Queens of Geek by Jen Wilde

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Queens of Geek book coverQueens of Geek is technically a YA romance, not something I usually review here (generally they’re too tame, but I made an exception because it was what I read this week and the characters are all eighteen so it could be considered New Adult, which I would review here). So.

As the title implies, there are some serious geek themes in this book. First of all, it’s set at “SupaCon,” a fictional ComicCon, that’s in San Diego, I think. It’s about three best friends from Melbourne, Australia making the journey to the US for the first time. It’s narrated by the two women, Charlie and Taylor.

Charlie’s an upcoming movie star with a popular video blog. Her parents are from China, though her race has no relevance to the story from what I could see. It just makes everything more realistic, as Australia is diverse, too. Charlie also has pink hair and is bi, though her last relationship was with her male co-star, making it a very public one. The breakup was painful and also public and she’s a little gun-shy now. She has a crush on another up-and-coming star, Alyssa, who’s also going to be at SupaCon.

Although Taylor is one of Charlie’s best friends, they aren’t very alike—Taylor is shy and anxiety-riddled. She’s also on the spectrum, having been diagnosed with Asperger’s only a few months earlier. But she’s hoping to step a bit out of her comfort zone at SupaCon, even if she doesn’t know how. She doesn’t have a lot of confidence in general, but especially body confidence because she’s not some stereotypical sexy mama. She’s a little “curvy.” She credits Charlie with helping her to avoid falling down the well of self-loathing.

The third friend is Jamie, who also happens to be the guy Taylor’s been in love with for ages. Not that she’s going to say anything, because she doesn’t want to ruin their friendship, which she values dearly. The friends all plan to move to LA in the fall. Taylor and Jamie have applied to UCLA and Charlie is moving there for her career.

A lot of reviewers have admired this book for its positive messages about women and girls. Throughout the book, they support, protect, and help each other out. And it is great, since a lot of books show a more negative view of female relationships. At times, I did think the book got so caught in all the good it was trying to do that the story itself suffered. Nothing ever got too dire—things mostly went at least okay for the characters.

Also, I have to mention that this book has some of the best two-way communication I’ve ever seen, even between Taylor and Jamie. Much of the dialogue could be sample conversations in a self-help book about how to communicate effectively. People say what they feel and what they mean and they actually understand each other. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I noticed it.

Charlie and Taylor are both good characters, though I think Taylor is a little more complex and developed than Charlie. This is probably because her anxiety is explored in great depth. Jamie isn’t as developed as the other two, which I thought was a bit of a shame. I’d liked to have seen more of him. He’s also Hispanic and originally from Seattle but we don’t get much of him except to see how supportive he is of Taylor.

For those who live in geekdom, this book’s a dream. There are so many pop culture references that you’ll have to appreciate it. I’m not as in the mix as I used to be, but even I got a lot of the references. Overall, this was an enjoyable read with a lot of positive representation of things that frequently get a pass in the romance world. Still, it was light and fun.

Neanderthal Seeks Human (Knitting in the City #1) by Penny Reid

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Neanderthal Seeks Human book coverWhat’s better than a socially-awkward but very smart heroine hitting rock bottom before meeting the guy who’ll change everything? If you’re me, that’s a recipe for a highly entertaining romance.

This was the first Reid book I read and it made me an instant fan. I just reread it so I could write this review, and enjoyed it just as much the second time.

Janie is awesome. Not in the she’s-a-martial-arts-master way. She’s a dork, but a very lovable dork. As I mentioned, she’s socially awkward, which manifests in an especially amusing way: verbal diarrhea of random facts. These aren’t run-of-the-mill facts, either—Janie knows a ton about a lot of things. She’s not just socially inept, but kind of awkward in general. This can sometimes bug me (the whole Silly Woman thing), but in this case it worked because she wasn’t really that blundering and when she did encounter these moments, she was hilarious in reporting them. Case in point (after she’s just been laid off and is surprised to be getting sent home in a car):

The car was a limo.

I’d never been in a limo before, so of course I spent the first several minutes in shock, the next several minutes playing with the buttons, then the subsequent several minutes after that trying to clean up the mess made by an exploding water bottle.

We learn pretty early that Janie doesn’t have a lot of body confidence because she’s tall and curvy. But she’s not a withering flower. When someone comments, “You’re very big,” she quips, “Yes, I ate all my vegetables as a child.”

Before the book starts, Janie regularly admired a security guard at her building. And he’s the one who escorts her out and arranges the limo when she’s laid off. Then suddenly he—Quinn—is in her life all the time and she doesn’t know what to think because he’s the most attractive man she’s ever known. After his intentions become clearer, she and her friend decide he’s a “Wendell”—a hot player you’d never actually date, but can have loads of fun with anyway. We also get another useful term: “slamp,” the kind of girl who is willing to partake of a Wendell’s services.

Watching everything unfold is a lot of fun. The book’s told entirely from Janie’s perspective. I usually like the guy’s perspective too, but in this case, the single viewpoint works really well because Quinn is meant to be very enigmatic.

As I’ve implied before, the book’s also very funny. Dialogue is clever and fresh and Janie’s obscure-fact monologues really are hilarious if you appreciate nerds at all. Reid bills all her books as romantic comedies but to me they’re just contemporaries that happen to be funny. But that’s just splitting hairs.

The book’s also sexy, even though the love scenes aren’t as detailed as in some of Reid’s later books. Also, these scenes are full of over-analyzing gems like this: “My reactions were entirely medulla oblongata-based.” A sentence later she clarifies what she means—that her brain is malfunctioning because of what’s currently happening. It’s funny and doesn’t dissipate the heat like you might think.

I think any romance reader who’s got a bit of the nerd in them would love this book, but that’s not a requirement. It’s just a funny novel with a likable heroine and a sexy and appealing hero. Who doesn’t enjoy that?

A Distant Heart by Sonali Dev

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A Distant Heart book coverI enjoyed Dev’s first three books and was looking forward to this one. It features two minor (but important) characters from A Change of Heart, so I was excited to see their story.

Kimi was confined to a sterile room for most of her childhood. As a result, she doesn’t really have friends—except for the boy who clean bird crap off the side of the house. Rahul lost his father at fourteen and became the man of the house. Kimi’s father is a wealthy ex-Bollywood star and because Rahul’s father died protecting him, he tries to help Rahul’s family out. But Rahul is stubborn and doesn’t like the handouts, so he does work around Kimi’s house (”The Mansion,” as he calls it). 

Their friendship develops over time and although Kimi is clearly in love with him, he’s holding back for some reason. She doesn’t know why and it frustrates her. When the book opens, Kimi has recently had a heart transplant—and professed her love for Rahul and been shot down. But for some reason, a particularly vile gangster who ran a black market of organs from people he had killed has it out for her. As Rahul is a police officer, he ends up protecting her and they get out of Dodge. There’s more to it than escape, but I won’t give that away. Still, it forces them to be together even though Kimi told him to stay away after he rejected her. 

This one is more or less a romantic suspense. But I’m not sure it’s all the way there, partially because of Dev’s chosen narrative style. It’s a little different from her others because it relies much more heavily on flashback in order to show the development of Kimi and Rahul’s early friendship. That may be the reason that the book was slow to get going for me. I read her others fairly quickly, but I was only doing a chapter or two a night with this one until I got about a quarter in. But then it picked up.

Anyone who’s read the others, particularly A Change of Heart, will enjoy this one. You don’t have to have read her others, but I think you’d get more out of it if you have. 

The Art of Running in Heels (Chinooks Hockey Team #7) by Rachel Gibson

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The Art of Running in Heels book coverFor anyone who enjoyed the first six books from this series, the release of a seventh is pretty exciting. It’s been seven years since #6, after all.

This book follows Lexie Kowalsky, the now-grownup daughter of Georgie and John from book #1. She’s started her own business, making clothes for dogs. In order to get more exposure for her company, she signs up for a Bachelor-style show with a country flavor called Gettin’ Hitched. Then she ends up winning, with the culmination being a required wedding to the bachelor in question. But Lexie realizes she can’t go through it at the last minute and absconds.

Sean Knox is a new member of the Seattle Chinooks team. He has a frustrating and manipulative mother who’s convinced him to fly back to Canada to see her because she’s “dying” (something that happens over and over until she makes yet another miraculous recovery).

The two meet when the pilot of the small plane Sean has chartered insists on waiting for another passenger, who turns out to be Lexie literally running from her wedding. She manages to get into the plane, but it’s a comical ordeal in her poofy dress. So the setup’s funny enough and there are lots of subsequent laughs to be had. After some media developments, Lexie convinces Sean to be her fake boyfriend that made the Gettin’ Hitched guy a rebound relationship.

However, I had trouble with the book. For one thing, I could never relate at all to Lexie. She’s way too different from me. A bigger problem was Sean, who I never really liked. He keeps her in the dark about who he is for too long. The chemistry between them wasn’t as good as in Gibson’s other books. I felt like I was being told they were really into each other rather than shown. Additionally, I didn’t love the way the romance developed and I really thought the book was a little longer than necessary (and once we had Lexie on the actual plane, it was a little slow to develop).

Despite that, the characters are believable and realistic. Lexie will be familiar because she’s a lot like Georgie, with a lot of the same attitudes and speech patterns (this isn’t a criticism), which are quite unique in the book. Sean is true to the laconic hockey player type in dialogue and in his head. The storyline of Lexie’s business is both funny and nice to watch as she’s basically successful, even if the resolution is a little underwhelming.

Fans of the series will probably want to read this one, but I wouldn’t recommend starting in the series with it.

Brooklynaire (Brooklyn Bruisers #4) by Sarina Bowen

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Brooklynaire book coverFirst off, I love the title of this book. It’s so perfect.

Of course anyone who’s read any of the other Brooklyn Bruisers books knows about Becca and Nate. Nate is a very successful tech mogul and Becca’s been his assistant for seven years. A couple years earlier, he moved her to the Brooklyn Bruisers office when he bought the NHL team. Becca doesn’t know why and has always thought she did something to fall out of his favor. Because they were buddies for so long.

Becca’s a distinctly nice girl. She had to drop out of college when her father died and that’s when she landed the job with Nate’s company. Now, she’s helping to support her younger sister while she goes through college—by letting the sister and boyfriend and baby all live with her. It’s a bit wild and crazy at home, but she can’t imagine not helping out. In the midst of this chaos in her life, she slips and falls on the ice at work, hitting her head and giving herself a concussion.

Back in the early days, Nate had a fiancé, but something went wrong with that. And soon after, he started lusting after Becca. But she seemed inaccessible for one reason or another, and he never did anything about it. But when Becca gets hurt, he’s unable to keep himself from stepping in to help. His help is to offer her a place to stay away from her crazy apartment, so she can get some actual rest.

She’s a little weirded out at first, but when she does get some genuinely restful sleep, she’s in. But then she still doesn’t get better, and Nate’s sends her to a specialist who says she has additional, rarer damage from the fall. Dealing with this requires multiple therapy sessions a week that she struggles to pay for. (This is one thing that kind of annoyed me: Becca’s head injury would be covered by worker’s comp.)

It’s not in Nate’s house where they finally kiss. No, that takes place in a hotel room far away from New York. And it’s both hot and a little funny, because it catches Becca totally by surprise. But then there’s some confusion:

“Bec, listen—I will apologize again and get the fuck out of your room. But for the love of god, help me understand—are you pissed off about the kiss? Or are you pissed that I stopped?”

“That’s not an easy question!” Obviously.

His handsome face wrinkles with confusion. “But it’s multiple choice!”

Both Nate and Becca are well-drawn and deep characters. The sexual tension is great throughout and the release of that tension is also (should-be-)trademarked Bowen quality. I was a tiny bit meh about the grand gesture at the end, but I won’t spoil that for you. Other than that, it was perfect.

If you have read any of Bowen’s Brooklyn Bruisers books, you need to read this one. If you like hockey romances you should read it. And of course, if you like Bowen, you should read it. And although romances can actually be read out of order, to fully appreciate this one I’d recommend reading the first three Brooklyn Bruisers books first, since book #1 is really where this one starts.

The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory

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Wedding Date book coverThere’s been a fair bit of hype about The Wedding Date. So I went into it wondering if the book would live up to it. I think it does.

The main reason the book was so hyped up is that it features a black heroine and white hero. They’re definitely not the first multiracial couple to people romances, but this is the book that sort of broke through. Probably because it’s good (though I’ve read other good ones too—chalk it up to luck). And it addresses the race issue directly but doesn’t hit you over the head with it. The issues are sort of subtle and cleverly integrated with the plot. Also, I should mention that there aren’t that many romances featuring black heroines, regardless of the race of the hero. So seeing a book like this going mainstream is exciting. I hope it’s the beginning of a trend because I love reading about different kinds of people.

Alexa is chief of staff to Berkeley’s mayor and she has a lofty goal at the beginning of the book: to get a new program for at-risk youth going. She’s got to first convince the mayor and even after that, she’ll have to deal with the council of mostly privileged people. Drew’s goal at the beginning of the book is more mundane: survive the wedding of his ex-girlfriend and work buddy. Awkward. And he’s even in the wedding. Alexa and Drew meet when they get stuck in an elevator at the hotel the wedding party is staying in. Alexa’s heading up to visit her sister with a snack haul, and she and Drew teasingly fight over her cheese and crackers. By the time the power comes back on, Alexa is going to be Drew’s date for the wedding since his bailed.

Their chemistry’s great and it goes where you’d think it might (and good for Alexa—she was due). Neither of them has any intention of making this a long-term thing, but they start up a long-distance relationship anyway, flying back and forth (he’s in LA). Initially they spend time only with each other, but the longer it goes on, the more entrenched in each other’s lives they get. Eventually, Alexa goes to party with Drew at one of his ex-girlfriend’s houses. Alexa, who is “curvaceous,” is intimidated by all the beautiful, thin white women (who are also mostly blonde). I loved that part because I could so relate—I’ve never been one of the beautiful people either.

Race comes up several other times in the course of their relationship. First off, she asks Drew if she’ll be the only black person at the wedding. It hadn’t even occurred to him. Later, she cracks a joke about coffee and skin color and Drew reacts like a lot of white people would—he’s awkward and apologetic. The most significant moment is when they’re discussing the program she’s trying to get started in Berkeley. She has to school Drew on why it’s different when brown kids get up to the same shenanigans white kids get away with, with maybe a slap on the wrist. Not so for the brown kids. Another thing Drew just hadn’t thought of. It’s clear that he’s a good guy at heart, just kind of oblivious of the privilege his whiteness (and maleness and money) has granted him throughout life. The way we know he’s decent is that he listens to Alexa when she explains these things to him, rather than getting defensive. So there’s a lot of serious stuff in there, but there are also plenty of funny and light moments, too.

There was one thing that I found a little lacking in the book: the love scenes. They were basically nonexistent. Well, that’s not quite true—but there were few details. We get a little of the foreplay, but then we get told more or less what happens between one sentence and another. I’m used to a play-by-play. And I miss that because I actually think what they do in the bedroom (or wherever) really does matter to the story. But plenty of people will be more than satisfied with what’s there.

So, if you want a nice contemporary with an interesting storyline involving two smart and successful people, you’ve got it in The Wedding Date.

Kissing Tolstoy (Dear Professor #1) by Penny Reid

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Kissing Tolstoy book coverKissing Tolstoy is the short first book in a new series from Reid, one of my favorite romance authors. It might qualify as New Adult because it’s set on a college campus and Anna’s about to graduate, but the hero, Luca, is in his early thirties. And we do get his perspective, even though it’s mostly narrated by Anna. But whatever you call it, it’s cute and sexy.

Anna’s an electrical engineering junior, but she has a huge soft spot (borderline obsession?) with Russian literature. She’s also a nerd, which made me love her. As she points out, unlike the depictions on TV might lead you to believe that nerds never have sex, Anna clarifies: “Nerds do it. A lot.”

The set up is cute. Anna’s friend Emily gives her a friend’s address telling her she should email him for a blind date. Anna summons some courage and sends an email to a guy named Lucas. He agrees to meet her at a bar. She goes and is blindsided by the appearance of a super-hot motorcycle guy (leather pants, leather everything, and the bluest eyes she’s ever seen). They have a sort of strange interaction (he grills her about her background), during which she envisions herself having all sorts of fun with him, until he eventually tells her he’s not who she thinks he is—he doesn’t even know their supposedly common friend. She’s mortified as they conclude that she simply emailed the wrong guy. So, understandably, she basically runs away.

So when she shows up for the first day of her summer Russian literature class, she’s mortified again when she sees that sexy motorcycle guy is the professor. He spots her too and the next few classes are more awkward. He ignores her even though she knows all the answers. This is stressful for her:

Being perpetually ignored and then rejected by a person I admired made me want to cry into a big pillow and listen to The Cure while watching Old Yeller and reading the world statistics about the Zika virus.

She finally confronts him. Things progress from there and involve lots of kissing and heated debates about Russian literature.

The book’s in first person, alternating between Anna’s and Luca’s viewpoints (though it’s mostly Anna’s). The voice is great, with each of them quite identifiable. Luca’s is serious and terse. Anna’s is indeed pretty nerdy, but it’s where most of Reid’s trademark humor comes in. For instance, after she’s discovered that her professor is the guy from the bar, she’s at work and her boss observes that she’s anxious, this happens:

I tried to swallow, but I rushed it, and experienced a swallow misfire. It took every ounce of my self-control not to cough.

Anna’s silly, but not in that unnaturally-dumb-girl way that annoys me so much.

So this book would be great for any fans of Reid plus those who like college romances, even if this one involves a professor (and for the record, those relationships usually aren’t forbidden—just discouraged).

Temporary by Sarina Bowen and Sarah Mayberry

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Temporary book coverAnother enjoyable read from Bowen. Mayberry is new to me, but their styles meshed together seamlessly.

Temporary features hard-working Grace Kerrington, who’s unofficially taking care of her fifteen-year-old sister because their mom is a drug addict. She has a degree but has struggled to find a lucrative job. She’s temping and landed a gopher-type job at an Australia-based corporation called Walker Holdings. Just as the book opens, she’s given a weird assignment: catalog the belongings of the recently-deceased brother (Jack) of the company’s CEO. As soon as she’s in his condo, she’s in heaven because he was an art collector of sorts, and although she got a business degree out of necessity, art is her true passion.

However, the condo is also where she first meets Callan Walker, the son of the CEO. He’s also an internationally known philanderer with websites dedicated to admiring his body and money. He’s got self-confidence to match his bank balance. But he was really close to his uncle and only found out he’d died when he was hanging out on some yacht. He immediately returned to New York City and let himself into Jack’s condo.

So he’s sitting there when she comes in and she doesn’t expect anyone to be there and says a few things that make everything a tad awkward going forward. Or it would be if not for the steaming tension between them. Grace doesn’t even know who he is, but her sister does, which makes for some amusing conversations.

Callan got screwed over by his first real love and hasn’t gotten over it. And Grace is hoping her temp position will turn into a permanent one, so she knows not to risk it by getting involved with Callan. But it’s difficult since they’re basically working side-by-side in Jack’s condo—and that accent. It’s a struggle for her. What she doesn’t know is that Callan’s hiding the real reason he’s there—he’s looking for a more recent version of Jack’s will that he’s convinced exists. She also doesn’t know that getting involved with him could put her guardianship of her sister at risk and that Callan’s not quite the shallow playboy we think he is.

It takes them a little while to see that they’re the real deal, and there’s lots of fun to be had along the way. On the couch. In the closet. You get the idea.

This book has great emotional depth in addition to the amazing tension between Grace and Callan, which persists even after they first hook up. Dialogue is realistic and distinct among the characters. Grace regularly reminds us of Callan’s accent without it being intrusive or weird. Callan definitely grows in the book. Grace’s arc isn’t as strong to me, as most of the things that she reacts to are external, but she does have to learn to trust Callan. Still, I didn’t find the book lacking for this.

Check it out if you’re a fan of either author, or even if you just like well-written steamy reads, as the book delivers an excellent romantic journey.

On Second Thought by Kristan Higgins

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On Second Thought book coverOn Second Thought is the first of Higgins’ non-romance* books that I’ve read. And I’m happy to report I loved it. There is romance in the book—two, in fact—but the main storyline is two grown sisters getting close to each other for the first time.

Kate O’Leary is a 39-year-old successful photographer when she meets Nathan. They’re married in a few months and trying to start a family. When Nathan is killed just 96 days into their marriage in a freak accident, she’s devastated and completely shaken. Not just because she lost someone she loved, but because she’d totally uprooted herself and moved (herself and her studio) from Brooklyn to a giant house in a small wealthy town where Nathan’s family lives. On top of that, because she’d known him such a short time, she feels like an imposter mixing among all these grieving people who’ve known him for so much longer.

Her younger half-sister Ainsley is in a very long-term relationship with a Wall Street guy, Eric, waiting patiently for him to propose. But when Nathan dies—at Eric’s free-from-cancer celebration party, right before Eric is going to publicly propose—Eric freaks out a bit. He abruptly and coldly breaks up with Ainsley to go find himself in the wilds of Alaska.

Higgins is a master of digging into the depths of her characters’ thoughts. Nathan’s wake is a long scene told from Kate’s perspective. There is an apparently interminable line of people paying their condolences, leaving time for Kate to think all sorts of thoughts and react to all sorts of people. Near the beginning of the scene, she’s thinking about Nathan’s nephews, who are devastated.

The thought of their sweet, bereft faces made my throat feel like a nail had been driven through it. A spike, actually, a big rusty railroad spike. Their uncle. Their only uncle.

Four days ago, I was married. That had been enough of a trip. Now I was a widow. I ask you—how weird was that? (My brain seemed to be generating only italicized words, like an overdramatic narrator.)

Brooke lost her beloved younger brother. The Coburns no longer had a son.

Nathan was dead.

I mean, really. What the fuck?

The use of that last word is so perfect (I think it’s the only time it’s used in the book) because it’s so powerful here. She also uses the rusty spike throughout the book, which takes us right back to the horrible wake.

We also get to see Ainsley at the wake and get to know her as a great woman rising to the occasion while so many other people fail miserably. We see her on her own before all the bad stuff goes down, as she basically hero-worships her tool of a boyfriend. And when he does dump her, he does so publicly. He invites her to a fancy restaurant and tells her he wants her to move out (he “accidentally” left her name off the mortgage when they bought their house). Then he writes a blog post that goes viral about her reaction. He goes on several national news shows to talk about his intended journey, the whole time humiliating Ainsley. The result of getting kicked out is that Ainsley moves in with Kate, which is such a relief to Kate (she hates being in Nathan’s giant house alone).

Kate’s and Ainsley’s voices are so great—they’re so different from each other yet both are likable (and, I’m happy to report, not silly). As I mentioned, Higgins goes deep into both of their minds, which takes us on their journeys with them. Kate’s grief is palpable and heartbreaking. And while Ainsley’s situation is obviously not quite as horrible, we still really feel her pain. Kate’s journey is primarily getting over her grief and dealing with the aftereffects of such a short marriage ending so abruptly. Ainsley’s journey’s a little different. She has to learn to accept the fact that Eric is a total douche and she’s better off without him.

The supporting characters are all also excellent. So different from each other and well-developed. The three primary men in the book are very realistically drawn despite the fact that we never get in their heads. Setting is wonderful and detailed. Dialogue shines. And although the book is pretty heavy—heavier than Higgins’ romances—it’s got so many funny moments (mostly Ainsley’s).

So if you like deep stories about real women dealing with real issues, you should enjoy On Second Thought. I definitely did.

 

* I know most people call this book “women’s fiction.” But I refuse to acknowledge the existence of such a ”genre.” It’s simply non-genre fiction that focuses on women protagonists. We don’t call Jonathan Franzen’s work “men’s fiction.” It is not true that when men write it it’s fiction and when women write it it’s some sort of deviation from the real thing and needs its own label. That would be sexist.

Beard Science (Winston Brothers #3) by Penny Reid

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Beard Science book coverJennifer Sylvester is kind of a joke in Green Valley, Tennessee, where she’s know as the Banana Cake Queen because—well, you can guess why. The recipe is a family secret. People don’t take her seriously. One of the locals called her “stranger than a vegetarian at a barbecue.” And on top of that, her parents are bullies, especially her mom. She’s forbidden to wear anything but her Sunday best clothes out in public. Now, she’s definitely old enough to be living on her own, but with the way her family treats her (borderline abuse), it’s really difficult for her to move out. They have her working full-time in the family bakery, but they don’t give her a salary. What she wants more than anything is to start a family, but with her so isolated, she never really meets men in any useful way.

Cletus Winston is one of the many Winston brothers we’ve met in previous books. He’s the weird one. But he’s also clever and entertaining. Jennifer knows he’s regarded as “the most powerful man in East Tennessee” (because “he could make anything happen”). He’s kind of arrogant, but somehow it’s not as irritating as it is on other people. He also doesn’t think much of her:

The show of confidence had been completely out of character for meek and docile Jennifer Sylvester.

Granted, I didn’t know her very well. I didn’t need to. She was a weak person.

But then she surprises Cletus by catching him on video doing something he shouldn’t, and then using that to get him to help her. Basically extorting him to get his help in finding a husband so she can start that family she so desperately wants.

Cletus decides that to accomplish what she wants, she needs lessons and practice. So he challenges her to do different things (paint her fingernails a bold color, dye her hair a color other than what her mom wants, …). Doing these things is difficult for Jennifer and overcoming this is her character arc. She feels undervalued by her family (because she is) and she needs to find some self-confidence somewhere and build it up. And get on with her adult life. Cletus helps her do that, but she’s the one who does the real work. Cletus doesn’t have as strong an arc, because his main thing is that he learns to see her as more than a meek and docile girl.

Like always with Reid’s books, this one’s funny and fairly steamy at times, though it’s a slow build. It’s equally surprising to Jennifer and Cletus when they end up together. Her dialogue is good even though it’s all about a couple of odd people who speak a little… oddly at times. As with all the books in this series, the setting’s fun and unusual (you don’t see rural eastern Tennessee come up often, do you?). We also see the setup for book #4, which was released fairly recently. Check Beard Science out if you like quirky characters.

Stay (WAGs #2) by Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy

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Stay book coverRead on if you’r interested in more hockey hotness from Bowen and Kennedy. Stay is the second in the WAGs series (that’s wives and girlfriends for those of you not in the know) after Good Boy. And it features a cool girl and another hot hockey player.

Hailey Emery co-runs (with her ex-husband) her own business, a virtual assistant company called Fetch. They’re basically a concierge, finding services like dog-walkers and housecleaners, picking up and delivering items, and doing other such things for clients. She has one client whose account name is Sniper87 and she’s half convinced he’s the hockey star Matt Eriksson. Who she fancies. But she respects her client’s privacy and resists the temptation to peek at his profile details.

She’s not wrong. Matt’s on the same Toronto team as Blake and Wes, who we’ve seen in the earlier books. At 30, he’s getting old for the game and starting to feel it. He’s also unhappily single, with little time to do anything about it. His ex-wife’s deeply unpleasant and he doesn’t see his two daughters enough. He’s been using Fetch and the person he corresponds with the most is Hailey, or Hottie as he calls her (because her initials are all he sees—HTE). He’s seen a picture of a pretty woman on the site and decided it’s her, and he’s theoretically interested.

He’s not wrong either. How they finally get together is entertaining but not overly cutesy. First, the dog walkers she’s hired aren’t doing a good job with his dog—they’re snooping around his apartment, for instance. So she does the dog walking herself the next day, and he watches over his security cam and decides she really is the cute girl from the website photo. So they’re chatting about it over the Fetch messaging app, and he flirts with her a little because he assumes she knows who he is. He arranges to get her two tickets to the next home game, in a card labeled For HoTtiE. Things go from there, as they do.

Hailey’s pretty shy and although she’s been married before, she’s not really experienced much excitement. Matt takes on teaching her a little about life and… other things. The book is funny partially because of her inexperience and shyness, but there’s plenty of unrelated humor, too. There’s an ongoing thread with a client sending dick pics to Fetch which is pretty funny, especially when it gets explained near the end. As always, the dialogue’s good, the secondary characters are entertaining, and the ending’s satisfying. So if you like hockey romances, Bowen, or Kennedy, you’ll like this one.

Flat-out Sexy (Fast Track #1) by Erin McCarthy

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Flat-out Sexy book coverIf you’d told me I’d enjoy a romance about a hot professional race car driver, I wouldn’t have believed you. But Flat-out Sexy is a solid, complex story about a race widow and a young driver. Kudos to McCarthy to making the world of NASCAR interesting to me.

Tamara Briggs lost her husband in a crash at Talladega, which left her with two young kids to raise. Elec Monroe is a rookie driver. He’s almost 26 and Tamara’s thirty-ish, which doesn’t stop them from having a hot hookup the first night they meet.

After a second meeting engineered by their friends, Elec talks Tamara into getting together occasionally for stress relief. Tamara thinks they can’t be anything serious, but for Elec, it soon becomes more than a fling. The fact that Tamara already has kids is not an issue for him. Due to a youthful mistake, he’s sterile, but the problem with that is he wants kids. Perhaps even more than if he could have them. Yet Elec struggles to get Tamara to consider a real relationship.

When the kids get chicken pox, Elec shows up to offer moral support and dinner and the tide begins to turn a little. Tamara finds Elec and her son lying on their stomachs fiddling with an ant farm he’d brought as a gift:

It was so normal, so masculine, so casual, that damned if she didn’t have tears in her eyes.

This was what her son had lost when Pete had spun out and hit the wall at Talladega.

I’m also happy that Tamara’s kids aren’t cutesy stereotypes—they might be young (9 and 7) and cute, but it’s her daughter who’s the race fanatic, while her son isn’t particularly interested.

It’s nice to see Tamara and Elec come to terms with their issues over the course of the book (Elec also has an ex that’s causing trouble and Tamara unsurprisingly is a little self-conscious about her body) while they learn to be there for each other.

As I mentioned, the book has a fair amount going on, but it’s not so much that it overwhelms the reader. Also, it’s definitely funny at times and there were several well-placed turns of phrase. After they met that first night, for several complicated reasons Tamara needs to sleep in her friend Ryder’s coach and ends up having to share a cab with some guy, who turns out to be Elec.

Elec, just as gorgeous as she remembered, leaned out of the cab. “Hop on in, Tamara. I’ll make sure you get home safely.

Said the spider to the fly.

I’m pretty sure this was the first romance I read, on a friend’s recommendation, and it’s what pulled me into the genre. My one complaint is that the part where they temporarily break up near the end felt contrived and manufactured. But this is occasionally true in romances. So if you already enjoy the genre, you’ll like this one if you appreciate steamy and more going on than the romance itself. And if you’ve never read one, give it a try.

Barefoot in the Sand (Barefoot Bay #1) by Roxanne St. Claire

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Barefoot in the Sand book coverBarefoot in the Sand is presented as a fun beach read, but I thought there was more to it than that—it wasn’t a lightweight story. No, there was a lot else going on, which is how I like my romances.

After a massive hurricane turns unexpectedly toward their beach town, Lacey Armstrong and her daughter Ashley survive it by cowering in the bathtub and holding a mattress over their heads. Their house is destroyed and she hopes to use the insurance money not to just rebuild, but to build a B&B.

Then she meets Clay Walker, who is a down-on-his-luck sort-of architect. We aren’t sure what his story is for a while, but soon enough learn that it’s family-related, as his father (who has the same name) is a renowned architect who sabotaged Clay’s career. For Lacey, Clay paints a much more ambitious picture for what she could build: a small resort.

They start working together to design the place and find that the chemistry they have is hard to ignore. Clay makes a move or two but it takes a while for them to really get together. It’s well worth the wait.

In the midst of their resort planning, David, Ashley’s absentee father reappears in their lives after having an epiphany about the value of family. He wants to get back together with Lacey despite the fact that he dumped her when she first told him she was pregnant. She isn’t interested, but Ashley is holding onto the family fantasy herself. Then, to complicate things further, the town council is led by someone completely opposed to the building of Lacey’s resort, and a battle ensues between her and the council.

The book nicely ties together Lacey’s and Clay’s backstories into an intertwined and well-plotted story. Seeing them get past their issues to fall in love is quite enjoyable. Both of these characters are deeply drawn and relatable, even if it takes a little longer for us to really get Clay (his backstory is withheld longer than Lacey’s).

The only complaints I have have to do with Clay’s behavior early on and then the grand gesture. He doesn’t behave like someone who’s trying to get a desperately-needed job—instead, he’s overtly trying to get in Lacey’s pants. I felt like he’d be acting more professionally at the beginning. But whatever—it gets the plot moving, so I looked past that.

Then the other thing is the grand gesture. I won’t give it away, but it was just super-cheesy. I guess a lot of people like gushy and innaproppriately-timed public displays, but they make me uncomfortable. But again, whatever—it wrapped the novel up.

Overall, the book was a good read and I’ll likely read the next one in the series because I like the depth of the story. And St. Claire is a masterful emotion-manager, taking us where she wants us to be with great description, natural dialogue, and good pacing. Anyone who likes longer contemporary romances should enjoy it.

Favorite Reads of 2017

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Here’s a breakdown of my favorite romances that I read in 2017 (not necessarily that were published in 2017)…

Of course Sarina Bowen tops the list because she’s always my favorite. I read several of her books this year and loved them all. But I especially love the True North Series, from which I read the latest three. I especially adored Steadfast and Keepsake. These books have great depth where a lot more is going on than the central romance, but it never takes away from the romance. See the reviews here and here.

Pipe Dreams from Bowen’s Brooklyn Bruisers series also gets a mention because I really liked the  second chance story with all the unfair obstacles the two had to get past. I haven’t reviewed this one yet but plan to at some point.

A surprise for me was The Hating Game, a debut by Sally Thorne. It’s a friends-to-lovers story and I’m not generally a fan of that trope, but the tension in this book is fantastic. I reviewed it here.

I’m also a fan of Penny Reid, particularly for Grin and Beard It, a tale of a highly unlikely couple—a pop-culture-oblivious forest ranger and smart and feminist movie star. Click here for the review.

Finally, I’d like to mention one of Lisa Kleypas’s Friday Harbor books. I read these out of order and my first was my favorite—#3, Dream Lake. The hero in this one seems unredeemable at first, but he’s never so horrible that his behavior was unforgivable. See the review here.