#BlogTour! Love at First Spite by Anna E. Collins

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It is my great pleasure to share with the funny and heartfelt Love at First Spite by Anna E. Collins. This book is so entertaining that I flew through it in just one afternoon and could not put it down! I mean, does it get any better than a book that opens with a woman wearing her wedding dress to a paintball game to celebrate NOT getting married? It’s so good!

In this delightful, breezy romcom, interior designer Dani decides to get revenge on her cheating ex the only way she knows how: by building a spite house next door.

They say living well is the best revenge. But sometimes, spreading the misery seems a whole lot more satisfying. That’s interior designer Dani Porter’s justification for buying the vacant lot next to her ex-fiancé’s house…the house they were supposed to live in together, before he cheated on her with their realtor. Dani plans to build a vacation rental that will a) mess with his view and his peace of mind and b) prove that Dani is not someone to be stepped on. Welcome to project Spite House.

That plan quickly becomes complicated when Dani is forced to team up with Wyatt Montego, the handsome, haughty architect at her firm, and the only person available to draw up blueprints.

Love at First Spite

Author: Anna E. Collins

ISBN: 9781525899799

Publication Date: January 4, 2022

Publisher: Graydon House

Chapter 1

My white dress trails me as we make our way across the small clearing to where the others are waiting. The heavy fabric rustles against the ground, a few leaves catching in the hem, but I ignore them, concentrating instead on what’s ahead. All eyes are on me.

“Are you sure?” my cousin Mia asks at my elbow. My partner in crime.

I glance her way. I’m nervous, but I don’t want to be, and the simmering excitement in her expression reassures me. This is the right choice.

“Hundred percent,” I say.

She smiles and squeezes my hand. “You’ll rock this, I know it.” She lets go and steps away to assume her position with a wink. “See you on the other side.”

Then it begins.

I take off at a sprint. The paintball arena is at least a football field in size and strewn with steel drums, crates, and sandbags. A few larger structures in the middle resemble a small-scale Old West town complete with porches and a saloon sign. The guys Mia and I’ve been teamed up with run that way, while she and I head for the trees along the sides. The large pines tower stoically above the fray, and I choose one of the largest trunks for my first cover.

“Did everyone else go the other way?” I call out to Mia but get no response. Wasn’t she behind me?

I peer around the trunk only to catch the whisp of her braid beneath her helmet as she dives for shelter by a tree trunk twenty yards in front of me.

“Don’t be a baby, Porter,” I chastise myself, before following her. It’s a thirty-minute game of most-hits-win, so she’s got the right idea: it’s go time.

As fast as my skirts allow, I jog in the direction of the rapid pops and ka-splats of active battle, paintball gun at the ready. The staff told me I’d be at a disadvantage playing in my wedding dress, and they had a good point. But then again, I didn’t come here expecting to leave in virginal white.

I barely get my finger on the trigger before two shots in succession hit me squarely in the chest, and a green stain blooms before me. It hurts less than I anticipated, but I still freeze too long and another round easily finds my shoulder. Blue paint drips off the white lace of my sleeve.

Oh yeah? That’s how it’s going to be?

Something akin to glee bubbles up my chest and I let out a loud cackle. All righty, then. Shouldering my gun, I aim at the culprit—some kid a full foot shorter than me— and one, two, three splotches of paint hit his belly.

“Yeah!” I shout, as he hightails off. Adrenaline pumps through my arms.

“Dani, over here!” Mia runs sideways behind me from the cover of a fake building to a stack of boxes. “I’ll shield you.”

Yeah right. She already looks like she’s wrestled with a rainbow.

I consider darting the opposite way, to a smattering of hay bales, but Mia sounds increasingly desperate. I hike up my skirts and do my best to make myself small before jumping to safety next to her.

Back up against the boxes, I peek around the corner. “Two of them,” I say, still breathing hard. “On my mark.” I count down with my fingers and, on three, we spring out, guns leveled at opponents who don’t see us coming. I’m a vengeful angel, gliding through the sky—at least that’s what I picture until my toe catches the hem of my dress and I stumble forward into a mouthful of dirty straw.

“Take that!” Mia shouts from a distance, accompanied by a fresh round of shots volleying through the air.

“What the fuck?” a deep voice yells out.

Another voice: “We’re on the same fucking team.”

I lift my face off the ground. Mia is backing up toward me, pursued by our imagined foe who’s indeed wearing the same beat-up Timberlands I spotted on our teammates earlier.

It’s fair to say they’re about as excited to be paired with us as my taste buds are about the straw. I spit out the horse fodder and push myself up.

“We should have never teamed up with them,” the first guy complains. “That one wants to get hit, and this one…” He gestures at Mia.

She exhales as if he’s punched her.

“What?” I say, moving to stand between him and my cousin. “This one, what?”

“Dude, come on,” the second guy says. “Let’s just play.”

“Well she’s not exactly agile, is she?” guy number one sneers.

“Ha, that’s funny.” I bob my head a few times and train my gun on him. “What do you think, Mia?”

She appears at my side. “I think someone’s about to get pummeled.”

His eyebrows jerk behind his protective goggles, but that’s all he manages before we shoot.

And shoot again.

Who needs a team? The sight of them running away is totally worth losing for.

Excerpted from Love at First Spite by Anna E. Collins, Copyright © 2022 by Anna E. Collins. Published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

Anna E. Collins is a Seattle-area author who writes stories about the lives and loves of women. Once upon a time she was a teacher, and she has a master’s degree in educational psychology. LOVE AT FIRST SPITE is her first novel.


Social Links:

Author Website

Twitter: @AEC_Writer

Facebook: @aecollinsbooks

Instagram: @aeccreates

Goodreads


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It's a New Year!

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Each year, my family runs away to the woods to spend some time hiking and genuinely relaxing. Every year, my plan is to read way more books than I can actually get through and this year, I barely made it through 2 books. 2 books! I know a lot of people have really struggled with their reading lives this past year and I am definitely one of those.

But it looks like things might be looking up. I have a Kindle that is loaded with great titles, including a ton of arcs that I’m genuinely excited to read, and I feel ready to really dive back into books. I took advantage of a smoking good Kindle Unlimited deal and have really enjoyed playing around with the paranormal romances and I think I’ve found a few winners. As of today, I saw the promo for 3 months for 99¢ is still active and I highly recommend giving it a try if you want to dive deep into some really fun and bonkers romances. And by bonkers, I mean BONKERS! There’s a ton of really fun looking rom-coms coming out in the coming months and I can’t wait to read all the books that were sent for blog tours.

I think I’m past needing to hit a specific number of books in a year, but I do want to get better at tracking my reading. It’s something I start each year doing and give up by February because I usually read way more than I feel like writing down. It might be time to finally start that spreadsheet I’ve been avoiding because those feel like work, but so does writing down titles by hand. Maybe a Google Form would be easier? How do you track your reading? Journals? Spreadsheets? I’m very curious to know what works for other people.

What goals do you have for your reading life?

*This post may contain affiliate links, including Amazon Associate links, and I may earn from qualifying purchases.

#BlogTour! Harlequin GLAMOROUS: Stranded with Her Greek Husband by Michelle Smart

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STRANDED WITH HER GREEK BILLIONAIRE by Michelle Smart (on-sale Dec.28, Harlequin Presents): Michelle Smart unravels the mysteries of a Greek marriage in this emotional reunion romance. Keren fled the island of Agon heartbroken, convinced her marriage was over. Now she must return to face her gloriously handsome estranged husband, Yannis, and end things for good. Instead, she finds herself marooned on Agon, and Yannis insists she spends three final days with him first! With nowhere to run from the fierce longing he reawakens, Keren must open her eyes to the whole truth. Not just the tragedy that broke them, but the joy and passion she’s tried—and failed—to forget…

Readers, we have been blessed with a wealth of wonderful Harlequin Romance this month and today’s blog tour book is no exception. It’s my pleasure to share an excerpt from Michelle Smart’s Stranded with Her Greek Husband:


Excerpt, STRANDED WITH HER GREEK HUSBAND by Michelle Smart

Would it help if I apologised?’

She couldn’t stop her stare darting to him. ‘I’m staying for three days not three weeks, Yannis.’

To her surprise, a grin spread over his face. It was a heartbreaker of a smile, all lopsided and…sexy.

She quickly looked away.

Keren didn’t want to see his smile and remember how it had once been part of the Yannis Filipidis package that had seduced and charmed her from the moment she set eyes on him.

Their first meeting had been at the opening of a new contemporary art gallery at Agon’s palace that Yannis and his brother had helped curate as a favour to the King. The palace had artwork and antiquities dating back millennia, but the modern King wanted to bring it more fully into the twenty-first century. Knowing their King wanted to attract a younger, hipper clientele, the PR people behind the launch reached out to Keren and invited her to attend and review. That she was no art critic and had only visited and reviewed two art galleries in all her travels—reviewing offbeat bars and restaurants and activities like elephant trekking were more her thing—didn’t matter to them. It was her audience they wanted to connect with. They’d offered to pay for her flights and accommodation and promised no interference with what she published on her blog. As Agon had been on her wish list of countries to visit, she’d been thrilled to accept.

She remembered the funky feel of the gallery. The creative and delicious cocktails and canapés she’d been plied with by the eager PR team. The buzz that had permeated the air.

But mostly she remembered the incredibly tall, incredibly gorgeous man dressed in a dapper pinstriped suit propped against the wall with a bottle of lager in his hand, oblivious to the lusty stares being thrown his way because his entire focus had been on her.Keren had come to Agon intending to stay for a long weekend. It had ended up being her home for two years.

The man whose attention she’d caught that night and married six months later was still grinning. ‘But you are staying,’ he pointed out smugly.

‘Under duress. And only for three days.’

‘Three days is long enough to convince you to stay.’ Then the smile fell. He tilted his head. ‘Would you believe any apology?’

‘No.’

‘Then I shall save my breath for when you do believe it.’

‘Save it but don’t hold it,’ she advised.

The smile returned. ‘You would give me the kiss of life, surely?’

Before she could respond, he swept past her, his arm brushing hers, and engulfed her in a cloud of the cologne she hadn’t even realised she’d been avoiding inhaling until it was too late.

Grinding her toes into her sandals, Keren closed her eyes and tried her hardest to ride out the wave of longing ripping through her.

They were just echoes of the past. Memories.

Memories she’d locked away on her flight out of Agon.

About Michelle Smart: Michelle Smart is a Publishers Weekly bestselling author with a slight-to-severe coffee addiction. A book worm since birth, Michelle can usually be found hiding behind a paperback, or if it’s an author she really loves, a hardback. Michelle lives in rural Northamptonshire in England with her husband and two young Smarties. When not reading or pretending to do the housework she loves nothing more than creating worlds of her own. Preferably with lots of coffee on tap. www.michelle-smart.com.

Buy Stranded with Her Greek Husband by Michelle Smart:

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Harlequin.com


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#BlogTour! The Women of Pearl Island by Polly Crosby

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I had the pleasure of reading Polly Crosby’s other novel, The Book of Hidden Wonders and fell in love with her ability to weave together dreamy and magical stories. So it is my great pleasure to share with you an excerpt from Polly Crosby’s new novel, The Women of Pearl Island.

ONE

Tartelin

Summer 2018

“I do not require diaper changing, I do not require spoon-feeding, I do not require my ego massaging. What I do require is someone with a deft pair of hands. I asked for someone with experience in dealing with little things, delicate things. A scientist, perhaps. Is that you?”

I nod.

“Show me your hands, then, child.”

I hold them out, palm side downward, and she wheels herself over and inspects them. Her own hands, I see now, have a tremor.

“You’re a pretty girl,” she says, her eyes drifting over my face, glancing off my cheek, and I feel my skin redden. “Not very robust, though. Are you sure this is the right job for you?” I open my mouth to speak, but she cuts me off. “What did you do, before you came here? How is it that you are suited to this vacancy?”

I frown. We went over all this in our letters, back and forth, back and forth. Written on paper, not sent by email, each one signed Miss Marianne Stourbridge in her regimented, barbed-wire scrawl. My life back home was the reason she chose me. But then, she is old, and she can’t be expected to remember everything.

“I grew up around my mother’s artwork, helping her out in her studio,” I say, more loudly than I mean to. “And then I went to art school myself. Mum’s work was focused on found objects, making art from bits of nature…feathers, leaves and twigs—”

“Lepidoptera aren’t ‘bits of nature,’ Miss Brown.”

“She also made sculptures out of grains of rice in her spare time. I helped her.”

“Why on earth would anyone do that?” She leaves the ques-tion hanging in the air and turns her chair abruptly, wheeling herself back to her desk.

The chair is made from cane. It looks like an antique, and I’m surprised it still works. It must be exhausting to propel.

“It’s a shame you don’t have a scientific background, but now you’re here, you’ll have to do. Here, hold this.” She lifts a pair of gold tweezers into the air and I hasten forward and take them. “No, not like that. Pinch. Gently. That’s it.”

I adjust my hold and feel how the spring of the tines is like an extension of my fingers, and I’m back with my mother and she’s saying, “Careful, Tartelin, don’t squeeze too hard. Feather barbs bruise easily.” But before I can use this new-found body part, the tweezers are whisked away from me, and she’s turning again to the desk and bending over her work. I stand by her side and wait, wondering if I’m allowed to go. The clock on the mantel chimes loudly. I count eight. I look at my watch. It’s ten past two.

Miss Stourbridge? Shall I adjust your clock?”

“No point. It’ll only go back to eight o’clock.”

I look over at it, frowning. The second hand is juddering in jerky movements. It makes me dizzy to look at it, as if it’s mea-suring a different kind of time. I turn back to my employer.

Miss Stourbridge is so still as she works. I can see her teas-ing the body of a dead moth from a cocoon, her fingers mov-ing infinitesimally slowly. I look around the room. It is lined in dark panels of wood, and every surface has frames and frames of butterflies and moths, glinting pins plunged into husked bodies.

“Did you catch all these butterflies?”

She is silent, and at first I think she hasn’t heard me. But then I see she’s holding her breath so as not to disturb the moth’s delicate wings. I watch closely, the clock ticking behind us. I’m looking not at her work but at her ribs, waiting for them to inflate, waiting for her nostrils to swell, anything that shows air is passing into her chest. My eyes sting from the pain of staring. She is so still that she has become a part of the chair she sits in. Only her finger and thumb move ach-ingly slowly, and the minutes tick by.

When I was young, I used to try to be as still as she is now. My mother would sit me on her knee and tell me stories, and I would hold myself as still as a statue, bewitched by her tales.

“Long ago,” she always began, in a voice that was reserved only for when the moon was rising, “I was a tiny jellied spawn no bigger than a pearl, floating in the earth’s great oceans. The fish nibbled and swallowed my brothers and sisters up, snap, snap, snap, and I was left, coming at last to rest on the pebbled shore of a beach. And that is how I came to have these,” she would say, waving her hands in front of my face, so close that they skimmed my eyelashes and all I could see was the thin layer of webbed skin between each finger. To my unprejudiced four-year-old eyes, the webs were not a deformity: they were beautiful, useful, magical, and I wished with all my heart that I could be like her, could be from the sea.

I take my eyes from the poor moth on the desk and look over Miss Stourbridge’s head to the picture window that frames the sea beyond, and I remember anew that the sea surrounds us here, like a comforting arm holding the world at bay. A feeling of calm settles over me. However strange this woman is, whatever my job might entail, it was the right decision to come here, I can feel it.

I had seen the advertisement in one of Mum’s ornithologi-cal magazines. Mum bought them for the photographs. She particularly liked the close-ups of the birds’ eyes and feathers. The magazines were littered throughout our house, spattered with drops of paint, pages ripped out and twisted together into the vague forms of gulls and robins so that every surface was covered in paper birds made of paper birds.

But the latest magazine had landed on the doormat, pris-tine and untouched, and when I shook it from its clear plastic covering, it had fallen open on the ad.

PA required to assist lepidopterist. Must be able to start immedi-ately. Must not be squeamish.

When I had written to ask for more information, the return address had intrigued me.

Dogger Bank House, Dohhalund.

Dohhalund. An unusual word, not English-sounding at all. A bit of research showed me that it was a tiny island off the East Anglian coast, the long thin shape of it reminiscent of a fish leaping out of the water. Its heritage was a mixture of English and Dutch. When I looked at it on a map on my phone, it had seemed so small that I imagined you could walk its circumference in only a few hours. I had tried to picture what kind of an island it would be: a cold, hard rock grizzled with the droppings of thousands of seabirds, or a flat stretch of white sand, waiting for my footprints? Whatever it turned out to be, the isolation of it appealed to me.

Miss Stourbridge’s letters had been vague about the posi-tion she was offering, but she did tell me, rather proudly, that the island had belonged to her family for hundreds of years. While I wait, I look about the room, searching for photo-graphs, evidence of other people. Where is her family now?

I shift my weight carefully from foot to foot and I glance at my watch. Two twenty-three. Thirteen minutes. I wonder if I’m being paid to stand and do nothing. I look around the room. Next to the desk is a large clear glass box. Inside hang rows and rows of cocoons of all different shapes and sizes. One or two are twitching. I turn away with a sting of shame, feel-ing somehow as if I’ve looked at something I shouldn’t have.

Over by the window, there is a huge black telescope on a stand. Unlike everything else in this place, it looks very mod-ern. Next to it on the windowsill sits a battered pair of bin-oculars on a worn leather strap.

Quietly I back toward the chaise longue in the corner and lower myself onto its tattered silk cover. It’s the first time I’ve sat down in hours, and my body sings with relief. I edge my hand into my pocket and pull out my phone. It’s switched off: the battery ran low somewhere off the coast of Norfolk at around the same time that the signal disappeared. The lack of signal hadn’t worried me: I’d been looking forward to charg-ing my phone when I arrived, tapping in Miss Stourbridge’s Wi-Fi code, the friendly glow of my phone’s screen a com-fort in this new place.

I look around for an outlet in the room, and with a sudden slick shiver I find I can’t see any. There must be electricity here, surely. But if not… Realization runs through me like a thrill: if there’s no electricity in this house, there won’t be any Wi-Fi either. And with no signal, there’s no way of contacting the outside world. No way for the outside world to contact me. The roar of the sea appears to amplify through

I take my eyes from the poor moth on the desk and look over Miss Stourbridge’s head to the picture window that frames the sea beyond, and I remember anew that the sea surrounds us here, like a comforting arm holding the world at bay. A feeling of calm settles over me. However strange this woman is, whatever my job might entail, it was the right de-cision to come here, I can feel it.

I had seen the advertisement in one of Mum’s ornithologi-cal magazines. Mum bought them for the photographs. She particularly liked the close-ups of the birds’ eyes and feathers. The magazines were littered throughout our house, spattered with drops of paint, pages ripped out and twisted together into the vague forms of gulls and robins so that every surface was covered in paper birds made of paper birds.

But the latest magazine had landed on the doormat, pris-tine and untouched, and when I shook it from its clear plastic covering, it had fallen open on the ad.

PA required to assist lepidopterist. Must be able to start immedi-ately. Must not be squeamish.

When I had written to ask for more information, the return address had intrigued me.

Dogger Bank House, Dohhalund.

Dohhalund. An unusual word, not English-sounding at all. A bit of research showed me that it was a tiny island off the East Anglian coast, the long thin shape of it reminiscent of a fish leaping out of the water. Its heritage was a mixture of English and Dutch. When I looked at it on a map on my phone, it had seemed so small that I imagined you could walk its circumference in only a few hours. I had tried to picture what kind of an island it would be: a cold, hard rock grizzled with the droppings of thousands of seabirds, or a flat stretch of white sand, waiting for my footprints? Whatever it turned out to be, the isolation of it appealed to me.





Excerpted from The Women of Pearl Island by Polly Crosby, Copyright © 2021 by Polly Crosby. Published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

Author Bio: 

Polly Crosby grew up on the Suffolk coast, and now lives deep in the Norfolk countryside. THE BOOK OF HIDDEN WONDERS was awarded runner up in the Bridport Prize's Peggy Chapman Andrews Award for a First Novel, and Polly also won Curtis Brown Creative's Yesterday Scholarship, which enabled her to finish the novel. She currently holds the Annabel Abbs Scholarship at the University of East Anglia, where she is studying part time for an MA in Creative Writing. THE WOMEN OF PEARL ISLAND is her second novel.

THE WOMEN OF PEARL ISLAND

Author: Polly Crosby

ISBN: 9780778311140

Publication Date: December 7, 2021

Publisher: Park Row Books


Buy Links: 

BookShop.org

Harlequin 

Barnes & Noble

Amazon

Books-A-Million

Powell’s 

Social Links:

Author Website

Twitter: @WriterPolly

Instagram: @ polly_crosby

Facebook: @pollycrosbyauthor 

Goodreads



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#BlogTour! Harlequin GLAMOROUS: Tall, Dark and Off Limits by Shannon McKenna

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His job is to protect his best friend’s sister…not seduce her! Don’t miss the conclusion of the Men of Maddox Hill series by New York Times bestselling author Shannon McKenna. When it comes to his best friend’s sister, he’s tempted to be much more than her protector. Assigned to keep an eye on social media darling Ava Maddox, security expert Zack Austin is more than up to the task. After all, she’s like family. But dealing with the dynamic beauty requires every ounce of patience…and sexual control. They’ve been denying their forbidden feelings for way too long and soon professionalism gives way to passion. Zack’s willing to face her overprotective family’s wrath, but is Ava’s talent for finding trouble about to explode in his face?

Doesn’t that sound intriguing? Read on for an excerpt from Shannon McKenna’s Tall, Dark and Off Limits!

Excerpt, TALL, DARK AND OFF LIMITS by Shannon McKenna

“No wine,” Zack told the waiter brusquely, realizing too late how stuffy and uptight that sounded. “For me, of course,” he said to Ava. “Feel free to have some. I never drink when I’m working.”

“Good for you.” She smiled up at the waiter, whose name was Martin, according to the tag on his shirt. “I’ll have a glass of red wine, please.”

“I have a beautiful 2016 Romanée-Conti that’s open,” Martin told her.

“Sounds lovely.” She gave the waiter that trademarked blinding smile that brought men to their knees. Martin stumbled off, probably to walk into walls and tables.

And Zack just sat there, tongue-tied. When Ava Maddox was around, his foot always ended up stuck so far into his mouth, he needed surgical intervention to get it out. She was giving him that look. Big, sharp blue eyes that missed nothing. So on to him.

The restaurant had low light and a hushed ambience, and they were in the back, tucked in a wood-paneled corner booth. Now the challenge was to kick-start his brain into operation, instead of just staring at how beautiful she was in the flickering candlelight.

She just waited, patiently. Like she was all too used to men losing their train of thought as soon as they made eye contact with her. Like she was accustomed to cutting the poor stammering chumps some slack while they pulled themselves together.

Her cell rang, and she gave him an apologetic glance when she saw the display. “Gotta take this. One sec.” She tapped the screen and held it to her ear. “Ernest? Thanks for getting back to me. Are you still in the office?… Yeah? Could you get a cab to swing by the Mathesson Pub and Grill on your way home?… Yeah, I need my laptop, the pink one with the collage cover. I’m talking to the Maddox Hill CSO about the online harassment…yeah, I know, but still…uh-huh. Okay, thanks. You’re my hero. Later, then.”

She laid the phone down. “Ernest is my assistant. He’ll bring my computer here so I can show you the master list of the last few of years’ worth of Blazon’s projects.”

“I’m surprised you don’t have your laptop with you at all times,” he said.

“I usually do,” she said. “But I had every intention of going back to Gilchrist House tonight. I have a crazy weekend coming up. Ernest and I are flying down to the Future Innovation trade show in Los Angeles tomorrow. It’s a very big deal.”

Zack couldn’t hide his disapproval. “Traveling to Los Angeles? Going back to a deserted office late in the evening? Leaving by yourself, going home by yourself? With all this going on?”

Ava sighed. “Zack, Gilchrist House has a twenty-four-hour doorman. And I would call a car to take me from doorstep to doorstep. I’m not an idiot.”

“I never suggested that you were.”

“I’m not in physical danger,” Ava assured him. “Really. This is just, you know, the new normal. The incivility of our modern electronic age. It’s ugly and unsavory, but I’ve got to get used to it and learn to roll with it.”

“The hell you do,” he said. “New normal, my ass. I’ll tell you what’s normal. When I find that bottom-feeding son of a bitch and grind him into paste.”

Ava gave him that narrow, nervous look, which by now he recognized. It was a signal that he wasn’t behaving professionally. He was too intense. Making it personal.

In a word, scaring her.

“Ah, wow, Zack,” she murmured. “I’m surprised at your reaction.”

“Why? This situation is a disgrace. Why should you be surprised that I’m horrified?”

Her eyes slid away. “Well, I don’t know. It’s just that you’ve never taken me seriously before, so why would you suddenly take me seriously now?”

“I’m sorry I gave you that impression,” he said stiffly. “It wasn’t intentional.”

“Oh, don’t be that way.” Her tone was light. “I’m  used to it. I rub a lot of people the wrong way. I’m just too much for people sometimes. Drew’s always on my case about it, telling me to tone it down. And I try, I really do. But it never works. Boom, out it comes. The real Ava, right in your face.”

“He shouldn’t do that,” Zack said forcefully.

“Shouldn’t what? Sorry, but I’m not following you.”

“Drew. He shouldn’t be on your case. He shouldn’t tell you to tone it down.”

Her eyes were big. “Ah… I didn’t mean to get you all wound up.”

About Shannon McKenna: Shannon McKenna is the NYT bestselling author of seventeen action packed, turbocharged romantic thrillers, among which are the stories of the wildly popular McCloud series and the brand new romantic suspense series, The Obsidian Files. She loves tough and heroic alpha males, heroines with the brains and guts to match them, villains who challenge them to their utmost, adventure, scorching sensuality, and most of all, the redemptive power of true love. Since she was small she has loved abandoning herself to the magic of a good book, and her fond childhood fantasy was that writing would be just like that, but with the added benefit of being able to take credit for the story at the end. Alas, the alchemy of writing turned out to be messier than she'd ever dreamed. But what the hell, she loves it anyway, and hopes that readers enjoy the results of her alchemical experiments. 

Buy Tall, Dark and Off Limits

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This post contains affiliate links, including Amazon Associate links, and I may earn from qualifying purchases.

Horror Quickie - The Last House on Needless Street

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Available Now

Reader friends, this book contains all the content warnings. It’s a rough, rough read but the writing itself is phenomenal.

From the Publisher:

In a boarded-up house on a dead-end street at the edge of the wild Washington woods lives a family of three.

A teenage girl who isn’t allowed outside, not after last time.
A man who drinks alone in front of his TV, trying to ignore the gaps in his memory.
And a house cat who loves napping and reading the Bible.

An unspeakable secret binds them together, but when a new neighbor moves in next door, what is buried out among the birch trees may come back to haunt them all.

The Last House on Needless Street is an intricately crafted puzzle that reveals itself to be extraordinarily dark and horrifying. It’s full of unreliable narrators and complex characters set in a dark and depressing part of the neighborhood. This neighborhood also borders a forest and that can only be home to horrific secrets. Not going to lie, it took until the last 50 or so pages for me to fully realize what was actually going on in the story and I was completely blown away. While this is one of the hardest books I’ve read in a long time, Ward’s ability to weave such an intricate story and pull off that level of a reveal was extraordinary to experience.

Highly recommend it, but know this is a hard and trauma filled story going in. If you want to add this book to your collection, you can find ordering information here or click on the book cover.

This post contains affiliate links, including Amazon Associate links, and I may earn from qualifying purchases.

Romance Quickie- Kick at the Darkness by Suleikha Snyder

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Available now for only 99¢!

Reader Friends, this is a kick ass romance set during a zombie apocalypse! That’s right! Zombies and pants feelings! Emran’s future was ripped away from him but Mona’s teenage starry-eyed crush. But when the world is overrun by zombies five years later, returning to her is his sole mission. Now the two are trapped in her family’s mansion with only a panic room and a highly prized wine cellar between them and the hordes of zombies outside. Together, they must find away to survive the apocalypse and their explosive feelings for each other.

This was so good! I was immeadiately invested in Mona and Emran’s relationship and was blown away by all the obstacles they had to overcome. Both Emran and Mona grew and changed as people over their five years apart and their reunion was quite eye opening for both of them. I think the author did a great job balancing the tension between the characters with the very real danger they faced in the outside world. There’s a really great scene in the wine cellar where I know I would have made a different choice than Mona, but I also would’ve died because of it. Luckily Mona is one smart woman who knew exactly the right decision to make.

It’s fast paced, exciting, and very hot. Extremely hot, thank you very much! I definitely recommend this one when you’re looking for a quick, powerful escape from this wild world we’re currently living in. Although, it may not be all that different from our world…

If you would like to add this apocalyptic romance novella to your bookshelf, you can find ordering information here:

 
 
 

Want more Suleikha Snyder? I’ve read Big, Bad Wolf and loved it! Here are a few more of her titles to try:

This post contains affiliate links, including Amazon Associate links, and I earn from qualifying purchases. Please remember, all mistakes and opinions are my own.

#BlogTour! Harlequin Christmas #bookstagram Tour: The Bad Boy Experiment by Reese Ryan

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THE BAD BOY EXPERIMENT by Reese Ryan (on-sale Dec.28, Harlequin Desire): A steamy fling with an old crush who doesn’t do commitment? What was she thinking! Find out in the conclusion to Reese Ryan’s Bourbon Brothers series. What happens when you say yes to a bad boy? Even if divorcée Renee Lockwood were willing to give love a second chance, she wouldn’t choose Cole Abbott. The sexy, successful real estate developer doesn’t do commitment. But he’s perfect for a no-strings fling—exactly what Ren needs now that she’s moved back home to raise her son. Mind-blowing pleasure with the man she once crushed on is harder to quit than Ren expected. Impossible, in fact. Is time running out before the bad boy bolts…or will the results of her experiment surprise her? 

Excerpt, THE BAD BOY EXPERIMENT by Reese Ryan

Renee turned and started down the stairs. Suddenly, the door swung open, taking her by surprise. She missed a step, tripping but catching herself on the banister before she face-planted in the gravel.

Graceful, Renee. You’re a regular Misty Copeland.

“Ren?” Cole hurried down the stairs. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I thought maybe you’d… I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Changed your mind.”

She was flustered and rambling like a fool. Yep, this was definitely a bad idea.

Stop talking and make a graceful exit, if that’s even possible at this point.

“Not a chance, sweetheart.” Cole extended a hand. “C’mon inside.”

Renee swallowed hard, her hand trembling as she placed it inside his.

Don’t chicken out now.

Cole led her into the kitchen. Like hers, it was outdated. It reminded her of her Aunt Bea standing at the old stove making fried corn or her famous chicken and dumplings—the first thing Ren had ever learned to cook.

“Still feels weird being here, huh?” Cole’s voice shook her from her temporary daze.

“Very.”

They entered the living room where an exercise mat and weights were on the floor.

“You were working out. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have disturbed you.” Ren glanced at the equipment. “I know it’s really late and—”

“Renee…” Cole drew her closer, pulling her attention back to him. His gaze was soft and warm as he stroked her cheek. “It’s okay. We both know why you came here.” He managed to say the words without sounding cocky. “But I need to hear it from you. Tell me exactly what you want from me.”

Ren’s head was spinning. No one had ever asked her that. Not in a relationship or her career. And now that he had, she wasn’t quite sure what to say.

So instead, she clutched Cole’s white Abbott Construction & Development T-shirt, pulled him closer and pressed her lips to his.

Reese Ryan writes sexy, contemporary romance featuring a diverse cast of complex characters. She presents her characters with family and career drama, challenging love interests and life-changing secrets while treating readers to emotional love stories with unexpected twists. Past president of her local RWA chapter and a panelist at the 2017 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, Reese is an advocate of the romance genre and diversity in fiction. Visit her online at ReeseRyan.com.

Buy Links:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Harlequin

November Whirlwind!

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It feels like it was literally yesterday that I was organizing Halloween events for the Library and the Fire Station and now I have to prep for Thanksgiving and two Christmases this week! I’m not sure where the last few weeks went too, but I’m tired and have a huge stack of books I’m dying to read.

One exciting and positive highlight of this whirlwind of a month was that I was the very lucky recipient of the latest giveaway from Lucy Eden’s monthly newsletter, Notes from Paradise! Now, fair warning, I’m definitely not a photographer and this was mailed to the Library so I took some very excited pics on my very messy desk. So I want to apologize in advance to Lucy Eden for not showing her beautiful packaging the respect it deserves.

Do you know what’s really fun? Interrupting the workday to show off how much more exciting your deliveries are than everyone else’s! And all these books are signed! With so many stickers and bookmarks!

Quick side note, Lucy’s website and monthly newsletter are fantastic. Her newsletter contains author interviews, book promos, and giveaways. It’s like a beautiful magazine just for romance readers.

So what’s inside the box? I’m so glad you asked!

Now, I wasted no time in reading An Angel for Daddy by Lucy Eden. It’s a really sweet and soft novella about a single dad who has a bad habit of picking his daughter up late from school and the amazing teacher who is inconvenienced by said bad habit. Ruby is a dedicated teacher who is trying to juggle her career and the care of her elderly father. Focusing on her job, family, and putting herself in a good financial place needs to come before a new relationship. But Spencer is a great dad and is kind to her father. He’s also really hot…

I really enjoyed this novella and loved how Spencer and Ruby were able to have real conversations and their lives were so relatable. Nina was super cute without taking over the story and it’s always nice to see daddy’s being so devoted. While I think this is one of the sweetest stories I’ve read this fall, it’s also really hot! Ruby and Spencer have some pretty explosive scenes together. You may want to check the content warnings available here, as they contain spoilers and there is a pretty big plot point that is really intense.

Huge thank you to Lucy Eden for putting together an amazing giveaway and to all the authors who contributed to it! You can find more about Lucy Eden and her books at www.lucyeden.com.

This post contains affiliate links, including Amazon, and as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling

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Available now

This book is pure fun! If you’re looking for a romance with some wacky magic and family drama, this is the one for you. Also, be prepared for me to say over and over again that this book is delightful. It’s truly the best description. It’s absolutely delightful!

After Vivienne finds herself heartbroken after finding out her first love is engaged to another woman, she and her cousin may have broken the first rule of magic: don’t mix vodka with witchcraft. What begins as an innocent way to blow off some anger turns into a hilarious adventure of misfiring magic and finding a second chance at love.

Nine years later, Vivienne is all grown up with a successful teaching career at the local college when her life is turned upside down by the return of her first love, Rhys Penhallow. As a descendant of the original founder of Graves Glen, he must return to recharge the ley lines and give the speech at the annual Founder’s Day celebration. But things don’t go quite as planned. When his magic becomes unpredictable and he finds himself falling for Vivienne all over again, he discovers that there might be more going on. LIke, maybe she accidentally cursed him while drunk nearly a decade ago?

This one is so good! It is truly delightful from start to finish. VIvienne and her cousin Gwyn have this really close friendship and truly have each other's backs. If you love fun banter, they have it in spades. The curse they place on Rhys is   in its specificity. The best part? When they discover that one part of it really just curses all the women in his romantic relationships. It’s great. The small town drama surrounding Founder’s Day is really fun, especially Gwyn’s reluctance to get over herself and give in to her feelings for the beautiful and single mayor. Even the mysterious connection between Rhys’s curse and the magical mayhem is done in such a quirky way that the story never loses its lightness. 

The romance between Rhys and Vivenne felt very real and believable. I think it’s very hard to pull off a second chance romance. If the characters find themselves in a situation where the relationship truly must end, it can be very difficult to see them in any situation where they can work through the problems that originally split them up. Sterling has her characters wait nearly a decade before they see eachother again. While they both commit some low-key on-line social media searches, they don’t interact with each other until Rhys comes back to town. They both have grown up and matured significantly since their break-up and now have successful careers and places where they belong. They still dance around some subjects and should be more willing to discuss their feelings but hey, it’s a romance. That’s how they work. 

The Ex Hex is a truly delightful novel that made for a lovely reading experience. The characters are great, the magical system was really fun, and the story was compelling and moved along quickly. This would be a great way to dip your toes into paranormal romance if that’s a new genre for you, or to add a new holiday romance to your list. 

If you would like to add this hilarious romp to your shelf, you can find ordering information here: 

 




This post contains affiliate links, including Amazon Associate links, and I earn from qualifying purchases.

The Guest List by Lucy Foley

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Available now

CW: child death, sexual violence

It is well known that I am an avid lover and collector of books. If I see one that’s interesting, I add it to my shelves. I was once able to justify a new, and unneeded, ereader to my husband simply by showing how much space could be saved by owning digital titles instead of physical. To no one’s surprise, I never stopped buying physical books and have countless that I have never, and may never get to. 

This very rarely bothers me. It’s only when listening to a bookish podcast and becoming increasingly interested in a book being recommended and then noticing that it’s on my bookshelf do I feel the slightest guilt. Well, maybe more like frustration that I’ve had a spectacular book on my shelf and I haven’t made the time to read it. The Guest List by Lucy Foley is my latest, “Why Did I Wait So Long To Read You?” title. 

The Guest List is an atmospheric and dark thriller set on a remote island off the coast of Ireland. The island’s only inhabitants are a couple who have turned a large home-possibly a mansion-into a resort that appeals to the type of client who wants an exclusive and secluded vacation destination. Jules is a highly successful magazine owner and creator who has amassed her own wealth and elite group of friends. Her wedding to an incredibly handsome and successful survivalist reality star demands the type of affair that her magazine would feature. The highest quality food and drink, along with every expensive and luxurious detail must be shuttled by boat to the island, including the guests. 

As the wedding draws closer, secrets, both long hidden and newly made, are brought to light amongst the wedding party and the families of the bride and groom. But the wedding will bring more than joy and happiness; it will also bring a dead body. 

Reader friends, if you slept on this one like I did, please do yourself a favor and pick it up immediately. A remote island off of Ireland, a mysterious resort with its own cemetery, and loads of rich people with their rich people problems-it’s all my catnip! Every character in this book needs some serious therapy. Everyone has a troubled past and has made mistakes that are slowly destroying their relationship with themselves and those around them. Everyone is hiding a major secret and has something to lose. Many of the characters are completely insufferable and treat the wedding planner Aoife and her helpers as no more significant than the furniture. 

Told through multiple POVs, the characters reveal themselves to be as unpredictable and dangerous as the storm threatening the island. 

The Guest List is a dark and compelling thriller that kept me enthralled from the very first page. Highly recommend reading this during a thunderstorm-it was a fabulous coincidence that I was able to indulge in and absolutely loved it. 

If you would like to add this thrilling and creepy novel to your shelf, and actually read it, you can find ordering information here:

 



This post contains affiliate links, including Amazon Associate links, and I earn from qualifying purchases.

Grave Reservations by Cherie Priest

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Available now

This is hands down, one of the best books I’ve read this year. It’s hilarious, full of heart, quirky, and just an absolute delight.

When Seattle police detective Grady narrowly misses a plane crash due to a last minute flight change by his travel agent Leda, he knows he has found the one person who can help him solve a cold case. With her ability to see flashes of memories while holding objects, Leda makes a perfect partner. But Leda hasn’t really spent a lot of time honing her ability and uses it mainly as way to draw customers to a friend’s bar where she performs karaoke inspired by objects people bring her. Can her unpredictable gift help solve Grady’s cold case and possibly, the case of her murdered fiancé?

I loved this book so much! It was full of hijinks and amazing friendships where everyone has great quippy banter. Leda was a really fun character. She has this amazing gift of seeing flashes of memory when she handles objects and has a devoted following at her friend’s bar where she gets to drink for free while she wows crowds with her Klairvoyant Karaoke. Her day job is the owner-operator of Foley’s Far-Fetched Flights of Fancy and I think that is one of the best fake business names I’ve ever heard. That business name? Tells you about everything you need to know about the tone of the book. Even though our characters are searching for a killer, it’s done in a very light-hearted and sarcastic way. Leda and her best friend Niki take over the bar’s whiteboard to create a “murder board” and manage to wrangle all the bar’s employees to help in solving the murder of Leda’s fiancé and another victim. Detective Grady Merritt takes his job very seriously and truly wants to solve the case, but also feels deep down that trusting Leda is key to finding his murderer. There are some great scenes where Grady and Leda are trying to question witnesses but it devolves so quickly into chaos.

The story moves along very quickly and I was completely enthralled from start to finish. It’s so well plotted with so many twists and funny moments that I never wanted to put it down. Luckily, I had this with me on vacation last month and was able to read it in pretty much one sitting. The humor is great, the friendships were delightful, and the plot never gets to gruesome. Sorry, I just want to keep you telling it’s delightful because that’s the best description-it’s just absolutely delightful. If you like Darynda Jones and any of her series, you will love this.

Seriously, pick this book up. It’s amazing. If you’d like to get your own copy, you can find ordering information here:

 
 

Thank you to Netgalley and Atria Books for the opportunity to read and review this title. All opinions and mistakes are my own. This post also contains affiliate links, including Amazon affiliate links, and I earn from qualifying purchases.

A Dark and Starless Forest by Sarah Hollowell

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Available Now

CW: child abuse, child death

I had so many reasons to be excited to order A Dark and Starless Forest for the Library:

  • It’s a magical story centered around witches

  • Wonderful fat girl rep

  • Tight knit group of siblings

  • Queer, ace, nonbinary and trans characters

  • Moody, magical forest

  • Amazing reviews from other readers

So it came as no surprise that while cataloging the book, I instead started to read the first few pages and was instantly hooked. I highly recommend reading this book in front of a fire with a spooky playlist, Pandora has one literally titled “Spooky Forest,” but I am sure that you will fall in love with this story no matter where you read it.

Derry lives with her eight siblings in a lake house far from town and prying eyes. They spend their days honing their magical abilities, guided by their ever present guardian Frank. Frank protects, clothes, and shelters Derry and her siblings from harm, but he is far from a fatherly figure. When her oldest sister goes missing, Derry refuses to give up hope of finding her. She is convinced that her sibling is somehow lost in the forest in a way that can’t be seen and the mysterious girl that Derry sees there holds the answers Derry seeks. But as the days go on and another sibling goes missing, Derry and her siblings find Frank’s behavior more and more disturbing and Derry finds herself drawn to the forest and it’s mysterious inhabitant.

This book is absolutely amazing! I loved every minute of Hollowell’s masterful worldbuilding and the mystery surrounding the witches and their magical abilities. The siblings all had very different lives before they came to live with Frank and their magical abilities were just as diverse. Even a power as deceptively simple and gentle as growing flowers quickly became dark and ominous when you realized how many flowers were also poisonous. It was fascinating to see how Hollowell was able to show both the light and dark sides to each person’s magic and how that weighed on them. The characters were so well written and complex that they truly felt like real people with real lives.

Hollowell has delivered a truly compelling story that instantly grabbed my attention and had me invested in the characters. The outside world was an ever-present threat to Derry and her sisters and you could feel how that impacted all of their decisions. No matter how hard Frank pushed them or how isolated they felt, the threat of other people constantly hung over their heads. They fully realized they were children and teens with no one to help them and no way to survive on their own. While it broke my heart over and over again, I knew that this story was not going to end tragically-how could it? Underneath everything, this was group of powerful witches who practiced their skills daily. I knew an epic ending had to be waiting for me at the end and Hollowell did not disappoint.

This is an absolutely fabulous magical adventure that definitely left room for more stories within this universe. I highly recommend you add this to your reading list and the list of anyone who loves dark, witchy tales.

If you would like to add this amazing story to your shelf, you can find ordering information here:

 
 

This post contains affiliate links, including Amazon Associate Links, and I earn from qualifying purchases.

GLAMOROUS | Harlequin Fall 2021 Blog Tour! The Bride He Stole for Christmas by Caitlin Crews

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She gave him her innocence.

Can he win her back by Christmas?

Certain that she will never love again, Timoney George has agreed to a convenient marriage. If she can’t recapture the hot, all-consuming chemistry she discovered with Crete Asgar, she might as well have cold security.

Crete tried to forget Timoney, but the idea of another man possessing her is intolerable. With just twelve hours until she walks down the aisle, Crete steals her back. And now he has the night before Christmas to prove to her—and himself—that he won’t break her heart all over again…

Add The Bride he Stole for Christmas to your Goodreads!

Buy The Bride he Stole for Christmas by Caitlin Crews

Harlequin.com: https://www.harlequin.com/shop/books/9781335569097_the-bride-he-stole-for-christmas.html


Excerpt of The Bride he Stole for Christmas by Caitlin Crews (Oct 26)

Harlequin Presents

Add The Bride he Stole for Christmas to your Goodreads!

Tell me your name, he had ordered her. And then tell me what it will take to make you mine.

She shuddered at that, here on her frigid bench on this lonely Christmas Eve, her body as alive and greedy as she had been that night.

And Timoney wanted to scream out all the anguish, all the artless fury that he’d left her with. His betrayal so absolute that it had taken her whole months to fully comprehend exactly what he’d done. Chucked her out. Forgotten her name. Washed his hands of her completely.

Yet tonight, when she should have been reveling in exactly how cold and dead inside she’d become, it was as if he was here. A ghostly presence in the mist, and it seemed deeply unfair that any ghost could fill a cold garden the way he had always overwhelmed a room.

She blew out a breath and told herself not to be such a fool. For once.

Crete was immovable. A terrible wall of stone and silence, and some part of her had known that from the start.

And still she had run straight for all that brick and smashed herself apart.

“Have you fallen asleep, Timoney?” came the terrible, wonderful, familiar voice.

Timoney wrenched open her eyes, and as she did, the moon came out from behind the clouds.

And it was impossible, but Crete was there. He stood before her looking beautiful and dangerous, as ever. He was sheer male glory in his typical uniform, one of those dark, bespoke suits that made love to his body in all the ways she longed to do.

It was not possible, and yet every hair on her body seemed to stand on end, so she knew that it was real. That this was no dream.

That somehow, Crete Asgar was stood in the remains of the garden while her uncle and her husband-to-be carried on toasting the wedding up in the manor house. 

“Crete…” she whispered.

And all the feelings she’d been holding at bay slammed back into her, and worse, were lit up with hope.

Because he had finished with her because she’d committed the cardinal sin of telling him she loved him. Why would he be here, on the night before her wedding no less, unless he was finally ready to admit what she had always suspected, that he loved her, too? What else could bring him out on Christmas Eve.

“You can’t possibly marry that old man in the morning,” he told her, and he did not sound like a man tortured by love. He did not sound tortured at all. Or in love. If anything, Crete sounded impatient. “I have standards, Timoney. Obviously any lover after me will be a downgrade. But this verges on an insult.”

About the Author

USA Today bestselling, RITA-nominated, and critically-acclaimed author Caitlin Crews has written more than 100 books and counting. She has a Masters and Ph.D. in English Literature, thinks everyone should read more category romance, and is always available to discuss her beloved alpha heroes. Just ask. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her comic book artist husband, is always planning her next trip, and will never, ever, read all the books in her to-be-read pile. Thank goodness.



Connect with the Author 

Website: https://megancrane.com/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MeganCraneAndCaitlinCrews 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/megancrane 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meganmcrane/ 


Cackle by Rachel Harrison

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Available Now

Reader Friends, this book is delightful. Now, if like my husband, you think spiders are murderous little monsters intent on eliminating all humankind, you may not find this as delightful as there are A LOT of spiders in this book. But I loved it and flew through it the other night.

Annie has been dumped by her long time boyfriend Sam and is now on her own for the first time in nearly a decade. Breaking up with Sam also means leaving New York City for a new town, new job, and new apartment. Devastated by the break-up, Annie spends her time obsessed with reading old text exchanges from Sam and scrolling through old photos while wine drunk on her couch. As if that wasn’t enough, her new job is plagued with clique-y coworkers, unruly students, and a nosy boss. It’s an all-around crap-tastic situation.

But then Annie meets Sophie. A beautiful, interesting, intriguing woman who lives alone in a mansion in the woods. The more time they spend together, the more Annie realizes that the people in the small village of Rowan seem genuinely afraid of Sophie. She rarely pays for anything in the stores and diners and the townspeople seem very nervous around her. But Annie is enthralled by Sophie’s grace and independent lifestyle. As the two become closer, little things start to make Annie uneasy about their budding friendship. The more Sophie pushes Annie to stop apologizing and live her life as she please, the more Annie realizes that there is a cost to that kind of living.

This was so good! Harrison did such a great job building the tension between Sophie and the people of Rowan. So many of the interactions felt just that littlest bit off from normal so it was easy to brush it all off as people just not liking her, or the complete opposite, like they had such respect for her that they couldn’t possibly do anything that would insult her. Also, Annie isn’t used to small town living and can’t tell if it’s just how the villagers are with each other or if there is something bigger going on. Annie’s break up with Sam runs really close to the line of obsession and threatens to become all consuming which definitely clouds her judgement when it comes to Sophie. There were quite a few times that I was definitely on Team Sophie and wanted to Annie to just get over him and move on but I also understand how hard it was for her to completely sever that tie. Cackle also shows how hard it is to make new friends as an adult and the struggles that come along with moving to a new town where you don’t know a single person.

Not going to lie, I would move into Sophie’s woodland mansion in a heartbeat. I loved how Annie had to travel through the woods, past a run-down, abandoned hut, and a graveyard to get there. Knowing there was no direct route to Sophie’s made it feel very eerie, but also quite magical. And this house was magical. Enormous, with a grand ballroom and many guest rooms, Sophie’s mansion was as run-down as it was expansive. I loved how it was covered in dust and cobwebs but still full of crystal chandeliers and an indoor swimming pool. How do you pass up an indoor swimming pool?

And possibly full of ghosts? Possibly.

This was a delightfully spooky and eerie tale that was full of surprises. It’s definitely on the lighter side if you’ve spent the past month immersed in all things horror, this may be a great book to lighten things up a bit. This would be a great choice for those that love watching characters grown and change throughout a story. Annie’s life and attitude changes dramatically in really interesting and compelling ways.

If you would love to add this charming and chilling book to your shelf, you can find ordering information here:


This post contains affiliate links, such as Amazon, and I may earn from qualifying purchases.

Bombshell by Sarah MacLean

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Available Now

I had the absolute pleasure of reading this in nearly one sitting, uninterrupted, while traveling back from Florida. I highly recommend finding a time where you can dive in and become completely enthralled in the world that MacLean has so masterfully crafted. Sesily Talbot, our infamous and scandalous Talbot sister is back with her own book and surrounded by strong, independent women who know how to get things done.

Tired of watching evil men get away with horrendous crimes, Sesily, along with Duchess and Lady Imogen, work quietly behind the scenes to ensure that women are saved from brutish husbands and abusive employers. But during a late night gathering to celebrate their latest success, Sesily is faced with the man who stole her heart years before. Caleb Calhoun, best friend and business partner with one of Sesily’s sisters, is back in town and prepared for the knife to the heart that is Sesily Talbot. Caleb quickly realizes that Sesily is involved in some dangerous shenanigans and is determined to keep her safe. Sesily can easily take care of herself and is constantly having to remind Caleb of just that fact. As these two battle their desire for each other, greater forces threaten to keep them apart.

This is an absolutely fantastic book! I loved every page and found myself laughing out loud so many times.

Come for the innuendoes, stay for the toppling of the patriarchy.

In Bombshell, MacLean has created a tight knit group of women who are invested in creating a more equal and safe environment for all women to live and thrive. Duchess throws these wonderful parties for the female staff of wealthy homes to give them a safe place to relax and find refuge from evil bosses. It was so interesting to read all the tiny details about how those women were helped and the measures that were taken to ensure their enjoyment that you could tell this was something really personal for the author. Just like with the friendship between Duchess, Imogen and Sesily. I loved how close they were, but also how ruthless they were each other. I also found it beyond delightful how scared some of the men were of the group’s fighting skills. Sesily, Duchess, and Imogen fought together, partied together, and were willing to die for each other and have definitely set the bar very high for all friendships. Also, I loved how much Imogen loves to blow things up. Her book is going to be amazing!

The road to romance for Sesily and Caleb was such winding and bumpy one. There were so many times that I was convinced that there was no coming back and yet MacLean was able to bring them back together effortlessly. Much of Sesily’s strength came not from her knife skills, but from knowing when to be honest and vulnerable with other people. Also, I loved how fiercely sex positive Sesily was. That girl had no regrets about her past and wasn’t going to let anyone deny her any pleasure. It was also really interesting to see some frank discussions about birth control and whether or not children were going to be a part of Sesily’s future. Don’t get me wrong, Caleb was great too, I just fell in love with Sesily and have so much respect for her and her gang of avengers.

I loved this book and I can’t wait to see what comes next for this fabulous group of women. Highly, highly recommend.

If you would like to add this amazing historical romance to your shelf, you can find ordering information here:

 

This post contains affiliate links, including Amazon affiliate links, and I may earn from qualifying purchases.

#BlogTour! Fan Club by Erin Mayer

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In this raucous psychological thriller, a disillusioned millennial joins a cliquey fan club, only to discover that the group is bound together by something darker than devotion.

Day after day our narrator searches for meaning beyond her vacuous job at a women's lifestyle website - entering text into a computer system while she watches their beauty editor unwrap box after box of perfectly packaged bits of happiness. Then, one night at a dive bar, she hears a message in the newest single by international pop-star Adriana Argento, and she is struck. Soon she loses herself to the online fandom, a community whose members feverishly track Adriana's every move.

When a colleague notices her obsession, she’s invited to join an enigmatic group of adult Adriana superfans who call themselves the Ivies and worship her music in witchy, candlelit listening parties. As the narrator becomes more entrenched in the group, she gets closer to uncovering the sinister secrets that bind them together - while simultaneously losing her grip on reality.

With caustic wit and hypnotic writing, this unsparingly critical thrill ride through millennial life examines all that is wrong in our celebrity-obsessed internet age and how easy it is to lose yourself in it.

Sounds intriguing, doesn’t it? I’m very excited to share an excerpt from Fan Club!

Chapter One

I’m outside for a cumulative ten minutes each day before work. Five to walk from my apartment building to the subway, another five to go from the subway to the anemic obelisk that houses my office. I try to breathe as deeply as I can in those minutes, because I never know how long it will be until I take fresh air into my lungs again. Not that the city air is all that fresh, tinged with the sharp stench of old garbage, pollution’s metallic swirl. But it beats the stale oxygen of the office, already filtered through distant respiratory systems. Sometimes, during slow moments at my desk, I inhale and try to imagine those other nostrils and lungs that have already processed this same air. I’m not sure how it works in reality, any knowledge I once had of the intricacies of breathing having been long ago discarded by more useful information, but the image comforts me. Usually, I picture a middle-aged man with greying temples, a fringe of visible nose hair, and a coffee stain on the collar of his baby blue button-down. He looks nothing and everything like my father. An every-father, if you will.

My office is populated by dyed-blonde or pierced brunette women in their mid-to-late twenties and early thirties. The occasional man, just a touch older than most of the women, but still young enough to give off the faint impression that he DJs at Meatpacking nightclubs for extra cash on the weekends.

We are the new corporate Americans, the offspring of the grey-templed men. We wear tastefully ripped jeans and cozy sweaters to the office instead of blazers and trousers. Display a tattoo here and there—our supervisors don’t mind; in fact, they have the most ink. We eat yogurt for breakfast, work through lunch, leave the office at six if we’re lucky, arriving home with just enough time to order dinner from an app and watch two or three hours of Netflix before collapsing into bed from exhaustion we haven’t earned. Exhaustion that lives in the brain, not the body, and cannot be relieved by a mere eight hours of sleep.

Nobody understands exactly what it is we do here, and neither do we. I push through revolving glass door, run my wallet over the card reader, which beeps as my ID scans through the stiff leather, and half-wave in the direction of the uniformed security guard behind the desk, whose face my eyes never quite reach so I can’t tell you what he looks like. He’s just one of the many set-pieces staging the scene of my days.

The elevator ride to the eleventh floor is long enough to skim one-third of a longform article on my phone. I barely register what it’s about, something loosely political, or who is standing next to me in the cramped elevator.

When the doors slide open on eleven, we both get off.

…

In the dim eleventh-floor lobby, a humming neon light shaping the company logo assaults my sleep-swollen eyes like the prick of a dozen tiny needles. Today, a small section has burned out, creating a skip in the letter w. Below the logo is a tufted cerulean velvet couch where guests wait to be welcomed. To the left there’s a mirrored wall reflecting the vestibule; people sometimes pause there to take photos on the way to and from the office, usually on the Friday afternoon before a long weekend. I see the photos later while scrolling through my various feeds at home in bed. They hit me one after another like shots of tequila: See ya Tuesday! *margarita emoji* Peace out for the long weekend! *palm tree emoji* Byeeeeee! *peace sign emoji.*

She steps in front of me, my elevator companion. Black Rag & Bone ankle boots gleaming, blade-tipped pixie cut grazing her ears. Her neck piercing taunts me, those winking silver balls on either side of her spine. She’s Lexi O’ Connell, the website’s senior editor. She walks ahead with her head angled down, thumb working her phone’s keyboard, and doesn’t look up as she shoves the interior door open, palm to the glass.

I trip over the back of one clunky winter boot with the other as I speed up, considering whether to call out for her attention. It’s what a good web producer, one who is eager to move on from the endless drudgery of copy-pasting and resizing and into the slightly more thrilling drudgery of writing and rewriting, would do.

By the time I regain my footing, I come face-to-face with the smear of her handprint as the door glides shut in front of me.

Monday.

…

I work at a website.

It’s like most other websites; we publish content, mostly articles: news stories, essays, interviews, glossed over with the polished opalescent sheen of commercialized feminism. The occasional quiz, video, or photoshoot rounds out our offerings. This is how websites work in the age of ad revenue: Each provides a slightly varied selection of mindless entertainment, news updates, and watered-down hot takes about everything from climate change to plus size fashion, hawking their wares on the digital marketplace, leaving The Reader to wander drunkenly through the bazaar, wielding her cursor like an Amex. You can find everything you’d want to read in one place online, dozens of times over. The algorithms have erased choice. Search engines and social media platforms, they know what you want before you do.

As a web producer, my job is to input article text into the website’s proprietary content management system, or CMS. I’m a digitized high school janitor; I clean up the small messes, the litter that misses the rim of the garbage can. I make sure the links are working and the images are high resolution. When anything bigger comes up, it goes to an editor or IT. I’m an expert in nothing, a master of the miniscule fixes.

There are five of us who produce for the entire website, each handling about 20 articles a day. We sit at a long grey table on display at the very center of the open office, surrounded on all sides by editors and writers.

The web producers’ bullpen, Lexi calls it.

The light fixture above the table buzzes loudly like a nest of bees is trapped inside the fluorescent tubing. I drop my bag on the floor and take a seat, shedding my coat like a layer of skin. My chair faces the beauty editor’s desk, the cruelest seat in the house. All day long, I watch Charlotte Miller receive package after package stuffed with pastel tissue paper. Inside those packages: lipstick, foundation, perfume, happiness. A thousand simulacrums of Christmas morning spread across the two-hundred and sixty-one workdays of the year. She has piled the trappings of Brooklyn hipsterdom on top of her blonde, big-toothed, prettiness. Wire-frame glasses, a tattoo of a constellation on her inner left forearm, a rose gold nose ring. She seems Texan, but she’s actually from some wholesome upper Midwestern state, I can never remember which one. Right now, she applies red lipstick from a warm golden tube in the flat gleam of the golden mirror next to her monitor. Everything about her is color-coordinated.

I open my laptop. The screen blinks twice and prompts me for my password. I type it in, and the CMS appears, open to where I left it when I signed off the previous evening. Our CMS is called LIZZIE. There’s a rumor that it was named after Lizzie Borden, christened during the pre-launch party when the tech team pounded too many shots after they finished coding. As in, “Lizzie Borden took an ax and gave her mother forty whacks.” Lizzie Borden rebranded in the 21st century as a symbol of righteous feminine anger. LIZZIE, my best friend, my closest confidant. She’s an equally comforting and infuriating presence, constant in her bland attention. She gazes at me, always emotionless, saying nothing as she watches me teeter on the edge, fighting tears or trying not to doze at my desk or simply staring, in search of answers she cannot provide.

My eyes droop in their sockets as I scan the articles that were submitted before I arrived this morning. The whites threaten to turn liquid and splash onto my keyboard, pool between the keys and jiggle like eggs minus the yolks. Thinking of this causes a tiny laugh to slip out from between my clenched lips. Charlotte slides the cap onto her lipstick, glares at me over the lip of the mirror.

“Morning.”

That’s Tom, the only male web producer, who sits across and slightly left of me, keeping my view of Charlotte’s towering wonderland of boxes and bags clear. He’s four years older than me, twenty-eight, but the plush chipmunk curve of his cheeks makes him appear much younger, like he’s about to graduate high school. He’s cute, though, in the way of a movie star who always gets cast as the geek in teen comedies. Definitely hot but dress him down in an argyle sweater and glasses and he could be a Hollywood nerd. I’ve always wanted to ask him why he works here, doing this. There isn’t really a web producer archetype. We’re all different, a true island of misfit toys.

But if there is a type, Tom doesn’t fit it. He seems smart and driven. He’s consistently the only person who attends company book club meetings having read that month’s selection from cover to cover. I’ve never asked him why he works here because we don’t talk much. No one in our office talks much. Not out loud, anyway. We communicate through a private Morse code, fingers dancing on keys, expressions scanned and evaluated from a distance.

Sometimes I think about flirting with Tom, for something to do, but he wears a wedding ring. Not that I care about his wife; it’s more the fear of rebuff and rejection, of hearing the low-voiced Sorry, I’m married, that stops me. He usually sails in a few minutes after I do, smelling like his bodega coffee and the egg sandwich he carefully unwraps and eats at his desk. He nods in my direction. Morning is the only word we’ve exchanged the entire time I’ve worked here, which is coming up on a year in January. It’s not even a greeting, merely a statement of fact. It is morning and we’re both here. Again.

Three hundred and sixty-five days lost to the hum and twitch and click. I can’t seem to remember how I got here. It all feels like a dream. The mundane kind, full of banal details, but something slightly off about it all. I don’t remember applying for the job, or interviewing. One day, an offer letter appeared in my inbox and I signed.

And here I am. Day after day, I wait for someone to need me. I open articles. I tweak the formatting, check the links, correct the occasional typo that catches my eye. It isn’t really my job to copy edit, or even to read closely, but sometimes I notice things, grammatical errors or awkward phrasing, and I then can’t not notice them; I have to put them right or else they nag like a papercut on the soft webbing connecting two fingers. The brain wants to be useful. It craves activity, even after almost three hundred and sixty-five days of operating at its lowest frequency.

I open emails. I download attachments. I insert numbers into spreadsheets. I email those spreadsheets to Lexi and my direct boss, Ashley, who manages the homepage.

None of it ever seems to add up to anything.



Excerpted from Fan Club by Erin Mayer, Copyright © 2021 by Erin Mayer. Published by MIRA Books.

 
 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Erin Mayer is a freelance writer and editor based in Maine. Her work has appeared in Business Insider, Man Repeller, Literary Hub, and others. She was previously an associate fashion and beauty editor at Bustle.com.

SOCIAL LINKS:

Author website: http://erinmayer.com/

Twitter: @mayer_erin

Instagram: @erinkmayer








A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow

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Available Now

I absolutely loved this story! LOVED IT! If you love fairy tale retellings, especially ones that point out every sexist and problematic element, then is the perfect book for you.

On Zinnia Gray’s twenty-first birthday, she finds herself dying, surrounded by rose petals, at the top of a tower. Now, Zinnia has been dying since the day she was born. Genetic abnormalities caused by environmental pollutions has caused irreparable damage to her body and Zinnia knows she has maybe one more year left to live. After a birthday party thrown by her absolute best friend Charm, Zinnia finds herself faced with a spinning wheel just like a real-life Aurora.

What Zinnia doesn’t anticipate, is finding herself transported to a fairy tale world with another Aurora-like character, Princess Primrose who is destined to fall into a deep sleep for 100 years on her twenty-first birthday.

So what happens when you combine two real-life Sleeping Beauties who don’t feel compelled to follow the story written for them? They set out to write their own.

This is a short little novella that packs a huge emotional punch. I loved this book from the very first page and found myself laughing out loud and cheering on Zinnia and Primrose as they fought for their freedom. I’m a huge sucker for books with awesome friendships and Zinnia finds a fast ally in Primrose but also has the world’s best friend in Charm, her friend since elementary school. They are all fiercely protective of each other and have no problem calling each other on their nonsense. Charm doesn’t let Zin get too down and Zin doesn’t let Charm get too lost in searching for an answer to Zin’s illness. I found myself relating to the overprotectiveness of Zin’s parents and Zin’s need to break away and become her own person with the little time she had left. Some tears were definitely shed during this book but it was easily balanced by all the amazing one-liners and banter between the characters.

A Spindle Splintered is an excellent feminist retelling of one our most loved and problematic fairy tales. It’s subversive, funny, dark, and full of wildly beautiful illustrations.

If you would like to add this novella to your shelf, you can find ordering information here:

 
 


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