Review: Playing it Safe

Playing it Safe by Amy Andrews
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Donovan Bane is a big tattooed half-Maori professional rugby player. Divorced, with a daughter who lives with her mother in New Zealand, he is devoted to being the best player he can be for the Sydney Smoke. Donovan is hiding a big secret, he's gay, but there are no openly gay professional rugby players out there and he doesn't want the furore of being the first one to come out, so he's resigned to staying in the closet until he retires a few years down the line, anyway it's not as if he has any experience with men, not since a disastrous first encounter years ago when he was still married.

Then pow! Donovan is sitting with two of his teammates' wives and baby having a coffee when the women spot a sexy guy wearing a Sydney Smoke lanyard. Donovan can't take his eyes off this sexy accountant, which is a surprise because he always thought he would be attracted to a sportsman or some more outdoorsy, and Beck can't take his eyes off Donovan, although he seems to understand that Donovan is hiding his sexuality and doesn't flirt with him.

It might have been the most innocent of meetings but Donovan can't help thinking about Beck, about how he had the courage to be totally honest about his sexuality, about mentioning his ex-boyfriend to relative strangers, about how gorgeous he was. Heck obsessing about Beck is putting him off his game, the most reliable player on the field!

Beck has been in a relationship with someone who keeps his sexuality a secret and he doesn't want to do it again, but this big, sexy rugby player is so cute and so sexy he's breaking his own rules.

This is the bit where Amy Andrews calls me out in her newsletter (again), of course the sex scenes are H.O.T.I just felt that there wasn't enough story/plot linking the sex scenes, not enough tension, no plot twist, no misunderstandings, no homophobic friends/teammates/family, no grit. I thought Kate Meader did it better in Undone By You, and yet it's a shorter book.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

View all my reviews

Review: Battle Royal

Battle Royal by Lucy Parker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Four and a half stars.

Four years ago Sylvie Fairchild was a contestant on baking reality show Operation Cake. Now she has her own cake shop and she's been invited to be a judge on the show, alongside her nemesis Dominic De Vere. Never have there been two such opposites. Sylvie's designs are whimsical, unicorns and fairies, rainbows and glitter (literally) whereas Dominic's designs are austere, shades of white and ivory, cream if he is feeling totally out-of-the-box, flawlessly executed with exquisite flavours and beautiful decoration, but (whisper) a bit boring. To add extra piquancy, Sylvie's shop Sugar Fair is immediately opposite Dominic's shop, which has been in his family for generations.

Then rumour has it that Princess Rosie is getting engaged to a nobody. The goth princess has a unique style, nothing like the rest of the royal family, and being invited to make the wedding cake would bring fame, fortune and many new orders to the lucky baker.

I love Lucy Parker's theatrical romances and this looks like it could be a great new series (I have high hopes for Dominic's sister Pet and X). Filled with Lucy's trademark lovable characters, charming settings and multi-layered plots it was a joy to read, and I devoured it in less than 24 hours!

Another sparkling winner from an auto-buy author. Loved it.

View all my reviews

Review: Flirt With Me

Flirt With Me by Kristen Proby
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Meh, meh, meh.

Maeve O'Callaghan is a real-estate agent on a small, but exclusive island, just across Puget Sound from Seattle by day. By night she tends bar at her family's Irish bar. Clearly this is a spin-off of a spin-off given that this is seventeenth in the With Me in Seattle series, and I'm afraid it shows. A cast of multiple couples, most of them rich, famous, or both, yet all working in the family bar, come on?

Hunter Meyers has recently retired from MMA. He's a single father with a wayward teenage daughter, desperate to get her out of Seattle and away from the bad influences. He's engaged Maeve to find him a house with a view.

This book just screams category small-town romance to me. Pretty short, some dramatic tension which is (frankly) over before it has even begun, a flaky baby-mamma who tries to cause trouble, and some brief smexy times (so brief that I worried about Hunter's stamina LOL).

I'm sorry to say I've read loads of this type of book before with a stereotypical large Irish family, each sibling (and usually then cousins or newly discovered half-siblings) getting their own book. After a while they all get a bit same-same and this is no exception.

I received an ARC of this book from Valentine PR & Literary Management in return for an honest review.

View all my reviews

Review: Long Shadows

Long Shadows by Jodi Taylor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Where on earth to start?

First off, DO NOT start the series with this book, it is complicated enough for those of us who have read the preceding books for a new reader I think it would be almost impossible.

Elizabeth Cage was a very boring, ordinary, housewife, married to the head of security for a local research facility. But she has a secret, she can see people's auras (or colours as she describes it) and that can give her insights into people's emotions and whether they are lying. After her husband's death, Elizabeth is pursued by the sinister head of research, Sorenson.

Elizabeth thinks she has found some form of equilibrium/mutually assured destruction with Sorenson so she and Michael Jones (a shadowy MI5-type character) take a long-overdue holiday in Scotland. Unfortunately, despite their best plans, Elizabeth's 'gift' leads them into conflict almost immediately.

Someone else has said they couldn't describe the plot because plot because 'spoilers'. Suffice it to say this book contains: a hunky secret agent type with witty repartee, a huge sword, a smelly dog, Christmas, several ghosts, ancient gods, demons, murders, kidnapping, and a date. And of course, long dark shadows.

It was mad, gripping, funny, scary, and sweet all at once. Loved it.

View all my reviews

Review: Take a Moment

Take a Moment by Nina Kaye
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Alex seems to be having the time of her life. Engaged to her childhood sweetheart Dom, flying high as an IT Project Manager, and planning her dream wedding in her beloved Glasgow. Then a fall at work leads to a shocking diagnosis and things start to fall apart.

Alex's changed circumstances might be life-altering, but it's the effect it has on her friends and family that is the most devastating. Over night it seems as though everyone is treating her like an invalid. Her mother and sister take over the wedding planning, and overrule all Alex's decisions. Dom treats her as though she doesn't know her own mind and she's been given a non-urgent make-work project to manage at work instead of the exciting project she was managing before the diagnosis. Even her best friend Sasha is treating her like an imbecile.

Determined that a medical diagnosis won't force her to be an invalid, and after a devastating argument with Dom, Alex decides to move to Birmingham, away from her the well-meaning, but suffocating, embrace of her friends and family. A new home, a new job, an employer who respects and accommodates her medical issues. The only fly in the ointment is one of her co-workers, Danielle, who unsuccessfully applied for the job that Alex won.

Romance, office politics, and karaoke, what's not to love?

This was a charming, yet insightful, romance and love letter to the overlooked city of Birmingham. It shone an honest light onto the limitations that such a diagnosis imposes, but also confirms that it doesn't stop you from living a good, exciting, and interesting life. I read that the author Nina Kaye has had a similar diagnosis and I think that is what makes this such an honest novel.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

View all my reviews

Review: Impassioned

Impassioned by Darcy Burke
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Be careful what you wish for ...

I read the first book in this new series and found the premise (a group of men who set up their own gentlemen's gambling club) a little bit too similar to another historical romance series I'd read. However, I was intrigued to read the story of the Earl of Aldington, Constantine Westbrooke (elder brother of the founder of the Phoenix Club), and his bloodless marriage so I jumped at the chance of this when I saw the ARC available on NetGalley.

Constantine and his wife Sabrina's marriage was arranged by their parents. Constantine's father is controlling and Constantine has spent his life trying to earn his father's approval. Sabrina has crippling anxiety and her parents constantly criticise her. Ever since their marriage Constantine and Sabrina have barely spent any time together, bar a perfunctory fortnight each year. He spends his time in London while she resides at their country estate. But Sabrina has overcome her anxiety and come to London, determined to have a baby.

Sabrina and Constantine have been misled about each other by their respective parents and each has made erroneous assumptions about the other, in an effort to unravel the misunderstandings, Constantine's brother arranges for Sabrina to pose as a courtesan to (verbally) coach Constantine on the art of seducing his wife.

I felt like I deceived myself with this book. In my head it was supposed to be a bit like the relationship in The Scarlett Pimpernel, two people desperately in love with each other but for 'reasons' treating each other with icy disdain/politeness. Unfortunately, this book was more about Lessons in Love and standing up to your mean parents.

Again, I liked but I didn't love it. It felt like Sabrina was the driving force in the relationship and Constantine was a bit wet TBH, but I'm not a fan of the 'disguising yourself to date/make love to your own spouse' whether it's in literature or music.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

View all my reviews

Review: The Man Who Died Twice

The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Four and a half well-earned stars.

Welcome back to the exclusive retirement village in Kent, home to the Thursday Murder Club where our four intrepid retirees are champing at the bit to solve another mystery.

Elizabeth (ex-MI5) receives a mysterious letter from a dead man which draws her back into the shadowy world of espionage, £20 million of stolen diamonds, the mafia, a black market 'fixer', drug dealers, and a rather distressing number of grisly murders for such a beautiful part of the English countryside.

The trick to a good detective story (in my opinion) is to keep the reader guessing the identity of the murderer for as long as possible, but not make the clues so convoluted and obscure that the reader can't recognise them in retrospect. Richard Osman does such a great job of this and I liked this probably even more than the first book. Roll on the next ...

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

View all my reviews

Review: I Love You, I Hate You: All's fair in love and law in this irresistible enemies-to-lovers rom-com!

I Love You, I Hate You: All's fair in love and law in this irresistible enemies-to-lovers rom-com! by Elizabeth Davis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Victoria Clemenceaux is a brilliant young in-house lawyer working for a soulless big corporation called Smorgasbord, based in . It's her job to quash any hints of law suits against the company and she's very good at it. She loathes her employer but it pays mega-bucks and as the daughter of a teen single-mother who has battled poverty her entire life, money is important. She has huge college debts and she would dearly love to buy her mother a house so working anywhere else for a lower salary is out of the question. Her arch-nemesis is Owen Pohl, the original Trust Fund kid, son of one of the richest families in the Upper Midwest, who has set up his own law firm who now likes to take on big business, and Victoria's employer is one of the largest in Minnesota, which is handy when it comes to depositioning senior management. They may hate each other in the Courtroom but its the sort of fiery hatred that leads to hate-sex.

What Victoria and Owen don't know is that while they may be arch-enemies in real life, they are close friends on Twitter. Neither uses their real names and Victoria has always been deliberately vague about her job and her physical location because her liberal, feminist views often attract trolls. Victoria has always been so focused on her career she doesn't really have any physical friends, only groups of like-minded individuals on Twitter. Even then, it is only 'Luke' to whom she opens up and spills all her hopes, fears, and insecurities.

IDK, is it a significant anniversary of the release of You've Got Mail? This is the second or third retelling of the film I have read this year, which itself was of course a remake of the film The Shop Around the Corner, which in itself was (according to Wiki) based on a Hungarian play. The trouble with reboots is how to keep the story interesting without totally departing from the original (by which I mean the Tom Hanks version because that's my era).

Well, the answer is, in this case, really well! I have issues with the Tom Hanks film, namely why he deliberately manipulates the situation, acting as his own Cyrano de Bergerac if you like. Elizabeth Davis does this brilliantly. She totally explains why Own doesn't admit he is Victoria's Twitter friend Luke (as in Skywalker) when he finds out - and it makes sense! And it doesn't make him a douche.

The only reason this isn't four stars is because I found the sex scenes both too frequent and not very sexy. I get that they are f*ckbuddies, but it wasn't very erotic. Conversely, I found the inevitable break-up scenes really moving and they brought me to tears.

Finally, a retelling of the Tom Hanks film which addresses my issues with the film in a way that makes sense. I will certainly look out for other books by Elizabeth Davis in future.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

View all my reviews

Review: Her Last Hope

Her Last Hope by Louise Guy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Two women starting over become friends.

Abi's comfortable life in a wealthy suburb of Melbourne comes to an abrupt end when her husband commits suicide. He has been investing client money without consent and lost it all in a property scam. Ostracised by her former friends, made redundant from her job, and estranged from her teenage son, she gets a job as apartment manager for a run down block of apartments in Elsternwick with an apartment on site.

Lucinda is married to a drug dealer and all-round gangster, when Ryan is jailed for two years for assault she takes her opportunity to vanish without a trace and make a new life in Melbourne with her son Max with a false identity. A chance meeting with a kind, elderly couple at breakfast in the hotel on her first night in Melbourne persuades Lucinda to move to the Elsternwick area of Melbourne. Abi's first job is to get a tenant for an empty apartment and Lucinda seems like the perfect tenant, clean, respectable and able to pay two months rent in advance.

Faced at every turn by fresh evidence of Eric's perfidy (sorry, never used that word before but it just popped into my head) Abi sinks deeper into depression, not helped by her son's cutting remarks. Meanwhile Lucinda and Max are enjoying making a new life away from Ryan's violence, making friends and creating a home. But are all their new friends exactly what they seem?

The trouble with this kind of suspense is that the writer needs to drop enough hints for the reader to realise (as they said on Through The Keyhole) that 'the clues were there' and not so few that the reader is blindsided but not so many that the reader can see things coming a mile off. Unfortunately for me, this fell into the the latter category, I thought the clue dropping was so heavy that Lucinda was a fool to stay in Melbourne and I doubt that anyone on the run from a violent criminal would continue to interact with anyone who gave off an odd vibe.

As always this was a well-written novel with engaging characters, just a little obvious for my tastes.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

View all my reviews

Review: The Secrets of Latimer House

The Secrets of Latimer House by Jules Wake
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Latimer House in the English countryside near Amersham is a secret base where allied troops interrogate captured German soldiers and sailors. Three very different women are recruited.

Evelyn, a society heiress whose father and brother are fighting for King and country, previously engaged to a German aristocrat her impeccable German and good looks help to make the prisoners more amenable.

Judith a German Jew who lost everything in Kristallnacht has been in England since 1938 but has never truly fit in. Her job will be to listen to private conversations between prisoners in their cells to see if they reveal any secrets away from their interrogators.

Betty is a local girl, she relished working in London away from her fussy mother and her sort-of fiancé Bert, but concern for her younger sister leads her to request a transfer to work at the Distribution Centre which has been set up at the local stately home.

Billeted together, doing top secret work, these three women form an unlikely friendship.

I thought that this would be more like The Rose Code which I read and really enjoyed earlier this year. However, this was less about the work and more about the romances, pleasant enough but not what I was really looking for. Also, it was all a bit predictable and don't even get me started on the 'coincidence' at the USAF dance!

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

View all my reviews

Review: The Winter of Second Chances

The Winter of Second Chances by Jenny Bayliss
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Annie Sharpe has a golden life, wife to Max, her childhood sweetheart, with twin sons Peter and Alex, and chef/owner of a MIchelin starred restaurant. Then a small error on her part leads Annie to confront a truth she's been ignoring for too long. A chance sighting of an unusual advertisement leads Annie to a role as short-term caretaker of a tiny cottage on the Kent coast called Saltwater Nook (the cottage not the village) while its owner holidays with a friend in Cornwall.

The village of Willow Bay is small and friendly, soon Annie, and Saltwater Nook are at the heart of village life, hosting various festivals and parties to mark the passing of the seasons. The only issue is her landlady's nephew John, who seems determined to sell Saltwater Nook to a developer.

This was a pleasant, albeit predictable, small town, over-40 contemporary romance. Annie is a likable character and her revival of the Saltwater Nook cafe acts as a hub for the community as the tourists leave.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

View all my reviews