This Monday means a brand new book to start the week and the new month and it's:
One Night With The CEO by Mia Sosa: After some disappointing dates, Karen Ramirez has concluded that great sex is for other people. Especially since medical school won’t leave her much time for romance anyway. Then she runs into tall, dark, charming, and ridiculously wealthy Mark Lansing—and quickly reconsiders celibacy. Adding to temptation? Mark will be the best man at her sister’s wedding and the nuptial destination is sultry Puerto Rico. Now this trip might just be sensory overload—or the perfect chance for Karen to find the groove she’s never had.
For CEO Mark Lansing, his perfect match would be smart, sweet, and funny, with long legs and silky hair the color of dark chocolate. In short, someone a lot like Karen. But Mark’s looking to settle down, while a relationship is the last thing on Karen’s mind. So Mark proposes a plan: he and Karen will use their weekend in paradise to sizzling advantage—before downshifting to friendship. The only problem? Karen is all Mark can think of when he gets home. Now his most challenging negotiation will be for the one thing money can’t buy . . .
This past week has been crazy with one thing or another and that includes the books I have read too. Due to biting off a bit more than I can chew, I overcommitted myself to too many arc's in April and it has been a rush this past week to meet my deadlines...thankfully I haven't missed any. May is going to be a month where I begin to show some love to my ever expanding list of TNR's waiting patiently to be read and loved.
Here are the books I've read this past week:
Over The Lines by Lisa Desrochers: Lee Delgado never planned on falling in love with the irresistible Oliver Savoca, son of a Chicago crime lord. Considering that their families are rivals, she knew it could never work. And now that both their fathers have been nabbed on racketeering charges, any real chance at a future with the man she loves has been shot to hell. But a greater blow is yet to come.
Not only does Lee learn that a contract is out on her life, she has reason to believe that Oliver is behind the devastating betrayal. Now she’s working closely—very closely—with Federal Agent Sean Callahan to help bring her man down. But however she’s come to feel about Callahan, Lee is still deeply, hopelessly, unabashedly in love with Oliver.
Where that fearless love takes Lee next is beyond her control—but the risk is worth every beat of her heart.
Kabana Wild by Josie Jax: Three people...three depraved plans...one inferno of scandalous pleasures.
Movie star Mitch Wulfrum is tired of deflecting the gay rumors buzzing around him. It's time for drastic measures to suppress them once and for all--even if it means marriage in name only to the first trophy wife he can get his hands on. And beautiful sugar-cane princess Kiona 'Alohi fits right into his plan.
Kiona can't believe her luck when she's presented with Mitch's proposition. Her overbearing father is dangling her trust fund over her head as an enticement to dump her oh-so-sexy, but oh-so-unsuitable lover, Nakolo. A bogus marriage to Mitch will net her everything she wants--money and love, even if she can only have Kol on the sly.
What she doesn't expect are the sexual sparks that fly between her and Mitch, or, when Kol catches them together, the heat that flares between the two men. One scandalously pleasurable encounter after another fans the flames of attraction, until they begin to dream that all three of them could have everything they ever wanted--and more than they ever expected.
An intricate, fragile web of lies and deceit are all that keep their wanton secrets from erupting into the public eye. Trouble is, one scheming photographer named Anjelee has already clicked the shutter that could ruin all their lives.
Someone Like You by Jennifer Gracen: Pierce Harrison—yes, that Pierce Harrison, black sheep of the wealthy Harrison clan—has come home to his family’s luxurious Long Island compound. The big question is why the dangerously sexy soccer star agreed to coach a kids’ soccer team. His co-coach Abby McCord should be grateful. Instead she’s fending off some seriously smoldering advances from the scandal-ridden athlete. Good thing bad boys are so not her type . . .
Abby is definitely not lacking in passion, but the sweet-faced beauty needs to learn a thing or two about taking a team to the championship—and a whole lot about how to let a man into her once-broken heart. Pierce definitely knows how to make the moves, but will Abby trust that the bachelor the world has condemned as a scoundrel can settle down with the one woman who has taken hold of his heart?
My review here: in progress
The Change Up by Ellie Arden: Commercial real estate mogul Rachel Reed followed her workaholic father’s footsteps to success, so when he’s diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, she vows to rise to the occasion. She’ll help her father get the Arlington Aces independent professional baseball team up and running, then sell the franchise off to recoup their investment. It’s a tall order, but Rachel knows one thing for sure: a few acres of trees aren’t going to stand in her way of building the facility they need.
Landscaper Sam Sutter is surprised to find his brother’s high school girlfriend lurking in the woods behind his secluded log house. This former minor leaguer’s even more upset to learn “his” trees are on her chopping block. There’s no way he’ll help her erect a painful reminder to his failed career in his backyard. But butting heads with the beautiful businesswoman proves to be a tricky task, and before long, he finds himself heading up the grounds keeping crew at her father’s stadium.
Working under Rachel’s watchful—smoldering—eyes might be Sam’s undoing. Can he cut into her plans without felling their chances at a home run in love?
The Grass Was Always Browner by Sacha Jones: The Grass Was Alway Browner by Sacha Jones is the story of a strong-willed, smart yet often less than sensible, curious and questioning girl growing up as the middle-child of three children. Her parents are old, and old-fashioned, deeply impractical, idealistic and naive, not best suited to negotiating the rough and rugged terrain of suburban Sydney in the 1970s-80s.
Sacha is not only the middle child, but she is stuck in the middle of the muddle and mess of her family’s situation. She sees and suffers more than her siblings do – or so she feels. However, one advantage of her position is that she is sent to study ballet to treat her asthma, and through ballet she finds a way out of her predicament.
Sacha’s determination to escape her humdrum existence and ‘become Russian’ saw her push through and succeed against the odds (wrong-shaped head, wrong feet, overall wrong build) and a father who is strongly against her becoming a ballet dancer. He describes ballet as ‘a frivolous and selfish pursuit, too focused on appearances.’ His own dreams are focused on a desire to save the Third World. However, in their very different ways, Sacha and her father are more alike than either would care to admit.
In becoming a dancing star, Sacha surprises no-one more than her legendary dance teacher – an actual Russian – Mrs P, Tanya Pearson. However, her father was right about ballet.
Although it gives Sacha the escape she desires, there is a heavy price to pay. And when she sets off for London to further her dance career, it is in part because the Australian dance scene betrayed her trust.
Award-winning playwright, poet and novelist Stephanie Johnson says of The Grass Was Always Browner, “Nineteen seventies suburban Sydney comes winningly alive in Sacha’s light-hearted girlhood memoir of boundless optimism, pink milk, tutus, triumph at the Eisteddfod and a horse in the back garden.”
The Grass Was Always Browner is a laugh-out-loud memoir and a cautionary reminder that the grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence.
My review here: in progress
