Illinois

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 ...

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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 ...

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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’ ...

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+
Illegally Yours

In the second installment of Ms. Meader’s new Laws of Attraction series, two emotional powder kegs explode, then deal with the fallout, then live happily ever after. It’s an angsty insta-lust, enemies-to-lovers tale with the requisite steamy AF sexytimes we’ve come to expect from this author, ...

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Their Perfect Melody

This book contains explicit descriptions of domestic violence, and there are references to it in this review. When I put out a call on my Twitter for Latinx OwnVoices romances, I didn’t hear from many people – but my curiosity googling led me to the work of Priscilla Oliveras and her new Matc ...

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Hooked on You

In the finale to Kate Meader’s excellent Chicago Rebels series, Violet Vasquez finally gets her happily ever after. For anyone who has read the previous books, that may just be all I need to say. This woman so vivacious she leaps off the page, with all of her scars, jaded bits, and hidden away hop ...

B
The Love Coupon

Lobbyist Flick Dalgetty has finally landed the job of her dreams advocating for the underprivileged in D.C., but her lease is up before she can leave her present job in Chicago. She worms her way into staying with Tom O’Connell, whose uptight precision is the complete opposite of her vivacious cha ...