Love & Romance

Audiobook: Kiss Her Once for Me

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by Alison Cochrun
Read by: Natalie Naudus
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: It’s a romance, so there are sexytimes. And lots and lots of kissing. Plus swearing, including f-bombs. It’s in the romance section of the bookstore.

Ellie Oliver had one perfect day. It was Christmas Eve, and she was sad that her mother (again) wouldn’t visit her in Portland. She was about to start her dream job. Then, during a snowstorm, she met the perfect woman and spent the perfect day. A year later, though, Ellie’s life is a mess: she was fired from the perfect job, she’s working as a barista in a dive of a coffee shop, and worst of all: she had her heart broken by the perfect woman. So when the landlord of the coffee shop suggests a fake engagement so he can inherit $2 million (and give her 10%) she jumps at the chance. The catch? His sister is said perfect woman who broke Ellie’s heart. In a crazy, event-filled week at the family’s winter cabin, Ellie has to make a choice: the safe, fake marriage and money for true love.

(You can guess which one she chooses.)

The thing about romance books is that it’s the characters that pull you in and keep you interested. Readers basically know how the plot is going to go. And this one, my friends, has some excellent characters. From Ellie herself to the fantastic love interest, Jack, to the high and/or stoned grandmothers. It’s all a lot of fun. And the narrator is just sublime. So, even though I read a Christmas book in July, it was totally worth it. Such fun, such delight, such adorableness.

Audiobook: Unnecessary Drama

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by Nina Kenwood
Read by: Maddy Withington
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Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is some swearing, including a few f-bombs, teenage drinking (though it’s legal in Australia), and some off-screen sex. It’s in the Teen section (grades 9+) of the bookstore.

Brooke is off to her first year of uni, and she just wants a fresh start. Sure, she’s overly anxious and prone to making lists and cleaning when she’s stressed, but now that she’s in Melbourne and away from everything, she’s going to be a New Person. That all falls apart when she discovers that one of the roommates in her shared house is Jesse, the boy from high school who completely dumped on her when she was 14 and has been her nemisis ever since.

You know where this is going, right?

Not only is it a very cute, solid, enemies-to-lovers trope – of course Jesse and Brooke start out hating each other, but slowly become friends. BUT there’s ALSO fake dating! When out at a bar to celebrate their other roommate, Harper’s, birthday, they run into Brooke’s ex-boyfriend, and because she doesn’t want to look like a pathetic fool, she ropes Jesse into being her boyfriend for the night. Except that lights a fire….

There’s also the “no dating roommates” rule at the house…

It’s a lot of cute, silly, fun. Fun that made me laugh out loud and shake my head at the pure anxiousness and need-to-be-in-control that Brooke has. Jesse is a good foil for everything, and he turns out to be really sweet. I love that it’s set during the first year of uni, and talks about the transition from high school to college. And the narrator with her Australian accent was a delight too.

So, yeah, I really liked this one.

Audiobook: Same Time Next Summer

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by Annabel Monaghan
Read by Brittany Pressley and Dan Bittner
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Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is some mild swearing, and a couple of f-bombs. There is also some sexy times, but mostly off-screen. It’s in the romance section of the bookstore.

Sam has always felt most alive on the beach at her family’s Long Island summer home. With the waves, the freedom, the long days, and with Wyatt, the boy next door. They even had one spectacular summer where they spent every day together, falling in love. But at the end of that summer, they had a falling out, and now it’s been fourteen years since they’ve seen each other. Sam is back at the beach house with her fiance, Jack, for a week as she is dealing with a misstep at her job and they’re trying to figure out where to get married that October. And guess who’s back next-door? Wyatt, of course, fresh in from LA to help out with a music festival in their beach town.

What does that mean for Sam? Has she gotten over him? Is closure what she needs? Or maybe a whole new lease on life?

This one was really sweet. I liked Sam as a character, and I liked that she learned to come back into herself over the course of the book. It wasn’t as steamy as some of the other ones I’ve read lately, but it went hard for the summertime, hippy living, beach town vibe and it absolutely nailed that. I loved the narrators, and the way they made the characters come alive. It was thoroughly delightful, especially on audio.

Audiobook: Rubi Ramos’s Recipe for Success

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by Jessica Parra
Read by: Karla Serrato
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Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is some kissing. It’s in the YA section (grades 6-8) of the bookstore.

Graduation is fast approaching and Rubi Ramos has everything all planned out. She is going to go to Alma college and study pre-law, and do Great Things. The only problem? She’s been waitilsted at Alma. And what she really wants to do is bake. However, for her Cuban immigrant parents who own two bakeries, baking for Rubi isn’t an option. So, Rubi has a plan: she’s going to get a math tutor to help pull her class standing up (who turns out to be really cute), and she’s going to compete in the Bake Off (without her parents knowing) and hopefully win – which comes with a trip to Cuba.

Of course, things don’t go smoothly, and there are bumps along the way.

This was a delightful romp. It’s got a baking competition! It’s got a surfer dude! It’s got immigrant parents! It’s got Cuban heritage! I liked the relationship Rubi had with her parents; they were firm and wanted a lot for Rubi, but in the end weren’t unreasonable about working with what she wanted. I loved Rubi’s friends, and the support system she had. And the whole baking competition – which was quite definintly a reference to the Great British Bake Off – with it’s baking puns and Johnny Oliver judge, was charming and silly.

The narrator was quite good as well, and I enjoyed the time I spent listening to this one. A good, fun, summery YA book.

Audiobook: Darkhearts

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by James L. Sutter
Read by Ramon de Ocampo
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Or listen at Libro.fm
Release date: June 6, 2023
Content: There is a lot of swearing, including quite a few f-bombs, talk of sex, and some tasteful on-screen sex. It will be in the Teen section of the bookstore.

In middle school, David started a band – Darkhearts – with his friends Eli and Chance. They had some success playing gigs in the Seattle area, where they lived, but after a while, David got annoyed with Eli and Chance hogging the spotlight and so quit the band. However, after he left, Darkhearts got huge. Like super huge. And David’s held a grudge ever since because he feels he missed out. 

But, Chance is back in town – Eli died of an overdose, and Chance came for the funeral and to regroup – and wants to reconnect with David. At first, David goes along with it grudgingly, but after a while he realizes something: he really likes Chance. Like really likes Chance. Is he going to be able to get past everything else – Chance’s fame, his own resentment, his father’s concern – and be able to throw himself into this relationship? Does he even want to? 

This was so incredibly delightful. The characters, the depection of a teenage boy band, the cool things they went. David’s best freind, Rachel. The fluidity of his sexuality, and the total non-issue that it was. The romance – and while it kind of followed the beats of a romance novel, I appreciated David’s growth over the whole thing. De Ocampo was a fabulous narrator as well; pulling me into a story that I may have dismissed in print. 

Highly recommended.

The Seven Year Slip

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by Ashley Poston
First sentence: “‘This apartment is magical,’ Aunt Analea once said, sitting in her wingback chair the color of robin’s eggs, her hair twisted up with a silver dagger hairpin.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: June 27, 2023
Review copy sent to me by the publisher rep who has definitely got a bead on what I like to read.
Content: There is some swearing, including multiple f-bombs, and a couple of on-screen sex scenes. It will be in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Celemtine’s favorite aunt has just died and left Clementine her apartment. She’s having a hard time with her aunt’s death, and it’s difficult to go home to a place where her aunt had filled with so much life. That is until she opened the door one day to seven years in the past when Iwan was staying in the apartment. (Poston tells you in the first sentence, that the apartment is magical. She meant it!) Iwan is an up-and-coming chef, someone who wants to make it big in the culinary world. But Clementine’s aunt had two rules about the apartment: 1) always take off your shoes. And 2) never fall in love. When you’re in love with someone seven years in the past, finding them in the present is an impossibility. Isn’t it?

Oh, I adored this. I sat down to read just a bit one day and when I came up for air, I was nearly done with the book. Clementine and Iwan are fantastic characters, and I liked how, while this was a romance, it didn’t follow your typical romance book tropes. When you’re playing with time like Poston is here, you open up a whole lot more possibilities and I enjoyed that.

It just was a perfect book to sit and read on a lazy day. And I’m so glad I did.

Don’t Call Me a Hurricane

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by Ellen Hagan
First sentence: “‘Grab your board,’ Isa shouts, throwing open the screen door letting sunshine and cool breeze into our living room.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy pilfered from the ARC shelves at work
Content: There is mention of teenage drinking and some intense moments with a natural disaster. It’s in the Teen section (grades 9+) of the bookstore.

Eliza’s life hasn’t been the same in the five years since the hurricane hit her island off the Jersey shore. Sure, her family’s still living there, still scraping by, but the island itself has changed. Developers have come in, and bought up houses, knocked them down, in the name of progress. The latest example? They want to build out the marshland. And Eliza – and her friends – don’t want to lose that much of their island.

It also doesn’t help that a new boy – Milo – is from New York City, is one of those rich summer-only island visitors and that Eliza seems to be falling for him.

This one had all the elements I like: it’s about the ocean and island living! It’s got a strong female character! It’s a novel in verse! There’s a strong environmental message! But it fell completely flat. Not so flat that I didn’t finish it, but flat enough that I found myself skimming the chapters, just enough to get the information. I wanted to like this one so much more than I actually did. Not sure where it went wrong: Eliza is a good character and Hagan does a good job of showing the trauma after a natural disaster (though she did amp up the stakes by almost killing Eliza’s brother in the storm), but I just didn’t connect with it.

Audiobook: Ander & Santi Were Here

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by Jonny Garza Villa
Read by: Avi Roque
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Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is a lot of swearing, including many f-bombs, marijuana use, and mention of sex (it’s not quite on-screen, but not entirely off- either)

Ander is taking a gap year after they graduated high school to figure things out. They’ve been accepted into a prestigious art school in Chicago, but for right now, they’re doing an internship with a non-profit in their hometown of San Antonio. But then their parents and grandmother hire Santi at their taquira, and Ander’s world turns upside down. But it’s not just first love: Santi is an undocumented immigrant, which poses all kinds of complications for their relationship.

I really enjoyed this one, especially on audio. The narrator was fantastic, and kept me interested the whole way through. But, it was also about art and finding one’s voice (can you find a voice in art?) and expressing the true version of oneself. It’s about this country’s messed-up immigration system. But it was also about family, and being there for and supporting each other.

I loved how effortless that Latinx elements were, and how much Villa just sprinkled it with Spanish. it felt very authentic and real, and I could just imagine Ander and Santi at different places around San Antonio. An excellent read.

Mrs. Nash’s Ashes

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by Sarah Adler
First sentence: “Rose McIntyre Nash died peacefully in her sleep at age ninety-eight, and now I carry part of her with me wherever I go.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: May 23, 2023
ARC pilfered from the shelves at the bookstore.
Content: There swearing, including a few f-bombs, talk of sex, and some very on-screen sex scenes. It will be in the Romance section of the bookstore.

The plot: Millicent Watts-Cohen has a mission: she is going to reunite some of her dead neighbor’s/friend’s ashes – the Mrs. Nash of the title – with the woman that she fell in love with in the 1940s, who is currently living in an assisted living center in Key West.

She’s at the airport, all set to fly down there, when the flights all get grounded (the reason doesn’t matter). She ends up pairing with Hollis Hollenbeck, a former classmate of Millicent’s terrible, arrogant, back-stabbing ex-boyfriend, and they end up driving from DC to Key West. The way is not smooth – oil spills, suicidal deer, broccoli fests, and lots of paint-by-number Jesus portraits stand in Millie’s way. But, also, along the way she might just learn how to love again.

Oh, this one was delightful in so many ways. I adored the push-and-pull between the ever-optimistic, and slightly weird, Millie and the grumpy, pessimistic Hollis. I loved their banter – and laughed out loud more than once. I’ve often said that I don’t mind sexytimes in a book (and they were very good in this book), but I need to have a plot and some characters that I can enjoy to actually enjoy a romance book. And while this fits the formula of a romance, it was excellent in its execution. It was so very funny, and yet tender and heartbreaking at times. I enjoyed having Rose’s story interspersed with Millie’s adventures, and it made the ending bittersweet and that much more fulfilling. This is Adler’s debut novel, and I’m excited to see where she goes from here.

Audiobook: Nora Goes Off Script

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by Annabel Monaghan
Read by Hillary Huber
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: Oh, well, it’s a romance book. Infer what you will. It’s in the romance section of the bookstore.

Nora is fine. She has a fairly successful career writing scripts for romance movies for the Romance Channel. When her husband left, she was sad, but he was also an asshole, so it wasn’t that bad. And then she wrote a script about their story and sold it to an actual movie studio and it got made into a movie. The studio spent a couple of days filming at her actual house – and the star, Leo Vance, is charmed by her home. After the filming is done, he sticks around, wanting to experience normal life for a bit (in order to process his mother’s recent death). He helps Nora with the shopping and cooking and with her kids… and eventually, they fall in love.

But things are not perfect; when Leo has to jet away to deal with a film contract, he promises he will come back. But he doesn’t. Nora’s heart breaks, and life goes on, and suddenly those romance movie scripts with predictable outcomes seem trite. Will Nora be able to get her life back on track after the second man in as many years has walked out on her?

Oh, I liked this one. It was delightful on audio – Huber does a fantastic job, keeping me engaged in the story. Which was a lot of fun as well. It seems that the current trend in romance books is to be the thing while critiquing the thing, so while I knew the beats of the story, there was some depth to it. I liked how the focus was more on Nora’s ability to be resilient and vulnerable to others, as well as making her children her priority. I liked the relationship between her and Leo, and even the conflict felt real. It was a solid romance book, and I’ll be happy to read whatever Monaghan writes next.