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Once a man who lived by the letter of the law.

Newt Tobias will do anything for his little girl. Even take early retirement, sell his city home, and move to cottage country, hoping that the simpler life will provide a better balance for his troubled teenage daughter. 

Yet, not long after they’ve settled, he finds himself toe-to-toe with a stubborn, fiery tempered woman with pretty brown eyes.

Once a recluse preferring to live alone. 

Working with troubled adolescents, Frederique Marchand doesn’t suffer fools and won’t put up with bullies. Especially handsome strangers like Newt who think they can run roughshod over her. She loves her work, but on her own time she much prefers the company of her menagerie of animals.

But with the welfare of a teenager at stake, she must put aside rocky first impressions and work with a man who needs her as much as she’ll come to need him.

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Foxylutely Book Reviews – “This was another winning storyline from Freya Barker and one I did not want to end.”


Mindy Lou’s Book Review – “What an incredible and emotional story about a single father struggling to help his troubled, teenage daughter.”


The Laundry Librarian – “A Change of Pace is the perfect down home, all the feels, REAL romance read. It was refreshing, heartbreaking and beautiful.”

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

You realize this is supposed to be a bonding exercise, right? I swear the two of you make it feel more like the Hunger Games than euchre night…

I hardly think you’d qualify as a spinster. You don’t wear the prerequisite sensible shoes.

Seriously, you’d think he was pushing out triplets the way he’s moaning and grunting. Nothing worse than a sick man… Married bliss, they say. A load of jabberwocky. Wait ‘til pretty boy gets a cold, the romance will evaporate fast then a fart in a fan factory.

My Review:

I adore Freya Barker stories and I particularly relished how she employed the uncommon twist of a selfless and nurturing single-parent dad for this one.   Newt was a relatively awesome dad despite only stepping into the full-time parent role a few years prior. But then, I always enjoy picking up a Freya Barker book. Her stories are relevant, unique, and original, yet easy to sink into and feature realistic people with real-world issues while also providing entertaining side servings of romance, sensual steam, and levity. As with all her books, the primary and secondary characters featured in Change of Pace were recognizable and realistically flawed, yet endearing and well-meaning with each valiantly struggling with their own foibles, choices, and concerns. The writing flowed smoothly and was comfortably easy to follow while also emotive and engaging. I appreciate and marvel at her observant insights and thoughtful touches which deftly insert each thread into a cohesive storyline. Plus, I scored the added bonus of learning a new word – garburator, which according to Mr. Google, is what our friends to the north call the garbage disposal.

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Freya Barker inspires with her stories about ‘real’ people, perhaps less than perfect, each struggling to find their own slice of happy. She is the author of the Cedar Tree Series and the Portland, ME, novels.

Freya is the recipient of the RomCon “Reader’s Choice” Award for best first book, “Slim To None,” and is a finalist for the 2016 Kindle Book Awards for “From Dust”. She currently has two complete series and three anthologies published, and is working on two new series; La Plata County FBI—ROCK POINT, and Northern Lights. She continues to spin story after story with an endless supply of bruised and dented characters, vying for attention!

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 What Blooms from Dust

by James Markert

Amazon | iBooks | Books-A-Million | Barnes & Noble

Paperback: 352 pages

Publisher: Thomas Nelson (June 26, 2018)

Just as Jeremiah Goodbye is set to meet his fate in the electric chair, a tornado tears down the prison walls, and he is given a second chance at life. With the flip of a coin, he decides to return to his hometown of Nowhere, Oklahoma, to settle the score with his twin brother Josiah. But upon his escape, he enters a world he doesn’t recognize—one that has been overtaken by the Dust Bowl. And the gift he once relied on to guide him is as unrecognizable as the path back to Nowhere.

After one jolt in Old Sparky, Jeremiah sees things more clearly and begins to question the mysterious circumstances surrounding the murders he was accused of. On his journey home, he accidentally rescues a young boy who follows him the rest of the way, and the pair arrive at their destination where they are greeted by fearful townspeople. When the Black Sunday storm hits the very next day, the residents of Nowhere finally begin to let the past few years of hardship bury them under the weight of all that dust.

Unlikely heroes, Jeremiah and his new companion, Peter Cotton, try to protect the townspeople from themselves, but Jeremiah must face his nightmares and free himself from the guilt of flipping the coin on those men who died.

Filled with mystery and magic, What Blooms from Dust is the story of finding hope in the midst of darkness and discovering the beauty of unexpected kindness.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Wilmington said he felt a duster coming every morning. He liked to hedge his bets and say he told you so.

Least when I talk I don’t look like a mouse nibblin’ on cheese…

Back when you had hair on your head and a stomach that fit in your pants. How do you continue gaining weight when the rest of us can’t seem to keep it?

Your mother died too young, Jeremiah. Death ain’t picky when it comes to things like that. It takes you when it takes you and then leaves you to cope without the least bit of instructions on how you’re supposed to do it.

There’s signs up everywhere in California… They say No Okies Allowed. They don’t want us. Nobody wants us. We’re no different from the Indians and the Blacks and the Mexicans… They put us on the same signs. The same signs.

My Review:

“Health, wealth, and opportunity,” were the promises on a brochure depicting a lovely town with paved roads and a wholesome and established community which had lured a train filled with hopeful new residents, all eager to see their new investment of homes and property, only to find themselves in the middle of nowhere, in a field in the Oklahoma panhandle in 1920s. Swindled and fleeced. They settled there anyway and ironically named their newly established town, Nowhere, Oklahoma. I love irony and Mr. Markert used it cleverly throughout his intricately woven storylines and brilliantly paced and engrossing tale.

Masterfully crafted are the words that kept turning over in my mind as I read this evocative and superbly written book. It was quite stunning. Mr. Markert’s cunning use of detail and striking descriptions plucked at all senses while sharp visuals danced through my gray matter. I became so engrossed in the story I grew hot and thirsty when they were parched; I could almost hear the wind and smell/taste/feel the grit of the relentless dust that permeated every scene. Their despair and exhaustion wafted across the pages. I also felt low-energy as they grew increasingly listless and despondent.   But in addition to all that was the eeriness of the sixth sense and unexplainable good/evil type forces at play.   I was fully invested in this startling and peculiar family drama from beginning to end and despite the arduousness of the tale; I was well pleased and fully satisfied with the journey.

About James Markert

James Markert lives with his wife and two children in Louisville, Kentucky. He has a history degree from the University of Louisville and won an IPPY Award for The Requiem Rose, which was later published as A White Wind Blew, a story of redemption in a 1929 tuberculosis sanatorium, where a faith-tested doctor uses music therapy to heal the patients. The Angels’ Share is his second novel, and he is currently working on his next historical, All Things Bright and Strange. James is also a USPTA tennis pro, and has coached dozens of kids who’ve gone on to play college tennis in top conferences like the BIG 10, the Big East, and the ACC..

Connect with James

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 Whiskey Sharp: Torn

by Lauren Dane

Amazon | Books-A-Million | Barnes & Noble

Mass Market Paperback: 352 pages

Publisher: HQN (June 26, 2018)

Sometimes what you find isn’t what you were searching for

Beau Petty has been searching his whole life. Searching for a place that fills all the empty spaces in him. Searching for a way to tame the restlessness. Searching for answers to the secret he’s never stopped trying to solve. What he wasn’t searching for was a woman to claim all of him, but when Cora Silvera walks back into his life, he’s ready to search out all the ways he can make her his.

Cora has spent her life as the family nurturer, taking care of others. But now she’s ready to pass that job on to someone else. It’s time to make some changes and live for herself. It’s in that moment that her former teenage crush reappears and the draw and the heat of their instant connection is like nothing either of them has experienced. He craves being around her. She accepts him, dark corners and all.

Beau thinks Cora’s had enough drama in her life. He wants to protect her from the secrets of his past, even if it means holding back the last pieces of himself. But Cora is no pushover and she means to claim all those pieces.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Beau’s had quite the colorful life. I mean. Wow. Also the modeling shots alone might have made me pregnant.

 Naked, he’s like one of those magical things you’re not supposed to look at directly or you get ensorcelled.

 I guess I need to make an honest man out of you or people might think you were easy… You must really love me to want my crazy mixing up with your crazy. You do realize we might have just bred the Kwisatz Haderach, right?

 People take pictures of you. You’re not just a pretty surfing tourist. You’re Beau Petty. And so some video of you giving me the business would end up online and everyone would savage my thighs…

 Rachel snatched the dog from her sister and Cora decided not to inform them that Beau had fed Jezzy an entire can of those gross sausages that smelled like dog food. Cute though Jezzy was, she also farted like a demon, and then pretended it wasn’t her.

My Review:

This book was a delight, I’ve never read this author before but look forward to further indulging myself with her magical combinations of words. Silly me, I jumped into a series with book three, and while it probably would have deepened my enjoyment and understanding of the secondary characters, it was not necessary to have read the previous books as Whiskey Sharp: Torn had strong legs, like mighty oaks, and was more than capable of standing alone.   However, I am greedy and want to read the two earlier books as well as anything else this staggeringly talented wordsmith has scribbled.

The characters were multi-layered, alluring, and captivating while adorned with fascinating and complicated histories. The storylines were engaging, unique, intriguing, and laced with levity, zinging banter, bawdy wit, and clever humor.   The copious meals that were prepared and enjoyed tantalized and tortured this salivating dieter, as they sounded as drool-worthy as the lascivious and bootylicious sensual scenes.

This was my favorite type of story as the featured couple enjoyed a refreshingly sweet, sensual, and profoundly nurturing and supportive relationship that was relatively conflict-free. And I absolutely loved this couple; they were adorable and precious, perfectly matched, irresistible, and off-the-charts passionate together. They were totally smitten and besotted and good to and for each other. I reveled in the ease, thoughtfulness, and care they took with each other, as well as their ability to scorch the sheets and singe the ceiling tiles. I have to adore a sweet and sexy man who can inventively cook in every room in the house.

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About Lauren Dane

The story goes like this – While on pregnancy bed rest, Lauren Dane had plenty of down time so her husband took her comments about “giving that writing thing a serious go” to heart and brought home a secondhand laptop. She wrote her first book on it before it gave up the ghost. Even better, she sold that book and never looked back.

Today Lauren is a New York Times bestselling author of over fifty novels and novellas across several genres.

Connect with Lauren

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Summer at The Little Duck Pond Café

by Rosie Green

Goodreads

Amazon US / UK

Jaz Winters stuck a pin in a map and fled to the village of Sunnybrook, looking for a brand new life – and after a rocky start, it’s beginning to look as if she made the right decision. Her blossoming friendship with Ellie and Fen has seen her through some dark times, and she’s managed to land two jobs – waitress at The Little Duck Pond Café and working as a weekend tour guide at Brambleberry Manor, the country house that’s been in Fen’s family for generations.

Sure, life isn’t totally perfect. There’s the irritating know-it-all guy who keeps popping up on her manor tours, for a start. He seems determined to get under Jaz’s skin whether she likes it or not. But she supposes it’s a small price to pay for the relative peace she’s found, living in Sunnybrook.

But just as Jaz is beginning to think rosier times are on the horizon, a shock encounter looks set to shatter her fragile happiness.

Will she be forced to flee from Sunnybrook and everyone she’s grown so fond of? Or will she find the strength to stand her ground and finally face up to the nightmares of the past?

This novella is part of a trilogy:

Spring at The Little Duck Pond Café

Summer at The Little Duck Pond Café

Winter at The Little Duck Pond Café

My Rating:

3.75 Stars

Favorite Quotes:

I could probably see the funny side of this – if I wasn’t feeling as tense as Donald Trump on a windy day.

 Even his T-shirt has a joke on it. Give Blood. Play Rugby.

 My Review:

I’m feeling more than a bit conflicted with this installment. The character of Jaz was the annoyingly weak and waffly type of woman who I impatiently want to give a kick in the posterior region so as to provide them assistance in loosening their misplaced cranium. However, the premise was entertaining and the writing was comfortable and easy to follow, and I enjoyed the sweet elements of the village, catching up with previously introduced characters, and the brisk pace of several of the storylines as well as the welcome hits of levity. Yet I struggled to appreciate the lead character, which is a rather crucial factor in my reading enjoyment.

Author Bio

Rosie Green has been scribbling stories ever since she was little. Back then they were rip-roaring adventure tales with a young heroine in perilous danger of falling off a cliff or being tied up by ‘the baddies’. Thankfully, Rosie has moved on somewhat, and now much prefers to write romantic comedies that melt your heart and make you smile, with really not much perilous danger involved at all, unless you count the heroine losing her heart in love.

Rosie’s brand new series of novellas is centered on life in a village café. Summer at The Little Duck Pond Café, published on 18^th June 2018, follows the first in the series, Spring at The Little Duck Pond Café.

Twitter – https://twitter.com/Rosie_Green1988

The Summer List

by Amy Mason Doan

Paperback: 384 pages

Publisher: Graydon House (June 26, 2018)

In the tradition of Judy Blume’s Summer Sisters, The Summer List is a tender yet tantalizing novel about two friends, the summer night they fell apart, and the scavenger hunt that reunites them decades later—until the clues expose a breathtaking secret that just might shatter them once and for all.

Laura and Casey were once inseparable: as they floated on their backs in the sunlit lake, as they dreamed about the future under starry skies, and as they teamed up for the wild scavenger hunts in their small California lakeside town. Until one summer night, when a shocking betrayal sent Laura running through the pines, down the dock, and into a new life, leaving Casey and a first love in her wake.

But the past is impossible to escape, and now, after seventeen years away, Laura is pulled home and into a reunion with Casey she can’t resist—one last scavenger hunt. With a twist: this time, the list of clues leads to the settings of their most cherished summer memories. From glistening Jade Cove to the vintage skating rink, each step they take becomes a bittersweet reminder of the friendship they once shared. But just as the game brings Laura and Casey back together, the clues unravel a stunning secret that threatens to tear them apart…

Mesmerizing and unforgettable, Amy Mason Doan’s The Summer List is about losing and recapturing the person who understands you best—and the unbreakable bonds of girlhood.

“This accomplished debut novel from Doan cleverly blends a coming-of-age tale, the story of a long-simmering mystery, and a thoughtful study of relationships between childhood friends…. With lovable characters and a scenic small town, Doan’s pleasant mix of mystery and high school nostalgia will please readers who grew up with the novels of Judy Blume.”-Publishers Weekly

“A trip down memory lane becomes a hunt for long-buried secrets in Amy Mason Doan’s gripping and poignant debut about the bond between two compelling outsiders. The Summer List is an evocative tale of family, first love, and the unique and lasting gift of a friendship formed in girlhood.”-Meg Donohue, USA Today bestselling author

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

I had a journal my dad gave me when I was seven, a puffy pink thing with A Girl’s First Diary on the cover in gold script. I hid it inside a hollowed-out copy of Silas Marner on my bottom bookshelf, and concealed the key in a mint tin in my third best church purse.

 I could take the most direct route to the exit—hurdle over the blue-carpeted half wall in front of us and run straight across the crowded rink. I’d shove aside toddlers, the gang of tough-looking older women zooming past in matching black satin jackets that said Hell on Wheelz, whoever. But I was an adult now so I only smiled harder.

“You can tell my age in our high school pictures by the thickness of my eyeshadow.” Like figuring out a tree’s age by the rings in the trunk.

Soggy heart. I’d read that on some blog. The not-so-technical name for when you get tipsy and accidentally tell the truth.

Women’s Studies 201. Sophomore year… Modern religion is an institution created by men to police women’s sexuality. Discuss. Oh, the hands that had shot up that day. Not mine, though. I’d kept my own hands, twisting and fidgeting, in my lap, too overcome by the bell-like simplicity of the professor’s statement, too angry at how long the world had waited to articulate it to me clearly, to speak. By the end of the fifty-minute class my palms were wet.

My Review:

This cunningly paced and well-crafted book resonated for me like the thrum of a well-struck tuning fork.   It sucked me right in and held my rapt attention as I felt I knew and understood these endearingly flawed characters inside and out. Cleverly and deftly narrated by two women over three timelines, I never felt confused or lost but held suspended in an eager and avid state of curiosity. I was engaged, engrossed, and intrigued by the characters, their history, and the prickly unfolding story of their present.

I over-identified with the character of Laura at every age, but I took great pleasure in her clever stealth and ingenious efforts to carve out a modicum of privacy for herself, away from her stridently religious mother’s stifling control. Laura devised secret hiding places for her diary and prized possessions and an intricate level of subterfuge was required for even the smallest acts of rebellion such as using lip gloss, eating pizza, and having a true friend in the real world who would not meet her judgmental mother’s stringent expectations. I wanted to fist pump when Laura finally spoke up.

I was frequently awed by this intensely talented author’s insightful and deft handling of the characters thoughts and observances, as well as their understanding or misunderstandings of the unusual events at various ages and levels of assimilation.   The storylines were unique, beguiling, and captivating as were each and every one of the characters. I now need to sleep for a week as I had a hard time putting this one down. The writing was extraordinary, intricate, and arresting. I was more than satisfied by the ending but would have happily read another 384 more pages. Amy Mason Doan has crazy good word voodoo.

About Amy Mason Doan

AMY MASON DOAN earned a BA in English from UC Berkeley and an MA in journalism from Stanford University and has written for The Oregonian, San Francisco Chronicle, and Forbes, among other publications. She grew up in Danville, California, and now lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and daughter. The Summer List is her first novel.

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Connect with Amy

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The Guilt of a Sparrow

by Jess B. Moore

Goodreads

Amazon US/ UK  /  B&N

The Guilt of a Sparrow

Magnolia Porter has spent the entirety of her twenty-four years satisfying her mother’s guilt. She was the good girl to her troublemaking brother, Lucian – the one left behind to hold her mother together after he died. She is an invisible girl in a small town carrying the burden of her family’s loss and pain. Maggie was nobody trying desperately to be somebody.  

Cotton MacKenna is the one with the temper. Of the five MacKenna boys, he’s the one most likely to throw the first punch. Never mind all those fights were a decade ago, all in an attempt to save a sweet girl from her bullying older brother. Now, Cotton has grown up, with his own photography business, yet as the fourth in the line of MacKennas, he would only ever be known for his past. Time for a change.  

Maggie and Cotton are more than the labels placed on them, put there by their families, the town, and themselves.  

A meddling best friend. Bluegrass jams. Small town gossiping. Love, loss, and family ties. Learning how to be who you are outside of who you were told to be. With humor and plenty of romance, of course.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

The MacKenna clan was one short of a six-pack of boys… Some people loved them, for their good humor, musicality, and generosity. Others hated the lot of them, for their pranks, talent, and popularity.

Mrs. Albright. A horrible old biddy. White blue hair, deep set wrinkles, and an affinity at spreading ignorance.

“I am talking to Vincent on Monday, and he’ll ask her out, and before you know it they’ll have little tattooed kids running around.” “Tattooed kids?” I asked because I couldn’t help it. The idea was too funny. “He can’t have plain ol’ regular kids.” She deadpanned,

The silence felt like a real thing, something swimming in the air that I could grab at and come away with evidence in my hands.

I had no destination in mind, but whatever I was looking for, I hadn’t found it yet. That was the problem with running away, when your only goal was to leave something behind, but never to find something ahead.

 My Review:

I was stunned and awed to realize this masterfully crafted tale was the author’s first book. It was divine storytelling. I was quickly sucked into the Magnolia Porter vortex and there I remained, fully immersed and held fast by this highly skilled writer’s mesmerizing prose. Jess B. Moore has mad skills. The writing was evocative, unflinchingly insightful, and keenly observant, while the storylines were well-paced and cunningly honed. But the characters, oh I adored and ached for these deeply flawed characters and felt I knew them all too well. Jess B. Moore is definitely going to the top of my list as a new favorite and “Talent to Watch.”

Author Bio –  

Jess B Moore is a writer of love stories.  When she’s not writing, she’s busy mothering her talented and stubborn children, reading obscene numbers of books, and knitting scarves she’ll likely never finish.   

Jess lives in small-town North Carolina with her bluegrass obsessed family.  She takes too many pictures of her cat, thinking the Internet loves him as much as she does.  She is a firm believer of swapping stories over coffee or wine, and that there should always be dark chocolate involved.   

The Guilt of a Sparrow is her debut novel combining her interests in family, music, and small towns into a thoughtful tale of growing up and falling in love.  Her second book, Fierce Grace, follows similar themes in a whole new way and will be available later in 2018.   

Please leave a review to tell other readers what you thought.  Reviews are everything for writers! 

Social Media Links –
Website: https://jessbmoore.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/authorjessb
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Instagram: http://instagram.com/authorjessb