​I received a complimentary ARC of this book from Netgalley but all opinions provided are my own.
 
The evocative title Mermaid Inn—coupled with the fact that said book's written by the criminally under-recommended Jenny Holiday—made this one of my most anticipated 2020 reads. What I discovered is a delight from start to finish, a warm and funny and sexy romance that’s as unique as the place it’s set in. I loved living inside this world for a while.
 
Eve Abbott returns to Moonflower Bay to take possession of the Mermaid Inn, which was left to her by her great-aunt. She’s going to leave town as soon as possible—though she blissfully spent most of her childhood summers in Moonflower Bay, now the town holds only memories of the great betrayal committed by her former best friend and first love Sawyer.
 
But as they often do in romance novels, thank God or Sarah MacLean or whomever you pray to, plans often go awry, and Eve encounters Sawyer, now a sheriff, right away. Even worse for Eve, thanks to a dictate in her great-aunt’s will she has to stay in Moonflower Bay for a full year if she wants to sell the inn, so she’ll keep encountering him...over and over again.
 
Second chance romance is often a hard trope for me. I’m at the point in my life when couple break-ups make me (maybe disproportionately) sad whether they’re people I know or celebrities I don’t even really care about. But it’s really well done here, especially since Sawyer wears his yearning, affection, and regret on his sleeve. Like Eve in one relevant scene, I wanted him to be a little more aware of how annoying/damaging his highhandedness was (being guilt-ridden doesn’t necessarily equal being 100% remorseful for Sawyer) but overall, he seems ready to do the work needed for a proper second chance.
 
And as much as I rooted for that eventual HEA, I cheered Eve on for not making it easy on him. She has a right to be very upset and she makes him earn her forgiveness in a way that I appreciated.
 
Those dynamics aside, it’s clear this couple has some stuff to learn and the burden of communication’s on both of them. It’s a process that both characters have to embrace for any kind of a future together, whether it’s fully clothed and in the outside world communication or dirty talk during their super sexy not-as-clothed bedroom moments, and that resonated with me.
 
I wanted more legwork done to justify one particular aspect of the direction that Eve’s life takes in the conclusion, but overall, this is a well-rounded romance where little is taken for granted. It’s not just the leads who matter—it’s also their family and friends, their homes, their neighbors—and that thoughtfulness comes across throughout Mermaid Inn.
 
I can’t wait for the next time I’m in Moonflower/Matchmaker Bay. Once this girl *gestures toward self* falls for a book/community/place, she doesn’t mess around.
 
4.25 ​⭐️

I received a complimentary ARC of this book from Edelweiss+ but all opinions provided are my own.
 
Who can resist a romance between a boss-of-bosses wedding planner and the brother of the man who once jilted her on her wedding day because said brother convinced the almost-groom to walk? Someone stronger than me, I know that much. I’m weak and The Worst Best Man is too good.
 
Wedding planner Lina Santos hasn’t suffered any real emotional fall-out as a result of being jilted three years earlier. In fact, she tries to suppress her emotions as much as possible, blaming them for a couple of significant embarrassing events in her life.
 
That fear of showing emotions is precisely why she acts like she’s never met her former fiancé, Andrew, and his meddling brother and Best Man, Max, when she’s presented with an opportunity that will either make or break her career: she and one of the brothers will create a marketing pitch to show why she would be the best choice for a wedding planner Director position that’s opening in a prestigious hotel chain.
 
Now she and Max—the man she blames for the wedding that didn’t happen—are tasked with working together. And Max? He’s got his own issues, like the fact that he and his brother have been competing since birth, and also would you look at Lina Santos, because she’s the sexiest woman he’s ever seen…
 
The heroine and hero in The Worst Best Man are fantastic. If competence porn is your thing, you’re in luck because Lina and Max both know their jobs inside-out, and the way they play off one another and build Lina’s pitch reveals their mutual professional respect. The can't-look-away-from-the-page-because-it's-so-good intimacy between them is convincing on a physical and emotional level; the moment when Lina relates the risks of showing emotion to being an Afro-Latinx woman is particularly stunning.
 
And Max. Oh, Max. He’s too adorable and part of it is his willingness to be vulnerable, from the sleepover with his best friend Dean to his respectful—and sexy—efforts to see if Lina can envision any kind of relationship with him. I fell hard for him and pretty much every other character in The Worst Best Man, including the secondary characters that circulate throughout (shout-out Lina’s family).  
 
The Worst Best Man is adorable. Also smart and funny—if that’s your thing (and why the hell shouldn’t it be?!)—fiercely sexy and approachable. Yum.
 
5 ⭐️

I’m still buzzing a little from reading one of my favorite books of the year at the final hour. Pamela Clare’s HARD JUSTICE took me on a wild ride/hijacked my attention/made me fall in love with a giant, Scottish ginger (and if I imagined him as looking like Tormund from GOT that’s no one’s business but mine).
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This book is fantastic, with killer steam and sweet, caring moments, too; it’s an adrenaline-fueled murder investigation and a love story with two long-time coworkers finally succumbing to the attraction they’ve held for years...again and again and again 😉. (I told you, it’s very steamy.)
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Quinn McManus’s experience as a private security operative comes in handy when he travels to Scotland to figure out who killed his best friend. Elizabeth Shields or Lilibet, as he calls her, his coworker & the woman he’s long had a crush on, unexpectedly joins him, and they’re soon embroiled in a dangerous investigation that could cost them everything.
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There’s a little bit of forbidden romance here, and also just reluctance on Quinn’s part because he’s dealing with things in his past. But Quinn shouldn’t worry, because—I’m going to put it all on the table here—he’s such a delicious hero and he and Elizabeth together are 10/10, fireworks in a summer night sky kind of magic.
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Check this book out for phenomenal romantic suspense. In case you can’t tell, I loved it. 4.5 ⭐️.
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Thanks to Netgalley for my complimentary copy; all opinions provided are my own.

​I received a complimentary ARC of this book from Netgalley but all opinions provided are my own.
 
This is one of those books that I want all of my friends to read, because it’s so wonderful and I know you all will love it. (Please do what I ask; it’s for your own good.)
 
Okay, now that that’s out of the way.
 
I’ve loved Lucy Parker’s books since I first read the sensational opposites-attract romance Act Like It, and I think that Headliners is my favorite of a truly special series. Featuring long-standing professional rivals whose relationship has recently turned even more nasty, Headliners sucked me in with its glares and insults and caustic chemistry and then it slowly turned as sweet (and necessary to my happiness) as sugar. For much of the book I was a pile of goo.
 
In the previous book in the series, The Austen Playbook, journalist Nick Davenport reveals a huge scoop that just so happens to drag his reporter-nemesis Sabrina Carlton’s family through the mud and casts aspersions on her character. It’s the lowest moment for him personally, even if it does temporarily give him the career boost he wanted.
 
Now, in Headliners, Nick’s career’s in trouble, and the only way he can save it is by teaming up with Sabrina, who, thanks to Nick’s earlier scoop, needs her own success story. The struggling morning show they’re tasked with running is the only thing keeping them both professionally afloat, which is really unfortunate since they can’t stand each other and there’s quite a lot of bad blood between them (and not in a cute Taylor Swift song kind of way).
 
There’s so much about Parker’s writing, and Headliners in particular, that stands out to me—even in the sea of really well-written contemporaries I’ve read this year—but I think what it really comes down to is that Parker’s romances feel believable. The pacing is marvelously done: each moment of vulnerability feels like it’s leading convincingly to a future HEA, even if the protagonists started out as the most bitter of enemies at the beginning of the book. Even if one of them, *cough Nick cough* did something pretty bad that he’s now ashamed of.
 
It feels like Parker's characters make genuine connections through touch, potentially awkward situations, and difficult conversations, and you can see them fall in love as it happens (even if the characters themselves are less than aware). There’s no moment of doubt for me—no wondering if the characters actually know each other even as they proclaim their love. Just the sense that two flawed and yet lovely people have found their person and they’re fantastically well-matched.
 
I love Sabrina and Nick together--and also Freddy and Griff, the protagonists of The Austen Playbook who return in Headliners and are as cute as ever *bops them all on the nose*.
 
Headliners is all so good: warm and witty and told in Parker’s distinctive fashion, and I loved every word of it.
 
5 ⭐️

​Thanks to Netgalley and HarperCollins Publishers for my complimentary ARC; all opinions provided are my own.
 
Before having Josephine I’d forgotten that breastfeeding—especially in the middle of the night—offers the opportunity to binge read (and eat lots of bad things in the name of staying awake, but that’s another matter altogether and best not explored at the moment because #survivalmode).
 
The facts are that Josephine has been a greedy little nighttime piglet and since having her on the 10th I’ve read at least four books. The first of them was Jill Shalvis’s Almost Just Friends, a magnetic women’s fic book that I couldn’t wait to keep reading despite the fact that I was running on probably three hours of sleep or less for three days in a row.
 
EMT Piper has spent her life taking care of people: the injured people she encounters at her job and her two younger siblings whom she basically raised after their parents died. Now’s her chance to leave Wildstone and pursue her own dreams…until her siblings show back up with a boatload of secrets between them and a sexy stranger named Camden moves in next door (relatively speaking).
 
As a person who isn’t too keen on confrontation, family drama plots sometimes stress me out. But Shalvis handles it deftly here: I love how she sketches the complicated dynamics between family members, showing how even the most well-intentioned person can make mistakes and also keep trying to be better. There’s room for both squabbles and forgiveness in families and Shalvis’s portrayal of that in Almost Just Friends moves me.
 
Those family secrets are also balanced by the relationship between Piper and Camden, which is all things lovely despite/because of the baggage each of them is dragging. It’s a relationship that’s based on mutual respect and attraction and fear-that-turns-into-bravery, all things that I find really sexy in real life and in romance novels. The banter between them and the other characters shines, offering another source of levity and warmth for the (extremely tired and maybe a little grumpy) reader.

And a big hurray! to Shalvis for increasingly including diverse characters and themes in her books, something that I think sets her apart from a lot of white “mainstream” romance novelists. Almost Just Friends features a gay secondary romance that’s maybe as heart-stirring as the primary.
 
On a basic level, I really enjoyed Almost Just Friends. I also felt grateful that this was the first book I reached for after Josephine: it satisfied me, touched me, and offered me some respite from the more immediate physical realities of newborn life, and none of those things are to be taken lightly.
 
4.25 ⭐️

​I received a complimentary ARC of this book from Edelweiss+ but all opinions provided are my own.
 
*Wheezes Good Lord* but does Tessa Bailey know how to write a romance that will all but slap you in the face with pheromones. I should be used to this effect considering how many books of hers I’ve read, but she still never fails to surprise, and I love it.
 
Love Her or Lose Her releases January 2020, and in addition to the all of the other Bailey signatures I figured I’d see—sexual magnetism, uber devotion between leads, drama and heart—I also knew that I’d encounter a trope that I don’t see too often, particularly in my contemporary romance reading: a husband and wife whose marriage is struggling.
 
In LHoLH, high school sweethearts Dominic (*mouth fills with saliva) and Rosie have been married for close to a decade. For a few years Dominic was in the military, and then he returned seemingly a different person. The last five years, Dominic and Rosie have increasingly lived in their home like strangers, only reconnecting one night a week when the pulsating attraction between them explodes like water gushing from a severely tested dam. (Lots of questionable metaphors in this review, huh?)
 
One night Rosie’s finally had enough, and she ultimately gives Dominic an ultimatum: go to therapy—the most unconventional kind she can find, because spite—or their marriage is over.
 
I’m going to be totally honest here: I’m more than a little in love with Dominic. It’s easy to see how and why Rosie’s saddened and frustrated by the state of things between them, but Bailey also writes Dominic sympathetically and hotly (?), and there’s so much good about him that you kind of want to hug him (kiss him?) even as you want to shake him into actually talking to Rosie. If you’re a fan of Bailey’s heroes, Dominic is likely everything you love condensed into one.
 
And Rosie sparkles as she makes a new life for herself, one in which she isn’t willing to settle for anything, and she’s determined to chase the dreams that she’s let slide over the last decade.
 
The state of their marriage is painful and raw at times, but it’s also obvious that they still love each other, and I thank Bailey for being fairly gentle with my heart. She skillfully portrays the dynamic between them, and thanks to the idea of love languages, I could understand how things got skewed despite their obvious feeling & attraction for each other. I did feel like 5 years of marital difficulty/strain seemed like an excessively long time plot-wise—and I also wanted some more overt discussion between Dominic and Rosie about what his military life was like—but both of those things are pretty easy for me to get past, all things considered.
 
Because this couple belongs together, and you can see that even through the pathos of the opening scenes.
 
A big part of the reason—at least in the beginning of the book—is sex, and spoiler alert, it’s as athletic and consuming as ever in a Bailey book. The sexual pacing and tension between the characters is *chef’s kiss, and in addition to being titillating, it also keeps the story from veering into too dark territory. Honorable mentions in the Thank You for Not Ripping my Heart Out category go to the hilarious therapist Rosie hires, the banter between Travis and Stephen, and the sense of community and fierce support of the Just Us League.
 
For me, LHorLH is second chance romance done right: some angst and pain but constant indirect assurance that the couple belongs together—and will find their way back to each other—so don’t you worry too much.  
 
4.5 ⭐️

Thanks to Netgalley for my complimentary ARC of this book which I used for my review & to Kensington Publishing for my complimentary hard-copy; all opinions provided are my own.
 
Kate Clayborn’s Love Lettering is unapologetically modern but oh my gosh, if it doesn’t give me some of those 90s Meg Ryan movie vibes (read: peak cinematic rom com period as far as I’m concerned). See the checklist below:
 
⭐️A quirky heroine who’s confronted with the where-do-I-go-now-when-the-artistic-space-I’ve-created-for-myself-is-threatened question. (spoiler alert: have no fear! She’ll figure it out!)
 
⭐️A corporate hero (in Clayborn's case--and in a lot of rom com cases--hero maybe doesn’t always take the time to stop and appreciate what’s around him…literally).
 
⭐️A big city, where fresh things and old things sit side by side on crowded streets, and it’s all chaotic and beautiful and alive (note: it might require the right person to show you how to see it).
 
There’s so much goodness in Love Lettering, from its sunshine-y heroine and reserved hero with a “double-take face” to its treatment of female friendship (necessary! Also complicated! Also salvageable, changeable, and forgiving); from its premise to its Epilogue, which is put-a-smile-upon-your-face delightful.
 
But let’s start with the plot.
 
Meg Mackworth has made a name for herself as a designer of largely “whimsical” wedding invitations, planners, etc. But she’s got a little problem: sometimes she puts hidden messages in her work, and it comes back to bite her when one of her previous clients, a Wall Street type named Reid Sutherland, confronts her about his wedding invitation which she created almost one year before.
 
Reid’s confrontation comes at a moment when Meg’s experiencing a crisis of faith about her abilities, inspiration, and overall career, and after an awkward reunion—where it’s clear that they’re both at a crossroads of sorts—they make an arrangement to walk around NYC together, looking at the hand-lettered “signs” (literal and metaphorical) that surround them.
 
When I describe Clayborn’s books, I feel like I constantly rely on adjectives like “lovely” but that’s because they are. They’re emotionally sensitive and astute, and the moments when the characters reveal the tender, secret parts of themselves are so beautifully done that you feel it in every word. In a lot of ways, Clayborn’s books themselves feel full of “signs”—they’re full of little details that make them special, that can be savored again and again.
 
Here, she writes a heroine who’s passionate and emotional and utterly distinctive, and a hero who will capture your heart with his sensitivity and willingness to be vulnerable. (Don’t let the suit fool you.) But despite their general amazingness, neither character is capable of fully fixing every problem facing them by the novel’s conclusion, and that’s part of what makes this love story extra admirable and sweet. Because you know, life isn’t really like that; all problems aren't magically solved by falling in love.
 
Love Lettering doesn’t feel flashy to me. In fact, there were times when the book felt understated in a way that I mostly enjoyed but that occasionally mildly disconcerted. (I blame the string of romantic suspense books I've been reading lately for this response.)

​But maybe the best part of my reading experience (and a sign of a great book)? I’m confident that—as much as I enjoyed it this time around—and did I ever—this feels like one that’ll only become richer with re-reads, when I’ll pick up on those “signs” I missed the first time around, and when I can luxuriate again in the world—the love story—that Clayborn puts on the page.
 
4.5 ⭐️

Thanks to Netgalley for my complimentary ARC of this book. All opinions provided are my own.
 
The stars aligned earlier this week and I was gifted a copy of Kelly Bowen’s novella Night of the Scoundrel when I needed it most. Featuring her long-mysterious character King as lead, Scoundrel starts with a rush as he watches a beautiful woman expertly take down her foes with a rapier and a knife in an alleyway. The woman is known as Adrestia (real name: Adeline), and she’s come to achieve justice for one of her clients. That’s what she does.
 
Shortly thereafter King is confronted with the worst part of his awful past and he hires Adeline to get justice for him. Easy enough, right?, especially since he knows who deserves the justice coming for him and where the man is. But to King’s dismay/discomfort/fear, though he’s done everything he can to bury his past none of those skeletons want to stay buried when Adeline starts her investigation. Suddenly the hard-won control he has over his life seems threatened from every angle.
 
This novella is just wonderful. Scoundrel gave me all the warm fuzzies on a day when I really needed them, and as I followed the magnetic story of King and Adeline I was reminded again of how lovely a writer Kelly Bowen is. Both King and Adeline are impenetrable, unfathomable forces of nature to others, and the most exquisite moments of Scoundrel are when they let down their guard for one another. The passion that circuits between them is so well done, but even more hit-you-in-the-heart is a beautiful moment when King holds her while they sleep. Do you see the potential for loveliness, here?
 
Scoundrel had that enviable balance of strength and sweetness—the skirmishes and the kisses—the pain and the hope—that I adore in a story working its way to a HEA, and I loved it.
 
4.5 ⭐️

​I received a complimentary ARC of this book from Netgalley but all opinions provided are my own.
 
I can’t say that I remember reading any books set in Antarctica before, much less a searing romance that features one of my favorite combinations: a grumpy, taciturn hero and a “sunshine” heroine who’s friends with everyone…but the hero.
 
The fact is that despite my extreme aversion to the cold—I usually try to walk around in head to toe fleece in the winter—Adriana Anders’s Pole romance Whiteout has everything that I want: the fantastic tension of that aforementioned grumpy/sunshine dynamic; a keen sense of bated-breath suspense, given that the stakes are life and death and the latter seems all too easy to imagine with an Antarctica survival story; and a distinctive writing style that makes even something like the endless white and sometimes gray/sometimes blue expanse of Antarctica—the ice and the rush and the despair, the way such an inhospitable environment can bring a grumpy hero and a sunshine heroine together—feel fresh and new, even as said hero and heroine spend day after day trekking across it.
 
Simply put, this book is amazing, and I loved every minute of it.
 
Cook Angel Smith accepted a position at the Burke-Ruhe Research Station in the South Pole after her life fell apart. She’s drawn to the grumpiest person in the camp, researcher Dr. Ford Cooper, whom she’s privately christened Ice Man. Despite her attraction (which grumpy hero Ford secretly reciprocates but will never act upon), Angel has every intention on saying goodbye to the station and heading back home, only she misses the plane out and witnesses a murder instead.
 
Suddenly, she and Ford are allies, the only people left at the station who can possibly prevent the villains in the story from a nefarious plot involving something-which-will-not-be-named-because-spoilers. In their desperation they set out across the landscape, knowing that with every step they’re probably walking closer, and not farther away, from death.
 
Whiteout’s full of twists and turns, it’s intense and even stressful at times, and all of it’s blissfully rewarding for the reader. It’s also full of passion and sweetness, the latter of which is particularly powerful because Ford doesn’t really have those soft/protective instincts for anyone but Angel, and he’s all too willing to do whatever it takes to keep her safe. He’s the ice-bound bodyguard she's (you’ve) always wanted.
 
Whiteout was a complete surprise for me, and I. can’t. wait. to. read. more. (Seriously, when can I read more?)

5 ⭐️

​I received a complimentary ARC of this book from Netgalley but all opinions provided are my own.
 
I’ve heard a lot of buzz about John Boyne’s The Heart’s Invisible Furies and at the end of last week, I took a break from the romances I’ve been devouring and dove in. The story—which spans 70 years—is plainly but powerfully told, each section focusing on Cyril Avery’s life as he moves geographically from Ireland to Amsterdam to the United States and back home again, and more importantly, from a life of devastating secrets to a life where he lives as he is: a gay Irish man who’s made some big mistakes and been in love and tries to be better all the time.
 
Each section of the book focuses on Cyril’s life 7 years later from the previous section. We get his tumultuous birth in 1945, told from information he received later from his mother, his odd and sad childhood years as the adopted child of an unconventional—to say the least—couple, and the first moments he met Julian Woodbead, the child who becomes Cyril’s best friend and then the man Cyril loves throughout his adolescence and most of his 20s.
 
Since this book goes up to 2015 we get much, much more of course, from Cyril’s furtive sexual encounters in Ireland in the dark, to the lengths he’s willing to go to in order to hide his sexuality, and how it ends up hurting the people he cares about most. Also his years of embracing who he is and how those are sometimes threatened too.
 
And throughout it all is Ireland, a country that’s tragic and that’s home, that Cyril misses even as he acknowledges how damaging it was for him to grow up there when he did. Ireland holds the weight of his and other’s secrets, but it also holds Cyril’s potential chance to make amends and to live a life where he’s truly not hiding anymore.
 
Dedicated to John Irving, The Heart’s Invisible Furies feels comparable to Irving’s books I’ve read, from the style in which the story’s relayed to the moments of humor, which break up the quiet and not-so-quiet moments of sadness. Maybe it’s most similar in how it portrays the characters themselves, who are magnetic and entertaining and frustrating and disheartening (sometimes vaguely repulsive) and loveable. Take Cyril himself, who sometimes comes across as the “selfish” person he’s been accused of being, but who also has a huge heart that’s been bruised and crushed and denied, and whose actions are sometimes horrible but also, to some degree, maybe understandable, given his lifetime of hiding/lying/being ignored.
 
In the end, this book is about Cyril’s life, and it felt true to what I’ve discovered about life: there’s capacity for great ugliness, cruelty, and violence, but there’s also capacity for great forgiveness, hope, and love. There’s also the chance to apologize and work to be better, and that’s one of the most encouraging things of all.
 
4.5 ⭐️