The Risk (Briar U #2) by Elle Kennedy

Publication: February 18, 2019

Publisher: Elle Kennedy Inc.

Source: Author/Publisher

Synopsis:

A sexy standalone novel from New York Times and international bestselling author Elle Kennedy. THE RISK takes you back to the world of hot hockey players, feisty heroines, bro banter, and steamy scenes... 

Everyone says I’m a bad girl. They’re only partly right—I don’t let fear rule me, and I certainly don’t care what people think. But I draw the line at sleeping with the enemy. As the daughter of Briar’s head hockey coach, I’d be vilified if I hooked up with a player from a rival team.

And that’s who Jake Connelly is. Harvard’s star forward is arrogant, annoying, and too attractive for his own good. But fate is cruel—I require his help to secure a much-coveted internship, and the sexy jerk isn’t making it easy for me.

I need Connelly to be my fake boyfriend.

For every fake date…he wants a real one.

Which means this bad girl is in big trouble. Nothing good can come from sneaking around with Jake Connelly. My father would kill me, my friends will revolt, and my post-college career is on the line. But while it’s getting harder and harder to resist Jake’s oozing sex appeal and cocky grin, I refuse to fall for him.

That’s the one risk I’m not willing to take.

******

I fell in love with Brenna. Beyond her gorgeous looks, she is smart, sarcastic, independent, and very sure of herself. When she wants something she isn’t afraid to go after it.  Even though things in her life hadn’t always gone to plan, she’s determined to turn things around. She’s not afraid to enter into a profession that is mostly dominated by men. I loved her fearlessness and determination.

Jake is smart, witty, and on track to play with a professional hockey team once he’s finished college. He is the top college hockey player at the moment. He lives and breathes hockey. Not only is he really good at hockey, he is equally good looking. And he knows it too. He’s never had to work hard to get a woman’s attention. Until now. Jake’s trying to maintain his good grades at college and still excel in hockey. Brenna comes into his world and shakes things up a bit. He wasn’t expecting that. Well, neither one of them was expecting it.

I loved their back and forth banter. There wasn’t a chapter that I wasn’t smiling or laughing at or with these two. They’re attracted to each other from the beginning, but there was a gradual buildup to their relationship. It wasn’t instant. Despite the fact that Brenna is against having something real with Jake, their chemistry was off the charts.  There was no way that I could do anything but root for these two to get their HEA. The Risk is the second book in the Briar U series, but it was the first book I read by Elle Kennedy. I will definitely be checking out her previous books.

RATING: 4½ out of 5.

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The White Christmas Inn by Colleen Wright

 

Publication: October 23, 2018

Publisher: Atria/Howard Books

Source: Publisher

Synopsis:

In this heartwarming, feel-good novel, a snowstorm brings a cast of very different characters together at a sleepy New England inn, just in time for Christmas—and maybe even in time for a Christmas miracle. 

A New England inn seems like the picture-perfect place to spend the holidays. But when a snowstorm shuts the roads and keeps them all inside, the guests find themselves worrying that this Christmas may not be exactly what they dreamed of. 

Molly just needs to keep her head down and finish her latest book, but her writer’s block is crippling. The arrival of Marcus, a handsome widower with two young girls, is exactly the distraction she doesn't need.

Hannah was hoping for a picturesque winter wedding, but her plans come crashing down when her fiancé calls everything off. She reconnects with her childhood friend, Luke, when he comes to check on his grandmother before the storm.

Jeanne and Tim don't know how they're going to keep the inn open another year—or how to bridge the distance between them in their marriage. With a flurry of unexpected guests, they'll have to work together to fix all the problems that crop up. But will it be enough to rekindle their relationship?

As the characters’ stories intertwine, they start to find hope where they thought it had been lost. With faith, and a little bit of Christmas magic, the inn—and its inhabitants—might just make it through the holidays after all.

******

This was such a sweet and inviting Christmas story. All of these characters are different, yet during the course of their stay at the inn during a major blizzard, they become interconnected. They are each facing their own set of problems, wishing for a miracle to help them through the holiday.

I was worried that with all of the different characters in this story, I wouldn't be able to keep track of everyone and it would keep me from truly enjoying it. However, I was glad to discover that wasn't the case. I liked getting to know everyone and my favorites quickly became Molly, a children’s book writer, Marcus (an architect) and his two little girls, Addison and Bailey. Those little girls practically stole the show.

The author did a great job of the describing the inn, the decorations, and the food that was prepared. Though the characters backstories aren’t deeply delved into, I felt like there was enough information to get a good sense of the character and what was going on in their life.  

The White Christmas Inn is a heart-warming story filled with love, hope, and the magic of Christmas. It felt like I was watching a Hallmark movie unfolding before my eyes while I read. If you are looking for a story that will put you in the mood for the holiday season, pick up The White Christmas Inn.

RATING: 3 out of 5.

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Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders by Julianna Baggott Release Blitz!

I am so excited that HARRIET WOLF'S SEVENTH BOOK OF WONDERS by Julianna Baggott releases today and that I get to share the news, along with an exclusive excerpt!

If you haven’t yet heard about this wonderful book by Author Julianna Baggott, be sure to check out all the details below.

This blitz also includes a giveaway for 5 hardcovers of the book courtesy of Little Brown, and Rockstar Book Tours. So if you’d like a chance to win, enter in the Rafflecopter at the bottom of this post.

About The Book:

Title: HARRIET WOLF'S SEVENTH BOOK OF WONDERS
Author: Julianna Baggott
Pub. Date: August 18, 2015
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Pages: 336
Find it: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Goodreads

A brilliantly crafted saga about three generations of women and their secrets, including the discovery of a final unpublished book by the family matriarch, a revered and reclusive author.

Harriet Wolf has a final confession. It can be found only in the final book of the series that made her a famous writer. But does that book exist?

This absorbing novel spans the entire twentieth century, telling the moving story of a mother, her daughter, and two granddaughters, one of whom is the only person alive who knows the whereabouts of Harriet's final book. When a hospitalization brings the family back together, the mystery not only of Harriet's last book, but also of her life, hangs in the balance. Will the truth ever be known, or is Harriet's story gone forever?

A multi-generational tale of long-lost love, motherhood, and family secrets, this is Baggott's most sweeping and mesmerizing novel yet.

 Exclusive Excerpt:

Chapter One

The Baby, Twice Born

Harriet

This is how the story goes: I was born dead—or so my mother was told.

According to the physician, good old Dr. Brumus, I didn’t cry. I wasn’t capable of even this innate reflex. I was mute and sallow and already a bleeder, one red bead poised at each nostril. Imagine my exhausted mother—the saint, Irish and Catholic—her legs sagging wide beneath the bloody sheet like two pale, bony wings.

The year was 1900. The world was taking a new shape: the Paris Exposition’s moving sidewalks, Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, and a tunnel being dug for the subway at Borough Hall, Manhattan. But in our house near the Chesapeake, not far from bustling Baltimore—with its canneries and foundries, its harbor of moaning steamboats, its tenements teeming with typhoid—there was little to do for either my mother or me, medically. Science had come only so far.

But given that Dr. Brumus—winded, permanently overwhelmed—had delivered three stillborn babies from my mother already, it seemed, for the moment, he’d finally won something. He was always watchful, however, always squinting as if in bright sun, even at dusk, the hour I was born, mosquitoes whining past an ear. And Brumus knew, what with my bleeding nose and my pallid, lightly furred skin, that something wasn’t right. He wrapped me in a blanket—though the summer hung wet and steaming outside. Like an aging football captain, he shuttled me down the stairs to the porch, where my father, the banker, was pacing. Dr. Brumus presented me to my father and gave the news: “It isn’t fit.” I wasn’t a girl yet. I was still dangling before my father, midair, a lost pronoun, and it would take years before I would become a child in any real form in my father’s eyes.

“No, it isn’t fit,” my father agreed, perhaps expecting as much, given the three lost before me.

“It may only live long enough for her to get attached,” Dr. Brumus said, teary now.

“The baby’s mother isn’t fit either,” my father said. “Mary has those dark moods. You’ve seen them. She couldn’t withstand that kind of attachment and loss.”

Dr. Brumus tried to hand me to my father, whose face was poised above mine, his nose fat and squat, a boxy fender, though he was youngish and handsome in his taut pink skin and glossy hair. He didn’t like what he saw. “Take it with you,” he said.

Dr. Brumus oversaw the Maryland School for Feeble Minded Children in Owings Mills, long before Baltimore started spilling into it with such ferocity. My father was betting that I wouldn’t make it—but what if I did? Was he asking Dr. Brumus to be my father, or at least my warden? The two men had known each other since they were boys.

“Jackie,” Dr. Brumus said, using the pet name normally reserved for times when he’d drunk a Scotch and soda and was looking slack and heavy-lidded. But that wasn’t his mood now. His eyes raced. “I can’t take the baby with me—”

“You said it’s going to die. You said so!” And my father became a little boy, his face plump and sweaty.

“Where’s the baby?” my mother called, her voice carrying from the open bedroom window above, her Irish accent heavier because she was too tired to fight it. She could have been calling to them from reeds, a marsh with a fog rolling in.

My father shook his head. “No,” he whispered to the doctor, fiercely.

And then my father marched upstairs, past the water stains on the wallpaper and into the bedroom. 

“No,” he said to his wife in a lilting voice of his own. Was he going to sing to her? “Darling, no.”

And so, for my mother, I was dead.

But still there was a baby. And this other baby with its dim pulse was bundled and taken away to start its other life at the Maryland School for Feeble Minded Children.

In just over a decade’s time, this child would become a supposed Girl Genius, and, more important, she would find Eppitt in the laundry and love him too much. (You don’t know Eppitt yet, dear ones, but you will.) And then this same child would make her way back here again—to this very porch, to her mother’s bed.

Some of us are born dead, some never really born at all, and others are born fresh every day—as if they’ve had new eyes stitched on overnight—which is the best way to live.

I hope you will understand eventually why I’ve denied all of this for so long. Are you reading this, my Eleanor? My Ruthie? My dear Tilton? Are your eyes catching on these words, fastening one to the next, aware of my life collecting on the page? Are you here with me?

I still desire the veil of fiction, the means to monkey and fidget with the details so I can convince myself that I’m writing about another baby, another mother, another life. If not that, then I wish it were lovely. But what did I learn in writing out the lives of my characters Weldon and Daisy? You can’t have love without knowing sorrow; you can’t have miracles without desperation.

Here, then. My desperation.

Excerpted from Harriet Wolf’s Seventh Book of Wonders by Julianna Baggott. Copyright © 2015 by Julianna Baggott. Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown and Company, New York, NY. All rights reserved

About Julianna:

Critically acclaimed, bestselling author, Julianna Baggott -- who also writes under the pen names Bridget Asher (The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted) and N.E. Bode (The Anybodies) -- has published 17 books, including novels for adults, younger readers, and collections of poetry. Her latest novel, PURE, is the first of a trilogy; film rights have sold to Fox2000 -- www.pure-book.com. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Best American Poetry, Best Creative Nonfiction, Real Simple, on NPR.org, as well as read on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" and "Here and Now." Her novels have been book-pick selections by People Magazine's summer reading, Washington Post book-of-the-week, a Booksense selection, a Boston Herald Book Club selection, and a Kirkus Best Books of the Year list. Her novels have been published in over 50 overseas editions. She's a professor in the Creative Writing Program at Florida State University and the founder of the nonprofit Kids in Need - Books in Deed. For more, visit www.juliannabaggott.com.

Connect with the Author: Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

Giveaway Details:

5 Finished copies of HARRIET WOLF'S SEVENTH BOOK OF WONDERS. US Only.

Ends on August 24th at Midnight EST!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Loving Cara (Love Under the Big Sky #1) by Kristen Proby

Publication: January 21, 2014

Publisher: Pocket Books

Source: Bought

In this new Love Under the Big Sky series from a USA Todaybestselling author, Cara agrees to tutor her former classmate's nephew—and learns some lessons in love! Josh King is an expert at running his family’s multi-million dollar ranch in Montana. (And all that outside manual labor has done wonders for sculpting his six-foot-three body, too.) But as sure footed as he is when it comes to the ranch, Josh doesn’t know anything about how to deal with an adolescent boy—so when his twelve-year-old nephew, Seth, is dropped off on his doorstep, looking scared and acting surly as hell, Josh knows he needs help in straightening him out. Cara Donovan loves her quiet life as a teacher in her sleepy hometown, so she jumps at the chance to make a little money over the summer as a tutor. But when she learns she’ll be teaching Josh King’s nephew, Cara’s sweet summer job gets a little bit hotter. Cara tries to focus all her attention on tutoring Seth, but Josh proves to be a delicious distraction, while Josh’s memories of the shy girl he once teased in high school are nothing like the beautiful woman he’s facing now. Can he persuade her that there’s more between them than a summer fling?

I have only read two books by Kristen Proby, but so far, she is quickly become one of my favorite authors. Loving Cara was a very sweet romance that took me awhile to read, but that was because I wanted to go slow and take my time with it.

Cara and Josh meet when Cara is recommended to help tutor Josh’s nephew Seth. There is an attraction from the start, but they don’t really act on it at first. Josh wants to make sure his nephew getting help with school is priority. He is a tough kid, who has had a bad go of things. Seeing as his mom told Seth that his dad doesn’t love him. And because she didn’t want to be a mom anymore decided that she would just drop him off at this Grandparents and his Uncle’s Ranch. 

Cara ends up being great with Seth. And when Cara and Josh decide to actually give it a try, I was very happy for them. There are a few insecurities on Cara’s part and Josh has an issue or two of his own, but it was great seeing these two learn how to work together and resolve their issues.

This author has such a way of making you care about the characters and it is easy to empathize and connect with them. I don’t know what it is, but it happens every single time. The story-line felt solid, the dialogue was great, and the romance was swoon worthy. I loved every single page. I can’t wait to get to know the other characters when they get their own story. Speaking of which, the second book in the Love Under the Big Sky series, Seducing Lauren, released in August and is focused on Lauren and Josh’s best friend Ty.

RATING: 5 out of 5.

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On Dublin Street by Samantha Young

Synopsis:

Jocelyn Butler has been hiding from her past for years. But all her secrets are about to be laid bare… Four years ago, Jocelyn left her tragic past behind in the States and started over in Scotland, burying her grief, ignoring her demons, and forging ahead without attachments. Her solitary life is working well—until she moves into a new apartment on Dublin Street where she meets a man who shakes her carefully guarded world to its core. Braden Carmichael is used to getting what he wants, and he’s determined to get Jocelyn into his bed. Knowing how skittish she is about entering a relationship, Braden proposes an arrangement that will satisfy their intense attraction without any strings attached. But after an intrigued Jocelyn accepts, she realizes that Braden won’t be satisfied with just mind-blowing passion. The stubborn Scotsman is intent on truly knowing her… down to the very soul.

**********************************************

From their first meeting in a cab, there was just something about Jocelyn that had Braden intrigued. 

He has been hurt in the past, and it is hard for him to completely trust the person he is with. But when he is with Jocelyn, he lets her in little by little. Revealing more of himself in the process. Jocelyn has major issues herself. She never wants anyone to get too close to her. She tries to shut herself out from caring about people too much. This is why she believes their friends with ‘benefits’ relationship will work perfectly. No messing emotions to deal with. Easier said than done…

To me it seemed like he wanted to have a real relationship with her from the beginning. But because she did not, he was willing to make a deal they both would be happy with. He was a little sneaky in his attempts to ‘date’ her and get to know more about her life, which I thought was cute.  

Of course it does not take very long for Jocelyn to realize that she actually cares for Braden; a fact that scares her. And she begins to question if it really is better to keep people at a distance.

What I liked:

I loved Braden. I think he is going on my book boyfriends list because I liked him so much. He is a great alpha hero. He speaks his mind, is determined, and very sexy…. 

Final thoughts:

I don’t know why I waited so long to read this book. Seriously. I bought it when practically everyone I knew was raving about it, and it just set there on my virtual shelf collecting dust. Finally I was in the mood for a little romance and On Dublin Street did not disappoint. It had just the right amount of drama, angst, and steamy romance to keep me turning pages. I loved it.

Rating: 4½ out of 5. 

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