Promoting and reviewing romance novels one book at a time
Author: professorromance
I teach students to write for college. I love to read writers who write romance. Why not review and promote the writing of people who love to write romance? Win-win for me
If you’ve invested any time in Skye Warren’s Smoke and Mirrors (Cirque des Miroirs) trilogy, take a moment and read Blue Moon, a nibble of a novella based on the enigmatic and charismatic showman, Emerson. As the “villain” of the trilogy (or seemingly so), Warren situates him in a more morally gray position in Blue Moon. He’s responsible for finding a new act for Circque des Miroirs as penance, and he finds it with Luna, a gorgeous acrobat. Throughout the novella, Emerson shows the complications of his character as he saves Luna from an abusive situation while wanting to covet her for himself. There is definite chemistry and team between Emerson and Luna, a cornerstone of a Skye Warren story.
However, Emerson’s novella is wildly underdeveloped, leaving us with questions at the end of Blue Moon. Maybe it’s because Emerson is an important character in the Smoke and Mirrors trilogy, but I was hoping for more from his story. Warren may have more for him in store later, but Blue Moon feels like mostly a start, not an end for Luna and Emerson. I know that 1001 Dark Nights and Blue Box Press stories are short-form; however, I’ve read several of them to know that I wanted more from Warren for this story.
A dangerous ringmaster claims his rebellious acrobat for a sensual show you cannot miss.
Blue Moon, a Smoke and Mirrors novella from New York Times bestselling author Skye Warren is now live!
Charismatic. Devious. Secretive. Emerson Durand is the ringmaster for the illustrious Cirque des Miroirs. In each city he finds a new woman to command for the night. Until he finds the one woman who doesn’t bow to his demands.
Luna Rider soars through the air as an aerial acrobat. She’s determined to provide for herself and her sister, but she doesn’t count on being gambled away. Or the secrets that hover under the striped tent.
Instead, the person who opens it is none other than the stranger from earlier. He is surprisingly not black and blue, not beaten to bits. In fact, he looks healthy and haughty. His dark eyes twinkle like he has a secret with me. “Luna,” he says as if we’re old friends, which is not a good thing. It’s just another reason for my father to hate me later. Because whatever happens between this man and I, whether it’s sexual or not, dangerous or not, there’s no way I’m leaving Blue Moon Circus. “Come on in.” I step cautiously into the room. I’ve stepped foot into this trailer thousands of times, maybe millions of times, I don’t even know. This was my family home, my childhood home, if the word home could be applied to such a place of terror. But the scene is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. Instead of my father’s poker game or a few of the female performers passed out on his lumpy couch for him to use whenever he wants, there are two men I don’t recognize with guns. Pointing them at my father and a couple of his buddies who usually play poker with him. Chips are scattered all around the room. The card table is upended. Something bad happened here though you couldn’t tell by looking at Emerson, he smiles. “We had a slight disagreement at the end of our card game. However, the results stand. I won, which means that you come with me.”
**Every 1001 Dark Nights novella is a standalone story. For new readers, it’s an introduction to an author’s world. And for fans, it’s a bonus book in the author’s series. We hope you’ll enjoy each one as much as we do.**
“You make my soul breathe fire, my beautiful dark desire.”
Parker S. Huntington and L.J. Shen’s newest book, My Dark Desire, begins with a content warning: “this is a dark romance and may contain triggering content.” Anyone who’s read dark romance from either of these two authors knows that their dark can grow dark quickly. Like its partner in crime, My Dark Romeo, My Dark Desire finds its darkness in its MMC’s behavior. When one is rich and powerful, one’s scruples can become gray…and Huntington and Shen’s MMC, Zach, is the grayest of grays.
My Dark Desire is a modern-day Cinderella story with an FMC in Farrow with more backbone than your average dark romance FMC. What I loved the most about this story is Farrow’s capacity to bring Zachary Sun to his knees. It’s always my favorite part of a romance when the MMC seems like the most indomitable character in the room, but it’s clear from the moment this type of MMC meets his FMC, all bets are off. Huntington and Shen have imagined one of my favorite MMCs in this book: a seemingly impenetrable, robot of a man. This only means he will fall hard…and Zach Sun does just that. He becomes obsessed with Farrow.
Thankfully, Huntington and Shen understand the chemistry between an MMC obsessed with his FMC and an FMC who simply cannot help herself when it comes to the MMC. Farrow and Zach are pure chemistry from the start. Their banter, push and pull, and fire set this story’s path—and it’s a blazing one. In fact, Huntington and Shen have written so much story in My Dark Desire that it’s 428 pages of a cat and mouse chase.
What’s most compelling about My Dark Desire and by extension, My Dark Romeo, for that matter, is the creation of Romeo, Ollie, and Zach’s band of brothers trope. Usually, in dark romance, there is very little to save you from the wretchedness of the powerful character towards his/her prey. In this book, Huntington and Shen save you with the humor between these “brothers.” The choice to interrupt the narrative with text messages that will absolutely make you laugh out loud provides a respite from the growing tension between Zach and Farrow or Farrow and her step-family. The intentionality behind the layers of this book, ones that swirl between suspense, humor, and spice, drew me in and compelled me forward. There is something here for every type of romance reader.
My favorite moment of this book came at the end. I haven’t exclaimed at the end of a book for its final line in a while, and Huntington and Shen end My Dark Desire brilliantly. So consider this my warning: if you’re a “read the end of the book to alleviate your anxiety” kind of person, do NOT read the epilogue before you’ve read the entire story. You will ruin the brilliant machinations of its authors. A day later and My Dark Desire is still taking up space in my brain. Parker S. Huntington and L.J. Shen have absolutely done it again with this book, and I am very ready for Ollie’s story…
From Amazon #1 bestselling author Amy Daws, comes an all-new small town, spicy romance sure to hit you in the gut with laughs, feels, and mountain man grunts.
Help Wanted: Grumpy Mountain Man seeks baby momma. Job is an incubator position only. Surrogate must be impervious to grunting in the form of communication and nosey brotherly neighbors. Rustic mountain range housing available upon request.
I wanted to pummel my irritating brothers when they posted their own version of a wanted ad to help me with my life.
But I can’t fault the results once the right woman lands on my lap.
Becoming a single father is not a decision I made lightly. In fact, it’s the biggest decision of my entire life.
Which is why when I interview Trista, I know she’s perfect.
She’s wild, she’s opinionated, she wears cowboy boots. Even my pet goat loves her…
She’s the exact type of person I was holding out for.
And to my great horror, I realize on our first night of attempting this baby making dance…when the lights are low, the cheap wine is flowing, and the home insemination supplies are laid out on the kitchen counter…
I want to do a lot more than just make her my surrogate. I want to make her mine.
Nine Month Contract by Amy Daws releases April 11th
If this potential surrogate isn’t at least marginally impressed by the splendors of this dive bar, then she’s not fit to carry my baby, just like all the others I’ve met.
“Are you Trista?” I ask, my voice gruff.
“Yes,” the curvy woman chirps, her head snapping up like she’s been caught texting in class.
When our eyes connect, a rush of adrenaline surges through me—through my gut, specifically. I swallow the lump in my throat and reach my hand out to her. “Wyatt.”
Her hand is currently tucked deep inside her bag, so she offers me her opposite hand, making for a very awkward handshake. She rustles around with something that sounds like a wrapper in her bag and winces.
When we disconnect, her round eyes venture unabashedly down my body, her lips parting as she takes in my frame. The bag drops off her shoulder, and I hear a strange yip come from her before she begins coughing violently and whacking her chest.
“Excuse me,” she says, her voice gruff from the cough attack as she points at her throat and repositions the bag back on her shoulder. “I sucked some spit into the back of my throat, and it went down the wrong pipe.”
My brows furrow as I gesture to my table over by the stone fireplace. “Can I get you a drink?”
“A drink would be great,” she replies desperately, and I watch as she storms past me to the spot, carefully tucking her bag alongside the chair like she’s carrying a million dollars in cash.
I hesitantly take the seat across from her and gesture to Judy, who comes over in a hurry, likely sensing the awkwardness.
“I’ll have what he’s having,” she says, pointing at my beer with a wink. “Not knocked up yet, right?”
“Coming right up.” Judy shoots me a curious look and takes off for the bar. That’ll get the rumors flying.
“I heard you’ve interviewed a lot of candidates,” Trista offers, drumming her long fingers softly on the beat-up wood table.
“Yeah, I’m afraid so,” I reply with a huff. “And they always seem to feel like…”
“Like you’re picking out a livestock animal?” she offers with her brows arched.
My eyes widen at how she basically read my mind. “Bingo.”
BINGE THE SERIES
If you want to see where these brothers first appeared, check out Last on the List or binge the full Wait With Me Series while you wait for release day! Nine Month Contract is a spin off of Last on the List featuring the main character’s brothers!
For a chance to win a signed copy of Nine Month Contract, check out my cover reveal posts on Facebook and Instagram:www.facebook.com/amydawsauthor
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Number 1 Amazon Bestselling author Amy Daws writes spicy love stories that take place in America, as well as across the pond. She’s most known for her footy-playing Harris Brothers and writing in a tire shop waiting room. When Amy is not writing, she’s likely making charcuterie boards from her home in South Dakota where she lives with her daughter and husband.
Follow Amy on all social media channels, including Tik Tok under @amydawsauthor
A forbidden, small town, sports romance from Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author Devney Perry.
A coach. A student. The rules were concrete. We broke them anyway.
The night I met Toren Greely was the night I learned how to lie. He was a Treasure State football coach. I was the star of the volleyball team. Coaches and students were forbidden. My future was on the line, so I told myself it was only one night.
That was the first lie. They got easier to tell after that. The lines blurred. The boundaries shifted. Our relationship became a game of its own.
A chaste smile. A knowing glance. A veiled touch or a hushed kiss. We hid in plain sight. We were invincible. Or so we thought. Neither of us saw the blitz coming until it was too late.
Game over. The night I left Toren Greely was the night I learned how to lose.
Download today or read for FREE with Kindle Unlimited
Devney Perry is a Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of over forty romance novels. After working in the technology industry for a decade, she abandoned conference calls and project schedules to pursue her passion for writing. She was born and raised in Montana and now lives in Washington with her husband and two sons.
“Books are the mirrors of our soul.” – Virginia Woolf
“That she was indeed a hornet, not a butterfly. That the plain of her heart stretched vast enough to love two men so completely, love her children so purely, love her mother and her friends and the world around her with such a quiet fervor … because first, she loved herself.” – Kennedy Ryan
Rarely do I get personal in my book reviews. I’ve inserted my personal experience into the number of reviews I could count on one hand. Quite frankly, that seems sad. As the quote above from Virginia Woolf suggests, books are a reflection of ourselves. They help us understand life and love and longing, and it seems a shame that we don’t show authors in our reviews where we found ourselves in their book babies. If I were an author, I’d love to hear readers’ stories of the intersection of personal experience and my written word.
Kennedy Ryan’s This Could Be Us is impassioned, intelligent, and impeccable. Her style and syntax are cinematic and breathtaking. Her words grab you by the wrist and pull you into her story, and they hold your hand as you endure and experience her story.
I’d love to tell you how her focus on enduring female friendships in this book is the soft throw around your shoulders on a stormy day. I’d love to highlight the insight offered about the spectrum of neurodivergent characters, a spectrum so wide and vast that it makes it difficult for people to get the proper care and help. She volleys us between Aaron and Adam and Judah to illustrate the spectrum of autism, but that’s Kennedy’s story…and it’s also a bit of my own. Unfortunately, I’m not articulate enough to explain my connection to it.
I’d also love to tell you how the complications of Soledad and Judah’s journey surgically fillet your soul and create a leaner, better understanding of the power of love. The distinct understanding that one’s love affair shouldn’t compare to anyone else’s is a powerful notion. Lastly, I’d love to explain how Kennedy leans into the colonial idea of Republican Motherhood as she draws Soledad’s power in the domestic sphere. This notion ran rampant through my mind as Soledad became more influential in the domestic arts, reminding us of the impact women have made for centuries even when they were stripped of their power.
Where my mind took me for this review is in my want to be a” hornet, not a butterfly.” Here is where This Could Be Us feels like a “mirror” of my soul, where I felt empowered and changed. For the past two years, I’ve been on a journey of self-discovery and change. I learned late into my marriage that my husband lands somewhere on the autism spectrum, and he lacks the self-awareness or interest in loving me as I need to be loved. I had created a very careful existence, one that leaned heavily into peace-making for myself and my son, and it left me feeling lost and alone when my son left home to go to college. Over the past two years, I’ve been working towards becoming the “hornet” that Soledad’s mother, Catelaya, writes about so beautifully in her journal. And it hasn’t been easy. And it hasn’t been perfect, but I am learning to love myself little by little. To embrace all that I am. Opening the pages of Ryan’s inviolable book felt inspired. Kennedy Ryan’s capacity to capture the human experience, manifesting it onto the fullness of the page, is why I will read her stories until the end of my time. Her books are the mirrors to our souls, to my soul, and I feel seen and changed by them. I feel challenged and disarmed by them. I feel empowered by them.
Kennedy Ryan is an apt ambassador for romancelandia, and her books, ones like This Could Be Us, should be celebrated and held as the ultimate representation of all that is good in this genre.
Tropes: best friends to lovers; found family; romantic suspense; next generation; opposites attract
I have figured out why I adore Lexi Blake’s Masters and Mercenaries in all its iterations: her books are a wonderful mix of serious, steamy, suspenseful, and amusing (there was no great “s” word for funny). Her newest series, Masters and Mercenaries: the New Recruits, continues to bring us more of what her original series and its various offshoots have brought us: an investment in the found family of the Taggarts and their colleagues.
In her latest book, Live, Love, Spy, TJ Taggart and Lou (the daughter of the FMC in Delighted, a Masters and Mercenaries novella). Lou and TJ have loved each other from afar from the time they’ve met. TJ, however, believes they are too different to become a couple, and he essentially friendzones Lou until he realizes he can’t live without her. Much of this story is TJ convincing Lou of their potential future, and Lou holding him accountable for his earlier decisions. Blake deftly draws the complications of their journey to underscore the reality of timing in a relationship. While it takes much of the book for them to find equal footing, Blake ends her newest story with the HEA typical of her other M&M’s romances. They earn their happily ever after against the backdrop of a burgeoning suspense.
I’m invested in the underlying story of the New Recruits. Blake has laid the perfect foundation for more stories in this world, and she continues to keep her readers guessing about new couples, the new twists and turns of espionage, and the “world in danger” stories.
If you’re a fan of dom/sub and romantic suspense books, start reading Lexi Blake’s Masters & Mercenaries romances.
A Swoony Small-Town, Brother’s Best Friend, Age Gap Romance
I thought hot nerdy billionaires only existed in books.
Then brilliant astrophysicist Colin Hathaway moved in next door.
After losing his cool on camera, tech’s most eligible bachelor is hiding out in Buttercup Hill, getting a two-week taste of small town life while driving me crazy with that gorgeous smile and those deep blue eyes.
But I need to keep my distance. Not only is he ten years older and my brother’s college best friend, but I’m busy fending off the vultures trying to take over our family winery–and my siblings are just waiting for their little sister’s next bad decision.
Unfortunately, Colin is everywhere I turn. Offering to build me bookshelves, eating grilled cheese sandwiches in my kitchen, flying me off in a luxury helicopter to look at Mars through some fancy telescope.
Who knew the solar system was so sexy?
He’s impossible to resist.
The heat between us is white hot, and no one has ever looked at me the way he does–like I’m smart. Beautiful. Worthy. Strong. When he defends me in front of my family, I realize I’m in deep.
But one slip in front of the media could derail both of our careers. And my heart bears the scars of mistakes I’ve made in the past.
Trusting him could ruin everything I’m working for.
But what if I love him anyway?
Welcome to Buttercup Hill, where the men are hotter than the Napa Valley sun, and the wine flows all day long. LOVE YOU ANYWAY is Book 2 in the series of standalone novels, each with a happily ever after.
Download today or read for FREE with Kindle Unlimited
Stacy Travis writes spicy small-town romance about bookish, sassy women and the hot heroes who fall for them.
Writing makes her infinitely happy, but that might be the coffee talking.
She’s worked as a journalist, camp counselor, TV writer, SAT tutor, corporate finance researcher, education technology editor, and non-fiction author. When she’s not on a deadline, she’s in running shoes complaining that all roads seem to go uphill. Or on the couch with a margarita. Or fangirling at a soccer game.
She’s never met a dog she didn’t want to hug. And if you have no plans for Thanksgiving, she’ll probably invite you to dinner.
Stacy lives in Los Angeles with her two sons and a poorly-trained rescue dog who hoards socks. And she’s serious about the Thanksgiving thing.
When celebrity Laina Kelley bolted from her small hometown church on her wedding day, she ran to the first place that came to mind—to the home of the local farrier, a gorgeous playboy who just so happens to be her first love … and biggest frenemy.
Adriana Locke has revealed the gorgeous cover for This Much Is True!
Releasing: March 18, 2024
Cover Designer: Kari March Designs
Photographer: Wander Aguiar
USA Today bestselling author Adriana Locke delivers a new “sweet and spicy!” standalone romance about a runaway bride who finds herself in the arms, and horse barn, of her deliciously handsome frenemy—who just so happens to be her first love.
This isn’t your average romance. It begins with me in a wedding dress, just not at an altar …
I never expected to be a runaway bride. I also never thought I’d end up on my ex’s doorstep to flee from said wedding. Now that I’m here, it’s easy to find the key in an old boot by the door and let myself inside. It’s not breaking and entering if I have a key, right?
It’s safe to say that Luke Marshall didn’t expect to find me on his couch in my wedding dress, my veil over my face in tears. He has no choice but to listen to my panic-induced plea for salvation. It’s only a matter of time before the tabloids get wind of my disappearing act, and my life is over.
Luke takes pity on me and says I can stay… on one condition.
I can’t sing for my supper—I have to earn it. I have to work in the barn alongside him, up to my elbows in horse manure. Oh—and because there’s only one bed, I get the couch.
This works … in theory. However, when sparks start flying, and the small-town farrier asks me to stay, I’ll have to decide between my life as a pop star or a second chance with my first love.
USA Today and Amazon Charts Bestselling author, Adriana Locke, writes contemporary romances about the two things she knows best—big families and small towns. Her stories are about ordinary people finding extraordinary love with the perfect combination of heart, heat, and humor.
She loves connecting with readers, fall weather, football, reading alpha heroes, everything pumpkin, and pretending to garden.
Hailing from a tiny town in the Midwest, Adriana spends her free time with her high school sweetheart (who she married over twenty years ago) and their four sons (who truly are her best work). Her kitchen may be a perpetual disaster, and if all else fails, there is always pizza.
𝗡𝗘𝗪 𝗥𝗘𝗟𝗘𝗔𝗦𝗘 
Professor Romance 