8/10

#BookReview The Last Bathing Beauty by Amy Sue Nathan @AmySueNathan @AmazonPub @LUAuthors #TheLastBathingBeauty

#BookReview The Last Bathing Beauty by Amy Sue Nathan @AmySueNathan @AmazonPub @LUAuthors #TheLastBathingBeauty Title: The Last Bathing Beauty

Author: Amy Sue Nathan

Published by: Lake Union Publishing on Apr. 1, 2020

Genres: General Fiction, Women's Fiction, Historical Fiction

Pages: 304

Format: Paperback, ARC

Source: Amazon Publishing

Book Rating: 8/10

A former beauty queen faces the secrets of her past—for herself and the sake of her family’s future—in a heartfelt novel about fate, choices, and second chances.

Everything seemed possible in the summer of 1951. Back then Betty Stern was an eighteen-year-old knockout working at her grandparents’ lakeside resort. The “Catskills of the Midwest” was the perfect place for Betty to prepare for bigger things. She’d head to college in New York City. Her career as a fashion editor would flourish. But first, she’d enjoy a wondrous last summer at the beach falling deeply in love with an irresistible college boy and competing in the annual Miss South Haven pageant. On the precipice of a well-planned life, Betty’s future was limitless.

Decades later, the choices of that long-ago season still reverberate for Betty, now known as Boop. Especially when her granddaughter comes to her with a dilemma that echoes Boop’s memories of first love, broken hearts, and faraway dreams. It’s time to finally face the past—for the sake of her family and her own happiness. Maybe in reconciling the life she once imagined with the life she’s lived, Boop will discover it’s never too late for a second chance.


Review:

Tender, nostalgic, and sentimental!

The Last Bathing Beauty is an absorbing, heartwarming tale that takes us to the shores of South Haven, Michigan during 1951 when Jewish summer camps in the Catskills of the Midwest were the place to be, girls were excited for more than just marriage, and Betty Stern and her family would never be the same.

The writing is vivid and expressive. The characters are authentic, vivacious, and sympathetic. And the plot, using a past/present, back-and-forth style is a delightful mix of summer fun, friendship, family, coming-of-age, secrets, heartbreak, forbidden love, familial expectations, and second chances.

Overall, The Last Bathing Beauty is a heartfelt, beguiling, charming tale by Nathan that not only reminds us that everyone that enters our lives impacts, shapes, and defines it but that love is truly ageless.

 

This novel is available now.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.

         

 

 

Thank you to Amazon Publishing for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

 

About Amy Sue Nathan

Writer of novels, lover of cats, morning coffee, dark chocolate, and bold lipstick. Former vegetarian, occasional crafter, adequate cook, loyal friend, proud mom to two awesome adults.

Photograph courtesy of Author's Goodreads Page.

#BookReview I’ll Be Watching You by Leslie A. Kelly @lesliekelly @readforeverpub @grandcentralpub #ReadForever #Forever20 #LeslieAKelly #HollywoodHeat

#BookReview I’ll Be Watching You by Leslie A. Kelly @lesliekelly @readforeverpub @grandcentralpub #ReadForever #Forever20 #LeslieAKelly #HollywoodHeat Title: I'll Be Watching You

Author: Leslie A. Kelly

Series: Hollywood Heat #1

Published by: Forever on Mar. 31, 2020

Genres: Romantic Suspense

Pages: 400

Format: Paperback

Source: Forever

Book Rating: 8/10

She can trust him with her heart, but can she trust him with her life?

Growing up as a foster kid, Jessica Jensen found her escape in movies-especially those starring teen heartthrob Reece Winchester. When she meets him as an adult, he’s just as charming, fascinating, and devastatingly handsome as she’d imagined. Before she knows it, Jessica is falling hard. But her real-life Cinderella story is about to take a deadly turn…

Jessica has completely upended everything about Reece’s carefully ordered life. There’s a reason he’s never allowed anyone to get so close to him before. But now that she has, there’s a target on her back. Because someone knows that the Winchesters have been hiding some dark family secrets. Someone who is out there waiting to strike. Waiting…and always watching.

Previously published as Watching You.


Review:

Menacing, steamy, and alluring!

I’ll Be Watching You is a charged, passionate tale that takes you into the lives of two main characters. Jessica, an intelligent, young woman with a troubled past who seems to have become the target of a malicious killer, and Reece a Hollywood actor turned director with a checkered past of his own who’s determined to protect those he cares about at any cost.

The writing is crisp and sultry. The characters are secretive, committed, and resourceful. And the plot is a twisty, engaging mix of friendship, family, obsession, jealousy, instant attraction, smoking chemistry, smouldering tension, sexy times, and violence.

Overall, I’ll Be Watching You is an enticing, sensual, fast-paced tale by Kelly that has everything you look for in a romantic suspense novel and more.

 

This novel will be available on March 31, 2020.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.

            

 

 

Thank you to Forever & Grand Central Publishing for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

 

About Leslie A. Kelly

Leslie Kelly is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than fifty novels and novellas. Known for their sexy humor, Leslie’s books have been honored with numerous awards, including the National Reader’s Choice Award, the Aspen Gold, the Golden Quill, the Write Touch, the Romantic Times Award, and four RWA-Rita nominations. Leslie is also a Career Achievement Award winner from Romantic Times Magazine.
Although she has spent most of her life in Maryland and Florida, Leslie currently resides in Colorado with her husband and two fluffy, yappy little dogs.

#BookReview The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel @EmilyMandel @HarperCollinsCa #BooksofHCC

#BookReview The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel @EmilyMandel @HarperCollinsCa #BooksofHCC Title: The Glass Hotel

Author: Emily St. John Mandel

Published by: HarperCollins on Mar. 24, 2020

Genres: General Fiction

Pages: 320

Format: Paperback, ARC

Source: HarperCollins Canada

Book Rating: 8/10

From the award-winning author of Station Eleven, a captivating novel of money, beauty, white-collar crime, ghosts and moral compromise in which a woman disappears from a container ship off the coast of Mauritania and a massive Ponzi scheme implodes in New York, dragging countless fortunes with it.

Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star glass-and-cedar palace on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. New York financier Jonathan Alkaitis owns the hotel. When he passes Vincent his card with a tip, it’s the beginning of their life together. That same day, a hooded figure scrawls a note on the windowed wall of the hotel: “Why don’t you swallow broken glass.” Leon Prevant, a shipping executive for a company called Neptune-Avramidis, sees the note from the hotel bar and is shaken to his core. Thirteen years later, Vincent mysteriously disappears from the deck of a Neptune-Avramidis ship.

Weaving together the lives of these characters, The Glass Hotel moves between the ship, the skyscrapers of Manhattan and the wilderness of remote British Columbia, painting a breathtaking picture of greed and guilt, fantasy and delusion, art and the ghosts of our pasts.


Review:

Tragic, imaginative, and atmospheric!

The Glass Hotel is an alluring, character-driven tale that immerses you into the lives of multiple strangers as their worlds quickly unravel, intersect, collide, and are ultimately ruined when a Ponzi scheme catastrophically collapses.

The prose is rich and lyrical. The characters are lonely, complex, and vulnerable. And the plot told from multiple perspectives using flashbacks and alternate realities is a hauntingly sobering tale of tragedy, crime, corruption, heartbreak, manipulation, disillusionment, morality, and the true weight of a guilty conscience.

Overall, The Glass Hotel is an evocative, pensive, unique page-turner with a supernatural thread that does a beautiful job of reminding us that the choices we make often have far-reaching consequences and that life rarely unfolds as we expect it to.

 

This book is available now.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.

            

 

 

Thank you to HarperCollins Canada for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

 

About Emily St. John Mandel

Emily St. John Mandel was born and raised on the west coast of British Columbia, Canada. She studied contemporary dance at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre and lived briefly in Montreal before relocating to New York.

She is the author of five novels, including The Glass Hotel (spring 2020) and Station Eleven (2014.) Station Eleven was a finalist for a National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, won the Morning News Tournament of Books, and has been translated into 34 languages. She lives in NYC with her husband and daughter.

Photography by Sarah Shatz.

#BookReview Cross Her Heart (Bree Taggert #1) by Melinda Leigh @MelindaLeigh1 @AmazonPub #montlakeromance

#BookReview Cross Her Heart (Bree Taggert #1) by Melinda Leigh @MelindaLeigh1 @AmazonPub #montlakeromance Title: Cross Her Heart

Author: Melinda Leigh

Series: Bree Taggert #1

Published by: Montlake Romance on Mar. 17, 2020

Genres: Romantic Suspense, Mystery/Thriller

Pages: 327

Format: Paperback, ARC

Source: Amazon Publishing

Book Rating: 8/10

A homicide detective’s violent family history repeats itself in #1 Amazon Charts and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Melinda Leigh’s novel of murder, secrets, and retribution.

For more than twenty-five years, Philadelphia homicide detective Bree Taggert has tucked away the nightmarish childhood memories of her parents’ murder-suicide…Until her younger sister, Erin, is killed in a crime that echoes that tragic night: innocent witnesses and a stormy marriage that ended in gunfire. There’s just one chilling difference. Erin’s husband, Justin, has vanished.

Bree knows how explosive the line between love and hate can be, yet the evidence against her troubled brother-in-law isn’t adding up. Teaming up with Justin’s old friend, former sheriff’s investigator and K-9 handler Matt Flynn, Bree vows to uncover the secrets of her sister’s life and death, as she promised Erin’s children. But as her investigation unfolds, the danger hits close to home. Once again, Bree’s family is caught in a death grip. And this time, it could be fatal for her.


Review:

Twisty, menacing, and intense!

In this compelling first installment in the Bree Taggert series, Cross Her Heart, Leigh has written a well-paced whodunit where cases from the past and the present collide, suspects are numerous, and danger lurks around every corner.

The writing is smooth and tight. The characters are dependable, persistent, and troubled. And the plot is a captivating police procedural with lots of twists, turns, red herrings, familial drama, deception, jealousy, obsession, abuse, murder and a dab of romance.

Overall, Cross Her Heart is a suspenseful, entertaining, sinister tale that’s an encouraging start for this new series with its intriguing characters, and engaging storyline.

 

This book is available now.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.

           

 

 

Thank you to Amazon Publishing for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

 

About Melinda Leigh

#1 Wall Street Journal and #1 Amazon bestselling author Melinda Leigh is a fully recovered banker who learned that writing books is way more fun than analyzing financial statements. Melinda's debut novel, SHE CAN RUN, was nominated for Best First Novel by the International Thriller Writers. Since then, she has garnered numerous writing accolades, including two RITA® Award nominations and an induction into the NJ Romance Writers Hall of Fame. Her novels have sold more than 7.5 million copies across the world. Melinda loves martial arts, rescue dogs, and sea turtles.

Photograph courtesy of Author's Website.

#BookReview The Woman in the Mirror by Rebecca James @MinotaurBooks @StMartinsPress

#BookReview The Woman in the Mirror by Rebecca James @MinotaurBooks @StMartinsPress Title: The Woman in the Mirror

Author: Rebecca James

Published by: Minotaur Books on Mar. 17, 2020

Genres: Mystery/Thriller

Pages: 368

Format: Paperback, ARC

Source: Minotaur Books

Book Rating: 8/10

Rebecca James unveils a chilling modern gothic novel of a family consumed by the shadows and secrets of its past in The Woman in the Mirror.

For more than two centuries, Winterbourne Hall has stood atop a bluff overseeing the English countryside of Cornwall and the sea beyond.

In 1947, Londoner Alice Miller accepts a post as governess at Winterbourne, looking after Captain Jonathan de Grey’s twin children. Falling under the de Greys’ spell, Alice believes the family will heal her own past sorrows. But then the twins’ adoration becomes deceitful and taunting. Their father, ever distant, turns spiteful and cruel. The manor itself seems to lash out. Alice finds her surroundings subtly altered, her air slightly chilled. Something malicious resents her presence, something clouding her senses and threatening her very sanity.

In present day New York, art gallery curator Rachel Wright has learned she is a descendant of the de Greys and heir to Winterbourne. Adopted as an infant, she never knew her birth parents or her lineage. At long last, Rachel will find answers to questions about her identity that have haunted her entire life. But what she finds in Cornwall is a devastating tragic legacy that has afflicted generations of de Greys. A legacy borne from greed and deceit, twisted by madness, and suffused with unrequited love and unequivocal rage.


Review:

Intense, sinister, and mystical!

In this debut novel by James, The Woman in the Mirror, she transports us to the rugged cliffside of Cornwall, England during 1947, as well as present-day, and into a family manor where powerful emotions swirl, tragic memories reside, and long-buried skeletons and secrets are in abundance.

The prose is ominous and dark. The characters are complex, lonely, and troubled, with the setting, Winterborne Hall, being a character itself with its dereliction and isolation. And the plot told from alternating timelines is a gripping, suspenseful tale full of familial drama, heartache, tension, obsession, death, revenge, cruelty, desperation, and violence, all interwoven with a sliver of the supernatural.

Overall, The Woman in the Mirror is a gothic, atmospheric, eerie tale that captivates from the very first page and ultimately leaves you chilled, mystified, and entertained.

 

This novel is available now.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.

            

 

 

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press – Minotaur Books for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

 

About Rebecca James

Rebecca James worked in publishing for several years before leaving to write full-time, and is now the author of several novels written under a pseudonym, as well as The Woman in the Mirror under her own name. Her favorite things are autumn walks, Argentinean red wine and curling up in the winter with a good old-fashioned ghost story. She lives in Bristol with her husband and two daughters.

Photograph by Marte Lundby Rekaa

#BookReview Wild, Wild Rake (The Cavensham Heiresses #6) by Janna MacGregor @JannaMacGregor @smpromance #WildWildRake #smpromance

#BookReview Wild, Wild Rake (The Cavensham Heiresses #6) by Janna MacGregor @JannaMacGregor @smpromance #WildWildRake #smpromance Title: Wild, Wild Rake

Author: Janna MacGregor

Series: The Cavensham Heiresses #6

Published by: St. Martin's Press on Feb. 25, 2020

Genres: Historical Romance

Pages: 353

Format: Paperback, ARC

Source: St. Martin's Press

Book Rating: 8/10

Her first marriage was an epic failure.

Lady Avalon Warwyk never did love her husband. Arrogant, selfish, and cruel, it’s a blessing when she’s widowed and left to raise her son all by herself. Finally, Avalon can live freely and do the work she loves: helping fallen women become businesswomen. She’s lived these past ten years with no desire to remarry―that is until Mr. Devan Farris comes to town.

Can he convince her to take another chance at happily ever after?

Devan Farris―charming vicar, reputed rake, and the brother of Avalon’s son’s guardian―is reluctantly sent to town to keep tabs on Avalon and her son. Devan wishes he didn’t have to meddle in her affairs; he’s not one to trod on a woman’s independent nature and keen sense of convictions. But she’ll have nothing to do with vicar with a wild reputation―even though he’s never given his heart and body to another. If only he could find a way to show Avalon who he really is on the inside―a good, true soul looking for its other half. But how can prove that he wants to love and care for her. . . until death do they part?


Review:

Romantic, tantalizing, and witty!

Wild, Wild Rake is set in the English countryside during 1815 and features the independent, fiery Lady Avalon Warwyk who after a decade of blissful widowhood suddenly finds herself under the watchful eye of her late husband’s friend, the devilishly handsome, new parish vicar Devan Farris.

The prose is light and engaging. The characters are sweet, tentative, and alluring. And the plot is an amusing mix of Regency lifestyle, scoundrel behaviour, familial drama, mystique, attraction, admiration, tricky mishaps, danger, and steamy romance.

Overall, Wild, Wild Rake is a tempestuous, entertaining, scandalous read by MacGregor that’s a wonderful addition to The Cavensham Heiresses series and a delightful indulgence.

 

This novel is available now.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from the following link.

                 

 

 

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

 

About Janna MacGregor

Janna MacGregor was born and raised in the bootheel of Missouri. She credits her darling mom for introducing her to the happily-ever-after world of romance novels. Janna writes stories where compelling and powerful heroines meet and fall in love with their equally matched heroes. She is the mother of triplets and lives in Kansas City with her very own dashing rogue, and two smug, but not surprisingly, perfect pugs. She loves to hear from readers.

Photograph courtesy of Author's Goodreads Page.

#BookReview Lost Boy Found by Kirsten Alexander @kirstenalex @GrandCentralPub @HBGCanada #LostBoyFound

#BookReview Lost Boy Found by Kirsten Alexander @kirstenalex @GrandCentralPub @HBGCanada #LostBoyFound Title: Lost Boy Found

Author: Kirsten Alexander

Published by: Grand Central Publishing on Mar. 10, 2020

Genres: Historical Fiction, Mystery/Thriller

Pages: 368

Format: Paperback, ARC

Source: HBG Canada

Book Rating: 8/10

Perfect for fans of the NYT bestseller Sold on a Monday, this Southern historical novel based on the true story of a boy’s mysterious disappearance examines despair, loyalty, and the nature of truth. Originally published in Australia as Half Moon Lake.

In 1913, on a summer’s day at Half Moon Lake, Louisiana, four-year-old Sonny Davenport walks into the woods and never returns.

The boy’s mysterious disappearance from the family’s lake house makes front-page news in their home town of Opelousas. John Henry and Mary Davenport are wealthy and influential, and will do anything to find their son. For two years, the Davenports search across the South, offer increasingly large rewards and struggle not to give in to despair. Then, at the moment when all hope seems lost, the boy is found in the company of a tramp.

But is he truly Sonny Davenport? The circumstances of his discovery raise more questions than answers. And when Grace Mill, an unwed farm worker, travels from Alabama to lay claim to the child, newspapers, townsfolk, even the Davenports’ own friends, take sides.

As the tramp’s kidnapping trial begins, and two desperate mothers fight for ownership of the boy, the people of Opelousas discover that truth is more complicated than they’d ever dreamed.


Review:

Engaging, unsettling, and thought-provoking!

Lost Boy Found is a compelling story that sweeps you away to Louisana during the early 1900s and delves into the anxiety and terror experienced when a mother’s worst nightmare comes true and explores the physical, psychological and emotional extremes parents are willing to take in order to find their child and bring them home safely.

The writing is descriptive and didactic. The characters are despondent, anxious, and relentless. And the plot is a harrowing tale about life, loss, heartbreak, familial dynamics, hope, manipulation, corruption, prejudice, class division, ethics, and morality.

Overall, Lost Boy Found is a heart-sickening, twisty tale by Alexander that does a beautiful job of expressing the emotional devastation and shocking injustice that actually occurred in the real-life tragedy that inspired it.

 

This novel is available now.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.

                

 

 

Thank you to HBG Canada for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

 

About Kirsten Alexander

Kirsten Alexander is the author of two novels, Half Moon Lake (PRH, Australia & NZ, 2019; published as Lost Boy Found by Grand Central/Hachette, US & Canada 2020) and Riptides (PRH, 2020). She is writing her third novel.

She is also co-founder of short story site Storymart: www.storymart.com

Kirsten has worked as a nonfiction book editor, copywriter (inhouse four years for Aesop, also for Crumpler, M.L. Vintage, House + Universe), and occasional article writer (for the Age, the Daily Beast, Notebook, the Melbourne Weekly, Atticus Review and others). She’s worked as a reviewer for ABC Radio National’s The Book Show, a magazine section editor, and content manager for several websites.

She was co-founder and editor of three-volume digital journal Open Field.

Kirsten was born in San Francisco, raised in Brisbane, and lives in Melbourne with her partner and two sons.

Photograph courtesy of Author's Goodreads Page.

#BookReview Hannah’s War by Jan Eliasberg @JanEliasberg @littlebrown @HBGCanada

#BookReview Hannah’s War by Jan Eliasberg @JanEliasberg @littlebrown @HBGCanada Title: Hannah's War

Author: Jan Eliasberg

Published by: Little Brown and Company on Mar. 3, 2020

Genres: Historical Fiction

Pages: 320

Format: Paperback, ARC

Source: HBG Canada

Book Rating: 8/10

A “mesmerizing” re-imagination of the final months of World War II (Kate Quinn, author of The Alice Network), Hannah’s War is an unforgettable love story about an exceptional woman and the dangerous power of her greatest discovery.

Berlin, 1938. Groundbreaking physicist Dr. Hannah Weiss is on the verge of the greatest discovery of the 20th century: splitting the atom. She understands that the energy released by her discovery can power entire cities or destroy them. Hannah believes the weapon’s creation will secure an end to future wars, but as a Jewish woman living under the harsh rule of the Third Reich, her research is belittled, overlooked, and eventually stolen by her German colleagues. Faced with an impossible choice, Hannah must decide what she is willing to sacrifice in pursuit of science’s greatest achievement.

New Mexico, 1945. Returning wounded and battered from the liberation of Paris, Major Jack Delaney arrives in the New Mexican desert with a mission: to catch a spy. Someone in the top-secret nuclear lab at Los Alamos has been leaking encoded equations to Hitler’s scientists. Chief among Jack’s suspects is the brilliant and mysterious Hannah Weiss, an exiled physicist lending her talent to J. Robert Oppenheimer’s mission. All signs point to Hannah as the traitor, but over three days of interrogation that separate her lies from the truth, Jack will realize they have more in common than either one bargained for.


Hannah’s War is a thrilling wartime story of loyalty, truth, and the unforeseeable fallout of a single choice.


Review:

Fascinating, pacey, and engaging!

Hannah’s War is an intriguing story that sweeps you away to Los Alamos, New Mexico in the final days of WWII where a female Jewish physicist is on the cusp of making history in a field dominated by men, the race to develop the first nuclear weapon is well and truly underway, and the search and investigation of potential Nazi spies is top priority.

The prose is atmospheric and descriptive. The characters are intelligent, passionate, anxious, and driven. And the plot is an entertaining tale about life, love, friendship, survival, tragedy, war, romance, loyalty, subterfuge, and the development of nuclear fusion.

Overall, Hannah’s War is a well-written, compelling debut by Eliasberg that incorporates a nice mix of real-life historical figures, insightful information, and plausible fiction in a tale loosely based on the brilliant accomplishments of Dr. Lise Meitner.

 

This novel is available now.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.

                

 

 

Thank you to HBG Canada for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

 

About Jan Eliasberg

Jan Eliasberg is an award-winning writer/director. Her prolific directing career includes dramatic pilots for CBS, NBC, and ABC, such as Miami Vice and Wiseguy; countless episodes of television series, including Bull, Nashville, Parenthood, The Magicians, Blue Bloods, NCIS: Los Angeles, Supernatural, and dozens of others; as well as the feature film Past Midnight, starring Paul Giamatti, the late Natasha Richardson, and Rutger Hauer.

Eliasberg also has a storied career as a screenwriter, writing films driven by strong female leads, including Fly Girls about the Women Air Service Pilots in WWII for Nicole Kidman and Cameron Diaz at FOX 2000, among many others.

Photograph courtesy of hachettebookgroup.com

#BookReview The Telephone Box Library by Rachael Lucas @karamina @PGCBooks @panmacmillan

#BookReview The Telephone Box Library by Rachael Lucas @karamina @PGCBooks @panmacmillan Title: The Telephone Box Library

Author: Rachael Lucas

Published by: Pan Macmillan on Feb. 25, 2020

Genres: Contemporary Romance, Women's Fiction

Pages: 401

Format: Paperback

Source: Publishers Group Canada

Book Rating: 8/10

The Telephone Box Library is an uplifting story about fresh starts and new beginnings, set in a picturesque Cotswold village, by bestselling author Rachael Lucas.

Books. Wine. Secrets. You’ll find them all at the telephone box library . . .

The Cotswolds: the perfect retreat for a stressed-out teacher. And Lucy has found just the right cottage for a bargain rent. All she has to do is keep an eye on Bunty, her extremely feisty ninety-something neighbour . . .

With her West Highland terrier Hamish at her side, Lucy plans to relax and read up on the women of nearby Bletchley Park. But the villagers of Little Maudley have other ideas, and she finds herself caught up in the campaign to turn a dilapidated telephone box into a volunteer-run library.

Along the way, she makes friends with treehouse designer Sam, and finds herself falling for the charms of village life. And it seems Bunty has a special connection to Bletchley and the telephone box, one that she’s kept secret for decades . . .


Review:

Quaint, cosy, and heartwarming!

The Telephone Box Library is an absorbing, uplifting tale that sweeps you away to the beautiful village of Little Maudley and immerses you into the lives of several of its residents, both old and new, permanent and temporary as they celebrate, support, heal, grow, communicate, remember the past, take chances, start anew, and join together to create something worthwhile.

The writing is seamless and light. The characters are multilayered, kind, and endearing. And the plot, including all the subplots, intertwine and unravel into a charming tale of life, love, family, friendship, self-reflection, history, happiness, romance, and community.

Overall, The Telephone Box Library is a sweet, atmospheric, delightful tale by Lucas that is entertaining, satisfying, and the perfect sunny afternoon treat.

 

This novel is available now.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.

             

 

 

Thank you to Publishers Group Canada for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

 

About Rachael Lucas

Rachael Lucas juggles working as an author, coach, and freelance writer with the aid of quite a lot of tea. She and her partner (also a writer) live by the seaside in the North West of England with their six children.
She is the author of Finding Hope at Bramble Farm, My Box-Shaped Heart, Wildflower Bay, Coming Up Roses, and Sealed With a Kiss.

#BookReview Forbidden Promises (Jackson Falls #1) by Synithia Williams @SynithiaW @HarlequinBooks #harlequinpublicityteam #ForbiddenPromises #NewSeries

#BookReview Forbidden Promises (Jackson Falls #1) by Synithia Williams @SynithiaW @HarlequinBooks #harlequinpublicityteam #ForbiddenPromises #NewSeries Title: Forbidden Promises

Author: Synithia Williams

Series: Jackson Falls #1

Published by: HQN Books on Feb. 25, 2020

Genres: Contemporary Romance

Pages: 384

Format: Paperback, ARC

Source: Harlequin Books

Book Rating: 8/10

What do you do when you want the one person you can never have?

Get in and get out. That was India Robidoux’s plan for this family visit. But when her brother needs her help with his high-profile political campaign, India has no choice but to stay and face the one man she’s been running from for years—Travis, her sister’s ex-husband. One hot summer night when Travis was still free, they celebrated her birthday with whiskey and an unforgettable kiss. The memory is as strong as ever—and so are the feelings she’s tried so hard to forget.

Travis Strickland owes everything to the Robidoux family. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for them—his divorce could never change that. Still, he has one regret. Impulsive and passionate, India always understood him better than anyone else. And the longer they work together on the campaign, the more torn he is. Coming between her and her sister is out of the question. But how can he let love pass him by a second time?


Review:

Angsty, passionate, and dramatic!

Forbidden Promises is a heartfelt, intricate, second-chance romance featuring the independent, feisty India and the hardworking, dependable Travis as they discover that even though they really should stay away from each other, they just can’t resist.

The prose is crisp and witty. The characters are intelligent, flirty, hesitant, and intriguing. And the plot is an engaging blend of friendship, emotion, attraction, heat, familial drama, awkward moments, romance, and politics.

Overall, Forbidden Promises is a spirited, seductive, entertaining read by Williams that’s a promising start for this new Jackson Falls series and the perfect choice for those who love soap operas.

 

This book is available on February 25, 2020.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.

            

 

 

Thank you to Harlequin Books for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

 

About Synithia Williams

Synithia Williams has loved romance novels since reading her first one at the age of 13. It was only natural that she would one day write her own romance. When she isn’t writing, Synithia works on water quality issues in the Midlands of South Carolina while taking care of her supportive husband and two sons.