Today’s Steals and Deals at AAR…..
Historical romance doesn’t get any better than this.
This is the kind of book – it’s the book – to give to someone who disses the romance genre as frivolous and nothing more than soft-core porn for women. Pornography is never this well written. It never engages the mind and emotions like this. It never explores the transcendence of love with this kind of power and emotion. I have yet to weep when reading porn, and you will cry as you experience Maddy and Christian’s story: in frustration, in anguish, and finally in joy. My first copy is falling apart, between the pages falling out and the finger-smudges and the occasional blotch of salty moisture on the paper. Flowers from the Storm is just about the only book I’ve got two copies of. Read it, and you’ll understand why.
It’s on sale for 1.99 here.
Love The Wolf and the Dove–my personal fave by Woodiwiss? This one isn’t as good but it’s a strong Medieval love story.
It’s on sale for 1.99 here.
Looking for a sexy, fast paced read with an alpha hero AND a smart strong heroine? Here you go.
Rachel nurses Kell back to health and when he regains consciousness, the attraction between them is immediate and palpable. When Linda Howard is on target, no one can do sexual attraction like she can and she is right on the money in this book. Kell is very much a Linda Howard hero – all hairy chest, hard muscle and high gear sex drive – but he is not an arrogant jerk, thank goodness! He and Rachel are together for almost the entire book and they make one of Linda Howard’s most memorable couples. Their love scenes are as intense as any I have read. They are marked by deep mutual desire and caring and lack the edge of cruelty that Linda Howard sometimes injects into her love scenes.
Rachel is a perfect match for Kell…. Rachel is independent, strong and loving. The main conflict between them is the danger that Kell’s work is to him and to her if she continues to associate with him. Rachel, having faced danger and death as a reporter, does not fear it. She shows herself to be resourceful and brave in a crisis and is one of my favorite Linda Howard heroines.
It’s on sale for 0.99 here.
Did you see the movie? Well, here’s the book! It’s a good time too!
Alex and Henry are both adorable, well-rounded characters that I loved. Really, the whole cast of the book is fantastic. Alex comes off as someone young and probably reckless who isn’t sure where he wants to be, but he’s very rooted to the people in his life. Henry is almost the opposite in that he’s cautious and thinks his fate is predetermined by birth, but longs for relationships with anyone who can deeply understand him. The boys falling for each other is stellar, and I’d recommend the book to anyone just for their relationship.
It’s on sale for 2.99 here.
There is romance here, but this is the story of Aina’s life, and her journey from strong child to self-actualized woman. She is incredibly memorable and beautifully captured, and this is both a fearless book, and a beautiful one. The Other Princess is one of the finest pieces of historical fiction released this year, and I highly recommend it.
It’s on sale for 1.99 here.
I’ve read two of Kinsale’s books I know she’s very popular in HR but I just couldn’t click with her books. The only two I’ve read are Lessons in French and The dream hunter I liked the first half but the second half really went down hill.
I don’t really like either of those, FWIW. This is the only one of hers I adore.
I know this one of hers is the favourite I’m pondering if I should try another one of her books.
I’m with Dabney on this one. I’m so-so on most of Kinsale’s work but Flowers from the Storm I recommend unreservedly.
I might give it a go it’s just when I don’t like one or two books by an author I’m a bit reluctant to try more. Its a bit unfair to the writer maybe but I’m quite a slow reader due to dyslexia and if I don’t like a book I usually Dnf in the first 50 pages or less.
Life is too short to read bad books!
If you do audiobooks the audio version of this one is superb.
Audiobooks are a fabulous way to enjoy reading and to boost the number of books a person can read in a year. I’ve “read” books while exercising, gardening, cleaning house, commuting, baking, working on jig saw puzzles. . . the list is endless. As a middle school librarian, I always tried to have audiobook versions of titles that were required reading in the curriculum; and always reinforced for students (and perhaps more importantly their parents) that listening to a book absolutely “counts” as reading.
NPR just the other day had a short feature about words that journalists have mispronounced (to their embarrassment) because they’d only read them off a page. They’d never heard the words pronounced correctly. Just one more advantage to being an audiobook listener!
I’ve heard some pretty bad mispronunciations in my work as an audio proofer! You’re right in that it usually happens because the performer has never heard the word spoken aloud (or heard it pronounced wrongly). And, dare I say, it’s almost always the younger performers, perhaps because they just haven’t been around as long as us (me) old uns to have the same aural vocabulary!
I have read her entire oeuvre (except the Dream Hunter) and liked all of them including Lessons in French which I thought was very funny in places. I know Flowers in the Storm is a favorite of many but for me it is just one of her several great books. Her Sweet Folly is a good one too. She is one author whose every book is unique in its plot, setting and characters. She wrote before series mania took over. She got lots of As on this website, deservedly so.
I felt like that with Flowers: The first third or so is superbly written and mesmerizing, but it goes downhill from there in terms of story development and by the end I was ready to throw the book against the wall – I just could not deal with the endless doubts the heroine exhibited. But I know many readers love the book for exactly that, the struggle to get to the HEA. It was simply too much/too long in this book for me.
AAR would be a very boring place if we all saw books–and the world–in the same way!