Collected by Mary Jo
Christina Courtenay Contributes:
Following a Wench recommendation, I have spent this month immersed in the world of the Brooklyn Bruisers, a series by Sarina Bowen. Starting with Rookie Move, it follows the members of a new ice hockey team based in Brooklyn, each of whom falls in love in spectacular fashion. As a huge fan of ice hockey, I’ve really enjoyed this series and am now working my way through various spin-offs as well. I’ll probably also read all the other books by this author as soon as I can.
Rookie Move features Leo, a player who has spent the last six years trying to succeed in the NHL and also get over the girl who broke his heart in high school. Unfortunately for him, when he’s taken on by the Bruisers he finds that the team’s publicist is his former girlfriend Georgia, and the coach is her father, who hates him with a vengeance. As for Georgia, she had suffered her own trauma and the last thing she wants is to work with Leo. Keeping their relationship strictly professional is never going to be easy …
Amazon’s algorithms obviously noticed my interest in hockey and also suggested a New Adult series by Elle Kennedy, starting with The Deal, which features the ice hockey players of Briar University. I don’t usually read much New Adult stuff as they tend to be set in US colleges with sororities and frat boys, which I’m not massively keen on, but the characters in these stories aren’t preppy and the heroines are unusual and likeable. The heroes are players in every sense of the word, but they all get ‘tamed’ by the right girl and I loved following their journeys towards falling in love.
The Deal features a hero who needs some tutoring to raise his GPA, otherwise he’ll be kicked off the hockey team which is his whole life. When the girl he asks for help only agrees if he’ll help her make another guy jealous, he is intrigued, especially as she seems immune to his own charms (unlike all the other girls on campus). It doesn’t take him long to realise he wants her for himself but can he convince her of that when she’s got her sights set on someone else?
Pat Rice's suggestions:
As might not be obvious <G>, I have a thing for books about bookshops. While the protagonist in The Lost for Words Bookshop, by Stephanie Butland, works in a bookshop, this book is about her and not the books.
Loveday has been broken since tragedy struck her family when she was ten. Because she’s a reader, she loses herself in books and pushes people away. She’s twenty-five and still pushing people away when the book opens. The power of the writing drags the reader inside Loveday, makes you feel with her, not just for her. We see her strong enough to put an abusive boyfriend aside without hating him, because she knows he’s broken, too. But we see her too weak to ask for help until it’s almost too late, but we understand her reluctance. Along with Loveday we meet an extraordinary collection of wonderful people from the bigger-than-life, richer-than-sin bookstore owner to the charming magician/poet who was once an awkward teen. This is a coming-of-age book with fabulous characters and a sweet romance. Highly recommended for people who love good characterization without a lot of action plot.
And of course, I have to recommend our own Anne Gracie's The Scoundrel's Daughter, because I read and love everything Anne writes. The first of a new series, the Brides of Bellaire Gardens, The Scoundrel’s Daughter is classic Gracie, only twice as good—with two wonderful couples! Just sink into the beautifully drawn Regency setting, enjoy meeting the distinct and charming characters, laugh at the humor (this has one of the best set-down of a harpy scenes I’ve ever read), swoon at the delightful romance, and escape reality for a few wonderful hours!
Nicola's turn:
Nicola here. This month’s reading has mostly been recommendations for the previous WWRs, including Fake by Kylie Scott, which Christina mentioned last month and which had me totally hooked from the start. I loved down-to-earth waitress Norah and way in which she dealt with moody- but- gorgeous fake boyfriend Patrick, the movie star. The way their relationship developed was so well written and the hot romance was fun! I’m already lining up my next book by Kylie Scott.
On a different note, The Silver Collar by Antonia Hodgson is a brilliant historical novel set in the 18th century. It’s the fourth book in a series but I read it as a stand alone and that worked fine. Thomas Hawkins is a gentleman fallen from grace who is a bit of an adventurer and a rogue. His relationship with bookshop-owner Kitty Sparks is witty and fun and they make a great couple. The book is set in the seedier side of London, amongst the criminals and backstreets and rookeries, and Thomas’s sidekick, Sam Fleet, is a product of these, a shadowy character who is a remarkable creation. When an evil enemy threatens to bring both Thomas and Kitty to destruction, they need all their collective ingenuity to foil the plot. The book vividly portrays the dark side of London society and has themes that include slavery, but what I loved about it is the way the darkness is balanced by humour – it’s very funny, and the dialogue is great – and it comes together as a riveting read.
Mary Jo's weighs in:
Sarah Dessen is a thoughtful, intelligent writer of young adult novels. Her protagonists are young women at turning points in their lives, and they learn a great deal of wisdom about themselves and their places in the world during the course of the story--often the length of a summer. In Along for the Ride, Auden West is the narrator and the summer is between her high school graduation and her first year of college.
Auden is the daughter of two self-absorbed academics, now divorced. Having been raised without much attention from her parents, she's a very good student with very few social skills and a bad case of insomnia.
Bored at home with her mother, she decides to spend the summer with her selfish father and his new, much younger wife, who has just had a baby. The situation is stressful all around, and Auden survives by roaming through her insomniac nights. Then she meets Eli, another night roamer, and through him and a part time job at her stepmother's beach town boutique, she learns about friendship, how to be a girl, and how to become herself. And there are a lot of bicycles around!.
Also a couple of dittos. We Wenches often pick up books based on the recommendations of other Wenches. Having heard great enthusiasm for Kylie Scott's Fake, I decided to give it a try, and thoroughly enjoyed the book. Scott has the gift of creating a relationship that is believable and compelling. Patrick is the gorgeous actor who has been caught up in a scandal, and in order to improve his reputation, his publicists want him to have a positive romantic relationship with a fake girlfriend. He wants someone real, so he chooses Norah, the waitress serving his pasta. It's a delight watching this relationship develop in a believable way!
Another great DITTO is for our Anne Gracie's just released Regency Historical, The Scoundrel's Daughter. Several Wenches had recommended it enthusiastically with plot descriptions so I won't say much more, except that I've read it twice and my husband the Mayhem Consultant has now latched onto my copy. (Yes, he loves Anne's writing!)
Anne here.
Regular readers of this column might recall my love for Lucy Parker's books, and her newest, Battle Royal,is delightful. Set in the world of the hit baking show, Operation Cake, the two competing real life bakeries belonging to the hero and heroine, and the world of English royalty — it's a fun romp with some lovely touching moments.
Sylvie, the heroine, loves sparkle, quirk and fantasy in her cake creations. Dominic, the hero, is from a traditional baking background that had royal approval in the past. He prefers classic perfection. Now they're butting heads, both in the TV show where they're judges (and where Sylvie was once a contestant), and in competition to be selected to bake the wedding cake for the royal wedding of Princess Rose, an unconventional gamer/goth princess, and her ordinary guy fiancé Johnny.
Lively, laugh out loud funny in place, the fun and banter zips along, until you're suddenly in a poignant and beautifully emotional scene. That's what separates Lucy Parker from the usual rom-com writer — she makes you laugh and she also touches your heart. Highly recommended.
A new-to-me author is Annie Darling, and I've now read all four of her series set in the Lonely Hearts Bookshop. Book #1, The Little Bookshop of Lonely Hearts, is where the heroine inherits a struggling bookshop and decides to reinvent it as a romance specialist bookshop — much to the disgust of the original owner's nephew (who of course is the hero). I enjoyed it, but I didn't much like the hero who was billed as the rudest man in London — and was. But the rest of the characters were great and the writing is delightful. I read books 2, 3, and 4 in quick succession and loved every one of them.
Book #2, True Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop, is about Verity, an introvert and Jane Austen fan who works in the bookshop and after having her heart broken once, has given up on love, and has invented a boyfriend who she uses to get out of uncomfortable social occasions. Then a real man steps into the breach, a man who wants a fake girlfriend. True Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop is funny, laugh out loud in places, and refreshingly different.
And now Andrea Penrose!
First of all, I will chime in on how much I loved Anne’s new book, The Scoundrel’s Daughter. One of the things that makes her Regencies so special is that she crafts such interesting and richly textured characters and stories. They aren’t set in the fancy ballrooms and country estates where the heart of the story takes place within a world of pomp and privilege. She has her heroines facing real life—the threat of poverty; loneliness; how to survive when circumstances take a wrong turn—and she shows how grit, determination, hope, and most of all compassion and love, give then the strength to overcome the challenges. Her heroes are equally wonderful. She always gives them tiny flaws—they are starchy or a bit alpha—but they are always unshakably honorable. Watching her bring them together with their heroines is always a joy. Don’t miss this one. (Hint, you get TWO love stories in one!)
Now, my other read this month likely won’t have most of you running out to add it to your TBR list, but I found it a wonderful read. I really enjoy non-fiction books on animals and the natural world, so, as this one was chosen as a NY Times Notable Book of the Year, and NPR really liked it too, I couldn’t resist. Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World’s Largest Owl by Jonathan Slaght takes the reader on a fascinating trek through the wilds of eastern Russia as the author seeks to help find and observe the Blakiston Fish Owl, a very rare species which is the largest owl in the world.
A chance sighting on another conservation mission make Slaght fall in love with them, and he then joined a Russian team to study them in the wild. And quite a wild place it is! From drinking vodka with hermits in primitive cabins, to falling through the ice on their snowmobiles to worrying about being eaten by a Siberian tiger, things are never dull! If you like armchair adventuring, it’s great fun, and Slaght writes beautifully about Nature and the magnificent but shy owls.
(Don’t miss seeing his short video on the Amazon page of the book, where he narrates why he’s passionate about saving them while showing the rugged environment and the owls themselves—which look like Jim Henson creations from the Muppets!) As it say in the book’s Amazon description, the book is “ . . . a testament to the determination, creativity, and resolve required by field research and a powerful reminder of the beauty, strength, and vulnerability of the natural world.”
That's all for now, folks! Happy reading--
Mary Jo