Tag: contemporary romance

Blog tours

Blog Tour: The Five-Year Plan

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A bonus post today, as I’m on the blog tour for The Five-Year Plan by Carla Burgess, which is out later this week.

Our heroine is Orla, a trainee reporter on a local paper and she has a plan. A five-year plan in fact, to get to a job on a national newspaper. She definitely doesn’t want a boyfriend – he’d only get in the way. But then she’s sent out on assignment to interview wildlife photographer Aiden. He’s dedicated to his career too and spends his life travelling the world and sleeping in a tent. He only has casual relationships, because he doesn’t want to be tied down. As they get to know each other, they do everything they can to make sure they don’t fall for each other – but it doesn’t seem to be working. But they follow the plan and go their separate ways. Then five years later they meet again…

I really, really wanted to like this more than I did – partly because it has such a promising start. The opening when Orla and Aiden meet again at his exhibition really grabbed me and hooked me in. But then it jumped back five years to their first meeting and stayed there for an awful lot longer than I was expecting. I wasn’t so interested in what happened back then, I wanted to know what happened next and it took a long time to get back to that. And while we were in the past section, I found that I didn’t like either of the characters as much as I had at the start.

When we finally got back to the present, Orla was a bit more passive than I was hoping that she would be and I felt like I never really got a sense of who she is – even though the story is told from her point of view. Thinking back at the end, I couldn’t name a hobby, or an interest or a band she liked. I’m not even sure what it is about journalism that she liked – her plan is just explained as being to get a job at a national paper. And because you’re in Orla’s head, you never really get to know Aiden except through her eyes – and even through her eyes he has a tendency to seem self-centred and manipulative. I never really understood why they got on together so well or why she’d been so hung up on him for so long or what it was about her that Aiden liked so much, other than her ability to sit in a tent with him and watch otters.

I love a second chance romance, and I thought this had a lot of potential to recapture some of the things I loved about late 90s-early 00s “chick lit” – and which are seem to be so hard to find at the moment. But in the end it didn’t quite do what I wanted it to do – and I’m not sure it’s entirely because I was hoping for it to be something it wasn’t.

The Five-Year Plan may not have been entirely for me, but it may well scratch an itch for some of you out there. And in these difficult times (you know what I’m talking about), it has the advantage of not having any peril, or illness in it (beyond a sprained ankle) and that’s definitely a plus. My copy of The Five-Year Plan came from the publisher, but it is out on Friday on Kindle and Kobo.

Happy Reading!

*but in fairness, it’s not in the running other women down way.

Five Year Plan blog tour banner

romance, week in books

Book of the Week: Love Lettering

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After a classic crime pick last week, this week it’s a romance – and one that’s had a lot of buzz. The buzz is good, because Kate Claybourn’s latest novel came out on December 31st – and so was too late for anyone’s 2019 roundups, but sort of doesn’t count as 2020 either. Anyway – to the plot.

Cover of Love Lettering

Meg Mackworth is know as “The Planner of Park Slope” because of her hand-lettering skills, which she puts to use designing custom journals for those in the know in New York City. But she has a secret – sometimes she weaves secret patterns into her work, like the one she left in a wedding program for a couple she was sure wasn’t going to last. When Reid, the handsome and mathematically-minded groom, appears in her shop a year later to demand how she knew his future wasn’t going to last, it looks like it’s coming back to haunt her. Grappling with a case of creative block, Meg comes up with a plan to try and fix the situation. As the two wander the city getting to know each other and opening up, a connection develops. But Meg can see signs everywhere of problems ahead – how can this lead to a happy ending?

From the description above, Meg sounds a bit like a Manic Pixie Dream girl – one of those characters from quirky movies with improbable jobs and glamourous lives. She’s not. She’s guarded, anxious, likes routine, hates confrontation and sees letters in everything that she does. Her relationship with Reid is such a slow burn – just to friendship, let alone to more. But it’s such a joy to watch develop. The games they invent as they’re walking around the city, the way it makes Meg develop confidence and her ideas as well as the romance. And on top of that, the book itselfs really well designed – it’s got different fonts and lettering dropped in so that you can see what Meg is seeing in her head. It’s just lovely.

Also I think we can conclude that the tense a book is written in doesn’t bother me – because I’ve seen several reviews mentioning that it’s written in first person present and they still liked it, but I didn’t even notice really. I was so swept away by the book that I was just thinking about what happened next. Thinking back now it does feel like it had a sense of movement and uncertainty that was generated by the present tense – but at the time I wasn’t even thinking about tenses – just about Meg and Reid.

I absolutely ate this up with a spoon. I mean – I borrowed this from the library, but it’s on offer for 99p on Kindle (and Kobo) at the moment, so I’ve bought it so I can go back to it now my loan is up, and I may also have pre-ordered the paperback (out in March) so I can see what the all the different letters look like in the print version. It is so much fun.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, new releases, romance

Book of the Week: Sweet Talkin’ Lover

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Another Tuesday, another book of the week post.  I read a few books I really liked last week, and it was a close decision on what to pick, but I think Tracey Livesay’s new book was my favourite last week.

Cover of Sweet Talkin' Lover

Caila Harris is ambitious and driven. She’s given up her social life and is working all the hours she can to get her next promotion as she climbs the ladder in the beauty industry.  But when her beloved grandfather dies, she makes some bad decisions – and suddenly her chances of promotion are on the line.  The assignment she’s given to turn it around: go to a small southern town, and write the report that justifies shutting a factory down.  But when she gets to Bradleton, she runs into more trouble than she expected in the form of the town’s mayor, Wyatt Bradley. He’s determined to do whatever it takes to keep the plant open.  Soon sparks are flying between Caila and Mayor McHottie as the town calls him – but will their relationship survive if she finds out the sneaky tactics he’s using to try and keep her in town and when he finds out that the closure decision has already been made.

This is smart, fun and has a hero and heroine with great chemistry.  I like enemies/rivals to lovers as a trope and Sweet Talkin’ Lover does that really well. I also loved Caila’s relationship with her group of friends.  Livesay has said that the group is based on her own friendship group – and the holiday they’re on at the start is what they do every year. I love a ride-or-die friendship group in a story and these ladies really are that – and I’m looking forward to reading the books about the others, because this is the first in a series.

My only quibble with the book was from right at the end.  I didn’t quite believe that Wyatt’s family issues – either with his career or the way they treated Caila – were really all sorted out.  I believed that Wyatt and Caila wanted to make it work between them and that some of the roadblocks were removed, but I wasn’t quite confident that it was really all resolved enough to be confident that the happy ending was really going to be all ok if that makes sense. But that’s quite a minor quibble in the grand scheme of things.

Sweet Talkin’ Lover is Livesay’s print debut and came out in the middle of all the RWA problems.  She was also one of the resignations from the RWA board on Boxing Day (because of the way the Ethics Committee handled the complaint against Courtney Milan), so I think it’s fair to say that RWA messed up her Christmas and a big moment in her writing career.  And this book did not deserve to get swamped by RWA being a trashfire.

My copy of Sweet Talkin’ Lover came from the library, but its availalble now in Kindle, Kobo and as an audibook, but the paperback isn’t out in the UK until February 20.  I’ll try and remember to remind you.

Happy reading!

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: The Bromance Book Club

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Well where to start.  You saw the list yesterday. it was long. There was good stuff. You might have expected the pick today to be the Gail Carriger – and I do love her, but I’ve written a lot about her already and you really need to be reading those in order, so go back at least as far as Prudence first, maybe even Soulless. But this book, the very last one I read last week was my favourite. I had trouble stopping myself reading it when I had to go and do other things. Like eat. Or get off the train.

Cover of The Bromance Book Club

Gavin Scott has messed up. His baseball career is on a high, but his marriage has fallen apart. The night of his biggest career triumph was also the night his relationship came crashing down when he discovered his wife Thea had been faking it in bed. He reacted badly and now she wants a divorce. Gavin doesn’t though – he wants his wife back. Enter the Bromance Book Club – a group of really quite alpha guys who have fixed their own relationships with the help of a seemingly unlikely source: romance novels. With the help of the book that they’ve picked for him Gavin starts to try and rebuild his marriage. But will he manage to follow its instructions – and does Thea even want to try again?

“The point is to fit the lessons of it into your own marriage. Plus, that’s a Regency, so—” “What the hell is a Regency?” “That means it’s set in eighteenth-or early nineteenth-century England.” “Oh, great. That sounds relevant.” “It is, actually,” Malcolm said. “Modern romance novelists use the patriarchal society of old British aristocracy to explore the gender-based limitations placed on women today in both the professional and personal spheres. That shit is feminist as fuck.”

This was so much my jam. I mean really, really good. I mean if that quote doesn’t sell it to you, then I don’t know what will. Gavin is a great hero – he knows he’s messed up, he doesn’t know how to fix it and he hasn’t realised that more is wrong than just the bedroom issue.  His pro-sports career gives him a legitimate reason to have not noticed some of the stuff that’s been bothering Thea – and once he realises what’s happened, he pulls himself together and makes changes to do better and be better.  Thea is an attractive heroine – she’s a young mum who’s given up a lot because of her husband’s career but who still has goals and ambitions.  You understand why she reacts the way that she does and why she feels so strongly. She’s changed herself so much to fit in with Gavin’s life and the players’ wives and she wants to find her own identity again.  It’s wonderful to watch it all unfold.

The only thing that I didn’t like was the resolution to the bedroom side of the story.  Nothing really changes really in *what* they’re doing in the bedroom – so you don’t really understand orgasms weren’t happening during sex for Thea in the first place – or why she started being able to come again. Other reviewers have also spotted this – and I think it has bothered them more than it bothered me – but it is annoying and also troublesome. In a book which is mostly about Gavin learning to listen to his wife and to be a better partner, there’s no conversation about how to fix this at all – but hey presto, it’s fixed because the rest of their relationship is fixed.  That’s not how it works. It didn’t ruin my enjoyment of the book, but it is a shame and an opportunity missed.

I’m having a real moment with contemporary romance right now and struggling a bit with the historical stuff (apart from a few reliable authors) but this was such a great combination of the two.  It’s also got a great cast of supporting characters with the other guys from the book club – the Russian with the digestive problems, the playboy who flirts with every woman he sees.  Thea’s sister Liv was a bit of a tough sell for me at times, but as you lean more about the sisters’ childhood you understand why she is like she is.  I’m looking forward to her getting a book of her own – because this – praise be – is the start of a series.

My copy of the Bromance Book Club  by Lyssa Kay Adams came from NetGalley, but it’s out now in ebook – it’s a bargainous £1.99 on Kindle and Kobo at the moment.  The paperback comes out in the UK at the end of January.

Happy Reading!

 

book round-ups, Recommendsday, romance

Recommendsday: Royal Romances

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Another bonus post for you today – there’s a new series of the Crown out on Netflix this week and there’s been a rush of romances about royalty recently (gee, I wonder why) – a lot of which I seem to have read – so I thought I’d round up a few for you here – new and old.

The Princess Plan by Julia London

Cover of The Princess Plan

This came out yesterday (in the UK at least) and is a historical romance which sees a prince and a commoner team up to solve a murder mystery. Prince Sebastian of Alucia is in Britain for trade talks when his private secretary (and friend) is murdered after a ball.  Eliza Tricklebank helps write a popular gossip sheet and receives a tip off about who committed the crime.  She is probably the only person in the country who doesn’t really care about Sebastian’s rank (for Reasons).  Soon the two of them are investigating what happened – with Eliza digging in the places Sebastian can’t go, while he investigates at court. And as they work together, they develop feelings for each other – but how can a prince marry a nobody – a spinster firmly on the shelf and with a scandal in her past? You know they’ll find a way! I read a lot of historicals – but not many that involve royalty – and this is really quite fun. The mystery is twisty and although I had the culprit worked out very early on, I didn’t work out how they were going to fix the Happily Ever After.  Lots of fun and it’s the first in a series. I had an advance copy from NetGalley, but the ebook for this looks like it’s on offer here this week for release – it’s £2.99 Kindle and Kobo at the moment.

Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

Cover of Red, White and Royal Blue

Alex Claremont-Diaz is the First Son of the United States.  Prince Henry is, well a British Prince.  They hate each other, right until they don’t (hello enemies to lovers trope again) and then there’s a whole lot of secrecy and new problems to deal with. This is a lot of fun while you’re reading it – it rattles along so fast that you don’t get a chance to analyse or dissect the backstory and set up too much. I don’t read a lot of New Adult because usually it’s too angsty and drama-filled for me, but in this most of the drama and angst is external to the couple which worked well. And by the end I wanted the ending to be true in real life. Just don’t think too hard about it all or it all falls apart! Luckily it rattles on at enough speed that you don’t have time to think about it too much – a bit like the Royal Spyness series – and try not to over think it afterwards! This one is new and expensive – Kindle and Kobo are in the £7-£8 bracket at the moment, and the physical version even more.
The Runaway Princess by Hester Browne
Cover of The Runaway Princess
An older pick now – I read this five years ago, but it actually came out in 2012.  The title is something of a spoiler, but hey, I’ll try and not give too much away. Amy is a gardner, not a social butterfly, but when a drunk European prince crashes her friend’s party, she falls for Leo the guy who helps her sort the mess out.  But Leo and Amy’s lives are very different and soon Amy’s trying to decide if he’s worth the changes and problems that life with him would bring This is a fun, easy, romantic read with likeable characters and a lovely (if a perhaps a little bit underdeveloped male lead). It’s a modern princess story – but with a leading lady that’s not as polished and perfect as Kate Middleton (remember this came out in the year of the First Royal Wedding, not the Harry and Meghan era). Amy has some skeletons in her closet – and to be honest I’m surprised they didn’t come out sooner when the press started sniffing around. I had pretty much worked out what had happened (I’m being vague because I don’t want to give it away) but the resolution to that strand of the story was more inventive than I expected. Oh and the Kindle and Kobo editions are £1.99 at the moment.  A win all around.

Reluctant Royals series by Alyssa Cole

Cover of A Prince on Paper

And I couldn’t let this post go by without reminding you of the Reluctant Royals.  I’ve reviewed Alyssa Cole a lot in recent years and two of this series have already been Book of the Weeks – A Princess in Theory and the novella Can’t Escape Love – but if you haven’t already checked out this series, they’re well worth a look.   The last in the series, A Prince on Paper, features a Playboy prince (or so we think) and a woman trying to find out who she is after discovering that her father has betrayed her. I had a few quibbles with how it all resolved itself (it seemed to easy) but absolutely raced through this the day that it came out – which says pretty much all you need to know about it! A Princess in Theory is £1.99 at the moment on Kindle and Kobo – but they’re all under £3 – and there are three novels and two novellas. Cole’s new series, Runaway Royals, starts next year with How To Catch A Queen and I’m looking forward to it already.

So there you have it – the best of my recent royal-themed reading and some older picks too.  If you’ve got some more recommendations for me, leave them in the comments!

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: Unhoneymooners

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A very unseasonal pick for this week’s BotW – the weather here is cold and often wet, the pavements near my house are a sludge of fallen leaves and I’ve had to retire my in-between season wardrobe and admit that it’s actually winter.  And yet here I am recommending a book mostly set on a tropical island vacation. I know. But not everyone wants to read winter books at this time of year – and if you’re not the sort of person that might impulse book a hot weather holiday if you read a book set on the beach at this time (and maybe if you are and you’re ok with that!) then this is such a great read. And yes I know, I’m repeating authors – I’ll get to that later.

Cover of The Unhoneymooners

Olive thinks she’s unlucky – she’s just lost her job and nothing ever seems to go right for er.  Her identical twin sister on the other hand is so luck she’s financed her wedding by winning contests. Great for her – but not for Olive who is going to have to spend the day with Ami’s new brother-in-law, who is best man and also Olive’s sworn enemy.  But when Ethan and Olive are the only people who don’t go down with food poisoning at the reception, suddenly they’re off on Ami’s nontransferrable all-expenses paid contest prize honeymoon.  Surely they can pretend to get along for a week’s free vacation? But Olive’s bad luck seems to have followed her to the holiday – because she runs into her future boss who now thinks she’s married and suddenly the stakes got a bit higher.  And Olive is starting to think that maybe she doesn’t hate Ethan as much as she thought she did…

If you’ve been reading long enough to remember my Historical Romance Tropes post you’ll know that fake relationships are one of my favourites. Also on that list – although not talked about in that post – are forced proximity (stuck somewhere with no escape – often deployed in christmas novels where people get snowed in) and enemies to lovers (i hate you, I hate you, I hate you, wait why do I want to stroke your hair?*).  And this does pretty much everything you would want a forced proximity, enemies to lovers, fake relationship romantic comedy to do.  And it is very much a comedy at times.  There are some laugh out loud funny moments here.  I did have some doubts at various points if it would be able to wrap everything up in a satisfactory manner** but actually it all played out rather nicely.  It did all wrap up very quickly at the end, as romances often do, but the epilogue sort of made up for it.

I have been a bit hit and miss with Christina Lauren at times – although this is the second time they’ve been a BotW pick in just over a month, so I can see that you might not believe me – but this is the most fun of all their romances that I’ve read.  Aside from Autoboygraphy (which I loved, but which is YA) I’ve had problems with some of their  heros – I hated Carter in Dating You/Hating You and never really believed that he realised exactly how much of a jerk he had been. To be fair, I also hated the pranks in that book because they were incredibly petty and unprofessional and I like competency porn from my heros and heroines. I chalked that up in my review to not my tropes – but when the stars align and they are writing in my wheelhouse, they can be absolutely spectacular.  The trouble then for me is working out which of their novels will be my thing. I’m hopeful that Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating may be one I like – so I’m going to try that next.

My copy of The Unhoneymooners came from the library, but it’s available now on Kindle and Kobo.  It’s not out in the UK in paperback until May next year (which may be why the ebooks are so expensive – £9.99 at time of writing) so you won’t be able to get it in a UK bookshop yet (although you could preorder) but Book Depository seem to have copies, and you should be fine in the US.

Happy Reading!

 

 

 

*thank you Sarah Wendell

** mostly related to the reasons why the two of them had initially not got on and about one part of Ethan’s character to say more about either of these would be a spoiler.

Book of the Week, new releases

Book of the Week: Evvie Drake Starts Over

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Such an easy choice for this week.  I had to be dragged away from this one and it totally lifted me out of what had been a bit of a reading slump as I rationalised the to-read shelf and discovered that there was a fair number of books on it that I didn’t like when I started reading them.

Cover of Evvie Drake Starts Over

Evvie Drake has the car packed. She’s leaving her husband. But just as she’s about to about to go when the phone rings: Tim has been in a car accident, she needs to get to the hospital, fast.  We rejoin Evvie nearly a year later – when everyone in town thinks it’s grief that’s keeping her at home and she hasn’t done anything to correct them.  To help out a friend – and to help pay the bills, she lets the apartment at the back of her house to Dean Tenney, former Major League Baseball pitcher and now a byword for blowing it after a major case of the yips saw him lose his aim.  The two of them make a deal – she won’t ask about his baseball career and he won’t ask about her late husband.  But as the months go by the two of them grow closer and a friendship looks like it could develop into something more.  But those demons are going to need addressing before they can really move forward.

This is just what I hoped it would be.  It’s warm and has a great slow burn romance and two people trying to figure out whether they are right for each other – and whether they’re actually ok themselves.  Evvie (rhymes with Chevy) is a wonderful heroine – smart and funny but also a little bit broken and trying to figure out who she really is and if she can get her life back on track.  And Dean is such an appealing hero – he’s lost the ability to do the thing that defined who he was and has to figure out who he is if he’s not a baseball player.  The supporting characters are wonderfully drawn too and Evvie’s complicated relationship with the town feels very realistic.  I had a few minor quibbles here and there – but nothing that took me out of the story or disturbed my warm and cozy feeling at the way that it was all unfolding.

I had been a little worried that this wouldn’t live up to my expectations for it: I had been looking forward to reading this ever since I heard about it.  Linda Holmes is the presenter of the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR and mentioned more than a year ago (as part of their things that are making them happy this week section) that she had written a novel and that it was going to be published.  On top of that, it’s got great reviews, been picked for a big TV book club in the US and the UK version has blurbs from Rainbow Rowell, Helen Hoang and Taylor Jenkins Reid.  How could it ever live up to all that?  But it did, it really did.  I’m often moaning about not being able to find the sort of romantic novels that I like, the sort of thing that I used to be able to buy really easily 10 years ago – with smart heroines and humour and where people fix themselves and get romance as a bonus – and this did everything that I wanted it to do.  When I got to the end and read the list of thank yous from the author, it was a list of people who I listen to on podcasts or read on my favourite websites and I realised that I should have had more faith and been less worried.

British cover of Evvie Drake Starts Over

My copy of Evvie Drake Starts Over came from the library – and I got there before a huuuuuuge queue developed behind me – I only had to wait a couple of weeks after release for my hold to come in.  But its available now in Kindle, Kobo and hardback (with a paperback coming out in March 2020).  It would make a perfect read on your sunlounger this summer.

Happy Reading!

book round-ups

Best (new) books of 2019 so far

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We’re halfway through the year (or we will be on Monday) and so it’s time for me to take a look at my favourite new releases of the year so far.  A couple of months ago I looked at my top reads of the year Q1 (although they were not necessarily all new releases) so some of these picks will not a surprise to you, but hey, I like to shout about the books that I’ve enjoyed! Sue me.

Contemporary Romance: The Bride Test  by Helen Hoang

Cover of The Bride Test

This one was on my 2019 lookahead after I loved Hoang’s debut last year and which lived up to the buzz it was getting ahead of release.  This is a fabulous way to follow up the success of The Kiss Quotient and would make a brilliant beach read this summer.  It’s an arranged marriage/relationship of convenience romance with a feisty immigrant heroine and an neuro-diverse hero who thinks he can’t – and shouldn’t – love.  Plus it’s mostly set in California and feels super summery and the descriptions of the Vietnamese food will make you hungry. What’s not to love in that. Here’s my review from May.

Honourable Mention: Fumbled by Alexa Martin

Historical Romance: A Duke in Disguise by Cat Sebastian 

Cover of A Duke in Disguise

I went on a big old Cat Sebastian jag while I was in the US last autumn, so I had this on my radar. A Duke in Disguise was billed as her first “traditional” male/female romance – but that’s doing it a disservice. This is a clever subversive romance which doesn’t focus on the world of the ton (although they do appear and the nobility plays a role) with feisty, smart, sexually experienced heroine and a neuro-diverse, virgin hero. And the heroine is called Verity – which makes another for my list. Total catnip right?  The only reason this wasn’t a BotW is because I read it the same wee that I read Intercepted – and that was the first Alexa Martin I’d read.  NB: this has a content warning* for off page domestic violence, off page neglect of child, epileptic seizure

Honourable Mention: An Unconditional Freedom by Alyssa Cole

Non fiction History: The Adventures of Maud West

Cover of The Adventures of Maud West

Yeah, I know, it’s only two weeks since I read this.  But it really is so very, very good.  And it ticks so many of my boxes – early twentieth century, women in history, detective stories, forgotten lives.  If you’re a fan of golden age mysteries, what’s not to love about this investigation into the life of a real life lady detective from the first half of the twentieth century? Here’s my review from earlier this month.

Honourable mention: The Five by Hallie Rubenhold

Literary Fiction: Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Cover of Daisy Jones & The Six

This is everywhere – on all the lists and getting all the mentions in the mainstream press – even the bits that don’t usually talk about books.  It was on my anticipated books list, I read it and loved it, it was on my Q1 review post and now I’m talking about it again.  By now you may be getting wary of reading it because of the hype.  But trust me, it’s worth it.  I’ve been recommending it all over the place to people for their summer holidays and I think it might be turning into my Swiss Army Knife fiction recommendation – I think it has something for pretty much everyone.  And for once I was sightly ahead of the curve.  Here’s my review from March.

Honourable mention: The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins

Mystery Fiction: Death of an Angel by Derek Farrell

Cover of Death of an Angel

I haven’t read a lot of new mystery fiction this year, but what I have read has been cracking.  This is the fourth Danny Bird mystery and as well as giving you all the snark and fun you could want from a detective who calls himself “Sherlock Homo”, it has a healthy dose of social commentary about the state of London today along with solving the murder.  I love Danny and his world and I would recommend them to anyone. You can read my review from February here or my interview with Derek Farrell from last year here.

Honourable mention: Vinyl Detective: Flip Back by Andrew Cartmel

So there you are, my favourite new books of the year so far – each of them a belter.  Here’s hoping the rest of 2019’s new releases live up to the first half.

Let me know what your favourite book of the year so far is in the comments – and let me know what you think I should be looking out for in the rest of 2019.

*I’m going to be trying to give content warnings when books have things that some readers want to avoid and that wouldn’t be obvious from their plot summary or genre.  So I won’t be warning you about murders in detective stories or in a non-fiction book like The Five which has it in the subject matter – but I will try and tell you if there’s something like sexual assault in the back story of a romance (if it’s not mentioned in the blurb).  Does that make sense?

Book of the Week, romance

Book of the Week: Hate To Want You

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Back in the contemporary romance world again this week because another of my library holds came in and it was a lot of fun.

Hate To Want You is the first book in Alisha Rai’s Forbidden Hearts series and features a second chance, enemies to lovers, family dysfunction sort of thing. Livvy and Nico spend one night together every year. One night where they forget the fact that their families are enemies, the tragedy in their past and the reasons they hide their feelings even from themselves. Then one year Nico doesn’t hear from Livvy. He tries to forget and move on, but then she reappears in town and the two of them have to face up to the issues in their past and work out if they can find a way to be together agains the odds.

Cover of Hate To Want You

I had heard so much about this book, from so many places so it was great to finally read what everyone had been going on about. I liked the characters, I liked the set up and I liked the complicated situation they found themselves in, I just wanted more of it resolved. I liked that they sorted themselves out, and resolved their problems but I wanted more of the wider picture issues sorted too. Luckily, I’m two years behind the curve as usual, so I can go straight on to book two and book three (library loans permitting) and hopefully get the resolution to the other stuff that’s bubbling along here.

It would be remiss of me not to mention that this has got great representation – the cast is diverse, they have proper issues that can’t just be “fixed” by love and just in general feel like real, breathing people that you might know, living in a world that you can recognise. It’s a really well put together romance that will keep you turning the pages to find out how Livvy and Nico get to their happily ever after.

My copy came from the library, but you can get your own copy from Kindle and Kobo (for £1.99 at the moment, which it definitely wasn’t when I put the library hold in!) . If you want a paperback and you’re in the UK, it’s going to be a special order, because I don’t think it’s had a UK release. Which is a shame – but it’s possible – Amazon list the mass market paperback (and for a reasonably sensible price). There are three books in the series and you can expect to see the other two popping up on Week in Books lists once I can get my hands on them.

Happy reading!

American imports, Book of the Week, new releases, romance

Book of the Week: The Bride Test

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You all knew this was coming.  You knew I’d been looking forward to this.  It was in my anticipated books post, Helen Hoang’s debut, The Kiss Quotient, was a Book of the Week and one of my favourite books of last year.  It is on my bullet journal list of 2019 books I want to read and only came out two weeks ago.  The reading list yesterday was short.  Doris Day died and I’ve been watching romantic comedies and being nostalgic.  This was the perfect book to be reading last week and the perfect BotW pick.

Cover of The Bride Test

So, Khai Diep doesn’t have feelings.  Not like everyone else seems to anyway.  The big feelings that everyone else gets, he doesn’t seem to.  Or at least he doesn’t think he does.  So it wouldn’t be fair on him to have a relationship with anyone – because he can’t give them what they need.  Except that his family knows better – he feels things, it’s just that his autism means he doesn’t process them the same as everyone else does.  So that’s why his mum makes a trip to Vietnam to find a woman for him.  Esme Tran has always felt out of place in Ho Chi Minh City – as a mixed race girl in the slums.  So when she gets the chance to spend a summer in America, she just can’t turn it down.  She could make a better life for her family, she could try and find her father.  But Khai isn’t what she expected.  There’s a language barrier and a culture barrier sure, but there’s something else as well that’s making Khai hold back.  But holding back isn’t a problem for Esme – everything that she’s doing to try and make Khai fall for her is only making her fall for him more.  And Esme’s on a clock – she’s only got a tourist visa and if she doesn’t make Khai want to marry her by the end of the summer, it could all have been for nothing. How will these two get to happily ever after?

I loved this.  Esme is a fantastic heroine – she fierce and determined and resourceful and she’s taking an opportunity to make her life better.  Her story mirrors that of many immigrants from around the world – who are looking for a better future.  You’re willing her on every step of the way.  Khai’s family are the other end of that migration story – they’ve been in America, they’ve arrived, they’ve set down roots and they’ve started the next generation.  And Khai is a fabulous hero – smart, but clueless, generous and caring but in ways that people don’t always recognise.  They make a great couple and it’s a real treat watching them work out their relationship.

There’s a lovely afterword from Helen Hoang talking about how her mother’s life inspired and informed elements of Esme’s life, and it shows.  What also shows is the care and attention Hoang has taken with Khai.  Like Stella in The Kiss Quotient, Khai is in the autistic spectrum, but the two of them are very different and that is absolutely as it should be.  Austism comes in many forms and we need more representation of neurodiverse characters in books.  I’ve been lucky enough to read a lot of books who feature heroes and heroines who I can see myself in – and everyone in society and the world deserves that for themselves too.  Books have also always been one of the ways that I expand my horizons and my understanding – so having more books (and knowing where to look for them) about people who don’t look like me fills me with joy.

This would make the perfect holiday read – I’m almost sorry I didn’t manage to save it for my next vacation.   The next book in the series just can’t come soon enough – especially as it’s Quan’s story and I’ve been itching to find out more about him.  I know I’ll be pre-ordering it just as soon as it that’s an option.

My copy of The Bride Test was pre-ordered on Kindle, which is good because at my library the hold list for the ebook is currently around 19 weeks. But it’s available now on Kobo (£1.99 at time of writing) and Kindle (only £1.19! total bargain)  or you can pre-order the paperback – which comes out on June 6th – from Amazon, Book Depository or wherever you buy your books.  I don’t think you’ll regret it.

Happy Reading!

Bonus photo:  The aforementioned upcoming books master list in my journal.

Double page journal spread with a bookshelf on one side and a list of books on the other