Close Enough to Touch by Victoria Dahl

Victoria Dahl is one of my favorite contemporary authors. "Lead Me On" was a great example of using a nontraditional hero (one who is covered with tattoos) and heroine (one who is very attracted to the burly, brawny, biker type. I really need to re-read that book).

This book is the same. Grace Barrett is a makeup artist, one with purple hair (as we are reminded about over and over in most of the advertising for this book.) She's running away from Hollywood and her troubles there. Cole Rawlins is a cowboy who was also part of the Hollywood scene; he also ran.

And that's my trouble with this book. I didn't connect with eithe Cole or Grace. In fact, for three-quarters of the book, I absolutely disliked Grace. We don't get any explanation for her actions until the end. I wondered if I was suffering from not allowing the heroine the same latitude I might give a grumpy hero, something Podcast 31 from Smart Bitches Trashy books discusses. However, I would have given Grace that same latitude had I known her situation earlier in the book. As it was, I only finished the book because it was an ARC from NetGalley.

And I'm glad I did. Victoria Dahl is a skilled wordsmith and writes hot, hot sex scenes (not always to my taste, but I know they're well-written.) Will this book be a favorite? No. Will I continue to read this series and all of Victoria Dahl's future writings? Hell, yes.

Forever and a Day by Jill Shalvis

I am loving every single book in this series. Seriously, loving.
Grace is in between jobs. She has overachiever parents who aren't necessarily pressuring her to also be excellent, but she's feeling the pressure. She's running out of money and options. Her phone rings with someone looking for a dog sitter. It's not her flyer he's answering but she jumps at the chance to make some money. Nearly losing the dog has Dr. Josh Scott coming to her rescue and also results in getting her fired. Except that Dr. Josh needs help. His practice has grown to a point where he can't keep up. He doesn't have enough time to deal with his son, much less his twenty-one-year-old sister who is pretty close to a paraplegic but most definitely has an attitude. In fact, her attitude is what has driven Josh's past two nannies from the house.
Grace doesn't want to get involved, but she has an attraction to Josh that is hard to deny. She's also falling in love with his son and trying to help protect his sister.
The cameos from other books were a little forced sometimes but never overt.
Love Lucky Harbor. Love the Chocolate quotes at the beginning. Love Amy, Mallory, and Grace's relationship.

Summer Nights by Susan Mallery

Annabelle Weiss is a librarian in need of a bookmobile. She has decided to raise money by doing The Dance of the Horse at the next town festival (they have one every (or nearly every) month).  She's got ten weeks to get it down but she needs some help. Because, well, she doesn't exactly know how to ride a horse and, really, she needs a horse that has been trained to dance.
Shane Stryker knows horses. He also knows that he's been burned in the past. His ex-wife was a flamboyant woman who loved attention, especially from men who weren't her husband. His first glimpse of Annabelle is of her dancing on a bar so he assumes that she is more of the same. But as he works with her, he starts to discover that's not true. Of course, that's only after he sticks his foot in his mouth a few more times.
We get some more mayhem with Shane's mother ordering all sorts of exotic animals including pigs, elephants, and ponies (Shane <i>hates</i> ponies).
I probably wouldn't recommend this book as a stand-alone (there are <i>way</i> too many characters for that, although Ms. Mallery has come up with a <a href="http://foolsgoldca.susanmallery.com/who.html">Who's Who</a> of Fools Gold that can be helpful. It's a fast and easy read that will delight Susan Mallery's Fools Gold fans.

Summer Days by Susan Mallery

Rafe Stryker has some troubles. His mother loaned a man $250,000 for a ranch that the man didn't own. She isn't really interested in prosecuting but it's his name on the line. To add to the troubles, the ranch is the one where he grew up with his two brothers and sister; they were dirt poor. It was a hardscrabble existence and Rafe doesn't want to be reminded of those times. But maybe some good can come out of it. After all, the swindler's granddaughter (the actual property owner)isn't hard to look at.
Heidi Simpson grew up with a carnival (different than a circus, no animals)and only wants to stay in one place. She has grown to love the town of Fool's Gold and her friends there. She loves her goats and she loves the land that she can barely afford. Now Rafe's threatening to take it all away. He's certainly a looker though. Can she manage to untangle her feelings for him long enough to save her ranch?
Update: Read my review for "Summer Nights" the next book in the series

Lucky in Love by Jill Shalvis

Ty Garrison is the man that Lucky Harbor  is calling “Mysterious Cute Guy.” Apparently the town’s Facebook page is half reportings about seeing him out and about. He’s actually in town trying to recuperate from an accident that injured him and left four of his coworkers dead. Mostly he’s just trying to keep his head down and finish some car repairs.

Mallory is the town good girl. A nurse with an unending well of patience, she’s the “white sheep” in a family of children who liked to cross the line. She’s also working on opening up a health services clinic so that people in need, like her sister who died at eighteen, would be able to get the help that they need without having to pay Emergency Room costs. I like Mallory. She's a good heroine, but not <i>too</i> perfect (that's just annoying in a heroine.)

However, like any good romance heroine. Mallory is ready for a walk on the wild side (as we’re told more than once) and she thinks Ty might be the perfect man. Short-term and just a little dangerous, he’s not interested in setting up with a dog, 2.3 kids, and a white picket fence. “She knew he didn’t want to be her hero.” But she can’t stop herself from going back again and again.

Of course, he can’t either. He finds himself stopping at her car wash, going by her house, replacing her alternator. “Probably he needed to work harder on keeping his distance.” 

It could be such a trite story but Shalvis weaves humor with a good dose of common sense and reality checks (e.g. we can’t just let our veterans fend for themselves after they’ve fought to protect our freedoms. 

Born to Darkness by Suzanne Brockmann

Well, this is certainly a departure from Brockmann's SEAL series. I don't know that regular Brockmann readers will like the story, but I think readers new to this author (not bringing in the high expectations from  her must-read Troubleshooter's series) and those with an open mind will enjoy this book.
Like all Brockmann books, this is a book with a primary romance and many secondary romances. It's set in a dystopian future where the government tracks everyone and there are bad, bad forces at work. Of course, there is also a team of good guys, the Obermeyer Institute, headed up by Joseph Bach, who is one of the "Greater Thans," humans who use many talents including telekinesis and mind control. Normal people (or "Less Thans"), like Shane Laughlin, don't know that these people exist. But he's about to find out. He's been tapped by OI as a potential Greater Than. He's not sure what this group is or why they're willing to hire him (he was dishonorably discharged, a BFD in this future), but he's willing to take a chance. The night before he joins, he is picked up by Mac Mackenzie (do NOT call her Michelle) who is (this is a romance, is it any surprise) one of the Greater Thans. She can do many things including tweaking her appearance and projecting sexual energy (I like that one. It's my new pick for "what would your superpower be?").
The secondary characters and romances are always great. As with the Troubleshooters series, there is a M/M romance that is explored just as much as the M/F relationship. I did feel that Elliot and Diaz got a little bit of a short shrift and hope that we will learn more about them in future stories because I really connected with Elliot's character
This is an interesting start to a new series. There was a LOT going on (which is a Brockmann signature, but it was even more than usual) and some of the plot lines were underdeveloped but this is one of my read-every-book authors so I will definitely be reading the second book. I think it's awesome that she's branching out into a new genre, I'm just hoping the next book is a return to the five-star Brockmann.

The Odds by Stewart O'Nan

What a wonderful weaver of language! A lot of reviews complain that this is not O'Nan's best work, but never having read him before, I enjoyed the book highly. This book was shorter than I expected, having gotten it as an ARC from NetGalley. It's only two hundred pages but packs a tight story in those short passages.
"...she thought, if offered, she might actually seize the opportunity to rewind to sixteen or seventeen and start over to avoid all of this--then remembered [her children]. You couldn't relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. You had to accept it as a whole--like the world, or the person, you loved. With the Southern Comfort warming her, short-circuiting her thoughts, the idea seemed profound..."
Art and Marion have been married for thirty years. They've had ups and downs (and infidelities) but right now is definitely a down. Because of the downturn in the economy, both have been laid off from their jobs. They are in the morass of unlucky people who were approved for home loans that they never should have been given. Combine the job loss, the massive mortgage and several bad money choices and they're at their wits end. The plan is to declare bankruptcy and then divorce. The divorce is supposed to be for show but Marion is starting to wonder if she shouldn't just let it stand. She's tired of this marriage and tired of Art. Art, on the other hand, is an eternal optimist and ready to try to make it all work. This is the story of one last hurrah, a trip to their honeymoon destination, just to see if they can recapture the magic in their marriage, and maybe earn a little money while gambling as well.