Author: professorromance

Overall Grade: 4.5 ⭐️

Tropes: second chance romance; older sister single parent; small-town romance; love at first sight

About a week ago, a friend of mine who received an ARC for Karla Sorensen’s Worth the Wait, her final story in her A Love at First Sight series, messaged me while reading it. She said, “I always forget how much I love Karla’s romances.” I responded: “I know.” There is a quietude, a simplicity in Sorensen’s writing. Her romance creeps up on you like silent whispers, and before you know it, you’ve fallen deeply in love with her characters because they are people you want to know in real life. Yes, it’s fiction, but it doesn’t read as such. And yes, even though it reads like real life, you still find yourself lost in her stories. At least, that’s my estimation as to why book after book, Sorensen steals the hearts of her readers. 

And Worth the Wait, her newest story in the SmartyPants Romance universe, is more of the same. In fact, of the four books of this series, Hunter and Iris seem to take up the least amount of story space in the series. It’s hard to explain that to readers who I want to read this book. Let’s see if I can do that here:

It’s a given that Hunter and Iris love each other. From the start of this story, there is no doubt. However, there is an uneasiness in their love because Iris’s fatal flaw is her inability to trust and believe that she can be loved fully. When you are a character such as Hunter who loves deeply, who is quietly charming, who is willing to do anything to make Iris’s life easy, you would think it would be a given that Iris would reach out the hand he extends. But no. Sorensen makes us work for their happy ending. The struggle of Worth the Wait is Iris growing the capacity to accept she can be loved and cherished and Hunter learning to do that with stipulations if Iris requires them. 

That’s it. Yes, you can add her younger brother’s issues, Hunter’s return to Green Valley, and Iris’s mother to the mix of this story, but the basis of Worth the Wait is this idea of acceptance. Hunter and Iris reside in that small space, falling in love again with each other and throwing up complication after complication to keep you involved in their story. It doesn’t feel grand or over the top. It, again, feels real. Like I said at the beginning of this review, it whispers over you, and you realize that romances don’t need to scream love loudly. Instead, under the deft hand of a beloved author, love can take up a place in the small spaces too. 

Honestly, I was sad at the end of Worth the Wait because I loved Hunter and Iris and their sweet happy ending. But I also loved Joss and Levi, Grady and Magnolia, and Grace and Tucker. I hate leaving them behind. And yes, I know they are forever immortalized in my Kindle. But saying goodbye this time is difficult because Karla Sorensen has written them so well that it feels like saying goodbye to old friends. If you love the small-town romance, sweet love, and community of Penny Reid, you should be reading Karla Sorensen’s A Love at First Sight series. Now.

In love and romance, 

Professor A

Overall Grade: ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Tropes: second chance romance; teacher-student; broken hero; contemporary romance; small-town romance

Benson Bexley is an enigma. Well, not really. He has the soul of a wounded boy in the body of a man. What this does for K.K. Allen’s Heart of Stone is create a MMC who hides his emotional wounds behind traveling, creating art, and bedding women. At first glance, Benny is hard to love as a character. Allen has crafted in him a hero who hides his pain behind a cold, impenetrable exterior. It takes the implacable Brooklyn to challenge him. And challenge him she does. Allen’s Heart of Stone is a beautiful emotional journey of a man needing to forgive himself so that he can live the abundant life he deserves. 

At first, it is really hard to like Benny Bexley. Yes, he’s charming and gorgeous. He can be witty, but his charm feels overwrought at times. Even more, in my opinion, he objectifies Brooklyn. It takes her self-control and acerbic wit to put him in his place. It’s those moments that made the book a bit magical. Until Benny begins to accept his past, allow himself to be vulnerable, and stop running away from his problems, he is difficult to love even though you know his trauma. Allen intentionally draws this as it ramps up Brooklyn and Benny’s steam level when they eventually fall into bed together. 

While Brooklyn’s strength is impressive, her confusion over her hidden feelings for Benny added a layer of complication to Heart of Stone. Her friend, Olivia, doesn’t offer the best advice, and Brooklyn’s choices to hide information from him undermine the first impression of her inner strength. Honestly, Brooklyn hiding her relationship with Benny felt like a machination on Allen’s part to heighten the story’s drama, and it was my least favorite aspect of this romance. Benny’s loss and subsequent familial trauma served as enough angst for this story. Adding that layer felt like Allen was gilding the lily of her story’s angst. 

Now, by my estimation, Heart of Stone is Allen’s steamiest romance. At least from my recollection, Brooklyn and Benson’s chemistry is pure fire. They simply cannot stay away from each other, and Allen deftly amps up the inferno of their physicality as the story’s emotion grows. 

K.K. Allen’s Heart of Stone will turn the hardest heart soft as Benson and Brooklyn find their happy ending. To get there, you have to wade through the muck of the Bexley family drama. Thankfully, this reader knows how to put on her boots and use a shovel. 

In love and romance,

Professor A

It was never meant to be . . . and then it was.

Making the Match, an all-new second chance, single parent, standalone romance full of heat and heart from New York Times bestselling author Kristen Ashley, is available now!

Read my 5 ⭐️ review HERE.

Decades ago, tennis superstar Tom Pierce and “It Girl” Mika Stowe met at a party.

Mika fell in love. Tom was already in love with his wife. As badly as Tom wanted Mika as a friend, Mika knew it would hurt too much to be attracted to this amazing man and never be able to have him.

They parted ways for what they thought would be forever, only to reconnect just once, when unspeakable tragedy darkens Mika’s life.

Years later, the impossible happens.

A time comes when they’re both unattached.

But now Tom has made a terrible mistake. A mistake so damaging to the ones he loves, he feels he’ll never be redeemed.

Mika has never forgotten how far and how fast she fell when she met him, but Tom’s transgression is holding her distant from reaching out.

There are matchmakers in their midst, however.

And when the plot has been unleashed to make that match, Tom and Mika are thrown into an international intrigue that pits them against a Goliath of the sports industry.

Now they face a massive battle at the same time they’re navigating friendship, attraction, love, family, grief, redemption, two very different lives lived on two opposite sides of a continent and a box full of kittens.

Fall in love with Tom and Mika!
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Keep reading for a look inside Making the Match!

She looked beyond him and called, “Hey, Mom.”
Suddenly, Tom felt like he’d been punched in the chest, his breath not coming easy.
Dragging some in, he turned and saw Mika standing there.
She was wearing a kaftan dress with a low V at the neck, draping sleeves and a string through an empire waist that gathered the material. The print on a black background was mostly reds, oranges and pinks with bright accents of green and blue and turquoise. She had some flat, embroidered mules on her feet. And her still-golden hair was up in a messy knot on top of her head.
Even though she was dressed like she was hanging around the house, she wore makeup. Mostly neutral but with black cat’s-eye, drawing focus to her eyes and the startling sea-blue color of the iris. She had some delicate chain bracelets at her wrists and a number of piercings in her ears, with studs or small hoops running up the shell, and dangling beads coming from the lobe.
She looked the picture of what a poet, photographer, novelist, filmmaker would look like. An easy style that was not unique, but she made it that way.
She was also still one of the most attractive women he’d ever laid eyes on.
In fact, he’d go so far as saying she was in the top two, vying for number one.
“Tom,” she greeted.
“Mika,” he replied, and then was surprised yet again in his short visit to her home.

He saw a soft pink rise in her cheeks, the kind a woman got when she felt nervous or didn’t know what to do with flattery, something he hadn’t offered, unless she caught it in his gaze.
She looked to her daughter and ordered, “Scram, kid.”

Add Making the Match to Goodreads: https://bit.ly/38BrcCN

About Kristen Ashley
Kristen Ashley is the New York Times bestselling author of over eighty romance novels. She’s a hybrid author, publishing titles both independently and traditionally, her books have been translated in fourteen languages and she’s sold millions of books.

Kristen recently released GOSSAMER IN THE DARKNESs, a novella with 1,001 Dark Nights based in Kristen’s Fantasyland universe.

In September 2022, she’ll publish the fourth in the River Rain Series, the story of Tom and Mika, MAKING THE MATCH. She also has upcoming books in her Wild West MC romance series, and her romantic thriller series, Misted Pines.

Kristen, born in Gary and raised in Brownsburg, Indiana and was a fourth-generation graduate of Purdue University. Since, she has lived in Denver, the West Country of England, and she now resides in Phoenix. She worked as a charity executive for eighteen years prior to beginning her independent publishing career. She now writes full-time.

Although romance is her genre, the prevailing themes running through all of Kristen’s novels are friendship, family and a strong sisterhood. To this end, and as a way to thank her readers for their support, Kristen has created the Rock Chick Nation, a series of programs that are designed to give back to her readers and promote a strong female community.
You can learn more about Kristen and the Rock Chick Nation on her website: http://www.KristenAshley.net

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Give Me Love by Corinne Michaels is now live! 

New York Times bestselling author Corinne Michaels brings another second chance standalone in the town of Rose Canyon.

My biggest mistake was falling in love with my fake husband.

It was supposed to be a marriage of convenience between two best friends in the military. Our plan was to collect extra money and stay stationed together.

But what failed? Me. I did. Because suddenly I wanted a man who was never meant to be my real husband.

In an attempt to remedy my mistake, I severed all ties and put my life as a combat medic and Emmett Maxwell behind me. I’ve lost too many people to open myself up to love.

Now I’m working as a private investigator, and fate has stepped in, forcing our paths to intersect again when I’m looking into the disappearance of a missing girl with ties to Emmett’s hometown. A case I fear puts his life in danger.

He gives me one week to prove my suspicions and then I need to sign the divorce papers and leave. The problem with that? The moment I see Emmett again, I realize how foolish it was to leave him, to think I could ever stop loving him. All I want is a second chance.

When the case threatens not only my life but also his, I’m faced with my worst fear. How many times can a heart break before it shatters beyond repair?

 Download today or read FREE in Kindle Unlimited! 

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Narrated by: Vanessa Edwin & Jason Clarke

If you haven’t read Help Me Remember, you can read it Free in Kindle Unlimited: https://geni.us/HMR_Zon

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Meet Corinne

Corinne Michaels is a New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of romance novels. Her stories are chock full of emotion, humor, and unrelenting love, and she enjoys putting her characters through intense heartbreak before finding a way to heal them through their struggles.

Corinne is a former Navy wife and happily married to the man of her dreams. She began her writing career after spending months away from her husband while he was deployed–reading and writing were her escapes from the loneliness. Corinne now lives in Virginia with her husband and is the emotional, witty, sarcastic, and fun-loving mom of two beautiful children.

Connect with Corinne

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