OK, so when Julie Anne Long first quit writing historical romances and moved to contemporaries, I was unhappy. I was also a moron. Her contemps are AWESOME–we have not one but TWO DIK reviews of Dirty Dancing at Devil’s Leap.

In Dirty Dancing at Devil’s Leap, the third installment in her Hellcat Canyon series, Julie Anne Long delivers an engrossing story of second chances and enemies shifting to lovers, full of heart, banter, and sexytimes. What more can anyone ask for?….

Maximilian Coltrane was born into money – assuming you can’t tell that by the name. However, his fortunes have shifted since a childhood spent in Hellcat Canyon and he’s found himself on the opposite end of the financial spectrum. We meet him as he’s putting his family home up for sale at auction to cover familial debts (his father made some atrocious decisions, which leave Mac with some of the choices he’s forced to make now). He’s got a plan all worked out to buy it for himself, quietly, when he’s outbid by none other than the girl he’s never forgotten, Avalon Harwood.

Avalon has come a long way since the days of playing with the rich boy who lived next door. When we meet her, she’s got a fabulous boyfriend and a successful business. About five pages after we meet her, she finds said boyfriend in bed with an intern and her foundations crumble. Fleeing home, she discovers the Coltrane house is up for auction and decides to buy it and flip it (i.e, fix it up and sell it at a profit). She spent much of her childhood at that house, growing up with and falling for Mac. Mac, whom she hasn’t seen in nigh on a decade after overhearing him call her a hick.

So imagine her surprise when she buys the house and discovers it comes with a groundskeeper who also happens to be Mac. A much different man than the boy she fell for, Mac is now a military veteran who runs a small farm and is successfully carving a life for himself out of the ruins of his father’s fraud convictions and very public downfall. They spar immediately – Avalon is feisty because Mac broke her heart, Mac returns the sass because Avalon is the girl who got away.

They soon declare war on each other, but it’s a mischievous, banter-filled war. Avalon is  determined to get Mac off her property, and Mac is determined to buy his house back from her. He reasons that as she’s never flipped a house before, she’ll surely give up.  Little does he know that brokenhearted, adult Avalon has more grit than he could have ever imagined. As they fall for each other, we’re along for the ride of self-discovery and the building of a happily ever after.

It’s on sale today at Amazon for 1.99 here.

We gave Nora Goes Off Script a DIK. In her review, Kayne wrote:

Nora Goes Off Script is Annabel Monaghan’s first adult book and one of my favorite rom-coms this year. The story is fresh with humor and heart.

Nora is a screenwriter for a romance channel. Her self-centered husband leaves her and their two children so of course she writes a screenplay about it. This script is different from her normal happily ever afters – hence the title, Nora Goes Off Script. The screenplay is picked up by Hollywood and the story begins when the film crew pulls up to Nora’s home to film a few scenes in her tea cottage in the garden.

Leo, former Sexiest Man Alive, plays her ex-husband in the movie and when the film crew leaves, Nora finds him on her porch with a bottle of tequila. He asks if he can stay for a week in her tea cottage and offers her a thousand dollars a day. He says he’d like to escape the city and enjoy everyday life with Nora and her kids.

As the two watch sunrises together on the front porch and do their daily activities, they get to know each other. I laughed at their banter when they’re grocery shopping, and when Nora calls Leo out after she sees him giving the smoldering looks he is famous for. He doesn’t leave after the first week and, wonderfully, he works his way into Nora’s and her children’s hearts.

It’s on sale here for 1.99.

It’s the time of year that holiday romances are everywhere. This one, from 2007, is a good time. We gave it a B+.

Bailey Sullivan (named after George Bailey in the holiday movie It’s a Wonderful Life) doesn’t like Christmas, despite her name, and hasn’t celebrated it for the last ten years. Her parents own and operate a store dedicated to Christmas and growing up with the behind-the-scenes merchandising of the holiday killed her enthusiasm for it. This year, however, she won’t be able to ignore it. Her mother and stepfather, who separated three months ago, haven’t stepped one foot into the store because they don’t want to chance seeing the other. That’s bad news since it is December, the store’s busiest and most profitable month. The longtime employees make a desperate call to Bailey, who grudgingly agrees to take time from her job to go run the store.

While staying at her parents’ house, she sees an SUV parked at the house next door and dreads that it may mean that Finn Jacobson, her teenage sweetheart, is visiting his grandmother. It turns out she’s right. Although he’s older, she recognizes him, and Finn shows that he recognizes her by mentioning that she left him ten years ago without even saying goodbye.

What follows is a wonderful reunion romance between two people who loved each other very much when they were teenagers and who never got over that love even after one seemed to have cruelly abandoned the other. Bailey and Finn are appealing characters and Finn in particular is quite appealing – totally sexy, totally manly, and vulnerable enough to make any woman sigh deeply. Their love scenes show the love deepening between them and are hot and yummy, too. There’s also a great secondary romance between Bailey’s separated mother and stepfather, and the older couple has a hot love scene, too!

Both Bailey and Finn have to deal with emotional baggage before they find their HEA with each other. Bailey abandoned Finn even though it was the hardest thing she had ever done because she feared he would leave her like her father left her mother. She has a good job managing a law firm, but is lonely in her personal life, keeping her relationships at bay and never letting any man get close enough to hurt her. When she meets Finn again, it doesn’t take long before she has feelings for him, but she’s just not sure about the lasting power of love.

Finn was the classic teenage delinquent who was thisclose to some serious trouble with the law. Only love for his grandmother and then for Bailey kept him from going over the edge. Bailey’s inexplicable abandonment hurt and angered Finn tremendously, and he has never forgotten the pain. He went on to live an exemplary life until a tragic event about a year ago ripped it up. Seeing Bailey only worsens his wounds, yet he cannot deny how much he once loved her and is distressed to find himself falling in love with her all over again.

Get it at Amazon for 0.99 here.

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