DAILY DEALS: Second chance at love, light fantasy, and hunky bodyguards
Make My Wish Come True by Fiona Harper $ 0.99
From the Jacket Copy:
Family-oriented Juliet is a Christmas-dinner cook extraordinaire and is trying to keep it together in the wake of her marriage breakdown two Christmases ago, but the cracks are beginning to show.
Her bright and vivacious sister Gemma was always the favorite daughter. Gemma has no qualms about escaping the festive madness and the pressures of her glamorous job by jetting off somewhere warm and leaving Christmas in Juliet’s capable hands.
When Gemma shirks responsibility one too many times and announces she’s off to the Caribbean (again!), Juliet finally snaps. Gemma offers her sister the perfect solution—to swap Christmases. She’ll stay home and cook the turkey (how hard can it be?) and Juliet can fly off into the sun and have a restorative break.
In the midst of all the chaos, there’s Will, Juliet’s dishy neighbor who’s far too nice to float Gemma’s boat and may secretly harbor feelings for her sister; and Marco, the suave Italian in the villa next door who has his own ideas about the best way to help Juliet unwind.
Will the sisters abandon caution and make this a Christmas swap to remember?
Sing the Four Quarters by Tanya Huff $ 0.99
From the Jacket Copy:
The Bards of Shkoder hold the country together. They, and the elemental spirits they Sing – earth, air, fire, and water – bring the news of the sea to the mountains, news of the mountains to the plains. They give their people, from peasant to king, a song in common.
Annice is a rare talent, able to Sing all four quarters, but her brother, the newly enthroned King Theron, sees her request to study at the Bardic Hall as a betrayal. To his surprise, Annice accepts his conditions, renouncing her royal blood and swearing to remain childless so as not to jeopardize the line of succession. She walks away from political responsibilities, royal privilege and her family.
Ten years later, Annice has become the Princess Bard and her real life is about to become the exact opposite of the overwrought ballad her fellow students at the Bardic Hall wrote about her. Now, she’s on the run from the Royal Guards with the Duc of Ohrid, the father of her unborn child, both of them guilty of treason – one of them unjustly accused. To save the Duc’s life, they’ll have to cross the country, manage to keep from strangling each other, and defeat an enemy too damaged for even a Bard’s song to reach.
Into the Fury by Kat Martin $ 1.99
From the Jacket Copy:
A bodyguard, a bounty hunter, a P.I.—the men of Brodie Operations Security Service, Inc. are down for the job…
Sinners, whores, and sluts beware—your time is at hand: a faceless menace is threatening lingerie models on a cross country tour, and Ethan Brodie is there to defend and protect.
Ethan’s learned the hard way that beauty is no substitute for character. So even though Valentine Hart is one of the most breathtaking women he’s ever seen, he’s keeping his hands off and his eyes open. Or that’s what he tells himself.
Then one of the models is murdered, and the closer Ethan gets to the answers, the closer he finds himself to Valentine—and the hotter the pressure feels. There’s more to Val—more to the other girls—than he could have guessed. But one is keeping a secret that could kill them all.
Sweet Savage Love by Rosemary Rogers $ 1.99
From the Jacket Copy:
A tale of human emotion that lays bare the heights and depths of love, passion and desire in old and new worlds…as we follow Virginia Brandon, beautiful, impudent and innocent, from the glittering ballrooms of Paris to the sensuality of life in New Orleans to the splendor of intrigue-filled Mexico.
A tale of unending passion, never to be forgotten…the story of Virginia’s love for Steven Morgan, a love so powerful that she will risk anything for him…even her life.
“Sinners, whores, and sluts beware—your time is at hand: a faceless menace is threatening lingerie models on a cross country tour”
Am I reading this right, in that this sounds like it’s saying that lingerie models are sinners, whores and sluts? That’s – eye-opening. And not a book I would be interested in reading.
OMG that Sweet Savage Love cover is hilarious and not at all representative of the content. It was one of the original bodice-rippers with 400+ pages of questionable consent, lots of hate sex, Big Misunderstandings, followed by declarations of love on the 401st page that come out of nowhere and are entirely unconvincing. By page 5 of the sequel they’te back to the hate sex etc.
@SusanS – I think that cover counts as misleading advertising!
OMG. Sweet Savage Love was the first romance book I remember reading. Snuck it from my aunt’s hidey hole. I’m not sure I actually understood it all, but whew! It was an eye opener. My girlfriends and I had half the book highlighted. Think I’ll have to one click and see if it really is as steamy as I remember.
@Jewell:
I had exactly the same reaction to that line!
I have never read “Sweet Savage Love” by Rosemary Rogers but all I can think of when I hear the title is of a legal case many years ago where a young woman falsely accused a man of raping her and he was convicted. Some time later she confessed she was scared of telling her parents she was engaging in consensual sex with a boyfriend and lied about being abducted and raped, taking details from “Sweet Savage Love”to make up her story. I think the man who went to jail was eventually freed due to DNA evidence excluding him and the media picking up the story after the woman confessed.
Like TrishJ, Sweet Savage Love was the first romance I read, way back in the 1970’s. To my teenage mind, Steve and Ginny’s story was so epic, it was the standard against which I measured pretty much every succeeding bodice ripper. Today, if I tried to reread it, I doubt I would make it past p. 50 and I certainly would not categorize it as a romance. It just goes to show that even though there are still problems with female empowerment in romance, the genre has evolved pretty far in the last 40 years.
Seeing that cover and reading that blurb just makes me laugh. The male model is just plain wrong and the name Virginia??? I don’t think she’s ever referred to by that name in the whole 500+ page book.
I’m thinking/hoping Make My Wish is UK. Is it?
That is a bad Photoshop on Sweet Savage ….. Look at his arm and her head next to his head, the lighting is off too….SMH
Add me to the list of folks whose first romance was Sweet Savage Love. It was amazingly eye-opening for a 12 year old. There are scenes that I still remember… la petit more. I’d be almost terrified to re-read it, it loomed so large back then.
I, too, read Sweet Savage Love as a young teen. It wasn’t my first romance but it was close. I had no clue what I was reading really. I don’t think I could read it now – as a 13 year old I thought it was very daring and romantic but I know better now.
And that cover model looks nothing like Steve! LOL
@Patricia Burroughs aka Pooks: Yes, it is! Harper is British and writes UK-set romances. I first discovered her through her M&B/Harlequin categories. For the last 2-3 years she’s been writing books that straddle the overlap between chick lit, women’s fiction, and genre romance. There are usually prominent female relationships in addition to a romantic storyline, and the romance doesn’t necessarily go the way you’d expect, or there are aspects that are not as common in genre (e.g., in one book she falls for a guy who is in a relationship with someone else, and the heroine grows quite friendly with the other woman).
This one is set at Christmas and I’d say it’s more women’s-ficcy than straight romance, but in a UK rather than US way.
After reading the comments re: Sweet Savage Love, it seems to me that romance has come a long way in the past few decades. Having said that, I’m sure that quite a few girls’ first romance book these days is 50 Shades of Grey, which probably elicits the same reaction as the bodice-rippers of yore.
@Aislinn: @Jewell: I’m guessing there’s stalking and anonymous threats involved and “Sinners, whores, and sluts beware—your time is at hand” is one of the threats that someone did a poor job of incorporating into the cover copy. Again, a guess.