Kissing in the Rain 

(Blushing Bay #2.5)

Annie Rains

Goodreads

Amazon /  B&N 

A Blushing Bay Prequel Novella

After a rough year, Jillian Maready is overdue for a relaxing weekend getaway. Where better to find that than Blushing Bay, North Carolina where her family vacationed growing up? When she sets sail on her own, however, she ends up stranded on a deserted island in the middle of one of the biggest storms of the summer—and in the arms of her sexy childhood crush.

As part of the Coast Guard Reserve, Gabe Sawyer is used to search and rescues. After learning that his sister’s best friend is in trouble, he doesn’t hesitate to brave the storm to find her. With the raging seas too volatile to navigate back, Gabe is in over his head when he and Jillian must spend one hot summer night surviving the storm together—and giving in to their sizzling attraction. But what happens when the sun comes back out?

My Rating:

Favorite Quote:

I don’t hate your guts. I’m just not very fond of them.

My Review:

This saucy little second chance tale was short and sweet and a petite side story to accompany the other installments in this engaging series featuring the Sawyer family.   Jillian and Gabe shared an embarrassing episode in their teens when fifteen-year-old bookworm Jillian had thrown herself at Gabe, her first crush and best friend’s older brother. He had also feelings for her at the time but didn’t feel it appropriate, and his rejection had humiliated and continued to sting years later. Nothing like being cold, wet, and in need of shared body heat while stranded together in a storm to work out those pesky issues.

Annie Rains is a USA Today bestselling author who writes small-town love stories set in fictional towns on the coast of North Carolina. Raised in one of America’s largest military communities, Annie often features heroes who fight for their countries, while also fighting for a place to call home and a good woman to love. When Annie isn’t writing, she’s spending time with her husband and three children, or reading a book by one of her favorite authors.

Website /  Goodreads / Amazon / Facebook / Twitter

Me and Mr. Jones

(Heartbreak Hotel Book 2)

by Christie Ridgway

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Jessie’s expression fell, looking as if he’d broken her favorite toy and stolen the last of her Halloween candy.

I have a cat. A white cat… Hildr, after a famous Viking shieldmaiden. She killed her enemies in battle and wore their dried penises on a belt around her waist.

He ordered them each beers from the female bartender who wore a Harley-Davidson tank top and jeans so tight they seemed to split her in two from behind.

“Married a jerk,” she said matter-of-factly. “Promised me the moon and gave me green cheese instead.”

My Review:

I’m enjoying this light and entertaining series featuring couples who have no interest in being a part of any couple, but by the end of the book, they have become one none the less. The premise and storylines were entertaining and easy to follow with an even balance of angst, sizzle, and humor. Although initially despondent after being abandoned hours before her elaborate wedding, Audra began to rejoin the land of the living before growing excessively crusty and devised two separate bucket list types of activities after taking stock of her Goody-Two-Shoes personality and “pleaser gene” tendencies. I enjoyed Audra attempting to locate and embrace her more daring feisty side with the assistance of a sexy hotelier.

About the Author

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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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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

A Cornish Secret 

(Tremarnock #4)

by Emma Burstall

Goodreads

Amazon / B&N / Kobo /

 iBooks / Google Play

Be careful what you kiss for…

Esme Posorsky is an enigma. For as long as people can remember, she has been part of community life in the quaint Cornish fishing village of Tremarnock, but does anyone really know her? She is usually to be found working in her pottery studio or at home with her beloved cat, Rasputin. But when an old school friend turns up with a secret from the past, nothing will ever be the same again.

Meanwhile, teenager, Rosie, is excited to find a bottle washed up on Tremarnock beach with a message from a former German prisoner of war. While the rest of the village is up in arms about a new housing development, she sets out to find him. Little does she know, however, that her discovery will unleash a shocking chain of events that threatens to blow her family apart. Tremarnock may look like a cozy backwater, but some of its residents are about to come face-to-face with tough decisions and cold reality…

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

He wasn’t bad-looking, with short black hair, shaved at the sides and longer on top and a sprinkling of designer stubble, but his unusually large ears made him look rather as if he might take off in flight at any moment.

It looked as if Barbara might have got to him with her foot pump, for his short body seemed to be filled with air and his two chins waggled self-importantly

She glanced up and her smile lit the room, taking Esme’s breath away. It was the sun breaking through clouds, it was Monday made Friday, it was a tidal wave that swallowed up a thousand doubts… and most of all, a curve that made the whole world spin and also set it straight.

He then came up with the idea of having special T-shirts printed with Tremarnock Resists on the front, and the conversation was side-tracked while they discussed colour schemes and matching beanie hats, so they would look as if they meant business.

I can assure you I have many, many faults. Sometimes I even pick my nose.

The older woman’s shoulders drooped and despite her tall, broad stature she looked fragile and shrunken, as if someone had come along, pulled her apart and done a poor job of putting her together again.

My Review:

I am feeling rather indecisive and unsure of how to rate this one. I was new to the author and series and for some reason, I went into this book expecting a romantic comedy, which it wasn’t. There were comedic elements with numerous cleverly amusing descriptions and witty observations and underpinnings, however, the overall tone of the book felt rather melancholy as the majority of the characters were struggling with either personal, vocational, social, or community issues.

Despite the dizzying number of unique and fully fleshed out characters, the writing was easy to follow, effusively descriptive, lusciously detailed, and conjured strong visuals. I enjoyed Ms. Burstall’s smooth and engaging writing style as well as her relevant, thoughtful, and socially diverse storylines. My conflict is with the ending, there wasn’t one; it just stopped with open threads left unknotted… but thankfully, no heinous cliffhanger in sight.   I just didn’t expect this was to be an on-going tale. Hence my dilemma.

I do have a few new additions to my Brit Vocabulary list with Rootle (to root or delve), pushchair (a child’s stroller), chocky bickies (chocolate cookies), and I couldn’t help but notice that their use or purpose for an “outhouse” is significantly different from ours in the USA ~ smirk.

About the author

Goodreads / Amazon    

Website

Twitter: @EmmaBurstall
Facebook: @emmaburstallauthor

Emma Burstall was a newspaper journalist in Devon and Cornwall before becoming a full-time author. Tremarnock, the first novel in her series set in a delightful Cornish village, was published in 2015 and became a top-10 bestseller.

Herons Landing:

A Small-Town Romance

 Honeymoon Harbor Series

Mass Market Paperback: 496 pages

Publisher: HQN (May 22, 2018)

There’s no place to fall in love like the place you left your heart 

Welcome to Honeymoon Harbor, the brand-new, long-awaited series by beloved New York Times bestselling author JoAnn Ross, where unforgettable characters come face-to-face with the kind of love that grabs your heart and never lets go.

Working as a Las Vegas concierge, Brianna Mannion is an expert at making other people’s wishes come true. It’s satisfying work, but a visit home to scenic Honeymoon Harbor turns into a permanent stay when she’s reminded of everything she’s missing: the idyllic small-town charm; the old Victorian house she’d always coveted; and Seth Harper, her best friend’s widower and the neighborhood boy she once crushed on—hard. After years spent serving others, maybe Brianna’s finally ready to chase dreams of her own.

Since losing his wife, Seth has kept busy running the Harper family’s renovation business and flying way under the social radar. But when Brianna hires him to convert her aging dream home into a romantic B and B, working together presents a heart-stopping temptation Seth never saw coming. With guilt and grief his only companions for so long, he’ll have to step out of the past long enough to recognize the beautiful life Brianna and he could build together..

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

“On our first date, she cited all this damn research claiming vegans lived nine years longer than meat eaters.” Jarle’s teeth flashed in a grin in his flaming red beard. “After a week of grazing, I decided that her statistics might be true, but that extra time would be nine horrible baconless years.”

Dottie’s going to love dressing you. I swear to the Goddess that woman’s goal in life is to get every Northwesterner looking like a unicorn vomited out rainbows.

Jarle tends to fall in love with every good-looking single woman who comes into the pub. I think it’s the Viking in him. So far he hasn’t carried any off, and doesn’t harass them, just admires from afar, so I figure putting all that emotion into his cooking helps improve business.

You make him work for it, sweetheart. A woman’s gotta let her man know from the beginning that he’s going to have to do his share in a marriage. We women shouldn’t have to do all the heavy lifting. 

My Review:

I was a bit conflicted on how to rate this slowly developing and character-driven small-town tale of second chances. Being the first in a series there were lots of characters to introduce and considerable background and history to cover about the quaint little community and a long-standing feud between two of the early families that continued to inhabit both ends of the social ladder. The premise was relevant and interesting, and the storylines were meticulously detailed with the tones alternating between amusing, heartbreaking, and realistic with a few hot licks of sizzling sensuality to take some of the edge off the over-serve of sorrow and angst. The characters were likable, endearing, and admirable, but the story tended to stall on occasion due to the rather repetitive and tiresome retreading the young widower’s grief and inability to move on. Despite my personal pet peeve toward angst, I look forward to returning to the characters living in this unique little enclave while hoping for a lighter beat in the next installment.

About JoAnn Ross

New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author JoAnn Ross has been published in twenty-seven countries. A member of Romance Writers of America’s Honor Roll of bestselling authors, JoAnn lives with her husband and three rescued dogs — who pretty much rule the house — in the Pacific Northwest. Visit her on the web at www.joannross.com.