetrator until very near the end – and then only because there were too many characters who simply could not be “it” because of their close relationship to Emma and/or Colin.

That being said, I really like the circle of friends and family that Emma and Colin have gathered around them/been gathered into. The group of is very interesting mix of family-of-birth and family-of-choice on both sides of the Atlantic and in both of their hearts. And just like any family, it has a few black sheep, and some members that one of them likes or tolerates more than the other. It’s also a hoot that one member of their family is a former art thief.

It’s always good to visit with this gang, even when some of the visit is bittersweet, as it is in Impostor’s Lure. I’ll be back.

 

Carla Neggers’ IMPOSTOR’S LURE – Review & Excerpt Tour Schedule:

August 20th

It’s All About the Romance – Excerpt

Nerdy Dirty and Flirty – Excerpt

Ripe For Reader – Excerpt

August 21st

Bobo’s Book Bank – Excerpt

Literary misfit – Excerpt

OMGReads – Excerpt

Sip Read Love – Excerpt

August 22nd

Bookstanista – Excerpt

Hearts & Scribbles – Excerpt

What Is That Book About – Excerpt

August 23rd

A Book Nerd, a Bookseller and a Bibliophile – Review & Excerpt

Reading Reality – Review

Words We Love By –Review & Excerpt

August 24th

Cinta Garcia de la Rosa – Excerpt

Wickedcoolflight – Review & Excerpt

August 25th

Bookishly Yours – Review & Excerpt

Catty Jane Book Lovers – Review & Excerpt

Reading Between the Wines Book Club – Excerpt

August 26th

Book Addict – Review & Excerpt

Novel Addiction – Excerpt

Tfaulcbookreviews – Review & Excerpt

August 27th

A Lovely Book Affair – Review

Cali Book Reviews – Review & Excerpt

TBR Book Blog – Excerpt

August 28th

Adventures in Writing – Excerpt

Lisa Book Blog – Excerpt

August 29th

BTH Reviews – Review & Excerpt

Evermore Books – Excerpt

Lynn’s Romance Enthusiasm – Excerpt

August 30th

All about reading – Review & Excerpt

Fire and Ice Book Reviews – Excerpt

GhostPepperBabes/ Pimpers’ Dungeon – Excerpt

August 31st

Becky on Books – Review & Excerpt

Cathy Reads Books – Review

Devilishly Delicious Book Reviews – Excerpt

September 1st

Books are love – Review & Excerpt

Brittany’s Book Blog – Excerpt

NightWolf Book Blog – Excerpt

September 2nd

Blushing babes are up all night – Review & Excerpt

Em Jay Reads – Review & Excerpt

Jax’s Book Magic – Excerpt

Spotlight + Excerpt: Good Time Cowboy by Maisey Yates

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | blog tours> Excerpts> Spotlight

 

From New York Times bestselling author Maisey Yates, comes GOOD TIME COWBOY—the third standalone novel in her Gold Valley Series!

GOOD TIME COWBOY is now available. Grab your copy today!

 

GOOD TIME COWBOY Synopsis:

In Gold Valley, Oregon, forbidden desire just might turn into the love of a lifetime…

When Lindy Parker lost her cheating husband, she gained a vineyard. She’ll do anything for Grassroots Winery, including teaming up with the hottest devil she knows, rancher Wyatt Dodge. Wyatt is her ex’s friend and has an ego as big as the bulls he rides. But in spite of that, disciplined Lindy has always wanted him…

Lightning struck Wyatt Dodge the first time he saw Lindy Parker. But there were two problems with that: she was married to his friend, and Wyatt doesn’t do strings. But now Lindy is free, and the two of them can finally explore the heat that’s burned between them for so long. But can Lindy make this good time cowboy decide on forever?

 

Grab your copy of GOOD TIME COWBOY here!

Amazon | Kindle | Barnes & Noble | Nook | B-A-M

Harlequin | Google Play | iBooks | Kobo

 

 

Add it to your Goodreads Now!

 

EXCERPT:

SHE WAS AS stupid as she was transparent. She didn’t care if Grant wanted to date again. She wasn’t interested in Grant like that at all. But she had to do something to…something. To diffuse that very obvious moment that had just happened between herself and Wyatt.

She didn’t like this. Not at all.

She didn’t like feeling like she didn’t have the upper hand on a social situation. Didn’t like feeling as if everything around her was so far beyond her she could never reach it.

That was her entire experience in the early days of dating Damien and being his wife. Feeling like she had just walked into the room in the middle of a conversation and had to spend every moment thereafter playing catch-up.

She hated that feeling. More than anything.

Well, that wasn’t true. Actually, she hated finding out that her husband had been having an affair for years and years even more. Although, it was a different side of the same coin. Being out of the loop. Being ignorant. Being small.

Somehow less than everyone that surrounded her.

Wyatt didn’t make her feel like she was less, but he made her feel something. And she didn’t like it.

She’d gotten her balance in a small sense when she had demanded that Laz put Wyatt’s drink on her tab.

But then, he had touched her.

He had touched her, and she hadn’t been able to disguise her response to it. She could see it in his eyes. That he thought he knew exactly what she felt. And even if it was true, even if he did, she was not going to let him have that.

She enjoyed this. That hesitation in his eyes. The tightening in his jaw. The fact that she had him on his back foot. Yeah, she liked that a lot better than feeling like she was on hers.

He tilted his head back. “Grant, huh?”

“He seems like a nice guy. Good-looking too.”

“Right.” His teeth were clenched so tight she’d be surprised if he didn’t chip one. Maybe that shouldn’t satisfy her. But it did.

“Just wondering if you have the inside track on that.” She tried to look both cool and interested at the same time.

He lifted a brow. “I expect you could ask him yourself.”

“Oh, I expect I could.” She kept her tone light but steady. She had a feeling it was that lightness that had him caught so off guard.

“Then why ask me?” He was trying to sound casual too. Unlike her, he was failing.

“Everyone could use a good wingman, Wyatt. If you wanted to be mine, I would hardly say no.” She smiled, and he didn’t.

“I’ll pass.”

She lifted her shoulder. “Suit yourself. But, I would have returned the favor.”

“Wingmen are for amateurs, honey,” he said. “I’ve never needed one yet.”

He walked away from her, heading back over to their shared corner of the saloon. She was captivated watching him. Even angry at him. Even with him angry at her.

Those broad shoulders, narrow waist. His ass in those jeans.

She didn’t know who she was when she looked at him. The things she noticed. What it made her want.

She stood for a moment and took a breath trying to get a hold of herself. It was only then that she realized her hands were shaking. Dammit.

She crossed the room, making her way back over to the table. “Why don’t you sit next to Grant?” Wyatt asked, giving her an evil smirk from his position in his chair.

And that made her suspect that he didn’t believe her at all. Asshole.

“Sure,” she said, easily, casually. She took a seat next to Grant. “We haven’t had a chance to talk much,” she said, turning to the other man.

Grant was looking at her, somewhat blandly, and she felt a small twinge of guilt. She wasn’t interested in him. She didn’t want him to think she was. Not when she wasn’t going to actually follow up.

That was a new low. Using a widowed man as a pawn in her control game.

But, his extreme and apparent lack of interest made her feel less guilty immediately.

Somehow, they stumbled through the rest of the evening making conversation. And she could feel Wyatt’s eyes on her the entire time. But she refused to look back at him.

 

 

 

About Maisey Yates:

New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author Maisey Yates lives in rural Oregon with her three children and her husband, whose chiseled jaw and arresting features continue to make her swoon. She feels the epic trek she takes several times a day from her office to her coffee maker is a true example of her pioneer spirit.

In 2009, at the age of twenty-three Maisey sold her first book. Since then it’s been a whirlwind of sexy alpha males and happily ever afters, and she wouldn’t have it any other way. Maisey divides her writing time between dark, passionate category romances set just about everywhere on earth and light sexy contemporary romances set practically in her back yard. She believes that she clearly has the best job in the world.

 

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

Review: The River House by Carla Neggers

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
Review: The River House by Carla NeggersThe River House by Carla Neggers
Formats available: paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook
Series: Swift River Valley #8
Pages: 352
Published by Mira Books on March 27th 2018
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

In this charming novel about the search for love, home and family, New York Times bestselling author Carla Neggers takes readers on a journey to an irresistible town they’ll want to return to over and over again

Felicity MacGregor loves organizing social events for others but her own personal life is a different story. After a brief but failed attempt at a career as a financial analyst, she returned to Knights Bridge where she enjoys running a thriving party-planning business.

Then Felicity’s life gets a shake-up when her childhood friend Gabriel Flanagan returns unexpectedly to their tiny hometown. Now a high-flying businessman, Gabe always vowed to get out of Knights Bridge, but he is back for the local entrepreneurial boot camp Felicity’s been hired to organize. Together again, they’ll finally have to face each other—and their complicated past.

Gabe and Felicity soon realize their reunion is stirring up long-buried emotions. While Gabe has big plans for his future, Felicity is discovering that hers doesn’t depend on fate—she must choose what’s right for her. But if they can find a bridge between their diverging paths, they may just discover that their enduring connection is what matters most.

My Review:

Knights Bridge Massachusetts is not just a nice place to visit, it also seems like a really nice place to live – except for those New England winters.

In this story, for both Felicity MacGregor and Gabe Flanagan, it is also home in the Robert Frost sense, the one about “home is the place that when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

Felicity went back about three years before the story begins, opened up her own events planning business, and has been finally getting her life on track after a decade of doing what she was expected to do instead of what she wanted to do. Where she failed, repeatedly and over and over again, as the financial analyst her family expected her to be, she’s independent and successful in the career she found by accident.

Gabe Flanagan, on the other hand, has been a successful entrepreneur from the day he dropped out of college, or so it seems. He’s just sold his latest venture for “gazillions” of dollars, as Felicity put it, and he’s at loose ends.

Just in time to come home to Knights Bridge to speak at his brother’s one-day boot camp for budding entrepreneurs.

And to see if he can finally mend fences with the woman who used to be his best friend, Felicity.

They grew up together. They’ve been friends since nursery school. And once, just before they went their separate ways for college – they were lovers. They remained besties even through their first jobs, his ups and down with various start-ups and all her downs as she struggled through one financial analyst job after another.

Their breakup came when Gabe’s very tough love shoved at Felicity’s need for comfort and a place to land. She was broke again, having been fired from yet another position, and couch-surfing at Gabe’s apartment. He was in the midst of what turned out to be his first big success. And in his very blunt and possibly tactless fashion, he told Felicity the bald truth that she had been avoiding for a decade – that whatever she was meant to be and do, it was clear that being a financial analyst made her utterly miserable to the point of failure, and that she needed to get her act together – at something else.

He was right. His delivery sucked, but he was right. And she was gone.

Now she’s living in Knights Bridge, the proud owner of the house that Gabe and his brother built on the site of their grandfather’s old campgrounds. The site where Felicity and Gabe’s friendship morphed into something more, for that one night. The place where Gabe was Felicity’s first lover.

They say you never forget your first. Felicity certainly can’t forget Gabe – he’s wrapped into all her memories of her childhood and adolescence in Knights Bridge. But when he comes back to town, the question is whether she ever got over him – and whether she ever wants to.

Escape Rating B: It feels like The River House is more of a women’s fiction story than a romance. While the relationship between Felicity and Gabe is front and center throughout the book, most of that story is about them rebuilding their solid and life-sustaining friendship. There is sexual tension under the surface, but for most of the story it feels like the focus is on whether they can be besties again, rather than either of them actively looking for more.

Not that more doesn’t eventually find them.

Because they were besties for over two decades, they have a lot of backstory together. And Gabe’s return to Knights Bridge brings up all the events since he left. That means there’s a lot of the past that gets uncovered and turned over. While longtime readers of the series may find the backstory repetitive, for those of us who have read few (one in my case) or none of the previous entries will probably see the backstory as a way of catching up to the cast of characters – which is fairly large and very interconnected.

I really liked the people of Knights Bridge and felt a great deal of empathy for both Felicity and Gabe. Like Gabe, I have also been accused, and rightly so, of being much too blunt. Like Felicity, my dad didn’t figure out what he wanted to do when he grew up until he was also about 30, and fell into the job that became his career with a similar lack of planning. I understood where they both were coming from.

This was the kind of story I happened to be looking for when I picked it up, and I fell right into it.

As much as I enjoyed the setting and the characters, there was one person in the mix whose involvement pushed the book down to a B, and that’s the intrusion of Nadia. She starts by trying to inveigle her way into the entrepreneur boot camp and never lets up until the very end. She comes off as “crazy stalker ex”, but she is not Gabe’s ex. Instead, she’s a former colleague and the ex of the douchebag who bought Gabe’s company for those gazillions of dollars and then left her without a job as well as a husband – not that he was any great loss.

But Nadia becomes a constant, niggling annoyance throughout the entire story. Her lies, her constant interference and her continued unwanted intrusions and overall shadowy presence cast a pall over a whole lot of the events. It feels as if she is being built up to be a villain – and then her plot line kind of fizzles. I’m not sure what she brought to the table and I wish she weren’t there at all. She’s a Chekhov’s gun that misfires with a whimper.

However, I really enjoyed the rest of the story and will happily look for an excuse to go back to Knights Bridge at some point, especially if I get to jonesing for something in the author’s romantic suspense series, Sharpe & Donovan.

 

THE RIVER HOUSE Review & Excerpt Tour Schedule:

March 19th

Nerdy Dirty and Flirty – Excerpt

Reading Keeps Me Sane – Excerpt

Reads All the Books – Excerpt

March 20th

Always a happy ever after – Excerpt

It’s All About the Romance – Excerpt

Ramblings From This Chick – Excerpt

March 21st

Devilishly Delicious Book Reviews – Excerpt

Nose Stuck in a Book – Excerpt

Novel Addiction – Excerpt

March 22nd

Hearts & Scribbles – Excerpt

LETSHAVEAKYA – Excerpt

Reading Between the Wines Book Club – Excerpt

What Is That Book About – Excerpt

March 23rd

Books n Wine – Excerpt

Cathy Reads Books – Review & Excerpt

Ficwishes – Excerpt

Reading Reality – Review

White Hot Reads – Review & Excerpt

March 24th

Nicole’s Book Musings – Excerpt

Shannon’s Book Blog – Review & Excerpt

Smut Book Junkie Book Reviews – Excerpt

Tfaulcbookreviews – Excerpt

March 25th

Book Magic – Under a spell with every page – Review & Excerpt

Evermore Books – Excerpt

Ripe For Reader – Excerpt

TBR Book Blog – Review & Excerpt

March 26th

A Literary Perusal – Review & Excerpt

Have Words Will Scribble – Review & Excerpt

Nice Ladies, Naughty Books – Excerpt

The Ghost Pepper Babes – Excerpt

March 27th

Book Nook Nuts – Excerpt

Kick Back & Review – Excerpt

Literary Misfit – Excerpt

The Bookish Sisters – Review & Excerpt

March 28th

JordansBookReviews – Excerpt

Read more sleep less – Excerpt

Read-Love-Blog – Review & Excerpt

Two Book Pushers – Excerpt

March 29th

Blushing babes are up all night – Review & Excerpt

Sip Read Love – Review

Thoughts of a Blonde – Excerpt

Words We Love By – Review & Excerpt

March 30th

Bobo’s Book Bank – Excerpt

Jax’s Book Magic – Excerpt

Kindle Friends Forever – Review & Excerpt

Scandalous Book Blog – Review & Excerpt

March 31st

Books are love – Review & Excerpt

G & T’s Indie Café – Excerpt

Inside The Mind of an Avid Reader – Review

The Fairest of All Book Reviews – Excerpt

Review: Smooth Talking Cowboy by Maisey Yates + Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways
Review: Smooth Talking Cowboy by Maisey Yates + GiveawaySmooth-Talking Cowboy (Gold Valley, #1) by Maisey Yates
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Series: Gold Valley #1
Pages: 384
Published by HQN Books on February 20th 2018
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Welcome to Gold Valley, Oregon, where a rough-and-tumble rancher and the girl next door are about to learn that opposites attract

Olivia Logan has a plan: win back her ex by making him see what he’s missing. But first she needs to find a man who’s willing to play along. With his laid-back cowboy charm and knack for getting under her skin, Luke Hollister is an unlikely hero—but he wants her help convincing her father to sell him land, which means he needs her as much as she needs him.

Luke likes his life—and his women—uncomplicated. So why does good girl Olivia heat his blood like no one else? She’s always been off-limits, but the more time they spend as Gold Valley’s hottest new “couple,” the more real it’s starting to feel. Luke was supposed to help her win back another man…not keep her in his arms. But now that he has her there, he’s not sure he’ll ever let go.

My Review:

It’s not so much that Luke Hollister is a particularly smooth talker – it’s more like Olivia Logan is particularly susceptible to his brand of cowboy charm – even if she can’t admit it, not even to herself.

But then, Olivia has a long and sad history of not admitting what’s important to her to herself or to anyone else. She has become so invested in being a “good girl” for so many sad and bad reasons that falling for Luke’s charm is the furthest thing from her mind.

Until after it happens, and she’s forced to realize, at least in the privacy of her own mind, that he’s just what she’s been waiting for all along – even when she was pining away for someone else entirely.

This author has a knack for getting her heroine’s into really angsty situations, and Olivia Logan is no exception, even if some of her angst, or at least the layers on top, are mostly of her own making.

In the Copper Ridge series, which takes place just down the road from Gold Valley, Olivia Logan was one of the secondary characters. As her friends and co-workers met and fell in love with the men of their dreams, Olivia was absolutely certain that she had already found the man she was destined to spend the rest of her life with.

The fact that it was obvious to everyone that Olivia Logan and Bennett Dodge had absolutely zero chemistry didn’t seem to matter to Olivia. She had convinced herself that Bennett was the perfect man for her. And it turned out that Olivia’s father had convinced Bennett that Olivia was the right woman for him.

This is not the stuff of which dreams are made. Occasionally it IS the stuff of which nightmares are made.

After a year of extremely tepid dating, Olivia expected a ring. Bennett wasn’t ready. It’s dubious whether Bennett would ever be ready, but Olivia wasn’t ready to admit that. She broke up with Bennett in the hopes that her absence would make him realize just what he was missing.

Instead, Olivia discovered exactly what she was missing, in the person of Luke Hollister – a man who delighted in getting her just a little bit riled up every time they met. Sort of like the way that little boys tease the girls they like but don’t know what to do with yet.

Luke wasn’t interested in relationships, and Olivia wasn’t interested in anything but. But without Bennett to fill in the empty spaces, Olivia discovered that being a good girl was kind of a strait-jacket, and that Luke was the perfect person to help her out of it. And everything else she might possibly have on.

If she’s willing to take a risk on not being perfect, on getting hurt, and on saying (and doing) what’s really in her heart.

Escape Rating B+: As I said earlier, Olivia has been one of the secondary characters in Copper Ridge, and in the author’s Copper Ridge series. She has not been one of the more likeable characters, but up until now, we didn’t really know why.

What we do know is that she’s just a bit socially awkward, and not for any of the usual reasons. Olivia has been so invested in being the “good girl” that her parents expect her to be that she has done her best to live a completely disciplined life and remove any and all temptations to stray from the straight and narrow. And she’s pretty judgemental about anyone who does stray from that straight and narrow.

Olivia is a twin, but her twin sister is not in the picture. Vanessa didn’t just stray from the straight and narrow, she ran headlong away from it, into sex and booze and eventually drugs. As happens in so many families, the more that Vanessa turned toward the “dark side”, the more that Olivia felt obligated to become her opposite, the “good girl”. And now that Vanessa is who-knows-where doing who-knows-what, Olivia is kind of stuck in her role. Not only does the entire town expect it, but so do her smothering, overprotective parents who are desperate to hover over the child they still have in their lives.

Marrying Bennett Dodge was part of the life that Olivia was expected to have. It’s only once Bennett is out of her life that she’s able to look at what she really wants – even when she herself doesn’t want to see it.

Not that Luke is much more self-aware. Just as the loss of her twin is at the heart of so much of Olivia’s behavior, and so much of her internal conflict, Luke Hollister is also hiding a deep loss that he hasn’t been able to get past. It’s their traumas that finally bring them together, and nearly tear them apart.

The lesson at the end of the story is both sad and beautiful. You’ll see.

~~~~~~ TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~

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Review: Second Chance Girl by Susan Mallery + Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways
Review: Second Chance Girl by Susan Mallery + GiveawaySecond Chance Girl (Happily Inc, #2) by Susan Mallery
Formats available: paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook
Series: Happily Inc #2
Pages: 384
Published by Harlequin Books on September 26th 2017
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads


A touching modern fairy tale that won't let go of your heart, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Fool's Gold romances!

Mathias Mitchell's easy smile hides a world of hurt. After the worst kind of family betrayal, he moves to Happily Inc., California—the wedding destination town supplies a steady stream of bridesmaids, perfect for his "no promises, no pain" lifestyle. Yet he can't stop watching for his beautiful, elusive neighbor on the animal preserve behind their homes.

Gamekeeper Carol Lund knows she's not special enough to attract an alpha male like Mathias, so his offer to help her adopt a herd for her lonely giraffe is surprising—and his determined seduction, even more so. But just as she finally welcomes him into her bed, his careless actions crush her heart. Will she give him a second chance to prove she'll always come first in his heart?

My Review:

Welcome back to Happily Inc., the adorable little town saved by a massive PR stunt. While the legend of the brides and the wagon train is pretty much pure bunk, it turned this small town on the edge of the California desert into a destination wedding extravaganza. Happily Inc loves its brides, and they love it right back.

The terrific first book in the series, You Say It First, focused on one of the creators of those destination weddings, Pallas Saunders and her Weddings In A Box, now very much out of the box, business. But now that we’re into the second book of the series, it looks like the series as a whole is focused on the artistically talented Mitchell brothers finding their happy ever afters, in spite of the way that their parents seriously screwed them all up.

Carol Lund is the gamekeeper at the local wildlife rescue operation. While Carol’s need to find a herd for her giraffe Millie provides much of the driving force in this story, the entire operation that Carol, her dad and her uncle have created is a marvelous thing. Her dad and uncle began with a cutting edge recycling and waste management company, added a fantastic wildlife refuge and are continuing to expand their world-renowned business into profitable projects that help their community and the surrounding area.

Carol, and Millie, and the zebras, gazelles and other animals, are just part of the package, but a great one. But Millie is lonely. Male giraffes may be solitary, but female giraffes live in herds, and Millie doesn’t have one. However, creating a herd of giraffes is not exactly cheap. It’s not just purchasing the animals, but also transporting them, dealing with the host of regulations, and then feeding and caring for them.

Carol needs half of a million dollars. That’s a lot of giraffe feed. Or it’s a lot of weeks (months, years) of collecting from little tins all over town.

And that’s where Matthias Mitchell comes in. He’s her neighbor. He’s also one of the very talented Mitchell brothers. And he’s utterly gorgeous and Carol, like many of the single women in Happily Inc., has more than a bit of a crush on him. But Matthias doesn’t do relationships. He’s rather infamous for doing one of the bridesmaids from pretty much every out-of-town wedding party. Easy sex, no commitments.

But something about Carol, and Millie, draws him in. And not just because they are neighbors who run into each other regularly. Or because watching Carol and Millie walk together around the preserve is the highlight of his day.

Matthias wants to help Carol. He’s also having a damn hard time admitting to himself that he just wants Carol. But everything he does to help Millie pulls the two of them together that much closer. And the deeper in he gets, the more he wants, and the less he’s able to resist.

Even though he’s sure that he’s much too damaged to be good relationship material for anyone. Especially someone he actually cares about.

And he might be right.

Escape Rating B: I liked Carol and Matthias a lot, and I also enjoyed the secondary relationship between Carol’s sister Violet and the quite surprising Duke of Somerbrooke. I actually enjoyed the development of Violet’s relationship more. It begins with a meet-cute, only to discover that they met even cuter once long ago. And after Ulrich screws up, he gives very good grovel. Their story was just plain fun from beginning to end.

The thing about Carol and Matthias’ relationship is that Matthias is really screwed up. Not that Carol doesn’t have plenty of her own issues, because of course she does or we wouldn’t get some of the lovely delicious tension in the story.

But Matthias’ father Ceallach Mitchell is the ogre that looms over the entire story. I want to say that he’s evil, but unfortunately he’s just human. And a complete and utter bastard. Also a violent abuser who only stopped when the oldest of his sons got big enough to stand between him and the rest.

Ceallach has attempted to ruin all of his sons’ lives in the desperate attempt to keep any of them from outshining his legendary artistic self. And he’s aided and abetted by his doormat of a wife, the boys’ mother, who has never defended her sons from her husband’s abusive fists or his destructive words.

That she still doesn’t understand why they can’t get along is icing on a very ugly cake. Especially when the whole family comes to Happily Inc for a family wedding, and Ceallach does his best to ruin everything his sons have touched, including the fund raiser for Millie that Matthias has arranged.

From the moment Ceallach shows up, he sucks all the air out of every room. That it sounds like is named for the “Winter Hag” of Celtic folklore is weirdly appropriate, because he overshadows every scene with a deep and abiding chill.

His sons have turned out alright in spite of him, so I hope we see less of him in any future books in the series. He’s done more than enough damage already. And I do hope there are future books in this series, because Happily Inc is a lovely place and the people we’ve met (with the exception of the Mitchell parents) are marvelous and great fun. I want to see everyone get their HEA.

It looks like Matthias’ “twin” brother Ronan might be next. I certainly hope so, because he really needs it.

~~~~~~ TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~

Susan and Harlequin are giving away a $100 Amazon or Barnes and Noble Gift Card to one extremely lucky participant on this tour!

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