Maame suffers a bit because I’ve read a several similar books over the past few years, each about women emerging from the pressures and stifling cloister of their family lives to become a fully actualized person. This novel offers a couple of new twists, but the author’s voice isn’t especially distinctive. Still, there are some…
In Talia Hibbert’s Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute, we get a relatable, friends-to-enemies-back-to-friends-to-maybe-more young adult story that, while well written, somewhat missed the mark for me. Granted, I had high expectations given the buzz Hibbert has received for her contemporary romance titles. Celine Bangura may be an outsider, but she definitely owns it. She knows…
In Amy Lea’s Exes and O’s, Tara Chen is a romance book influencer when she isn’t a NICU nurse. When she interviews her grandmother about Grandma’s own trope-style second-chance romance, Tara becomes enamored of the idea of dating her own list of exes. Surely one of them could be her romantic reunion? Her roommate, firefighter…
I really enjoyed Kelly Jensen’s Sundays With Oliver, book one in her Hearts and Crafts series. Like her This Time Forever series, Hearts and Crafts features older characters (well, in their forties) finding love, and she does it very well, creating characters and situations that feel very realistic, especially given she’s writing about people who…
Rich and tender in the best of ways, Lunar Love wraps an enemies-to-lovers story around a tale of family devotion and love. An appealing narrative voice and a relatable look into what it means to be biracial add on to an already great book. Matchmaker Olivia Huang-Christenson is stepping into the limelight and taking over…
This one left me grinning. The Love Match is a fun, fast-paced romp through a coming of age tale with a compelling love triangle and a lot of solid material to be had. Zahra Khan is a princess without a crown. Stuck in Patterson, New Jersey with the rest of her family, she’s hoping to…
Jayci Lee brings punch and verve to her Han Sisters series, but One Night Only leans too heavily on certain stultifying tropes and hamster-in-a-wheel scenes which repeat themselves, seemingly to pad out the novel’s page length. Only the originality of her characters manage to punch through the fog of typicality surrounding the plot. Megan Han…
Marcella Bell’s Snowbound in her Boss’s Bed makes the same mistake I’ve seen in a few books lately – focusing on the wrong part of the story. Miriam Howard, event planner, is the daughter of a Black pastor and hasn’t fit in with her family since she converted to Judaism. Temporarily hired to replace a…
Knot Again is a sweet, smart contemporary romance about how true love can find you when you least expect it. Communication problems make this one a little hard to recommend without mild reservations but it’s still worth a read. Lucas Strong is a fireman searching for a little bit of tranquility. He posed for the…
I used to say I was a sucker for Christmas romances. However, I’ve realized that I just love holiday romances in general. I simply love getting a window into the joy of people’s celebrations. I was looking for a happy read this month, and A Match Made for Thanksgiving delivered. This was a very fun read indeed….
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