Introvert’s Book Club
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Check Out the Booksta
Sing Me Home to Carolina by Joy Callaway
Rating: 3/5
Spice: 0/5
Plot: 5/5
Primary Genre: Contemporary Romance
Blurb: A small town girl turned big city businesswoman returns home to help her parents, only to find her heart being tugged between her old flame and the town’s mysterious new guy. This witty and effervescent novel is perfect for readers of Viola Shipman and fans of Sweet Magnolias and Hart of Dixie. Event planner Hattie Norwood only came back home to Mountain View, South Carolina to support her parents as they receive word that the family peanut farm is infertile. This news doesn’t come as a surprise to Hattie, and she plans to return to Charlotte at the weekend’s end. But then the town councilwoman begs Hattie to use her event planning prowess to help Mountain View put on a musical benefit to stop the construction of the new Carolina Panthers stadium—a project Hattie is actually in favor of, much to the dismay of the locals—and she finds herself agreeing to stay until the town’s Founder’s Day celebration a week later, just as her old flame, former MLB standout Lee Lockhardt, materializes in town after a career-ending injury. When the hunky and mysterious new owner of Fox’s Hardware, Fox Ryan, suggests the Founder’s Day celebration be moved to the Norwoods’ barn in an attempt to reinvent the failing farm as a music and event venue, Hattie agrees, unaware this move will thrust the town, her love life, and the brewing tension over the stadium into a very public spotlight. Fans of small-town romance and quirky casts of characters will be rooting for Team Lee or Team Fox as Hattie decides if love, like most music, is meant to fade or last forever.
It’s A Love Story by Annabel Monaghan
Rating: 5/5
Spice: 0/5
Plot: 5/5
Primary Genre: Contemporary Romance
Blurb: From the USA Today bestselling author of Nora Goes Off Script, a novel about a former adolescent TV punchline who has left her awkwardness in the rearview mirror thanks to a fake-it-till-you-make-it mantra that has her on the cusp of success, until she tells a lie that sets her on a crash-course with her past, spending a week in Long Island with the last man she thinks might make her believe in love. Rules for a love story: There are none. It’s all a lie. Jane Jackson knows that true love is a lie. Laughter is the only truth—you can’t fake a belly laugh. Jane should know, she spent her adolescence as "Poor Janey Jakes," the barbecue-sauce-in-her-braces punchline on America's fifth-favorite sitcom. Now she’s a Creative Executive at Clearwater Studios and she’s living by a new mantra: Fake it till you make it. Except, she might have faked it too far. Desperate to get her first project greenlit and riled up by pompous cinematographer and one-time crush Dan Finnegan, she opened her mouth and a big fat fib fell out. She claimed that Jack Quinlan, hottest popstar of the moment, has promised to write an original song for the soundtrack. Jack may have been her first kiss—and greatest source of shame—but she hasn’t spoken to him in twenty years. Now, Jane must turn to the last man she’d ever want to owe: Dan Finnegan. Because Jack is playing a festival in Dan’s hometown on Long Island, and Dan has an in. A week in close quarters with Dan while facing down her past is Jane's idea of hell, but Dan just might surprise her. While covering up her lie, can they find something true?
Just One Taste by Lizzy Dent
Rating: 3/5
Spice: 1
Primary Genre: Contemporary Women’s Fiction/Romance
Plot: 4/5
Blurb: Olive Stone is about to spend four weeks in Italy with the most beautiful man she’s ever hated. When Olive Stone and her Italian pseudo-celebrity chef father fell out fourteen years ago, annoyingly handsome Leo Ricci slipped right in as his surrogate son and sous-chef. No one is more surprised than Olive when her father wills her his beloved (and now failing) restaurant. Or that his dying wish was for Olive and Leo to complete his cookbook…together. She’s determined to sell the restaurant. Leo is determined to convince her not to. As they embark on four weeks in Italy, traveling from Sicily to Tuscany to Liguria, they’ll test each other as often as they test recipes. But the more time Olive and Leo spend together the more undeniable their attraction grows. Olive finds herself wondering whether selling the restaurant might be running away, and what it might be like to try Just One Taste of Leo Ricci. Because he isn’t who she expected, and this trip might reveal more about who Olive is than she’s ready for.
Summer in the City by Alex Aster
Rating: 4/5
Spice: 1.5/5
Plot: 3/5
Primary Genre: Contemporary Romance
Blurb: From #1 New York Times bestselling author Alex Aster comes her adult debut novel Summer in the City—a swoony, fast-paced rom-com set in New York City in which a screenwriter and a sexy tech CEO go from lovers to enemies and back to lovers again… Twenty-seven-year-old screenwriter Elle has the chance of a lifetime to write a big-budget movie set in New York City. The only problem? She’s had writer’s block for months, and her screenplay is due at the end of the summer. In a desperate attempt at inspiration, Elle ends up back in the city she swore she would never return to, in an apartment she could never afford (floor-to-ceiling windows, skyline views, and a new coffee shop to haunt included). It’s the perfect place to write her screenplay…until she realizes her new neighbor is tech “Billionaire Bachelor” Parker Warren, her stairwell hookup from two years ago. It’s been a lovers-to-enemies situation ever since. When seeing him again turns into a full night of hate-fueled writing, Elle realizes her enemy/twisted muse might just be the key to finishing her screenplay... if she can stand being around her polar opposite. She writes anonymously, and he’s on the cover of every business magazine. He frequents fancy red carpeted events, and she doesn’t like leaving her emotional support five block radius. One summer. One wall apart. He needs to fake a buzzy relationship during his company’s precarious acquisition. She needs to write a movie around a list of NYC locations. Both need a break from their unrelenting schedules, and a chance to rediscover the skyscraper glimmering, pizza crusted, sunlit charms of the city. Summers always end, and so will this agreement. It’s all pretend. Promise. Until it isn’t.
Brewing Up A Bad Boy by Katherine Garbera
Wicked Sisters #3
Rating: 3.75/5
Spice: 3
Primary Genre: Contemporary Romance
Plot: 4/5
Blurb: A tea shop owner good girl and a reformed microbrewer bad boy reunite in this wonderfully wicked love story.
Sometimes the second sip is sweetest.
In the cozy town of Birch Lake, tea shop owner Poppy Kitchener thought she’d left her mistakes, and her failed marriage, in the past. But when her ex-husband, Alistair Miller, turns up—as charming and irritatingly handsome as ever—those old feelings float to the surface. To top it off, he has a puzzling pretend they’re still married for his cousin’s wedding in exchange for a lucrative business deal with his family.
Easy enough, right? After all, this could be Poppy’s last chance to get closure, grow her business and use Alistair’s knowledge of microbrewing to help her finish that winning recipe for the tea competition.
But even after all this time, he still knows how to make her laugh. And he’s changed in ways that make Poppy wonder about the man he’s become… Can she trust this new Alistair with her heart, or will a second chance brew up disaster?
