The week of the 22nd I read/listened to 7 books.
See below for my reviews and the synopsis.
I had a great week of reading that week. All the stories I enjoyed and all very different from each other.
Weekly Reading:
🍒Breaking All The Rules by Amy Andrews -4⭐
🍒Blush by Helen Hardt -4⭐
🍒Cinderella Hired for His Revenge by Emmy Grayson -4.25⭐
🍒Against the Currant by Olivia Matthews -3.75⭐
🍒The Minusucle Mansion-4.25⭐
🍒Root-4.25⭐
🍒Coercion-4.5⭐
Reviews
Breaking All The Rules
by Amy Andrews
Pub Day – 1/24/23
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✨Reverse Age Gap
✨Small Town Romance
✨Opposites Attract
✨Dual POV
This was such a fun fast read! Loved the overworked underappreciated ad exec who is taking a break in a small town where she meets a handsome police officer 10 years younger than her that she just hits it off with. I mean she made an interesting first impression. Loved how she landed on her feet and her journey to get where she needed to be.
Synopsis:
Sometimes you gotta toss your whole life into a burning dumpster to find what’s most important…
Beatrice Archer has always done everything she’s supposed to —worked her ass off, ignored her non-existent personal life, and kept her mouth shut. Now she’s over it. The rat race, respectability…the underwire bras. She’s taking her life back. Starting with moving to Nowhere, Colorado to live life on her own terms.
Now Bea gives exactly zero forks. Beer for breakfast. Sugar for everything else. Baggy sweats and soft cotton undies FTW. Then a much younger and delightfully attractive cop is called to deal with her flagrant disregard for appropriate clothing outside the local diner (some folks just don’t appreciate bunny slippers) and Bea realizes there’s something missing from her little decathlon of decadence…and he might be the guy to help her out.
When it comes to breaking rules, Officer Austin Cooper is surprisingly eager to assist. He’s charming, a little bit cowboy, and a whole lot sexy. But Bea’s about to discover that breaking the rules has consequences. And all of the cherry pies in Colorado can’t save her from what’s coming…
Thank you entangledpub and netgalley for the e-ARC for the honest and voluntary review.
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Blush
by Helen Hardt
Pub Day – 1/24/23
✨Friends to lovers
✨Steamy, hot with BDSM lite
✨Dual POV
This is the start of a new series and I loved the chemistry between Jackson and Mandy.
He has been trying to keep himself in the friend zone and she has been trapped in unrequited love hell for her whole life. They are childhood best friends and she wants to start dating again and he pulls a Tom Hanks you’ve got mail on her with a mix of Christian Grey.
This starts some enjoyable teaching moments for her. Since no one can have her but me vibes roll off him.
Synopsis:
What he wants from you will make you…Blush
Amanda Thomas is hopelessly in love with Jackson Paris, but he will never see her as anything more than his sweet and innocent bestie. After being virgin-adjacent for too long, Mandy is officially ready to move on. She wants to learn about hot, dirty sex, so she joins an online dating app where the enigmatic Mr. Dark promises to fulfill all of her wicked fantasies…
Jackson Paris has been keeping secrets from his stunning, too-innocent best friend—like forbidden sexual proclivities and his membership at the exclusive Black Rose Underground club. But Mandy has decided she needs an education—the filthy kind. As Mr. Dark, Jackson can safely give her a taste of what she wants—and deter her from pursuing more—without revealing his identity.
But in the dim, provocative atmosphere of Black Rose Underground, there are no secrets. Here, every wicked appetite is satisfied. And for the first time, Mandy will discover who her best friend really is…just in time to shock him with a secret of her own.
Thank you entangledpub and netgalley for the e-ARC for the honest and voluntary review.
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Cinderella Hired for His Revenge
by Emmy Grayson
Pub Date – 1/24/23
Cinderella Hired for His Revenge
🍒Second Chance Romance
🍒 Slowburn
🍒Floral arranging
Loved the revenge hire that Grant did with Alexandra’s floral shop. They had dated once upon a time and she broke his heart. She was the wealthy heiress and he was the gardener. Now her father is in jail and she’s starting over and he’s the billionaire. Though trying to stick it to her isn’t working cause she’s good at her job. And he’s realizing that maybe things didn’t end the way he thought they did or for the reasons he thought.
Synopsis:
Her deal with the tycoon from her past will save her from destitution! Discover this thrilling revenge romance from Emmy Grayson.
The boss rarely forgives…
And he never forgets!
Under her father’s ironclad influence, heiress Alexandra Moss was forced to shatter Grant Santos’s heart to save his promising future. Now their positions are reversed. She’s penniless and working every waking hour…and he’s a legendary Manhattan CEO whose signature she needs on a business-saving contract!
Grant hires Alexandra to exact ice-cold vengeance. Except every glance is still red-hot! Being burned twice is not part of his plan… This time, when their passion becomes irresistible, Grant plans to be the one in control!
From Harlequin Presents: Escape to exotic locations where passion knows no bounds.
Thank you harlequinbooks and netgalley for the e-ARC for the honest and voluntary review.
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Against the Currant
A Spice Isle Bakery Mystery
by Olivia Matthews
Pub Date 1/24/23
Against the Currant: A Spice Isle Bakery Mystery (Spice Isle Bakery Mysteries #1)
✨Cozy mystery ✨Amateur investigation ✨Lots of West Indian food!
This was a fast paced cozy mystery set in Brooklyn. A new bakery specializing in Caribbean food is opening and the current neighborhood bakery owner comes by to cause trouble. So after a heated back and forth that surly bakery owner is found dead at his home.And of course Lyndsay is the prime suspect cause of the verbal fight the day before.Though through some investigating of her own she finds there are a lot of people that have issues with this guy due to his bad attitude, bad business practices and possible grifting.But the police still won’t look at anyone but her. Love a good cozy and the food sounds amazing!!
Synopsis:
In Olivia Matthews’s Against the Currant, the first Spice Isle Bakery Mystery, investigating a murder was never supposed to be on the menu…
Little Caribbean, Brooklyn, New York: Lyndsay Murray is opening Spice Isle Bakery with her family, and it’s everything she’s ever wanted. The West Indian bakery is her way to give back to the community she loves, stay connected to her Grenadian roots, and work side-by-side with her family. The only thing getting a rise out of Lyndsay is Claudio Fabrizi, a disgruntled fellow bakery owner who does not want any competition.
On opening day, he comes into the bakery threatening to shut them down. Fed up, Lyndsay takes him to task in front of what seems to be the whole neighborhood. So when Claudio turns up dead a day later—murdered—Lyndsay is unfortunately the prime suspect. To get the scent of suspicion off her and her bakery, Lyndsay has to prove she’s innocent—under the watchful eyes of her overprotective brother, anxious parents, and meddlesome extended family—what could go wrong?
Thank you stmarinspress and netgalley for the e-ARC for my honest and voluntary review.
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The Minuscule Mansion of Myra Malone
by Audrey Burges
Pub Date – 1/24/23
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The Minuscule Mansion of Myra Malone
✨Magical Realism
✨Dual Timeline, Multi POV
✨Emotional with romance
I enjoyed this one! The mansion of miniatures that was so much more! Myra had been gifted this mansion and how to take care of it when she was small. This is a dual timeline between her and Willa and Ford’s timeline. Willa lived in the real life version and it passed down through her family. I felt the magic, mystery, pain, love, and heartache in this book.
I would probably follow a mansion on a blog. Her single minded focus on this miniature house was so interesting to me. For someone who fixates and obsesses I could get lost in a project like that especially if it communicated and new furniture just appeared.
Synopsis:
A woman learns to expand the boundaries of her small world and let love inside it in this sparkling and unforgettable novel by Audrey Burges.
From her attic in the Arizona mountains, thirty-four-year-old Myra Malone blogs about a dollhouse mansion that captivates thousands of readers worldwide. Myra’s stories have created legions of fans who breathlessly await every blog post, trade photographs of Mansion-modeled rooms, and swap theories about the enigmatic and reclusive author. Myra herself is tethered to the Mansion by mysteries she can’t understand—rooms that appear and disappear overnight, music that plays in its corridors.
Across the country, Alex Rakes, the scion of a custom furniture business, encounters two Mansion fans trying to recreate a room. The pair show him the Minuscule Mansion, and Alex is shocked to recognize a reflection of his own life mirrored back to him in minute scale. The room is his own bedroom, and the Mansion is his family’s home, handed down from the grandmother who disappeared mysteriously when Alex was a child. Searching for answers, Alex begins corresponding with Myra. Together, the two unwind the lonely paths of their twin worlds—big and small—and trace the stories that entwine them, setting the stage for a meeting rooted in loss, but defined by love.
Thank you berkleypub and netgalley for the e-ARC for my honest and voluntary review.
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Root
Spirit Era
by Aurélie Benattar
Pub Date – 1/31/23
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✨Dystopian
✨AI simulations
✨Chakras
This is such an interesting concept! I love books like this that address the issues of the world and have a countdown and a selection of talented people to try to save the world. The testing simulation was very interesting and all the complicated society woven in there. I can totally see that as a possible outcome to our current social trajectory. This is the first in a series. Excited to see what happens next!
Synopsis:
Seven teenagers. Seven chakras. Seven keys to save humanity.
In 2035, fifteen-year-old Rae, an orphan, has chosen silence. Or perhaps silence has chosen her. After the sudden death of her father, she has lost her ability to speak.
But that is the least of her problems. An elusive genius known as the Keeper has created an advanced AI program—Spirit Era—that predicts the world will end in two years without massive human intervention. The solution? Seven teenage volunteers who must work together to prevent this doomsday. Despite her reluctance to apply, Rae is selected, along with six other teens from the four corners of the world, to save humanity.
Spirit Era has designed seven Mantras, virtual reality worlds revealing the seven most likely apocalyptic disasters. Within these Mantras are concealed seven keys that will unlock humanity’s potential to stand in the way of planetary destruction and fight for the future of the world. The seven chosen ones—quiet Rae, hotheaded Chayton, sensual Helen, quick-witted Ali, gentle Keiji, intense Alpha, and reserved Stepan—must journey into these worlds to find the keys.
Root, the first book in this gripping saga, follows the seven into a hyperrealistic simulation of the not-too-distant future, where the rich have seized control of the world’s resources following a global famine triggered by a devastating loss of biodiversity. In order to escape this possible future, the seven must join together and use all their powers to find the key—and survive the simulation.
Two years left until the end of the world. The countdown begins . . .
Thank you aurelie_benattar and netgalley for the e-ARC for my honest and voluntary review.
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Coercion
By Amelia Wilde
Pub Date- 1/24/23
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This is book #3 for Will and Bristol. After the cliffhanger in book 2 there was so much action to get back to eachother and to stay safe.
Their chemistry is still 🥵 but they finally dig in to their traumas so maybe they can start their lives together. Love the found family they’ve become with her siblings and his. His deep-rooted family issues get a little more closure for him and his brothers in this book.
Can’t wait for Sinclair’s book! Loved the excerpt at the end his lady of choice is going to get him in trouble.
Synopsis:
There’s a fight to the death… and a fight for his heart.
COERCION is book three in the Controlling Interest trilogy. Find out what happens in the explosive conclusion of Will Leblanc’s emotional story.
Thank you valentine_pr_ and dangerouspress for the e-ARC for my honest and voluntary review.
ReadsbyRadus 