chicago

B+
Good Hands

I'm a fan of the vacation fling trope in romances, ones where the characters meet up again later and develop an actual relationship. So when I heard that Kelly Jamieson's most recent release, Good Hands would feature this within her current hockey series (Bears Hockey II) I was quite excited to get ...

A
Marriage or Ruin for the Heiress

Lauri Robinson’s Marriage or Ruin for the Heiress is the first in her new miniseries The Osterlund Saga.  This book is set in Chicago during the Great Depression and features a hero and heroine who are both determined never to fall in love.  This is a delightful and easy read, with the tiniest b ...

A-
Wild Women and the Blues

Fans of historical fiction are in for a treat with Wild Women and the Blues, a dual timeline novel about Jazz Age Chicago with its beautiful, fun but dark and dangerous world of juice joints, dance girls and racketeering, and a young man searching for redemption in twenty-first century America. S ...

A-
Love at First

Kate Clayborn’s Love at First is one of those books that you immediately feel has wrapped you up in a warm hug, and in which the characters and their story creep gradually and unobtrusively under your skin and wind around your heartstrings.  Ms. Clayborn is one of my few go-to contemporary romanc ...

B-
Foreplayer

Mia Wallace had her professional hockey dreams dashed several years back, but she’s ready to get back on the ice. With a spot on the Olympic team in her grasp, she just needs some extra oomf in her training. Enter Cal Foreman, the newest member of the Chicago Rebels, and Mia’s brother’s old fr ...

B+
How to Fail at Flirting

How to Fail at Flirting is a début novel about an uptight professor who decides to let loose for a night and the sexy, witty stranger who she winds up spending more than just an evening with. The characters are charming and well-written and the romance is both sweet and sensuous. Readers who are lo ...

A-
Holiday Home Run

Looking for a fun, quick holiday read to get you in the mood for the upcoming winter months?  Priscilla Oliveras comes through with a sweet novella filled with charm and spirit, Holiday Home Run. Party planner Julia Fernández (Julia is a cousin to the three Fern ández sisters from Oliveras’ ...

B-
Black Tie Billionaire

Harlequin novels are a trope-y subgenre, and this book hits a lot of them. While Black Tie Billionaire avoids a lot of the worst pitfalls of archetype, there are too many contrivances. Shay ‘Camille’ Neal, heiress, is doing a favor for her friend and moonlighting in disguise as catering staff at ...

A
Motion

Motion is part one of Penny Reid’s new series Laws of Physics and it is classic Penny Reid - smart, funny, and romantic with a little bit of mystery thrown in. Mona Da Vinci is a nineteen-year-old physics genius enjoying her structured life - meditation, yoga, journaling, dental checkups -  all w ...

B
Motion

Penny Reid’s ongoing series about sexy physicists and the love they make continues apace with this very charming but also frustrating (hey, the author warned us it would be!) story about a physicist who never gets to have fun and the musician friend who tries to unwind her. Mona is a totally ra ...