One Good Book Deserves Another

Genre: Romantic Suspense
Series: Alpha Ops, Book 0.5
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 112 Pages
Formats: Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Forever Yours publisher Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.





Three years ago an anonymous night of passion with a sinfully sexy man served as both comfort and solace to journalist Grace Grainger. Memories from that night have helped her weather three, year-long tours with combat troops in Afghanistan, so when she gets separated from her patrol and caught behind enemy lines, she expects those memories will help her get through another night until she's rescued.

What she doesn't expect is her rescuer to be the same man who helped make those memories.

That others may live. That is the pararescuer creed, one Master Sergeant Josh Travers has lived by for years. Then the rescue mission he's on goes sideways and Josh finds himself cut off from his team and stuck behind enemy lines with the last person on the planet he thought he'd stumble across in Afghanistan. He hasn't seen that face, those eyes, or that body for three long, hot, sweat-and-danger soaked years, but he's never forgotten her.

Now Josh has to do his job to the absolute best of his abilities and get them both the hell out of there, or those memories are all that he and Grace will ever have of each other...for the too-brief time they'll survive.


While military-themed romance and romantic suspense aren't truly favorites of mine, there are a few series with that theme that I have and do enjoy. If this prequel novella by Curtis is any indication, I will be adding the Alpha Ops series to that short list.

I can't say I was crazy about the beginning of this story, though. The introduction of main characters Josh and Grace wasn't to my personal taste. I struggled with Grace's deception about her identity and Josh's evasions with his, as well as the deliberate intention of both of them to hit it and quit it. It was all just a bit too impersonal and calculated for me to fully enjoy, regardless of the personal demons riding them at the time.

Thankfully, that's all I disliked. Despite the setup, I actually liked both Josh and Grace as characters. They felt refreshingly realistic to me, with flaws and peccadilloes craftily woven together with personal strengths to bulk up their characterizations and add impetus to the romance arc of the story. Maybe there wasn't as much complexity as I would hope to see in characters in a full-length novel, but for a novella, I was well satisfied and quite pleased by both of them.

It didn't hurt that Josh and Grace do a lot more than get groiny in this novella, and are more then the sum of their sex scenes. There's quite a bit of story going on around them, with both a war and a hostile environment threatening their lives constantly. It made for a tense, suspenseful read, and I loved that Grace had just as important a hand in their survival as Josh did. This wasn't a story about an uber-alpha warrior riding to the fair maiden's rescue. Grace more than held her own, often gave as good as she got, and I loved her for it.

There was actually quite a lot to love about this novella. Too often stories of this length are a crap shoot for me. Either they're too light on characterization and story and end up feeling superficial and rushed or they focus too heavily on the relationship of the characters and don't offer nearly as comprehensive an external conflict. This one had a very nice balance of both that ended up leaving me just as satisfied by the story as I was by the sexy good times.

In fact, Curtis obviously did significant research to flesh out her story and her characters, and the care taken with the military elements of the story in particular were a high point as a result. If she can write a novella that feels this authentic, robust, and complex, with characters who are more than cookie-cutter stereotypes, I honestly can't wait to find out what she can do with a full-length book. With the first of those, Over the Line, set to release in early October, I'm happy to say I don't have to wait long.

Genre: Steampunk Romance
Series:  The Shadow Guild, Book 1
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 384 Pages
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Forever Yours publisher Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.
Want it?: Gilded Hearts






A vicious killer is slashing his way through the soot-slicked streets of New London's Whitechapel district, leaving the broken, bloody bodies of prostitutes in his wake.

King's Sentry Sergeant Samuel Hawkins has, in the course of his police work, had the occasional dealing with an Archivist in the five years since he fled their Guild, but Piper Smith isn't just any Archivist. Her arrival at his crime scene affects him more deeply than he was expecting. Once both best friend and deepest desire, Piper was little more than a girl when he'd begged her to leave the Guild with him all those years ago.

She stayed. He couldn't. But he never got over her.

Now both a fully grown woman and a full-fledged Archivist, Piper embraces her role as a memory retrieval agent for the Guild, though the shock of seeing Sam again almost ruins her first job. She's at the scene to take the memories of his murder victim, not to rehash their relationship, and focus is paramount. What she sees in the memories of the murdered woman, however, will shake more than Piper's focus, it will shake the very foundation on which she's built her life. 

As more bodies are found and a deadly finger of accusation points towards the Archivists' Guild, Sam and Piper will have to take a hard look at their own past and the secrets buried there. And just hope like hell they survive it.


Sometimes you just know, ya know?

I wasn't even a tenth of the way into this book before I knew it was going to really work for me. Between initial impressions of the dark, complex Steampunk world, the grim sense of danger and mystery in the opening murder scene, and the intriguing history and emotional detritus between the main characters, the story snatched me up from the start and kept me captivated throughout.

What a world. What a dark, dangerous, well-conceived and deftly-written world. I enjoy Steampunk for the imaginative, mechanically-enhanced alternative history inherent in the genre, but have to admit, the stories themselves are hit or miss for me. D'Abo struck just the right cord for my tastes, weaving a wealth of clever Steampunk elements together with a creative twist on Jack the Ripper, and did it in such a way that it enriched the various dramatic conflicts in the story without extraneous over-description or too much superfluous detail. Everything blended together nicely to provide a robust tapestry of story and substance.

The characters themselves were as carefully and intently created, and they acquitted themselves very well in the story. I think I preferred Samuel over Piper by a slim margin, though that had more to do with my sympathy for his traumatic childhood, as well as greater understanding of the choices he made and actions he took (as opposed to Piper's) both in his past and during the murder investigations. The guy is definitely dragging around a few demons, and D'Abo was deliciously cagey about disclosing those demons to her readers, but it painted a very solid and three dimensional picture of him as a slightly flawed, definitely damaged romantic hero.

Not that I didn't like Piper. I completely did. I found her wonderfully independent, feisty, stubborn, and fiercely loyal. I just also happened to be as disturbed by the Archivists' Guild purpose and presence in the world as Sam was, so the fact that Piper was a very determined Archivist, willfully and knowingly putting holes in her mind for an alleged greater good, was a bit harder to relate to than the guy who had escaped them and went on to make a career for himself in law enforcement.

They did fit together nicely as a romantic couple, though, with a chemistry that extended far beyond sexual and included an obvious and genuine childhood friendship. I loved the snippets of their past that get revealed in well-timed flashes throughout the book. Frequent flashbacks in a story rarely work for me and tend to jar me out of the flow of the current-timeline plot, but D'Abo mastered the transitions smoothly and had a judicious eye for how and when to incorporate them to add depth to the story and the relationship between Sam and his Pip. 

I enjoyed the hell out of the Jack the Ripper investigation, too, but have to admit, I got a little lost when it came to a political element in the investigation. That aspect of the world hadn't been explained quite enough for me to really understand everywhere the leads in the case took Sam and Piper. I didn't have trouble following the action, but I definitely felt an emotional disconnect with the story when it came to a few scenes.

And honestly, the resolution to the climax of the book left me feeling...disturbed and a bit unsatisfied.

Don't get me wrong, I loved the culmination of the Ripper investigation, and thought the evolution of Sam and Pip's relationship was nicely done. D'Abo built plot and relationship conflict from the first page of this book, adding layers of horror and dread, dastardly motivation and sick psychosis, and connected it all Sam's murky past in such a way that I was left impressed by the complexities and entertained by it all. I heartily enjoyed that very much.

How it resolved, though, and what it all means in the big picture, disturbed me. And it's virtually impossible to be any more specific without some huge spoilers and I don't want to do that. I will say this: I don't think there is anything right or good about the Archivists' Guild. Not one thing. That may pose a problem for me in future books depending on its role in the series. It definitely posed a problem for me at the end of this book.

It took a bit of the bloom off what was otherwise a passionate and perilous, wildly imaginative, darkly entertaining, bloody-red rose.

Genre: Contemporary Romance
Series: Country Roads, Book 2
Rating: 1 Star
Length: 400 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Forever publisher Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




Small town baker Grace King has loved her big brother's best friend Jaxson Anderson since she was a kid. Problem is, Jax has always treated her like a younger sister, protective and caring. That's great and all, but Grace is no longer a child and her feelings for Jax are anything but immature. He's her one and only. He just doesn't know it. Yet.

As a sheriff in the small Gulf Coast town of Mirabelle, Florida, Jax Anderson sees a broad spectrum of the worst in human nature. It's nothing he hasn't seen before, though, considering his violently abusive, drunken father and utterly disinterested mother. If it weren't for the King family, he probably wouldn't have made it as far as he has. And that's why he's always known he's not good enough for his best friend's little sister, Grace, no matter that he can't remember a time when he didn't want her.

He was doing an admirable job of ignoring the want until that accident that almost cost her her life. Since then Jax has been struggling with his control, haunted by what-ifs. Surely that's the only reason he totally snaps his chain with the woman when she pushes his buttons, wrenching the last shred of control out of his hands with a maelstrom of passion. He still knows he doesn't deserve Grace. Still has no doubt she will realize that eventually and leave him. But maybe, just maybe, he can have a little grace in his life before she does.


I really enjoyed Richard's first book in this series, Undone, and I couldn't wait to get my hands on Jax and Grace's story. That's why it kills me to say that so many things went wrong for me in this one that Undeniable left me...well...undone. From the characters, who I found largely intolerable, to the story, which wavered between boring and extremely frustrating, to the writing, which made me a little nuts in several places, there were just too many things that pushed all the wrong buttons.

The long-suffering, self-sacrificing martyr character type never works for me, and Jax rode the, "We can't be together because I'm not good enough for you," horse until it keeled over dead. It was a refrain that popped up so many times I lost patience with him even before I reached the halfway point of the book.

Honestly, I could never figure out why he was so down on himself. Sure, he has a horrible set of parents and his childhood was traumatic, but only parts of it, because the King family and others took care of him and showed him what love was all about - a fact that is also stressed several times throughout the narrative. He's now a well respected member of the community, has good friends, a good life, and money enough in his pockets to buy his own home. So...not really seeing any real motivation for the I'm-no-good self image. It didn't endear me to him at all. Mostly I just wanted to kick him.

I wish I could say I liked Grace more, but I didn't. Her desperation for Jax and the subsequent heartbroken angst after every single time he pulled the push-me-pull-you act on her was very off-putting. And really, more than once would have been too much, but the number of times she went back to him in a blink after his demons reared their oft-seen heads and he treated her like Kleenex yet again was ridiculous.

Not for nothing, but any man alludes to me as a whore - in public no less - and I don't care how much I love him, he's not going to be climbing back into my bed with just a weak-ass apology. Not without missing a few of his favorite appendages first, anyways. The fact that Grace just accepted his apologies with very little confrontation every time and cozied right back up to the guy didn't make me think too highly of her level of self respect.

Had I liked the main characters more maybe I wouldn't have been so disappointed with the plot of the story, but I was bored through most of it. There were a couple of threads of interest, however. I liked Grace's friend Preston. He had a nice ancillary storyline that added poignancy to the read. I also liked seeing Paige and Brendan again. I love them.

On the other hand, the town biddy was up to her old tricks. I just wish someone would make her a victim of a tragic underwater basket-weaving accident or something, because that bat has to go. She's more than a source of conflict, she's an utterly reprehensible, barely human being and I can't for the life of me figure out why someone hasn't at least sued her for slander. The fact that her behavior continues unchecked is really rubbing me the wrong way. As do the town's bad apples, the trio of terror. They're so over the top ugly that I struggle to believe that their behavior has gone unchecked for so long.

There was an anemic mystery thread surrounding a rash of robberies in town that could have been better developed and incorporated into the storyline, as well. It wasn't a bad idea, but as it was written, it just seemed contrived to put the characters in the position they were in at the climax of the book, and that bothered me. For that matter, I couldn't figure out why what happened in the climax suddenly wakes Jax up when what happened at the end of the previous book didn't seem to.

I wasn't thrilled with the narrative itself, either. It was over-burdened by way too much superfluous information and description. It seemed at times that every single element of a scene was described in minute and unnecessary detail and every ancillary character who was given so much as a mention had their life story and connection to the town detailed to the extreme. And there are a lot of characters mentioned. After a while it all became white noise, and it drowned out the stuff that could have really added to the narrative and the storyline.

There are just too many things about this book that either fell short or didn't work for me. I really enjoyed the first book, so I'm hoping that this was just not a good fit for my reading preferences. I'm not ready to give up on this series just yet. There's obviously something brewing between Grace's friend Mel and Jax's friend Bennett, who caught my eye in the first book. I'm sincerely hoping, though, that Bennett acquits himself better than Jax did here.

Genre: Contemporary Romance
Series: Lucky Harbor, Book 7
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 352 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




Sometimes it just doesn't pay to get out of bed in the morning. Unfortunately for Ali Winters, that sentiment spans more than just a single morning. It wasn't just getting dumped by her scumbag boyfriend Teddy, though that did suck. It just didn't suck as bad as actually catching him cheating on her, then getting a break-up text from him before she has a chance to dump him first.

To add insult to that particular injury, the text message kindly informed her he hadn't renewed the lease on the rental home they shared and she had to be out by the end of the month, which was, you know...yesterday. Now Ali has no home, no boyfriend, and a whole lotta rage. Not really a surprise that the police think she stole the $50,000 that went missing from Teddy's office after she left a very...detailed...note on his desk - and a voice mail or ten - letting him know just what she thought of him.

Returning to Lucky Harbor for some much-needed alone time after his latest case ripped his life apart, San Francisco cop Luke Hanover didn't expect to find a gorgeous, almost naked, and seriously brassed off woman squatting in his house. He wanted her gone so he could be miserable all by himself, but one look at the injured yet defiant Ali and he finds himself doing things he had no intention of doing.

Things like allowing her to stay at his place, or, when the police treat her like a suspect in a pretty major crime, getting involved to help her out. Which is the absolute last thing he wants to do. He just can't seem to help himself.

Yup, sometimes it just doesn't pay to get out of bed in the morning.


Another fun, feel-good Lucky Harbor romance! Shalvis' Lucky Harbor series is my favorite of the ongoing contemporary romance series I read. It's consistently entertaining, often flat-out delightful, and it's chock full of a wide variety of wacky and weird and wonderful characters who are so easy to adore. And of course, the romances between the heroes and heroines in each book are fairly awesome, too.

In this one we meet the irrepressible Ali and the inscrutable Luke as Shalvis kicks off her third set of loosely connected in-series trilogies, this one revolving around the boys of Lucky Harbor, three childhood besties who have grown up all kinds of hot, sexy, and heroic.

Lest I forget, you can't have a Shalvis romance without a quirky, fierce beauty to give the guy's heart his forever home, and I loved Ali. She's a spitfire. Dealt some pretty hard blows at the beginning of the book, Ali responds to each with her chin up and her fists clenched in proud defiance. She's strong and highly independent, but she's also got a softer, more easily bruised side that was very sympathetic. In fact, she sort of stole the show.

That's not to say that Luke isn't a tall dish of sexy goodness in his own right. Brooding, taciturn, and more than a little dented by life, Luke is the quintessential reluctant hero on the outside but total alpha male problem-solver at heart. He got sucked into the dual vortexes of Ali and Lucky Harbor and couldn't quite get himself free, no matter how hard he tried (which, well...wasn't really all that hard). He's a far more internal male lead than we've seen so far in the series, and he doesn't say a whole lot, but his actions speak volumes. I loved him.

As a couple they were a sometimes volatile and always impressive mix of hot sex and sweet, heart-tugging emotion. A very good pair to follow after the nearly incomparable Grace and Josh.

There was a suspense element in this storyline that the other books haven't had, and I liked it a lot. It didn't take a large chunk of story focus away from Ali and Luke's relationship arc, but it added a romantic suspense flavor that I enjoyed. Not that the Lucky Harbor series needed additional elements to improve it, or was lacking in any way, but I definitely thought it brought a new dynamic to the series that I appreciated.

But maybe it took something away, too, because I have to admit, the humor wasn't as prevalent as it was in the previous three books and I didn't feel there was as large an influence of Lucky Harbor residents as I'm used to enjoying. There were several included, obviously, and of course Lucille was up to her usual shenanigans, but overall on a lesser scale than I would have hoped for. Lucky Harbor's Facebook-loving geriatric brigade is always good for a smile or ten.

I also wish that Luke's problems with his job and the threat that brought to his life had been afforded a larger role in the story, with a more comprehensive resolution. Ali's issues, personal and legal, got significantly more page time, so the story lacked the sort of balance between the characters' personal evolution that other books have had. That was a little disappointing, especially as I had gone into this book looking forward to this three-book set in the series focusing more on the men and their lives and friendships, like the sisters in the first three and the female best friends in the second set.

But a little disappointment doesn't make this book a bad bet by any means.

Nothing about this book or this series is a bad bed. Shalvis is clearly at the top of her writing game and keeps cranking out touching stories that deliver on the sexy good times as well as the sigh-worthy love stories. For pure romance reading fun, you just can't do any better than Shalvis and her Lucky Harbor series. And if I ever find the place on a map, I'm so moving there.

Genre: Romantic Suspense
Series: Firefighter, Book 3
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 352 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Forever Yours publisher Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.





He was her best friend. She was his world. Then tragedy struck and tore Summer Abrams' life apart. Crippled by grief and forged by loss, Summer ran from her hometown of Ocean Beach. She ran from the loss of her father. She ran from the suffocating emotion of her family. She ran from the strength and importance of her friendship with Joe Walker. She ran, and never stopped running. Then the call came.

Twelve years after the warehouse fire that irrevocably altered her life, the beast has struck again. The first time drove Summer away. The second brought her home.

She hadn't expected her return to OB to be easy, not after so many years, but her family's chilly reception still hurts. Summer is determined to reconnect with them, to reforge the bonds she had once cut so cleanly no matter how uncomfortable she is with the effort. She's just as determined to reconnect with her former best friend Joe, who has grown into a fine specimen of manhood.

The longer she stays in town, however, the more she feels pushed out the door. Her mom certainly doesn't seem to want her around, and Joe, now a fire marshal and investigating the fire that brought her back, is no more welcoming. Maybe it's been too long. Maybe time doesn't heal all wounds.

When another fire breaks out and almost takes Summer's life with it, she is forced to face another grim possibility. Maybe her return has stirred up ghosts that someone is desperate to let lie. Maybe, just maybe someone she loves wants her gone...permanently.


I've pretty much come to the conclusion that if a book has Jill Shalvis' name on it, I'm going to enjoy the read. Of course some books I like more than others, but the sheer consistency of entertainment her books provide sets Shalvis apart and is a large part of why she's one of my favorite authors. And this re-release of a 2005 title just goes to show she's been good for a long time.

The sticky widget with re-releases is whether or not they'll feel dated. That can quickly ruin a read for me. Fortunately, that wasn't a problem here. The big reveal during the book's climax felt a little old-school and a trifle cliched because of it, but nothing really struck me as completely anachronistic.

This book has a much stronger suspense plotline than I was expecting. I'm used to, and love, Shalvis' contemporary romance novels, especially the Lucky Harbor series (which absolutely should not be missed), but they're lighter than this one so the emotional depth and darker elements in this story took me by surprise. That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it. I love romantic suspense, and felt this was a solid example of one.

I fell hard and fast for the fabulous Joe Walker. Shalvis sure didn't go easy on the poor guy, but he's a great character. His horrible childhood and the emotional detritus from his struggles with weight as a teen made him such a sympathetic hero. And I'm a total sucker for a guy who's loved a girl his whole life, even after she ripped his heart out. The fact that he is now a totally hot, if often emotionally unavailable firefighter was just icing on a very delicious cake. Sexy, strong, and oh-so-endearing, I adored everything about him.

Summer, on the other hand, was a bit of a harder pill to swallow. My feelings about her are far more complicated. On one hand, I appreciated her for her flaws and damage. I find flawed and/or damaged characters intrinsically more interesting and believable than their picture-perfect counterparts. Not necessarily more likable, just more interesting. Summer definitely wasn't always likable.

In fact, through most of the book she struck me as wounded but selfish with it, and her self-involvement was often cruel, albeit unintentionally so. I felt for her yearning for family bonds and struggle to fit in, but shuddered at her casual dismissal of Joe's plainly-spoken boundaries and the legitimate reasons for them. Too many times and for too long into the story I felt Joe deserved a lot more than Summer was willing or able to give. And emotional cowards have always been a major turn off to me. That made it hard to really embrace her in her romantic role, even though I heartily appreciated those flaws in regards to her family issues and the suspense elements of the plot.

I had some minor quibbles with one or two other elements of the story, and I was a little disappointed that Joe and Summer's fight before the first fire was never really addressed, but mostly I was thoroughly entertained by this book and totally smitten with Joe. I haven't read the preceding books in the series, but can happily say that had no impact at all. This read like a stand-alone novel. Of course, I want to read those preceding books, but that has less to do with them being a part of this series and everything to do with that name on the cover. They're Jill Shalvis books. A guaranteed good time.

Genre: Contemporary Romance
Series: Country Roads, Book 1
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 368 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Forever Yours publisher Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.





Paige Morrison hasn't had the best day...er...well, week...no, it's more like...oh, hell. The past year of her life has pretty much sucked.

She lost her job with an advertising agency in Philadelphia, lost her roommate (and best friend) to a swank job in DC, lost her apartment because she couldn't make the rent alone, temporarily moved in with her boyfriend until she got back on her feet, then got dumped before she got the chance. Forced to leave Philly just to survive, she ended up at her parents' home in the small town of Mirabelle, FL, where for the past three months she's found nothing but closed, prejudiced minds and tightly sealed doors, so no job and no friends there either.

Then, to add insult to the injury of a particularly humiliating interview with the town's resident gossipy, venomous hag, her Jeep dies, stranding her on the side of a very hot, very dusty road to nowhere. Yeah, she's definitely had better years.

Hey, at least her mechanic is hot.

Brendan King has heard of Paige Morrison. Everyone has. He's even seen her jogging around town a few times. Her call for a tow, though, is the first chance he has to see her up close or talk to her. Turns out that's probably a good thing, seeing as how just five minutes with the gorgeous, smart-mouthed, quick-witted, and so obviously down-on-her-luck woman completely rocks Brendan's world to the point where he doesn't know if he'll ever recover. Or if he even wants to.

She's the best thing he's ever had happen to his life, but Paige is a city girl, and Brendan is right where he belongs in the small town of Mirabelle. The problem may not be so much getting the girl as it is keeping her, but some risks the heart just has to take.


I have a few confessions to make. First, I absolutely love romances that have a guy so totally gone over a girl that he's endearingly goofy with it. It's totally sappy of me, I know, and I'm probably ruining my tough-girl cred (I have tough-girl cred...really...I swear. Oh, hush.) but for some reason that sort of over-the-moon-for-a-girl guy just really pushes my Happy Reader buttons, and Brendan was exactly such a guy from the moment he meets Paige. I loved it. I loved him.

I also have to confess that sometimes, just sometimes, no other sort of book will do for me but a light, fluffy, relatively complications-free romance. They're the cotton candy of what I refer to as brain candy reads; airy, not a lot of substance, really, but still so damn sweet and tasty. When I started this book, that type of cotton candy romance was exactly what I needed to cleanse my mental palate after several weightier, less happy reads. For most of this book, I was in reader heaven.

Brendan was by far my favorite character, but I liked Paige, too. Their romance was the sort of cute, fun, slow-buildup (relatively), almost idyllic romantic tale that doesn't come around all that often any more. There was sex, but not before they had been seeing each other for months, and the arc of their romance stretched all the way through a wedding and beyond. Definitely not something you read every day.

While the narrative lacked a measure of sophistication in a lot of ways and the writing style, most notably in the descriptive passages, sometimes read like bullet points, there was plenty of southern small-town goodness to balance it out. There was also a nice number of secondary characters with tons of personality if not definition, and the setup for the next book in the series, Jax and Grace's book, was well done.

The plot wasn't complex. External conflicts were mostly annoyances and relationship conflicts were few and far between. Personal conflicts and emotional baggage didn't come into play all that often, either, even when it would have been more realistic if they had. Occasionally that made the romance arc feel a little saccharine and made the book seem a little long, especially as I reached the last quarter of the story. I also had some minor issues with the timeline, which starts out with a nice day-to-day pace but has some awkward transitions when the timeline starts jumping forward by months. Nothing too bad, but enough to notice and pull me out of the story a bit.

To be honest, a staple diet of this sort of romance would drive me a little batty, but in small doses, it's just what my reading doctor ordered. For me it was a feel good, guilt-free pleasure read with a totally adorable romantic hero and an eminently likable heroine. It was also my first read of a Shannon Richard book, but given how I'm dying to get my hands on Jax and Grace's story, I can pretty much say with certainty it won't be my last. After all, a girl's gotta have just a little bit of cotton candy every once in awhile.

Genre: Contemporary Romance
Series: Lucky Harbor, Book 6
Rating: 5 Stars
Length: 324 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Forever publisher Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




Four months in Lucky Harbor has netted banking specialist Grace Brooks two best friends and a town she adores, but it's still falling short in the career department. Though she takes as many odd jobs as she can get while she searches for one in her field, her savings account is really feeling the pinch of her extended not-quite-vacation. Surely that's the only reason she doesn't correct the delectable Dr. Josh Scott, dreamiest of the McDreamies, when he misdials a number for a dog walker and calls her instead.

She really does need the money, and honestly, how hard can walking one dog be?

Single father, town doctor, brother of a troubled young woman in a wheelchair, Josh has gotten used to wearing a lot of hats in his life, but lately the weight of all his many responsibilities is grinding him down to the bone. Coming home to deal with one more in a long string of catastrophes surrounding his son's dog Tank is just the tip of a very large iceberg. He wasn't expecting to be poleaxed by a soaking wet and distraught Grace, who was still in the ocean searching for the dog she thought she lost.

She may be the worst dog walker on the planet, but there's just something about the woman that brings Josh to his knees. She obviously needs help, and that's what Josh does, he helps...everyone but himself. But maybe, if Josh can loosen up a bit, and Grace can let go and have fun for a change, they'll both find exactly what they need, and more than they ever dreamed possible, with each other.

Okay, so maybe chocolate doesn't make the world go around, but it sure makes the trip worthwhile.

Six books into the Lucky Harbor series and I just gotta say, I want to live there. Seriously, I would totally move there if I could. Like each book in the series, the town is wacky, weird, and unrepentantly wonderful. Filled with a colorful mix of salty and spicy and sweet characters I've come to adore, Lucky Harbor is the perfect backdrop for each installment of this delightful series. And Grace and Josh's book is my favorite of the lot of them.

Feels like I keep saying that, though, with each new book. Funny how that works.

Speaking of funny, Shalvis baked a batch of giggles, snorts, and chuckles into this one. Grace was an absolute riot, and Josh was such a fabulous straight man opposite her charming blunders. I loved both of them, and the chemistry they had together was spectacular. More than just sexual chemistry, they had a genuine way of interacting that just tickled every single one of my Happy Reader buttons.

I loved how their lives slowly intertwined as the story progressed. Yes, they were totally hot for each other, and it was stellar, but equally enjoyable were the family moments, seeing Grace's influence slowly alter the whole Scott family in heartwarming ways. Josh may have been paying her, but the impact she has on his life, on the lives of his sister and son, all of it, just made me feel good.

The whole book made me feel good. I wanted to gobble Toby up every time he said "arf," and Anna was a complicated, realistic terror. Best friends Amy and Mallory were included in nice ways - not overshadowing Grace and Josh time but adding their own well-known and loved personalities to the story. Matt and Ty were there, too, as Josh's best friends. I loved revisiting them and seeing how happy they all are. It's one of my favorite things about romance series and Shalvis did an excellent job incorporating them as secondary characters. She even included - mostly by mention - the characters from the first three books. It added a layer of continuity to this one that I didn't feel as strongly in the previous two stories.

There just isn't anything that didn't work for me in this book. I thought Grace's issues with her parents and Josh's concerns with being a good father and brother added nice layers of personal conflict for both characters. The storyline evolved very naturally around them and those issues added a pleasant level of depth to their relationship.

There were a lot of different elements written into this book, some even struck more somber notes, yet it still managed to be a light, decadent, sexy romantic treat. This is exactly why Shalvis is one of my top go-to authors for feel-good romance. She writes characters that become old friends and stories that touch my heart even as they entertain my mind. She's done that in every book in this series, some to greater effect than others, but this one exceeds them all.

Grace and Josh's romance really is the hot, gooey, sinfully delicious chocolate on top of a fantastic Lucky Harbor sundae. And I truly can't wait to take another bite.

Quotables:

She didn't look ridiculous at all. She looked the opposite of ridiculous. In fact, she looked good enough to gobble up with a spoon. Without a spoon. He was thinking his tongue would work...

"You have more spiders?"
"No," he said without missing a beat. "No spiders."
"You said spiders," she said. "And I saw a big one in the side yard, in the sprinkler well."
"That spider went south for the winter."
"It's summer."
"He wanted to be the first to get out of town."

Ty pointed his beer at Josh. "Want to know what I think?"
"No," Josh said.
"I think you have a case of being a little girl. Maybe you should prescribe yourself a heavy dose of man-the-fuck-up."

Unfortunately, he was a man through and through, and therefore had a penis, which meant that there'd be no reasoning with him.

The Lucky Harbor Series:

Genre: Paranormal Romance
Series: Dark Dynasties, Book 3
Rating: 4.5 Stars
Length: 361 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Forever publisher Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.





He's a thief. He's an assassin. He's a dissolute rogue. As a Cait Sith and Shade of the House of Shadows, Damien Tremaine is all those things. Mostly though, he's really bloody bored with his long, long life.

The contract to find a missing member of the House of the mysterious - and freaky - Grigori at least provides a bit of a challenge. And if he's lucky, an opportunity to poke someone with something sharp. That's always fun.

Sure, he'd been informed of a rogue female Grigori roaming around, but if he's not getting paid for it, he has no interest in a female who probably resembles her obscenely large and ridiculously manly brethren. Then he actually meets the woman, and even as she's endeavoring to separate his head from his shoulders, Damien is struck dumb by her ethereal beauty and fierce determination. Suddenly boredom is a thing of the past and he can't stop purring long enough to convince her to stop trying to kill him.

All Ariane wants to do is find the only friend she's had in her centuries-long existence. She's fled her desert home and broken most of the Grigori's stringent rules, all in the hopes of locating Sammael. She's certainly not going to let some gorgeous but lowborn, cat-shifting vampire impede her on her quest. Even if she has no leads, no contacts, and no way of knowing where to find either.

He could use her knowledge of her people to aid him in his search. She could use his connections and his experience with a world from which she's been completely sheltered. And when a dark, insidious secret of the Grigori comes to light, a secret they've hidden from the world at large until it's poised to rise up and destroy them all, they will need each other more than either one of them could have ever dreamed...just to survive.


Only three books in and this series is already one of my favorites in paranormal romance, and this book is my favorite of the three. I am a total sucker for antiheroes, and Damien is just my kind of bad, bad boy. Snarky, irreverent, cynical, shallow with the capacity for casual cruelty, he's also loyal and honorable in his own way, and he's his own harshest critic.

And when he meets Ariane and turns into a big purring mess, I was totally sunk. I adored him.

Ariane was great, too, though she's not quite my preferred type in the genre. Her naivety, innocence, and lack of experience didn't thrill me. Combined, they made her character strike a little too close to the virginal heroines most often found in historical romance, but Castle balanced her with the kick-ass fighting skills of a warrior and gave her a pair of killer wings (I love wings). And her easy acceptance (once she stopped trying to skewer him, anyway) of the flawed, complicated Damien endeared me to her quite a lot.

The chemistry between them was instant and hot, and I loved how their relationship evolves as the plot progresses. Though the heat between them was fast, there was quite a lot of natural contention in their relationship at first, and as the story progressed, their partnership grew into a strong romance in a nicely organic fashion.

One of the greatest things about this series in general and this book in particular is the robust the world building, layered plot, and fantastic ancillary elements. The poor, maligned Cait Sith make wonderfully original protagonists. They are all so flawed and damaged, rife with internal conflicts that add delicious layers to their individual characters and subsequent romance arcs. Damien was a perfect addition to their ranks.

I loved finding out more about the Grigori, too. They've been mentioned before in the series but not much was known about them. The revelations were quick, rich, and fabulously intriguing once Ariane was introduced, and the mythos surrounding them built throughout the narrative, creating the foundation for the external conflict and cascading into a shocking climax.

The ending did feel a little abrupt to me, and even after rereading the denouement, I'm not entirely sure what happened, or how things ended up the way they did. There was a big climactic scene, then it was over and the dust settled, but the fallout was noted, not explained. I found it odd that no one questioned it, and I'm still not clear on how the good guys came out on top or what made the bad guys' ending so...simultaneous and inclusive. Perhaps that will be revisited in a later book, but it left me with several questions in this one.

That was the only issue I had with the story, however, and frankly, it didn't really dim the glow all that much. I just love this series and the characters in it who I've come to know and appreciate. One of my favorite secondary characters, Vlad, is in quite a lot of this book, too, so I was all kinds of happy while I was reading. In fact, with two excellent main characters, a fantastic romance, great surrounding story with an entire stable of memorable secondary characters, and just enough plot threads left untied to guarantee more fun reading in future books, what's not to love?

Quotables:

He was charming, damn it! She was supposed to notice!

"Unless I'm missing something important, yes, the man is dead," Damien finally replied. "I think his head is over there behind the desk, if you need further proof. Are you finished being overly dramatic yet?"
"His head?" The vampire gave a pitiful moan, his eyes rolling.
"Ah, apparently not. Lovely."

Ariane reached behind her and drew her blade.
And not just any blade. It was the sort of sword no vampire had any business carrying. The sort of sword that said, "I am ancient and terrible and I don't have time to let those who annoy me live."

"So this is how it ends for me. Afflicted with a plague of Grigori. If anyone else around here grows wings, I'm going to stab them in the head and light them on fire. I've had it."

Dark Dynasties Series:

Genre: Contemporary Romance
Series: Lucky Harbor, Book 5
Rating: 4.5 Stars
Length: 314 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Forever publisher Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




Dedicated bad girl of the chocoholics, the three best friends who bonded over cake and a natural disaster weeks ago, waitress Amy Michaels came to Lucky Harbor to find the hope her grandmother once found there years ago. It had taken her six months, but she was finally searching for it in the mountains that surrounded the town, following a map and the notes from her grandmother's journal. Amy needed to find that hope. The peace her grandmother wrote of wouldn't be bad either.

She didn't want any part of that pesky third thing. Heart. That's the one that tough girl Amy wants to keep well away from her. Anything to do with her heart. She's been burned in that area too many times.

That's why she's so darn cranky when forest ranger Matt Bowers shows up to help her down from the very mountain on which she managed to get completely lost. It's not that she doesn't need his help. She so does. She just doesn't want to need it. And she definitely doesn't want him to be the one to give it to her. He's far too tempting in that damn heart department.

Matt had been circling the tricky Amy ever since she blew into town. There's just something about her that tugs at him. He's been careful, though, because her attitude screams her hands-off stance towards men in general and him in particular. That doesn't mean he can't enjoy goading her a little when she's finally in a position to need his help. Matt's biggest concern, though, isn't getting her off the mountain safely. He can do that in his sleep. It's getting the woman into his arms that's proving to be the biggest challenge.

But Amy Michaels may just be that one challenge that's worth risking everything to win.


I love this Lucky Harbor series so much, and Shalvis just keeps delivering the fun, witty, charming, sexy good reads. Her books, and this series, are even better than brain candy, they're chocolate for the heart. At Last may just be my favorite in the series to this point, and Amy and Matt are two of my favorite characters.

I think the plot of this book had a little more meat on it than its predecessor, too. Or maybe I just related to it better. I was immensely entertained by Amy's search for hope, and thought the addition of Riley's character added all sorts of nifty little elements to the read as it did its work in opening Amy up a bit more and giving her and Matt another point of connection.

And the depth and complexity awarded to both main characters, as well as the nearly perfect chemistry between them, just flat out worked for me in every way.

The friendship between the chocoholics really started to click in this book, too, and the ancillary characters had more impact on the narrative. In a lot of ways, the friendship between the three women appeals to me even more than the relationship between the three sisters in the first three books in the series, but this is the first time I can say I felt the potential for this set of three to be even more entertaining than those.

Shalvis once again secures her position as one of my go-to authors for guilt- (and calorie-) free, sexy, contemporary romance fun. There are always a few serious elements, or things that lean more towards the darker end of the spectrum to add depth and dimension to the story (Lance's cystic fibrosis still kills me), but overall her books just make me feel good as they reliably deliver their heart-warming Happily Ever Afters. This one is absolutely no exception.


The Lucky Harbor Series:

Genre: Historical Paranormal Romance
Series: Darkest London, Book 2
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 384 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Forever publisher Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




With the obligatory year of mourning for a husband she despised now behind her, widow Daisy Ellis Craigmore finally feels free to slip the last lingering shackles of her abusive marriage. She yearns to live a little, feel a little, and experience...more than a little. That's how she finds herself in the alley beside the home of a friend, on the arm of an amorous young gentleman intent on showing her the sort of pleasure she's spent long, painful years without.

Instead, Daisy finds only horror.

Her friend, the host of the party she was attending, lies on the ground like a shattered doll, broken and bloody, and the...thing responsible is still bent over her. Eating. The scream that rips from her throat can do nothing to help her dead friend, but it does draw the attention of the monster that killed her.

Disenfranchised with his long, lonely life, lycan Ian Randulf is running the streets of London when he first catches the scent of blood, then smells the werewolf responsible for it. Before he can process either, he's goaded into action by the screams piercing the air and the sound of flesh being torn. By the time he reaches the source it's too late. A man and woman lay savaged, but a young woman hidden beneath one of the bodies is still alive.

And her scent tantalizes him in ways he hadn't felt in far too long.

Getting her away from that nightmare and into his home is his only thought, but when he finds out who she is and what she saw, Ian fears that a rogue werewolf may be the least of his problems. Saving the delightful Daisy Ellis may very well end up being the very death of him. Then again, there were worse ways to go.


I was pretty blown away by Firelight, Callihan's first book in the Darkest London series. It was so utterly original, with a deftly-woven and unique story that captivated me. It appealed to me to such a degree that I prepared myself for the likelihood that the second book in the series wouldn't have quite the same impact, and in truth it didn't, but it did provide a hell of a good read and a couple of characters I really enjoyed.

I loved Ian. In fact, I adored him. He was so deliciously burdened by his past and wounded by his present, yet he had a solid, good, and decent heart. He was even a bit of a helpless git at times, poor thing, especially when he was being disconcerted by Daisy's unpredictable nature. He was a great romantic hero.

Daisy wasn't quite so universally appealing to me. I liked her, and I did love her pert attitude when dealing with Ian, but she was fairly traditional for the genre. Her character lacked a bit of the devastating charm that Ian managed so effortlessly. I did like them together, though, and the arc of their romance was very nicely done.

I wasn't thrilled with the plot line of the werewolf, but that may have been more an issue of my expectations. I was so thoroughly impressed with the mythos and storyline of the first book that a second installment featuring werewolves and lycan just seemed a bit pedestrian in comparison. It wasn't bad, and without a doubt, Callihan weaves a complex and satisfying external conflict, but it lacked a bit of that wow factor.

The end of the book, however, was a real problem for me. The climax and subsequent resolution had elements that just seemed a bit too convenient, and the ending depressed me. I truly wish there had been another road chosen for Daisy's character. I won't give away spoilers, but it just didn't sit well with me. Combined with the epilogue, which was also a pretty big downer, the book ended on a lower note than it began.

Still, I love the Gothic tone of this world and Callihan crafts a truly authentic-feeling historical with three dimensional characters and a dark, edgy narrative. Despite the few issues I had, I still enjoyed the bulk of the read and Ian handily supplanted Archer as my favorite character of the series. I'm looking forward to the next installment.


The Darkest London Series: