Author: Empress DJ

Empress DJ AKA Honolulubelle is a Rabid Reader, Unabashed Reviewer, and All-Purpose Goddess
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Book Review: The Paid Bridesmaid by Sariah Wilson @sariahwilson

The Paid Bridesmaid
by Sariah Wilson

Amazon  / B&N /  BB

From Sariah Wilson, the bestselling author of Roommaid, comes a captivating romantic comedy about what happens when a wedding party mixes business with romance.

Rachel Vinson is a bridesmaid for hire: part confidante, part wedding planner, and one hundred percent pretend BFF. Discretion guaranteed. Her next gig is a destination wedding—live-streamed and sponsored—for an Instagram influencer. That means a paradise of new contacts, which could be a boon to her already booming business. If Rachel can keep the very handsome and slightly too interested best man at bay, that is.

High-tech entrepreneur Camden Lewis must know: Who is this gorgeous, intelligent, and mysterious woman? Too good to be real. Convinced she’s a corporate spy out to tank his company, Camden’s not letting her out of his sight. But the constant surveillance is also opening his eyes to things about Rachel that he likes. If she’s a spy, she’s certainly the cutest one he’s ever seen.

As the week’s worth of wedding events march along, Rachel and Camden are learning almost everything there is to know about each other. Rachel’s made a career out of always a bridesmaid…but perhaps there’s a chance for her own trip down the aisle?

 

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

… there had never been such helicopter parenting as I had growing up. They thought every fever meant I had meningitis and every bruise must mean internal organ failure. I was pretty sure they were the reason my pediatrician had been able to buy a second home in Aspen.

 

I’m sure what he lacks in youth and appearance she more than makes up for by not having a personality…

 

I think I liked it better in the olden days when phones were dumb and people were smart.

 

It’s good to see you laughing, though. For a bit there you were looking like the before picture for Prozac.

 

My dating karma hasn’t been great. I figure in a previous life I caused a lot of damage that I’m paying for now. Like I must have been like a CrossFit instructor or Mussolini or something.

 

My Review:

 

This was my first exposure to Sariah Wilson’s clever wordcraft and I feasted on her enticing characters, amusing and evocative descriptions, and immersive writing style. I marveled at her clever humor and crisp wit while she simultaneously dropped perceptive insights and cunning observations. Her snark was well-honed, whip-smart, and top-shelf, as were her characters’ snappy banter and pithy wordplay. The writing brought sharp and colorful visuals to mind that kept me smirking and pleasurably entertained. The rest of her published listing is now calling my name and has gleefully added to my TBR.

 

USA Today bestselling author Sariah Wilson has never jumped out of an airplane, never climbed Mt. Everest, and is not a former CIA operative. She has, however, been madly, passionately in love with her soulmate and is a fervent believer in happily ever afters—which is why she writes romance. She grew up in southern California, graduated from Brigham Young University (go Cougars!) with a semi-useless degree in history, and is the oldest of nine (yes, nine) children. She currently lives with the aforementioned soulmate and their four children in Utah, along with her cats, Pixel, Callie, and Belle, who do not get along. (The cats, not the children. Although the children sometimes have their issues, too.)

 

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Book Review: Nanny Dearest by Flora Collins @flococo16

 

Nanny Dearest
by Flora Collins

Amazon  / B&N / Apple / GP / BB

In this compulsively readable novel of domestic suspense, a young woman takes comfort in reconnecting with her childhood nanny after her father’s death, until she starts to uncover secrets the nanny has been holding for twenty years.

Sue Keller is lost. When her father dies suddenly, she’s orphaned in her mid-twenties, her mother already long gone. Then Sue meets Annie. It’s been twenty years, but Annie could never forget that face. She was Sue’s live-in nanny at their big house upstate, and she loved Sue like she was her own.

Craving connection and mothering, Sue is only too eager to welcome Annie back into her life; but as they become inseparable once again, Sue starts to uncover the truth about Annie’s unsettling time in the Keller house all those years ago, particularly the manner of her departure—or dismissal. At the same time, she begins to grow increasingly alarmed for the safety of the two new charges currently in Annie’s care.

Told in alternating points of view—Annie in the mid-’90s and Sue in the present day—this taut novel of suspense will keep readers turning the pages right up to the shocking end.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

It is a microcosm of motherhood here, women huddled in clusters around the edge of the playground, shaking out Goldfish, handing over juice boxes, wiping away dirt from little hands… Men are so absent, you would forget they existed at all.

 

But there’s something wrong with me, Suzy. Something very, very wrong.

 

My Review:

 

This was a disturbingly realistic and disquieting piece packed with warped and fractured characters who were all rather lacking in the areas of mental health and likable personalities. The writing was insightful and perceptive with a constant thrum of apprehension and risk of discovery, but the discovery of exactly what was always in question. I was deeply curious and invested in their tale and had developed multiple theories as I read, and all of them were wrong. How I love it when that happens!

The tale unraveled slowly while ratcheting up the tension, which was present and tautly held from the first page to the last word. I was impatient at times when the storylines appeared to falter or veer in other directions although I later realized the author was weaving in additional threads as the characters became increasingly unhinged.   But that ending has left me tapping my little foot while I contemplate my feelings, I’m quite unsettled and bordering on distressed. I have a feeling I will be ruminating on this one for some time.

 

 

About the Author
Flora Collins was born and raised in New York City and has never left, except for a four-year stint at Vassar College. When she’s not writing, she can be found watching reality shows that were canceled after one season or attempting to eat soft-serve ice cream in bed (sometimes simultaneously). Nanny Dearest is her first novel and draws upon personal experiences from her own family history.
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Book Review: Love & Saffron by Kim Fay @kimkfay

Love & Saffron
by Kim Fay

Amazon  / B&N / Apple / GP / BB

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The #1 Indie Next Pick, in the vein of the classic 84, Charing Cross Road and Meet Me at the Museum, this witty and tender novel follows two women in 1960s America as they discover that food really does connect us all, and that friendship and laughter are the best medicine.

When twenty-seven-year-old Joan Bergstrom sends a fan letter–as well as a gift of saffron–to fifty-nine-year-old Imogen Fortier, a life-changing friendship begins. Joan lives in Los Angeles and is just starting out as a writer for the newspaper food pages. Imogen lives on Camano Island outside Seattle, writing a monthly column for a Pacific Northwest magazine, and while she can hunt elk and dig for clams, she’s never tasted fresh garlic–exotic fare in the Northwest of the sixties. As the two women commune through their letters, they build a closeness that sustains them through the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of President Kennedy, and the unexpected in their own lives.

Food and a good life—they can’t be separated. It is a discovery the women share, not only with each other, but with the men in their lives. Because of her correspondence with Joan, Imogen’s decades-long marriage blossoms into something new and exciting, and in turn, Joan learns that true love does not always come in the form we expect it to. Into this beautiful, intimate world comes the ultimate test of Joan and Imogen’s friendship—a test that summons their unconditional trust in each other.

A brief respite from our chaotic world, Love & Saffron is a gem of a novel, a reminder that food and friendship are the antidote to most any heartache, and that human connection will always be worth creating.

 

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

I have simply always had an interest in people from other countries. I like the way their kitchens smell.

 

I have no idea what to do with Sex and the Single Girl. The girls at the paper are chirping with excitement about it. I find it embarrassing. I do not like the presumption that there is only one way for me to be an unmarried, twenty-seven-year-old female. Apparently, I should aspire to something called a “sexth sense,” and places where I should make an effort to meet eligible men include Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. As if I have any interest in spending my life drinking Chablis alone.

 

 The world is big, small, and gloriously astonishing all at once!

 

That is the first time I have written his name in my own hand. It makes my heart feel as vulnerable as a dandelion in a windstorm.

 

I felt thoroughly uncultured as we walked through the Huntington galleries. She knows so much about art. And I didn’t dare open my mouth when she played her opera records. Don’t tell her, but it sounded to me like a box of howling cats.

 

 My Review:

 

This was a quick, gentle, slow and easy, relaxing, thoughtfully written, delightfully amusing, and engaging read that tapped all the feels in the best way possible. The writing was easy to fall into while poignant, historically accurate, and heart-squeezing. The writing was honest and truly moving while a supportive relationship was developing between two women through their pen and paper correspondence over food that spanned several years and only one face-to-face meeting. The women easily established a bond that allowed them to freely expose their innermost fears and bare themselves on paper as they could to no one else in their lives. Their words plumbed all the feels and put hot rocks in my throat and stung my eyes as well as lifted my spirits. Kim Fay has gifted us with a tasty treat and a delicious tale for all the senses.

 

 

Former indie bookseller (Seattle), teacher and travel writer (Saigon), and jill-of-all-trades (Los Angeles). Author of the novels LOVE & SAFFRON (#1 Indie Next pick) and THE MAP OF LOST MEMORIES (Edgar Award Finalist), and COMMUNION: A CULINARY JOURNEY THROUGH VIETNAM. Also the creator/​editor of the To Asia With Love guidebook series, passionate reader, tea drinker, bread baker, nephew wrangler, puppy Mabel mom, and lifelong writer. #blessed
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Book Review: The Night She Went Missing by Kristen Bird @kbirdwrites

The Night She Went Missing
by Kristen Bird 

Amazon  / B&N / Apple / GP / BB

An intriguing and twisty domestic suspense about loyalty and deceit in a tight-knit Texas community where parents are known to behave badly and people are not always who they appear to be.Emily, a popular but bookish prep school senior, goes missing after a night out with friends. She was last seen leaving a party with Alex, a football player with a dubious reputation. But no one is talking.Now three mothers, Catherine, Leslie, and Morgan, friends turned frenemies, have their lives turned upside down as they are forced to look to their own children—and each other’s—for answers to questions they don’t want to ask.

Each mother is sure she knows who is responsible, but they all have their own secrets to keep and reputations to protect. And the lies they tell themselves and each other may just have the potential to be lethal in this riveting debut.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

… they also looked literally hungry. They all had that fresh scrub of a facial and the sallow cheeks of the carb-less.

 

I think that’s everything, ladies. The truth as we know it. Now, we must decide how much to tell everyone else.

 

My Review:

 

This was cleverly written, maddeningly paced, shrewdly plotted, and brilliantly laced together with an original cast of characters who were fatally flawed and varying degrees of abhorrent, yet also compelling and authentic. I was loath to put my beloved Kindle down as I was itching to discover the culprit and unearth the chain of events. I developed, modified, morphed, and cast off multiple theories but was only partially correct in my conclusions – what guile! Kristen Bird is a sly and devious trickster and I was stunned when I noticed this was her debut publication. She is definitely one to watch and going on my list of favorites.

 

About the Author
Kristen Bird lives outside of Houston, Texas with her husband and three daughters. She earned her bachelor’s degree in music and mass media before completing a master’s in literature. She teaches high school English and writes with a cup of coffee in hand. In her free time, she likes to visit parks with her three daughters, watch quirky films with her husband and attempt to keep pace with her rescue lab-mixes. THE NIGHT SHE WENT MISSING is her debut novel.
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Book Review: Under One Roof by Samantha Tonge   @SamTongeWriter

 

Under One Roof
by Samantha Tonge

 

Amazon  / B&N / Apple / GP/ BB


One forgotten discovery will change three women’s lives forever…
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Robin hasn’t been home for decades. After running away to London, she never expected to see her cantankerous mother, Faye, again. But when Faye has a fall, the two women are thrown together once more.

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The years apart have not made their hearts grow fonder and the ground between them is unsteady. Then Robin finds an unopened scroll – the last of the treasure hunts her much-missed father used to take them on every Sunday. A hunt he believed might change everything.

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Yet, not even this gift from her beloved father can smooth the way until Robin’s daughter, Amber, arrives to meet her grandmother for the first time. Amber is determined that the decades-old mystery be solved.

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Can a 30-year-old treasure hunt really ‘change everything’?

My Rating:

Favorite Quote:

 

‘I’m determined not to give everything up just because of this flippin’ arthritis.’ Her eyes twinkled. ‘I might even go dating, on that Tinker, it’s such an appropriate name. I’m sure there’d be an adventurous modern man out there who’d be happy to fiddle around and get my old engine running again.’

 

My Review:

 

This was excellent and although rife with family tension, I fell right into the tale and was fully invested in these authentic characters. The writing was engaging, entertaining, poignant, heart-squeezing, and thoughtfully insightful. The nibble storylines were cleverly crafted with witty treasure hunt clues and riddles, well nuanced with pensive secrets lurking just out of reach, and shrewdly paced to keep me curious and reading until my eyes closed against my will.

The cast of characters was a unique collection of flawed personalities from engaging and likable to abrasive and obnoxious. I was itching to see how their issues would be tackled and possibly resolved. Poor Robin, I adored her but she couldn’t seem to please anyone. She had a failed marriage behind her, recently lost her job, a snarky teenage snot for a daughter, and a snide and cruel battleax for a mother. I would have wanted to run away and join the circus for some peace!

 

About the Author

Amazon
Goodreads
Website
Facebook
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Samantha Tonge lives in Manchester UK with her husband and children. She studied German and French at university and has worked abroad, including a stint at Disneyland Paris. She has traveled widely. When not writing she passes her days cycling, baking, and drinking coffee. Samantha has sold many dozens of short stories to women’s magazines. She is represented by the Darley Anderson literary agency. In 2013, she landed a publishing deal for romantic comedy fiction with HQDigital at HarperCollins, and in 2014, her bestselling debut, Doubting Abbey, was shortlisted for the Festival of Romantic Fiction best Ebook award. In 2015 her summer novel, Game of Scones, hit #5 in the UK Kindle chart and won the Love Stories Awards Best Romantic Ebook category. In 2018 Forgive Me Not heralded a new direction into darker women’s fiction with publisher Canelo. In 2019 she was shortlisted for the Romantic Novelists’ Association romantic comedy award.

 

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Book Review: Am I Allergic to Men? (The Callaghan Sisters #5) by Kristen Bailey  @Bookouture @mrsbaileywrites

Am I Allergic to Men?
(The Callaghan Sisters #5)
by Kristen Bailey 

You think you’ve got it bad? I lost my memory, I’m so single I’ve basically got an allergy to men, and my own cat despises me.

‘Lucy! If you can hear me, squeeze my hand!’

That’s the first thing I hear when I wake up in hospital. Then my sister drops a bombshell: I’ve been in a coma.

It gets worse. In my head, it’s 2009 and I’m seventeen. Somehow, I need to remember the last decade…

Plan A: Track down my exes. Highlights include a one-night stand with someone in a Batman costume, and balcony sex that gave the neighbors a nervous breakdown.

Plan B: Get flirty. Lowlights include a fling with someone hairier than a yeti.

Plan C: Figure out why I have more exes than underwear. Am I allergic to men?

As I piece together my past, I find a mysterious note: Oscar, 9th February. Determined to work out what it means, I uncover a secret I’ve been hiding from everyone.

When the truth comes out, will my memory return? Will I get my life back? And will I ever find the cure to my singledom?

You’ll laugh so much your abs ache! The perfect page-turner for fans of Sophie Kinsella, Lindsey Kelk, and TV shows like Schitt’s Creek.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

She’s still looking for that happy ending where someone will pick her up, pledge undying love and whisk her away to a new-build semi in Surrey. The sort of world Hayley and I inhabit, the semis and happy endings normally end on our faces.

 

I know what my sisters are like and this could possibly still be a very elaborate joke. Those cows told me for years that my real father was Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and that he had to leave the actual country to be a Watcher because he was so ashamed of me.

 

‘We’re just going to get you into a deep state of relaxation…’ All I can think is that when I’m that relaxed I will most likely break wind. I hope the lotus and white musk will be able to mask that.

  

My Review:

 

This was a fun, dynamic, and energetic read that kept me wildly amused and gleefully giggle-snorting with abandon. The writing was crisp, breezy, sweary, and delightfully snarky while the sharp visuals conjured were diabolically humorous and colorful in every sense of the word.

In the previous installments, Lucy’s character was the most eccentric of the five sisters. Lucy was the fiercely independent, feisty, and predictably unpredictable free spirit/firecracker and youngest of the Callaghan clan. So I was doubly impressed with the insightful observations and emotive underpinnings permeating the unfamiliar sense of vulnerability Lucy was experiencing as she struggled to regain a sense of self during her period of memory loss following a head injury. Having lost twelve years would be quite unsettling for anyone but Lucy had packed a lot of living her best life and unusual adventures and eye-opening experimentation into those years. I was fascinated and deliciously entertained by each new development.

This being the last of the series, I am experiencing a sense of rueful melancholy, I will greatly miss this irreverent, divinely inappropriate, and tightly bonded family unit. They were good fun and their hijinks provided me with not only smirk-worthy entertainment but several unusual entries of British vernacular to my Brit Words and Phrases list. Many of which I cannot add to my reviews for fear of being censored, but this installment has produced the current publishable new addition of gurn, which Mr. Google indicates is to grimace or make an ugly face. I would expect nothing less from the lascivious Lucy.

 

 

To celebrate the publication of the fifth and final Callaghan sisters novel, let’s find out if you are Meg, Emma, Beth, Grace, or Lucy?

Quiz compiled by the author, Kristen Bailey.

About the Author

Mother-of-four, gin-drinker, binge-watcher, receipt hoarder, enthusiastic but terrible cook. Kristen also writes. She has had short fiction published in several publications including Mslexia & Riptide. Her first two novels, Souper Mum and Second Helpings were published in 2016. In 2019, she was long-listed in the Comedy Women in Print Prize and has since joined the Bookouture family. She hopes her novels have fresh and funny things to say about modern life, love, and family.

 

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Book Review: Give It Arrest by Laura Barnard @BarnardLaura

Give It Arrest
by Laura Barnard

 

Amazon  / B&N / BB

The high always comes before the fall…

Sadie would do anything not to end up on the streets again.  Even come up with the crazy idea of selling marijuana to cancer patients struggling through chemo.

Before they know it Sadie and her friends are over-run with orders, have a sexy detective on their trail, suspicious neighbours and drug dealers angry they’re working on their patch.

Can Sadie pull them out of this dangerous world they’ve found themselves in, all while ignoring the attraction between her and sexy detective Harry? And can she do it before they end up in prison?

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

‘You think I’m a police lady?’ I ask in disbelief. ‘How dare you! Have you even seen my shoes?’ I throw my leg up onto the counter, years of adult ballet working in my favour. I present my black patent stilettos with a red strap. ‘Do these look like the ugly shoes of a policewoman?’ I ask, my voice rising higher than it should. Damn it, he’s offended my shoes. He might as well have called me fat.

 

I feel a thrill of excitement go through me at the thought of it. I’m like a bond agent. What would I call myself? Pussy Galore’s taken. Maybe Gorgeous Chick. No, that doesn’t sound like a name. Maybe Gigi Paris. Yeah, I like that.

 

My God, my lady bits are so excited I’m worried I’m going to take off any minute, spinning round the room like a let off balloon.

 

My Review:

 

Don’t pick up this book unless you are ready to let your hair down for an irreverently humorous, snarky, sweary, and busy read. The writing was sly, wry, snappy, ironically amusing, and laced together with Ms. Barnard’s signature style of impertinent levity. The storylines were filled with struggling and conflicted characters who were deeply flawed and extremely annoying, yet I was invested in their plight.

The story was written from the first-person POV of Sadie who was recently unemployed and panicked by her inability to find a new job. Sadie was flippant, crass, and brassy, yet she meant well. She was fiercely independent but had a painfully heavy chip on her shoulder, was prone to irrational temper flares and was easily distracted. While trying to make ends meet and help her former co-workers/friends, Sadie found herself on a course of self-destruction.   I alternated between empathizing with her and wanting to pop her in the mouth. Her unusual odyssey was cheekily entertaining, smirk-worthy, and action-packed.

Laura Barnard lives in Hertfordshire, UK, and writes romantic comedy or ‘chick lit’ as it is so often described. In her spare time, she enjoys drinking her body weight in tea, indulging in cupcakes the size of her face, and drooling over hunks like Jamie Dornan, Ryan Gosling, and Leo Dicaprio.

She enjoys wearing yoga pants and reading fitness magazines while sitting on the sofa eating chocolate. She’s a real fan of the power nap and of course READING!

She writes not to get rich or famous, but because she LOVES writing. Even if one person tells her they enjoyed her book it makes the midnight typing worth it!

 

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Book Review: Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney @alicewriterland @MacmillanUSA @Flatironbooks

Rock Paper Scissors
by Alice Feeney 

Amazon  / B&N / Apple / GP / BB

 

Think you know the person you married? Think again…


Things have been wrong with Mr. and Mrs. Wright for a long time. When Adam and Amelia win a weekend away to Scotland, it might be just what their marriage needs. A self-confessed workaholic and screenwriter, Adam Wright has lived with face blindness his whole life. He can’t recognize friends or family, or even his own wife.

Every anniversary the couple exchange traditional gifts – paper, cotton, pottery, tin – and each year Adam’s wife writes him a letter that she never lets him read. Until now. They both know this weekend will make or break their marriage, but they didn’t randomly win this trip. One of them is lying, and someone doesn’t want them to live happily ever after.

Ten years of marriage. Ten years of secrets. And an anniversary they will never forget.

Rock Paper Scissors is the latest exciting domestic thriller from the queen of the killer twist, New York Times bestselling author Alice Feeney.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

… sometimes the dust of our memories is best left unswept.

 

I immediately regret saying it, but words don’t come with gift receipts and you can’t take them back.

 

Getting married costs a pretty penny, and pennies are prettiest when you don’t have many of them.

 

It smells as though we are in a chapel now. That musty scent of old Bibles and blind faith.

 

Trust can’t be borrowed, if you take it away you can’t give it back.

 

Don’t housekeepers clean things? From what I saw through the window, she doesn’t look like she knows how to use a feather duster. She may have a broom… for flying around at night—

 

Dreams are like dresses in a shop window; they look pretty, but sometimes don’t fit when you try them on.

 

She had a face like a carp and it was as red as her apron. Her beady eyes glared and she barked the word “what” at him with venomlike spit. She was clearly a woman who was good at making people feel bad. Sam resisted the urge to offer his condolences for Patty’s sister, who he was sure had been murdered by a girl called Dorothy near a yellow brick road.

 

My Review:

 

This was a brilliantly plotted and shrewdly paced and captivating tale that kept me tethered to my Kindle. I didn’t see this ending coming at all. The writing was cleverly observant and witty, wryly humorous while chillingly cunning, easy to fall into yet tense and prickly, and featured multiple POVs of people who intrigued me but weren’t all that likable most of the time. I fell right into the author’s trap and was totally bamboozled. I had several pages of favorite quotes and highlights.

Alice Feeney is a sly minx – her word voodoo is strong. I was sucked right into her characters’ narratives and even though I live in the tropics, I felt the bone-chilling and teeth-rattling temperatures of the unheated stone buildings in the Scottish Highlands.   It was tense and gripping with impending peril right around the corner, yet the observant humor was snarky and smirk-worthy witty on the way there. I’m greedy for all her clever arrangements of words and have just added her entire listing to my TBR.

 

 

About the Author
Alice Feeney is a New York Times bestselling author and journalist. Rock Paper Scissors is her fourth novel and is being made into a TV series for Netflix by the producer of The Crown. It will be published around the world in 2021.

Her debut novel, Sometimes I Lie, was an international bestseller, has been translated into over twenty languages, and is being made into a TV series by Warner Bros. starring Sarah Michelle Gellar. His & Hers is also being adapted for the screen by Jessica Chastain’s Freckle Films.

Alice was a BBC Journalist for fifteen years before becoming an author. She lives in Devon with her family.

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Book Review: Just River by Sara B. Fraser @saraphraser @mindbuckmedia

Just River
by Sara B. Fraser 

Amazon  / B&N  / BB

Sara B. Fraser paints for readers how life in a nothing upstate New York town in the ’90s might look: bleak and gritty. Wattsville was a booming manufacturing town on the Otis River. But now, the mills are closed. The windows boarded up. The same people frequent the same bars every day without fail. What once was a prosperous place is now somewhere riddled with substance abuse, poverty, violence, and hush-hush secrets. But only the river bears witness to all these secrets — and only the river can divulge the truth.

At the heart of these secrets is one family. When Carol’s daughter, Garnet, is caught in the crosshairs of justice and her former boyfriend’s deceit, Carol and her best friend Sam plot to prove Garnet’s innocence. Told with beauty and tenderness against the landscape of forgotten everyday America, Fraser’s JUST RIVER connects the complexity and danger we all contain.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

That woman’s gotten so much Botox, her eyebrows have fused to her skull.

 

It feels odd, smiling at them, like something might escape her mouth if she doesn’t keep her teeth clenched.

 

In Wattsville he is one of a kind, whereas he would find many like-minded people in the city. But he’s afraid. Its size scares him, and furthermore he wouldn’t be particularly special. Here, he explains, he’s a unicorn, a big fish in a small pond. “Puddle,” says Chloe. “It’s not a pond, it’s a puddle, my dear. You want to swim or lie there getting splashed? Heavens, the place is bound to evaporate in warm weather.”

 

Garnet is developing the rigid jaw and tight lips of a person expecting the worst. He is reminded of the way people’s faces look when they’re stuck in traffic, or when they pick the wrong checkout lane in the supermarket.

 

He must be outside his body… The pain is fading. Is there a solar eclipse? Sam sees, through a vague foggy tunnel, like the ending of the Looney Tunes cartoons he used to watch as a child— D-d-d-d-dat’s all folks!

 

My Review:

 

This was a shrewdly paced and cleverly plotted tale of knotted woe and intriguing complexities that boil down to simple thorny social problems.   After I finished I went back and reread the first chapter and found a treasure chest full of tidbits I had not noticed the first time through. Sara B. Fraser has a special brand of magic sprinkled into her wordcraft and I fell right under her spell.

The storylines and writing style were often realistically gritty, flinch-worthy with complex issues, keenly insightful, painfully observant, and yet bewitchingly humorous – all at the same time! Which takes crazy good skills. The characters were well nuanced and oddly compelling while deeply flawed. Most were repressed, oppressed, suppressed, and vulnerable. I was holding my breath while fully invested and rooting for them, even when they annoyed me. Ms. Fraser is a wily minx with a wicked wit and going to the top of my list of ones to watch.

 

Sara B. Fraser is also the author of LONG DIVISION, published by Black Rose Writing in March 2019. Her short fiction has appeared in Carve, Wilderness House Literary Review, Salamander, Stonecrop, the Forge, The Jabberwock Review, and more. She is a high-school Spanish teacher, surfing-obsessed, and the mother of two boys.
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Book Review: The Sweetheart Deal (Blossom Glen #1) by Miranda Liasson   @mirandaliasson

The Sweetheart Deal
(Blossom Glen #1)
by Miranda Liasson

Amazon / B&N / GP  / Apple / BB

From the bestselling author of the Angel Falls series, two enemies say “I do” in the first irresistible book about Blossom Glen.

Pastry chef Tessa Montgomery knows what everyone in the teeny town of Blossom Glen says about her. Spinster. Ice Queen. Such a shame. It’s enough to make a woman bake her troubles away, dreaming of Parisian delicacies while she makes bread at her mother’s struggling boulangerie. That is until Tessa’s mortal enemy—deliciously handsome (if arrogant) chef Leo Castorini, who owns the restaurant next door—proposes a business plan…to get married.

Leo knows that the Castorinis and the Montgomerys hate each other, but a marriage might just force these stubborn families to work together and blend their businesses for success. The deal is simple: Tessa and Leo marry, live together for six months, and then go their separate ways. Easy peasy.

It’s a sweetheart deal where everyone gets what they want—until feelings between the faux newlyweds start seriously complicating the mix. Have they discovered the perfect recipe for success…or is disaster on the way?

Each book in the Blossom Glen series is STANDALONE:
* The Sweetheart Deal
* The Sweetheart Fix

 

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

… she had to endure a lot of sad headshaking and endless questions about being dumped. Yes, still, even after almost a year. That was the thing about a small town— the first thing you did in your life that was gossip-worthy became the defining trait of your existence.

 

… this garden is protected by Gnomeland Security

 

“It’s three in the morning,” Gram said, tying a knot in her blue silk robe. “All of you are alive and breathing, so who’s pregnant?”

  

My Review:

 

I reveled in this entertaining and discerningly written tale and felt it was the author’s most poignant of those I’ve read. The storylines and writing tapped all the feels with a keen sensitivity and canny insights into the complications and sacrifices required to maintain family business as well as a peaceful existence in a small town. I adored these characters and how could I not? These are my people as they enjoyed Moscato, rainbow flip-flops, and sallying clever quips at each other like missiles. This new series is off to an excellent start and I am hooked and eager to see what and whom this clever wordsmith does with the next installment.

 

Author Bio:

Miranda Liasson loves to write stories about everyday people who find love despite themselves because there’s nothing like a great love story. And if there are a few laughs along the way, even better! She’s a Romance Writers of America Golden Heart winner and an Amazon bestselling author whose heartwarming and humorous small-town romances have won accolades such as the Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence and have been Harlequin Junkie and Night Owl Reviews Top Picks.

 

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