Genre: contemporary romance

Review: To Catch a Dream by Audrey Carlan

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | blog tours> book reviews> C+ Reviews
Review: To Catch a Dream by Audrey CarlanTo Catch a Dream by Audrey Carlan
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, women's fiction
Series: Wish #2
Pages: 320
Published by Hqn on March 9, 2021
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of the worldwide phenomenon Calendar Girl series brings readers a poignant and honest look at life’s most complicated relationships.
When their mother passed away, Evie Ross and her sister were each given a stack of letters, one to be opened every year on their birthday; letters their free-spirited mother hoped would inspire and guide them through adulthood. But although Evie has made a successful career, her desire for the stability and security she never had from her parents has meant she’s never experienced the best life has to offer. But the discovery of more letters hidden in a safe-deposit box points to secrets her mother held close, and possibly a new way for Evie to think about her family, her heart and her dreams.
“Audrey Carlan has created a gem of a story about sisterhood, love, second chances, and the kind of wanderlust that won’t be silenced, reminding us that sometimes the most important journey is the one we take home.” —Lexi Ryan, New York Times bestselling author

My Review:

There are two stories in To Catch a Dream. One is a story of sisterhood, and that part of the story is also about finding the place that your heart can call home – even if it’s not a place at all. And that part of the story really worked – at least for this reader.

The second part of the story is the romance. It’s a story about finally making the dreams of love and romance you had when you were experiencing your first crush come not just true, but seemingly just about perfect. And I have to say that this part of the story did not work nearly as well, at least not for this reader.

The relationship between Evie, her younger sister Suda Kaye and their mother Catori is a story about roots and wings and baggage. And I include Catori in the present tense because that relationship is still very much a part of both Evie and Suda Kaye’s present even though Catori has been dead for over a decade by the time To Catch a Dream begins.

When Catori died, Evie was 20, Suda Kaye was 18 and their mother had NEVER been their primary caregiver. That role was reserved for Catori’s father Tahsuda, the grandfather that the girls called Toko who was the defining figure in their lives.

Why? Because their father Adam Ross was a career Army officer, someone high up in hush-hush operations, and someone who lived where he served – wherever in the world that might be. Catori knew that going in, but the reality turned out to be more than she could handle as a young mother with postpartum depression and a baby.

Catori was a free spirit, born with wanderlust, and her home was never going to be a fixed place. So she left her daughters on the reservation with her own father and took off. Not that both Catori and Adam didn’t come back to their daughters as often as they could, but it made for a far from conventional upbringing for the girls.

When Catori succumbed to cancer, the girls were just barely old enough to take care of themselves. But she left them each a pile of letters, one to be opened on each of their birthdays, year after year, until the piles ran out. She left them each a piece of her spirit even if she couldn’t be with them.

And as soon as she opened her letter, Suda Kaye began making plans to follow the wanderlust in her own heart, leaving Evie heartbroken all over again, wondering why she was never enough for anyone she loved.

Suda Kaye returned to Colorado in the first book in the The Wish series, What the Heart Wants, which I haven’t read but didn’t feel like I missed anything important for this story by not having read that one.

As this story opens, Suda Kaye has found her heart has led her home, and she has found her happy ever after, but she and Evie still have a ton of baggage to get over, and a metric buttload of resentment, hurt and anger that they are both trying desperately to ignore.

And in the middle of that still seeping emotional wound, Suda Kaye just HAS to manipulate and maneuver her sister into the path of the childhood crush that she never got over. While it may be that folks who have found their own romantic HEAs are particularly bound and determined to make sure that every single person in their orbit finds theirs, the course of true love does not run smooth when there are too many people sticking their oars in the water.

Escape Rating C+: As I said, there were two parts to this story, as is fitting for something that straddles the line between women’s fiction and romance. The women’s fiction part of this story worked really, really well for me. As much as Suda Kaye would drive me crazy, and frequently does her sister Evie, their relationship felt solid and loving and grounded even when they were arguing. All of their stuff felt very real – including Suda Kaye’s well-intentioned but MUCH too frequent interference in her sister’s life.

And I especially loved the relationship that they both had with their grandfather. That was beautifully done.

But, and you knew there was a but coming, I had serious issues with the relationship between Evie and Milo, the relationship that eventually becomes the romance in the story.

I say eventually because in the first half of the book, Milo comes on so strong, and is so overbearingly heavy-handed in all of his dealings with Evie that I had to wonder whether that part of the book was going to turn out to be a cautionary tale about letting a man take over your life rather than a romance.

Although Milo and Evie have known each other since they were 12 and 8 respectively, when Milo saved Evie from a bunch of bullies, they have not had an ongoing friendship. So when the meet again as adults, the way that Milo declares that Evie is “his woman” and overrides her expressed wishes because he knows what’s best for her, it was honestly cringeworthy. He comes across as an obsessed stalker, and their every interaction for the entire first half of the book felt possessive and overbearing – not the start of a romance.

That he also wants to merge their businesses as well as their personal lives made things extra-squicky for a significant part of the story, because he kept ignoring and overriding Evie’s expressed opinions, concerns and needs. Even if he turned out to be right, the way that their romance began did not read like a relationship of equals.

I will say that Milo redeems himself in the second half of the story, but the impression left by the first half lingers uncomfortably.

So skim the first half of the romance, read this one for the sisterhood and the family relationships and the awesome and surprising cliffie at the end that sets up the next story in the series, On the Sweet Side.

Review: Level Up by Cathy Yardley

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: Level Up by Cathy YardleyLevel Up (Fandom Hearts, #1) by Cathy Yardley
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, romantic comedy
Series: Fandom Hearts #1
Pages: 154
Published by St. Martin's Press on April 11, 2017
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Geeky introvert Tessa Rodriguez will do whatever it takes to get promoted to video game engineer– including create a fandom-based video game in just three weeks. The only problem is, she can't do it alone. Now, she needs to strong-arm, cajole, and otherwise socialize with her video game coworkers, especially her roommate, Adam, who’s always been strictly business with her. The more they work together, though, the closer they get…
Adam London has always thought of his roomie Tessa as “one of the guys” until he agreed to help her with this crazy project. Now, he’s thinking of her all the time… and certainly as something more than just a roommate! But his last girlfriend broke up with him to follow her ambitions, and he knows that Tessa is obsessed with getting ahead in the video game world.
Going from friends to something more is one hell of a challenge. Can Tessa and Adam level up their relationship to love?

My Review:

I reviewed the second book in the Fandom Hearts series, One True Pairing, several years ago for Library Journal. I loved it so much that I gave it a Starred Review. While that review may be behind a paywall, a variation of it is here on Goodreads.

I also enjoyed it so much that I bought the first book in the series, Level Up, certain that I would get a round tuit eventually. When the notification for this tour popped up I decided that eventually was finally here.

And I have to say that Level Up was just as much geeky fun as One True Pairing.

The title of Level Up is a bit of a pun. Both Tessa and Adam work for the game design company MPG, whose name is also a pun but stands for Mysterious Pickles Games – not that anyone really calls the place that.

And they’re roommates. Adam owns the house, Tessa rents a room and shares the public spaces. They’re friend-ly rather than friends, as Tessa is very much of an introvert while Adam has a whole coterie of male friends that he works with and spends time gaming with outside of work.

The thing is that both Tessa and Adam need to do some leveling up in their lives and neither of them are quite ready to acknowledge it. Both are a year out of long-term relationships that went badly, and that’s a lot of it.

But Tessa in particular is in more than a bit of a “pickle” of her very own. She’s an excellent coder, she has serious skills in coding and design, but she’s a woman trying to break into a profession, a company and a gang that is an entirely male preserve.

She knows that she’s ready to level up her career and move from being merely the audio coder to a member of the engineering team. She’s been keeping her nose to the grindstone nearly 24/7 in the hopes that her talents will be recognized.

And it just doesn’t work that way. It should, but it doesn’t.

If Tessa wants to be recognized, she needs to put herself into a position where she can be known – at least a little bit. She needs to spend some time with her colleagues and co-workers and not holed up in her cubicle or her room.

Stepping outside of her comfort zone – and her walls – brings her the friendship of the geeky women who operate the geeky bookstore around the corner from the house. Tessa finds friendship and sisterhood with a group of women who are every bit as nerdy and geeky as she is herself. She belongs.

And she can help them as much as they can help her.

They need to win a fandom contest to say the bookstore. Tessa needs a gaming project that she can spearhead to bring herself the right kind of attention at MPG. And Adam needs to get over his high-maintenance ex by getting himself a girlfriend.

Those things shouldn’t quite go together. But they do. And it’s awesome, geeky romantic fun every level along the way.

Escape Rating A-: There is just so much to love in the Fandom Hearts series, especially for anyone who is a bit of a geek themselves. The portrait of life at a game developer in Level Up, and the way that One True Pairing speaks to the heart of “shipping” are just so much fun.

This story succeeds on multiple levels – and they’re all a lot of fun.

The romance here is a geeky version of friends to lovers. Tessa and Adam are platonic roommates. They’ve worked together for a while and shared a house for a year. They’ve had a chance to get to know each other and they’re friend-ly without being close friends. It also seems like their bad breakups have insulated them from each other, keeping them from seeing each other as possible romantic partners.

There are, after all, plenty of professional pitfalls for Tessa if she gets romantically involved with a co-worker or even dresses like anything other than “one of the guys”. She’s in an awkward spot. And it’s a very real kind of awkward. Software development companies of all types are known to be sausage-fests. All guys, all the time, to the point where measuring whose is biggest is practically a daily event.

That the team lead of this particular development group is a known asshole to everyone but especially to women makes this scenario feel especially true to life. Tessa still wants in, but knows that she’ll have to prove herself every single day and pay for it with her career if she ever falls a bit short – even if that shortfall is something that a man would be forgiven for instantly.

So Tessa’s spearheading of this project for her new friends is ballsy. Necessary for her career. And a tightrope walk every minute. And we feel for her.

The romance is glittery icing on top of Tessa’s hard-working and hard-won cake. Adam has to both get over his ex and see her for the user that she really is. And that he and Tessa are good for each other because they already like each other for who they really are and not anyone they need to pretend to be.

And it’s lovely that they figure that out while snowbound – even if that particular part of the scenario felt a bit too close to real life this month!

For those of us who are geeky girls, Fandom Hearts is a series that demonstrates that we can be just exactly who we are and still meet cute and find romance without compromising on our love of all things nerdy.

BTW if the plot of One True Pairing reminds readers a bit of last year’s marvelous Spoiler Alert, just remember that One True Pairing was originally published in 2017. So if you like one you’ll love the other and definitely vice-versa. After all, we’ve all shipped the story of a romance between one of the characters we love – or the actor who plays them – and a real-life person more than a few times in our fannish lives, haven’t we?

Review: Best Laid Plans by Roan Parrish

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: Best Laid Plans by Roan ParrishBest Laid Plans (Garnet Run, #2) by Roan Parrish
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, M/M romance
Series: Garnet Run #2
Pages: 304
Published by Carina Adores on February 23, 2021
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

A man who’s been moving his whole life finally finds a reason to stay put.
Charlie Matheson has spent his life taking care of things. When his parents died two days before his eighteenth birthday, he took care of his younger brother, even though that meant putting his own dreams on hold. He took care of his father’s hardware store, building it into something known several towns over. He took care of the cat he found in the woods…so now he has a cat.
When a stranger with epic tattoos and a glare to match starts coming into Matheson’s Hardware, buying things seemingly at random and lugging them off in a car so beat-up Charlie feels bad for it, his instinct is to help. When the man comes in for the fifth time in a week, Charlie can’t resist intervening.
Rye Janssen has spent his life breaking things. Promises. His parents’ hearts. Leases. He isn’t used to people wanting to put things back together—not the crumbling house he just inherited, not his future and certainly not him. But the longer he stays in Garnet Run, the more he can see himself belonging there. And the more time he spends with Charlie, the more he can see himself falling asleep in Charlie’s arms…and waking up in them.
Is this what it feels like to have a home—and someone to share it with?

My Review:

The original phrase (in the original Scots) by the immortal Robbie Burns goes, “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley.” But in contemporary English it’s usually paraphrased as “the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray”. Or something along those lines.

The point is pretty clear, whatever the language.

There are two kinds of plans going astray in this second book in the Garnet Run series, after last year’s terrific series opener Better Than People. Even better, you don’t have to read the first to enjoy the second, although both books are lovely and well worth reading.

Rye Janssen comes to the tiny town of Garnet Run Wyoming with not much more than the ghost of a plan – a ghost that gets exorcised just about the minute he arrives in town.

Rye inherited a house in Garnet Run from the grandfather he never met. Rye has been couch-surfing in Seattle since his most recent eviction. He’s broke, unemployed and has no place left to turn when the news that he owns a whole house in what he thinks of as the middle of nowhere turns out to be true and not the scam he expected it to be.

With no ties left in Seattle except his cat Marmot (who will happily come with him), and no economic prospects whatsoever, he climbs into his barely functional car and sets out for the unknown. He’s thinking that a house has to be a better place to live than his current circumstances. His plan is to get to Garnet Run, move into the house and see what happens next.

As I said, a ghost of a plan that goes up in smoke when he sees the sagging, teetering house that is his legacy from his grandfather. But he has no place and nothing else, so Rye and Marmot haul in the sleeping bag they share and start making do – because that’s what they always do.

Charlie Matheson has done nothing but live his life according to a self-imposed plan since the day his parents were killed in a car accident, leaving the just barely 18-year-old Charlie with a decent house, a failing hardware store, and the custody of his then 13-year-old brother Jack. (Jack is the protagonist of Better Than People.)

20 years later, Charlie has completely refurbished the house, has turned the hardware store into a profitable business and managed to see Jack through to a successful adulthood, living his dream as a successful book illustrator and commercial artist.

But Charlie never got to live his own dreams. Actually, Charlie barely lets himself live. The only people who are part of his inner circle are his brother Jack and his Maine Coon cat Jane. Outside of them, he has acquaintances, he has colleagues, but no close friends and definitely no lovers.

Until Rye Janssen slinks into his hardware store looking for as few cheap parts as possible to keep that house from falling down around his ears. He’s already put his leg through the rotting floorboards.

Charlie loves projects and Rye desperately needs help that he’s both ashamed and afraid to accept. That shouldn’t be enough to start a relationship – even though their cats are all in on that front LONG before their humans are on board.

Can a man who has nothing but roots and one who is all wings have anything like a chance?

Escape Rating A-: A lot of this series, at least so far, is centered around not just the romance but about the romantic partners and their relationships with their marvelously well drawn companion animals. And I’ll confess that I loved this one just a bit more than the first book because most of the animals in that story were dogs, while the star animal attractions in this one are both cats – not that I didn’t like the dogs, too.

But cats. Definitely cats for the win.

There’s something else about this series that definitely needs a shout-out, and that’s the way that it shows and doesn’t just tell two important things. One of the protagonists in the first book is neuroatypical, and that’s not something we see nearly often enough in one of the main characters in a romance. Happy endings are for everyone – or at least they should be.

In this book, Charlie is possibly a bit on that scale, but mostly it feels like he’s a trauma survivor whose coping mechanisms are now getting in his way. What makes this story shine is its attitude of total sex positivity. This is a story that demonstrates, over and over and over again, until both Charlie and the reader get the message, that love and sex are whatever works for each person. There is no rule that says only certain acts are or are not sexual, and that only certain behaviors are or are not okay. As long as everyone involved freely consents, whatever does or does not float a particular person’s boat is just fine.

And if they choose not to put their boat out at all, that’s fine too.

There’s a saying “that love is all there is is all we know of love” and that’s at the heart of this book.

But it also tells a lovely story about someone who has never had a place to call his own discovering that he can put down roots and make a life in a place he can call home. And that someone who had to grow up much too scared and much too soon still can still find a person who can help him make new dreams and take new wings.

And that every town, no matter how small or remote, can use an absolutely kick-ass cat playground and shelter to help make a town into a  community.

Review: A Vineyard Valentine by Nina Bocci

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> blog tours> book reviews
Review: A Vineyard Valentine by Nina BocciA Vineyard Valenting by Nina Bocci
Format: audiobook
Source: publisher
Formats available: audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, romantic comedy
Published by Audible Studios on February 4th 2021
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

An unforgettable night of romance awaits in this funny, charming novella by USA Today best-selling author Nina Bocci!

The annual Valentine’s Day singles soiree is always a big money-maker for Eloisa Giordono’s winery. What could be more romantic than looking for love at a quaint family vineyard on the most romantic night of year? Well, just about anything as far as Eloisa is concerned. She’s a Valentine’s Day Grinch who thinks it’s the lamest, most clichéd holiday ever invented.

Fortunately, she’ll get to hang out with like-minded folks this year by hosting an Anti-Valentine’s Day party on the same night. She’ll just need to alternate between events to keep them both running and she’ll be raking in the profits. But Eloisa is thrown for a loop when a sexy, self-described hopeless romantic shows up at the singles soiree and keeps her captivated. Will he change her mind about the holiday...and about love?

My Review:

If you’ve soured on love, or romance, or simply the commercialization of Valentine’s Day, you’d probably fit right in with winery owner Eloisa Giordono’s Anti-Valentine’s Day shindig – complete with black roses, dead cupids and a much more murdery and depressing vibe than she originally intended.

As a self-proclaimed Valentine’s Day Grinch, Elo was hoping to create an alternative celebration of the holiday of all-things-love for the happily single crowd. A place to celebrate friendship, acknowledge that loving yourself can be enough, and simply a place for those who aren’t ready to jump back into the dating pool to find some like-minded people for a fun evening.

Elo’s anti-love bash – or her bash against love, take your pick – is competing with her vineyard’s annual – and more traditional – Valentine’s Day event, Love at the Vineyard, which may sound hokey and cliché but works. Especially with the planning genius of the vineyard’s PR director – and Elo’s best friend – Mac.

Speaking of planning and genius, the genius plan is for Mac to handle the traditional event while Elo hosts the bashing Valentine’s bash. It’s all going SO WELL – until Mac makes the tired and hangry mistake of eating some leftover Seafood Alfredo that is way, way, way past its “safe to eat” date.

Food poisoning ensues, and the best laid plans of mice, women and vineyard owners go very much “gang aft agley” as Mac wakes up on the day of the dueling events with a desperate need to spend the day – and probably the night – worshipping at the porcelain altar to really bad decisions.

With Mac down for the count for at least a day if not more, Elo is on her own with both events. Now she’s responsible for two things that just aren’t her thing, a traditional love fest and public hosting and event management duties, along with worrying about Mac.

It should be the worst night of Elo’s life, at least recently. But just as the “festivities” are about to begin, Elo runs into Mr. Chardonnay. Literally. With a golf cart. But figuratively, as that’s not his real name.

In between shuttling from “murder Cupid” to “love is in the air” Elo and the mysterious man she has named “Mr. Chardonnay” flirt, banter and play a game of “strangers in the night”.

As the magic of the evening wraps around them both, the two mysterious strangers both start thinking that there might be something to this Valentine’s Day magic after all.

Escape Rating A-: This is kind of an amuse-bouche of a story. A chef’s kiss of a bit of romance. One that goes perfectly with the bite-sized wine and cheese pairings that are being served at the winery’s pro-Valentine’s Day event.

But seriously, this is a short story. A VERY short story. At most 100 pages if it’s length were being measured in pages.

That’s actually the right length. Because this is a story about the possibilities of love and the thrill of discovering that this person might just be the one. It’s the opening of the romance, with all of the internal angst and flirty banter that any romance reader could want.

It’s a meet-cute. And it’s ALL ABOUT the meet-cute. At the end, we’re left with the same possibility that the characters have, that this might lead to a happy ever after. It also might not. But that’s what first meetings are all about when you just click with someone and all you can see in front of you are possibilities.

One of the things that I, as the reader/listener loved about this story was Elo’s internal voice. She’s witty, snarky, and generally honest with herself no matter what actually comes out of her mouth. But she’s marvelously gifted with snarkitude and the reader’s voice was perfect for her.

The reader also does a good job voicing Mr. Chardonnay, but…I would have liked this one more if he’d been voiced by a male reader. Although I probably would have swooned while driving, which would be bad. His dialog is not just flirty but frequently downright sexy, and a second reader would have really put it over the top.

Speaking of over the top, there is one character who, in spite of her inability to leap tall buildings – or jump at all – was the perfect sidekick for the snarky but soft-hearted Elo, and that’s her adorable dog Olive in her equally adorable little cart. Olive steals hearts and scenes every time Elo brings her ANYWHERE and it’s just really, really cute.

So come for the yummy-sounding wine-and-cheese pairings. Stay for the flirty banter that turns Valentine’s Day Grinch Elo into a match with hopeless romantic Mr. Chardonnay. And don’t leave without giving Olive a scritch or three.

TLC
This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews and features.

Spotlight + Excerpt: The Vineyard at Painted Moon by Susan Mallery

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | blog tours> Excerpts> Spotlight
Spotlight + Excerpt: The Vineyard at Painted Moon by Susan MalleryThe Vineyard at Painted Moon by Susan Mallery
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Chick Lit, contemporary romance, women's fiction
Pages: 400
Published by HQN Books on February 9, 2021
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Step into the vineyard with Susan Mallery’s most irresistible novel yet, as one woman searches for the perfect blend of love, family and wine.
Mackenzie Dienes seems to have it all—a beautiful home, close friends and a successful career as an elite winemaker with the family winery. There’s just one problem—it’s not her family, it’s her husband’s. In fact, everything in her life is tied to him—his mother is the closest thing to a mom that she’s ever had, their home is on the family compound, his sister is her best friend. So when she and her husband admit their marriage is over, her pain goes beyond heartbreak. She’s on the brink of losing everything. Her job, her home, her friends and, worst of all, her family.
Staying is an option. She can continue to work at the winery, be friends with her mother-in-law, hug her nieces and nephews—but as an employee, nothing more. Or she can surrender every piece of her heart in order to build a legacy of her own. If she can dare to let go of the life she thought she wanted, she might discover something even more beautiful waiting for her beneath a painted moon.

Welcome to the Excerpt tour for The Vineyard at Painted Moon by Susan Mallery. She writes lovely and wonderful books that sweep me up, take me away, and put me right into the heart of relationships that manage to be both heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time. I’m looking forward to reading and reviewing The Vineyard at Painted Moon in the weeks ahead, so here’s a teaser to whet all of our reading appetites!

Excerpt from The Vineyard at Painted Moon by Susan Mallery (continued from Friday’s Excerpt at Jathan & Heather)

The song ended and Rhys led her back to Giorgio, who was chatting with several guests. As Barbara walked over to the bar to get a glass of wine, her youngest joined her.

 “Barbara,” Catherine said pleasantly. “Wonderful party.” 

Barbara did her best not to bristle. At the beginning of high school, Catherine had insisted on changing her name to Four, of all things. As in the fourth child. Barbara had refused to accommodate her, so Catherine had started calling her by her first name, to be annoying.

 Barbara simply didn’t understand where things had gone wrong. She’d been loving but fair, had limited TV and made all her children eat plenty of greens. Sometimes parenting was such a crapshoot. 

She motioned to her daughter’s dress. “One of your own creations?” 

Catherine spun in a circle. “It is. Don’t you love it?”

 “With all my heart.”

 Catherine grinned. “Sarcasm? Really?”

 “What did you want me to say?”

 Catherine’s good humor never faded. “What you said is perfect.” 

As her daughter drifted away, Barbara moved closer to Giorgio. He put his arm around her waist, the pressure against her back both comforting and familiar. She nodded as he talked, not really listening to the conversation. Whatever he was saying would be charming. He was like that—well-spoken, always dressed correctly for the occasion. He had an enviable way with people and a natural charm she’d never possessed. She supposed that was what she’d first noticed—how easy he made everything when he was around. 

This night, she thought with contentment. It was exactly right. Her children and grandchildren were around her. Giorgio was here. The vines were healthy and strong and come September there would be another harvest.

 She spotted Avery, her oldest grandchild, talking to her father, Stephanie’s ex. Kyle was too smooth by far, Barbara reminded herself. Their marriage had been a disaster from the beginning, but Stephanie had been pregnant, so there had been no way to avoid the entanglement or the subsequent divorce. 

At least Avery and Carson hadn’t been scarred by the breakup. Barbara couldn’t believe Avery was already sixteen. She was going to have to remind Stephanie to keep a close eye on her daughter when it came to boys and dating. If she didn’t, there was going to be a second generation with an unplanned pregnancy, and no one wanted that.

 She often told people that children and vineyards meant constant worry. Just when you were ready to relax, a new season started with new challenges. 

Stephanie walked over to her. “Mom, it’s about time for the toast, if you’re ready.” 

“I am.”

 Barbara excused herself to follow her daughter toward the DJ and the small platform by the dance floor. She took the microphone the young man offered and stared out at the crowd. Stephanie called for quiet and it took only a few seconds for the party to go silent.

 “Thank you so much for joining me and my family at our tenth annual Summer Solstice Party,” Barbara said, pausing for applause, then holding up her glass of chardonnay. 

“To my children—may the next year be one of happiness for each of you. To my grandchildren—know that you are loved by all of us.” She turned and found her daughter-in-law, then smiled at her. “To my special daughter of the heart—the day you came into our lives was a magnificent blessing.” 

There was more applause. 

Barbara looked at Giorgio and smiled. They’d discussed whether or not she should mention him, and he’d asked her not to. After all, he was just the boyfriend and he’d said tonight was about family—yet another reason she loved him. The man understood her and wasn’t that amazing.

Author Info:

#1 NYT bestselling author Susan Mallery writes heartwarming, humorous novels about the relationships that define our lives-family, friendship, romance. She’s known for putting nuanced characters in emotional situations that surprise readers to laughter. Beloved by millions, her books have been translated into 28 languages.Susan lives in Washington with her husband, two cats, and a small poodle with delusions of grandeur. Visit her at SusanMallery.com.

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Review: Breathe the Sky by Michelle Hazen

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
Review: Breathe the Sky by Michelle HazenBreathe the Sky by Michelle Hazen
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, women's fiction
Pages: 336
Published by Berkley Books: Penguin Random House on August 18, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Two strangers start out saving animals and end up rescuing each other in this heartwarming romance from the author of Unbreak Me. 
Mari Tucker is a wildlife biologist who scoops bunnies and endangered tortoises out of harm’s way on construction sites. Still haunted by her past, she takes the most remote jobs in the Mojave Desert to avoid people and hide from her ex. It’s a simple, quiet life filled with sweet animals and solar-powered baking until she ends up assigned to Jack Wyatt’s crew.
Construction foreman Jack Wyatt’s loud, foul-mouthed temper keeps even the most rugged of men on his crew in line. No mistake is overlooked, because out in the desert it could mean life or death. In his opinion, the job site is no place for sensitive biologists, especially one as shy as Mari. But instead of wilting from the heat and hard work, Mari wins over Jack and his crew one homemade brownie at a time.
Jack and Mari find a comfortable rhythm, building a friendship that’s rare for both of them. After Jack’s rocky childhood, they have more in common than they’d imagined. But even the Mojave sun can’t chase away the shadows when the past is determined to track them down…

My Review:

This one had me from “turtle rubber”. Honestly, “turtle rubber”, as in a condom for handling turtles. I started chortling along with the characters and didn’t stop, even though I already knew there was an EvilEx™ lurking in the shadows. And I usually don’t have kind thoughts about stories that rely on the return of an EvilEx™ to power their story.

But turtle rubbers? That, along with “consensual grabbing” of the turtle, tickled my funny bone, got me to empathize with the characters – including the poor, grabbed turtle – and got me hooked.

In spite of the chelonian (crossword puzzle answer meaning “relating to turtles”) humor, Breathe the Sky is not exactly a happy book. It does manage to grope its way towards a happy ending, but it’s a hard, rough ride to get there.

Because there isn’t just one EvilEx™ hanging over this romance like the proverbial Sword of Damocles, there are actually, sorta/kinda, two.

Wildlife biologist Mari Tucker begins the story on the run from her abusive ex-husband. That’s not a secret, not even at the very beginning. Everything Mari says and does seems to lead back to the vicious bastard.

Except, hopefully, her trail from her old life to her current job as a nomadic wildlife biologist – or bio – monitoring construction sites in the Mojave Desert to make sure that the towers that are built don’t contribute any further to the endangerment of the region’s many already endangered species.

Like those turtles.

Mari lives out of her truck, stays on the move, and uses most of her hard-earned cash to make inadequate payments on the thousands of dollars of medical debt she got left with after her divorce. Debts that she accumulated in treatment for all of the damage her ex did to her.

And she’s still looking over her shoulder, and still hearing his voice in her head, telling her that she’s stupid and clumsy, and incapable, and that no one will ever love her or take care of her except him.

There’s still a part of her that believes it, too. That is aware that the real reason that she left him was to keep him from killing her – not for her sake but to save him from a murder charge.

As much as Mari is used to making herself as small as possible in order to dodge the next fist, she still recognizes something of herself in construction foreman Jack Wyatt. Jack is rough and loud and yells more than he talks. But Mari figures out that Jack is, in a peculiar way, just like her.

That he’s waiting for the next blow or the next fist. That he’s scared, too. Just that his way of dealing with his fear is to make himself bigger and louder so that no one else ever sees that he’s afraid. That he’s hearing that same voice in his head telling him that he’s not enough and that he’s never going to amount to anything.

One inch, one step, and especially one solar-oven home cooked brownie at a time, Mari and Jack manage to help each other put some of their broken pieces together.

Only for their rising tide of possibility to get swamped by those old voices, reaching out of their past to try to destroy the present. And possibly succeeding.

Escape Rating B: Breathe the Sky is very much of a slow burn romance. And the reason that the burn is so slow boils down to the weight of the baggage that is dragging behind, and dragging down, both Mari and Wyatt. It’s like they are dragging the chains of Marley and Marley in A Muppet Christmas Carol – but without nearly as much of the humor that leavens that particular version of what is, honestly, a pretty dark story.

After reading Breathe the Sky, and particularly the author’s notes at the end, it feels as if this is really two stories combined into one that are both strong and good stories but don’t meld into as strong of a whole – or possibly that don’t appeal to the same audience.

One story, and it’s the one that brings with it the happy ending, parallels the author’s own life as a nomadic wildlife biologist. One who shares her love of working in remote places and that nomadic lifestyle with her very own romantic hero and has found her own HEA.

But it’s the darker story that dominates this book. Both Mari and Wyatt are domestic abuse survivors. Both come from families where domestic abuse is a repeating pattern. Mari doesn’t admit it, but there was abuse in her childhood, and she repeated the pattern with her ex-husband, who also came from a family with a pattern of abuse. Wyatt’s abuse began with his father and continued with his older brother.

They both have shit they haven’t dealt with, because it’s hard and it’s hard to admit that people who say they love you are hurting you. Even though by the time of this story they have physically escaped their abusers, mentally they are both still trapped and it is keeping them from moving on with their lives.

Neither of them trusts their own judgement, and they don’t feel capable of judging whether or not the other is trustworthy.

So the story operates on two different levels. Readers will probably have different thoughts and feelings about the story depending on which they see as dominant. I found the way that the abuse in their earlier lives continued to hang over them and hold them back to be the larger part of the story, which made it a hard slog for me.

One thing about this part of the story that I did love. In the end they each rescued themselves. They didn’t rescue each other. You can only break your own chains, you can only deal with your own shit. No one can do it for you and it was important to show that.

But it still makes for a very hard read.

Howsomever, readers who see their recovery as the lion’s share of the story will probably come out of the story happier than I did. This one is definitely a case where the reading mileage is going to vary.

Review: You Had Me at Hola by Alexis Daria

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: You Had Me at Hola by Alexis DariaYou Had Me at Hola by Alexis Daria
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Chick Lit, contemporary romance, romantic comedy
Series: Primas of Power #1
Pages: 365
Published by Avon on August 4, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Leading Ladies do not end up on tabloid covers. 
After a messy public breakup, soap opera darling Jasmine Lin Rodriguez finds her face splashed across the tabloids. When she returns to her hometown of New York City to film the starring role in a bilingual romantic comedy for the number one streaming service in the country, Jasmine figures her new “Leading Lady Plan” should be easy enough to follow—until a casting shake-up pairs her with telenovela hunk Ashton Suárez. 
Leading Ladies don’t need a man to be happy. 
After his last telenovela character was killed off, Ashton is worried his career is dead as well. Joining this new cast as a last-minute addition will give him the chance to show off his acting chops to American audiences and ping the radar of Hollywood casting agents. To make it work, he’ll need to generate smoking-hot on-screen chemistry with Jasmine. Easier said than done, especially when a disastrous first impression smothers the embers of whatever sexual heat they might have had. 
Leading Ladies do not rebound with their new costars. 
With their careers on the line, Jasmine and Ashton agree to rehearse in private. But rehearsal leads to kissing, and kissing leads to a behind-the-scenes romance worthy of a soap opera. While their on-screen performance improves, the media spotlight on Jasmine soon threatens to destroy her new image and expose Ashton’s most closely guarded secret.
 

My Review:

I went looking for happy endings again. Is anyone surprised? In that search I discovered a whole bunch of friends’ recommendations for this book, as well as remembering that it had been on several best of the year lists – and that I had a copy! Problem solved for a day – not that I didn’t immediately go looking for more for the rest of this week.

While Jasmine and Ashton do have each other at “Hola”, it’s also true that the title is quite a bit catchier than the actual truth, which is more like a mutual “you had me when you spilled coffee on me” because that’s not half so romantic sounding – or succinct.

This is a story that works in multiple directions. One is that it’s a story of two people who both believe, and for very good but completely different reasons, that they need to concentrate on their careers and absolutely NOT on any possibility of romance.

Second, it’s a story about validation. Again, for entirely different reasons, both Jasmine and Ashton are laboring under the mistaken belief that they are not good enough, not doing enough, not accomplishing enough, not trying hard enough, not doing the right things rightly enough.

In other words, they both have serious cases of impostor syndrome. Some of that arises from their family situations, and some of it comes from the way that the entertainment industry which they are both involved in, suffers from a baked-in preference for actors AND people behind the camera and in the front office, who are not like them.

Both are Latinx and both have had plenty of barriers put in their way in their chosen profession. Which leads to the third thing about this story, in that it is a celebration, not just of Latinx culture in all of its own diversity, but also in the joy of being part of a team that has your back and helps you put forth your best everything because of what you all share – particularly in a world that tells you how “other” you are at pretty much every turn.

The romance is, in many ways, an opposites attract kind of love story. Jasmine is very open. She trusts easily and she falls in love easily – both to her own detriment. As a result, much too much of her personal life gets splashed on the tabloids, even if most of what they write is made up nonsense.

Ashton, on the other hand, is extremely private and closed off. He has a secret that he is desperate to keep, but keeping that secret also keeps him from opening himself up even to friendship, let alone anything more.

She’s public and he’s private. She’s gossip fodder and he ruthlessly suppresses publicity. It shouldn’t work. Neither of them really wants it to work, at least as the story begins.

But they’re playing the romantic leads in a made-for-streaming romantic comedy series. On screen, they have to generate serious chemistry, which means that off screen they need to at least be able to talk to one another.

Talking, as it so often does, leads to a whole lot more. A more that neither of them wants to reveal. Until the paparazzi take care of all of that for them in, of course, the worst way possible.

And very nearly destroy the best thing that’s ever happened to either of them.

Escape Rating B+: While this wasn’t quite as transportive as a couple of the romances from my week of happy endings – I’m thinking in particular of Take a Hint, Dani Brown and Spoiler Alert – a good reading time was definitely had by all. Or at least by moi.

I loved the romance between Jasmine and Ashton. It read like a variation of the fake-romance trope, but a variation that definitely worked. It wasn’t exactly that they were faking a romance, but they were faking a romance. It’s just that everyone knew it was a fake, because it was the onscreen romance between their characters.

Come to think of it, they were really faking NOT being a romance. A kind of double-fake. It worked, and the reasons for it worked.

While Ashton’s reason was more important, that he was a single father who was hiding his son in order to keep him safe, it was Jasmine’s reason that resonated most with me. As a middle child, she often felt overlooked between her overachieving older sister and her younger, always the baby sister. And so many of her family interactions, while well-meaning, intentionally or otherwise reminded her over and over (and over) that her goals and achievements weren’t as important or as successful, from her family’s perspective, as theirs. She felt overlooked and as a consequence looked for validation in romantic relationships – and looked too hard and all too often with men who didn’t value her either.

Jasmine’s feelings, and her response to them, will resonate with a lot of women who felt overlooked or overshadowed in their families and used similar methods to find validation, whether that overshadowing was the result of middle-child syndrome, workaholic parents or some other reason.

Ashton’s reasons, on the other hand, while they make sense were more the result of his understandable paranoia after a stalking incident than anything actually based in reality – as Jasmine pointed out. If he wants to be a famous actor and someday win an Oscar, he can’t keep his private life truly private. It’s understandable that he wants to but his goals are mutually exclusive.

In the story he clung to that overwhelming desire to keep his son a secret a bit too long. The point had been made, and made, and made to the point where it began to feel repetitive and I just wanted the story to get on with it. Your reading mileage may vary.

That being said, the story was lovely and I really enjoyed myself with Jasmine, her team and especially the Primas of Power, her terrifically supportive cousins who always had her back – especially when they needed to push her forward.

So a wonderful romance, a terrific story, and I’d love to see more about the Primas of Power and Jasmine’s entire clan!

Review: Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia HibbertTake a Hint, Dani Brown (The Brown Sisters, #2) by Talia Hibbert
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Chick Lit, contemporary romance
Series: Brown Sisters #2
Pages: 361
Published by Avon on June 23, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Talia Hibbert returns with another charming romantic comedy about a young woman who agrees to fake date her friend after a video of him “rescuing” her from their office building goes viral...
Danika Brown knows what she wants: professional success, academic renown, and an occasional roll in the hay to relieve all that career-driven tension. But romance? Been there, done that, burned the T-shirt. Romantic partners, whatever their gender, are a distraction at best and a drain at worst. So Dani asks the universe for the perfect friend-with-benefits—someone who knows the score and knows their way around the bedroom.
When brooding security guard Zafir Ansari rescues Dani from a workplace fire drill gone wrong, it’s an obvious sign: PhD student Dani and ex-rugby player Zaf are destined to sleep together. But before she can explain that fact, a video of the heroic rescue goes viral. Now half the internet is shipping #DrRugbae—and Zaf is begging Dani to play along. Turns out, his sports charity for kids could really use the publicity. Lying to help children? Who on earth would refuse?
Dani’s plan is simple: fake a relationship in public, seduce Zaf behind the scenes. The trouble is, grumpy Zaf’s secretly a hopeless romantic—and he’s determined to corrupt Dani’s stone-cold realism. Before long, he’s tackling her fears into the dirt. But the former sports star has issues of his own, and the walls around his heart are as thick as his... um, thighs.
Suddenly, the easy lay Dani dreamed of is more complex than her thesis. Has her wish backfired? Is her focus being tested? Or is the universe just waiting for her to take a hint?

My Review:

As my “week of happy endings” kicked off last Friday with the first book in the Brown Sisters trilogy, Get a Life, Chloe Brown – Dani’s older sister’s story – it is only fitting that I close the week with this book, all about the middle sister in the Brown family.

And what a story it is!

This story, and this series so far, is all about finding love a)when you are not looking for it and b) while you’re carrying baggage that you’re sure means that no one will ever really love you as you are except for family. Part of me is tempted to say these characters are all “positive” about their negative chances, because none of the protagonists so far begin their stories even remotely hopeful about their chances at finding anything resembling love and acceptance of the romantic kind.

And, as both of these stories show, it’s important to see people carrying emotional baggage finding happiness, because everyone is carrying some. Unless of course, they’re dead, and in paranormal romance even death doesn’t stop characters from finding their HEAs.

So this story, and this series so far, are about people who deal with their baggage and find love and happiness neither in spite of it nor because of it, but rather because they’re dealing with their own crap in constructive ways that make romance possible.

Love doesn’t magically cure what ails you – whether that ailing is physical or emotional – but it can help give you the strength to handle it a bit better. And that’s what is at the heart and soul of this series so far.

In the case of Dani Brown’s slightly flirty friendship with Zafir Ansari, both of them are carrying some pretty heavy baggage of the emotional kind. Nerdy, driven, single-minded and obsessively focused Dani has internalized the idea that she isn’t capable of the emotional work of maintaining a relationship. She’s happy to be friends-with-benefits with people, but relationships require work that she doesn’t believe she’s no longer interested in even attempting. So she has rules about getting involved with people outside the bedroom.

In Dani’s world, friendship is good, sex is great and romance is entirely off the table. She’s too busy pursuing her dream of becoming one of the relatively few black, female full professors in Britain to make the time for relationship maintenance and all of the compromises she knows it requires. Compromises she already knows that she’s very, very bad at.

Zafir Ansari is dealing with an entirely different set of emotional burdens. He’d love to find a happy ever after, and he’s more than willing to try, but whoever he becomes involved with has to be able to deal with his occasional panic attacks, uber-protective anxiety binges and his complete unwillingness to revisit whole swaths of his past because that way lies depression. He lost his father and his older brother in an accident and the resulting downward spiral caused his promising rugby career to implode.

But he has gotten his life mostly back on track, running a combination coaching and counseling program for boys who need help dealing with emotional and mental health issues without resorting to the dead end trap of toxic masculinity. As the program doesn’t pay the bills, he has a day job as a security guard at the university where Dani is an underpaid and over-driving teaching assistant and Ph.D. candidate.

Zafir wants a happy ever after, and Dani is just looking for a new fuckbuddy. They should restrict themselves to flirting, because they have entirely different relationship goals. Or at least they think they are.

When a recording of Zafir’s dramatic “rescue” of Dani from a trapped elevator during an evacuation drill goes viral, they decide, with eyes more or less wide shut, to embark upon a fake relationship, a classic of the romance genre, in order for the publicity to boost Zaf’s counseling program.

Oh, and they’ll be friends with benefits for the length of time it takes the social media craze to die down and the future for Zaf’s program to be secure.

Everyone knows just how fake relationships turn out in romance novels. Especially Zaf, who reads them voraciously. He’s all in, even if thought he wouldn’t be. The question is whether Dani can admit that she is, too. Before it’s too late.

Escape Rating A-: Dani’s story is even better than Chloe’s – and Chloe’s story was damn good.

But as much as I loved Chloe’s story, I found Dani’s to be just that extra bit easier to identify with because of her recognition and rejection of the performative nature of being part of a relationship. Women usually end up doing the emotional heavy-lifting in a heterosexual relationship, and some of us just aren’t equipped for it. Not that we don’t love the other person, but there are just some parts of relationship maintenance that we either don’t get or can’t be bothered with or that suffer in comparison to career or personal goals.

The latter of which is considered perfectly okay when a man feels – or doesn’t feel – that way but for which women get roundly and soundly criticized.

At the same time, part of what makes this romance so good is just what made Chloe’s story so good. In spite of often being emotionally clueless, Dani supports Zafir’s goals and his broken places, just as he does for her. They come to love each other as they are, not as the other wants them to be.

And the journey here for both of them is learning to deal better with their own shit. Zafir needs to be able to incorporate the good parts of his past with his present. He’s cutting himself off from both happiness and opportunities because he tries to maintain a hard line between the before – before the accident that took his father and brother – and the aftermath where he copes as long as that door isn’t opened.

Dani, on the other hand, needs to open the door in her own psyche to deal with a trauma that she hasn’t been willing to admit is there. That she’s afraid she can’t maintain a relationship so she refuses to try.

Like Chloe’s story, Dani’s romance with Zaf works because it feels real, and so do the tensions that nearly tear them apart. Get a Life, Chloe Brown was the perfect opening for my week of romance, and Take a Hint, Dani Brown was the perfect ending.

Even better, the Brown Sisters’ story is not over – which is wonderful because they’re part of a terrific family that continues to be marvelous to get to know. Youngest sister Eve’s story is coming up this spring in Act Your Age, Eve Brown. I can’t wait to see her try!

Review: Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Review: Spoiler Alert by Olivia DadeSpoiler Alert (Spoiler Alert #1) by Olivia Dade
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Chick Lit, contemporary romance
Series: Spoiler Alert #1
Pages: 416
Published by Avon on October 6, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Olivia Dade bursts onto the scene in this delightfully fun romantic comedy set in the world of fanfiction, in which a devoted fan goes on an unexpected date with her celebrity crush, who’s secretly posting fanfiction of his own. 
Marcus Caster-Rupp has a secret. While the world knows him as Aeneas, the star of the biggest show on TV, Gods of the Gates, he's known to fanfiction readers as Book!AeneasWouldNever, an anonymous and popular poster.  Marcus is able to get out his own frustrations with his character through his stories, especially the ones that feature the internet’s favorite couple to ship, Aeneas and Lavinia. But if anyone ever found out about his online persona, he’d be fired. Immediately.
April Whittier has secrets of her own. A hardcore Lavinia fan, she’s hidden her fanfiction and cosplay hobby from her “real life” for years—but not anymore. When she decides to post her latest Lavinia creation on Twitter, her photo goes viral. Trolls and supporters alike are commenting on her plus-size take, but when Marcus, one half of her OTP, sees her pic and asks her out on a date to spite her critics, she realizes life is really stranger than fanfiction.
Even though their first date is a disaster, Marcus quickly realizes that he wants much more from April than a one-time publicity stunt. And when he discovers she’s actually Unapologetic Lavinia Stan, his closest fandom friend, he has one more huge secret to hide from her.
With love and Marcus’s career on the line, can the two of them stop hiding once and for all, or will a match made in fandom end up prematurely cancelled?

My Review:

Fanfiction, and for that matter fandom culture in general, tends to get a bad rap. But, if there are really only seven basic plots, and considering that there really is nothing new under the sun, everything is fanfiction. Every story is at least a tiny bit of a takeoff on something else. I read somewhere that John Milton’s Paradise Lost (published in 1667!) was fanfic about the Bible. Whatever you think of that particular variation of the concept, the idea of fanfiction has been around for a very long time.

And you’ve probably read some yourself, whether you considered it as such or not. After all, all Sherlock Holmes stories not written by Conan Doyle are fanfiction. It just happens to be legal fanfiction as most or all of the Holmes canon, depending on which side of the pond you are on, is out of copyright and can be played with or played upon at will.

But fanfiction in the context of this story has a specific meaning, it’s fiction written about someone else’s intellectual property, in this case a hit TV show based upon a best-selling book series that is, itself a kind of fanfiction, as it is a retelling of Homer’s Aeneid, a story that has been told, retold and sorta/kinda told since Virgil first wrote down his version between 29 and 19 BC. Over 2,000 years ago.

Plenty of time for lots of fanfiction to accrete around a story.

Much of contemporary fanfiction, as propagated on Archive of Our Own (AO3), Fanfiction.net and an ever increasing number of Discord servers, just like the fanfiction in the mimeographed fanzines that came before them, tend to be romances, whether explicit or not, although often very. Explicit, that is.

Fanfiction takes that age old question, “What if?” and applies it to someone else’s story. Often by pairing – or shipping – two characters who are not romantic partners in the original, no matter how many fans think they should have been.

The story in Spoiler Alert is a glorious chef’s kiss to fanfiction, a lovely story of wish-fulfillment that goes right, and then wrong, and then right again, and a beautiful romance between two people who no one would ever have shipped – but everyone should have.

Especially the two people who are the heart and soul of this surprising and wonderful romance.

Escape Rating A: I have to say that I absolutely adore fanfiction. It’s been a saving grace this year on days when I just could not get into a book. I could drop into a piece of fanfiction and let it whisk me away to a world I already knew with characters I already loved. For hours if not days. Rereading my favorites has been a comfort this year of everything going to whack.

I’ve also written a bit of fanfiction, a long time ago. There is no feeling like pouring your heart and soul into a piece of work and getting responses and kudos and occasional constructive criticism back. I still have friends from that part of my life.

So I understood where April was coming from on more than one level. Both in just how satisfying the writing is and just how difficult it can be to maintain an identity separate from your professional life because you know the reaction you will get. It was a release for her to find somewhere that allowed her to be her authentic self at work as well as in the fanfiction community.

Her story was also a beautiful piece of wish-fulfillment. Many, many, MANY fans of media properties have had that fantasy of meeting the actor playing their dream character and having a happy ever after romance with them, in spite of all the odds against it.

What made April’s story special was that her wish-fulfillment was wrapped around Marcus accepting her and loving her for exactly who she really is – not for some magical transformation to make her more acceptable or conventional in some way. And that her part of that journey was to put herself first and remove toxic relationships from her life, even if those relationships were with her parents. Even if that relationship was with the love of her life.

It was also great that Marcus’ life wasn’t perfect either. He also had toxic relationships to either cut off or change, and what made those relationships toxic was completely different, but every bit as real, as April’s. They both need to get to better places, more authentic places in their lives. And it was crucial that they don’t help each other get there directly but rather give each other the strength to walk their own paths in their own ways.

Even when that path forced them to part because they had – or rather Marcus had  – violated that authenticity with April.

In addition to the lovely, charming, beautiful romance between April and Marcus, there are also plenty of laugh out loud aspects to this story.

It’s easy to see the parallels between Gate of the Gods and Game of Thrones, and that’s obviously intended. From a certain perspective, Spoiler Alert is fanfiction about the entire production of GOT, and the tongue-in-cheek nods and send ups of GOT make the whole thing that much funnier. Especially when it seems like half the cast is writing fanfic under various pseudonyms in order to anonymously stick it to the douchecanoe showrunners.

The whole story is kind of an in-joke on an in-joke and all the funnier – and occasionally more poignant for it. So read Spoiler Alert for the romance, but stay for the tremendous fannish fun.

Just read this book, period, exclamation point, if you’re looking for a wonderfully nuanced romance! There’s a reason – actually there are LOTS of reasons, why Spoiler Alert has been on so many Best Books lists this year. See for yourself!

OMG there’s going to be a sequel! SQUEE!

Review: The Worst Best Man by Mia Sosa

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: The Worst Best Man by Mia SosaThe Worst Best Man by Mia Sosa
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Chick Lit, contemporary romance, romantic comedy
Pages: 359
Published by Avon on February 4, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

A wedding planner left at the altar. Yeah, the irony isn’t lost on Carolina Santos, either. But despite that embarrassing blip from her past, Lina’s managed to make other people’s dreams come true as a top-tier wedding coordinator in DC. After impressing an influential guest, she’s offered an opportunity that could change her life. There’s just one hitch… she has to collaborate with the best (make that worst) man from her own failed nuptials.
Tired of living in his older brother’s shadow, marketing expert Max Hartley is determined to make his mark with a coveted hotel client looking to expand its brand. Then he learns he’ll be working with his brother’s whip-smart, stunning —absolutely off-limits — ex-fiancée. And she loathes him.
If they can survive the next few weeks and nail their presentation without killing each other, they’ll both come out ahead. Except Max has been public enemy number one ever since he encouraged his brother to jilt the bride, and Lina’s ready to dish out a little payback of her own.
But even the best laid plans can go awry, and soon Lina and Max discover animosity may not be the only emotion creating sparks between them. Still, this star-crossed couple can never be more than temporary playmates because Lina isn’t interested in falling in love and Max refuses to play runner-up to his brother ever again...

My Review:

Sometimes, families are the absolute worst. At other times, they’re the greatest! In Lina Santos’ experience as a wedding planner, they can be both, entirely too frequently on opposite sides of the aisle at one of the weddings she has planned. Or rescued. (Three little words, “chartreuse wedding gown”. Enough said)

But the one wedding she couldn’t rescue was her own. Not only was Lina left at the altar, but she was left with the task of letting all of the guests know that there wouldn’t be a wedding after all. Because the groom had bailed, leaving his brother to inform the bride and the bride to deal with all of the fallout.

Fast forward a few years. Lina has put the wedding-that-wasn’t behind her. In a lot of ways, fairly easily. She chose Andrew because he didn’t really touch her heart, so his runaway from the runway was more of a blow to her pride than any other part of her.

Which didn’t mean that she was overcome with joy to discover that Andrew and his brother Max, the best man forced to deliver the news to the no-longer-a-bride Lina, were the PR team for the luxury hotel chain that was looking to hire a full-time wedding coordinator.

A job that Lina desperately both wants and needs. What she doesn’t either want or need is to expose their collective and seriously messy past to a possible boss. So she panics and pretends she doesn’t know either of them.

Even better – or worse – or both, they go along with the ruse.

A ruse that Lina and Max are going to have to maintain for six weeks while the hotel’s new owner goes through a very thorough vetting process. A time period that is more than long enough to strain both the ruse and Max and Lina’s ability to tolerate each other for the length of time necessary for Lina to get the job and Max to prove to both the hotelier and his mother-the-PR-boss that Max is a different and separate person from his conniving, competitive older brother Andrew.

Not that Max is any less competitive, or possibly any less conniving where Andrew is concerned. But this level of connivance, deception and, surprisingly temptation is big enough to bite them all in the ass.

Especially once Max and Lina figure out that the heat in their back-biting is masking a desire to bite each other in an entirely different way!

Escape Rating B+: Max isn’t so much the worst best man as this scenario is the worst nightmare for a wedding planner – being forced to work with the erstwhile groom who left her at the altar and the almost-best man who was stuck giving her the news. Not that Max didn’t take some of the blame for Andrew’s actions, and not that Lina wasn’t more than willing at the time to shoot the damn messenger.

But in spite of the scenario beginning as soap opera worthy and descending from there, Max isn’t even the worst best man that Lina’s ever dealt with, on the job or off.

And they do begin this mess with something in common – they both want to get something over Andrew. In a whole lot of senses, he’s a professional embarrassment for both of them – Lina for the obvious reason, but Max because Andrew has been riding on his intellectual coattails their entire lives, and managing to take all the credit for Max’ hard work into the bargain.

This enemies to lovers romance is billed as a rom-com, and it is filled with the kind of witty banter that makes rom-coms so much fun. But underneath all of that, there’s more going on in this story than first meets the eye.

At the beginning, Max’ attitude towards Andrew, their mother, the job and Lina all come off as very manipulative. His desire to get one over on his brother seems to be driving his actions, and his thoughts are more than a bit on the ugly side.

Max’ relationship with his brother is toxic for both of them, and it seems as if their mother doesn’t see just how much poison she’s adding to that brew. The situation underpins the whole story, as Max is a bit unclear at the beginning whether he’s helping Lina or just using her. And it feels like a bit of both. Max’ manipulativeness soured me a bit on the story at that point, but so many people said so many good things about it that I stuck with it and I’m glad I did.

When Lina and Max become involved with each other, there are plenty of questions all around about whether their emotions are real or whether they’re both using the situation to get back at Andrew. There’s also a heaping helping of concern about whether any relationship they might have can get itself out from under Andrew’s shadow.

At the same time, there’s also a lot that gets said, and needs to be said, that doesn’t get clearly articulated near enough. Max wants Lina to show more of her emotions, but Lina – and every other woman reading this story – is very clear that being able to display your emotions in a professional setting is very much a male privilege. If she gets righteously upset, she’ll be seen as merely a stereotypical “angry black woman” or a typical “hot-blooded Latina as she is Afro-Latinx. If she cries in a work setting, she’s labelled as a “hysterical female” who can’t control her emotions. It’s happened to her. It’s cost her a job and a career. It’s happened to all of us so we do our best to clamp down our emotions at work. As Lina successfully does.

The resolution here is for them to find a way to deal with the very real situation that their relationship drags into the light. Not to paper them over, not to magic up a happy ending, but to earn one.

And that they definitely do!