Love a Little Sideways by Shannon Stacey

I read the first six Kowalski books practically in one sitting and had to wait a couple of months to get this one. I couldn't wait to find out about Liz and Drew. Unfortunately, this just wasn't as good as the other books in the series. Better than most contemporary romances though so still got three stars.
Why Liz and Drew can't tell Mitch (her brother, his best friend) about their relationship is a mystery to me. Hiding a one-night stand? Yes. But a full-blown relationship? It took half the book to get over that plotline and Stacey is usually much faster at getting past tired tropes.

Three stars
Follows All He Ever Dreamed
Followed by Taken with You
November 26th, 2013
Listened to on Audible Escape
Opinions are my own

Heiress for Hire by Madeline Hunter

Chase Radnor is an investigator and the perfect choice for his cousin to reach out to for help. His cousin has inherited a dukedom but the vast wealth that their uncle collected was not left to anyone in the family. Rather, it was parceled out to three women that no one knows. Finally, Chase has found the first one, though breaking into her house might not have been the best idea.
Minerva Hepplewhite had an abusive husband who died mysteriously. She took her friend, Betsy, and Betsy's son Jeremy, moved them all to London and changed her name. She thought she was safe. And yet, there's a man who has now broken into her house. But he's not there to rob her. Instead, he wants to help her claim a huge inheritance. He is shocked to find out that she is working toward becoming an investigator herself, especially since he suspects that she may have been involved in her husband's death (and maybe even his uncle's.)
A good start to the series. This book included a lot of set up so there could have been more about their relationship and I never really connected with either Chase or Minerva. I am looking forward to Kevin's story but even more so to Nicholas, the duke's.

Three stars
This book comes out April 28th
ARC kindly provided by Kensington Books and NetGalley
Opinions are my own

The Friendship List by Susan Mallery

Ellen and Unity have been friends... forever. When Ellen got pregnant as a teen, Unity stuck by her. When Unity's husband died, Ellen stuck by her. Now Ellen's son is heading off to college and her life is about to change irrevocably. Meanwhile, Unity is still stuck in the mourning phase for her husband. Everyone gets to grieve differently but Unity's friend's seem to think that three years are enough. Both are fairly young to be in the position of about-to-be-empty-nester and widow so they decide to push each other to live a little by creating a list of things to get themselves out of a rut. Ellen finds herself getting closer to a long-time platonic friend while Unity's moves end up opening her up to her friend's son.
It took me a bit to get into this story. The middle of the story was definitely the better part than either the beginning or the end because that is where we really get to meet Unity and Ellen and they get their chance to grow into the people they are going to be.

Three and a half stars
This book comes out May 26th
ARC kindly provided by Harlequin and NetGalley
Opinions are my own

Silence Fallen by Patricia Briggs

It's a night of pirates and gaming when Mercy discovers she needs more ingredients to bake cookies. She goes out but then wakes up battered and bruised in a cube with two vampires, her pack and mate bonds seemingly severed. She is on her own. Luckily, Mercy is underestimated once again and she manages to escape (because the pack was practicing their Jackie Chan moves, she knows how to run up the corner of a wall.) But now she's in Europe. Alone. With no known allies (and a lot of enemies), Mercy needs help more than ever but her pack doesn't know where she is.

This book is nice because Briggs introduces a third person omniscient that follows both Mercy and Adam at different points and that was really fun, to get more of a look at his side of the story.

Three stars
This book came out March 7th, 2017
Follows Fire Touched
Followed by Storm Cursed
Ebook from Library
Opinions are my own

Girl Gone Viral by Alisha Rai

Katrina King grew up with an abusive father who pushed her into the spotlight. She married a much older man to get away. When the man died, Katrina was left a fortune that she quickly developed. She also struggled with agoraphobia but has largely conquered it. She enjoys her life and her routines. That's what makes her new notoriety so heartbreaking. She shared a table with a guy in a coffee shop, shared several sentences with him, all of which were captured by an enterprising blogger, and now the world wants to know who she is and whether their meeting has led to an epic romance. Katrina wants none of it. So she escapes with her bodyguard to his family's fruit farm.
Jas just wants to keep Katrina safe. Yes, he's been her bodyguard for almost a decade. Yes, he's developed some feelings for her that go deeper than what a bodyguard usually feels but that doesn't mean he's going to act on it. He's just going to do his job and keep her safe.
But this is a romance novel. So that means that means forced proximity might force some of those feelings to make themselves known....
I really liked the first book in this series and that may have placed my expectations a bit too high for this book. This is a fine story and I liked Katrina but the bodyguard trope (which, to be fair, Rai doesn't exactly follow) is not a fave. There was also a lot of concentration on Jas's back story and it felt a little more weighted to his backstory than hers.

Three and a half stars

Follows The Right Swipe

Followed by First Comes Like
This book comes out April 21st
ARC kindly provided by HarperCollins Publishers and NetGalley
Opinions are my own

All He Ever Desired by Shannon Stacey

We've met both Ryan Kowalski and Lauren Carpenter in earlier Kowalski books and we also know that there is some "mystery" in their past that causes Ryan to avoid Lauren as much as he can whenever he returns to their hometown.
Well, it turns out that Ryan has always loved Lauren, even when she was married to his best friend. And he betrayed his best friend by asking Lauren to run away with him (it's in the first part of the book, not exactly a spoiler).
So... awkward. Right? And it's worked out for the two to avoid each other. But they can't now because Lauren's teenage son has caused some major damage at Ryan's family home and now he needs to work it off. Which mean the Lauren and Ryan will be seeing a lot more of each other. (heh)
I loved that conflicts were solved so fast because the damn characters talked to each other. Does that happen in romance novels? Not often. And Stacey made it work! Love it. That was what really bumped this book from a three to a four for me.


Four stars
Follows All He Ever Needed 
Followed by All He Ever Dreamed
November 19th, 2012
Listened to on Audible Escape
Opinions are my own

Wylde Fire by Sarah Robinson

Holly Glen has had a hard life. She was in a car accident that took the life of her parents and put her younger into a coma. That was three years ago and her younger sister's care is more than she can afford. So when she can steal a parking space from her high school crush, Sam Wylde, who was kind of a jerk back then, she figures the fates are just aligning. She doesn't expect him to propose marriage.
Sam needs a reason for his family to stop fussing over him. Just because his high school girlfriend started an affair with his brother and now they're getting married, everyone is worried. But if he has a love of his own...
I wish we had seen more of his brother - we're told that he's not a nice guy but we're only given a couple of instances. And this was a really short book so there wasn't a ton of time to see whether Sam and Holly are really going to work out (especially with some kind of big news in the epilogue) but hopefully we'll see a little of them in later books.)

Three and a half stars
This book came out September 17th, 2019
Ebook from Kindle (originally an ARC from Author Collective 20 and NetGalley that I did not download in time)
Opinions are my own