One Hundred Reflections
(An Aspen Cove Romance Book 19)
by Kelly Collins

ABOUT KELLY COLLINS   

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Bestselling author of DEAR WIFE and THE MARRIAGE LIE, Kimberly Belle returns with her most heart-pounding thriller to date, as a masked home invader reveals the cracks in a marriage.

Everyone is about to know what her husband isn’t telling her…

Jade and Cam Lasky are by all accounts a happily married couple with two adorable kids, a spacious home, and a rapidly growing restaurant business. But their world is tipped upside down when Jade is confronted by a masked home invader. As Cam scrambles to gather the ransom money, Jade starts to wonder if they’re as financially secure as their lifestyle suggests, and what other secrets her husband is keeping from her.

Cam may be a good father, a celebrity chef, and a darling husband, but there’s another side he’s kept hidden from Jade that has put their family in danger. Unbeknownst to Cam and Jade, the home invader has been watching them and is about to turn their family secrets into a public scandal.
With riveting twists and a breakneck pace, My Darling Husband is an utterly compelling thriller that once again showcases Kimberly Belle’s exceptional talent for domestic suspense.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Maxim’s lungs sound like a rock tumbler filled with gravel, a noisy in and out that makes my own chest seize in sympathy. Maxim smokes like a chimney. He doesn’t exercise or sleep. He eats fried potatoes and red meat drowning in butter sauce, which he washes down with booze. But he’s trim and energetic and when he’s zipping around town in his convertible Maserati, he looks like a million bucks. Maxim is like one of those deep-water sharks—he’ll live to be four hundred.

And all those things I used to care about, the restaurants and the real estate and the houses and cars, I’d give it all up. Because here’s what happens when your family’s lives are at stake. There’s this… white-light moment of clarity, a lightning-bolt realization that you’re an idiot and all that shit you’ve spent so much time and effort accumulating is worthless. The banks can have everything. I don’t want any of those things anymore. Without Jade and the Bees, it’s worthless. I’m worthless.

My Review:

My shoulders are still in my ears and my cuticles are ragged from my incessant gnawing while I read this intense tale. Kimberly Belle is a wily one and steadily ratcheted up the pressure and strain for her realistically flawed and battling characters with the reveal of the increasingly disquieting revelations they were experiencing. I had a hard time putting my Kindle down and cursed its weak battery for forcing an untimely stop.

I marveled at the perceptive and insightful inner musings and observations this cunning wordsmith deftly implanted into her narratives.   Each character was acutely defined and well-honed by the end of the book, while most bore little resemblance to how they had initially appeared. The little pea in my brain bounced and rattled as I pondered the significance of various odd clues but I would never have put this heart-squeezing and brilliantly contrived puzzle together. I felt for them all and prized the unexpected levels of empathy and wisdom each gained for the others by the final page.

About the Author

Kimberly Belle is the USA Today and internationally bestselling author of six novels, including the forthcoming Stranger in the Lake (June 2020). Her third novel, The Marriage Lie, was a semifinalist in the 2017 Goodreads Choice Awards for Best Mystery & Thriller, and a #1 e-book bestseller in the UK and Italy. She’s sold rights to her books in a dozen languages as well as film and television options. A graduate of Agnes Scott College, Belle divides her time between Atlanta and Amsterdam.

Social Links:

Author website: https://www.kimberlybellebooks.com/

Facebook: @KimberlyBelleBooks

Twitter: @KimberlySBelle

Instagram: @kimberlysbelle

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/kimberlybelle

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Welcome To Winterville
(Winterville #1)
by Carrie Elks 

 

Amazon /  BB

 

He’s determined to bulldoze her childhood dreams. She’ll fight him with everything she has – including her heart…

When a ruthless company buys Holly Winter’s small hometown, she’s determined to stop them.

But then she meets the CEO. Josh Gerber is handsome, smooth, and disgustingly successful. He’s also the man that Holly spent a night with eight years ago. And now he’s back to steal the home she’s always loved.

If anybody can stand up to him, Holly can. She’s clever, determined, and most of all, she understands his weaknesses. She has the same ones, after all.

But the more she fights him, the stronger the attraction between them grows. And before long, their arguments are ending in deliciously hot, stolen kisses that make her forget that Josh is supposed to be her enemy.

Holly may be able to save Winterville, but will she have to sacrifice her heart in the process?

It’s A Wonderful Life meets The Hating Game in this gorgeously festive standalone romance. Why not take a trip to Winterville today?

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

“I thought about buying him a personality transplant,” she said, deadpan. “But then I realized he’d have to have a personality to start with.”

 

She saw the good in everything, even when there was no good to be seen. He had an inkling that if she was Satan’s grandma, she’d go around telling people just how lovely it was that he kept everybody warm.

 

Oh my, the woman was a human dynamo. She managed to persuade Oscar Gentry to open his wallet, and everybody says the world will end when those demon moths escape.

 

 My Review:

 

This was a fun and entertaining start to a new small-town series by one of my favorite authors. I adore Carrie Elks, the gal has mad storytelling skills. I tumbled right into this tale, was invested in the characters from beginning to end, and am eagerly looking forward to delving into the rest of the family’s tangled love lives. Rather than siblings, this series features a unique and engaging grouping of close-knit cousins with wastrels for parents. The storylines were original, amusingly humorous, easy to follow, and held my interest throughout.

About the Author

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My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

She’d taken over some cookies once when she’d thought she caught sight of someone in their dining-room window, but the only welcome she’d gotten had been from a couple of garden gnomes sitting on the front porch. It was like living next door to Boo Radley.

Oh, good grief. Just what every woman dreamed about: a proposal in a parking lot with a dead rose.

Her cousin, who fancied herself a singer, sang Paul Stookey’s “Wedding Song.” She didn’t murder it, only maimed it severely.

No single dads had come across her path, though several rom-coms had convinced her they would.

Getting to know him was like befriending a feral animal. There was a lot of coaxing involved.

My Review:

This was a sweet and delightfully heartfelt holiday women’s fiction story that gently touched the feels while warming the heart and frequently pulled my lips into an amused smile with wry humor and witty observations. This was my first taste of the clever craft of Sheila Roberts and I am kicking myself for not noticing her works sooner. Her engaging storylines were easy to follow, relatable, and enjoyably entertaining.   The characters were original, realistic, knowable, and highly likable people, even the old curmudgeon who was happy being haunted by his late wife. I was pulling for him even when he pushed back.

Author Website

Facebook: @funwithsheila

Twitter: @_Sheila_Roberts

Instagram: @sheilarobertswriter

Goodreads

Sheila Roberts lives on a lake in Washington State, where most of her novels are set. Her books have been published in several languages. On Strike for Christmas, was made into a movie for the Lifetime Movie Network and her novel, The Nine Lives of Christmas, was made into a movie for Hallmark.

Once upon a time, there was a man who stood aside, imagining he could live someone else’s life and dreaming of something which would never be his; yet he wasn’t ready to give it up.

Once upon a time, there was a man who loved a woman. His only wish was to watch her achieve her dreams – without knowing that the only dream she ever wanted to achieve was him.

Once upon a time, there was a woman afraid that no one would ever be able to love her – without knowing that there was a man who had loved nothing but her for his entire life.

That man is me: Reid Johnson. And that woman is her: my deepest secret. Fine, so I have a few secrets – but it would be best not to reveal them, as they could take everything I have away from me. And without those secrets, I’d have nothing to dream of.

There are two things you should know about me before deciding whether or not to read this story:

I’ve never been the person everyone thinks I am.

I’ve never been the man she believes me to be.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

It’s been eleven years, and she still smells the same. She smells like freshly-cut grass, like the morning sunrise. She smells like the sea, washing up forgotten memories. She smells like wood crackling in a fireplace. Sloan smells like home: the only home I could ever dream of going back to every night.

You have this armour of cynicism, this tough exterior, but then you do or say things that totally go against your personality, and I can’t understand why. You confuse me.

 My Review:

I wasn’t sure I was going to enjoy the character of Reid for several chapters into the book, although his snarky inner musings and rude and snappy banter often had me snorting into my coffee.   I really should know better than to sip while perusing such a wickedly funny author.

The engaging and provocative storylines hit all the feels and were well woven and laced together with teasing tendrils of hidden complications and issues kept just out of reach yet periodically dangled in a taunting manner to keep me tethered to my kindle. My brain was itching with questions and theories. A.S. Kelly is a rather ruthless tease and a sly and crafty mistress of words. I am eager to amass and lose myself in more of her clever tales.

When her husband David announces he’s been offered a job in New York, Saoirse is thrilled. The glamour of the big city, the shopping, the culture, not to mention the free Manhattan apartment and business class airfare – what’s not to like? There’s just the small matter of making it work for their daughter, five-year-old Anna, who isn’t so keen to leave her friends and school behind.

The Big Apple in the middle of summer isn’t quite the holiday Saoirse envisaged, and with David away with work, New York apartment sizes on the minuscule side, and the pace of life faster than the sleepy London suburbs, solo ex-pat parenting pushes Saoirse to her limits.

And as the pressure builds and ‘faking it till she makes it’ isn’t cutting it, there’s only one thing for it – Saoirse and Anna need a new plan, and ‘Winging It’ might be their best option…

Emma Murray returns with this laugh-out-loud funny, compulsively page-turning adventure about parenting, traveling, and finding your tribe – on both sides of the pond. 

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Eventually, I do what I always do when faced with a complex problem: I push it to the back of my mind and pretend it doesn’t exist.

I do everything in my power to stop my face from falling. Just when you think you’ve found a new friend, she turns out to be in the PTA.

‘Well, I don’t mean to generalise but I’m not sure if Americans are into swearing,’ I say, hoping I haven’t offended them… Roars of protest follow. Darcy’s voice is the loudest. ‘Of course I swear!’ she says indignantly. ‘I have five kids and a husband who still hasn’t learned the kids’ soccer timetable, or how to take out the trash.’ … A feeling of pure exhilaration fills my chest. Maybe, just maybe, I have found my American tribe.

This is our first time celebrating Thanksgiving and I really enjoy the festiveness of the occasion. Mind you, I think it’s fair to say that Anna doesn’t quite grasp the concept: her teacher laughingly told me that when she gave a smooth rock to each of the kids and asked them to paint what they were grateful for, Anna wrote ‘iPad’ when everyone else wrote ‘Mom’, ‘Dad’, ‘God’ or ‘Jesus’. At least David and I know where we sit in the pecking order.

‘Come on, Mummy!’ Anna says, pulling at my sleeve impatiently. ‘Jen is having a connip-shit!’ A fit of giggles rises up in my chest. ‘I think you mean “conniption”.’

My Review:

This was my introduction to the cleverly amusing wit of Emma Murray, and I found it good fun as she kept a near-constant smirk on my face during perusal. The storylines were comical, engaging, original, and easy to follow. I enjoyed all the characters as they were generally likable, realistically flawed, and accessible and even the obnoxious ones were humorously entertaining with knowable and recognizable traits. I look forward to reading this author again and again.