Friday, June 30, 2017

Blog Tour: In The Cowboy's Arms



IN THE COWBOW’S ARMS
By Vicki Lewis Thompson
May 23, 2017
$5.75 US; 224 pages

ISBN: 978-0-373-62352-5

Blurb:


Matt Forrest was born to be an actor, but grew up at Thunder Mountain Ranch as a cowboy. So when things go haywire after shooting his first Hollywood movie, he retreats to his childhood home where he knows his parents and foster brothers can help him figure out what he really wants out of life.

But PR agent, Geena Lysander, isn’t about to lose one of her best new clients—so she follows him. And things get complicated because she’s attracted to Matt, and not just for his handsome, movie-star good looks. As she gets to know the man behind the cowboy, their professional relationship becomes passionately personal. Could Matt’s next big role be as Geena’s leading man?

Review: I have read Vicki Lewis Thompson for ages. We're talking, I've read her books since she wrote for the Temptation line. (That's a very long time) This is her first special edition, because the Blaze line is going away. (sniffle sniffle). Her books are always hot and sexy. As I haven't been a fan of that heat level lately, I was kind of glad to find that toned down for this imprint. 

I liked that Matt was an actor. It made things different, as I'm used to harlequin novels being billionaire mogels or sheikh's. Geena is is PR, whose job is keeping him out of trouble, which he has managed to do, because of the leading lady on his first film, who has it in for him since he turned down her advances.

The romance between Geena and Matt takes off pretty quickly once she joins him on his family ranch. (Maybe a little too quickly if you like a little reality in your romance, but this is harlequin and love happens that fast in these books)

What I liked about Matt was his character. He was an actor, which isn't a usual occupation, but he was also a cowboy with a very strong moral compass. I loved the Thunder Mountain Brotherhood and the closeness between the "brothers." It really is what family is about.

The only thing that kept this from being an over the top fabulous read are a lot of the issues that got wrapped up too neatly at the end. (The original issue and another issue with his birth mother) I really felt that a book that had its plot rooted in a scandal should have had some confrontation of something with the troublemaker actress that started it all.

This was still a fast fun and sexy read. Vicki doesn't disappoint.

Rating: 4 flowers


Blog Tours: Their Pretend Amish Courtship



THEIR PRETEND AMISH COURTSHIP
By Patricia Davids
May 23, 2017
$5.99 US; 224 pages

ISBN: 978-0-373-62278-8
Blurb:

Fannie Erb isn’t looking for a husband – especially if it means she has to leave behind her beloved horses to go find one. What she needs is a way to assure her parents that she’s not hopeless when it comes to love. And her family friend, Noah Bowman, might just be her solution.

A fake relationship would free them both from unwanted matchmaking plans, but how could Fannie predict that pretending to date the handsome boy next door would awaken genuine emotions? By summer’s end, they’ll be free to go their separate ways, but Fannie’s growing feelings are transforming her neighbor into the only man who might ever reign in her adventurous heart.

Review: Fannie and Noah have a strange relationship when it comes to Amish romance. They have a fake engagement. That's not what you usually expect from anything about the Amish. I was really surprised at this premise, which is one of the reasons I wanted to read this book.

Fannie is very headstrong and has ideas that don't fit the Amish way of life, Noah does too. Both are enjoying a very long rumspringa, they are nearing 22 and neither have been baptized into the Amish faith, much to the chagrin of their parents. Throughout the book, I really couldn't see either of these two becoming members of the Amish faith. The things that they wanted out of life seemed to "English" to me.

I had a lot of issues with the characters, because they did act much younger than their years and they didn't seem to know what they really wanted. It got frustrating. Fannie was the character that bugged me the most, because I couldn't understand her not trying to explain so many things to her parents and then to Noah, when their relationship really seemed to be developing beyond the lines of friendship and more into a real courtship.

I did enjoy watching the two of them grow into more mature individuals as the story progressed. There was a bit of a surprise at the end that really left me gobsmacked.

Its a good clean romance, but for me, a longtime reader of Patricia's Amish romances, it wasn't quite up to her usual high standards.

Rating: 3 flowers



Blog Tour: Call To Engage

About Call to Engage:

Title: Call To Engage
Author: Tawny Weber
Publisher: Harlequin
Release Date: June 27, 2017
Series: Team Poseidon
Genres: Contemporary Romance/Romantic Suspense/Military Romance
ISBN: (Digital) 9781460397886
ISBN: (Print)
9780373801961

Lieutenant Elijah Prescott should be spending his precious leave somewhere with sun, surf and scantily clad women. Instead, he's heading home with two goals in mind. Figure out exactly how his last assignment went to hell and almost killed him—and reconnect with the woman who might offer salvation.
Ava Monroe has streamlined her life, eliminating every source of pain—including a marriage touched by tragedy. One glimpse of her ex and those good intentions turn to bad-girl desires. Her strategy: get over Elijah by getting under him again, sating herself until she can finally let go. But as betrayal within the rank of the SEALs turns deadly, there's no denying that her heart and her life are on the line. Elijah is the only man who can protect both…


Add to your TBR list: Goodreads


Review: Tawny Weber is known for writing stories with sexy Navy SEALs. I  have read many of them that were part of the Harlequin Blaze line. This is the second book in the Team Poseidon series. Uh, not sure how I missed the first book, but I did. Bad me!

This is a novel of second chances. (God I've been reading a lot of these lately) Elijah and Ava were married before and they are very different people now, but they still have feelings for each other. Ava is now working in a gym. Ava reminded me a little of one of Tawny's past heroines with that career choice. If you've read her Uniformly Hot series, Ava reminded me of Livi.

Ava and Elijah are very hot when they are together. Tawny makes those scenes full of spice and steam. I wish I could say I loved Ava, but she wasn't quite my favorite heroine. She's the type of person, I know I'd avoid in real life, not that she would't be a nice person, but she was way to "health conscious" for me. Definitely suitable for a Navy SEAL wife, but not for someone's BFF.

Her back story with Elijah is a pretty sad one, which is why I couldn't hate her. Her family was controlling and she really didn't find her inner strength until after their relationship dissolved and she lost a child while married to Elijah.

The driving force of this story was the mission involving the dirty SEAL and the possibility that another member of Poseidon might be bad as well.

The rekindling romance of Ava and Elijah was a little ho hum for my tastes, it just happened, with a small amount of conflict, but not enough to make that part of the story interesting enough for me. It was more, Elijah is back..and boom...they are falling back into things together.

I enjoyed this book, especially getting to know Elijah's team members. I can't wait to read this next book. (and the first)

Rating: 4 flowers



About Tawny Weber:

New York Times and USA TODAY Bestselling author of more than forty books, Tawny Weber loves writing about sexy heroes, most notably her popular Navy SEALs series. Her sassy, emotional romances are filled with men dedicated to being the best—and women determined to have the best. Tawny credits her ex-military alpha husband for inspiration in her writing, and in her life. The recipient of numerous writing accolades, including Romantic Times Reviewers Choice and in addition to the NY Times and USA Today bestseller lists, Tawny has also hit the number one spot on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
A homeschooling mom, Tawny enjoys scrapbooking, gardening and spending time with her family and dogs in her Northern California home.







Thursday, June 29, 2017

Blog Tour: Wanted Texas Daddy



WANTED: TEXAS DADDY
By Cathy Gillen Thacker
June 6, 2017
$5.75 US; 224 pages

ISBN: 978-0-373-75761-9
Blurb:
All small towns have their secrets. No one in Laramie, Texas knows about Sage Lockhart’s friends-with-benefits relationship with the handsome cowboy, Nick Monroe. However, Sage wants something more from Nick—something that could change the very nature of their arrangement. She wants to have his baby.

Nick has always wanted to take things with Sage to the next level. Having a child wasn’t exactly what he had in mind, but it’s an adventure he can’t refuse. Of course, neither of them realized just how complicated things could get.

Now, with a baby on the way and all of their careful plans unraveling, Sage and Nick must face the one secret they’ve been hiding from themselves…and from each other.

Review: The cover of this book is so cute, but the baby doesn't make an appearance until the book is very nearly finished. I'm not sure what goes through the minds of people at Harlequin when they design these books. 

Sage and Nick's story is a friends and lovers to parents story, but not in a traditional way. They are friends with benefits when the story starts and really have a good thing going, but Sage wants a baby, but not a husband, or she thinks she doesn't want a husband because she was hurt before.

Nick is a businessman that really thinks only about making money, but he enjoys his relationship with Sage, and he has more feelings for her than he wants to admit.

That's where the problem lies. Both love each other going in, especially when business dealings force them into marriage.

These are two people that are in love but are too foolish to admit it. It gives you a lot of moments where you want to shake one of them, mostly Sage, because she's the one that really pushes for this goofy kind of relationship, even when Nick goes all romantic on her.

This was a really cute quick read. Its heat level is a little more than I like in these seemingly family oriented novels.


Rating: 4 flowers




Tasty Book Tours Releases Blast: King of Clubs


Passions—and tempers—flare as one star-crossed couple gets a second chance at love.


KING OF CLUBS
Aces & Eights #2
Sandra Owens
Releasing June 27, 2017
Montlake Romance


In the second novel in acclaimed author Sandra Owens’s Aces & Eights series, passions—and tempers—flare as one star-crossed couple gets a second chance at love.

Covert FBI agent Court Gentry loves his brothers, his job, and his Harley-Davidson. Once he loved a girl, too, but when she broke his heart, he put his emotions on lockdown…until she crosses his path again.

On vacation six years ago, free-spirited Lauren Montgomery fell hard for Court Gentry. She returned home happier than ever, only to descend into a spiral of abuse by her ex-husband, Stephan. When Stephan threatened to kill any man who touched her, Lauren cut Court from her life—but not from her heart.

When Lauren and Court reunite after her friend marries his brother, Court guards himself against the person who made him feel such intense passion and pain. Except the undeniable spark between them is impossible to contain and heating up fast. Six years ago, it was love. Now, it’s just lust. Keeping it merely physical is a foolproof plan…right?

When Stephan is released from prison, Lauren can’t outrun her past anymore, and Court vows to protect her. But with Lauren in imminent danger, Court must question his heart and risk his life to save the woman he never stopped loving.




A best-selling, award winning author, Sandra Owens lives in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Her family and friends often question her sanity, but have ceased being surprised by what she might get up to next. She’s jumped out of a plane, flown in an aerobatic plane while the pilot performed death-defying stunts, has flown Air Combat (two fighter planes dogfighting, pretending to shoot at each other with laser guns), and rode a Harley motorcycle for years. She regrets nothing.

A member of Romance Writers of America's Honor Roll, Sandra is a 2013 Golden Heart® Finalist for her contemporary romance, CRAZY FOR HER. In addition to her contemporary romantic suspense novels, she writes Regency stories. 

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Tasty Book Tour Release Blast: Beware The Ranger


Will they be able to lay the past to rest and rekindle their love from the ashes?


BEWARE THE RANGER
In the Long Arms of the Lawman #1
Debra Holt
Releasing June 28, 2017
Tule Publishing


Twelve years ago, Kaitlyn Russell had a dream: living happily ever after with Clay Morgan. Except her grandmother had bigger plans for her beloved granddaughter and they didn’t include life in the small town of McKenna Springs as the wife of a young, poor deputy. Kaitlyn’s heart was broken when Clay and her grandmother convinced her to pursue her second love, Broadway stardom.

Texas Ranger Clay Morgan is a widower with a young son to raise. A dozen years before, he had to make the most difficult decision of his life when he agreed to let go of the only woman he’d ever loved so that she could pursue her dreams.

Now, fate and an old woman’s guilty conscience conspire to bring Clay and Kaitlyn back together once more. Will they be able to lay the past to rest and rekindle their love from the ashes?




Born and raised in the Lone Star state of Texas, Debra Holt grew up among horses, cowboys, wide open spaces, and real Texas Rangers. Pride in her state and ancestry knows no bounds and it is these heroes and heroines she loves to write about the most. She also draws upon a variety of life experiences including working with abused children, caring for baby animals at a major zoo, and planning high-end weddings (ah, romance!).

Debra's real pride and joys, however, are her son, an aspiring film actor, and a daughter with aspirations to join the Federal Bureau of Investigation. (more story ideas!) When she isn't busy writing about tall Texans and feisty heroines, she can be found cheering on her Texas Tech Red Raiders, or heading off on another cruise adventure. She read her first romance...Janet Dailey's Fiesta San Antonio, over thirty years ago and became hooked on the genre. Writing contemporary western romances, is both her passion and dream come true, and she hopes her books will bring smiles...and sighs... to all who believe in happily-ever-after's.

Debra invites you to visit her website. She loves to hear from other aspiring authors or readers via her email.

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Book Review: A Fool and His Honey

Author: Charlaine Harris
Title: A Fool And His Honey
Publisher: Berkley
Publish Date: Sept 13, 1999
Buy: Amazon
Book Blurb: Aurora Teagarden should be used to surprises by now. Yet when a local handyman begins dancing naked in her yard, she’s thrown for a loop and suspects it could be a bad omen of unwelcome events to come. When her husband’s niece, Regina, appears in Lawrenceton with a baby in tow and evading questions, tensions escalate. It’s not much longer before Regina’s husband is found murdered and Regina herself has disappeared, leaving both her baby and a large amount of money behind.

Traveling north to Ohio seeking relatives to care for the abandoned child, and accompanied by a friend of Regina’s who seems to know more than he’s letting on, Roe and Martin search for clues that will point them to Regina’s location and why she abandoned her baby. There’s a killer at large and Roe, snowed in in rural Ohio, will have to peel back the layers of secrets to find the truth before more people die.


Review: This is book 6 in the Aurora Teagarden mystery series. My library doesn't have them all, so I read this one after book 1, plus it is the latest book to be made into a movie for the Hallmark Mystery channel.

I got interested in this series, when I watched The Julius House (which I really want to read). I like Roe but I did have mixed feelings about Martin in this book. I really couldn't get over his not knowing anything about caring for a baby when he had a child with his first wife. That made me shake my head a little bit. What father knows nothing about diapering or feeding a baby? This book was written in the late 90s not the 50s (and even in the 50s I bet father's knew more about babies). It was also hard to figure out how a surprisingly spunky woman let her husband dictate her life, especially in regards to having children

Regina and her hangers on, including her baby made for a much different mystery than I'd expect from a cozy mystery series. There are a couple of things going on that make this short novel a lot more complex than most of the mysteries I read.

First we have Regina, who just shows up on her Uncle's doorstep, baby in tow. Then her possible lover shows up at the same time she disappears and her husband is found dead leaving baby Hayden with Roe and Martin.

So there's the dead husband and the whole baby mystery going on, definitely something different from the typical cozy. I can't say that enough. I was also surprised that the group "Real Murders" wasn't part of the story line, but again, I haven't read the other books.

There are things going on with her mother's husband, John, but nothing, and I do mean nothing will prepare you for the ending of this book.

I actually had to reread several pages of the last chapters because I didn't believe what had happened.

Rating: 4 flowers




Tasty Book Tours Release Blast: Rock Star


A high school reunion is about to get down and dirty 
and a whole lot more complicated!


ROCK STAR
A Bad Boy Homecoming Novel
Stacey Kennedy
Releasing June 27, 2017


A high school reunion is about to get down and dirty and a whole lot more complicated in this new erotic romance from USA Today bestselling author Stacey Kennedy.

Veterinarian, Rae Evans expects to attend a dreadful ten-year high school reunion. Instead, she’s confronted by a past she’s never gotten over. The love of her life, Travis Walker, has returned to Catfish Creek, and the now-famous rock star wants only three things: Her. Naked. And screaming his name.

Fresh off his last world tour, Travis has returned to town to get a dose of reality. With fame casting a superficial cloud over Travis’s life, he’s scrambling to stay afloat. He needs an anchor, and Rae is that for him. But as he finds himself, he’s determined to remind Rae of the heat that once burned between them.

Before they know it, their one hot night is three, and soon, just like ten years ago, Travis holds the strings to Rae’s heart. But Rae’s not that young girl who watched her high school sweetheart race off to become famous. She’s a woman who knows what she wants and realizes when a man needs her. She just has to decide if she should put the past on repeat, or walk away from it forever.





STACEY KENNEDY is the USA Today bestselling author of the Dirty Little Secrets and Club Sin series. She writes deeply emotional romances about powerful men and the wild women who tame them. When she’s not writing sensual stories, she spends her time in southwestern Ontario with her real life hero, her husband, their two young children, and her other babies: a mini labradoodle named Jax and a chocolate labrador named Murphy. Stacey is a proud chocolate, television show, Urban Barn, and wine addict. She likes her heroes in her books like she likes her coffee . . . strong and hot!

 
Blog Design by Use Your Imagination Designs using images from the Tea Time kit and the Saturday Night kit by MK-Designs