Showing posts with label Stacy Finz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stacy Finz. Show all posts

Saturday, August 28, 2021

The Café between Pumpkin and Pie -- Anthology

In the town of Moonbright, young woman who chant some specific lines on Halloween are destined to see the reflection of their true love before the night is over. Three loosely connected stories explore the romances of 2021.

Love Over Easy by Katie Angell
Hannah Allan is in a little over her head. Dressed as Bo Peep so that her sister's children (her sister is home with a cold and her brother-in-law is at work as a policeman) can go to the Halloween parade and then go trick-or-treating. She didn't expect to run into Jake Kaylor. He is the man that every woman in Moonbright wants. Hannah's sister was his girlfriend for awhile but they didn't work out. 
Hannah's family owns the Corner Cafe. She works as a waitress and may not always get everyone's orders right, but she is pleasant and the town loves her. Jake is beyond what she can imagine, the bad boy extraordinaire. Yet he somehow has eyes for her. And she's looking back...
Some of the language by Angell is a bit formal and I'm not sure I bought an HEA but for sure there was an HFN.

Three stars.

Love Rising by Stacy Finz
I've read Stacy Finz before and was happy to recognize some characters from previous books. Of the three stories, this felt the most cohesive and it may have helped that the main characters knew each other in the past and seemed to be willing to meet each other halfway to make the relationship work.
Sydney Byrne is only in Moonbright to sell her grandmother's house and then she's going back to San Francisco and back to her bakery. She's not sure why Nick Rossi is at the house at o'dark thirty, nor does she know why he's tearing down the wall to her grandmother's crafts room but she never suspects that her grandmother may have made alternate plans.
Nick doesn't know why Sydney's grandmother hired him but he always fulfills his clients requests. Especially when it means that he's tweaking Sydney's nose at the same time. The two were close in high school with Sydney tutoring him. But then his girlfriend caught them kissing and spread horrible rumors about Sydney that Nick did nothing to stem. Now they're all grown up, both single, and he's thinking that they can test the waters again. But Sydney's life is across the country, how can they make it work?

Three and a half stars

Romance on Tap by Marina Adair
I really liked that Adair wrapped in the experiences of a child adopted from another country but still loves her adoptive parents. Mila Cramer is back in Moonbright so that her parents can have one last Christmas in the house she grew up in. While she's in town, she's determined to lift the curse that Ford James put on her when he kissed her during Seven Minutes in Heaven in high school. That was the last time she kissed a man with whom she had such chemistry. But Ford's twin brother Hudson might book a spoke in those plans.
Again, having characters who already have a history served the author well in this short story. It made me believe that they might have a shot at an HEA because they do know each other... at least their histories. 

Three and a half stars

Three and a half stars
This book comes out August 31st, 2021
ARC kindly provided by Kensington Books and NetGalley
Opinions are my own

Saturday, July 20, 2019

Cowboy Up by Stacy Finz

Aubrey McAlister is nobody's favorite person in Dry Creek. She has committed the unforgivable sin of (gasp!) calling off her wedding to the most popular man in town. She has her reasons but is
keeping them hidden in order to save the inevitable heartbreak for a friend who has already been through a lot. Her car is vandalized, her coffee may or may not have spit in it, and her job prospects have dried up (the downside of working for your fiancé). Basically, Aubrey's life is crap.
Cash Dalton knows from crap. He is a former FBI agent (the "former" part is not his own choice) and now he's in town trying to help his cousins keep the ranch that has been in his family for generations. Speaking of generations, it seems that Cash unknowingly contributed to the next-he apparently has a daughter whose mother never bothered to tell Cash existed. So he's dealing with his own crap and now the crap of a teenage girl whose mother died and now has to live with a man she was told didn't want her.
There was a lot going on in this book and I'm not sure it all really gelled for me. Finz is a fantastic writer but it might have been too many stories to fit into one book. The ending was fine but I have a feeling I will feel better after the next book (assuming we get to see more of Aubrey and Cash there.)

Three stars
This book comes out July 23
ARC kindly provided by Kensington Books and NetGalley
Opinions are my own

Saturday, December 15, 2018

Tempting Fate by Stacy Finz

Tempting Fate by Stacy FinzIn earlier Nugget books, Raylene Rosser was decidedly the villain. And in this book, she's the heroine. It's a long slog to get her there but Stacy Finn manages to do it well. Raylene is back in town for her brother's wedding and literally no one is happy. And she really deserves it. Not only was she kind of a bitch, she was an alcoholic, and  almost helped to put an innocent man in jail for murder.
Gabe Moretti is in town because he helped open up a security business with Raylene's half-brother, Logan. And when Logan asks Gabe to keep an eye on Raylene, Gabe takes that very seriously. Even though he's very attracted to Raylene, he tries to keep his distance. Though he will help her search for the gold that her ancestor supposedly buried.
There are definitely some rough spots in this story but it was, overall, lovely.

Three stars
This book came out December 11
ARC kindly provided by publisher and NetGalley

Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Love You by Stacy Finz

Love You by Stacy FinzWin Garner and Darcy Wallace have both been introduced in this series before. Win is the playboy of his family, the one who wines and dines women but never gets serious. In fact, he tries not to get too serious about anything. Or that's the perception; there have been glimpses of a deeper Win.
Darcy doesn't want Win to be deep. She just wants to break her dry spell. So she's fairly astonished when she crawls into his bed one night but gets rebuffed. Because her mother has been wearing on her self-confidence her whole life, she assumes that it's her. But Win is just trying to stay on the straight and narrow. He suggests they be friends but can't stop flirting.
The two are thrown together in order to help bring in a corporate account for their family business, Garner Adventures. It lets them both shine as well as spend some more time together.
This is a fast,fun, and fluffy with some toe-dips into the serious but nothing deep. Perfect reading for a summer's day.

Three and a half stars
This book comes out July 31
ARC kindly provided by NetGalley
Follows Want You

Saturday, February 24, 2018

Want You by Stacy Finz

Want You by Stacy FinzDeb Bennett has loved TJ Garner since she was a child but she knew that she would never measure up to the Garner's golden boy so she settled for his brother, Win. The two of them got along quite well since Win is sort of the family black sheep, the one least likely to succeed (though that's not hard in a family of overachievers.) But Win isn't coming back to Deb and she knows that it's for the best. For TJ, that means it's an opportunity to win the woman he's always loved, first by wooing her with a marketing job.
And Deb ends up being amazing at the job even though she's only worked as a server and never went to college (or only went for a little while... I don't remember). While I'm sure there are many people who can do this, I didn't get any sense that Deb was going to be that person. And I have to admit that there was so little time between Deb and TJ on the slopes. We're told over and over that Deb is this amazing sports-woman but we never actually get to see it. And TJ's story of angst is... a little disappointing. I didn't love this story but am definitely still looking forward to the next.

Three stars
This book comes out February 27
ARC kindly provided by NetGalley
Followed by Love You

Thursday, October 5, 2017

Hope for Christmas by Stacy Finz

Hope for Christmas by Stacy FinzIn a previous Nugget book, we met Emily and Clay McCreedy. She's a famous cookbook author while he's a rancher. They've created a blended family with his two sons but Emily can't ever forget her daughter. Especially now that there are calls claiming that somebody has her. After seven years, can it possibly be true? And what does that mean? Not only for Emily but for her ex-husband and his new wife.
A nice addition to the Nugget series. I like that everything wasn't solved neatly and some ties were left undone. This is definitely not a story for people who haven't read the rest of the series.

Three and a half stars
This book comes out October 10

Friday, August 7, 2015

Starting Over by Stacy Finz

I've read one of Finz's "Nugget" stories all the way through and flipped through the other two. None really caught my interest and I was ready to write off the series. But I saw this one on NetGalley and was curious as to how Ms. Finz was going to pair Nathan "Nate" Breyer. I had liked him in the first book, a business-like man who was enigmatically kind toward his sister and agreed to donate sperm to his best friend so that she and her partner could have a child. Nathan is now dealing with the consequences of that action, in love with his biological daughter but unsure how much he can contribute to her life without overstepping the bounds of his original agreement. I wish we could have seen more of that struggle but it was resolved well (I thouhgt). Ms. Finz specializes in off-beat families/romantic pairings, and, though not quite as gritty, remind me very much of Brenda Novak.
Starting Over by Stacy FinzI rather liked Sam Dunsbury, the woman who reminds Nate so much of the fiancee who dumped him the night before their wedding. Sam actually did the same thing, leaving the man she was to marry hours before the wedding. Rich playgirl, that's what he's mentally categorized her as.
Sam thinks Nate's hot but can't understand the hostility he seems to have for her. She knows that she hasn't worked before but also knows that this is the kind of job that she can excel at. Hell, she's been doing it for free for years.
I loved watching the dance of these two proud people. And really enjoy that this book actually has the feel of a small town. We're not hit over the head with "Hey- this is a small town," it just is. There were definitely some misunderstandings that could have been cleared up if they had just <i>talked</i> to each other. Also, the end was a little too pat. Pages and pages of misunderstandings that cleared up in a few paragraphs? A little rushed. But, overall, an enjoyable book.