Love & Romance

The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year

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by Ally Carter
First sentence: “Ms. Chase: Well, of course I have his blood on my hands.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There is some swearing (I don’t remember f-bombs, but if there were any, there weren’t a lot), kissing, and off-screen sex. It will be in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Maggie Chase and Ethan Wyatt are rival mystery writers. They don’t like each other. And even though Maggie’s successful, Ethan is a different level of success, which is just annoying, since he has only a few books to his name. So, when she ends up in a private plane headed to England for Christmas and Ethan is there, she’s sure it will be a lousy holiday. Except: they end up at Eleanor Ashley’s house with a number of her relatives, and then she goes missing. It’s up to Maggie and Ethan to figure out where Elenaor has gone, and – more importantly – why.

This was a fun, light romance. It leans more heavily into the mystery – or at the very least I was more interested by the mystery – than the romance, though it’s there. More importantly, it’s about Maggie’s journey to trusting herself. She’s been told her whole life that she doesn’t matter and that her opinions don’t count, and she doesn’t really trust herself. Over the course of the book – and with Ethan’s help – she learns how to trust her instincts and her decisions again.

I don’t know if I was expecting something spicier (it’s not spicy at all), but I wasn’t expecting so much of a mystery. And I was pleasantly surprised how enjoyable and fun it was.

Audiobook: The Truth According to Ember

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by Danica Nava
Read by Siena East
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is blatant racism towards Native people, as well as some swearing including a few f-bombs. There is on the page, pretty spicy sex. It’s in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Ember Lee Cardinal hasn’t been able to catch a break. She had to drop out of college because she used her college money to bail out her younger brother from jail, but he skipped bail so she lost the money. She’s working a dead-end job at a bowling alley in a less-than-desirable part of Oklahoma City. And all her applications for better jobs come back as rejected. So she decides to be creative: she exaggerates her qualifications and checks the white box instead of the Native American one. (Her dad is white, so it’s not a super big stretch on that one.) She lands a job as an accounting assistant at a tech firm where she meets Danuwoa Colson, the IT guy and fellow Native. He even seems to be interested in her as well. Things are looking up. But when she gets an unexpected (and unwanted) promotion to the Executive Assistant to the CEO and when a coworker finds Ember and Danuwoa in a bit of a compromising position (they were kissing on an elevator at an offsite conference), her lies begin to build and get out of control. With everything – her job, her life, the relationship with Danuwoa – at stake, will Ember be able to come clean?

This one was a ton of fun. There was a bit of second-hand embarrassment as Ember’s lies kept piling up, but I got why she kept doing it. The motivations were always there. Nava was great at making the spice pop as well as weaving in elements of what Native people have to deal with in the corporate workplace (it was SUPER cringe). I loved Ember’s best friend Joanna (not sure of the spelling of that, since I listened) and the way it was incredibly centered in Oklahoma. Additionally, East did an excellent job narrating, making all the characters come to life.

It ended up being one of those books where I kept driving just so I could keep listening, and there really isn’t any higher praise than that.

Four Weekends and a Funeral

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by Ellie Palmer
First sentence: “When I learn I’m still dating Sam Lewis, I’m at his funeral.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy pilfered from the ARC shelves at the bookstore.
Content: There is some mild swearing, as well as kissing and off-page sex. It’s in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Alison had a brief relationship with Sam. She was coming off a double mastectomy (as a cancer prevention measure), and she wanted a bit of adventure in her life. Sam – who lived life large – was it. It didn’t work out, but he never told his family that they broke up, and Alison found out at Sam’s funeral after a tragic accident. She is compelled to play along with the fiction that she was actually dating-dating Sam, and she and his best friend, Adam, get roped into cleaning out and fixing up Sam’s condo. The project gets off to a rough start: Adam is notoriously recalcitrant towards activities, and even though Alison tries to be cheerful around him, he’s just not warming up.

But, she still feels a pull toward him, and even though she’s still feeling all sorts of ways about her mastectomy, her and Adam’s relationship buds from friendship into something more.

It’s a sweet and light romance, with undercurrents of both grief and survivor’s guilt. While I really liked the relationship between Alison and Adam – there were some genuinely laugh out lout moments in the book – it was the side characters that really kept me reading. I liked Alison’s friends Chelsea and Mara, and the trivia night competitions, and just their friendship. And I feel like that while this is a romance, at its heart, it’s following the trend I’m seeing in romances: the real story is women figuring out how to be their best selves. Alison works through her survivor’s guilt, she embraces her true self, and only then can she and Adam have a deep, real relationship. And while it lacks spice, it is sweet, and there are bonus points for old (well 80s) romcom references.

I found it to be sweet, charming, and quite funny, which is a win in my book.

Audiobook: Done and Dusted

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by Lyla Sage
Read by Aaron Shedlock & Stella Hunter
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is on-page, quite graphic sex. There is also swearing, including several f-bombs. It’s in the Romance section of the bookstore.

All Emmy Rider – the youngest of the three Rider kids – wanted to do was get out of her small Wyoming town and make something of herself. Which she did by going to college and making a name for herself on the barrel racing circuit. But, after a bad accident, she’s aimless back home at Rebel Blue, the family ranch, trying to figure out the next step. Enter in Luke Books, Meadowlark’s most eligible bachelor, and Emmy’s oldest brother’s best friend. He’s always been just annoying, but now – maybe he’s something more. Except for Emmy’s off-limits, because her brother wouldn’t take kindly to their being together.

Will that stop them? (We all know the answer to that question.)

We had Lyla Sage at the store over Bookstore Romance day, and I had the pleasure of working the event. It was a lot of fun, she’s smart and funny, and I found myself wondering if these were any good (especially since all the other romance readers at the store were raving about the books). And yes, yes they are. Well, it depends on what you mean by “good”. Are they high literature? No. Are they entertaining and sexy? Yes. And really, that’s all anyone really wants out of a romance book, after all. I did like the characters, and Sage is good at writing witty banter (almost a must for me in a romance book). It’s got a little bit of push and pull and some sexy scenes and it all came together quite nicely.

It was good on audio as well. Thankfully, the narrators realized that people from Wyoming don’t have an accent (we were worried about that), and they embodied the characters beautifully. It was entertaining and fun, and you really can’t want anything more than that in a romance.

Audiobook: Arya Khanna’s Bollywood Moment

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by Arushi Avachat
Read by Nikhaar Kishnani
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is mention of mental illness, including depression, and some kissing. It’s in the YA section (grades 6-8) of the bookstore.

Arya’s senior year has been super complicated so far: she’s ben at odds with the school council president, Dean, since the year started; and her older sister has finally come home after three years to get married. It’s a lot to deal with, especially since she might have feelings for Dean. The question is: how is she going to manage everything.

Yes, it’s a fluff plot, and not a very deep book, but it was cute. The narrator was fun to listen to and there was enough to keep me entertained, My favorite part about it all, though, was the Bollywood references. I desperately needed a playlist (both audio and video) for the book, and was sad that I couldn’t find one.

So, no, not the best book out there, but a fun one.

I’ll Have What He’s Having

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by Adib Khorram
First sentence: “Farzan was crying.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: August 27, 2024
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There is on-page sex, as well as lots of swearing, including multiple f-bombs. It will be in the romance section of the bookstore.

Farzan is stressed that he’s the family screw-up. He’s 37, single, and the guy he thought he was dating just broke up with him. He’s hopeless. So, he heads to a local restaurant to drown his sorrows in wine and french fries where he meets their very attractive sommelier, David.

David’s back in Kansas City studying for his master sommelier test. He doesn’t want relationships, but when he sees Farzan, he’s instantly attracted. After an evening of flirting (there’s a bit of mistaken identity in there as well), they have a one-night stand. But that one-night stand turns into something more… and suddenly David and Farzan are questioning what their dreams and plans really are.

On the one hand, this was a very sweet story. I liked Farzan and his family and friends, and their relationships with each other. I liked that Khorram writes about older(ish) men, who aren’t super successful or super fit. The book is incredibly body-positive, and I liked how David and Farzan are with each other. I liked the way it’s very centered in Kansas City; I felt like this was very much a “Kansas City is a really cool city and cool things happen here” kind of book, which I didn’t mind at all.

On the other hand, I just didn’t find it sexy. I did appreciate that there was consensual gay sex (a lot of it), which I think is important, but I just didn’t get the chemistry between David and Farzan at all. I wanted to; I liked both of the characters, but I just didn’t feel it between them. (I might just be me, honestly.) This made the book – since the sex was a huge part of the book – less than I wanted it to be.

Is it bad? I don’t think it’s for everyone, but I am glad that it’s out there.

Slow Dance

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by Rainbow Rowell
First sentence: “The wedding invitation came, and Shiloh said yes, of course she’d be there.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There was swearing, including several f-bombs, as well as on-page sex. It’s in the Romance section of the bookstore.

In high school, it was always Shiloh-and-Cary-and-Mike. They were always together, and everyone assumed that Shiloh and Cary were together. But they weren’t. They were just friends. And now, 14 years after they last saw each other, after Shiloh has been married and divorced and had two kids, Cary is back in her life. They re-met at Mike’s second marriage, back in Omaha – Shiloh never left, actually – and tried to pick up where they left off. There were some false starts and miscommunication, but in the end, and despite everything else going on in their lives, it was just too good – too right – to be back in each other’s orbit again.

On the one hand, I really enjoyed this. I connected with the characters — it’s set in 2006, when they were 33 (I was 34 that year) — and the situations they found themselves in. I liked Shiloh and Carey, even when they weren’t communicating well, or Shiloh was acting anxious, or just everything. On the other hand, this was very slow and very mundane. There wasn’t a lot of what a reader would expect out of a romance in it. Even a second-chance one. There was no third-act fallout, there was very little conflict or tension. And while I liked the thoughtful, reflective quality of a book, it’s not really what readers have come to expect out of something billed as romance.

Is this a book for everyone? Probably not. But I enjoyed it.

Audiobook: That Prince is Mine

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by Jayci Lee
Read by Olivia Song
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is a lot of on-page, somewhat explicit sex as well as swearing, including many f-bombs. It’s in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Emma Yoon only wants two things to be happy: to open her culinary school and to have her godmother, a Korean matchmaker, arrange a marriage for her. She doesn’t believe in love matches – her parents had one that failed spectacularly – and she trusts that her godmother will find someone perfect for her. On the other hand, is Prince Michele Chevalier – the crown prince of some small European country – doesn’t want an arranged marriage, and so he’s in LA as a visiting professor to find someone to fall in love with so he can take her home and live happily ever after.

Of course, they have a meet-cute and of course, they fall in love despite Emma’s misgivings.

It’s a cute enough book, and the narrator does a decent job, but I found it annoying. Mostly because it was so repetitive. Lee lays out at the beginning that Emma doesn’t want a love match, that she needs to use her godmother’s matchmaking services because only Emma can help save her business and that Michele needs to find someone that he’s Compatible with and can Love Forever. That’s all fine and good. The problem is that Lee needs to tell us these facts Every. Single. Chapter. It got really old really fast. And, honestly, while I was entertained by the book, that one issue kind of dampened my enjoyment. I honestly didn’t feel any chemistry between the main characters, and it all just kind of fell flat.

I wanted to enjoy this one a lot more than I actually did, which is too bad.

Audiobook: Summer Romance

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by Annabel Monaghan
Read by Kristen DiMercurio
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is some swearing, including a couple f-bombs, and some off-screen sex. It’s in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Ali Morris thought she had it all: a loving, supportive mother; the perfect marriage; the perfect kids; the perfect family. But, her mother died two years ago, and Ali retreated into herself, and everything fell apart: she and her husband separated and she’s losing touch with her kids. But this summer – the summer that the divorce will be finalized – Ali has decided that maybe what she needs is a summer romance.

Enter Ethan. He seems like the perfect candidate: he’s only in town for the summer. It’ll be the perfect fling to get Ali out of her funk. Except things aren’t quite that simple when you’re nearly 40.

This one – much like all of Monaghan’s books -was delightful. I loved the narrator; she kept me engaged in the story and added depth to Ali’s situation that I might have missed had I read the book. But I also love Monaghan’s tales of second chances. The women are always slightly older, always coming off a not-quite-great situation, and always find that person who fits them just perfectly. It’s lovely to read, and to be reminded that maybe just because it’s your second time around, it doesn’t mean you’re washed up.

A truly charming summer book

If You’ll Have Me

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by Eunnie
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There is talk of sex, but none actual. It’s in the graphic novel section of the bookstore.

Momo is the one friend who is the helpful one. You know: the one you go to for homework, or to borrow $10 from when you need it. PG is a slacker – I’m impressed if she passes any of her college classes! – and tends to prefer one-night stands to actual relationships. So, when they meet, Momo doesn’t think she’s PG’s type. But as they get to know each other, Momo falls for PG.

I’m not doing too well describing the plot because there’s not much there. It’s a cute girl and a butch girl falling in love, having some miscommunications and then working it out. The art is where this one shines. Eunnie is a Korean-American artist and you can tell there are Asian influences in there. It’s all very pink and sparkly and big eyes and bubble hearts. It’s just so very sweet and cute and not a whole lot else. She did try to give PG a bit of an edge, but I’m not sure how well it worked; you could tell that PG is a softie under there. I still thought it was sweet and fun, and I’m sure there’s someone out there who will fall in love with it.