Tag: Older-Woman-Younger-Man Romance

Audio-Book Review: Amy Andrews’s BREAKING ALL THE RULES

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Breaking_All_RulesRomcom is the new chicklit, or chicklit was the old romcom: chicken-egg, does it really matter when entertaining, light-hearted, heartfelt romance is being written? Because that’s certainly what you’ll get in Amy Andrews’s standalone, Breaking All the Rules. Andrews loves a life-restart-romance, especially on her heroines’ parts: Beatrice Archer has burned bridges big-time and docked her life-shambles in small-town Credence, Colorado with resolve to burn even more by “breaking all the rules” which held her rigid and controlled in the past. No more of that, baby, is her ‘tude! The publisher’s blurb will fill in some further details:

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… (more…)

Review: Cara Bastone’s FLIRTING WITH FOREVER (Forever Yours #3)

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Flirting_With_ForeverNow I’ve come to the end of Bastone’s Forever Yours series and must say I’ll miss her world and the characters she creates. I hope to see more from Bastone: she’s a wonderful combination of familiar-contemporary-romance groove and something fresh, new, and, at times, subtly subversive. On the surface, one thinks typical contemporary rom-com, as the blurb suggests:

Mary Trace is bright, bubbly and back in the dating pool in her midthirties. All of her closest friends are in love, and she refuses to miss out on romance. So when a regular customer at her trendy Brooklyn boutique wants to set Mary up on a blind date with her son, she gives a hesitant yes. John Modesto-Whitford is gorgeous and well-groomed, so maybe dinner won’t be a total bust—until he drops a less-than-flattering comment about Mary’s age.
Desperate to be nothing like his snake of a politician father, public defender John Modesto-Whitford prides himself on his honesty and candor. But his social awkwardness and lack of filter just blew it with the most beautiful woman he’s ever dated. Luckily, Mom’s machinations keep Mary and John running into each other all summer long, and soon they resort to fake dating to get her to back off. When their pretense turns to real friendship—and some surprisingly hot chemistry—can these two stubborn individuals see past their rocky start to a rock-solid future together? (more…)

Janet’s Review of Mary Balogh’s SOMEONE TO TRUST

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someone_to_trustHappy Saturday, everyone! I’ve stocked the fridge and ensured a plenteous tea supply, getting ready for a winter storm chez MissB. I’m reading a wonderful book and will be posting a review soon. For today, I have a treat for you: Janet Webb’s review of Mary Balogh’s Someone To Trust (Westcott #5). Read Janet’s review below!

Mary Balogh writes books that once you start, sleep is optional until you utter a happy sigh at the end. I’m invested in the Westcotts, a close, intertwined family who invite readers into their charmed circle.

Balogh does widows who’ve had a crummy first marriage very well. Some causes are abuse, be it emotional and/or physical, or the consequences of dealing with a husband’s mental illness. Lizzie aka Elizabeth, Lady Overfield, is the latest widow-with-a-troubled-past. She shares characteristics that reoccur in Balogh’s depiction of widows, like a stiff upper lip, an almost preternatural serenity, and a tendency to be self-effacing.
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REVIEW: Liz Talley’s PERFECTLY CHARMING

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Perfectly_CharmingLiz Talley’s Perfectly Charming is her second Montlake-published Morning Glory novel. Talley used to write great Super-romance for Harlequin. While Miss Bates loved Talley’s Harlequin work, the first Morning Glory, Mississippi, novel was shrug-worthy. But Talley is a strong enough writer to convince MissB. to give the series another try. The series premise is an interesting, though conventional one. Three childhood friends lose #4 in their tight, supportive circle to cancer. Lucy leaves a charm bracelet and wish for each with enough money attached that each heroine can have an adventure, take a chance, and make a change in her life. When her life has taken its turn, she passes the bracelet on. Jessica Culpepper, Perfectly Charming‘s heroine, has already had her life turned upside down when the novel opens. Her “American Dream” existence, the cheerleader who married the wealthy high school football star and had a white-picket fence life, ended in divorce when Benton slept with the florist and told Jess their marriage no longer fulfilled him. Jess’s world crashed, but Lucy’s legacy allows her to leave her loving Morning Glory family and friends, to take a nursing job in Pensacola. Now a year after the divorce, Jess has healed and Florida is the final step in making her psychic cure complete.  (more…)

REVIEW: Bliss Bennet’s A REBEL WITHOUT A ROGUE, Or Tell Me Your Name and I’ll Tell You No Lies

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Rebel_Without_RogueMiss Bates approaches a new-to-her author, especially a self-published one, with trepidation. Witness? Her DNF posts. But Bliss Bennet is the writer of the Romance Novels For Feminists blog, which Miss B. reads and enjoys. And she was curious: what kind of a romance would a long-familiar blogger write? Given the blog content, will it be “feminist”? Though Miss Bates calls herself a feminist, she doesn’t read romance, or rather she doesn’t deliberately read romance because it carries a particular stance. She went into reading Bennet’s romance with these questions and departed, as she tapped the final page on her Kobo, not really caring how they were, or not, answered. Because she was completely swept up in the story.
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REVIEW: Liz Talley’s SWEET TALKING MAN, Or Jane and the Viking

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Sweet_Talking_ManWhen you read a lot of romance, like Miss Bates does, it’s inevitable the narrative becomes stale. You lose patience and are more likely to curl your lip and DNF. There are romance writers, however, who renew your faith in the narrative’s ability to be fresh, yet familiar. The romance reader is this creature: she wants the familiar because it has meaning and the familiar to be sufficiently deviant to keep her interest and delight her. Liz Talley’s Sweet Talking Man was such a narrative for Miss B.: familiar and fresh, well-known conventions unfolding like beloved Christmas ornaments and their subversion unfolding like unexpected gifts. Thus transpires the story of B&B owner, PTA president, organizer-of-all-things, super-single-mom, forty-year-old divorcée heroine, Abigail Beauchamp Orgeron, and artist, teacher, vegan, ukulele-playing, thirty-four-year-old hero, Lief Lively, or as strait-laced Abigail calls him, “resident cuckoo bird.” The familiar is evident in the “opposites-attract” trope and romance narrative deviations in a 40-year-old heroine and the un-alpha-like interests of her December-to-his-May hero.  Continue reading