Tag: slow burn romance

new release

✍🏻 Do you LOVE small-town romance? In the tradition of Devney Perry and Elsie Silver, Laney Hatcher’s Leaf It to Me put an absolute smile on my face. One of my fav tropes – he falls first/unrequited love/MMC loves the FMC hard – is found in the pages of this story, and Mark Mercer will absolutely charm you. One-click this one fast…Laney Hatcher is my new fav small-town romance charmer. ✍🏻

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★★Now Live★★
LEAF IT TO ME, an all new swoony slow burn romance from Laney Hatcher, is LIVE in Kindle Unlimited! Don’t miss this charming small town and cozy holiday vibes!

★★Grab your copy today!★★
https://geni.us/LITM-BLG

★★BLURB★★
𝐒𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐨𝐚𝐝 𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐞.

Candace Judd is part of a legacy. One she up and left when she turned eighteen. While she spent the last seven years collecting degrees and achieving her dreams, her family’s apple farm moved on without her. But now she’s back and nothing about Kirby Falls is how she remembers it–including her family’s newest employee, a certifiable blast from the past. A quiet boy turned flannel-covered mountain man and her distractingly handsome coworker.

Mark Mercer leads a quiet life. He works at Judd’s Orchard. He keeps his head down and avoids the gossip that’s been chasing him around since his divorce. But when his high school crush returns to Kirby Falls unexpectedly, he realizes there is nothing more humbling than having the past come back to bite you. Or even worse, forget you altogether.

Desperate to prove herself, Candace works to find her footing with her family while Mark struggles with the desire to hide himself away. When she takes the time to really look, Candace discovers more than an ally in the rugged farmer.

As days at the orchard become nights spent together under the stars, Mark begins to see that his dream girl is more than the prom queen he remembers. While life shines brighter with Candace by his side, Mark must decide if he’d rather live in the shadows or face his fears once and for all.

Cover Reveal

✍🏻 Who’s ready for a winter small-town romance from a delicious author? Laney Hatcher’s Leaf It to Me is coming December 17th. ✍🏻

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★★Cover Reveal★★

LEAF IT TO ME, an all new small-town slow burn romance from Laney hatcher, is coming December 17th to Kindle Unlimited! And we have the gorgeous new cover!

★★Reserve your copy today!★★

https://geni.us/LITM-BLG

★★BLURB★★

𝐒𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐨𝐚𝐝 𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐞.

Candace Judd is part of a legacy. One she up and left when she turned eighteen. While she spent the last seven years collecting degrees and achieving her dreams, her family’s apple farm moved on without her. But now she’s back and nothing about Kirby Falls is how she remembers it–including her family’s newest employee, a certifiable blast from the past. A quiet boy turned flannel-covered mountain man and her distractingly handsome coworker.

Mark Mercer leads a quiet life. He works at Judd’s Orchard. He keeps his head down and avoids the gossip that’s been chasing him around since his divorce. But when his high school crush returns to Kirby Falls unexpectedly, he realizes there is nothing more humbling than having the past come back to bite you. Or even worse, forget you altogether.

Desperate to prove herself, Candace works to find her footing with her family while Mark struggles with the desire to hide himself away. When she takes the time to really look, Candace discovers more than an ally in the rugged farmer.

As days at the orchard become nights spent together under the stars, Mark begins to see that his dream girl is more than the prom queen he remembers. While life shines brighter with Candace by his side, Mark must decide if he’d rather live in the shadows or face his fears once and for all.

new release

✍🏻 Penelope Ward’s The Rocker’s Muse is HERE! ✍🏻

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Title: The Rocker’s Muse
Author: Penelope Ward
Genre: Standalone Contemporary Romance
Tropes: Rockstar/15-Year Age Gap/Small Town
Found Family/Slow Burn/Forbidden
Release Date: August 26, 2024
BLURB
From New York Times bestselling author Penelope Ward comes a new, STANDALONE novel…
No one but me knew why I was actually in the California desert that day.
Nestled deep within the desolate, rocky area was a recording studio.
When a door suddenly opened, a man mistook me for someone he was supposed to be interviewing for a job.
The next thing I knew, I was whisked inside.
The position? An assistant on the upcoming tour for one of America’s most famous rock bands.
Pretty exciting opportunity for a twenty-two-year-old, just out of college.
Not surprisingly, I bombed the interview.
When I ended up mistakenly walking into the men’s room on my way out, I struck up a conversation with a stranger—not realizing it was the lead singer, Tristan Daltrey.
He seemed to like the fact that I had no idea who he was, that I saw him as a normal person.
That night, I got a call offering me the job.
So began my complicated story with Tristan.
Millions of women loved him.
Yet for some reason, after the shows, he only wanted to hang out with me.
Late-night talks. Casual dinners in his hotel room.
I wasn’t supposed to be fraternizing with the band’s frontman.
Despite our fifteen-year age difference, Tristan and I had a connection.
But I had a secret.
One that would eventually lead to my leaving the tour.
And one that would lead Tristan and the band straight to the small town where I came from.
PURCHASE LINKS
AMAZON US / UK / CA / AU
Audiobook coming soon!
WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT
ROCKSTAR
15-YEAR AGE GAP
SMALL TOWN
FOUND FAMILY
SLOW BURN
FORBIDDEN
AUTHOR BIO
Penelope Ward is a New York Times, USA Today and #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling author of contemporary romance.
She grew up in Boston with five older brothers and spent most of her twenties as a television news anchor. Penelope resides in Rhode Island with her husband, son, and beautiful daughter with autism.
With millions of books sold, she is a 21-time New York Times bestseller and the author of over forty books. Her novels have been translated into over a dozen languages and can be found in bookstores around the world.
AUTHOR LINKS
OTHER BOOKS BY PENELOPE WARD
AMAZON US / UK / CA / AU
AMAZON US / UK / CA / AU
AMAZON US / UK / CA / AU
SEE MORE BOOKS HERE
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Review

✍🏻 Professor Romance’s Review: Laney Hatcher’s Love Matched, a Smartypants Romance ✍🏻

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Overall Grade: A

Tropes: opposites attract; fish out of water; standalone in an interconnected series; regency romance; slow burn


The brilliance of Laney Hatcher’s storytelling in the Smartypants World shouldn’t be missed. Here’s the situation: imagine taking a beloved series (Knitting in the City series) from the illustrious Penny Reid and reimagining it into the world of Regency romance. This isn’t an easy task as the women of Penny Reid’s original series read against type for that world. Yet, after Hatcher’s first two books for Smartypants, Neanderthal Seeks Duchess and Well-Acquainted, she does it with such aplomb that it’s quite astounding to the dedicated Penny Reid reader. Now, the newest story, Love Matched, poses another challenge. In the story that Love Matched re-tells, Love Hacked, the MMC is a genius hacker. How does one take a decidedly 21st-century occupation and infuse some element of it into a Regency romance? If you’re Laney Hatcher, seemingly easy. You should know that Penny Reid’s Sandra and Alex are my second favorite couple in her Knitting in the City series, so I was reading Love Matched with a critical, yet intrigued eye. How do you craft an MMC and FMC such as Sandra and Alex into 19th-century characters? Even more, when I read Penny Reid’s Love Hacked, there was a desolation to Alex’s story, a struggle to unwind himself from an outer claim on him. This bind is the tension of their story, as over and over again, Sandra must fight for their coupleship with the odds stacked against them. 

And Laney Hatcher rises to the challenge of these issues in her story, Love Matched. Even in Regency England, Sandra is headstrong, independent, and brave. Her pursuit of Alexander is the catalyst for significant change in his life, and she believes in him and their capacity for a future, just as the character in Penny Reid’s book does. Additionally, Hatcher composes Alexander with the same solitariness as Reid’s character. This is important because the Alex of Penny Reid’s book cloaks himself in that solitariness as protection. Hatcher’s ability to draw Alexander in the same, but different manner than Reid’s character doesn’t read like a copy, but rather an iteration, a complex, fully rendered reimagining. And I find this fascinating and exciting. 

Laney Hatcher’s Love Matched is my favorite of her Smartypants Romance stories thus far. Partly, I love an FMC who knows her mind and challenges social mores to ensure her eternal happiness, and I adore an MMC who challenges her but also accepts her on her own terms. The community we love and adore in Penny Reid’s Knitting in the City series is still a cornerstone of Laney Hatcher’s reconceptualization of this beloved group of women. It continues to buoy the stories. Now, I’m ready for Hatcher’s next book in the series, as it should feature my favoritest of favorites in the Penny Reid world, Fiona and Greg. What will a ninja look like in Regency England? One can only imagine it.

In love and romance,


Professor A

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Review

✍🏻 Professor Romance’s 5 ⭐️ Review: Karla Sorensen’s One and Only ✍🏻

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Overall Grade: ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Tropes: fake relationship; single dad; sports romance; slow burn

“I wanted her everywhere. All her sounds, every flicker of her eyes, and every smile, I wanted them inked on my skin and threaded through my veins.”

There is something very special about Karla Sorensen’s One and Only. Let me be clear: Sorensen is a must-read author for me because her style, her storytelling, her genius at crafting characters speaks to me as a reader. I can hear her characters and their story distinctly in my head, and the way she puts words together flows easily through my mind. I’ve loved her romances and especially adored Logan Ward, the ultimate book boyfriend, for his capacity to love his sisters and his eventual soulmate, Paige. I note all of this because her newest book has taken the top spot for my favorite Sorensen romance. Here’s why…

  1. The romance is nuanced in a way that shreds your heart. Everything feels understated and small, but the specter of it fills your soul. One and Only is a slow burn. Like…a really slow burn. Think, they finally give in to their chemistry at the 90-ish percentage mark. And it’s pure perfection. It’s exactly as it should be because Sorensen knows that her characters, Greer and Beckett, require the space of the story to find themselves while falling in love with each other.
  2. I’ve tried to understand why Sorensen’s romances captivate me, and One and Only helped me realize that her superpower is crafting small, quiet moments between her characters that shout out their attraction and chemistry in powerful, heartrending ways. Even with a big character such as Greer who takes up space with her spontaneity, the small moments between her and Beckett cause you to hold your breath and fall deeply in love with them. There’s a moment when Beckett shares his experience growing up with older parents and feeling minimized. He tells Greer how he’s insistent on wanting all the time with his daughter, Olive, because he wants to give her more than he had. In that moment, he recognizes how Greer takes his truth and holds it dear: “Greer’s attention never wavered, and I could see the way she tucked every word of my answer somewhere important. I wanted to know where she kept it. Where she locked it away. What question it answered in her mind. This answer, the biggest piece of who I was, mattered to her. And that, in turn, mattered to me.” This is a purely internal moment, and it causes you to hold your breath a little at Beckett’s gravity of interest in Greer. It’s here where love is created, and it jars you a little in all the best ways. Beckett is incredibly internal, and Sorensen uses it to draw her readers to his character.
  3. Beckett speaks few words, but his eventual choices breed a big love. That’s where I fell in love with him. It’s where he surpassed my love for Logan Ward. His integrity and his willingness to sacrifice Greer in order for them to have a future are what made me fall deeply for him. It’s hard to describe why it feels special to this story, but I think, in a world where it feels harder and harder to trust people, Sorensen plays with the idea of integrity through the fake relationship trope and rectifies it in a way that feels both devastating and promising in equal measure. That’s where she blew my mind and made me appreciate her even more as a writer.
  4. The tertiary relationships of One and Only are its foundation. They give Beckett and Olive a family, challenge Greer, add humor, and make me cry. The Wilder family is magical, and I won’t be okay when Tim dies. I know it’s a matter of time, but I’m not ready for it yet. Even more, there is the promise of more stories, and I can’t wait to reside in Ian, Parker, Cameron, or Poppy’s stories because Sorensen has constructed a family that we’d all love to belong to.

I’m still not over One and Only. Beckett’s silent strength and Greer’s fierce love have burrowed spaces into my heart. As I think about the sweet bonus epilogue and the beauty of their journey, I don’t want to move on from them. Hopefully, we will see them again in future Wilder family books, but it’s a testament to Karla Sorensen’s gift that we hate to leave her stories. That we’d love to live in the day-to-day of Beckett and Greer always.

In love and romance,

Professor A