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
“Sharp writing, layered characters, and wonderful tension flow through this book, along with a super-swoon-worthy hero and a kick ass heroine I just love.” — Elizabeth Hunter, USA Today bestselling author
Code of Conduct, the first in the romantic suspense Cipher Security series of standalones, from April White is available now!
There are three things you need to know about Shane P.I.
1) P.I. is not her last name, it’s her job title,
2) Her specialty is catching cheaters, and
3) She’s a superhuman – kind of.
Gabriel is a security expert for Cipher Security, and a former UN Peacekeeper with a fierce protective streak that finds its focus on the beautiful P.I.
Their attraction is like an elephant in a room full of breakable things, and figuring out how to trust each other with their hearts, and maybe their lives, is the most fragile thing of all.
‘Code of Conduct’ is a full-length romantic suspense novel, can be read as a standalone, and is book#1 in the Cipher Security series, Knitting in the City World, Penny Reid Universe.
April White has been a film producer, private investigator, bouncer, teacher and screenwriter. She has climbed in the Himalayas, survived a shipwreck, and lived on a gold mine in the Yukon. She and her husband share their home in Southern California with two extraordinary boys and a lifetime collection of books.
Her first novel, Marking Time is the 2016 winner of the Library Journal Indie E-Book Award for YA Literature, and all five books in the Immortal Descendants series are on the Amazon Top 100 lists in Time Travel Romance and Historical Fantasy.
I was naïve to think my marriage to Luka Catano might work.
I was infatuated with him from afar…
Until I met him.
He loved the challenge of his next conquest, anyone would do…
Except me.
A wife was never something he wanted.
Torturous was not a strong enough word to describe how I felt when I was in a room with Luka. Besides hating nearly every word that came out of his mouth, I also drowned with lust every time I looked at him.
At times I thought he might feel the same.
But nothing prepared me for what his family would make me become.
“You’ve outdone yourself,” he says. “Which Eden do I have tonight? Will you bite or will you purr?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
He holds his hands out. “What do you think? Am I suitable to be by your side?”
“You clean up okay.”
He smirks and steps closer to me, pulling me flush against him. “Keep playing the cool act. I know it shouldn’t, but it gets me so hard.” He presses into me to prove his point.
“Have you been drinking already?” I frown.
“This is me stone-cold sober.”
“So there’s nothing to excuse your behavior.”
His hands go lower and when he still feels my skin, he frowns. His hands go lower still until they find material, which happens to be hugging my backside. He thrusts into me again and leans his forehead against mine.
“You don’t want to excuse my behavior. You like me best this way. Hot and salivating over you. Admit it.”
I shake my head. “You need to take a step back.”
He exhales a shuddering breath and drops his hands, stepping back. “We’re going to be late. Let’s go.”
I shiver from the loss of his hands and the chill in his voice. I can’t win with him.
Willow Aster is a USA Today Bestselling author and host of Living in the Pages podcast. She lives in St. Paul, MN with her husband, kids, and rescue dog.
Please bring me a new boss for Christmas. Mine is the worst. The worst, hidden in a six foot tall package of male perfection. It’d be easier if he looked like an old Scrooge, wouldn’t it?
Nick Saint-Croix doesn’t look like an old scrooge. He’s hot as-
Um, never mind. Just bring me a new boss. Please.
Sincerely, Holly Winter
If You Give A Jerk A Gingerbread (Reindeer Falls #2) Release Date: November 14th
I will not fall for him, no matter how charming or irresistible or famous he is. I will not be swayed by his skills in the kitchen or by his British accent. I’m going to win the Great Gingerbread Bake Off and no one is going to stand in my way. Not even Keller.
All kisses are off. I mean all bets. All bets are off. And his clothes, those are off too.
Grr, never mind. I’ll figure this out myself.
XOXO, Ginger Winter
The One Night Stand Before Christmas (Reindeer Falls #3) Release Date: November 21st
Please stop by my house and pick up your suit. If you thought I was going to run it to the dry cleaners for you after you left it on my bedroom floor, you’ve got another think coming.
Best, Noel Winter
About the Author: Jana Aston likes cats, big coffee cups and books about billionaires who deflower virgins. She wrote her debut novel while fielding customer service calls about electrical bills, and she’s ever grateful for the fictional gynecologist in Wrong that readers embraced so much she was able to make working in her pajamas a reality. Jana’s novels have appeared on the NYT, USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists, some multiple times. She likes multiples.
“Welcome to Weight Expectations. Where Great Things Happen.”
The slogan for the fictitious gym in M.E. Carter’s newest book, Weight Expectations, goes far to show the “greatness” of this book. Carter’s story is an admonition, a reminder, of the need to love yourself as you are, so that we don’t become stagnant as we fail to meet impossible societal expectations. It’s that realization that we often find ourselves settling in situations because we fear trying something new and failing. This suggestion along with Carter’s craftsmanship of her heroine, Rian, a BBW, challenges her reader to be more to find the “great things” that happen in her book.
The story follows Rian, as she strives to lose weight and become healthier at the request of her employer. She decides to join a gym as a means to this end. This is not an easy move for her, as she has never joined a gym previously, and the experience is foreign to her. Thankfully, her trainer, Abel, along with Tabitha, the smoothie maker extraordinaire for the gym, help her attempt to adjust to this new experience. For the most part, Rian has been self-conscious of her weight for most of her life. She accepts that she is a heavier woman, but other people’s expectations and comparisons of her have made her more comfortable by herself.
Carlos is a gym rat. Like Rian, he began working out as a way to fit in with the security specialists of his employer, Cipher Systems. Even though he is a successful COO of his company, he, like Rian, compares himself to the brawny security personnel and strives to create a body that can compete. Unfortunately, there is a part of him that never believes he quite lives up to his perception of them. Therefore, he lives a highly-structured fit lifestyle.
Additionally, Carlos is not interested in relationships, given his parents’ divorce. He prefers bedding women in one-night stands or short flings. He finds a “type”: more physically attractive in the traditional sense than deep in substance. This works fine for him. Through Tabitha, Carlos and Rian meet. Rian is not Carlos’s type, yet he finds himself drawn to her intellect and personality. Yes, he finds her attractive, but, again, she isn’t his usual interest. Unfortunately, Carlos cannot seem to forget Rian, while Rian believes that Carlos would never choose a woman like her. Are Carlos and Rian destined for each other? That seems to be the question of Carter’s romance.
From the outset of this book, I fell in love. Well, at least, I fell in love with Rian. See, I absolutely connected with her self-image struggles and the way in which she girded herself up against the societal judgment regarding her weight. Her most impactful support system, her family, is actually fraught with problems because they fail to see the true Rian. Instead, they criticize her lifestyle choices and fail to provide her the support she needs to recognize her worth. I think we all see a bit of ourselves in Rian. It doesn’t matter if the problem is weight-related or some other perceived personal deficiency. At some point, we’ve felt that we simply don’t meet someone else’s expectations of us, and we make choices to remain comfortable instead of challenging ourselves to be better for ourselves. Rian’s character is the first representation of this in the book, and Carter does such a beautiful job of crafting Rian’s insecurity. Her words become the words that we say to ourselves in our own insecurities. Yet, Carter overrides those negative words through Carlos’s love of Rian.
Like Rian, Carlos also struggles with a failure to meet expectations. Yes, it seemingly looks like a body image issue. However, as his story progresses, his struggles relate to relationships. He doesn’t believe he can offer the necessary feelings for anything long term, so as Rian does with her weight and her career, he hides behind meaningless flings. Everyone around him can see the depth of his character, as Carter creates it. Yet, his lack of belief in his ability to love another person fully stunts any meaningful connections with women. Until Rian.
Through Carlos and Rian, Carter’s words find purchase in your soul. As Rian struggles to accept Carlos’s love, your heart hurts for her because Carter crafts it to be so. The truth of these two characters is challenged throughout the story through the wise words of Tabitha, Abel, and Frank. When Carlos almost misses his opportunity with Rian, Carter’s words cut at my heart a little. Thankfully, she repaired it through the wisdom of the other characters in the story. This occurs multiple times throughout the story that, once the words act as a salve, you can’t help but consider your own negative self-talk. There is so much wisdom about loving yourself and meeting your own expectations in this story that you’ll find yourself highlighting Carter’s writing like mad because it’s just so darn good.
As a professor of writing, I love ideas. In reading romance, it’s easy to feel your heart pulled into the relationship between the characters and their stories. It’s easy to read the same story over and over again and continue to fall in love with an author’s vision. Yet, there is something more profound in reading romance that has a mission: to offer a truth about life that is bigger than the romantic story. That exists in M.E. Carter’s Weight Expectations. Yes, there is a beautifully written story about two unlikely people falling in love despite their internal challenges. Yes, this romance has its requisite happy ending. And yes, there is the tension-filled climax, threatening the reader will all kinds of turmoil. What Weight Expectations has that many other romances don’t have is a reminder, a heady message of personal acceptance. Trying to meet other people’s expectations will leave us discouraged always. Instead, Carter shows us that we are wonderful just as we are, and that is truly where “great things happen.”
Code of Conduct, one of the books of the SmartyPants Romance group, is a story of finding one’s place. Disguised as romantic suspense, this book is a reminder that we all need a place to belong no matter our life situation. In the case of this story, it takes being loved to help the heroine open herself up to the possibilities of what it means to live.
Shane is a private investigator tasked with helping spouses confirm their spouses are cheating on them. One night, she meets with a man who is cheating and transfers money from a hidden account to his wife’s account. Unbeknownst to Shane, one of the best security firms, Cipher Security, is protecting this man. Alerted to her transfer, a Cipher Security team shows up to investigate, and Shane notices one of the men, Gabriel. She is drawn to him, in the same way, he is drawn to her. Ensuring she escapes, she leaves into the night. However, Shane is drawn to Gabriel and places herself in his way. On finding out that the wife has disappeared, Gabriel encourages Shane to work with him to investigate the wife’s disappearance and the shady dealings of the husband. As the two scrutinize the case together, they grow closer and more rooted in their attraction to each other. When Shane’s life becomes endangered, Gabriel does everything to keep her safe. But as the two grow closer, the more Shane wants to push Gabriel away. Will Gabriel and Shane discover the betrayal behind the husband’s dealings, and will Shane lower her guard to make room for Gabriel in her solitary life?
If you don’t know, Code of Conduct is one of Penny Reid’s SmartyPants Romance books. This is the third book of this group that I’ve read, and what I love thus far with these books is their social consciousness. Code of Conduct is no different. Wrapped up in a burgeoning, fiery romance is a message, an important one. Our heroine, Shane, is an amputee. She loses her leg in an accident, and it changes her identity. In many ways, she’s incredibly independent, trying on various “legs” to suit her needs. In other ways, her injury acts to keep people at bay. Losing her leg is one of her many traumas, and White shows us through the characterization of Shane how people sometimes empower themselves in ways that distance themselves from others. Sparky, the inventor of her many legs, tells her she needs to let people into her life because she has spent her post-amputee life, distancing herself from others. She doesn’t seek help because living alone is more comfortable. Unfortunately, as White shows us, it also keeps us complacent, never seeking adventure. White crafts Shane in a way where we get a real sense of her before the various traumas in her life. It’s easy to see she has stopped truly living until Gabriel comes into her life. It’s a reality check that we should look to our own lives to determine if we, too, are keeping people at “arm’s length,” effectively stagnating our lives in the pursuit of comfort and ease.
There are also messages in this book about pre-judgment. As an amputee, Shane talks about how people often can only see her loss: “people didn’t usually see me. They saw my face and my height if any prosthetic was out of sight, or they saw the fake leg and only the fake leg if it wasn’t.” White also illustrates this through Gabriel. He’s a black man, albeit one who wears beautiful suits and has a British accent. Yet, throughout the story, we see him struggle against the societal judgment of black men. One such incident occurs the night that Shane is threatened, and her life is endangered. Instead of the police handling the situation correctly, they focus their attention on Gabriel, the one who had saved Shane from danger simply because he is a black man, and the villain of this tale is a white man. Again, in this instance, White shows us the difficulty of people looking beyond the outer package. It causes others to unfairly judge people based on a loss of limb or more melanin in one’s skin. And it’s an important message for readers to consider.
As our hero, Gabriel is dreamy. From the outset, I loved him. He’s caring, sensitive, and masculine. These qualities are not mutually exclusive in this story. We find out quickly that he has been raised in a mostly female household. This has given him a sensitivity and respect for women while offering him a place to develop the skill of protection. And we see this is a balancing act in this story. White creates a tense moment between Shane and Gabriel when he fails to find the balance between caring and masculinity. At that moment, White is placing a magnifying glass on how masculinity usurps feminine strength. It’s another moment of reflection in this story. As she does so well with the other messages of her book, White offers a solution to it, one that remedies the tension between our hero and heroine.
Together, Gabriel and Shane are modern-day hero/heroine magic. With her internal strength, Shane challenges Gabriel and his expectations of women, while Gabriel challenges Shane to open her heart to others. To borrow from the movie, Jerry Maquire, they “complete” each other in ways that are mature and heady in our world of social messages. While I’ve spent time focusing on White’s messages in Code of Conduct, it needs to be said that her messages aren’t heavy-handed. They are woven brilliantly amid Shane and Gabriel’s romance and the suspense of this story. Nonetheless, adding the depth of these messages to her romance gives it an essential place in romance. I think this is what I love the best about it. Yes, it’s easy to see the brilliance of an amputee heroine with the strength of personality to take down the bad guy. It sets Shane apart from your average romantic heroine.
It’s April White’s insistence on focusing us on greater social ills in Code of Conduct that make it a worthy read, a necessary one. This book is deep; it’s wrapped in a package of a comfortable, suspense-filled romantic story. But it’s anything but that. I love what Penny Reid and authors such as April White are doing with the SmartyPants Romance books. They are giving us “smart” romance, romance that uses typical romance tropes to challenge our thinking about life. If your romance manna is romantic suspense, then you need Shane and Gabriel’s story in your Kindle Library. You’ll thank me in the end.
Landon & Shay, an all-new emotional and touching duet from Brittainy C. Cherry is coming October 30th, and we have the gorgeous covers!
Shay Gable hated my guts, and I hated hers, too.
We went out of our way to avoid one another at all times. When she came my direction, I went the other. When we locked eyes, she’d turn and walk away.
All of that changed the day I was presented with a challenge. It started out as a stupid bet: make Shay fall in love with me before I fell in love with her first.
That was an easy bet for me to win.
I didn’t love; I hardly liked.
Yet slowly the game started to shift. Shay made me crave things I never knew I wanted like love, happiness, and her.
The closer we grew, the more she challenged my darkness, and the parts I kept locked away.
The hurts.
The pains.
The truth.
The game between us became too real, our feelings intermixed, and the risks of hurting one another grew higher.
But you know what they say…
All’s fair in the game of love and war—especially the heartbreaks.
Author Brittainy C. Cherry is an Amazon #1 bestselling author.
She has been in love with words since the day she took her first breath. She graduated from Carroll University with a Bachelor Degree in Theatre Arts and a minor in Creative Writing.
Her novels have been published in 18+ countries around the world. Brittainy lives in Brookfield, Wisconsin with her fur babies.
Recuperating from a pulled groin muscle isn’t exactly how I planned to spend my much-needed summer vacation.
But I’ll admit, being nursed back to health by my gorgeous friend Bailey, who’s just graduated from medical school, doesn’t exactly sound like a hardship.
We spend a week together at my family’s beach house, a week of swimming and barbecues, a week of entertaining my little cousins and sleeping right across the hall from each other. A week of watching Bailey grow closer with my mom and sisters, and my wacky but lovable grandma. A week of enjoying Bailey tending to me—which is saying something, because it involves a lot of shoving ice packs into my underwear and taping up sore muscles.
She’s funny and kind, and after just being myself for the first time in a long time, my walls come tumbling down. But when Bailey says she’s not looking for a relationship, I’m bound and determined to be more than just the fun hookup who sprained his groin a second time—this time with her.
A New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling
author of more than three dozen titles, Kendall Ryan has sold over 3 million
books and her books have been translated into several languages in countries
around the world.
Her books have also appeared on the New York Times and USA Today
bestseller lists more than 70 times. Ryan has been featured in such
publications as USA Today, Newsweek, and InTouch Magazine.
Wanderlove, an all-new emotional contemporary romance from Rachel Blaufeld is coming October 21st! But you can pre-order this heart-stopping new adult romance today!
Don’t miss the story early reviewers are calling “the best read of 2019!”
Sick of living under her dad’s rules, Emerson Bender bolts when she’s eighteen. On her own for the first time, she heads to the only place her mom ever lived—New York City—desperate to find the woman who dropped her off on her dad’s doorstep.
Content to spend the rest of his life in Small Town, Pennsylvania, Price Barnes is plucked out of his idyllic life by his estranged father. Missing his mom and stepfather, he’s dropped in New York City to attend college and live an all-expenses paid lifestyle. Cushy, right? But not the life he wanted.
She’s looking to fill a hole in her heart, and he’s looking to forget the man who disrupted his life. Together, they’re both wandering, looking for acceptance and hoping to forget the rejection.
Let’s say you’re an independent, self-sufficient woman who runs the family company and you find yourself falling for your little brother’s best friend. Now, more than ever, you need to count all the reasons why you need to abandon falling.
Abandon Falling #1 – He’s a womanizer. Hasn’t had a serious relationship a day in his life and changes women more often than he changes his sheets.
Abandon Falling #2 – He’s never serious. He cracks one-liners, mostly at your expense.
Abandon Falling #3 – When things go wrong, he seems unfazed and always remains in control. It’s so annoying.
Abandon Falling #4 – He has tattoos. Lots of them. Everywhere. Not to mention, he owns a tattoo parlor. (Damn it! Why doesn’t that sound like a bad thing anymore?)
Abandon Falling #5 – There’s a growing list of how different you two are. You can’t get along for fifteen minutes—a lifetime together would land one of you in prison.
Keep repeating those reasons and drown yourself in work. Pretend you don’t notice his good qualities or how enticing he looks without a shirt, and do not, I repeat, do not agree to live with the man while your place is being repaired from flood damage.
Trust me, even the strongest of us can only forego temptation for so long.
Title: Out of the Darkness
Author: Jessica Prince
Series: Hope Valley
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Release Date: November 11
The light had been snuffed out of Xander Caine’s world a long time ago, leaving him to suffer in darkness. After a tremendous loss, he closed himself off from anyone and everyone, content to live alone in the shadows. Then a woman blew into town with the force of a hurricane and shook everything up.
Sage Winthrop was looking to start over. She didn’t have a plan for what her new life would look like, but when she landed in Hope Valley, she knew it was the place she wanted to call home. Then one chance encounter outside of the best coffee shop in town set her world spinning.
Sage and Xander hated each other on sight. However, when they’re forced to work together, that hate eventually turns into something neither of them expected. Their attraction proves too strong to ignore. But when secrets from Sage’s past are revealed and her life is threatened, Xander has no choice but to let go of his demons and step out of the darkness in order to save the woman he loves.
Born and raised around Houston Texas, Jessica spent most of her life complaining about the heat, humidity, and all around pain in the ass weather. It was only as an adult that she quickly realized the cost of living in Houston made up for not being able to breathe when she stepped outside. That’s why God created central air, after all.
Jessica is the mother of a perfect little boy–she refuses to accept that he inherited her attitude and sarcastic nature no matter what her husband says.
In addition to being a wife and mom, she’s also a wino, a coffee addict, and an avid lover of all types of books–romances still being her all time favs. Her husband likes to claim that reading is her obsession but she just says it’s a passion…there’s a difference. Not that she’d expect a boy to understand.
Jessica has been writing since she was a little girl, but thankfully grew out of drawing her own pictures for her stories before ever publishing her first book. Because an artist she is not.
