Spring at The Little Duck Pond Cafe 

by Rosie Green

Goodreads

 Amazon   US  / UK – 

Fleeing from a romance gone wrong, Ellie Farmer arrives in the pretty little village of Sunnybrook, hoping for a brand new start that most definitely does not include love! Following an unscheduled soak in the village duck pond, she meets Sylvia, who runs the nearby Duck Pond Café. Renting the little flat above the café seems like the answer to Ellie’s prayers. It’s only for six months, which will give her time to sort out her life, far away from cheating boyfriend Richard.

But is running away from your past ever really the answer?

Clashing with the mysterious and brooding Zack Chamberlain, an author with a bad case of writer’s block, is definitely not what Ellie needs right now. And then there’s Sylvia, who’s clinging so hard to her past, she’s in danger of losing the quaint but run-down Duck Pond Café altogether.

Can Ellie find the answers she desperately needs in Sunnybrook? And will she be able to help save Sylvia’s little Duck Pond Café from closure?

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

… all the bravado drains out of me, leaving me feeling like a balloon three days after the party.

After all, they do say the joy of being a grandparent is that you can hand the little terror back at the end of the day . . .

My Review:

While reading, I vacillated in how to rate this slowly developing and somewhat bittersweet tale about a small British village, where each of the main characters appears to be in a transitional stage in their lives. The premise was relevant and the storylines and writing were chaste enough for my elderly mother’s church ladies book club, yet still held my attention, which is rare ;).  As the first story in a trilogy, the stage was being set for subsequent installments, which was thankfully done without feeling like an information dump – yet it felt a bit flat to me. While there were humorous items and amusing observations, the story seemed to come up a little short of a Four-Star ranking, but close enough. I enjoyed the quirky characters and look forward to their future antics and adventures and proudly have two new additions to my Brit vocabulary list which now includes “came a cropper” which is to fall headlong, and “browned off” which is to be greatly annoyed. I do love being able to claim learning something new.

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. The first, Spring at the Little Duck Pond Café, is out on March 22^nd, 2018.

Twitter – https://twitter.com/Rosie_Green1988

Win this Wooden Duck Ornament and Chocolates

(Open to UK Only). 

During each day of this blog tour, each clue will be revealed to the true identity of Rosie Green.

Today’s Clue is:

I’ve written seven romantic comedies, the first published back in 2014.

In order to enter, you need to follow Rosie Green on Twitter, RT this tweet and then take a guess using the hashtag #WhoisRosieGreen

https://twitter.com/Rosie_Green1988/status/978271556068630528

You may guess more than once.

All entries using the hash tag will be entered, and the giveaway closes 23:00 BST 12th April

The identity of Rosie Green will be revealed on twitter after 12th April as will the giveaway winner.

Good luck and don’t forget to look at posts on other days of this tour, for more clues.

Diary of an Adorable Fat Girl

 The Complete, Full-length Novel

by Bernice Bloom

Goodreads

 Amazon US /  UK 

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Mary Brown is funny, gorgeous and bonkers. She’s also about six stone overweight. When she realizes she can’t cross her legs, has trouble bending over to tie her shoelaces without wheezing like an elderly chain-smoker, and discovers that even her hands and feet look fat, it’s time to take action. But what action? She’s tried every diet under the sun.

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This is the hysterical story of what happens when Mary joins ‘Fat Club’ where she meets a cast of funny characters and one particular man who catches her eye.

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The story is laugh-out-loud funny and will resonate with anyone who has dieted, tried to keep up with any sort of exercise programme or spent 10 minutes in a changing room trying to extricate herself from a way-too-small garment that she ambitiously tried on and is now completely stuck in.

Bernice Bloom is the big, new name in comedy writing…this is the first full-length novel after her series of laugh-out-loud mini books.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Sorry, it might sound like a horrible thing to say, but when I was sweet and pretty and slim, men opened doors. Now they take one look at me bulldozing my way down the street and think ‘well that one can clearly open the door herself – blimey she might take the whole thing off its hinges’… The day you can’t squeeze into your size 16 jeans is the day you learn to open doors for yourself.

I wanted the fish and chips like I’ve never wanted anything in my life before, but I reined myself in. I could easily nick some of Ted’s chips instead, everyone knows that the calories don’t count if they are contained in food nicked from someone else’s plate.

“This is the stupidest thing ever to happen to me in my whole, entire life.” I just shrugged. It wasn’t the stupidest thing to have happened to me that week, so I wasn’t in a position to comment.

Most beauticians think they’re scientists… And I was absolutely sure that every time they covered my face in something like mashed up beetle’s’ legs, sea moss and elephant’s semen that I’d emerge looking like Cameron Diaz. That was the thing about going to the beauticians – it was all about the hope.

Honestly, bringing out weighing scales at a Fat Club was like bringing out a hand grenade or a venomous snake. I noticed that Janice had physically recoiled from the sight of it.

My Review:

Originally written as three separate novella type installments for a six-part series, I giggle-snorted my way through this delightfully amusing yet insightfully written tale of a dramatic, Queen-Sized, Calamity Jane type named Mary. Mary was a trouble-magnet of the most unusual variety, yet she meant well, most of the time. Mary had acquired a weight problem following a vaguely referenced traumatic event in her teens, and while she had attempted and failed many diets, she was frustrated with herself and driven to join her first group-oriented approach, a group she called “Fat Club.” She made new friends with a few of the members and a special friend indeed with Ted, a sweet man whose kind heart was as large as his appetite. I enjoyed the premise, adored the quirky characters, and was highly entertained and charmed by Ms. Bloom’s observantly insightful, colorfully descriptive, and humorous writing style. Much to my merriment, Mary repeatedly found herself in the most unusual and comical of predicaments. The ending of this book felt rather abrupt until I realized the story had not concluded but had reached a satisfactory for-now stopping point in the middle of the series, as  three more installments remained. And between giggles, I fell upon a new addition for my Brit vocabulary list with “cack-handed” – which according to Urban Dictionary means “an awkward or inept way of doing something; originally meaning left-handed, stemming from cultures that use their right hand to eat and their left hand to wipe their behind.” I am eagerly looking forward to more cack-handed adventures as I already have Cruise with an Adorable Fat Girl waiting for me on my Kindle.   And, my apologies to any southpaws who may accidentally stumble upon this silly little review.

Author Bio –

Hello, my name is Bernice Bloom and I am a writer (I write light-hearted rom-com style novels and also work as a magazine journalist and advertising copywriter) and jewelry designer. My recent series of novels is called ‘Adorable Fat Girl’ and it features a heavily overweight woman called Mary Brown. She is bright, funny, friendly and bonkers. She’s also fat. The books blend the comedy of her efforts to lose weight with a more serious backstory about what happened to her in the past that had led to the issues that make her prone to over-eating. I’m fascinated that there are so few overweight heroines in literature. Women can be manipulative, evil, even murderers in fiction, but not fat! Certainly not fat and beautiful with loads of friends! Then along came Mary and she’s developed quite a fan base of people who love the fact that the heroine is large. She gets lots of letters and I have ended up taking her on lots of adventures!

Social Media Links –

https://www.facebook.com/BerniceBloombooks/

https://twitter.com/Bernice1Bloom

https://www.instagram.com/bernicebloomwriter/?hl=en

Giveaway 

Win a Daisy Bracelet and Earring set created by Bernice Bloom (Open Internationally).

*Terms and Conditions –Worldwide entries welcome.  Please enter using the Rafflecopter box below.  The winner will be selected at random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then I reserve the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over.  Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will be passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for the fulfillment of the prize, after which time I will delete the data.  I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.

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Author: Lindsay Detwiler

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Release Date: March 10, 2018

Publisher: Hot Tree Publishing

Cover Designer: Claire Smith

 

An undeniable chemistry simmers between the unlikely pair. The beach babe and the sexy cowboy soon find themselves asking: Can they tame their wild hearts and commit to the blossoming romance between them?

 

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

No, I don’t want to come into your honky-tonk bachelor pad and eat weird casseroles from the other neighbors who are apparently deaf because if I brought you a casserole right now, it’d probably be poisoned. Just saying.

 

She pinkie swore it was, so clearly that must mean it’s true. Oh, to be twenty-two again.

 

Oh my God, if he did that to you with a kiss, imagine what’s going to happen when you knock boots… What? I’ve always wanted to use that expression, and now it fits.

 

I don’t know if I’m in the writing mood. I think I’ve just seen too much twerking tonight to write effective horror.

 

Jodie doesn’t take handouts. Well, unless they’re in the form of free drinks. Then I lower my principles a notch. I’m not foolish, after all.

 

My Review:

Although a stand-alone story, Wild Hearts picked up where Inked Hearts left off, and was written from the first person POV of Jodie, a waitress and indie author wannabe of the horror genre. Her sexy new neighbor sported western attire, a limp, and a noisy parrot name Johnny Cash who enjoyed the loud country music of his namesake, at all hours of the day.   Jodie wasn’t a fan. I wasn’t an immediate fan of Jodie in this story as she was a rather abrupt and rude drama llama and mean girl to the tall glass of water named Levi. Oh, Levi, swoon – cue the fluttering hand-fan. But Levi’s obvious charms were too hard to resist and they soon decided on a “no-strings-attached” association of “just fun.” Of course, with a sweet and adorable couple with magnetic chemistry, it couldn’t stay at that level for long and I grew to appreciate Jodie almost as much as Levi had, although she continued to be prone to rash and dramatic overreactions. I enjoy this quirky, amusing, diverse cast of characters and look forward to more lively and entertaining stories from this clever wordsmith.

Nook: http://bit.ly/2DzhZsT

 

 

Lines in the Sand, Book 1

Inked Hearts

ONLY 99c

books2read.com/inkedhearts

 

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A high school English teacher, an author, and a fan of anything pink and/or glittery, Lindsay’s the English teacher cliché; she loves cats, reading, Shakespeare, and Poe.

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She currently lives in her hometown with her husband, Chad (her junior high sweetheart); their cats, Arya, Amelia, Alice, and Bob; and their Mastiff, Henry.

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Lindsay’s goal with her writing is to show the power of love and the beauty of life while also instilling a true sense of realism in her work. Some reviewers have noted that her books are not the “typical romance.” With her novels coming from a place of honesty, Lindsay examines the difficult questions, looks at the tough emotions, and paints the pictures that are sometimes difficult to look at. She wants her fiction to resonate with readers as realistic, poetic, and powerful. Lindsay wants women readers to be able to say, “I see myself in that novel.” She wants to speak to the modern woman’s experience while also bringing a twist of something new and exciting. Her aim is for readers to say, “That could happen,” or “I feel like the characters are real.” That’s how she knows she’s done her job.

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Lindsay’s hope is that by becoming a published author, she can inspire some of her students and other aspiring writers to pursue their own passions. She wants them to see that any dream can be attained and publishing a novel isn’t out of the realm of possibility.

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