All I knew about Kacen Callender’s Stars in Your Eyes when I picked it up for review was that it’s a celebrity fake-dating romance between a troubled bad-boy actor and his more likeable, sunny-natured co-star. Having enjoyed Ava Wilder’s How to Fake it in Hollywood – a deeply emotional, character-driven romance featuring complex, flawed but…
Denny S. Bryce’s Wild Women and the Blues was one of my favorite reads the year of its release, and The Other Princess is definitely going to end up on my list of 2023’s best stories. Fictionalizing the true-life account of an African princess gifted to Queen Victoria, who was raised in royal palaces and…
The heart is a battlefield. All Talasyn has ever known is the Hurricane Wars. Growing up an orphan in a nation under siege by the ruthless Night Emperor, she found her family among the soldiers who fight for freedom. But she is hiding a deadly secret: light magic courses through her veins, a blazing power…
Love of My Lives has lovely, sensual prose and a lot of good things going for it, including its wonderful heroine and a romance that sings. Just one thing kept this from being a flat-out A, otherwise it’s a wonderful little slice of magical realism. Madi Ramírez has been waiting for her perfect man, as…
I’d seen the buzz about Lydia San Andres Harlequin debut on Twitter, and I immediately picked up Compromised into a Scandalous Marriage for its setting. Set in the Dominican Republic in the early 20th century, this forced marriage tale is a tad formulaic, but in this author’s hands, it’s an engaging formula. Paulina Despradel lives in San Pedro…
Ranya Radwan, heroine of Heba Helmy’s The Earl’s Egyptian Heiress, is the daughter of a cotton pasha whose family honor is at stake: her brother was sent to buy out the Earl of Warrington’s shares in the cotton production business, but he has disappeared with all of the town’s money. It’s now up to Ranya…
Thank You For Sharing is one of the best contemporary romances of 2023, with its quick wit and soft-hearted love story. I adored the central protagonists, and I loved the way they move with aching slowness toward attachment after years of bitterness. Liyah Cohen-Jackson hasn’t seen Daniel Rosenberg since they had a huge blow-up fight…
The Neighbor Favor is a meet-cute story that beautifully captures how we often find love in the least expected of places. It’s one of the hottest days of the year, the subway is crowded, and its many passengers are cranky. Just another summer evening in New York but definitely a difficult one for Lily Greene,…
I love a story that takes me into a setting in detail, but the people who inhabit this setting have to be developed as well. So while I loved the big no-expense-spared New Jersey desi wedding in Nisha Sharma’s Tastes Like Shakkar, I couldn’t enjoy the incompetent wedding planner heroine or intermittent kinkster hero who…
In this tender and steamy story we follow Ama Torres, a wedding planner on the rise who has been hired by Hazel Renee, a celebrity makeup influencer to plan her wedding to her girlfriend Jackie. The only hitch is that Ama must work with Elliot Bloom, a hot, broody florist who is a family friend…
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