Book Review, Giveaway : Misadventures of a College Girl by Lauren Rowe

Misadventures of a College Girl

 

by Lauren Rowe

 

Goodreads

 


#MisadventuresofaCollegeGirl
 

 


***MISADVENTURES ARE STANDALONE ROMANCES THAT CAN BE READ IN ANY ORDER***

Synopsis
 

Straitlaced freshman Zooey Cartwright has arrived at UCLA determined to have a heck of a lot more fun in college than she did in high school. What’s the first item on Zooey’s agenda before classes start in two days? Losing her pesky V card. She’s definitely not looking for a boyfriend, so where can Zooey find the right guy to do the deed and move along without a backward glance? 

At a party thrown by a bunch of football players, of course. Enter Tyler Caldwell. A beast on the field and off, cocky as heck, and often wearing T-shirts with sayings like “God’s Gift to Womankind,” Tyler is most definitely not boyfriend material. After a make-out session with Tyler leaves Zooey entirely unsatisfied, she is determined never to see him again. But her schedule lands her in not one but two of his classes, and it doesn’t take long before Tyler and Zooey have reached an arrangement for Tyler to teach Zooey exactly what she wants to know―and a whole lot more she never bargained for. Can Zooey surrender her body to this bad boy without giving him her heart, too?


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My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

If you really want to be traumatized, then consider this: Why the hell isn’t Pooh wearing pants? He’s a bear who lives in a house and sleeps in a bed. He drinks tea out of a cup. And yet he wears no pants with his polo shirt? I mean, is Pooh fully anthropomorphized or not? Because, if he is, then he’s a ‘public lewdness’ charge waiting to happen.

 

Gosh, when the universe works this hard to put two ridiculously good-looking people together, it’d be downright arrogant of them not to have sex, don’t you think?

 

I saw you two walking through South Campus the other day holding hands. You looked good together. Like Beauty and the… Beauty.

 

My Review:

 

Written from the first person POV of a virginal female college freshman, this delightfully entertaining book was a breezy, naughty, and fun read. This Misadventure was jam-packed with clever humor, salacious sizzle, enticing characters, and a sweet romance that wasn’t supposed to happen as it was not part of the project plan or on the syllabus.   I adored the characters and thoroughly enjoyed Ms. Rowe’s witty, amusing, and engaging storylines. I fell hard and fast for this cute couple.

 


Meet the Author

Lauren Rowe is the pen name of the USA Today, Amazon #1, and international #1 best-selling author of The Club Series and more. She’s a performer, audiobook narrator, award-winning songwriter and media host/personality who decided to unleash her alter ego to write The Club Series to ensure she didn’t hold back or self-censor in writing the story. Lauren Rowe lives in San Diego, California where she lives with her family, sings with her band, hosts a show, and writes at all hours of the night. 

Find out more about The Club Series and Lauren Rowe’s other books at www.LaurenRoweBooks.com.   Facebook       Instagram

Find all books in the Misadventures Series here:

The Misadventures Series 

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Book Review, Giveaway: The Best Medicine by Charlotte Fallowfield

The Best Medicine 

(Dilbury Village #3)

by Charlotte Fallowfield 

Goodreads

Amazon

A laugh-out-loud novel from Charlotte Fallowfield, whose books have hit the Amazon #1 bestseller charts internationally for Contemporary Romance, Romantic Comedy, and Humour.

Despite being a successful author of risqué romance novels, Charlie Faulkner had yet to star in her own love story. Drowning her sorrows in takeaway pizza, and at risk of getting wedged in her favorite writing chair, she despaired of ever finding the kind of all-consuming love that she wrote about in her books.When she did venture out of her writing cave, chaos and disaster followed, with many a trip to the emergency room of the local hospital. It was there she fell head over heels for the handsome doctor who often treated her, Guy Fitton. The trouble was that with her medical track record, she wasn’t sure if he’d see her as a sexy, desirable temptress or just a crazy, accident-prone woman, with a medical file so heavy it needed its own trolley.

Would Charlie get her “happy ever after” with Dr. Fitton or end up with the other significant male in her life, the pizza delivery guy?

While The Best Medicine is a standalone story, it’s the third in the Dilbury Village series of romantic comedy novels. All of them will be set in the quaint fictitious English hamlet in the Shropshire countryside, but feature a different village couples’ story.

Warning, if you are of a sensitive disposition when it comes to toilet humor, then the Dilbury Village series may not be for you! 

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

So, how do you write such realistic and steamy sex scenes? I started one of your books as soon as I heard you’d moved in, and I have to say, that first steamy scene, with the dirty-mouthed Frenchman, nearly necessitated a trip to accident and emergency for the fitting of a pacemaker. I haven’t had such a vivid and exciting dream in a long time.

  

Don’t underestimate her… She looks like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, but underneath that sweet granny exterior she likes to portray is a sex-crazed nympho with a mouth that would make a sailor blush.

 

I’ve never heard of anyone getting beaver rash from jeans… Maybe your knicker elastic cut you… Take a look… don’t ask me. Muff inspections aren’t in the “things girlfriends do for each other” handbook.

 

We’d had a few more entertaining girls’ nights out, which had led to Andy the taxi driver refusing to accept bookings from us for our return journey. Daphne had given us the feedback, from the Dilbury rumour mill, that we were too raucous and our drunken topics of conversation had interfered with his pacemaker. She’d decided if the conversation was that spicy, she wanted to come on the next night out.

 

‘You’re buttering me up like a hot potato, what’s going on? Are you after some action tonight? A bit of the horizontal mumbo jumbo, as Charlie says?’ ‘Horizontal mambo,’ I giggled. ‘Though if you’re saying jumbo, is that a Freudian slip?’

 

 My Review:

 

I am totally besotted with this cleverly amusing author, her irreverent humor had me barking with glee. Charlie was a smart cookie and a successful author of “salacious material,” although she had the worst of luck and was a hazard to her own health with frequent slips and uncanny injuries that required emergency trips to the hospital where she caught sight of whom she believed to be the most swoon-worthy of beautiful men, who also happened to be her trauma doctor. She was a smitten kitten, although oddly, none of her friends seemed to share her opinion and even warned her that he seemed sketchy.   The premise was entertaining, the characters were beloved and endearing, and the writing was witty and crisp. The hardest part of writing this review was narrowing down my favorite quotes, as I seemed to have acquired a ream of them. I am already looking forward to the next trip to this quaint and quirky little village.

Giveaway

 Click on the graphic to be taken to the Facebook page for entry:

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About the Author

 
Enough heat to make the pages sizzle, romance to make you swoon, strong characters with depth and emotions to 

pluck at your heartstrings, and humor to make you laugh out loud. Roll all of that into one novel, or in C.J.’s case a lot of novels, and you have the measure of her books. Unless of course, you count the odd twist she likes to throw in to keep readers on their toes. C.J. comes from the United Kingdom and is half-French. She lives in the wonderful countryside of Wales, surrounded by rolling hills, trees and fields full of sheep and cows. She is yet to find her Prince Charming, but lives with her extremely pampered fur baby, Pumpkin, kitten of mass destruction.

C.J Fallowfield. is an Amazon #1 UK and international bestselling author of contemporary humorous erotic romance novels. She released her debut novel in January 2014.

Her alter-ego, Charlotte Fallowfield is an Amazon UK and international bestselling author of sweet, and sex free, romantic comedy novels.

Sign up for her newsletters to be kept up to date on her frequent promotions and giveaways, as well as to get exclusive first looks at covers, teasers, excerpts and her latest releases:

Book Review: The Sometimes Sisters by Carolyn Brown


The Sometimes Sisters

by Carolyn Brown

Release Date February 27, 2018



A bittersweet inheritance reunites three estranged sisters in a novel of family, trust, and forgiveness from New York Times bestselling author Carolyn Brown.

When they were growing up, Dana, Harper, and Tawny thought of themselves as “sometimes sisters.” They connected only during the summer month they’d all spend at their grandmother’s rustic lakeside resort in north Texas. But secrets started building, and ten years have passed since they’ve all been together—in fact, they’ve rarely spoken, and it broke their grandmother’s heart.

Now she’s gone, leaving Annie’s Place to her granddaughters—twelve cabins, a small house, a café, a convenience store, and a lot of family memories. It’s where Dana, Harper, and Tawny once shared so many good times. They’ve returned, sharing only hidden regrets, a guarded mistrust, and haunting guilt. But now, in this healing summer place, the secrets that once drove them apart could bring them back together—especially when they discover that their grandmother may have been hiding something, too…

To overcome the past and find future happiness, these “sometimes sisters” have one more chance to realize they are always family.


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#KindleUnLimited #RockstarLit #CarolynBrown

 

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

Granny used to say that the person who stirs the shit pile has to lick the spoon.

 

He made it in eight minutes and would have arrived there sooner if he hadn’t gotten behind a pokey old woman who didn’t have any place to go and a year to get there.

 

Did you think it was all rainbows and unicorn farts after you left? The only thing that changed was that I got all the bitchin’ instead of sharin’ it with you.

 

You can do better… He’s not for you, Aunt Tawny. He’s got a cat and he lives with his mama.

 

She’d worn a white robe and the preacher said that she was leaving all her sins in the water and would be a new creature when she arose from it. At ten years old, she’d often wondered how the water felt holding the sins of so many people and where it went when the preacher pulled the plug and let it all go. Did it wash into the rivers, where the sin jumped on people as they swam?

 

She loved the sound of his soft drawl. Maybe she could take him home. He could sit beside her bed and read the phone book to her until she fell asleep.

 

My Review:

 

I enjoyed this cleverly paced small-town family drama that was packed with quirky characters, heart-squeezing histories, irreverent homespun wisdom, and amusing observations.   Three grieving and desperate women arrived at a small-town Texas lake resort with each hoping for a chance at a fresh start in life. They had previously called themselves sometimes sisters, although they were actually three half-sisters who were only together one month each summer while staying at the rustic lake resort of with their much-loved grandmother, “Granny Annie.” Each was envious of the others but had never looked too deeply as nothing was as it had seemed.

But Granny Annie has just passed away, and the three women must return to run the resort together or get nothing at all, which posed quite the challenge, as they had not been successful in spending more than a few minutes together without an argument breaking out. Each arrived at the resort out of options, out of money, and weighted down with shameful secrets, regrets, and old resentments. Little did they know that Granny Annie had been keeping the biggest secret of them all. My favorite character was not one of the sisters but the elderly cook who had been known to them all their lives as Uncle Zed, I adored him, even if he was the cause of the first ugly cry I’ve sobbed out in years.


About the Author:


New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Carolyn Brown was born in Texas and raised in southern Oklahoma. These days she and her husband make their home in Davis, Oklahoma, a small town of less than three thousand people where everyone knows everyone, knows what they are doing and with whom, and read the weekly newspaper to see who got caught.

A plaque hangs on her office wall that says I know the voices are not real but they have such great ideas. That is her motto and muse as she goes through the days with quirky characters in her head, telling their stories, one by one, and loving her job.

She has been married almost half a century to a retired English teacher that she calls Mr. B and he does not read her books before they are published because she cannot afford a divorce. They have three grown children and enough grandchildren to keep them busy and young.

When Carolyn is not writing she likes to sit in the back yard and watch the two tom cats protect the yard from all kinds of wicked varmints like crickets, other cats, spiders and blue jays.


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Book Review: A Piece of the World by Christina Baker Kline

A Piece of the World 

by Christina Baker Kline

 

HarperCollins | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

 

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; Reprint edition (January 30, 2018)

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

“Exquisite. A must-read.” –Kristin Hannah

This paperback edition includes a color reproduction of Andrew Wyeth’s painting Christina’s World, along with a Q&A with bestselling author Kristin Hannah and a bonus short story, “Stranded in Ice.”

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the smash bestseller Orphan Train, a stunning and atmospheric novel of friendship, passion, and art, inspired by Andrew Wyeth’s mysterious and iconic painting Christina’s World.

“Later he told me that he’d been afraid to show me the painting. He thought I wouldn’t like the way he portrayed me: dragging myself across the field, fingers clutching dirt, my legs twisted behind. The arid moonscape of wheatgrass and timothy. That dilapidated house in the distance, looming up like a secret that won’t stay hidden.”

To Christina Olson, the entire world is her family farm in the small coastal town of Cushing, Maine. The only daughter in a family of sons, Christina is tied to her home by health and circumstance, and seems destined for a small life. Instead, she becomes Andrew Wyeth’s first great inspiration, and the subject of one of the best-known paintings of the twentieth century, Christina’s World.

As she did in her beloved bestseller Orphan Train, Christina Baker Kline interweaves fact and fiction to vividly reimagine a real moment in history. A Piece of the World is a powerful story of the flesh-and-blood woman behind the portrait, her complicated relationship to her family and inheritance, and how artist and muse can come together to forge a new and timeless legacy.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

Sometimes a sanctuary, sometimes a prison, that house on the hill has always been my home. I’ve spent my life yearning toward it, wanting to escape it, paralyzed by its hold on me. (There are many ways to be crippled, I’ve learned over the years, many forms of paralysis.) … You can never escape the bonds of family history, no matter how far you travel. And the skeleton of a house can carry in its bones the marrow of all that came before.

 

It is a terrible thing to find the love of your life, Christina… You know too well what you’re missing when it’s gone.

 

The day we bury her is dreary: a colorless sky, gray-boned trees, old sooty snow. Winter, I think, must be tired of itself.

 

… I put my hand over his, and he lays his other hand over mine. I feel the way I do when I lose something – a spool of thread, say – and search for it everywhere, only to discover it in an obvious place, like on the sideboard under the cloth.

 

My Review:

 

This was my first exposure to Christina Baker Kline’s talents and I became an instant devotee. The writing was emotive and often tinged with melancholy, lushly descriptive, thoughtfully observant, cunningly crafted, and intricately detailed. A fascinating mix of fact and fiction, I have since spent far too much time Googling Christina Olson and Andrew Wyeth’s iconic artwork.   I was immediately immersed in this beautifully and insightfully written book from the first person POV of Christina, a girl/woman with few options and limited mobility. Christina lived her entire life in the same house with her slightly odd family in small-town rural Maine and had continued to live under extremely harsh conditions without indoor plumbing, running water, or electricity, long after others in her area were enjoying these luxuries.

Christina was possibly the most obstinate woman of her time. Unsteady on her weak limbs following an life-threatening and undiagnosed illness at the age of three, she despised pity, denied most offers of assistance despite frequent mishaps and injuries from falls, refused to seek medical assistance when offered, and in her later years when her legs were no longer of use to her she steadfastly refused to use a wheelchair and drug herself by her elbows, up and down stairs and even across fields to visit her neighbor. I ached for her and wanted to pop her in the back of the head at the same time for her stubborn pride.  I was provided with a review copy of this captivating book by  TLC Book Tours and HarperCollins.

About Christina Baker Kline

Photo by Jerry Bauer

Christina Baker Kline is the author of six novels, including the #1 New York Times bestseller Orphan Train as well as A Piece of the World. She lives outside New York City and spends as much time as possible on the coast of Maine. Learn more about Christina at www.christinabakerkline.com.

Connect with Christina on Facebook, and follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Book Review, Giveaway: The Lost Castle by Kristy Cambron

 

The Lost Castle

by Kristy Cambron

 

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

Paperback: 384 pages

Publisher: Thomas Nelson (February 6, 2018)

Broken-down walls and crumbled stones seemed to possess a secret language all their own. What stories would they tell, if she finally listened?

Ellie Carver arrives at her grandmother’s bedside expecting to find her silently slipping away. Instead, the beloved old woman begins speaking. Of a secret past and castle ruins forgotten by time. Of a hidden chapel that served as a rendezvous for the French resistance in World War II. Of lost love and deep regret . . .

Each piece that unlocks the story seems to unlock part of Ellie too—where she came from and who she is becoming. But her grandmother is quickly disappearing into the shadows of Alzheimer’s and Ellie must act fast if she wants to uncover the truth of her family’s history. Drawn by the mystery surrounding The Sleeping Beauty—a forgotten castle so named for Charles Perrault’s beloved fairy tale—Ellie embarks on a journey to France’s Loire Valley in hopes that she can unearth its secrets before time silences them forever.

Bridging the past to present in three time-periods—the French Revolution, World War II, and present day—The Lost Castle is a story of loves won and lost, of battles waged in the hearts of men, and an enchanted castle that stood witness to it all, inspiring a legacy of faith through the generations..

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

“Don’t borrow trouble,” Grandma Vi had always said. “Don’t borrow— but be sure you don’t set out to buy it either.”

 

Tears, the real kind— the ones that meant everything was about to change and she must weather it all with newfound courage— refused to leave them be.

My Review:

 

The Lost Castle was not an easy or relaxing read, as the storylines were active and highly eventful while taut with tension, peril, infirmities, family drama, and three unexpected and inconvenient romances. Ergo, it required additional effort and attention to keep it straight; however, it was well worth the time and cranial investment. The book covered three different timelines and involved a French vineyard, the family who operated the vineyard, a ruined castle, and three different feisty females who made all the difference. I cannot imagine the staggering amount the research required to pull this one together.

The first two timelines were rife with wartime stressors occurring during the French Revolution and WWII, while the final timeline involved solving those lingering mysteries during the present day. The writing was atmospheric, highly emotive and deeply felt, scenically descriptive, and so vividly detailed that I fell right into each story feeling as if I could smell the flowers feel the vibrations of the bombs, and hear the gunfire. The characters were uniquely appealing, endearing, enticing, heroic, and continually intriguing to me. Their tales frequently squeezed my heart, although near the end it also stung my eyes, burned my throat, and had my chin quivering.

I enjoyed my time in France but I also picked up a few new words to add to my British Isles Vocabulary List, as one of my favorite characters was Irish. My first new addition was “chancer” a British term for an opportunist who takes advantage or manipulates others to their own benefit; then “olagonin’” meaning moaning/complaining; and finally “craicing” an Irish word for having fun. It’s always a bit of craic to pick up new slang.

 

Giveaway

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About Kristy Cambron

Kristy Cambron has a background in art and design, but she fancies life as a vintage-inspired storyteller. She is the bestselling author of The Ringmaster’s Wife, named to Publishers Weekly Spring 2016 Religion & Spirituality TOP 10. Her novels have been named to Library Journal Reviews’ Best Books and RT Book Reviewers’ Choice Awards Best lists for 2014 & 2015, and received 2015 & 2017 INSPY Award nominations. Kristy’s first Bible studies, THE VERSE MAPPING SERIES, will release in 2018.

Kristy holds a degree in Art History/Research Writing, and has 15 years of experience in education and leadership development from a Fortune-100 Corporation. Kristy lives in Indiana with her husband and three sons, and could probably be bribed with a coconut mocha latte and a good read.

Visit Kristy online at www.KristyCambron.com, Twitter: @KCambronAuthor, Facebook: Kristy-Cambron-Author, Instagram: KristyCambron.

Connect with Kristy

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

 

 

Book Review: Sunburn by Laura Lippman 

Sunburn

by Laura Lippman 

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Amazon

B&N

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One is playing a long game. But which one?

They meet at a local tavern in the small town of Belleville, Delaware. Polly is set on heading west. Adam says he’s also passing through.

Yet she stays and he stays—drawn to this mysterious redhead whose quiet stillness both unnerves and excites him. Over the course of a punishing summer, Polly and Adam abandon themselves to a steamy, inexorable affair. Still, each holds something back from the other—dangerous, even lethal, secrets that begin to accumulate as autumn approaches, feeding the growing doubts they conceal.

Then someone dies. Was it an accident, or part of a plan? By now, Adam and Polly are so ensnared in each other’s lives and lies that neither one knows how to get away—or even if they want to. Is their love strong enough to withstand the truth, or will it ultimately destroy them?

Something—or someone—has to give.

Which one will it be?

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My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

Men have always done things for her… It is a special art, asking people to do things, yet making it seem as if you never asked at all… but it’s the skill she was given, the hand she has to play.

 

Cath couldn’t find her way out of a room with no walls.

 

In her black dress, black gloves, and retro heels, she looks like Joan Crawford or Bette Davis. She feels like them too. Tough, yet brittle. That’s the thing about being really hard. When you do break, you shatter.

 

My Review:

 

I was immediately sucked into the powerful vortex of this enthralling and cleverly paced tale.   Written from the third person omniscient point of view, the storylines were fully textured, multi-layered, and ingeniously crafted. The characters were all hues of shady and mysterious while endlessly fascinating and alluring. But Ms. Lippman’s superlative writing tops all other elements as it was first class and kept me riveted and resentful of interruption. I despised the need for sleep and begrudgingly put my book down only when necessary. This author is a recent discovery for me and I am greedy to amass and hoard all of her mesmerizing arrangements of words.

About The Author  


 
 
 

Laura Lippman was a reporter for twenty years, including twelve years at The (Baltimore) Sun. She began writing novels while working fulltime and published seven books about “accidental PI” Tess Monaghan before leaving daily journalism in 2001. Her work has been awarded the Edgar ®, the Anthony, the Agatha, the Shamus, the Nero Wolfe, Gumshoe and Barry awards. She also has been nominated for other prizes in the crime fiction field, including the Hammett and the Macavity. She was the first-ever recipient of the Mayor’s Prize for Literary Excellence and the first genre writer recognized as Author of the Year by the Maryland Library Association.

Ms. Lippman grew up in Baltimore and attended city schools through ninth grade. After graduating from Wilde Lake High School in Columbia, Md., Ms. Lippman attended Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Her other newspaper jobs included the Waco Tribune-Herald and the San Antonio Light.

Ms. Lippman returned to Baltimore in 1989 and has lived there since. She is the daughter of Theo Lippman Jr., a Sun editorial writer who retired in 1995 but continues to freelance for several newspapers, and Madeline Mabry Lippman, a former Baltimore City school librarian. Her sister, Susan, is a local bookseller.

Book Review: The Test (The List #2) By Tawna Fenske

The Test

 (The List #2)

by Tawna Fenske 

 

“The hottest, sexiest, most hilariously fun opposites attract story I’ve ever read!” – USA Today bestselling author Samanthe Beck

This is a test. A test of every life decision Lisa Michaels has ever made.

Lisa thought she’d gotten everything right: The nicest condo, the right career, the best hair, and a perfectly adequate sex life with her stockbroker fiancé. But when the fiancé ditches her at the altar, Lisa’s left questioning every decision she’s ever made. What if her instincts have been steering her wrong all along? And what if she tested that theory by spending one month doing the exact opposite of what she’d normally do?

A crazy-hot fling with a tattooed steelworker from the wrong side of the tracks seems like a good starting point…

Each book in The List series is STANDALONE:
* The List
* The Test

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My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

I can’t see his face, but his shoulders look like he spends his spare time bench-pressing SUVs.

 

Is this foreplay? I have no idea. Gary’s idea of foreplay was muting the ten o’clock news and patting the mattress beside him. Don’t think I didn’t notice how he’d peer at the stock market crawl over my shoulder.

 

Did I ever tell you I used to volunteer at this museum?… There’s an exhibit on the third floor called Oregon Adventure… My first month here, I caught a couple going at it on one of the bunks in the Lewis and Clark exhibit… They were buck naked, right there between the bearskin rug and the display of nineteenth-century muskets.

 

Does anyone else feel self-conscious shopping for cucumbers? Like you’re standing there squeezing them and checking out the length and girth to make sure you get the best one, and you look over to see every creepy guy in the produce section is staring at you.

 

Her T-shirt is emblazoned with an electric guitar, the logo for the National Down Syndrome Association, and the words, “I’m rockin’ this extra chromosome.”

 

For future reference, most people bring cans of beer and Dinty Moore stew when they camp… Not an entire Riedel stemware set and an eighty-dollar bottle of port.

 

My Review:

 

I smirked and gasped my way through this delightfully naughty and amusingly clever and steamy tale of opposites. The premise was interesting, the storylines were entertaining, the characters were appealing and enticing, and the writing was witty and engaging. And if you just heard someone yell, “Home run!” – that would be me.

.
Lisa was a fussy and pretentious socialite wannabe who was overly concerned about appearances and having or being the best. However, she felt an itch to sample or “test” the grittier or less refined sides of life, which included experimenting with the many unfulfilled items on her sexual bucket list by going against her instincts and doing the exact opposite of what she had or would have considered doing for the next thirty days. It was to be sex only with no relationship or emotional involvement, and she found the perfect specimen with which to do so.
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Dax was a heavily tattooed and dirty-talking hottie whom Lisa had met in a bar, although she had no idea he was also a wealthy and successful business owner, as being a shallow snob, Lisa hadn’t taken the time to look past his delectable and colorfully inked surface. I adored the witty and profane Dax; although I couldn’t quote much of his dialogue as he words were typically laced with obscenities. His sexual dynamics, lubricity, and bawdy banter were some of the many turn-ons for Lisa, who was quickly softening during their association with blooming relationship thoughts working their way in, which wasn’t supposed to be part of the plan.
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About the Author    

Goodreads

When Tawna Fenske finished her English lit degree at 22, she celebrated by filling a giant trash bag full of romance novels and dragging it everywhere until she’d read them all. Now she’s a RITA-nominated, USA Today bestselling author who writes humorous fiction, risqué romance, and heartwarming love stories with a quirky twist. Publishers Weekly has praised Tawna’s offbeat romances with multiple starred reviews and noted, “There’s something wonderfully relaxing about being immersed in a story filled with over-the-top characters in undeniably relatable situations. Heartache and humor go hand in hand.”

Tawna lives in Bend, Oregon, with her husband, stepkids, and a menagerie of ill-behaved pets. She loves hiking, snowshoeing, standup paddleboarding, and inventing excuses to sip wine on her back porch. She can peel a banana with her toes and loses an average of twenty pairs of eyeglasses per year. To find out more about Tawna and her books, visit www.tawnafenske.com.

Book Review: Fix My Fall (The Fix Series #3) by Carey Heywood

 

Title: Fix My Fall
Series: The Fix #3
Author: Carey Heywood
Genre: Romantic Comedy
 Release Date: February 16, 2018

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Blurb
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Abby Thompson’s love life is a disaster. Everyone around her is blissfully falling in love, while she’s busy binge-watching anime. The last thing she needs is a walking temptation, in the form of ex-nerd turned dreamy astrophysics professor, Spencer Hill, aka her new client.
It’s her job to find Spencer his dream home, NOT fantasize about a ride on his space rocket. But the sparks between them are impossible to ignore, and
soon, Abby is wondering if her losing streak in love could be turning around.
Can she get over her anxiety he’s got her out-brained, and can he let go of the past and the fear that the girl he crushed on in high school is still out of his league?

 

 

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

If I didn’t need money so bad I would consider referring him to someone else. He’s so hot it’s distracting.

 

Earth’s atmosphere is twenty-one percent oxygen which makes my current level of breathlessness confusing.

 

Abby said you looked different but I didn’t believe her. You get bit by some radioactive spider in your lab man? ‘Cuz, holy shit, you’ve grown.

 

He smiles up at me, oblivious to the spinach leaf stuck to one of his back teeth. I point to my teeth. “You have something stuck in your teeth.” He nods, unbothered by this news. “I was saving it for later.”

 

That doesn’t stop me from carrying out a pretend conversation in my head. These are my favorite kind because I can control both sides of the conversation and not get in any trouble for saying what I want.

 

“Do you have a giant computer?” The corners of his eyes crinkle with his smile. “Huge.” “Oh, this conversation is starting to feel like foreplay.” He chokes, covering his mouth with the back of his hand as he coughs. “Science talk as foreplay. You might be my dream girl.”

 

My mouth waters like he’s fresh baked bread and I’m on a no carb diet.

 

My Review:

 

I am on book three of my continuing expedition of veneration and adoration for Carey Heywood and her The Fix Series. I cherish and pine for this author’s delightful wry humor and sweet and steamy stories between her releases. The books I have read so far have been a joy to read, amusingly clever, low conflict, written in my favorite dual POV, and pleasantly breezy with appealing and lovably quirky characters with a bit of edge. Her books do my heart good and tend to keep a smirk in place while reading. I adored Spencer, not only was he highly intelligent and sexy, he was patient, kind, thoughtful, polite, and a perfect gentleman who was also a gentle man – which is nirvana to me. Being a man of science and never having had a relationship, the clever and crafty Ms. Heywood has the brilliant and sexy Dr. Hill patiently and wisely applying the scientific method to his interactions with his high-school crush/current realtor Abby, he postulated a theory, formulated a hypothesis, performed his research, and gathered evidence from his experiments. Ingenious!

Purchase Links
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Author Bio
New York Times and USA Today bestselling romance author. Shewas born and raised in Alexandria, Virginia. Supporting her all the way are her husband, three sometimes-adorable children, a mischievous black cat, German Shepherd rescue puppy, and their nine-pound attack Yorkie.
Author Links

Book Review: Family Tree by Susan Wiggs

Family Tree

 by Susan Wiggs

 
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 Amazon 


Paperback: 400 pages
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; Reprint edition (January 9, 2018)

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author comes a powerful, emotionally complex story of love, loss, the pain of the past—and the promise of the future.

Sometimes the greatest dream starts with the smallest element. A single cell, joining with another. And then dividing. And just like that, the world changes. Annie Harlow knows how lucky she is. The producer of a popular television cooking show, she loves her handsome husband and the beautiful Los Angeles home they share. And now, she’s pregnant with their first child. But in an instant, her life is shattered. And when Annie awakes from a yearlong coma, she discovers that time isn’t the only thing she’s lost.

Grieving and wounded, Annie retreats to her old family home in Switchback, Vermont, a maple farm generations old. There, surrounded by her free-spirited brother, their divorced mother, and four young nieces and nephews, Annie slowly emerges into a world she left behind years ago: the town where she grew up, the people she knew before, the high-school boyfriend turned judge. And with the discovery of a cookbook her grandmother wrote in the distant past, Annie unearths an age-old mystery that might prove the salvation of the family farm.

Family Tree is the story of one woman’s triumph over betrayal, and how she eventually comes to terms with her past. It is the story of joys unrealized and opportunities regained. Complex, clear-eyed and big-hearted, funny, sad, and wise, it is a novel to cherish and to remember.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

It was one of those moments Gran used to call a key moment. Time didn’t simply tick past, unremarked, unnoticed. No, this was the kind of moment that made everything stop.   You separated it from every other one, pressing the feeling to your heart, like a dried flower slipped between the pages of a beloved book. The moment was made of something fragile and delicate, yet it possessed the power to last forever.

 

Memories are strange things, aren’t they? You can’t touch them and hold them in your hands, but they have incredible power.

 

That’s the moment when everything changes. There’s before, and then after. And once a key moment occurs, there’s no going back to before. You make a choice, and it’s like ringing a bell. You can’t unring it. A key moment is a feeling. Your heart tells you. The point is, you have to pay attention.

 

That was how love worked sometimes… It filled every nook and cranny of your heart, and then one day you realized it had gone away. She wondered where those feelings went. Maybe they trickled into the atmosphere to be inhaled by someone else, a stranger who suddenly saw someone across the room and instantly fell I love.

 

 My Review:

 

This was my first experience enjoying Ms. Wigg’s amusing and dynamic storytelling and I immediately became an instant and ravenous fan. I adored her quirky characters, clever humor, and insightful narrative. Her storylines were poignant, entertaining, heart squeezing, intriguing, and thoughtfully written. The descriptive detail of her food preparations played havoc with my diet plan, ultimately causing me to run to the farmers market for my own fresh ingredients from her spark of culinary creativity. Her skillful wordcraft was a delight for all the senses and I doubt I could ever tire of feasting on her works.  I was provided with a review of this delicious book by TLC Book Tours and HarperCollins.

 

 About Susan Wiggs  

 

Susan Wiggs is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than fifty novels, including the beloved Lakeshore Chronicles series and her most recent novel, the instant New York Times bestseller Family Tree. Her award-winning books have been translated into two dozen languages. A native of a small town in upstate New York, she now lives with her husband at the water’s edge on an island in Puget Sound, and in good weather can commute to her writers’ group in a twenty-one-foot motorboat. A former teacher and graduate of the University of Texas and Harvard, Susan is also an avid hiker, an amateur photographer, a good skier, and a cautious mountain biker—yet her favorite form of exercise is curling up with a good book.

Find out more about Susan at her website, and connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.






Book Review: The Lucky Ones by Tiffany Reisz

 

The Lucky Ones

by Tiffany Reisz

Print Length: 368 pages

Publisher: MIRA (February 13, 2018)

They called themselves “the lucky ones”

They were seven children either orphaned or abandoned by their parents and chosen by legendary philanthropist and brain surgeon Dr. Vincent Capello to live in The Dragon, his almost magical beach house on the Oregon Coast. Allison was the youngest of the lucky ones living an idyllic life with her newfound family…until the night she almost died and was then whisked away from the house and her adopted family forever.

Now, thirteen years later, Allison receives a letter from Roland, Dr. Capello’s oldest son, warning her that their father is ill and in his final days. Allison determines she must go home again and confront the ghosts of her past. She’s determined to find out what really happened that fateful night — was it an accident or, as she’s always suspected, did one of her beloved family members try to kill her?

But digging into the past can reveal horrific truths, and when Allison pieces together the story of her life, she’ll learn the terrible secret at the heart of the family she once loved but never really knew.

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My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

If I wanted to judge people all day I’d either be a priest or get a Facebook account…

 

Allison looked into his eyes. He didn’t have bedroom eyes, not like McQueen did. Roland had hallway eyes—labyrinthine hallways made of marble and lit by torches resting in iron sconces. She could wander those shadowy hallways forever and never once feel lost.

 

He buys his Catholic guilt in bulk at Costco…

 

You know what they say…ours is not to wonder why. Ours is but to drink bourbon and rye.

 

There aren’t a lot of them around. True psychopaths make up about two percent of the population. In prison it’s more like… fifty percent. In politics, maybe ninety percent.

 

 My Review:

 

I don’t believe I know enough lofty adjectives or adverbs to fully extol the brilliance and craft of this spellbinding tale. I was consumed, enthralled, engrossed and embedded in this riveting tale from beginning to end. I was intrigued and beguiled by all the characters while also fearful I was going to learn something truly awful about them, which I did, but I still loved them anyway. The story was ingeniously crafted, cunningly paced, and loaded with all manner of itchy and twisty elements that squeezed my heart, set my brain on fire, and put a series of hot rocks in my throat. Tiffany Reisz is an evil genius and a clever wordsmith. I covet her mad skills and am wild with greed to amass and read every single thing she has and will ever write.

About Tiffany Reisz 

 

 

Tiffany Reisz lives in Lexington, Kentucky with her husband, author Andrew Shaffer.