I’m Reading: Finding Joy by Adriana Herrera

Warning: Contains Spoilers

26-year-old American Desta Joy Walker begin his life in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The country was his father’s first love as well as the place of his death. When Desta tries to follow in his father’s footsteps as an aid worker, he finds the shoe doesn’t quite fit. He reconnects with his heritage and understands the love his father held for Addis Ababa, but feels the pull of a social work career back in the U.S. He must balance his own identity and calling against his parents’ dreams. The stakes for his decision skyrocket when he falls hard for the gentle, beautiful Elias Fikru. Both under the pressure of family legacy and in a place where gay relationships are illegal, they risk everything if they choose to be true to themselves.

This was a beautiful mix of steamy-hot sex and sweetly beautiful love of all kinds. We fall for the beauty of Ethiopia through the eyes of the character, and our hearts break for him and Elias for the intense pressure and danger they face together. The blend of Ethiopian and Dominican cultures and their fierce family loyalty is a rich tapestry to frame the story and the decisions the characters face.

The only downside for the story for me isn’t a downside for many: The story is low-angst. That means there’s some very real, plausible sources of conflict and danger the author chooses to leave on the table and not throw at the characters. They would greatly increase tension, but for some, tension is not always the goal. Some people want their happily-ever-after without putting their characters through hell and breaking them, first. I would chalk this up to simple differences in taste, rather than anything actually wrong with the story.

Similarly, some reviewers have mentioned the sex scenes being “out-of-tone” for the slow, sweet pacing of the story. They are indeed high-steam and graphically erotic, but I wonder if the same reviewers would complain if the main characters were M/F? This is a sensuous story, where the food, coffee, and other richly detailed textures of life in Ethiopia are an integral part of the story. I think the author brings the same sensual details to the love scenes.

You can find this and the author’s other books at https://adrianaherreraromance.com/

Content Notice: Contains LGBTQ discrimination and ethnic discrimination

I’m Reading: Suddenly Psychic by Elizabeth Hunter

While I love Paranormal Romance, the genre has been flooded with vampires, shapeshifters, and twenty-year-old ass-kicking women. A new genre has popped up for readers who like their magic a little more subtle and their relationships a little more varied. Paranormal Women’s Fiction features older women with magic, struggling through life changes, identity, and the existence of ghosts. There’s often an element of mystery to be solved, and family relationships take center stage along with a strong personal development arc. They seem to range from cozy to powerful, and I’m loving the genre as a reader.

Elizabeth Hunter was recommended to me as the best entry point, and I’m happy to second that recommendation. Suddenly Psychic features three women in their 40s, struggling with loss, changing family relationships, and a sense of purpose. A nearly tragic accident unlocks strange powers for them. Robin Brannon, the star of this first book in the series, finds that she can see ghosts. The strange man who saved them from the accident seems eerily familiar, and must be connected to the fifty-year-old chained bones found in the man-made lake. As the mystery develops, Elizabeth digs into her own family past, along with the history of their town, and the dark secrets she finds help her disrupt the generational echoes of abuse and trauma in her life.

If you’re one of those people who read a book like this for the mystery and feel cheated if the twist ending is too obvious, you probably won’t enjoy this book. The mystery is solid, but the ending isn’t a surprise. The way they get there is the fun part, for me, and this book worked for me just fine on that front.

If, like me, it’s all about sinking into a sympathetic character, laughing and crying with her and her friends as they struggle to dust off their lives and reclaim their happiness, then you’ll love this as much as I do. The banter among the friends is sharp and witty. The women are strong in a way that doesn’t require punching anyone, and their flawed expressions of love are sympathetic. The personal development arc is highly satisfying, and the romance is sweet. Best of all, the writing itself is tightly crafted and evocative.

Visit the author’s website at https://elizabethhunterwrites.com/ for purchasing options and info on her other books, or check your local library. Suddenly Psychic is also available on Kindle Unlimited.

Content Notice: This book contains references to a family history of abuse and stalking, as well as drownings and near-drownings, and mention of suicide. The heat level is sweet, with no on-screen explicit sex. Remember to check and add books to Does the Dog Die, where you can see details on many different forms of media for common trauma triggers and traumatic content.

Disclosure: I do not receive any compensation for reviews of books. Most reviews are of books I personally purchase and enjoy based on friend recommendations. If you’ve loved a recent popular book and think I might too, please contact me!

I’m Reading: A Cruel Kind of Beautiful by Michelle Hazen

Jera McKnight has sworn off men. Relationships will only end in heartache, since her last boyfriend convinced her she could never keep a man happy. Instead she pours her heart into her drums, making music and fighting towards the big time with her best friend Danny and lead singer, Jax.

When gorgeous Jacob accidently throws a newspaper through her window, her vow to remain single gets a new challenge. He’s sweet, considerate, and hot as hell. But he’s hiding a secret of his own, and trust comes hard to both of them.

Michelle Hazen is a recognized queen of steam. I usually begin with authors who offer at least one book free, either through the library, Kindle Unlimited, or a giveaway. If we click, I start buying up their whole catalog. Hazen is an exception to that rule. So many experienced romance authors recommended her as a master class on sexual tension that they convinced me to sprang for the first book. Then I devoured the series.

If you like things steamy, dark, and even kinky, this series is for you. Hazen deals with serious topics like addiction and sexual dysfunction that many writers won’t touch, but blends gritty realism with hope in a way that sucks you in and won’t let you go. Her characters are tortured, but not gratuitously so. The tension is excruciating, but delicious. Her prose is deep and dark, pulling you into sensuous details that make the music as rife with steamy tension as the sex. The wit is sharp, and the conflicts real, but there’s just enough light to balance the shadows, and we know that we won’t be left in despair at the end.

If you couldn’t tell, I highly recommend!

A Cruel Kind of Beautiful is the first in the Sex, Love, and Rock & Roll series. To learn more or find purchasing options, visit the author’s website at https://michellehazenbooks.com/

Content notice for gaslighting, women’s sexual dysfunction, drug and alcohol use/abuse, and light (in this book) BDSM. The books in the series get darker as they go, dealing with serious addiction, death, overdose, and heavier (but well-depicted and consensual) BDSM.

I’m Reading: The Match by Sarah Adams

Evie works for Southern Service Paws, helping clients with disabilities match with highly trained service dogs. When she gets an email to meet with the father of Sam, an eleven-year-old girl with epilepsy, Evie is especially eager to help someone with her own diagnosis find independence. The problem is that the email setting up the meeting didn’t come from Sam’s incredibly hot, incredibly rude father. It came from Sam.

Jake has been living in constant fear since his daughter’s epilepsy diagnosis. As a single dad, he’s terrified of getting the everyday parenting gig wrong, on top of keeping Sam safe during her seizures. There’s no room in his life for complications like love, especially after Sam’s mother walked out of their lives and never looked back. When a beautiful woman storms their table in a coffee shop insisting she has a meeting with him, Jake finds out his daughter conspired to bring them together. Evie is too vibrant, too attractive, and Jake needs to make sure she never wants to see him again.

The Match is a feel-good wholesome rom-com an abundance of heart. I’m personally a fan of heavy steam in my romance, and I was surprised to fall so deeply in love with a book that never goes further than make-out sessions on the couch. For me, the characters sell the book. We fall absolutely in love with Jake as parent of the year. He stresses adorably over single-dadhood and doing right by Sam. Evie is a messy, disorganized do-gooder with high competence and a strong uge to help others despite her upbringing among the self-centered elite. Sam is a well-written kid with devious smarts, relatable fears, and a giant heart that pulls the two main characters together. The secondary characters are smart, funny, and adorably bawdy, with strong voices of their own.

There are a few under-developed moments and threads (the antagonists in particular), but overall I found the plot highly satisfying and the characters endearing. It’s earned a high spot in my re-read pile. I’m glad I gave it a chance, despite its high ranking in the “clean and wholesome” category. It proves once again that a good story transcends categories, and we should never put our tastes in too narrow a box.

(I DESPISE the use of the term “clean” to describe books without sex, but that’s a rant for another day.)

Content notice: Book contains emotional abuse by the MC’s parents, including gaslighting and attempted emotional and financial coercion into a non-consensual relationship. Very brief on-page sexual assault (unwanted kiss).

I read The Match (book one of It Happened in Charleston) on Kindle Unlimited. Check with your local library, or visit Sarah Adam’s website to find this and her other work.

I’m Reading: Verity by Colleen Hoover

If you’re a fan of the classic gothic romance Rebecca, this modern Indie romantic suspense will give you all the steamy thrills and chills you’re looking for, with polished, sophisticated prose and sympathetically broken characters.

Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling author who travels upstate to the gloomy home of Verity Crawford, a famous author who is unable to finish her bestselling series after a tragic car accident. Tragedy has followed the Crawfords, who lost two children in the years before the accident. A sympathetic Lowen must fight her attraction to Verity’s husband, Jeremy and do the job she came for, but the discovery of a secret manuscript of Verity’s life revealed that tragedy may not be all that it seems.

Hoover plays beautifully with the gothic tropes, but in a way that will appeal to the sensibilities of modern readers. The melodrama is brought with a light touch. The twists and turns are deeply satisfying, deliciously dark, and dripping with atmosphere. I did think the ending could have used some tightening, but the effect was there and left us questioning everything we thought we knew.

I thought I’d struggle with the darker themes, with so much darkness in the world right now. Instead, I found myself tearing through the book, riveted. I finished it in a single sitting. None of the darkness felt gratuitous to me, and the pacing helped sell it as an organic part of the story development. The writing itself is excellent, with small touches of imagery and symbolism that thrill the senses of readers who enjoy the play of language. The deep POV flirts hard with elements of unreliable narrator and gaslighting essential to the gothic atmosphere.

There’s a reason why this Indie book rides so high in category rankings. It deserves its place!

Available through Kindle Unlimited. Check your local library, or visit the author online for purchasing options at https://www.colleenhoover.com/portfolio/verity/

Content notices for child abuse, trauma, neglect, death, murder, and ableism. This is a dark book with dark themes. If you have questions about any potential trauma triggers in the book, please reach out to me here or via Twitter DM @JoGeekly and I’d be happy to give you more info to make an informed consent decision on whether or not to read.

I’m Reading: Outmatched by Callihan and Young

Rhys Morgan is a former heavyweight champ in desperate need of cash to keep his gym afloat. Parker Brown is a wealthy environmental research scientist in desperate need of a fake relationship to satisfy a misogynistic boss. It was supposed to be just business. Neither expected to fall in love.

It’s a classic collection of tropes (fake relationship, opposites attract), but the authors make it all fresh again with a cast of genuinely human, lovable, vivid characters, broken in all the right places, and a masterful thread of steamy attraction that stitches them together piece by piece. This book is in my perpetual re-read pile. In fact, I came back to it this weekend for the third time.

I think my favorite part about the book is that the characters actually grow as people. It isn’t one sacrificing everything that makes them happy for the other. Instead, they both have to step outside their comfort zone, accept mistakes and compromises, and become better people in order to get what they want. For me, wanting to be a better person is much more romantic than some big personal sacrifice that makes you miserable. The latter just isn’t sustainable. Relationships should build you up, and Rhys and Parker are both stronger and better for their love. As a reader, that’s deeply satisfying. Combined with witty dialogue, adorable fierceness, touching vulnerability, and expertly crafted steam, this should be in the TBR list of anyone who enjoys contemporary or sport romances.

Get more information by visiting the authors online at:

https://authorsamanthayoung.com/outmatched/

https://www.kristencallihan.com/

I’m Reading: Waiting for Tom Hanks by Kerry Winfrey

Annie Cassidy is obsessed with the magic of happy-ever-afters. When a movie crew comes to her home town to film a rom-com, there’s potential for two dreams to come true. She can finally work for a real Hollywood director, and maybe stumble into a real-life love story.

I’ll be completely honest, I didn’t make it through this book on the first try. It begins with a chapter-long backstory infodump that I lost interest in and patience with. I returned it to the library and moved on in my reading pile.

But every time I finished a good romance ebook, Waiting for Tom Hanks popped up as a recommended read. The fact that it was keeping company with so many favorites convinced me to give it another chance. I’m glad I did!

I pushed through the exposition and there, at the end of the first chapter, we meet Uncle Don and his Dungeons and Dragons group. I fully admit it, once an author brings in the nerds, I’m hooked.

The story is full of feel-good whimsy, alternating poking fun at the rom-com genre and bringing it to magical life. There’s the grumpy leading man who makes the worst first impression, the meet-cutes that keep trying, the quirky best friend, and the feisty heroine who needs to be swept away from her small town life of writing listicles about hemorrhoid treatments.

The complex layers of the broody hero give the story some depth, and the romantic tension is nicely developed. There’s some LOLcringe with a horrifying blind date, and lots of sweet disaster characters like Uncle Don and Dungeon Master Rick. But it’s the tongue-in-cheek play with romance tropes that gives this story its appeal. It’s fun, funny, sweet and steamy, and I’ll keep it in my re-read pile.

Visit the author Kerry Winfrey at https://www.kerrywinfrey.com/ and check for her books at your local library!

I’m Reading: I Owe You One by Sophie Kinsella

As a writer and beta reader, I know it’s tough to make your main character’s life miserable. They’re our friend, after all. We invest in them emotionally and spend a lot of time in their heads. But most really great books require at least some suffering on the part of the protagonist for the sake of personal growth and sustained tension. This is especially true in romance because the genre requires a dark moment where all seems lost, right before the happy ending.

Sophie Kinsella is a master class in MC misery, balanced with tenderness, laugh-out-loud hilarity, and multiple plot threads all crashing down together on the character’s head like a vengeful curse. This story is a slow-motion train wreck in the most entertaining way. We cringe in horror as each new embarrassing disaster looms watching helplessly as it strikes. We laugh in horror as everything unravels in the worst (and funniest) possible unlucky outcome. Because the theme of the story is that we make our own luck. No one finds happiness pretending to be something they’re not.

Kinsella puts us right in Fixie’s head from the get-go with a strong voice and deep POV. Fixie’s a doormat without being wishy-washy or dull. She feels with her whole heart without being able to articulate it. She’s our disaster BFF we want to wrap up in a blanket fort and defend to the death from her own bad choices.

The deep POV is masterfully done, giving us Fixie as an unreliable narrator trying genuinely to make everyone around her happy, and with no idea the reader is looking at the self-centered users around her and muttering, “Oh honey…oh no…”

(And sometimes shouting, “YOU THROW THAT WHOLE MAN IN THE TRASH FIXIE FARR.” So I’ve heard. Ahem.)

Sophie Kinsella’s books can probably be found at your local library, or through her website at:

Sophie Kinsella

I’m Reading: Hands Down by Mariana Zapata

(Warning: Contains spoilers).

The Wall of Winnipeg and Me was my first Mariana Zapata. It was for a lot of folks as it became the exemplar for slow-burn, enemies to lovers with a fake relationship. I went on to read almost everything in Zapata’s catalog, and they continue to be comfort-food favorites I return to again and again. In her series there are two vivid, dynamic side characters I’ve been chomping at the bit to see in their own HEA, and Sweet, loving, loyal Zac “Snack Pack” Travis is one of them.

So I was a little disappointed when I read it the moment it came out. It was unlike any of Zapata’s other pairings, really. The angst was light. There weren’t any tortured dark anti-heroes to tame. There wasn’t that edge of barely-restrained violent tension. It was the first Zapata book I could safely recommend to a friend with PTSD because it lacked triggering events like domestic violence or stalking. It was even slower-burn than usual, with only a sweet kiss or two at the big moment, and a later sex scene almost as an afterthought. The attraction throughout was more playful than sexual.

I didn’t like it at first. I was looking for dark, tortured anti-heros, fierce sexual tension, and rough angst. But I read it again a few months later and realized quickly what I had missed. The book was an absolutely spot-on-perfect story for Zac. Everything from the laid-back pacing to the sweet, playful atmosphere and the struggle with self-doubt was everything we loved about Zac in Wall of Winnipeg.

Part of why I admire Zapata as a writer so much is her range. Many of my favorite authors perfect a very specific kind of romance trope and specialize in that trope. Zapata, while keeping her slow-burn, dabbles in everything from enemies to friends, figure skating to biker gangs. Some of her books took longer for me to really appreciate because I had slipped into expectations based on previous books. In this case, I expected a certain kind of tortured hero, and forgot everything I fell in love with when I first met “Big Texas” Travis. He has always been, at core, the most loyal friend anyone could have.

That’s what brought me around and put this book in my top-five Zapata re-reads. So many writers take a beloved side character and either flatten or twist them to make them fit a preconceived pattern when they take the spotlight. Instead, Zapata preserved Zac’s essence. He’s a goofball, a loyal friend, and cinnamon roll all the way down. True to his nature, his story is one of a deep, intimate friendship, full of trust and laughter, tipping ever-so-gently into romantic love. It’s the only love story that makes sense for him, the only way it could ever have been.

Most of Zapata’s work is available on Kindle Unlimited. Visit the author at https://www.marianazapata.com/

I’m Reading: Beginner’s Luck by Kate Clayborn

When I read a book I really like, I often go hunting for everything else the author has put out. In this case, Love Lettering sent me hunting for Kate Clayborn, and I was not disappointed. Beginner’s Luck lacks just a little of the rich, vivid description of Love Lettering, but it’s a highly engaging, enjoyable read.

Kit Averin is a materials scientist working a job she loves, living her lifelong dream of putting down roots in a place she can call home. When she and her friends win the lottery, she’s the one who swears nothing in her life will change. But when a recruiter shows up at her lab offering her a highly prestigious position, he throws all her plans into question. She’s forced to question how much of her dreams are rooted in a fear of change.

Kate Clayborn’s real gift is building smart, driven, damaged, and fully-rounded human characters. I love how she rounds out her nerds with artistic sensibilities, an appreciation for history, and a love of physical activities. They’re real people, and people I recognize from my own nerdy crowd. That really gets me invested in their stories. Each character has a strong internal development arc, a struggle that challenges their morality, and unique, believable external obstacles.

But my appreciation doesn’t end with the characters, as she also delivers a tight plot, interesting settings, and excellent, flowing prose. I think the only thing I didn’t enjoy about this book was the prologue. I’m not against them in general, but I found this book’s prologue unnecessary, expository, and something to “get through” before enjoying the main story. The rest of the book more than make up for it, and it’s earned a solid top spot in my re-read pile.

For more information, visit Kate Clayborn online.