Catherine
I was hoping for great things, after The Dead Romantics I was so geared up to read this book and it fell short. I know it was short, I know it's a cutsey-theme valentines series but it was a little sparse and I just didn't get it. Audrey Love is the girl before the girl - her ex's all go on to find the one after dating her. She's Best Man at her best friend Rhett's wedding, the Maid of Honour is Theo who she hates. Rhett goes missing on the day of, Audrey thinks she kissed him the night before and now he's run off. But she was blinding drunk so can't be sure. Theo drags her drunk ass round the town trying to find Rhett until they realise Rhett and his bride have gone off and eloped together and Audrey actually kissed Theo. Wasn't feeling it but it was only 43 pages.
This is Violet Easton's story. Having read Chestnut Creek (and loving it) I wanted to see where Violet came into it. It's a slower read, like the first book in the series. Violet is working at Gold Rush Ranch with Billie and just got her big break as a jockey on DD. Then she meets Cole, Vaughn's brother, and turns out they have history.
In an attempt to push her boundaries Violet posted a nude photo of herself online two years ago. There she met Golddigger85 and Pretty_In_Purple and he struck up a conversation. The book jumps back and forth Between their online relationship developing and the present day. During her 2nd race Violet is injured, hurts her leg and ends up having to move in with Cole whilst she heals. They reluctantly get to know each other better and Violet finally discovers why Cole never turned his web cam on. He's a military vet with PTSD and a prothetic leg. That explains why Golddigger85 ghosted Pretty_In_Purple after a year of chatting and when their relationship seemed to be moving forward.
It was slow but ok. I don't get why a girl in her early 20's would be so reclusive and why Vaughn is the right man for her.
Wells Whitaker is a golfing has-been. Once the darling of golfing media he's now only in possession of two things: a hangover and one hell-bent fan who won't go away. Until she does.
Josephine Doyle saw Wells potential, but you can't keep believing in someone who can't believe in themselves. Besides, her own life's a train wreck. Health insurance is hard, business insurance is hard, Hurricane Jake was harder.
Wells notices Josephine once she's gone, tracks her down and makes her an offer she can't afford to refuse: caddy for him and they'll split the prize money.
The more Tessa Bailey books I read the better they get. I really enjoyed this one and she dealt with a chronic illness in a very relatable way. I know nothing about golf but that didn't stop me enjoying the book. You should definitely read this.
Well it was better than the first two in the series.
All in it was a good story, well written and paced. It jumped between characters a lot (I occasionally forgot that someone had been left on a cliff hanger because we'd had a few different jumps before getting back to them).
It didn't grip me in the same way ToG did, I felt relieved to have finished the book and not bereft that the series was over. I struggled to like Bryce and Hunt but I think it's because I'm comparing them to Nesta and Cassian. It was nice to see Nesta's story continue and it was all weaved together in a very interesting and clever way.
I didn't like ACOTAR much the first time I read it and I suspect if I were to read CC again I'd probably enjoy it more but given the sheer size of the series I probably won't do that. I will of course read CC4 though.
This was my favourite of the series, but Daphne Elliot was the reason I read the series in the first place.
Delia was the man-hater, out of the four moms who moved into the brownstone together she was never going to fall. But Dylan's baby is due and she needs a contractor to get the house up to spec. Beckett enlists Enzo and riles both of them up enough to make it work.
This book took a fairly two-dimensional character and developed her into the best of the bunch. Delia comes across as a man-hater and just mean but actually she's trying to keep it all together and protect her friends and kids. She's fired all the contractors so far, but what nobody bothered to ask was why. Some were bad, some were lazy, some were just taking her money. Beckett and Cortney pressure Enzo to take the contract by promising future work with their family businesses. Enzo gets caught up in the family and falls in love with the kids as well as Delia and sees her for what she really is. Which is apparently more than her friends were capable of doing.
All in, it was a good read and I'm looking forward to Daphne Elliot's new series coming out.
Shayla's a widow who lost her husband to cancer 3 years ago. She's bringing up their 8 year old son, Kai, as best she can but everything terrifies her. Skateboarding, fried food, high fructose corn syrup (in fairness that scares most people) and ice skating.
Kai, being 8, loves the local ice hockey team. At a game one of their key players (insert correct sports term here), Rowan ‘Slick' Parker, gets hurt. Shayla is a physio and her friend's new husband, Beckett, is bossy and working on setting up all the moms. Beckett, whose family happen to own the team, makes sure Shay is the one to provide the physio therapy.
this wasn't the worst of the books, that was Mother Maker, but it was hard to get swept up in it. For one, the nickname 'Slick' just made me cringe every time. As Shay is a physical therapist she didn't want people to become aware of the relationship in case anyone thought she was unprofessional. I get why that was the trope for the book, but they already had a connection and Rowan had offered to teach Kai to skate.
I liked the rest of the series but I didn't enjoy this one as much. I don't know if it was because the characters got shoe-horned into a hard-to-write trope but I struggled.
Dylan is the hippy one of the group of friends, trusts in crystals and the universe sending everything she needs her way. Like Cortney Miller, the baseball player from a well-to-do Boston family.
Dylan had a rough time when she got accidentally pregnant in her early 20's with Liam - his dad was from a rich family and they treated her like rubbish. But they did give her a pay-off that allowed her to start her own daycare business. There's a lot about this book that annoyed me - Dylan's portrayed as a crazy earth mother but actually she's a successful business woman whose company continues to grow. She provides home schooling and child care for all the other kids which none of the other moms have to do but that doesn't seem to get recognised. There's minimal interact between the women in this book to the point you'd wonder how they were friends at all, never mind friends who live together and I really dislike what they did with Beckett's character in this book. I don't think he would have done that and he just came across as hateful.
I liked the character and think she deserved a better book.
Liv is supposed to go away for the weekend with her 3 best friends. Her 3 kids are staying with her recently-ex husband as ‘one last favour' but her boss, Beckett Langfield, makes her and her friends fly to his house in the Florida Keys instead so they can work on a pitch. Whilst drinking on the beach in the evening the women open up, they're all struggling as single mums. So the idea forms that they'll move into Delia's brownstone in Boston. Her great-aunt left it to her and it's definitely a fixer upper but it's got enough room for the four of them plus their seven kids. Except... except Liv accidentally marries her boss when they're in Vegas and drunk. It helps him out of a kid-hating tight spot that was going to cost his future at the company. He'll pay to help fix up the broken house.
Except... except, his parents announce that they'll stay in his apartment whilst their place is getting done up so Beckett moves in with Liv and her extended family. It's grumpy-sunshine, he kinda falls first but she's always like him just never thought he'd like her back because she's 'plus size' (I honestly have no idea what this means in the context as it's not referred to anywhere except like all women she has hips and boobs....). Ends as expected but good characters and would read books by the author again.
Having enjoyed the first book so much, I was disappointed with this one. I found the beginning as Liv explores her surroundings confusing and with Erik and Liv apart the book didn't have the same witty banter and tension. For something that had the potential to be dark it felt almost wholesome which isn't how it was marketed. (Which isn't terrible, just not what I was expecting)
Athena met the man of her dreams. At her engagement party. What's worse, he's her future brother in law. Or was until he pressured her fiancé to dump her a month before the wedding. So whilst her ex Johnny goes to Hawaii on what should have been their honeymoon, Athena moves into Spite House, the 4 story 10 foot wide house she bought as a wedding present for Johnny. The catch? It's attached to Johnny's house. What's worse? The neighbour across the way is Dr Matthew Vine the Third, Johnny's older brother.
I thought the book was brilliant for the first 80% but was slightly disappointed by the ending. There's definitely some brilliant scenes and Karl just completes it with his audiobooks of choice. The ideas fantastic and the characters are likeable and (most of the time) you're rooting for them. You should definitely read this book!
Fae Pirates. I knew there was something missing from my life but I didn't realise it was Fae Pirates until reading this book.
Erik Bloodsinger is King of the Ever, a land plagued by a mysterious blight and locked off from the earth fae lands by the Chasm after the last Great War. Livia Ferus, daughter of Valen and Elise, blood of the Night Folk Fae, once read stories to a young boy who was held captive. Stories about a Serpent and a Songbird. As a child, she rewrote the ending. As an adult she flipped the story. “Don't let your guard down, love. Not in the Ever.”
This... wasn't the worst thing I'd read but only because I'd read earlier books in this series. It would have made a great 2000's film but otherwise it was horribly predictable. Princess Ilaria swaps with her assistant to go wandering around without being recognised. Being a royal, so therefore an idiot, she takes painkillers that make her drowsy and passes out in a public space. Somebody took her home but turns out he's a photographer. But wait! He's actually not! He's the undercover heir of a Scottish kingdom! Who ever could have guessed it? They have a great day walking around, he realises who she is and bails cause he wants his freedom. They're both sad then get back together.
I love Throne of Glass and ACOTAR. I really liked the ending of House of Earth and Blood. I did not get this book at all. I really wanted to love this book, I've read ACOTAR and CC1 in the last few months building up to CC3's release, but I couldn't find the magic in this one that I've found and loved in the others.
I'm sure it's setting up for Book 3, but that's all it felt it did. Everything happened in the last 40 pages. The first 500 pages were tracking a kid who could have changed the world (but actually couldn't) and Bryce's sleight of hand with her mum was cleverly done but just left me feeling I'd missed out on a good bit. It's nice to see Ruhn get a story line but these characters don't feel like Manon or Dorian or Cassian. I'm not as bought into them as I have been with the other series.
I wanted to like it, I might come back after reading book 3 (because I will read it) with a completely different take but as a standalone book it felt about 400 pages too long.
I don't normally read short stories but this series has all my favourite authors.
An accidental email on Valentine's Day 2014 becomes a yearly tradition between Terra and Callum. As they open up and their friendship develops so do their feelings.
I thought this was a perfectly crafted short story that managed to pack so much into 100 pages.
What if Thor was a lumberjack? And an ex-airforce pilot? And probably saved kittens in his spare time. Finn Herbert's family imploded around him and now his name is mud. He ends up taking a job at the rival family's firm to keep his dreams alive and starts seeing more of Adele Gagnon. Who is very much the grumpy to his sunshine but can throw axes with alarming accuracy so nobody's given her that feedback.
Pascal is brother #3, the rich broody one who gave it all up to come home and help the family business. Parker was a cop but that was in the past. Thanks to Pascal. But the only way to crack this case is to go undercover. Deep undercover. Well, not that deep, just pretend to be Pascal's girlfriend to get the closed off locals to talk. Easy, right? Except this lumberjack's hobbies include a grand piano as well as chopping trees.
It's an amazing read with a level of depth and detail rarely found in a full series, let alone a book. There's a lot of detail at the start but by page 300 it's flowing and the storyline is epic. Sarah J Maas has such an ability to add layers and depth and detail that you get caught up and carried along. The last 100 pages had me in tears whilst also realising I will never vacuum in the same way every again.
Remy Gagnon caused an accident that nearly got his brother, Henri, killed. He's trying to make up for it by being a general dogsbody for his brothers and sister in the family logging business. Plus his fiancee left him for another man so life's not going great. Hazel is trying to complete her PhD on a shoestring budget so moves back in with her brother, Dylan (Remy's best friend). The shoestring budget doesn't stretch to health care and Hazel's gallbladder is a ticking timebomb.
So Remy does the only thing that makes sense - he offers her an office job in the family business to ensure she is covered by the generous health insurance. Of course he doesn't, like any good hero he proposes a marriage of convenience to his best friend's little sister.
Alice is working on becoming a new and improved version of herself so jumps at the chance to start a new job in Lovewell, Maine. She rents a cabin and moves in in August, ready for starting as the new school principal in September. Lovewell is a lumber town, struggling with lack of investment.
Her new landlord, Henri, lives in the house next door and owns one of the lumber companies. He rocks a beard, tattoos and suspenders and hobbies include chopping logs. He's the grumpy to Alice's sunshine. Neither want a relationship but they're both drawn to each other.
Alice starts work and finds an underfunded school crying out for someone to fight for it. So she does. In the process she meets Tucker and Goldie, siblings in the foster care system who are in a bad placement.
There's lots more going on that only seems briefly touched upon - Alice grew up with a mother who told her she wasn't deserving until she lost weight; Henri's running the family business because his dad died in a trucking accident and I get the idea this could have been developed further and probably cover a few hundred more pages (some of the themes are picked up in further books but not with these characters).
All in a sweet read that made me cry in parts but I'd have loved the book developed further.
Ok, I'm late to the party with this one but how did I manage to miss it's not a standalone and book 2 isn't out until Sept 2024?? I was not prepared for that level of cruelty.
It's actually a good book, the more I read the better it got. Granted, a medieval setting centred round a 9-5 office environment was not what I thought the book was going to be about but once disbelief was suspended it was just fun. It got me through a delayed flight and a hotel where I can hear everyone else's plumbing.
So definitely read the book, just in August 2024.
I mostly liked the book but there were parts that just gave me the ick. I'm sure there's a better term for it but there were parts of the book that made me physically recoil.
I've read several Tessa Bailey books already, some I've loved (the hot and hammered series), some not so much but she has a clear talent and gift for storytelling. I loved the premise, the setting and the character backstories. Both have suffered loss, both are closed off because of it. The author made crab fishing interesting and I never thought I'd think that.
The pace threw me, it got very intense very fast and I found that harder to buy in to. I loved the way each chapter ended abruptly, the writing style completely pulled me in.
There were some elements that I just didn't get, might be me, might be cultural but the conversations between Piper and her sister just didn't seem like conversations between siblings. That's where the ick came in. But those few paragraphs aside it's a solid read and not a bad way to spend a lazy afternoon.
This was a sweet read. Annie's not having much luck dating so ropes bodyguard Will in to help her practice. It goes exactly as you'd expect (and exactly how you want it to). The only downside is I read this book first. There's another book in the series and I did feel like I was missing something. It's not huge but they do reference the characters in the first book enough to make me consider switching to When In Rome first. But that's a me-problem and not a book problem. I would recommend reading the series in order but I do recommend reading the series!
100% Brilliant
I'd read some of the reviews and hesitated buying this book. I loved The Hating Game, and didn't want to be disappointed. I wasn't. It's a great read. The main character is a little darker and edgier than Lucy, and Tom isn't quite Josh but it's a brilliant book, well written and I devoured it in an evening. For anyone on the fence, please try it. And all I can hope is that Sally Thorne is working on her third book and there won't be as long a wait as there was for this one.
Not Ms Martin's greatest work
I've really enjoyed some of her other books, and there were parts in this novel that made me smile and laugh, but I don't think I've cringed so much during one book before. Details about relationships were painful and very forthcoming. Think I'll reread One Hundred Proposals instead.