Daily Deals: Reunited lovers and retold fairy tales
Slow Ride Home by Leah Braemel. $ .99
From the Jacket Copy:
Book one of The Grady Legacy
Losing his father was hard enough, but now Ben Grady must face the fact that he and his brother may not be sole owners of their beloved ranch. To protect his family’s legacy, he’s forced to rely on the legal prowess of the woman who stars in his erotic fantasies: Allie O’Keefe. Ben’s never forgotten the illicit encounter they shared fifteen years ago—or forgiven himself for letting her go.
Allie thought she’d moved beyond the scandal that cost her Ben in the past. But working so closely with the seductive rancher arouses the wild child within the cautious woman she’s become. Though she tries to keep business and pleasure separate, Allie soon gives in to temptation, and discovers Ben’s sensual skills surpass even her X-rated memories?
Allie has every intention of leaving Bull’s Hollow forever after her investigation is complete. But there are a few complications. Not the least of which is that while saving the ranch, Allie’s lost her heart.
97,000 words
E: I enjoyed Slow Ride Home and I am glad I reminded myself that I need to read more of her writing. The romantic and familial relationships with their ups and downs provided satisfying reading. The addition of the complex web of lies, omissions, and half-truths added to my enjoyment as I tried to solve the puzzle. I look forward to seeing this series continue and also exploring Braemel’s backlist.
I give Slow Ride Home a B
MinnChica: All in all I really enjoyed Braemel’s Slow Ride Home. I thought the secrets that were revealed about the Grady family were wonderful as they slowly came out. I thought the relationship between Ben and Allie, while quick to develop, was wonder, super sweet, and incredibly sexy. I hope that Braemel continues to write more within this world, especially about Jake.
I give Slow Ride Home a B-
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In Flight by R. K. Lilley. $ .99
From the Jacket Copy:
When reserved flight attendant Bianca gets one look at billionaire hotel owner James Cavendish, she loses all of her hard-won composure. For a girl who can easily juggle a tray of champagne flutes at 35,000 feet in three inch heels, she finds herself shockingly weak-kneed from their first encounter. The normally unruffled Bianca can’t seem to look away from his electrifying turquoise gaze. They hold a challenge, and a promise, that she finds impossible to resist, and she is a girl who is used to saying no and meaning it.
Bianca is accustomed to dealing with supermodels and movie stars in her job as a first class flight attendant, but James Cavendish puts them all to shame in the looks department. If only it were just his looks that she found so irresistible about the intimidating man, Bianca could have ignored his attentions. But what tempts her like never before is the dominant pull he seems to have over her from the moment they meet, and the promise of pleasure, and pain, that she reads in his eyes.
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Enchanted by Alethea Kontis. $ 1.99
From the Jacket Copy:
It isn’t easy being the rather overlooked and unhappy youngest sibling to sisters named for the other six days of the week. Sunday’s only comfort is writing stories, although what she writes has a terrible tendency to come true.
When Sunday meets an enchanted frog who asks about her stories, the two become friends. Soon that friendship deepens into something magical. One night Sunday kisses her frog goodbye and leaves, not realizing that her love has transformed him back into Rumbold, the crown prince of Arilland—and a man Sunday’s family despises.
The prince returns to his castle, intent on making Sunday fall in love with him as the man he is, not the frog he was. But Sunday is not so easy to woo. How can she feel such a strange, strong attraction for this prince she barely knows? And what twisted secrets lie hidden in his past—and hers?
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Chasing Perfect by Susan Mallery. $ .99 iBooks | AMZN.
From the Jacket Copy:
Welcome to Fool’s Gold, California, a charming community in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. There’s lots to do and plenty of people to meet, especially women. Because there’s just one tiny problem in Fool’s Gold: the men don’t seem to stick around. Maybe it’s the lure of big-city life, or maybe it’s plain old bad luck, but regardless of the reason, the problem has to be fixed, fast. And Charity Jones may be just the city planner to do it.
Charity’s nomadic childhood has left her itching to settle down, and she immediately falls in love with all the storybook town has to offer—everything, that is, except its sexiest and most famous resident, former world-class cyclist Josh Golden. With her long list of romantic disasters, she’s not about to take a chance on another bad boy, even if everyone else thinks he’s perfect just the way he is. But maybe that’s just what he needs—someone who knows the value of his flaws. Someone who knows that he’s just chasing perfect.
“Sure Josh lived in the hotel but he had dozens of ties to that community and it was clear he would always return there. Maybe if the conflict had been that Charity wouldn’t have wanted to travel with Josh or if she wasn’t prepared to become an athlete’s wife who would spend hours alone while her husband trained, I could have been more sympathetic but that isn’t how it was portrayed. It centered around this whole “fame” thing and Josh was never portrayed as a fame hungry man, making Charity’s opposition to their relationship as irrational.
Despite the problems I had with Charity, the story was an easy read. Josh was charming with a somewhat simplistic story arc. The matriarchs of Fool’s Gold were both smart and comical. “
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The Fool’s Gold series picks up steam around book 3 and peaks in 9 through 12 IMO, but for $.99, Chasing Perfect is a good introduction. Worth trying if you like small town romances
I am an absolute sucker for fairytale retellings, but Kontis’s Woodcutter series (of which this is the first) are something special. They have that surrealistic, dreamlike atmosphere, that abrupt rollercoaster from whimsy to horror to heart-tugging, that only the best fairy tales can deliver.
I read the first two in the In Flight series but sort of lost interest in finishing it. I REALLY enjoyed her other trilogy about Tristan and Danika trilogy.
@loonigrrl: REALLY? You and I have really similar tastes and I kind of abandoned her books after the In Flight series.
Yeah, the Tristan and Danika books totally sucked me in. The story goes from cute to hot to a hot mess. The characters are so bad for each other and they have so many issues and it’s just so frickin tragic at times that I was kind of obsessed but also emotionally exhausted by it all. I remember thinking the books were very appropriately named, particularly the second one, Rock Bottom.