Rockaway Bride by Pippa Grant

What do you do when your manager runs away with all your money? This on top of the fact that your father's health is failing, your band's tour got canceled due to low sales, and one of your bandmates is missing? Well, getting drunk and stealing his fiancee probably isn't a good idea. But that's what Dax Gallagher does. 

Willow Honeycutt lives a pretty normal life as a preschool teacher in New York. Okay, yes, her step-father is the king of a small country but she herself is perfectly normal. She does play in an all-girl boy band cover band but perfectly normal. So when she decides to run away from her wedding the night before it happens, then finds out that her fiance actually dumped her first, she has sort of an existential breakdown. Kidnapped? Eh, not really. Willow is smarter than Dax and a better fighter than Dax so she soon becomes the brains of the operation, dragging him along on her bucket list trip around Europe. 

This book is crazy sauce. Absolutely crazy sauce. In the best kind of way. Believable? No. Enjoyable? Highly. I can't wait to read the next book in the series.

Three and a half stars

Follows Stud in the Stacks

Followed by The Hero and the Hacktivist

This book came out June 29th, 2018

Borrowed as ebook from Kindle Unlimited

Opinions are my own

Stud in the Stacks by Pippa Grant

Parker Elliott needs a boyfriend so she bids on Tarzan at a bachelor auction. She doesn't win him but she convinces him to pretend to be her boyfriend at her 20-year high school reunion. Her boss is pushing her to go so that they can land her former husband (and isn't THAT a story) as a client. Too bad she accidentally closets herself in a men's room with Tarzan. And that's before she realizes she actually used to babysit him.

Knox Moretti loves two things - romance novels and his job as a librarian. He even writes a blog as Mr. Romance. And it's that blog that gets him in trouble at work (although his boss wants him gone anyway...). So he'll take Parker on as his fake fiancee (much more stable than dating) and maybe they can help each other. 

There were parts that I found more cringe-worthy than funny but overall a fast-fun-and-fluffy book.

Three and a half stars

Follows Mr. McHottie

Followed by Rockaway Bride

This book came out January 5th, 2018

Borrowed as ebook from Kindle Unlimited

Opinions are my own

Wild Sign by Patricia Briggs

Leah and Bran's relationship has been touched on in past books but the origins of it have remained murky. It is cleared up a little bit in this story when Leah's past comes to haunt her present. 

The book opens with Leah, Rachel, Sage, and Anna on a girls' outing some time before the beginning of the last book. They are having some drinks (although alcohol doesn't affect werewolves) when Sage gets Leah to open up a little bit about how the two became mated. And even just this section proves Briggs' mastery of timelines as she deftly bobs and weaves between the past and present of two overlapping series.

This new story sends Charles and Anna along with the berserker, Tag, to the California mountains where a whole town has disappeared. They were there one week after being checked on by the Forest Service and then... gone. An old evil has popped up again and is joining forces with a group that has had past interactions with both the Alpha and the Omega as well as the Columbia pack.

I wish we had seen a little bit more with Bran and Leah. After the big set up of learning more about her past, we don't see a lot of them. Of course, the series does focus more on Anna and Charles so that makes some sense.

Four stars

Follows Burn Bright

Gifted an ebook on Kindle

This book came out March 16th, 2021

Opinions are my own

Spring by Janis McCurry and Lynn Mapp

I hadn't read any of The Matchmaker Chronicles before but the premise always sounded like a good one and I thought the cover of this was really cute. Even though this is book four, I didn't feel lost about characters even without an info dump. I was even a little disappointed that it seemed like this was the end of the series.

Matchmakers Maggie and Rina are flummoxed. They've been asked to help Christie find a husband... but not for love. Instead, she wants to get her hands on shares of a medical supply company that her uncle is threatening to sell off but she wants to keep it in the family (as well as make sure that their employees still have a job).

The man she's decided to match herself with is one of Rina's sons who needs the money to develop a gaming theater which sounds REALLY cool. 

Both Christie and Aaron were very mature and I really wish that there had been a little more conversation between the two of them but were some other stories competing for page space. Maggie has her own B plot with a man named Joe who is a world traveler but seems to be settling down. It was nice to see. There was also a side plot of a waitress meeting a wealthy man who is hiding who he is that would have been nice as its own book.

Three stars

This book came out March 18th, 2021

Follows Winter

ARC kindly provided by Mapp & McCurry LLC and NetGalley

Opinions are my own

The Truth About Lies by Aja Raden

This is an incredibly readable nonfiction book that looks at the lies people tell and why we believe them. Raden discusses several stories that actually overlap with another book on lies that I read recently but comes at them differently. The stories themselves are interwoven with information about why it is so easy to believe them, even when we see proof of "the truth" right in front of our own eyes. And more startling, even when people come out and SAY that they've been lying, people will refuse to believe it.

Four Stars

This book comes out May 11th, 2021
ARC kindly provided by St. Martin's Press and NetGalley

Opinions are my own

Hen of the Baskervilles by Donna Andrews

Caerphilly has started a local Un-Fair to help fill the gap left by the local State Fair (and to fill their city coffers). Part of the fair is also in Clay County. So is the dead man. At least partially. While he wasn't a prime specimen (never helping his wife; now cheating on her), it wasn't necessary to kill the man. Unless he was somehow connected to the thefts and vandalism that are threatening to close the fair. And then there's the added aggravation of the Clay County deputy who is dead set on sticking his nose into every aspect of the case.

Good thing Meg Langslow is on hand to help figure out exactly what was going on.

Three and a half stars

Follows Some Like it Hawk

Followed by Duck the Halls

This book came out July 16, 2013

Audiobook borrowed from Libby 

Opinions are my own

Reread August 2023

Some Like It Hawk by Donna Andrews

The town of Caerphilly is in trouble. The ex-mayor has mortgaged the town to the hilt and taken off with all of their money. One town clerk, Phineas Throckmortion, has managed to barricade himself in the basement of the courthouse for almost a year and a half (with the help of a secret tunnel and several townsfolk.) 

However, a vice-president of the Evil Lender has just been found dead in that same basement and it seems like Phineas is the only man who could have done the job.

Three stars

This book came out June 17th, 2012

Follows The Real Macaw

Followed by Hen of the Baskervilles 

Audiobook borrowed from Libby

Opinions are my own

Reread August 2023