Awwwkward...
In Guillory's second contemporary romance the hero's best friend from book one (The Wedding Date) gets his chance to find love - even if he's convinced that he doesn't have the time or space in his life for it.
MADreads
Posts by Jane J
Death and antiquities
Resourceful cook Kat Holloway has a new mystery to solve in the second of this historical mystery series. Though Kat is still the cook for Lord Rankin's household in Victorian London, but the people she's cooking for have changed a bit (after the events of Death Below Stairs). Lord Rankin has departed for the country and Lady Cynthia, though nominally chaperoned by an aunt and uncle, is left mostly to her own devices.
The warmth shines through
Grace Burrowes is pretty much an auto-read for me when it comes to historical romances. I don't get to every book of hers the minute it comes out, but eventually I'm going to read them. And the reason she's on my auto-read list is because she just does what she does so well. She writes engaging heroes and heroines. Her historical settings are well done - no major klinkers like a Lady Kardashian in Regency England. And the emotional journey she creates in each book always hits me just right.
Wild, wild west with magic
I'm a long-time fan of Charlaine Harris. I loved her books long before the making of True Blood based on the Sookie Stackhouse series. But I'll admit her last couple books that have once again picked up the Aurora Teagarden character did not generate much interest for me. Partly because, though I loved librarian Roe, I didn't like a choice Harris made about another main character. And partly because I've just moved pretty much beyond the cozier end of the spectrum in mysteries. All of this led me to be both excited and nervous about An Easy Death the first in a brand new trilogy.
That's what counts
Given the candy-colored cover and the peek-a-boo picture of the heroine, one might be forgiven for thinking that Addition by Toni Jordan is another in a long line of similar chick lit novels. Certainly Addition has wit and humor but it's the appealingly quirky (some might say crazy) heroine that rules the pages. And that crazy adds depth in this Australian debut which I recently pulled off a shelf of older "to be read" books (yes I have shelves of books that are tbr, don't judge).
For fans of Offred
The Handmaid's Tale is terrifying and fascinating all at the same time. And it got me looking for readalikes. One such is Archetype, a great debut that read like a cross between Before I Go To Sleep by S. J. Watson and Hilary Jordan's When She Woke (another great option if you're looking for more like Handmaid's). In Watson's book the female protagonist wakes with no memories and must learn who she can trust.
Pitch perfect
"For the record, I wasn't around the day they decided to become Dumb. If I'd been their manager back then I'd have pointed out that the name, while accurate, was not exactly smart. It just encouraged people to question the band's intelligence, maybe even their sanity. And the way I saw it, Dumb didn't have much of either."
Daring meets independent
In her latest in the Ravenals series, Kleypas has loosely based the heroine on a real historical figure, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first (and only, for many years) female doctor in England. Kleypas' Dr. Garrett Gibson is also the lone female physician of her time and she does work in London and those are broadly the only things they have in common.
Hitting all the notes
Marriage of convenience plots are a not-uncommon trope in the romance genre, but generally they work a bit better in historical romances (where marriage for practical purposes just feels more possible). In contemporary novels the MOC usually comes about from a couple of scenarios; either there's an inheritance at stake or someone needs to gain a green card. With Roomies, we're talking about the second scenario and it mostly works.
Perception is everything
I was so excited when I was offered a galley of Hartman's new novel set in the fantasy realm of Goredd first introduced in Seraphina. Here we meet Seraphina's half-sister Tess. Tess chafes at the role she's had to take on in her family and the restrictions placed on her as a female. She's bitter and angry and yes, she drinks too much to dull her frustrations. But she's chugging along with the goal of getting her sister settled in a good marriage.