Accidental Cowgirl (by Maggie McGinnis)

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Contemporary Romance

In quick succession, Kyla’s fiancé cheated both her and her grandparents of their savings; she was in a serious car accident which left her broken and scarred; and her grandparents who were forced to leave their home passed away.

With the court case behind her and her now ex-fiancé behind bars Kyla’s two closest friends drag her to a dude ranch in Montana to help her regroup and plan her next step. One of the first people she meets in Whisper Creek is Decker, the quintessential tall dark and handsome cowboy. She’s attracted to him but with so much baggage weighing her down she doesn’t trust her judgement.

Decker has his own problems. After kicking him out many years earlier, his father used the ranch to back his out of control gambling. Now his father has died and left Decker with the mess. He needs to find the money to pay back the debts or the ranch will be lost.

Nothing happens in Accidental Cowgirl that I haven’t seen before, but it’s exactly what I want from this genre. A simple story well told, characters I like and nothing too tricky. It’s a light and satisfying read and among the better Contemporary Romances I’ve read recently.

Many thanks to Random House and Netgalley for providing me with this ARC

Rhythm and Bluegrass (by Molly Harper)

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Contemporary Romance

As an historian working for the Kentucky Commission of Tourism, Bonnie Turkle lives a transient life.  She spends a few months in a town, before moving onto the next town and the next job. When she hears about an old music hall which is slated for demolition to make way for a factory, she immediately goes to Mud Creek to try and save as much of the heritage as she can.

Mud Creek is a town fallen on hard times and desperately needs the hundreds of jobs the factory will bring. The mayor of Mud Creek, Will McBride will do just about anything to ensure the factory is built so when Bonnie threatens the very future of the town they butt heads. And when they aren’t butting heads, they’re fighting to keep their hands off each other.


Rhythm and Bluegrass is cute a quirky romance with characters that you want to get to know. It’s a laugh out loud funny story, which occasionally delves into the more serious issues facing small towns across the U.S..  A lot of love for this book.

Many thanks to Edelweiss and Pocket Star Books for providing me with this ARC.

Down and Out in Beverly Heels (by Kathryn Leigh Scott)

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Cozy Mystery 

Meg Barnes was once an A-List actress. She lived the glittering Hollywood lifestyle and had everything she could ever desire. Then her con-man husband swindled her of everything she owned. Now homeless, penniless and living in her old Volvo she is desperately trying to hold onto her dignity and to find a job. But her husband didn’t just steal from her, he stole from some very dangerous people and Meg finds herself in the firing line of the the Russian mafia, while the FBI continue to suspect her of being a part of her husband’s schemes.

When I picked up this book I had some preconceived ideas of what I was getting. I was expecting a ditzy and clueless Hollywood starlet who bumbles around, makes a bit of a mess of things but still manages to solve the crime. Three chapters in and I was well and truly put in my place.

Meg is a woman who despite finding herself in difficult circumstances manages to make the most of things. She is homeless but still manages to hold onto her dignity. She is intelligent and independent. Honestly in a genre where Stephanie Plum clones abound, she is a breath of fresh air.

I loved this book. It had me from beginning to end. I can’t think of a bad thing to say about it.

The Secret of Everything & The Garden of Happy Endings (by Barbara O’Neal)

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Chick Lit

The Secret of Everything.

Tessa is a professional guide. Tourists who want a little more adventure than they can get at a five star resort pay her to lead them on hikes. After tragedy strikes on a hike she was leading, Tessa is left broken both physically and emotionally. With all consuming grief and despair she returns to Las Ladronas, the New Mexico town where she spent her earliest years.  Years she can’t remember.

As she starts to pull at the threads of her past, she discovers things about herself and those closest to her. With the help of a man and his young daughter she finds the strength to move forward.

The Garden of Happy Endings.

After a young girl in her congregation is brutally murdered, Reverend Elsa Montgomery has a crisis of faith. Depression consumes her and she returns to Pueblo, Colorado, to the parish she left behind many years earlier and the man who abandoned her to join the priesthood.

While there she finds herself working in the poor community to create a community garden, and as she works in the garden her broken heart finally starts to heal.

 

 

 

It’s hard to avoid superlatives when talking about these books.  Barbara O’Neal writes honest books about depression, grief and PTSD. Her books are unconventionally spiritual and about finding healing and the strength to keep living.

Mr Strangeway (by Karina Cooper)

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Steam Punk Novella

After the death of her parents Cherry St. Croix found herself for a time working as a pick pocket.  While on the street she became addicted to Laudanum, a tincture of opium and alcohol. After being plucked from the street by the executor of her father’s will she finds herself living in a beautiful home where her every need is provided except for her laudanum.  Wanting to get more of her drug of choice than the pitiful drizzle she is allowed she decides to become a bounty hunter.

It’s difficult to know what to say about this book. It’s a novella on the shorter end of novellas and it’s very much the warm up act for book three in the St. Croix Chronicles which is due out on September 23rd.  If this were a free gift for the diehard fans I think it would have worked. As it is, I’m not a diehard fan, I haven’t read the first two books in the series and I paid good money for this.  There isn’t much story or character development…to be honest the heroine of the story Cherry doesn’t do all that much.  For me it was a waste of time but I think people who have been reading the series will enjoy it, I don’t know if they’ll enjoy paying for it, only time will tell.

Plum Deadly (by Ellie Grant)

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Cozy Murder Mystery

After being falsely accused of embezzlement and fired, Maggie returns to her home town in North Carolina to lick her wounds.  Penniless and all but unemployable, she finds herself waiting tables at her aunt’s pie shop, Pie in the Sky.  

Then her former boss turns up at Pie in the Sky and tells her he knows who stole the money and has called a press conference in which he will name the real thief and clear her name. But after he turns up dead that very night she has gone from fry pan to fire and become the number one suspect in his murder.

With a little help from Ryan, a local newspaper reporter, she sets about clearing her name and finding the murderer.

Plum Deadly reminded me a lot of the Cats in Trouble mysteries by Leann Sweeney and the Coffee House mysteries by Cleo Coyle.  If I have a criticism it’s that some things were left unexplained and hanging. But it’s possible those things will be revisited in the next books in the series and for the most part I enjoyed this book.

Many thanks to Edelweiss and Gallery Books for providing me with this ARC

The Hero (by Robyn Carr)

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Contemporary Romance

After escaping from a secretive cult, Devon finds herself walking along a back road with her young daughter. When Rawley sees her on the side of the road he knows she is running and offers her a lift and a safe place to stay until she can decide where to go next.

Recently widowed, Spencer is still in mourning over the death of his wife.  Thunder Point is a chance for a new beginning as the coach of the local high school football team. So when Rawley helps Devon to find a job and start building a life in Thunder Point he immediately pushes thoughts of the beautiful blonde from his mind.

But as the weeks pass he finds himself drawn to her and they take some tentative steps towards a relationship. But both have baggage. Both have children. And Devon has a controlling and manipulative cult leader on her trail.

The Hero is what readers expect from Robyn Carr.  It is a well written contemporary romance which is about more than just Devon and Spencer.  Stories from previous books are revisited and characters are introduced who will appear in future books. The Hero reminded me a little of Shelter Mountain (Virgin River Book 2).  That’s not a bad thing, Shelter Mountain is probably my favorite in the Virgin River series and I enjoyed this book almost as much.

Many thanks to Harlequin and Netgalley for providing me with this ARC.

Love Overdue (by Pamela Morsi)

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Contemporary Romance

DJ is the poster girl for prim and proper librarians. She is conservative and staid, she wears muted tones and safe shoes. That is who she is and it’s who she wants to be. Except for one night, eight years earlier when she decided it was time to see what she was missing. She went out for a night of drinking and dancing with friends and ended up in the bed of a stranger.

Now in her late twenties she has accepted the job of Library Administrator in a small rural town in Kansas. But when she arrives she finds things are not going to go as smoothly as she had hoped. The acting librarian is recalcitrant in the extreme; she is living upstairs from her landlady; and the landlady’s son is the stranger she hooked up with eight years earlier.

DJ is trying desperately to avoid Scott. He’s a player who cheated on his wife and had an affair with a married woman. But those things don’t quite gel with the man she is getting to know. Still she needs to fight their growing attraction to each other and hope he never remembers that one night eight years earlier.

Love Overdue is cute and quirky small town romance which every now and then becomes something a little more. The characters in this story are wonderfully odd and just a little broken.
It doesn’t always work. The repeating of the same events from the different points of view of the heroine and the hero got a little confusing and I’ve never been a fan of flashbacks as a plot device. I actually thought I had missed something when I got to the end and went searching for a few missing pages. Only after rereading the ending did I realize I hadn’t missed anything.
But those are small things and I enjoyed this book a lot. Enough that I’ve bought a couple of other books by Pamela Morsi.

Many thanks to Harlequin and Netgalley for providing me with this ARC.

Heart of Venom (by Jennifer Estep)

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Urban Fantasy

Many years earlier Sophia was kidnapped and brutalised by Harley and his sister, both powerful fire elementals.  She escaped with the help of Gin’s mentor and surrogate father Fletcher, but it nearly killed them.  Now Fletcher is dead and Harley has returned and dragged Sophia back to his mountain fortress.

Gin launches a suicide mission to rescue Sophia and kill Harley once and for all, but when Harley and his sister combine their fire magic they are all but unbeatable.

In Heart of Venom Jennifer Estep turns her attention to Sophia, one of my favorite characters from the series. The entire series is brash and in your face, and this book is quite possibly the best yet.

I also want to say, that cover is superb. The artist has absolutely nailed it.

Many thanks to Pocket Books and Edelweiss for providing me with this ARC.

Beautiful Bad Man (by Ellen O’Connell)

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Historical / Western Romance

1866

Caught stealing from a group of free settlers, a starving boy faces mob justice. Norah, herself just a child cannot accept the injustice and sets him free before he can be lynched.

“Everyone you see is either predator or prey, wolf or rabbit. Wolf is better.”

1880

Caleb Sutton (Cal) is Webster Van Cleve’s newest gun for hire. Van Cleve’s goal is to run farmers off their land and claim it for himself. Arriving at a run down earthen house with a group of hired guns, he discovers a defeated widow just waiting to die. When he realizes the woman is the girl who saved him many years earlier, he steps in and stops the other hired guns from raping her and forcing her from her land.

Norah has lived the hard life of a farmer, taking the little the land gives and stretching it as far as it will go. After her husband is murdered by Van Cleve there is little she can do but wait to die. When Caleb steps in and starts helping her, she is mistrustful of the hired killer, but over time she comes to accept him and then love him. Cal lends his strength to Norah and Norah gentles Cal.  But as the range war escalates and a bounty is placed on Cal, the only option left to them is to either abandon the land and run, or fight and become outlaws.

“Put that rifle down, Mrs Hawkins. I don’t want to shoot a woman, but I will if I have to.”
Her hands stayed steady, and she didn’t let the rifle waver. “Mrs Sutton. And I don’t want to shoot a sheriff, but I will if I have to.”

I feel I should say, I don’t really know anything about this period of American history, apart from what this book and Wikipedia told me. If I’ve made mistakes in using incorrect terms, I’m sorry for that.

Beautiful, Bad Man is a great book. It’s completely captivating from start to finish. It’s one of those rare books that I can’t fault in any way.  Highly recommended for anyone who reads romance, but especially for fans of Western Romance.

“He’s a bad one.”
“Oh, Mabel, yes he is. He’s a very bad man, but he’s a beautiful bad man.”