I have an innate distrust of any romance with an excess of “baby” endearment and there’s A LOT of “babying” in Love Her or Lose Her, second in Tessa Bailey’s Hot and Hammered series. There were a few things to recommend it: the working-class ethos, that stays working-class, and the marriage-in-trouble trope, which is a rarity and yet should appear more often in contemporary romance. It’s topical and true, after all, and way more believable than ye olde fake relationship. So, my launching into Love Her or Lose Her was with the enthusiasm of the ignorant but tropically engaged. It didn’t take long for my keenness to deflate like a geriatric balloon.
But first, other than the premise, who are the protags and what are their narrative stakes? Rosie Vega works as a perfume-counter girl, then goes home to her taciturn husband, Dominic. He’s a good guy: works hard, doesn’t drink, gamble, or cheat. They share a powerful attraction, which they indulge once a week, on Tuesdays. We don’t really know why they’ve stopped their amorous pursuits beyond Tuesdays, given how hot and bothered they get around each other, but suffice to say, it’s a “symptom” of what’s wrong with their marriage.
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Three romance novels saw me DNF them because of their opening scene: Mary Balogh’s The Secret Pearl; Susan Elizabeth Phillips’s Nobody’s Baby But Mine; and, Cecilia Grant’s A Lady Awakened. In time, I returned to all three and loved them. We can add a fourth, Lopez’s début, Lush Money. All four open with a scene where one or both of the protagonists are morally comprised; we see the them at their worst. All four involve a scene where the body is exchanged for money, or services, where the “other” is objectified and exploited. It is most interesting that in three of the four, including Lopez’s, the hero is objectified. What Lopez brings to the table is a flip to the classic HP ethos: the billionaire, in this case, the heroine, Roxanne Medina, “buys” Prince Mateo Esperanza’s, the hero’s, services to make her dream baby and cement her business empire. They marry, business-like, and “meet” once a month over a three-day period when Roxanne ovulates. So, what’s in it for Mateo? 
Given a weakness for bhangra music and Indian food, also a hot cover, I was eager to read Nisha Sharma’s first adult romance, The Takeover Effect, the first of a trilogy. I wasn’t keen on its corporate setting and it turns out there’s a lot of “corporating,” but I hoped the, sadly because scarce, unique Sikh ethos would make up for what it lacked in premise. Hemdeep “Hem” Singh, estranged son of Deepak, returns to the family fold when his father’s digital empire, Bharat, Inc., is threatened by a hostile takeover; hence, the title. Hem finds his family in disarray. Deepak has suffered a heart attack and Hem’s brothers, CEO Ajay, and West coast R&D, Zail, are scrambling to deal with the crisis. Into this critical period in their company’s future walks heroine, Mina Kohli, hired by the board, as a neutral party, to oversee the takeover details. What the Singhs do not know is that Mina’s Uncle Sanjeev has told Mina she’s to rule in favour of the takeover, thus serving his nefarious interests. What does Sanjeev hold over her?
Carly Bloom is a new-to-me author and Big Bad Cowboy, her début romance. If she sustains this level of humour and pathos, then she has a good chance of becoming many romance readers’ autobuy. Big Bad Cowboy is a tongue-in-cheek pastiche of many romance conceits and in its combining of them, uniquely itself. Be warned, however, Big Bad Cowboy is busy with conceits and stories within stories. To start, the hero, Travis Blake, newly-returned Afghan vet to his dilapidated, tax-debt-ridden Texas ranch and uncle to his incarcerated brother’s and dead sister-in-law’s five-year-old, Henry. Henry is precocious, hilariously sharp-tongued, and Travis knows it from the get-go: 
My reading trajectory through Alisha Rai’s Hurts To Love You, third in her Forbidden Hearts series, went from gleeful enthusiasm to tempered affection. The novel tidies and resolves the story (I assume because I haven’t read the first two in the series) of the complicated, convoluted relationships between the Kane and Chandler families. Complications and convolutions that must’ve been illuminated, to an extent, in Hate To Want You and Wrong To Need You. Reading Hurts To Love You felt like I was late to game, like walking into a dinner-party when the crux of the conversation is already underway. After a while I gave up trying to keep up with the sundry relationships and backstories and just enjoyed the romance between outsider Gabe Hunter and Baby Chandler rich-girl, Evangeline, or “Eve”. Gabe and Eve’s romance opens with a lot of mutual lusting from afar, which is a lot of fun. But, to start, to the premise. While Eve might be a wealthy Chandler, Gabe is the adopted son of the Kane family housekeeper. The Kane-Chandler family “feud” started when Maria Chandler and Robert Kane were killed in a car accident years ago, with the mystery of why they were in the car together in the first place resolved by the end of this third-in-series book. 
I hadn’t read a romantic suspense novel in a long time and I wasn’t sure I really wanted to. Calhoun’s Turn Me Loose has a naked-chest-and-dog-tags cover that always turns me off. But, Calhoun: I’d heard a lot of good about her in the Twitterverse and wanted to give a new-to-me author a fighting chance. Turn Me Loose‘s introduction didn’t cover itself with glory and I came a hair’s-breath away from DNF-ing. But the writing was good, darn good, though I disliked the flash-back routine to the hero and heroine’s past. I recognized its necessity because it made it easier for Calhoun to segue into the present, but those, albeit not significant, parts of the novel never won me over. So, what did?
The day-job ate all of MissB’s reading time in the past few weeks. She greatly missed writing her blog and is so happy to be back this week with a review of Ruthie Knox’s Madly. Hopefully, a two-week hiatus won’t be repeated.
Tiffany Reisz is a new-to-Miss-B author writing in a category Miss B doesn’t usually read. Miss B. likes her candles and avowals of love with only the mildest of love scenes. Harlequin’s soon-to-be-defunct Blaze line is more ero than Miss Bates likes, BUT Reisz is an author Miss Bates wanted to try. However, Miss Bates knew Reisz’s erotica would not have been her cuppa. Miss B. thought the waning Blaze, a category from which she’s only read Sarah Mayberry’s marvellous romances, would be – well, less erotic. And it was: one woman, one man, yes explicit love scenes, but an HEA to end and some tender, falling-in-love moments. Miss B’s experiment didn’t leave her with a desire to snap up every Blaze title out there, but it wasn’t distasteful either … at least not when she started to skim the love scenes. 
Miss Bates greatly looked forward to Joanna Shupe’s Magnate. She loves the Gilded Age setting and an opportunity to read a historical romance “beyond-the-Regency”, with characters from America’s class system. Because, make no mistake, Shupe’s romance is a cross-class romance. Heroine Lizzie Sloane is a blue-blooded beauty from one of New York City’s oldest and most prestigious families. However, there is a hint of failure with, of finances gone awry for, the Northeast Railroad Company her family owns. William, Lizzie’s brother, struggles to keep the family fortunes running. What he won’t accept is help from his baby sister. Unlike the social-whirl focus of most young women of her circle, Lizzie wants to operate her own stockbroking company – unheard of for a woman in the day and age! But Lizzie is as determined as she is beautiful. She brings her appeal to a self-made man, a man whose past is couched in the poverty and violence of his Five-Points childhood, Emmett Cavanaugh. Emmett is big, powerful, fastidious, and unrelenting in his pursuit of wealth and influence. Lizzie, who’s aware of her attempt to flout social conventions, believes she’ll find a kindred spirit in the man who had to break them down to prove his mettle and worth. While Lizzie’s worth comes in gown-form, she does find, if not a kindred spirit, at least someone who listens to her plans and ambitions. 
Jennifer Hayward’s Claiming the Royal Innocent starts in run-of-the-mill HP romance fashion. Miss Bates was clipping along, enjoying the ride, when something happened a third of the way in: run-of-the-mill turned extraordinary, pleasant -enough became keeper-shelf-worthy. Miss Bates loved Hayward’s 
Miss Bates Reads Romance 