coffee

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Sweetheart

Sarah Mayberry’s Sweetheart is the first in a spinoff series based on the coffee shop The Busy Bean, which was originated by Sarina Bowen in her True North books. The True North World comprises three series - The Busy Bean, Moo U and Vino and Veritas - all written by different authors.  Being som ...

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It Started With a Dog

Julia London gives readers another fun, breezy dog-based contemporary romance with the next piece of the Lucky Dog series, It Started with a Dog. It’s just as good an experience as the previous book, and is a darnn fun read. Every year, Austin declares its Most Popular Rescue Dog in Austin, aka ...

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The Queer Principles of Kit Webb

Cat Sebastian takes readers back to Georgian England with her latest novel, The Queer Principles of Kit Webb.  It’s a lively tale laden with wit, sparkling dialogue and insightful social commentary; the two leads are superbly characterised and there’s a vibrant secondary cast, too.  In fact, w ...

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A Marriage of Equals

Harlequin Historicals continues to demonstrate that smaller packages contain not just good things, but sometimes, things that are great. As a young girl, Psyché Winthrop-Abeni came to England from Jamaica with her biological father, a white man (her enslaved mother had died). She was raised alon ...

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Blackberry Beach

Author Irene Hannon is a master of setting and conveying emotional tone, and in Blackberry Beach, the seventh book of the A Hope Harbor Novel series, the tone is like smooth water and soft sunlight.  Ms. Hannon explores the theme of thresholds in life and how we humans face and deal with them, and ...

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Served Hot

I was a bit pushed for reading time this month (too many new releases to review!) and I was actively looking for a fairly short read to fulfill this month’s prompt, so I was pleased when I came across Served Hot on my Kindle. I’m a big fan of Annabeth Albert’s books, but I’m still playing ...

B+
Roommate

Narrated by Teddy Hamilton and Stephen Dexter Sarina Bowen’s The Understatement of the Year and the co-authored (with Elle Kennedy) Him/Us are some of my favourite m/m stories and go-to re-listens, so when I saw that Teddy Hamilton was on board for Roommate, the first book in a new series that ...

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Sweet on You

I first learned about the writing of Romanceclass in the Philippines when I interviewed Bianca Mori for the Tropical Romance Book Club. Both Mori’s novella One Night at the Palace Hotel and another #romanceclass novel by Mina V. Esguerra, Kiss and Cry, have been DIKs for me, so I was quite excited ...

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Flat Whites & Chocolate Fish

When I read Powder & Pavlova, book one in Jay Hogan’s Southern Lights series, I was intrigued by the character of Adrian Powell, the handsome, enigmatic and tight-lipped barista who worked in the café owned by Ethan Sharpe and who, by the end of the book, had joined him in setting up a coffee ...

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The Professor's Green Card Marriage

Beware of judging a book by its title. Had I listened to my inner book snob, I would not have read Heidi Cullinan’s beautiful romance The Professor’s Green Card Marriage. I had passed over the novel a few times because I believed the clunky title to be too literal and uninspired for my tastes. B ...