Reading Fanatic Reviews
Contemporary RomanceBittersweet by K. S. Thomas
Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Kobo, Google Play, 24 Symbols, Mondadori, Angus & Robertson, and Indigo (Chapters)
Bittersweet*
An Amazing Tale of True Love
Oh, my gosh! What a story! I don’t want to give anything away because this story has some shocking twists and turns to it that must be experienced firsthand. This is a beautiful love story that goes so much deeper than the typical romantic novel. The love portrayed in this book is one that transcends fear, self, time, and space, the way that true love ought to be. It starts off so happy on the couple’s wedding day, but tragedy soon strikes. At critical dramatic moments, the author shifts away from the heroine current-day perspective into the hero’s flashbacks of their relationship. Not usually for long, but enough to give insight into the couple as they were before they married (and giving a moment to hold the dramatic tension). The novel is certainly an emotional one, as the heroine embarks on a perilous personal journey to bring forth her first child even though her damaged heart may not survive the process. This book is beautifully written and a real stunner. If you like heartfelt, emotional reads that focus on the strength and power of true love, this book may be for you.
Sugar Rush by Delilah Peters
Available at Amazon only
Free with Kindle Unlimited
Sugar Rush*
Steamy, Fluffy Contemporary Romance
This contemporary romance is as light and fluffy as the title suggests. It had some interesting moments in the beginning. I particularly enjoyed the heroine’s relationship with her brother and the early moments of her fractious relationship with the hero. I thought it was so funny that the heroine’s nickname was Tickle. I thought things got a little too sensual too quickly for the hero and heroine given their history. But there were some definitely laugh-out-loud moments in the book. I didn’t really appreciate all the profanity. It started off rather light with the curse words, but they seem to increase as the book went on. This is definitely a steamy read, as much of the later portions of the book seem to be almost exclusively those kinds of scenes was just a little glue in between. If you take it for what it is, a steamy contemporary romance, you might enjoy this very light romance as a beach or weekend read.
The Honeymooner by Melanie Summers
Available at Amazon only
Free with Kindle Unlimited
The Honeymooner*
Fun Romantic Comedy with All the Feels
What a delightfully fun romantic comedy! I love the unique start to the book, showing maps to made-up places and an epistolary beginning to the book. Through these letters and emails, we clearly learn a bit of the backstory of the hero and the heroine. Even with that, though, the author still did, in the beginning chapters that introduced them both, dump a little bit too much information all at once instead of letting information flow more naturally in the book. These characters have incredible backstories, but I like to see characters’ histories show up more organically rather than breaking up the flow of the narrative in a big chunk or two. The heroine’s world was tipped on its ear when her affianced leaves her waiting at the altar, breaking it off via text. She takes the honeymoon anyway, hoping to get the owner–whom she had written to previously in those early letters and emails–to take her company’s offer to buy out his nearly bankrupt resort. What she experiences when she goes to this resort is nothing she could have imagined but something that has the potential to change her life if she is willing to let go of the rigid control that she has had over her life since her mother abandoned her to her grandparents when she was a child. What path will she choose? I thought both the characters were well drawn. There were some laugh-out-loud moments. And even though I wouldn’t say I liked the backstory dumped into the text, it did really inform who they were as characters. Their actions reactions made sense given their histories. All in all, it is a well-done book.
His Competent Woman by Ellen Whyte
Available at Amazon only
Free with Kindle Unlimited
His Competent Woman*
But How Competent is She?
The author draws you right into this story when we see the heroine being told the news that her beloved son may have dyslexia. Emma is a single mother whose husband died while serving in the military, and she is struggling to make ends meet as it is now. The National Health Service does not cover dyslexia, so the diagnosis and any extra costs associated with it would have to be borne by her. She has had mostly short-term, dead-end jobs, but she manages to finagle her way into an office manager position at a local corporation by not being entirely truthful about her working history. The boss, the hero, comes across very strongly, an alpha male with a bad attitude towards women working in the office after three quit in the same week for personal reasons.
This is a short read, so the characters didn’t really have time to develop or have an arc. The author did broach to potentially difficult topics, being overweight and dyslexia. Honestly, the heroine didn’t seem to be that overweight by description—is someone whose clothes are a little too tight necessarily a BBW?—sometimes I wish that supposed BBW series actually had really overweight women and explored the topic deeply and sensitively. The dyslexia wasn’t handled as well as I would have liked, but this is a romantic novella, so I guess I can understand that fault. All in all, I found Emma’s head an interesting place to be in during her chapters, which made this a fun read.
The Neglected Garden by Suzanne Winterly
eBook available at Amazon only
Free with Kindle Unlimited
Paperback available at Thalia
The Neglected Garden*
Imbalance Hampers Story
Gilly the garden designer is asked to make a bid on a garden redesign for a swanky home. The relatively new owner lives there with his young son, and there are some apartments for tenants on the grounds. It’s a beautiful estate in County Kildare, Ireland, but danger and secrets lurk beneath its tranquil surface. A surprising amount of gardening talk takes up valuable story room. Clearly, the author either has a deep understanding of gardens and their designs, or she did a lot of research for this book. I found the level of detail perhaps to be a little too much. I don’t know enough about gardens and plants for the minutiae to make much sense to me without a Google search or five. I felt like the scenes at the beginning didn’t have enough motion; not enough happened or was revealed. They felt like slice-of-life moments and weren’t terribly interesting, which actually waste time in a story that supposed to have both romantic and suspense elements. I don’t feel that the romance was pulled off 100% successfully. I liked both Gilly and Marc as characters, but they just didn’t gel for me as a couple. All in all, I felt like it needed more romance and suspense and a little less gardening and day-in-the-life scenes.
Just the Way You Are by Ann Roth
Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Kobo, Scribd, 24 Symbols, Thalia, Mondadori, Angus & Robertson, and Bol.de
Just the Way You Are*
A Heartfelt Small-Town Romance
A simply wonderful small-town romance! Both the hero and the heroine are flawed, each having a history that embarrasses them. The heroine comes to a small town on the Oregon coast to crash with a friend after she quit her vice president job at a consulting firm in Los Angeles after the breakup of her short-term relationship with one of the partners. The hero is a handyman with dyslexia, which he keeps a secret from everyone but his older sister because he feels ashamed and unworthy. On the night they first meet, the heroine breaks down in tears, the roughness of the past couple of months finally catching up with her. The two have a near-instant attraction, but both determined not to do anything about it.
This was a really sweet, well-done small-town romance. The author drew me right into the story with the heroine’s unbalanced emotional state, even though she was her own worst enemy with that bad relationship with the boss. The hero at first comes off as sweet and flirty, but he has deep self-esteem issues because of his dyslexia that wasn’t diagnosed until he was a teen. His feelings and thoughts about himself seem so realistic. I am often caught up in the heroine’s emotional drama in a romance but rarely the heroes, so I liked that he had a flaw, so to speak, that held such an emotional charge for him. The town itself can almost be seen as a character. I don’t want to give too much more away, but there is a series of events that involve the whole town that also touches the heroine, and I thought it was a beautiful thing to behold. Having lived in a small coastal town in California, I can say it was true to small-town life. If you enjoy a contemporary small-town Romance, you may very well find this as much of a delightful read as I did.
Falling for Her Opposing Counsel by Tami Franklin
Available at Amazon only
Free with Kindle Unlimited
Falling for Her Opposing Counsel*
Another Charming Trip to Holiday Junction
I’ve read one other book in the Holiday Junction series, the book that was formerly known as Lena’s Lucky Charm and is now known as Falling for her Headache. I enjoyed that visit to Holiday Junction, and so I looked forward to another installment. The heroine in this book gradually fell for both the hero and for this small town; I’m in agreement with her on both! I thought Evie was a good heroine as she isn’t just a hard-bitten New York businesswoman who is dismissive of small-town life (though she doesn’t like camping!), as they can often be portrayed in romances. Even before she engages with the locals over the development issue, she understands the need to respect the place that her company wants to develop, and she understands the need to negotiate. Liam, the hero, is passionate in his defense of his town; this is believable and understandable. At times, these two butt heads, but not in an overly acrimonious way. In fact, as they get to know each other, some of their banter is quite witty and engaging; I loved the stories they told as they became better acquainted. Their evolving relationship and the delightful town and denizens of Holiday Junction are just utterly charming. I enjoyed this book as I did the first one, and I am looking forward to reading more in this series.
The Key to Her Heart by Blanche Dabney
Available at Amazon only
Free with Kindle Unlimited
The Key to Her Heart*
Romance Didn’t Have Enough Time to Develop
I found this to be an odd story. Except for the prologue, the hero and heroine don’t meet until after the 33% mark. Because they met so late in the novel, there really isn’t enough time to develop a proper romance. It felt like the early time spent in Scotland dealt with mostly inconsequential things, like Daisy getting her bearings and trying to figure out what was going on. This book did have a different element when it flipped back to the present. It was mildly amusing, though in a serious way, that Jock really thought that a demon possessed her because of all of her talk about the future. The idea of the scourge, though, seemed a bit extreme. Wasn’t the use of that only for priests? In other ways, too, the author makes the Highlanders very superstitious, with a healer not even wanting to help Daisy in case she was possessed and his soul would be damned because of his involvement with her. I don’t think this is historically accurate; not everyone would be a religious zealot. I’m not precisely sure when this book is supposed to take place, but it is clearly in medieval times. Some of it just felt off to me in these respects. I didn’t feel like there was enough external conflict going on. There was some, but it felt like it was just kind of stuck on and not fully integrated into the entire story arc. In all honesty, even the Highlander aspect of this story seemed like it was more for window dressing than the actual firm bedrock of a setting; it actually didn’t seem integral for the story or the characters. So for me, the story fell flat in several respects, including an undeveloped romance and not much really going on in the story.
One More Chapter by K. S. Thomas
Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Kobo, Google Play, 24 Symbols, Mondadori, Angus & Robertson, Indigo (Chapters)
One More Chapter*
Complex Romance
This book deals with a lot more than a simple romance. The characters both have elaborate backstories that make them fastening to watch as they try to negotiate their new relationship. They have both suffered in different ways. The author has done an excellent job of making the characters believable and relatable. Their pasts imbue their present with such emotion, and the author does a good job portraying that. There’s both humor and heaviness in this story. The only thing I didn’t like about it was all the profanity. The books I grew up reading never or rarely had profanity, so it is always a jarring and bad surprise to come across it in books. In this one, the F-bomb was dropped right on page one, which in itself was nearly enough for me to stop reading, but I read the reviews that said how good this book was, so I stuck with it. It IS a good story, one that hits all the right emotional buttons. I just think it would be better without all the swearing and other crude language.
Playing Doctor by Monique McDonnell
Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Kobo, Thalia, Mondadori, Angus & Robertson, Indigo (Chapters), and Bol.de
Playing Doctor*
Sweet, Gentle Romance that Focuses on Family
In this small-town romance, the heroine returns from the big city in hopes of landing a job as the hospital director of her hometown’s hospital. Also up for the job is her old friend, Trace, whom she has always had a serious crush, but things went sideways when they were teenagers. He is now a single dad and thinks the desk job would be better for his daughter as he could keep more regular hours doing that rather than as a surgeon. The book shows how the hero and heroine rekindle their friendship and how it comes to be something more. This story is about family on several levels. First, of course, there is the very important relationship between Trace and his daughter, Dakota. It’s his concern for her that drives him to consider taking the desk job even though he enjoys being a hands-on doctor. It’s also about the support that family can be for each other. Trace’s mother works to provide a stable home for Dakota along with her son, taking care of the little girl after school and when Trace is working. Trace really couldn’t do it without his mom. I don’t a hundred percent like the way the book ended. While an HEA seems in place at the end, the book ends much too abruptly. I would have liked to have seen a glimpse of the couple’s future life together. I also don’t think the time frame for Trace to become a doctor is correct; he would have had to get through regular college, medical school, residency, and internship to be a surgeon. That said, this is a sweet and gentle romance with a focus on family, and in general, I found it a very good read.
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