Tag: contemporary romance

Book of the Week, romance

Book of the Week: Star Shipped

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Amidst all the Marilyn Monroe of yesterday, I forgot to mention that June is Pride Month and I’ve got some bits and bobs planned for that – so keep your eyes peeled on that front as we head through the month. And I’m also coincidentally starting the month off with a m/m romance pick so that’s somewhat serendiptious too. This was also one of the books in my Anticipated new releases post at the start of the year, so I’m really pleased that it lived up to my expectations for it!

Star Shipped is Cat Sebastian’s first contemporary romance and it’s a slow burn enemies to lovers story about two co-stars on a sci-fi TV series. It’s told entirely from the point of view of Simon, who has spent seven years hating his co star Charlie even as the fans analyse their every move on screen to try and work out if their characters are (secretly) in love. Now he’s leaving the show and can get away from it all. Except that there’s a chance that people might think he’s been forced to leave the show because he’s difficult to work with (which he knows he kinda is) and that could cause him problems down the line. Charlie is also worried that he might catch the blame for Simon’s exit because of what happened during his first season on the show. So they agree to stage a public friendship to try and quash any rumours. And then when Charlie needs to leave LA in a hurry, somehow Simon finds himself joining him. Thus begins a road trip that should be everything that Simon hates, but he’s actually sort of enjoying. And maybe they actually don’t hate each other after all?

I read this in less than 24 hours from getting my grubby hands on it (it was delivered to my parents house for *reasons*) and when I was on a family holiday away in Wales and probably should have been being more sociable (sorry family) because it was just so good. I’m going to have to take some time to think about why Simon – a hero with an actual anxiety problem that he’s not really dealing with that well – worked for me when some other anxious main characters have really not, because I’m not sure how I could have enjoyed it more. It also fell exactly on the right side of the enemies part of the enemies to lovers spectrum – mostly Simon’s “hatred” of Charlie consists of being snarky to him (off page, before the book starts) rather than pranks or things that actually affect Charlie’s career, and Charlie never really hated Simon to start with. Then you add in a road trip (love a road trip) with some Only One Bed scenarios and a bit of found family and it’s really my thing. Additionally this is quite low angst on the external front – and none of the angst comes from fear of being outed or homophobia in it’s many forms and I really like that too.

This came out in paperback at the end of April – I had mine pre-ordered from Waterstones in their pre-Christmas discount offer and what has turned up appears to be an American edition but I’m not complaining. I spotted this in Gay’s the Word when I was in there a week or two back, but I’m not 100 percent sure if I’ve seen it anywhere else yet. It’s £1.99 on Kindle and Kobo this month, which is annoyingly a pound more than it was lat month, but it’s not often that Cat Sebastian is on offer at all, so don’t necessarily rely on it dropping back down. That said there are a few of Sebastian’s back catalogue at £1.99 at the moment, so if you have gaps in your library you want to fill in this may be the time.

Happy Reading!

Book previews

Out This Week: New Annabel Monaghan

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Happy Thursday everyone and this week’s new book to mention is the new Annabel Monaghan, Dolly All The Time which came out on Tuesday. According to the blurb, this is about self sufficient, problem solving, single mum Dolly who moves back to her seaside home town and finds herself in a fake relationship with the wealthy, workaholic son of one of the town’s major families. I loved, loved, loved Nora Goes Off Script back in 2023, and I have enjoyed the three books of hers I’ve read since, although none of them have quite hit the same buttons for me as Nora did. But that’s a very high bar. I had this pre-ordered, so I already have my copy waiting for me but if you weren’t planning that far ahead, it’s out now in paperback, Kindle and Kobo.

Book of the Week, new releases, romance

Book of the Week: The Paris Match

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Happy Tuesday everyone. It’s absolutely roasting hot here so it seems fitting that this week’s pick is summary book with a lot of wandering around Paris and lovely weather

I mentioned The Paris Match on the day that it came out but just a recap for you of the plot: it’s about Layla, who is going to Paris for the wedding of her ex’s sister. Layla has been like a sister to the bride but now she’s divorced the bride’s brother and this is the first test of the “amicable” part of their divorce and whether she can still be part of the family now she’s not officially in it any more. After a night out with the bride and her best friend, the bride decides she wants to break off the wedding and tells her fiancé it’s because of something Layla said. Thus Griffin, the best man, turns up at her room door and tells her she’s got to fix it. And so here starts Layla and Griffin trying to fix what’s gone wrong with the potential bride and groom for their own different reasons and in doing that they get to know each other and maybe fall in love.

This isn’t an all hearts and flowers book and that’s one of the things that I really liked about it. There’s some pretty serious backstory going on for both characters: Layla has her divorce and Griff has got some chronic illness and chronic pain that he’s dealing with. And a real feature of the book is how he moves through the world and how he is perceived in the world. But despite what you might think after reading that, it’s not super heavy or miserable read. And actually one of the things I really like about Kate Clayborn – and she’s done this in other books – is the way that she can manage to have quite serious subjects in the character’s lives and their back stories and yet the books don’t feel like it’s heavy or a slog. It just feels delightful watching these two people find each other and and fall in love – and not be fixed by their relationship per se but their lives made better by it. And I really found that with this.

I basically read it in about a day – I started it one night and finished it the next afternoon which speaks to how much I enjoyed it. I was gonna save it for a time of need but it turns out the time of need came a little bit sooner than I was expecting and I regret nothing about that decision. I love Paris and I loved watching Griff and Layla move around Paris and recognise bits of my experience. Paris is such a great city a great setting for this and works so well with the story. If I have any complaints it’s that I wanted a bit more comeuppance at the end for some people that have done the hero with heroine wrong, but I can live with it because I think that the ending that the characters got was pretty perfect.

This should be a fairly easy one to find. I had the paperback pre-ordered but the Kindle is actually on offer at 99p this month and I’m impressed with myself for resisting the urge to buy a Kindle copy as well as my paperbacks so I could read it while I was away from home so you should be able to get hold of this pretty much everywhere.

Recommendsday, romance

Recommendsday: Recent Romance Reads

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It’s Wednesday again and today I’ve got three reviews for you of romance novels that I’ve read in the last little while. These are all new – or relatively new – releases. The is the newest because Alisha Rai came out last week and the Jeevani Charika is the oldest and came out in November.

Enemies to Lovers by Alisha Rai*

Sejal’s got some issues: her parents were on both the wrong side of the law, also each other and sometimes her. This means that there are also some unsavoury people after her and she’s been trying to lie low. Krish’s brother has gone missing, and he’s pretty sure Sejal’s crime family have got something to do with it. So he does what any self respecting brother would do: pretends to be an FBI agent and persuade Sejal to help him find his brother. This means an epic cross country road trip where a grudging truce starts to seem like it’s turning into something else. I have a mixed record with career criminals but I love a road trip novel and I’ve really enjoyed some of Alisha Rai’s other series (including the complicated characters in the Forbidden Love series) so this was a no-brainer for me to read. However – it is the second in a series and I hadn’t read the first so I think I would have got more out of it if I had. That said it’s a twisty romantic-suspense that’s at the less scary end of the spectrum with really interesting and complicated protagonists who are both hiding plenty of things from each other and from themselves. It took a bit longer than I was expecting for me to get into it, but I did enjoy it a lot.

How Can I Resist You by Jeevani Charika*

Vidya is on a work trip to Waterloo Bay. Or at least that’s the main reason that she’s there. The other reason is that her sister came to a work party and hooked up with one of Vidya’s colleagues and can’t remember who and as the sensible sister Vidya is trying to find out who it is – based on a vague description and a shoulder tattoo. One of the suspects is Leo – handsome, furstrating and above all a colleague. This is a fun rom-com with a buttoned up rule following hero and a heroine who feels like she’s always trying to fix her sister’s problems. This took me a little bit to get into, I think because of the involvement of a trope that I don’t love (which I can’t tell you because it’s a spoiler) but it’s only a tangential thing mostly and once I got into it I was properly up and running. I liked the work trip setting – all the worrying about the HR issues that are thrown up by trying to see a colleague’s tattoo on a part of their body that is usually covered by clothing from Vidya and from Leo’s side the fact that Vidya’s a colleague and he’s been burnt by that before. Also there’s a seagull. This is the fifth book by Charika that I’ve read and although The Winner Bakes It All is still my favourite, this is pretty good too.

Falling for the Rabbi by Jennifer Wilck*

Josh is a Rabbi whose grandmother has got a matchmaker involved to try and find him a partner. Except when he turns up on the first date that the matchmaker has arranged she has bought her best friend along with her – a best friend who happens to be the same person who is buying his grandmother’s house. Emma is buying the house so that she can fulfill her dream of starting her own business and opening a bookshop. The two of them have more chemistry than Josh does with his actual date, but are there too many obstacles in the way for them to have their happy ending. This was my first actual Harlequin-Harlequin romance in I don’t know how long and I thought the premise was really promising. However it felt a little 2D in the execution – the side characters felt very black and white and you didn’t really get to know a lot about Josh or Emma’s inner life beyond her issues with trust and his with change. Now I would say that this is partly a limitation of the format, except that I’ve read some really good Harlequin/Mills and Boons that managed to flesh out the characters and conflicts really well – and this is a Harlequin special edition, so I think it actually has more pages/word count at it’s disposal than some. Still, it’s always nice to read a romance with a bookshop owner and it was a perfectly find way to pass a few hours.

Happy Humpday everyone!

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: While You Were Seething

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It’s Tuesday and it’s time for another Book of the Week – and this week it’s a romance pick after a few weeks of mystery ones. And actually it could have been one of a couple of romances this week – so tomorrow’s Recommendsday has got some more of them for you. But in the meantime, my favourite book that I read last week was the new Charlotte Stein – which also came out last week. So as I said yesterday – I’m even fairly timely!

Daisy and Caleb were at college together and they’ve been enemies ever since. These days Daisy is a crisis PR specialist and her latest assignment is to try and dig Caleb out of a public relations disaster: he’s a romance author who has just told the world he doesn’t believe in romance or happy endings. She knows it’s not going to be easy to persuade him to do the book tour they’ve got planned, but she hadn’t quite realised how hard it would be. Soon Daisy’s on a road trip with him to each stop of the tour which is hard enough, but more than that people at the events are starting to think that Daisy is the mysterious woman that he dedicates all his books too – the love of his life. Soon they’re going along with the idea and now they’re also trapped in a fake relationship. Except the chemistry is starting to feel much more real than it ought to considering how much they hate each other. Because they do hate each other, don’t they?

This is the third fake relationship romance in an interconnected series from Charlotte Stein which started with When Grumpy Met Sunshine. Now my main issue (if it can be considered an issue) with that book was that it was pretty clear to you as a reader that the hero was into the heroine and it was hard to see how she didn’t see it. Now in this one it is much easier to understand why Daisy doesn’t think that Caleb is into her – she’s so beaten down by always been seen as too much that you can see how she would misinterpret or not see the signs. And as a reader it’s really quite delicious as they get stuck in these increasingly ridiculous situations being forced into ever closer proximity. And it’s so much fun – I read it in less than 24 hours and actively resented having to go to work and not carry on reading it!

In the afterward Stein says that this is the last of her rom coms – and I really hope that’s not as final as it sounds because I have really, really enjoyed reading them and I hope that she writes something similar soon. She has a small town paranormal romance series that I have my eye on for if/when prices drop because at the moment the kindle prices are too rich for my blood considering how big the to-read pile is!

My copy of While You Were Seething came via NetGalley, but as I have the other two in paperback I’m not ruling out buying myself a copy as well to give me a matching set for the bookshelves! I’ve seen the others in bookshops so I’m hoping this will be too but it’s only showing as in stock in one of the central London Waterstones at the moment so we will have to see. And of course it’s on Kindle and Kobo too,

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: The Love Haters

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I mentioned yesterday that I had to crack out an emergency book over the weekend because I wasn’t feeling very well and that’s what I’ve ended up picking today: the latest Katherine Center, The Love Haters, which came out in paperback back in November. And it’s particularly good timing because it turns out that Center has written an Amazon Original story that is out today too.

Katie Vaughan is a videographer. For her day job she works for a small media company who make corporate and promotional video. For herself she makes day in the life videos about people who have done something heroic. The trouble is the passion project doesn’t pay the rent and there is a massive round of layoffs happening at the day job. So that’s why when her boss Cole offers her a last chance job she takes it. Trouble is, it’s filming a coast guard rescue swimmer and Katie doesn’t swim and the swimmer is Hutch, Cole’s brother. Hutch is internet famous after his rescue of a dog went viral, but he’s turned down every interview request since. But Katie really needs her job, so she heads off to the Florida Keys, where she finds that everything is just a bit different – and Hutch is definitely not what she was expecting either.

So I had a few qualms at a couple of points when I was reading this. Firstly there was a point where I was worried that this was going to have too much comedy based on humiliation, then there was a big third act twist that I was a bit dubious about and then I was concerned about the finale. But every time, it pulled it around – for me at least. I can see from the reviews that some people have found the plot strand around body image too much for them, but as someone who grew up in the terrible times that were the early 2000s I could totally understand where Katie was coming from and found her evolution on that front quite satisfying. Hutch is a great character – I wasn’t really aware of Coast Guard Swimmers being a thing before this book, but it was the perfect match of character and job and makes total sense for the way that the ending plays out. I don’t know that it’s my favourite of hers – I think I love The Rom-Commers the most, and it’s not a surefire recommendation for people because for reasons that may be apparent from what I’ve already written, but I read this in the space of an afternoon and evening and really enjoyed it.

This is out now in Kindle, Kobo and paperback. It’s showing up as being in stock in some of the London Waterstones so I think you should be able to get it in stores too.

Happy Tuesday!

Book of the Week, new releases, romance, romantic comedy

Book of the Week: Love and Other Brain Experiments

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Happy Tuesday everyone, and I’m back with a new release (well it was released in February and I read it in February so that counts as new release) romance for this week’s Book of the Week.

The heroine of Love and Other Brain Experiments is Frances, a neuroscientist who has spent the last five years trying to build her career after turning down a job – and her boyfriend – to follow her own research. Now she’s heading back to New York to a conference, where she’s going to come face to face with that same ex, who said she’d never make it on her own. When an argument with a rival is mistaken for an argument between a couple, she’s flustered and inadvertently confirms the misconception and suddenly both her and Lewis’s careers are at risk – and thus starts the fake dating agreement…

My favourite Sophie Kinsella book is Can You Keep a Secret, which starts with a genius scene set on a plane, and this also starts with an excellent plane-based meeting which set me up to really enjoy this. I had a slight concern with the fake dating scenario – because as the book sets it out Frances’s main problem with the initial relationship misconception is gaining a reputation for untruthfulness in science (where falsifying data is the worst thing you can do) but then she and Lewis create a much bigger reputational risk with the prolonged fake dating scenario. However, I love a fake dating story, and an enemies to lovers plot and this is so much fun that I just decided to go with it and hope that the resolution was well thought out and satisfying enough to negate that fear – and it basically was.

Frances is a great character – I loved all the details about the different places she’d worked in around the world and her complete single minded focus on her research made a great foil for her missing some issues in her real life outside of the lab. I thought Lewis was also really well drawn, although the reason why he and Frances became rivals seemed pretty unsurmountable initially, the actual explanation made it work. There is a slight case of just have a proper conversation you two here, but ultimately I raced through this in about 36 hours and ended with a big smile on my face at the resolution. This is Hannah Brohm’s debut – and this is a really accomplished start to a romance writing career and I look forward to seeing what she writes next. And on a more basic level this was one of the first STEM romances that I’ve read recently that wasn’t completely obviously a Reylo thing…

I got my copy of Love and Other Brain Experiments from NetGalley, but it’s out now in Kindle, Kobo and paperback – and as you can see I’ve already found it in a Waterstones – so it should be fairly easy to find in the shops too.

Happy Reading!

Book previews

Out Today: Night Rider

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Happy Thursday everyone, and I have another new book out today that I wanted to talk about. So we have a big trend of Cowboy and ranch romances at the moment, but Night Rider is adding in the famous person and normal person trope in this case a a cowboy and a Hollywood starlet. But. But. Look at this cover: Pastel colours, illustrations. Yes there is the word suspense in the Bailey Hannah quote, but does this look like a romantic suspense novel? Because this is the final line of the description:

But that dream is threatened when Nina’s past catches up with her. And when an unlikely predator strikes, she and Maverick must make a choice: to let each other go or face the world together.

So. I have a copy of this via NetGalley because I am behind with the Cowboy/Ranch trend and I wanted to get in on it, but when I was picking it out, I didn’t really peg it as being as Romantic Suspense as the Amazon page says it is. So I’m going to read it, and see how romantic suspense it is, and then go and find some more cowboys to see if they’re all actually romantic suspense and cover signalling has gone even more out the window than I previously thought!

Book of the Week, romance

Book of the Week: Totally and Completely Fine

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It’s that time again: the first Book of the Week of a New Year. And you can tell that we’re in the depths of winter purely from the photo of the book, because it’s getting harder and harder to get enough daylight to get a not-dark picture of anything. Hey ho. We’re past the shortest day now…

In Totally and Completely Fine, Lauren is still in the same small town in Montana where she grew up. She’s the widowed mother of a teenage daughter, but her reputation as a teenage tearaway still looms large in the mind of some of the town’s residents. She doesn’t really care about how others see her, but she’s still drifting through life after the loss of her husband. Then when she visits her brother Nate on the set of a movie he’s working on she meets his co star Ben. Ben is a decade younger than her and about to be an even bigger deal than he already is, but their attraction is mutual. But when Ben comes to town to help Nate relaunch the local theatre, there’s a chance that it could be something more than a one time thing – if Lauren can find a way to reconcile the different parts of her life.

Now if some of the names here sound familiar, that’s because Nate is the hero of one of Sussman’s previous books, Funny You Should Ask in which Lauren and her daughter Lena also make an appearance. I loved that previous book, and it’s fun in this to see Nate and Chani again and get some more of their story. But this really is about Lauren as the narrative switches between parts of her past – her teenage years, her marriage to Spencer – and her present. Lauren and her husband were happy, she is heartbroken by his death and this is about a new way of living with grief as well as about finding a new love.

It’s a bit of a tearjerker at times, and if I really just wanted Lauren to use her words to her therapist to help herself more, I get why she didn’t and it made for a great payoff at the end. None of the characters here are neat and easy, they’re all messy and complicated and have baggage – which is what makes it so satisfying when they work things out in the end. I enjoyed reading it, and it reminded me why romances with Proper Grown Up Characters are so good, after what feels like a bit of a string of romances with leads who were exasperating in their inability to adult properly!

My copy was a paperback, but it’s also available in Kindle and Kobo and should be fairly easy to find in a big enough bookshop – I’ve definitely seen it in a few.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, Christmas books, reviews

Book of the Week: Season of Love

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It’s the last Tuesday of 2025 and that strange period between Christmas and New Year where no one is quite sure what day it is, where we’re all still eating meals at strange times and there’s a box of chocolates just open on the counter. So before the Christmas mood is completely over, I’ve got a festive BotW pick for you.

Cover of Season of Love

Artist Miriam Blum hasn’t been back to her aunt’s Christmas tree farm in a decade, but when she hears that Aunt Cass has died, she heads back to Carrigan’s to sit Shiva. Her plan is to be in and out as quickly as possible – avoiding her family and having to deal with the difficult emotions that being back there bring up. But that’s all thrown up in the air when she discovers that Cass has left her a share in the business – and it’s at risk of going under. Noelle is the farm’s manager and she really doesn’t want Miriam around – she’s spent years dealing with the fall out from Miriam’s flight and she thinks Miriam is nothing but trouble. But sparks fly as they’re forced to work together to try and save the Christmas tree farm.

There is a lot of trauma in both Miriam and Noelle’s backstories – Miriam’s father is absolutely terrible in ways that I can’t really go into because: Spoilers, and Noelle has severe abandonment issues, so although this is billed as a rom com, the plot and underlying conflict here are less frothy and fun that that might suggest. But don’t let that put you off, because there is a lovely found family in the Carrigan’s community, there are people who use their words to sort out conflicts (well mostly) rather than them being fixed by magic sex. In fact this is pretty closed door on the actual romance front as well as being pretty slow burn, reluctant attraction in trope terms.

I really enjoyed this and read it in less than 24 hours. And as you might expect from a book about a Jewish-owned Christmas tree farm, the actual Christmas content here is mostly decoration and baubles (rather than church and Jesus) because the characters are only really interested in Christmas as far as it is needed for their business to work – and part of the plot sees them looking at how they can become less dependent on Christmas as a money earner. There are now two more books in this series, and I really want to read them!

This is available on Kindle and Kobo and allegedly in paperback although I haven’t seen it in the bookshops (and believe me, I’ve looked).

Happy Reading