A bookish heroine intent on working in peace and quiet on her dictionary is so irritated by the very sweaty and muscle-y carpenter banging away on her getaway's walls. With plans to outlast her match-making mother, she instead finds herself falling in love with the handsome man instead, even if he is unsuitable.

Read for Seasonally Booked Up, this was low-angst and lovely.

Notes - the heroine has a "palsy" which causes one side of her facial muscles to droop, a condition she's had since childhood. The heroine's mother definitely sees this as a fault and encourages her to hide that side of her face with her hair and big hats and loud outfits.

A bit too heavy on the suspense for my personal reading habits, but a paranormal I'm happy I picked up for book club. The world building is fantastic and this will suit readers who love urban fantasy and romances with a lot of characters and storylines that are sure to be built upon in future installments. There were at least 5 POV characters and I'm eager to find out what's up with the vampire.

"Hot damn, what would sex be like with a shiny dick?"

Wonder no more my friends, let Robin Lovett help you escape this world with a tall alien who is both glittery on the outside and inside the heart he needs help restoring.

While the romance is full of humorous moments (B33rona, huge balls hanging down to the knees, sparkle sperm, etc), Lovett also tackles hugely emotional themes. The virus in the story is worse than our current pandemic, and the characters who are on Earth are dealing with heavy emotions from years of isolation, lack of touch, and a Trumpian nightmare of a government that failed on all accounts.

Not only do the humans have heavy things, the aliens themselves are traumatized from their species nearly being extinct, and the hopes of finding fertile matches is the only way to ensure they can stop dying.

So, do tread carefully reading this one. Sensitively handled but still heavier than you might expect.

When aspiring sushi-chef is fired from her father's restaurant for daring to help a struggling coworker during dinner service, Eve Ono is left homeless and broke. She finds last minute employment on sea urchin fisherman Sam Lamont's boat, despite her grave fear of the ocean and the PTSD from losing her grandparents, and almost her own life, to a tsunami.

Sam reluctantly hires Eve at the urging of his former captain and his spunky landlord, both who took a chance on him years ago. He needs to make money fast to pay off a sketchy loan that has come due, or risk losing his boat and livelihood. Sam is mostly reluctant because of his instant attraction to the beautiful Eve, but tries to keep it professional as she says she has a boyfriend and she is his employee.

Sam and Eve learn to trust each other on the boat, and roll with their feelings, a shark attack, and dangerous criminals, but also find they cannot stay away from each other or their feelings.

This was super duper fun, just what I needed when I was looking for "sexy boat romances." Sam is an easy-going Dom (Dom-lite, sometimes a switch), and has a huge d*ck so big he and Eve struggle with it he he he. Eve is very inexperienced and naive, but is super keen to learn, and does have the help of her exotic dancer roommate (who I kind of hope has her own story, but I don't think she does??).

The overall plot is overwrought, and I was a bit meh on Eve, a biracial Japanese woman, having green eyes (this is from 2008), but the banging is absolutely delightful and so sexy.

CW: PTSD, panic attacks (on page), scary action/danger/violence (on page), shark attack (on page, described), hospital scenes, death of a secondary character

" “Get these off,” I demanded. “Yes, ma’am.” His grin made him look impossibly young and even more attractive."

I'm a sucker for a good ma'am and the pool boy in question ma'am's real good. Not in bed though whew. This age-gap pushed me right to the edge of my comfort level, and was so hot even I found myself a bit uncomfortable reading on my family vacation. But not enough to stop, nope. I wasn't expecting the sort of Nashville-esque musician plot, and I think I liked the part about him becoming her client (not just her pool boy) was the tiny bit that was too much for me. I'm glad it was worked out he wouldn't be, but there were so cringe-y moments there.

I was also uncomfortable that it was her best-friend's son, but that was part of the taboo. The sub-plot of her cheating ex-husband was also a bit squicky

she catches her ex-husband having sex with his colleague, another cis-man. She does keep his secret, since he is not out, and the eventually talk and come to a bit of resolution about why their marriage didn't work

.

But dang, there's some good sexy content in here. Yes there is.

First off, truly loathed the male audiobook narrator, and I was very sad the files I received to listen to I could not speed up. Nasally and snooty sounding.

Secondly, I get on the exterior this is a glossily packaged historical that seems fun, light, and frothy. The bickering and banter between the two love interests was catchy and spurred the story on, and Diana taking advantage of her widowed status to find a paramour on the surface seemed fun, but underneath was a thread of mean-spirited actions.

Both main characters, as the blurb says, are infamous for being flirts and for fighting with each other. Fine, do that. And sure, have Jeremy, Marquess of Willingham request his frenemy Lady Diana to help rate his performance in bed after he was told he wasn't good. But for a book with this premise, it was really slow-burn.

What lost me was the mean actions of Lady Diana towards a secondary character, Lady Helen, who she decides is insufferable and worth throwing at Jeremy and convincing that Jeremy wants to marry her, to win a wager Diana has with Jeremy about being wed by the end of the year. Yes, Lady Helen seems annoying, but no more so than Lady Diana and her gossiping friends. And when the reader discovers Lady Helen is sapphic, and Lady Diana outs her to her gossiping friends despite knowing how afraid Lady Helen is about being discovered, that's so awful.

Overall I found this contrived and tired, and it was a slog to listen to at normal speed. I would have DNF'ed but alas, it was assigned to me for LJ.

An age-gap office romance, featuring an icy advertising boss falling for her intern despite her best intentions. Both love interests are dealing with their complicated feelings regarding their parents' cancer (his mother, deceased; her mother, recently diagnosed). Corinne is also being sexually-harrassed by her boss and other colleagues, and she thinks Wesley is laughing about another intern calling her a c*nt on their very first meeting on an elevator ride up to the office.

While wildly sexy, and with amazing writing, I felt the swing from Corinne being scared and intimidated by her sleazy boss to her having sex on her desk with her intern very jarring.

What is handled magnificently is the complications of grief, and how each of the characters talks and feels about their loved ones and cancer. Having lost my own father to cancer, these emotions hit true (and I was in a good place when reading this book and was glad to have this knowledge before diving in).

Thank you to the publisher for the ARC

I'm so delighted with this historical. They had to marry because they were caught in a compromising position, and he thinks he is real good at sex but she just sat him down to tell him he is, in fact, not satisfying her. And bless him he growls and says challenge accepted.

Thaddeus, the Duke of Hasford, is my sort of love interest. He's super tall, he smells like pine, AND he pines so hard for the woman he told himself he'd never love, only get an heir from. Definitely a Captain Ri archetype like character, so starchy yet he'll put on lavender pants to please you.

Lavinia was also amazing, and I adored her straight forward and frank honesty with Thaddeus when he isn't pleasing her in bed. She wants to have fun while doing the heir making! And when she calls both Thaddeus and her dog Precious, I laughed so hard.

A comfy and delightful romance. Plus the parallel of both these hopeless fools running towards each other on horses named Kevin and Crusader, without knowing the other is on their way, at the end is 10/10 would recommend.

Where were you going?
To you. I was going to you.

I was going to you too, he said.

Thank you to Avon for the ARC

I kind of wandered away from this Heath and never came back? It was okay, but I've already forgotten most of the details but did live-tweet a bit with #bHeath21 on twitter.

I think this might be more of a 2.5 but I'll round up because I did finish it, and I do want to run my fingers through Teddy's hair. I don't quite understand what this story was trying to do, and it definitely skewed toward Ruthie's journey in realizing she can and should test out her wings as opposed to a love story. Some of the lines were funny, some were ??? and I did like the turtles/tortoises.

Listening on audio was definitely not the right choice for me (the narrator was fine, I just found myself losing focus and it felt like it took forever to get through).

Looking forward to discussing with my book club.