The Harlow Hoyden by Lynn Messina

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I seem to be on quite the kick of "hellion/hoyden" books right now. I was on a kick one day, requesting books that had interesting covers from NetGalley. This, was one of them. Being a new-to-me author was a bonus here. Another bonus? I quite enjoyed the story.
The Duke of Trent is quite bemused one afternoon to find a young woman assaulting one of his prize orchids (she was going to snap it off at the flower, rather than at the route). He's even more bemused to find out that his intruder is the well-known Harlow Hoyden, Miss Emma Harlow.
Emma is delighted to make the acquaintance of the Duke of Trent. She thinks that he's the answer to her prayers. Her prayers to find some libertine to seduce her sister away from a fiance that Emma wholly disapproves of.
Okay, there was a totally pointless scene at the end

the killer had to come back and strangler her a second time? Why? To eke out a few more pages?

.
And, DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN, I hope the typos are fixed before this book goes to print. I ignored them because this was an ARC but the duke's "think smile" and drinking of "ail" were... whew. If this were a published book, I would have been annoyed enough to mark this book down two stars.

UPDATE: The follow-up, The Other Harlow Girl, is about Vinnie finding her own HEA. Not as good, but still worth reading.

Passionately Yours by Cara Elliott

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I didn't read the first two books in the series but didn't feel like I had to because the only characters that seemed to travel to this book (refreshingly!) were the main characters with little diversion to updates or other nonsense.
I seem to be on a reading stretch where all of the young women are "hellions" of some sort. And in this book, Carolina Sloane is the youngest and most headstrong of three sisters who have been labeled as such. Again, I haven't read the first two books in this series so I don't know what went previously but, when this book opens, she's met our hero, Alec McClellan, Lord Strathcona, before. And it was an exciting adventure and these two were sparking off each other something serious.
We do get to see them connect more in this book as well as going on a grand adventure. Okay, it's more of trying to not get killed because of Alec's anti-British-togetherness stance (he's Scottish, which is actually fairly contemporary considering what's going on over there right now).
A good book and if you like Cara Elliott, you'll quite enjoy this book.

Kiss the Bride by Lucy Kevin

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The Wedding Dress
Anne Farleigh's life is about to change and investigator Gareth Cavendish is the one to do it. But how can he break this beautiful dressmaker's heart?
The Wedding Kiss
Rose Martin is about to get married to a dreamy doctor. So why does best friend RJ, the gardener at The Rose Chalet, make her heart go pitty-pat?
Sparks Fly
Angelina is a life organizer and she's just been hired to get Will Scott's life in order. His ex-wife hired him when she read that Angelina's clients had a habit of getting married right after she worked with them. Angelina knows Will's ex wants him back, which makes it just that much harder for her to ignore the feelings he's producing in her own heart.


Oh, Dear God-in-Heaven. If this hadn't been a NetGalley book, I would have stopped after the first story. Mary Sue was beyond TSTL. Between that and the lightning-fast romance which made absolutely no sense with the characters we were given, I was ready to give up on the story. 
The second story was okay but the third story, again, was one that I would have DNFd if I had the chance.
If you like stories with little "on-screen" sex and characters that are just a bit twee, you will like this story. Otherwise, steer clear.

Waiting on You by Kristan Higgins

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I've been looking forward to this book for awhile. Colleen O'Rourke, local bartender (bar owner, really), has been a B character in other Blue Heron books but she has seemed like a confident woman who is comfortable in her own skin. Even better, it's hinted that she has had "relationships" with many of the men that come into the bar (though Higgins does have to mention that her reputation is hugely inflated. Why can't we just have a confident woman who actually deserves her reputation?) but her friends don't think less of her for it and she doesn't think less of herself.
For four years, she dated Lucas Campbell while they were in high school and even while starting college. Then

she found out that he knew her father was cheating and didn't tell her. Also, he had issues saying "I love you" and just sharing emotions in general

her world fell apart and so did their relationship. While she hasn't lost faith in love, she's lost the idea of it for herself.
This book was three stars for me until the ending. I didn't love

that Joe was such a douche about Colleen sleeping with his cousin but you do have to factor in that his world had just shifted with the loss of his uncle

but the fact that he sort of figured it out on his own was a nice touch and, oh, the feels.
This book comes out on March 25, 2014 and is most definitely a book worth reading.

River Road by Jayne Ann Krentz

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I quite enjoyed this return to the books I remember reading when I first started getting into romance. This story is proof that Krentz can step away from the Arcane novels to return to her contemporary novels (the ones without paranormal aspects) and still craft a really good story. At the same time this story felt fairly modern, I really felt the connection to Krentz's earlier works.
The book opens with Lucy Sheridan being taken away from a teenage party by a three-years-older Mason Fletcher. She has a crush on this enigmatic male but she's still pissed that he peremptorily pulled her out of a party that she was going to leave anyway.
But Mason has a good reason for pulling her away, one he doesn't want to tell her about. But the problem goes away when the teen at the heart of the issue vanishes.
Thirteen years later, Lucy, now a genealogical researcher, returns to Summer River to sell the property left to her by her aunt and deal with the shares in a family company left to her by her aunt's partner (Krentz isn't usually so coy about possible homosexual relationships but I prefer to believe because it's such a non-issue that she doesn't feel the need to spell it out.) Of course, Mason is also there, healing his psyche after a particularly bad outcome with his company.
Long time readers will be able to figure out pretty quickly what the twist at the end is going to be but I didn't feel like it took any enjoyment out of the story.
Why not five stars? I really wish that Lucy and Mason had kept using condoms until they were in a committed relationship.

Four stars

This book came out January 7th, 2014

Loving Lord Ash by Sally MacKenzie

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Talk about your big misunderstandings... this one is... oof... a doozy. And it's caused Kit, the Marquis of Ashton, eldest son of the Duchess of Love, not to go near his wife for eight years. 
Jessica grew up with the family but, as the daughter of the head groomsman, she wasn't really part of the nobility, but not really part of the lower classes either. When her father died, she was ecstatic that someone wanted to marry her. Well, that's part of the story anyway.
Almost immediately after the ceremony, Ash dumped her and went to stay at his parents' estate. Since then, rumors about both husband and wife have circulated the country. Well, the nobility at least.
Ash decides that enough is enough and he needs an heir (not to mention his two brothers are devastatingly happy in their new marriages), so it's time for a divorce. He's sort of a douche-hat about the whole thing, even in the face of Jess trying to tell him what really has happened, but he does end up growing out of it.
Sally MacKenzie is a consistent three- to four-star author for me and this is one of her best. Yes, the situation is over-the-top. No, it probably wouldn't have really happened. Yes, we do get some great character development.

Come Home to Me by Brenda Novak

Oh the feels. The many, many feels. Brenda Novak does not always craft a... comfortable story,

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but she always manages to evoke strong emotions in her readers. At least me. Lots of spoilers in this review so I'm going to hide most of it.

SECRET BABY! Maybe two secret babies. This is such an overused storyline in the Harlequin romance novels and it irked me for much of the first part of the story. But... these are damaged people that Novak is writing about. They're not some white-bread secretary who only hides the baby because of some twisted logic. Okay, yes, Presley should have told Aaron. But, by the stated parameters of their relationship, they were only hooking up. And she was taking a lot of drugs at that point so... who knows. Then there's the burden of the relationship she had after she ran away to Arizona. It sounds... dark. Very dark.
The whole plotline with Cheyenne wanting to artificially inseminate herself with her brother-in-law's sperm also felt like it should be irksome. But, it somehow wasn't that bad once we found out that Dylan was also hiding things in their marriage. Again, coming from the same families as Presley and Aaron, these are two people who love each other so much but have never been around a good marriage to see how burdens shared can be burdens lightened (oh, god, that's so twee but yet so true.) I spent the second half of the book with my fingers crossed that they would just talk to each other and trusting in Novak to bring all of the tangled webs to a happy conclusion.