.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

My parents used to say that I was the link between my brothers. I was the one who kept the peace— or started the biggest fights.

“But I guess life is about taking risks as we search for that special place,” he says, sounding like a fortune cookie from Ying Palace where we ordered takeout almost every Wednesday. They never make sense but taste yummy, and their quotes sound so beautiful.

Depression is something that’s all over me, even when I don’t want it. I’ve tried to break away from it several times, but it’s my permanent companion.

We could call HGTV and have a show. Something like, Abandoned Houses Dusty Edition.

His eyes are pleading me to say something, but I am catching his words. They are like fluttering butterflies that one can see only once in a lifetime.

After my journey, love still has the same meaning it’s had for as long as I can remember. It’s a verb, a noun, an adjective, and an adverb with many meanings but it’s hard to explain in only a few words

Belonging wasn’t a clear verb for me until I met you…

 My Review:

Decisions, decisions… what a conundrum. After a lifetime of battling feelings of inadequacy and being “never enough,” as she had essentially been abandoned or passed over by everyone who had ever mattered to her, Hazel suddenly found herself having to choose between two adoring men who were vying for her heart. One was her ex-husband who had been her childhood best friend and first love, and the other was her business partner and the man she has been secretly in love with for the last two years. She felt deeply for both who were successful, smart, sexy, and attentive.   Hazel was a wreck, drowning in indecision, and miserable over the dilemma, but damn, I should have such problems!

Written from the multiple POV of the three main characters, the emotive storylines were original, entertaining, and well-crafted while the writing was richly poignant and insightful, engaging, delectably sensual, and held my rapt attention throughout. Ms. Burgoa’s characters are always uniquely compelling, considerably flawed or damaged, and tend to ceaselessly pluck at my curiosity as the cunning and wily wordsmith slowly reveals their motivations and histories. I was as conflicted as Hazel was and couldn’t decide whom she should select and waffled several times as I gained more perspective on each one. To my vast delight, the conclusion was even better than expected and infinitely satisfying.

 

 

AUTHOR INFORMATION:

Claudia is an award-winning, international bestselling author. She lives in Colorado working for a small IT company, managing her household filled with three confused dogs, two daughters wrought with fandoms and a son who thinks he’s the boss of the house. And a wonderful husband who shares her love for all things geek. To survive she works continually to find purpose for the voices flitting through her head, plus she consumes high quantities of chocolate to keep the last threads of sanity intact.

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Your Endless Love

by Layla Hagen

Goodreads

✦ Amazon US / UK / CA / AU

✦ iBooks  /  ✦ Google Play 

✦ B&N    /  ✦ Kobo 

An incurable romantic with a chronic case of bad luck with men…

Museum curator Summer Bennett knows that happily-ever-afters are not make-believe. After all, her siblings all found their soulmates, so she’s optimistic her prince charming will come along too…eventually. In the meantime, she focuses on her job and her volunteering—which brings her face to face with one of Hollywood’s hottest A-listers.

When Alexander Westbrook flashes America’s favorite panty-melting smile, Summer’s entire body responds. When she asks him to get involved in the community where she volunteers, Summer is shocked that the Hollywood heartthrob agrees right away. Two weeks working side by side with the world’s sexiest guy, and the game is on.

Far from the public eye, Summer discovers she likes the real Alex even more than his on-screen persona. Secret kisses and whispered conversations spark a fire in her that nothing can extinguish. If only his life wasn’t splashed all over the tabloids…

Alex can’t keep his eyes–or his hands–off of Summer. But she’s too sweet, and too damn lovely to be swept up in his Hollywood drama. His career is at risk, and an iron-clad clause in his contract with the studio makes a relationship impossible. But staying away from her is out of the question.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

As my brother heads to the bunch of kids grouped in the center of the room, I wonder for the millionth time if he’s actually human. He runs a billion-dollar corporation, finds time to woo his wife, and raise four little souls. I’m still going with a radioactive spider bite. Possibly vampire.

Some would call my tactics underhanded. Unorthodox is a better word. Much more elegant. A convincing sales pitch takes people skills, which I have in spades. You cannot grow up with eight siblings and not have people skills.

Everything we eat during girls’ night doesn’t matter… Gossiping burns a lot of calories…

Believing someone’s promise is more complicated than gifting them with yours, because when you chose to believe someone, you give them power over you.

My Review:

I have learned that I can always count on Layla Hagen’s Bennetts for sweet and steamy stories that are relatively low in conflict and dreaded angst, and I was long overdue for some refreshing relief. Summer and Alex were a charming couple and their story was delightfully crisp and simply adorable while it also brought the heat. The storyline was entertaining and engaging and provided updates on the rest of the massive Bennett clan. I enjoyed their playful banter and sizzling chemistry. But I’m left to wonder what will be next as Ms. Hagen has married off the last of the clan, although there seems to be a large pool of cousins yet to be tapped.

 About Layla Hagen   

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The Wild Woman’s Guide to Traveling the World

by Kristin Rockaway

Purchase Links

Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Center Street

Fans of Sophie Kinsella and The Devil Wears Prada will love this smart, sexy debut novel of wanderlust.

Objectively, Sophie is a success: she’s got a coveted job at a top consulting firm, a Manhattan apartment, and a passport full of stamps. It isn’t quite what she dreamed of when she was a teenager dog-earing pages in exotic travel guides, but it’s secure. Then her best friend bails just hours after they arrive in Hong Kong for a girls’ trip, and Sophie falls for Carson, a free-spirited, globetrotting American artist. He begs her to join him on his haphazard journey, but she chooses responsibility and her five-year plan.

Back in New York, that plan feels less and less appealing. As Sophie recalls the dreams she’s suppressed, the brief international jaunts she sneaks in between business trips no longer feel like enough. Carson isn’t ready to let her go either, but as they try to figure out their relationship, Sophie realizes she may have to pursue her passions with or without him.

Praise

“With its spirited yet credible plot and vividly intricate characters, this debut novel shines.” — Library Journal (starred review)

“…a fun, sexy debut perfect for readers who love exotic settings and a great love story. For those wishing to indulge their wanderlust, or who have dreams too big for tidy little boxes, this is an incredibly satisfying read.” — Karma Brown, bestselling author of Come Away With Me

“…brilliantly navigates one woman’s quest to let go of what is practical to pursue her passion and surrender to her inner dreamer.” — Kerry Lonsdale, bestselling author of Everything We Keep

“Can a novel be smart and loads of fun? Kristin Rockaway’s debut is proof that it’s possible. Warm, witty, and completely delightful, this book had my inner escapist itching to hop on the next flight out of town.” — Camille Pagán, bestselling author of Life and Other Near-Death Experiences

“Kristin Rockaway is a wise and fresh new voice in women’s fiction and this book was a delight from start to finish.”  — Anita Hughes, author of Christmas in Paris

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Elena rarely left the tri-state area; her idea of an exotic getaway involved tanning on the Jersey Shore.

But with my focus on the future, I rarely immersed myself in the right now. My life was reduced to a series of check marks, ticking off each goal I achieved without taking the time to revel in my accomplishments. As soon as I hit one target, I was already reaching for the next one and contemplating the one after that. I rushed full speed ahead, my sights pointed sharply forward, never stopping to take a look at what was around me.

I can sketch in Hong Kong, in Australia, in New York. I can find an adventure wherever I am. The only constant I need in my life is you. So wherever you go, I’ll follow.

My Review:

Sophie loved to travel and plan travel and dream up detailed imaginary itineraries, although she had unfortunately chosen the wrong travel partner in Elena who decided on their first night there that she just wasn’t feeling the Hong Kong vacation that Sophie had planned and paid for and after a tense dinner of informing Sophie of all her unlovable and miserable flaws, Elena flew back home the very next day.   Wow, this was the opening scene of the story and although I flinched a few times, I was hooked. Poor Sophie, I felt for her and was exasperated by her and also wanted to kick her more than a few times as I saw far too much of my twenty and thirty-something self in this character; it was rather eerie and more than a bit painful. I truly adored the character of Carson who proved that opposites not only attract, they can bewitch and fascinate. Carson was an artistic dreamer going through a nomad stage while Sophie was a highly structured and over anxious planner.

I was stunned to realize this insightful and well-written book was the author’s first; every single character was colorfully described with vivid environmental details and interesting facts also tucked into the narrative. The premise was unique and entertaining while the writing was cleverly observant, wryly amusing, and delightfully steamy. Ms. Rockaway has a bright future ahead of her.

About Kristin Rockaway

Kristin Rockaway is a native New Yorker with an insatiable case of wanderlust. After working in the IT industry for far too many years, she finally traded the city for the surf and chased her dreams out to Southern California, where she spends her days happily writing stories instead of software. Her debut novel, The Wild Woman’s Guide to Traveling the World, was released from Hachette Book Group in June 2017. When she’s not writing, she enjoys spending time with her husband and son, browsing the aisles of her neighborhood bookstores, and planning her next big vacation.

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

One More Promise

by Samantha Chase

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Amazon

B&N

Dylan Anders is making amends
…to his family
…to the public
…to the woman who just walked into his life

Paige Walters must learn to forgive
…her busy father
…her bossy sister
…and the wonderful man she horribly misjudged

Ambitious Paige Walters is ecstatic when she’s hired to recruit musicians for a literacy campaign—it’s her chance to prove she’s got the chops to make it in the family business. When Dylan steps in, she immediately dislikes him and vows not to let the fallen idol screw it up. But as the work brings Paige and Dylan closer together, their attraction grows…and so do their challenges…

Shaughnessy Brothers: Band on the Run series
One More Kiss (Book 1)
One More Promise (Book 2)
One More Moment (Book 3)

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Leave it to his parents to think all he needed to get started on this new life was a new suitcase.

Ariel didn’t smile. She rarely did. She thought it caused wrinkles.

She wasn’t even his usual type, but it turned out his usual type wasn’t particularly good for him.

A man knew when to pay attention, and Dylan learned early on that food was to Paige what flowers were to some women.

My Review:

This was a relatively light and easy to follow story with a slowly developing romance between Dylan, a newly rehabbed and tattooed bad boy rock-star with his reputation in tatters; and Paige, the mousy, uptight, and generally overlooked yet anxious to please PR executive who was assigned to be his handler. Paige worked in her father’s firm and her family was rather vile, yet they provided most of the comic relief.

If you have ever read a romance novel at any time in your life then, of course, you already know the outcome, yet the story was entertaining with a few delightfully naughty bits, and the characters were sweet and endearingly flawed.  Although, I was slow to fully warm up to Paige as she was initially rudely judgmental and inflexible.  I did not expect the former hard-partying man-ho rock-star to be the most level-headed, considerate, and thoughtful character in the book, but I adored the sweet and sexy Dylan.

Most girls/women have had a rock-star or famous actor fantasy or two – um thousand, yes, I will fess up… I’ll own it and wave my hands in the air like I do not care. While I don’t read rocker romances often, there are times I need something lighter in tone to break up the tedium or alleviate the residual heaviness from over-servings of angst or brain scrambling thrillers, and this sexy bad boy with a bad rep for fast living and hard partying came at a good time. And well, it’s from Samantha Chase, nuff said.

About the Author

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You know that saying: One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

I found out that it was true. At least, that’s what I’d thought a year earlier when a few stolen moments with this one, unexpected girl, turned my heart to mush.

I thought she was different.

I thought she was special.

But it turned out I was wrong.

I was the kind of guy who learned from his mistakes quickly, so I moved away, threw myself into my budding football career, and I was determined to make something of myself and focus on my future.

And it worked, despite me missing her.

For a short while, I had everything figured out again.

Then, in one split second, it was all gone, ripped out from beneath my feet.

An injury forced me back home to Winslow to face the world I’d left behind.

But I wasn’t the same man when I returned.

I was different now. Too different for everything to go back the way it was before.

-Jake

I wasn’t the relationship type. I was the girl who mothers warned their sons about. I was the local piece of trash.

At least, that’s what they all thought.

None of them ever really knew me at all. None of them except him.

And then he left me… alone and confused. He forced me to hate him, to hate them all. I wanted to drift away. Leave Winslow far behind me and start afresh someplace else. Someplace new. Somewhere I could become anything and anyone I wanted to be.

But then he came back, dragging with him every moment, every explicit memory I had of us together and dumping them unceremoniously at my feet.

I wanted to keep hating him.

I wanted to resist.

But he was different now.

So cold, so angry, and sexy as all hell.

He’d changed, and all my plans for a happy ever after were shattered the moment he made the decision to return and show me exactly what I’d been missing while he’d been gone. I was screwed.

-Melanie

Charlie M. Matthews is a hopeless romantic, lost in her own world of fairy tales and adventures. A lover of art and painting, she’d happily trade in her everyday clothes in exchange for a paint smudged shirt. In the confines of her attic room, she is able to create a world that is unlike no other. Mixing fantasy and fiction to generate a piece of work that she could so easily lose herself in. With her wild imagination and passion for reading, Charlie stumbled upon a new love.

Writing…

What started as a distraction from the crazy little thing that is ‘life’, it soon became all too real. She no longer dreamt about the day her words would be published for all to see because that day had finally come true. It 2015 she released her first novel and hasn’t looked back since.

Charlie is a mum of three beautiful children, living in a small village on the outskirts of Oxfordshire, England. Born and raised in the busy town of Reading, she switched the bright lights and traffic jams for a quiet life in the sticks a little over eight years ago.

Between school runs and generally just doing the whole ‘mum’ thing, you’ll most likely find her slobbing out on the sofa, shouting at the tv screen while her favourite football team (Arsenal) are tearing up the field. And yes, no doubt there will be beer involved, or if she’s feeling extra girlie, maybe even a glass of vino.

Buy The Book

Other books in the series

The Wrong Game

Buy The Wrong Game

 After Care

by L.B. Dunbar

Goodreads

Amazon US  / UK  /  CA  /  AU

Paperback

What do you get when you cross a breast cancer survivor with a sexy, mature man….

Blurb:

Breast cancer survivor Edie Williams is ready to live.

Divorced. Mother of two.

She’s planned the vacation of a lifetime for a reboot,

only to encounter an awakening adventure—Tommy Carrigan.

Manager of the band Collision, Tommy Carrigan has his plate full.

Independent. Carefree.

He’s on an annual holiday with his band family,

when the unexpected happens—Edie Williams.

Love might be just what the doctor prescribed,

but can it survive the world of rock-n-roll?

If you enjoyed The Sex Education of M.E., you’ll love After Care, another romance for the over-forty from L.B. Dunbar. Continue the adventure previously published in Love Notes, the newsletter of L.B. Dunbar.

A romance for the over 40.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

I was forty-three. I should have been in the prime of my life. Where was that sexual libido return everyone promised me would happen? Oh, right, it walked out the door with a younger model—blonde, thin, and cancer-free under her skin.

Marriage was hard work. One in two marriages still ended in divorce. I wasn’t a statistic; I was a trend.

When leaving the hospital, aftercare was always part of the experience. What you did after—the procedure, the treatment, the incision that cut deep. However, nothing could have prepared me for how I’d take care of myself after Tommy Carrigan. There was no list, no instruction manual online at patient dot com for matters of the heart.

I just want to be close to you… No one’s ever talked like that about me, and I just want to capture it for a little while. I want to hold onto it, if I can. For just a little bit.

I bet you’re used to leather and lace, and I’m one-hundred percent cotton.

You’ll never be an excuse, darlin’. Always my reason.

My Review:

Being an, ahem, mature woman on the plus side of forty, I couldn’t help but notice that bookstores have a rather limited selection of engaging offerings featuring vibrant and appealing main characters within my demographic of a platinum-haired goddess. Interesting female characters of my age tend to be written as secondary players, and most typically are the younger heroine’s indulgent or eccentric auntie. With this in mind, I found L.B. Dunbar’s After Care to be a refreshing and welcome change of pace and have a deliriously gleeful urge to erect an altar of pink typewriters in her honor. Not only were her characters highly appealing and alluring, they were smart and well seasoned. The premise was unique and relevant while the storylines were multi-layered, well-crafted, and wily. However, the writing wins the blue-ribbon prize as Ms. Dunbar’s word-craft was delightfully textured and insightful, witty, thoughtfully observant, hit all the feels, and sizzled and snapped with sensuality. I was quickly invested in the tale and remained happily engaged throughout.   Ms. Dunbar has a new fangirl.

ABOUT L.B. DUNBAR      

Avid drinker of Coca-Cola, L.B. Dunbar loves the sweet things in life. Her affair with all things romantic began with her first book at the tender age of six: Goldilocks and the Three Bears. One can never forget her first! From there, the reading journey includes a deep love of fairy tales, medieval knights, regency debauchery, and alpha males. She loves a deep belly laugh and a strong hug. Occasionally, she has the energy of a Jack Russell terrier. Accused, yes, that’s the correct word, of having an overactive imagination; to her benefit, such an imagination works well. Author of over a dozen novels, she’s created small town worlds, rock star mayhem, and MMA chaos. Her other duties in life include: mother to four growing children and wife to the one and only.

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Should’ve Been You

 (Man Enough #3)

by Nicole McLaughlin 

Goodreads

Amazon

Childhood neighbors get a chance at love in Should’ve Been You, an achingly romantic novella in Nicole McLaughlin’s Man Enough series!

National Guardsman Jase Beckford wants to live a quiet life raising cattle and taking care of his mother. His childhood friend and neighbor Hannah is still his best friend, but when he walks into the Walters house one morning and sees her twin sister Becca for the first time in five years, he wonders if he missed out on something special.

Becca Walters has nursed a secret crush on Jase since childhood, but he always preferred Hannah, so she buried her feelings assuming her sister and Jase would one day turn their flirtation into a real relationship. And this Christmas, she is anticipating a proposal of her own, so Jase’s reappearance in her life doesn’t mean anything. Much. Okay, maybe more than Becca would like to admit.

However, when Becca’s sister gets engaged to someone who’s not Jase, Becca and Jase find themselves spending more together. And when secrets are revealed, suddenly those dormant feelings come back to life; but is the possibility of something between them worth risking the happiness of everyone they love?

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Turkey Bacon… I have an open mind about many things, I’ll have you know. But the sanctity of pork fat is not one of them.

I was just thinking that if you’d been my middle-school teacher, I would not have been able to focus… All men— no matter their age—can appreciate a beautiful woman. Even teachers are fair game for the spank bank.

Aiden was a big guy. Goatee, shaved head, enough muscles for three men.

Sometimes I miss having a man around. I mean . . . obviously they have their uses.

My Review:

I enjoyed this quick and entertaining tale of a recent veteran who had returned to his small rural Kansas community while continuing to serve with the National Guard while establishing his new venture into cattle. His human relationships proved to be a bit trickier and considerably more complicated. I had not read the previous books in the series and apparently did not need to as was never confused, although I was feeling the prickling of curiosity as his fellow guardsmen sounded interesting and quirky. The premise was interesting and relevant, the storylines were easy to follow and engaging, and characters were likable and endearing. I was satisfied with the happy for now ending to the blossoming romance and would be interested in continuing the series with all the previous and future installments.

About the Author 

Amazon  Website

Nicole loves to read, bake, make lists, and binge watch an entire television show season in one day. She lives with her husband and three boys in a small town outside of Kansas City.