Tag: contemporary romance

This Chick Read: The Game Changer by Lana Ferguson

Delilah Baker’s local cable show’s numbers are dwindling and she comes up with a plan to approach her brother’s NHL team and ask for a special guest appearance by one of their players. When they send Ian Chase, her childhood crush and brother’s best friend, their on-screen chemistry is sizzling. Ian, too, needs the PR boost and agree’s to a fake dating scheme that gives them both what they need. A way out of his PR nightmare, and a boost to her ratings. What they both don’t count on is the re-kindling of their friendship with an added bonus, the start of a brand new romance.

The brother’s best friend is a frequent romance theme and The Game Changer uses it wisely. The backstory for Ian’s character brings a little more gravitas to the novel. A big secret, an obnoxious father, and of course hiding their real romance from her brother made this book interesting and yet somehow it fell a little flat for me. A lot of time was spent building up Ian’s character, but Lilah remained one dimensional. Yes she had a baking show, and yes she still had the crush on her brother’s best friend but that was pretty much it. Her dream of having a romance with that crush was coming true and yet for some reason, I just didn’t care that much. It felt a little too set up and lackluster for me to get too invested.

If you like spicey romance novels, The Game Changer will deliver the goods, but what this novel needed was a rock solid, interesting plot. For me, it only delivered half of it’s promise.

❤️❤️❤️

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review and it was honest.

Click this link to purchase this book!* The Game Changer

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This Chick Read: Body Check by Elle Kennedy

Hayden Houston spent her childhood being dragged around the country by her hockey coach dad and as an adult they are no longer close. However, she re-joins his world to help him through a nasty divorce leaving her teaching job, and ex on the west coast. At a bar with a friend she finds a one night stand guy, not realizing that he’s one of her dad’s star players. She was looking for one night but Brody Croft is looking for a commitment.

In the forward Elle Kennedy tells the reader the story of Body Check being the first book she ever wrote and her excitement at it’s new release. I’ve read a lot of her other sports romances, and if this is her first novel ever she’s a pretty consistent writer. Yes, her character development is a little more well developed in her newer novels but Body Check was consistent with her current style and story.

As an adult, Hayden moved both literally and figuratively as far from her father’s world as possible. She was once close to her father but they have drifted further apart, so when she returns to his side she’s surprised at the changes and doesn’t want to believe any of the rumors about his drinking and behavior. Her growing relationship with Brody gives her a shoulder to lean on as well as a release in tension (ha!). She was a little clueless which made me a bit impatient with her but the story was interesting and her developing relationship with Brody fun to read. I enjoyed it!

❤️❤️❤️❤️

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review and it was honest!

Click this link to purchase this book!* Body Check

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*Amazon Associate- if you purchase this book through the above link I’ll receive a small stipend.

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This Chick Read: The Love of My Afterlife by Kirsty Greenwood

When Delphie chokes on a burger and appears in the afterlife she finds herself in the laundromat of her after life therapist Merritt. While in the waiting room she meets a handsome stranger who has landed in the after life by mistake and gets bumped back to the living. When she finds out he’s her soulmate she begs Merritt for a return trip for her chance at love. Merritt, a fan of romance novels and all their tropes breaks the rules for her and allows her 7 days to be kissed by her true love. If she doesn’t get her kiss, she’s back in the afterlife.

This unique premise caught my eye but it was the quirky characters, humor, and my favorite enemies to lovers trope that kept me reading. Delphie hasn’t had a great life. Estranged from her parents, living a pretty solitary life, she now finds herself given an impossible task; to find her soulmate in a city of millions. Enlisting the aid of her co-workers and neighbors, she begins to follow his trail. As she does, she gets to know all of these people who have been in her life, but whom she has never allowed herself to befriend. I loved how these seven days truly changed Delphie and made her realize that she doesn’t want to leave this life behind and there are reasons to live.

This was definitely a quirky premise and these characters were often laugh out loud funny. This is the first novel I’ve read by Kirsty Greenwood and I’ll be looking for others with the hope she delivers on the humor again. It’s also worth noting that she delivers great relationships too. Delphie was a loner and her journey starts from scratch. She has to make friends, change her demeanor from sour and grumpy to open and welcoming, and she falls in love! This novel was transforming in a lot of ways and it was a lot of fun to read. ❤️❤️❤️❤️

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review and it was honest.

Click this link to purchase this book! * The Love of My Afterlife

Copyright 2024 The Reading Chick All Rights Reserved

*Amazon Associate- if you purchase this book through the above link I’ll receive a small stipend.

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This Chick Read: Under Your Spell by Laura Wood

After being let go from her job, dumped by her boyfriend, and kicked out of her apartment you can’t blame Clemmie Monroe for doing something way out of character- getting drunk and having a one night stand with a handsome stranger. When that stranger ends up being a world famous rock star whom she is babysitting as a favor for her music exec sister while he writes an album admittedly he’s hard to ignore. Her life’s a disaster but their summer together is kind of magical.

Clemmie was a bit of a hot mess. One of a trio of sisters born to a philandering rock star father, I loved Clemmie’s bond with her untraditional family and her sisters in particular. They were all vastly different and their unique personalities livened up quite a few scenes in this book. Clemmie’s relationship with her father isn’t great. He was never around for her when she was young, more interested in his own stardom than being a father. So, when she realizes her one night stand is the very famous Theo Elliott she wants nothing to do with him, but she’s made a promise to help her sister by providing the location for him to have peace and quiet and write his long anticipated album.

Theo was pretty down to earth for a rock star which made him pretty easy to like. The fact he was completely smitten with Clemmie made her avoidance of him fun to read. He had to work for their budding relationship which created some tension, as well as allowed the author to develop these characters, giving them back stories and depth that an insta love novel wouldn’t have provided. I really enjoyed their journey and loved the resolutions to their conflicts. Overall this was just a really easy to read enjoyable story.

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley and the publisher for an honest review and it was honest!

Click this link to purchase this book!* Under Your Spell

Copyright 2024 The Reading Chick All Rights Reserved

*Amazon Associate- if you purchase this book through the above link I’ll receive a small stipend.

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This Chick Read: Tangled Up In You (Meant to Be) by Christina Lauren

Ren grew up on a farm completely off the grid. Never had a cell phone, watched current TV shows, no social media, and doesn’t know how to live in the real world. She’s homeschooled and has earned scholarships to go away to college, something that her society hating parents are against but she perseveres and enters her freshman year at age 22. Fitz also attends Corona College and has relied on his charm and willingness to go the extra mile to gain himself privileges at school that may or may not have improved his grades. When she catches him in a compromising position at midnight in their classroom she bribes him to take her on his trip to Nashville.

The Meant To Be collection are stories written by different authors that take after a different fairy-tale. Tangled Up in You very loosely takes themes from Disney’s Tangled, which admittedly I’m not familiar with, however I am familiar with Rapunzel which I believe Tangled is based off. Confused? Yeah, me too. Despite the supposed fairy-tale theme, Tangled Up In You was a departure for this author duo. Part romance, part mystery, and definitely pg-13 rated this novel still had characteristics of other Christina Lauren books. Great dialog, fabulous and interesting characters, and an interesting hook.

I LOVED Ren. I would gobble up more books about Ren. She was such an interesting character and it was fun to explore this new world of college life and life in the outside world that she’s never inhabited and is now living. Fitz also grew on me. I really liked that despite Ren’s innocence, she saw right through his act and didn’t allow him to take advantage of her good nature. Once they got rolling on their road trip the two of them together were entertaining and well, I just fell in love with them as a couple.

There was a lot of heart in this story. So much that I teared up a couple of times and laughed softly in a few others. The only thing that holds me back from giving this a 5 rating is the three sentences they included at the end wrapping up their life in the future. I hated that! I’d rather have imagined my own life for them than to be given three sentences of a throwaway ending. If they go back and delete that paragraph it’s a five star read from me. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❣️

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley and the publisher for an honest review and it was honest.

Click this link to purchase this book!* Tangled Up In You

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*Amazon Associate- if you purchase this book through the above link I’ll receive a small stipend.

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This Chick Read: Fighting the Pull (River Rain #5) by Kristen Ashley

Hale Wheeler inherited billions from his wealthy father. His mission is to spend that money helping rebuild the world’s resources. He doesn’t have time for love but when he meets celebrity journalist Elsa Cohen he is tempted by their chemistry. Elsa, too, is on a mission to build her career reporting the celebrity news and knows that an interview with the elusive Hale Wheeler will make her career. The two of them want very different things from love but can they forge a path together?

The fifth installment in the River Rain series, this novel tells the story of Hale and Elsa but also gives us glimpses into the lives of other couples who’s stories we’ve followed. That’s what I love about Kristen Ashley’s series, the characters are so integrated into each others lives that their stories aren’t just one and done. You get these little extensions into their lives while enjoying a fresh story. Hale and Elsa have been side characters and their story arc began a few books back so the author has been building their tension in the background. All of these connections are like one of those little biosphere’s incapsulated in glass. The oxygen is feeding the organisms who keep growing, moving, and staying interconnected. I love it when one of her series works well together and The River Rain series is a good example of that.

Hale has a tragic life story. Raised by his mentally unstable mother full time, then spending part time with his father Cory who loved him but had trouble showing it physically, Hale has trouble facing his own feelings which makes his pursuit of Elsa both interesting and hard to read. Elsa is loving and open a contrast to his more closed off emotions. Of course watching them make that connection and figure out how to be a couple is what makes a good romance great and Fighting the Pull had moments that were both touching and emotionally fraught. This made for a really good story and an un-put-downable book.

If you love romances with great characters, lots of heat, quirky and loving side characters, and a bit of danger, then this book will fit the bill. Unfortunately, to get the real benefit of all the quirkiness in those side characters, please read the series in it’s entirety. If you don’t have the time, I think you’ll still enjoy this book but you’ll miss a few nuances, and back stories from other books in the series but you’ll still enjoy the read.

❤️❤️❤️❤️

Click this link to purchase this book!* Fighting the Pull

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*Amazon Associate- if you purchase this book through the above link I’ll receive a small stipend.

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This Chick Read: The Calculation of You and Me by Serena Kaylor

Navigating high school is difficult for a math nerd but Marlowe Meadows had managed to gain the attention of the most popular boy in school and for two years was half of that golden couple. When he suddenly breaks up with her stating that she isn’t very romantic she is determined to win him back. When she gets paired with black clothes, guyliner wearing rocker Ashton Hayes for an English project she reads some poetry he’s written and asks him to help her become more romantic and win her ex back. He’ll help her write some love letters and she’ll help his band go viral. As they spend more time together and she starts to develop feelings Marlowe wonders if there isn’t a perfect formula for love. How could she have gotten things so wrong?

After reading Serena Kaylor’s debut novel Long Story Short I knew I was going to pick up her next young adult novel. She seems to favor math nerds for heroine’s and I love a good STEM romance. In The Calculation of You and Me Marlowe is on the spectrum as well as being a math nerd and her ability to read nuances and jokes are difficult for her. This made what her ex said to her especially brutal and Ash’s appreciation of these traits more romantic and sweet. Needless to say I wanted her to stop trying to win back her douchebag ex and fall for Ash but she needed to figure things out at her own pace and it was totally fun to read her journey.

Learning how to be more romantic included a series of “lessons” set up like dates, as well as reading all the different romance tropes. It was fun to see this young math nerd open up to romance by doing something all of us readers already enjoy. Reading romance novels! I loved how she and her girlfriends found this new world of happily ever afters. This was just icing on the cake of a very good story already but it did make it a bit more fun. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley and the publisher for an honest review and it was honest!

Click this link to purchase this book!* The Calculation of You and Me

Copyright 2024 The Reading Chick All Rights Reserved

*Amazon Associate- if you purchase this book through the above link I’ll receive a small stipend.

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This Chick Read: The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center

Emma Wheeler longs to fulfill her dream of becoming a screenwriter. She’s spent her life obsessing over the great screenwriters, and teaching a course in the local community college. She lives at home and takes care of her kind-hearted father who needs full-time care. When she gets a call from her agent to head to Hollywood to work on a screenplay with the very famous writer Charlie Yates she calls in that favor from her little sister who just graduated from college. ‘Please come home and watch dad so I can try out my dream for six weeks.’ When she gets to LA she finds a man who doesn’t want help from a nobody to fix his horrible screenplay, in fact, he doesn’t care if it never gets fixed! To Emma, this is a travesty and despite not knowing if they’ll re-write the whole thing, she stays.

Emma was such a wonderful character. Having given up her dreams in order to give her father a great life, the reader is set up to root for her story, wherever it may lead. The fact that it leads to Hollywood and working with her screenwriter hero, Charlie Yates is icing on the cake. The fact he turns out to be difficult and surly is par for the course, but this girl loves a good enemies to lovers trope and I’m eagerly along for the ride. Charlie, of course, ends up to be a good guy with reasons for acting the way he’s acting and pretty quickly warms up to Emma. I love their journey, as well as the conflict and resolution in the latter third of the book. The whole story just had a roundness that made the reader feel great about how the conclusion was reached.

I’ve been waiting for another Katherine Center novel that has that magic formula of romance, comedy, and tragedy similar to her 2022 novel, The Bodyguard, and The Rom-Commers gets it just right. A fabulous enemies to lovers story that made me laugh, tear-up, and anticipate the fabulous happily ever after that I know is waiting at the end of the book. If you’re looking for that book to put in your beach bag, don’t leave this one behind!

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review and it was honest!

Click this link to purchase this book!* The Rom-Commers

Copyright 2024 The Reading Chick All Rights Reserved

*Amazon Associate- if you purchase this book through the above link I’ll receive a small stipend.

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This Chick Read: The Summer Escape (Sunrise Cove #6) by Jill Shalvis

Private Investigator Anna Moore is happy with her safe and steady life. Her investigations are more cheating spouse than murder mystery, so when a news story breaks about her own deceased father being a suspect in a long ago crime she is pushed to investigate by her older sister. Wearing a Go-Pro so her pregnant and bed-ridden sister can tag a long, she begins to search. Owen Harris, a handsome, adventurist is the grand-nephew of the person whom the stash was stolen and is dedicated to finding this missing treasure. Together they follow the clues and discover a little bit of truth and a whole lot of chemistry.

I was quite surprised by this Jill Shalvis novel! I always expect interesting characters and a quirky friend group or family and The Summer Escape did not disappoint. Anna’s sister was a delight! Pregnant with twins, on bed rest, and totally bored, Wendy makes Anna wear earbuds and a Go-Pro so there is a running commentary at all times, unless Anna turns her off. Her side-discussions were a hoot and I loved how easy going Owen played along and directed conversation at Wendy as well. I really liked how the relationship between Anna and Owen had undertones of interest and friendship right from the start and wasn’t just antagonistic. The thing I liked most is that this Jill Shalvis novel gave us something different from her others. A mystery to solve.

If you love Jill Shalvis’ novels then you are in for a wonderful surprise. This has all of those same elements you’ll expect but it delves a little deeper into the adventure-mystery solving theme. I really enjoyed the slight change because the story still had all of the other themes that I look forward to when reading one of her novels. Surprising and fun! ❤️❤️❤️❤️

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review and it was honest!

Click this link to purchase this book!* The Summer Escape

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*Amazon Associate- if you purchase this book through the above link I’ll receive a small stipend.

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This Chick Read: Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood

Rue Siebert is a successful engineer at Kline, a promising bio-tech start-up. Her life is stable and secure until Kline is bought out and their very attractive front man comes in to evaluate the company. Eli Killgore and his partners want Kline, but since meeting Rue, Eli also wants her but she’s off limits, or she should be. Rue and Eli are faced with amazing chemistry and decide to have a secret affair with a deadline. The day the buy-out goes through.

Ali Hazelwood’s novels typically run more towards a slow burn love story but Not In Love immediately introduces the heat and the flame just gets hotter as the story moves forward, never dimming. Not quite erotica, but the steamiest novel I’ve read in quite awhile. So, if you are leary of explicit scenes, especially in audio books, you may want to steer towards a paperback that you can skim through. This author has always done a great job at building up the tension in the two main characters, and because she’s taken away the ‘will they or won’t they’ build-up she supplies us with a really great subplot, the reason for Kline’s takeover.

In an interview I read with the author, she described this novel as being full of “angst”. I’d certainly agree. Rue delves into this secret relationship with Eli, has constant regrets, and her friends don’t want her to have this relationship. Eli, too, has friends who don’t agree with his pursuit of Rue. Reading both character’s POV’s help the reader understand these characters and definitely adds to the emotional tension. I was thankful for Eli’s point of view because Rue comes off as kind of a cold character, hiding all of her wants and needs behind this cool persona. A facade she uses to protect herself from hurt. If I hadn’t been able to see how Eli viewed Rue, it may have been difficult to get past her walls and identify with her and like her.

I truly enjoy these STEM romances by Hazelwood. She is now not the only one writing in this sub-sub genre, but I favor her style and look forward to seeing what aspects of real-life women she will write into her characters. Rue was a little more difficult to like, but I still appreciated her differences and loved how Eli viewed and was attracted to her character. Their love story was different, a little more antagonistic, and yes “angsty”, but I still enjoyed reading their story. ❤️❤️❤️❤️

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review and it was honest!

Click this link to purchase this book!* Not In Love

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*Amazon Associate- if you purchase this book through the above link I’ll receive a small stipend.

On By deborahkehoeIn A Hot Chick Who Reads