For a 35 page novella, this was a surprisingly good story. It's two men who meet at an auction. One man wins a painting that the other wants. Then they meet again at a gay bar and enter into a... relationship? Maybe? It's an incredibly short story and I don't go for erotica but for the length, etc. ... not a bad way to spend 15 minutes.
In a tragic mirror of real life Serenity Hammer is a librarian who has to fight for every penny to keep her library open. But the Powers That Be won't oil just any squeaky wheel, just the ones that oil them back. So Serenity decides that she's going to take matters into her own hands, whether it's legal or not.
Lord Alaric, third son of a duke, is known more popularly in England as Lord Wilde. His travel books have made him famous but the play written about him has made him notorious. When he returns home, he is stalked by women everywhere. He is set up as a teen heartthrob. Well, and older women as well. But he is not impressed. These women know a facsimile of him, not the man who misses his oldest brother, the man who might just be ready to come home.
Sophie Birch grew up with a father who was a con man (what is the deal with romance heroine's named Sophie always having con men fathers?). Obviously, this has made her fairly wary of relationships in her adult life, even with her roommates (the heroines of the first two books in this series). Except... it's different with Angela. Sophie sees her as a sort of surrogate mother. And that's the reason she tries to run back into her burning theater; to save the only copy of Angela's play. Too bad some dude keeps trying to rescue her.
Savanna Gray didn't know her husband was a serial rapist. But once the town found out, she became a pariah. So she packed up her two kids and took them to the house she had inherited from her parents. She's never been there, it's barely livable, but she's going to go anyway. Thank goodness the guy next door is willing to help her out.
This is the first book I'd read in this series but it didn't take long for me to catch up to what was going on. Lola Woodby is the main character in this book. She's supposed to be part of society but doesn't really have the money for it. She and her former cook, Berta, have opened up a "discreet retrieval agency" in order to make ends meet. In this book, she's supposed to have a simple retrieval, getting a rhino's head off a hunters wall. But it turns into diamond smuggling and murder and nothing is what it seems.
I read this book with a two- and a five-year-old. There was a little too much text on some of the pages to keep the two-year-old's interest. But they mainly seemed to enjoy the pictures. The theme (teamwork is important) is great and the rhythm of the rhymes was very nice. I'm not sure if my ARC was damaged in some way but the book ended really abruptly; it would have been nice to do a wrap up of realization that everyone was doing their part rather than having the book end at the trophies.