Tag: romance

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

romantic comedy, Series I love

Series I Love: Spoiler Alert

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Happy Friday everyone and I have a romance series for you this week, because all three of these are in Kindle Unlimited at the moment and so now is an ideal time to read them if you haven’t already.

So Olivia Dade’s Spoiler Alert series is three connected romances featuring cast members from a TV show that is somewhat Game of Thrones inspired. God of the Gates has been wildly popular but some of the actors (and the fans!) aren’t happy with the turn that the plots have taken. In Spoiler Alert, one of the stars is taking out his frustration with that by anonymously writing fan fiction, which is how he meets April although of course she doesn’t know who he really is. Then – both unknowingly – they meet in real life when Marcus asks April out after one of her fan costumes goes viral because she is plus size. When they start dating, he realises who she is and how is he going to detangle that one. All the Feels was a BotW, so there’s a full review of that already but it sees Alex assigned a minder by the show runners to keep him out of trouble until the final season airs. And Shipwrecked finds two actors who had a one night stand who find themselves co-stars and stuck filming together on a remote island for the duration of the series (because their characters are shipwrecked there) and so really need to not do anything that could end up in them hating each other and still having to work together. But when the series ends, they finally give in – but the trouble is they both have very different plans for the future.

You don’t really need to read these in order – but they do all take place at basically the same time (or at least parts of them take place at the same time) which makes for a really fun experience if you do read them all even if not in the proper order. Olivia Dade writes rom coms – these are funny as well as sexy and I like her characters who aren’t cookie cutter romances heroes and heroines. She was one of the first romance authors who I read who was regularly writing plus sized heroines or slightly older couples, by which at this point I mean in their 30s or up*, and I appreciate that too. I think I’ve re-read the first two twice each now – and probably the only reason I haven’t re-read Shipwrecked is because I own it in paperback so it’s not handy on my Kindle in the same way. They make great sunlounger books, so if you’re planning a late summer trip, these might be a good choice for you.

These are available in paperback as well as on Kindle Unlimited, and surprisingly given they are in KU at the moment, they are still on Kobo, although they are somewhat pricey there and they aren’t linked together as a series, so here is Spoiler Alert, All The Feels and Shipwrecked over there too.

*which given the amount of romances that have early 20s or college age characters at the moment is very welcome to me. New Adult seems to have subsumed the who genre.

romance, series

Romance series: Heartbreaker Bay

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It’s Friday and I’m back with another romance series for this week’s series post. This time another Jill Shalvis series – I’ve already written about her Lucky Harbor series and recommended a few of her others in recommendsday posts too.

Heartbreaker Bay is a series of eight connected romance novels centered around a renovated building in San Francisco, with characters coming from the residents of the building and employees of the businesses in it or nearby. In the centre of the building is a courtyard with a fountain, and the legend is that if you wish on the fountain you will find love. You know where this is going! You don’t have to read them in order – in fact I read them radically out of order because I borrowed loads of them from the library and read them over a fairly extended period. Half of the series are Christmas books and there are fill in novellas as well.

I was trying to pick a favourite of these but was struggling – by ratings it’s either Accidentally on Purpose or Chasing Christmas Eve, but I read them a while ago and who can tell if I’d still rate them above the ones I’ve read more recently. What I will say about all of these is that the characters have proper backstories, often with some trauma and have reasons for being wary of relationships and that often makes for the most satisfying romance novels for me. So maybe just start at the beginning and go from there!

These are in Kindle Unlimited at the moment, so the time is ripe for you to read them if you’re interest – that’s what finally got me to finish off the series now my local library and its hours are unpredictable…

Happy Friday everyone!

Book of the Week, romance

Book of the Week: The Art of Catching Feelings

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Happy Tuesday everyone, I finally made a start on the Alicia Thompson backlog last week and here I am reporting back!

When Daphne goes to a baseball game days after she’s signed her divorce papers, she’s doing it because her ex wanted the ticket. So she gets drunk and then she heckles a player and seems to make him cry. The moment goes viral and she reaches out to him on social to apologise… except in all the drafting and redrafting she edits out the bit where she says she was the heckler. And so when Chris unexpectedly replies to her message it all gets complicated really fast. Chris is struggling with his own issues and finds himself strangely drawn to his new online friend. But how long can Daphne keep her secret and what happens when he finds out?

Let’s get the big problem over with right away: yes she’s basically catfishing him. And we’re meant to be fine with it – or at least get over it by the time it’s all resolved because: romance reasons. And so your mileage on this one may vary depending on your tolerance for that. I was mostly OK with it, but it took far too long for Daphne to come clean with Chris and I think there were ways that the book could have worked better if the dual identity situation had been resolved sooner.

And I realise that that sounds like I didn’t enjoy this, but I actually did – I read it in about 24 hours – and I liked the banter and the baseball setting and the development of Daphne’s character. I just wanted it to be better in a couple of areas. I wanted to see Daphne’s ex getting his comeuppance for his awful behaviour – which would have helped the reader understand her a bit better (and thus help with the deception thing) – which could just have been as simple as him being really annoyed at the success she sees as part of the plot.

I’ve seen this in Big Foyles and the Waterstones with the romance sections, so it should be fairly easy to get hold of this one (compared to some of my choices I mean) but it’s also on Kobo and Kindle.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, Fantasy, reviews

Book of the Week: Legends and Lattes

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Happy Tuesday everyone. The weather here in the UK is distinctly summery, and I’ve started to one again think about my lack of a summer jacket. But of course as we have a bank holiday coming on Monday, this will not last, and we will soon be plunged into rain and misery again. But I’m enjoying it while I can. Today’s pick has got what I would call strong autumnal vibes – but it was the perfect book for what I needed last week, which was comforting, low angst reading.

Viv has spent her adult life as a barbarian bounty hunter, but as we meet her at the start of Legends and Lattes, she is hanging up her sword. She’s got a plan for a new life and has just finished the last mission she needs to do to be ready to carry it out. And so she leaves her crew behind her and heads to the coastal town of Thune where she wants to open a coffee shop. Just a few issues: no one there knows what coffee is, she’s never run a shop before and not everyone wants her to be successful.

I’d heard lots of people say that this was really, really good and it totally lived up to the hype for me. As I said at the top, this is such a comforting read. The cover even says “low stakes” and although there is some peril here, that is pretty much exactly what you get. Viv sets up a coffee shop and creates herself a found family whilst facing down a few challenges. I can be a bit iffy with fantasy, but this is definitely at the end of things that I like – the world made sense, it’s high fantasy but in some ways it reminds me of the sort of fantasy you get from the Discworld, but with less peril and a lot less satire. It’s a proper hug of a book and I do love a found family type story. I bought this a while ago when it was on offer (based off all those recommendations) and had been saving this for a Time of Need, and it did exactly what I needed it to do.

I read Legends and Lattes on Kindle, but it’s also available on Kobo and as an audiobook – read by Travis Baldree himself as is also a prolific audiobook narrator. There’s a prequel called Bookshops and Bonedust which also features Viv which I now need to read, and a third book in the series coming in the autum.

Happy Reading!

reviews, romance, series

Romance Series: Women Who Dare

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Happy Friday everyone, another week, another romance series for you today.

Beverly Jenkins’s Women Who Dare trilogy is three books set in the aftermath of the Civil War in the United States. First there is Rebel, which is set in New Orleans in the aftermath of the Civil War. Our heroine is Valinda, a transplant from New York in town to teach the newly emancipated community while she waits for her fiancé to return from abroad. Our hero is Drake LeVeq, an architect and son of an old New Orleans family descended from pirates. Second is Wild Rain which is set in Wyoming and is that rare thing: a western historical romance that I liked – so much so that I made it a BotW! And finally To Catch a Raven – which is set back in New Orleans and has a hero and heroine who are forced together in order to reclaim a stolen copy of the Declaration of Independence. Raven comes from a family of grifters, Braxton emphatically does not and as they fake marriage as part of the job they start to discover that perhaps they’re more suited to each other than it seems.

I don’t read a lot of American-set historical romances but I will always make an exception for Ms Beverly Jenkins. I love her writing and characterisation – her Blessings contemporary series is one of my favourites as you know – and she brings all that to the historicals but with interesting settings and premises that you don’t see a lot in the genre. I don’t think you have to read these in order to appreciate them – I didn’t – but you’ll probably get a better experience if you do.

They used to be quite hard to get hold of – but they’re all on kindle now, and they seem to rotate on offer fairly regularly so you can pick up the set.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Book previews

Out This Week: New Rosie Danan

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Happy New Book post Thursday. This week it’s a new book from Rosie Danan – who wrote The Roommate and Intimacy Experiment which were the subject of a double BotW post back in 2021. Her new book is called Fan Service and is a second paranormal romcom – following last year’s Do Your Worst. Now I have a mixed history with romances with supernatural or fantasy elements but I enjoyed the Jen DeLuca that had ghosts, so I’m prepared to give this a go. In Fan Service the star of a werewolf detective show finds himself in need of help from the woman who runs a fan forum for the show after he has an… unusual experience one full moon. I’ll be watching out for this, but also sort of hoping that the release coincides with a price drop for Do Your Worst – or in fact either of them appearing in a bookstore on a Buy One Get One Half Price table…

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Fairytale retellings

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So as it happens, today is Tell a Fairy Tale day, so in honour of that today’s post is about fairytale retellings. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of these are romances, but as i recommend a lot of romance already, I’m sure you won’t mind!

Let’s start with Geekerella, which is the first in Ashley Poston’s Once Upon a Con series, which is a YA romance series. As the name would suggest this is a Cinderella retelling, with a heroine who is a massive fan of a classic sci fi series, and a hero who is the star of a new movie adaptation. As ever with Cinderella stories, my main issues were around the meanness of the stepfamily, but I got past that – and it has a dachshund. And it should also be noted that my least favourite of the Bridgerton series is the Cinderella story – Benedict’s book, An Offer From a Gentleman, which is the third in the series but which I was delighted when the skipped it to go straight to Pen and Colin. I don’t think I’ve ever reread it, which says something but also maybe I should to see if I reassess it now.

Eloisa James has a whole series of fairy tale reworkings that she wrote after her Desperate Duchesses books. As well as Cinderella, she took on The Princess and the Pea, the Ugly Duckling, Rapunzel and my favourite of the series: Beauty and the Beast. In When Beauty Tamed the Beast, the hero has serious Dr House vibes. He’s cranky and does doctor stuff in deepest darkest rural Wales. She’s a society beauty who has accidentally managed to ruin her reputation and decided he is the answer. There is snark. There are independent characters. Just writing about it makes me want to read it again. Talking of Beauty and the Beast, the third Once Upon a Con is Bookish and the Beast and that’s also really fun. And for all of you who fell in love with the Beast in the Disney movie when Belle found his library: this is doing a riff on that. Also I maintain the beast in the Disney animated movie was hotter before he changed back into a prince.

I haven’t read this yet – but I do have it on the Kindle I think – but Sherry Thomas has a Mulan retelling. It’s called the Magnolia Sword and as you know I do love a a story with a girl dressed up as a boy (Masqueraders, Twelfth Night, etc etc) and it’s also a perfect excuse to post a clip of another of my favourite Disney heroes in one of my favourite musical numbers

Also on the list of books I own but haven’t read (yet) is T J Klune’s Pinocchio retelling In The Lives of Puppets. I will get there soon. And if you’ve read the book of the movie Wicked, the author of the novel that inspired the movie (but is very different and much darker) Gregory Maguire has also done some work in fairytales as well as in the wonderful land of Oz – including Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister. And finally there’s an Amazon shorts series that’s inspired by fairy tales called The Faraway collection, which I have read a couple of mostly because the first one is by Rainbow Rowell.

And that’s your lot today – Happy Reading!

books, Recommendsday

Recomendsday: Books set in Yorkshire

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After picking a Kate Shackleton yesterday which was particularly evocative of Yorkshire I thought I’d mention a few more books set around the county

Let’s start with one of my very favourite Georgette Heyer’s – Venetia. Most of this is set in and around Venetia and Damerel’s houses in rural Yorkshire. Venetia is feisty and independent- but Jasper is one of Heyer’s best hero’s and among the most well fleshed out. Another Yorkshire set historical romance – but with a very different vibe – is Sarah MacLean’s Ten Ways to be Adored while Landing a Lord. Our heroine is running the family estate with very little money, and the hero is escaping from fashionable society to the country. This is the second in the Love by Numbers series.

When other people were reading Rivals, I was reading Barbara Taylor Bradford. And A Woman of Substance is set in Leeds and the surrounding countryside. I think this was the first book with sex scenes I ever read but it’s mostly a big old saga as Emma Harte raises herself up from housemaid to department store tycoon. I did read the rest of the trilogy and some of her others, but I think this – which was her big breakthrough was the best.

I mentioned it in the summer when I went to see the stage adaptation at the Open Air Theatre, but a reminder that Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden is set in Yorkshire. I’m going to admit that I haven’t reread this since I was a child, so I can’t swear to how the original is aging… and of course there’s also James Heriot and his adventures in veterinary medicine.

Another book I read recently is Sovereign, the third in the Shardlake series, which sees Matthew following in the train of Henry VIII as he makes his progress to York. As well as a good murder plot it’s also really good at creating sixteenth century York – and given how much of old York still exists you can really conjure up the settings in your head. It was particularly good for me because my history supervisor at university was based in Kings Manor, which is one of the principal locations.

And finally several of the series I really like have installments in yorkshire – including Lady Julia Grey and Royal Spyness, but you really need to ahve read the others to get the most out of them.

Happy Humpday everyone!