**Click the cover for blurb, reviews, book trailer and buy links

Congratulations, ladies! Please email your full name and address to me at contests at theseasonforromance dot com. You have one week to contact me to collect your books.

Well today, I want to recognize the Top Picks from July – September that should have been, but because of circumstances beyond the author’s control, did not get that designation. Just click on the cover to go to the review page. Let me know if any spark your interest based on the review.

Rating:10 Heat Level: 4

Rating:10 Heat Level: 4

Rating:10 Heat Level: 4

Rating: 9

Rating: 9 Heat Level: 4

Rating: 9

Rating: 9

Rating: 9 Heat Level: 3

Rating: 9.5 Heat Level: 3

Falling For You
Author: Julie Ortolon
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Orig Pub. Date: April 15, 2002
Reissue Date: July 2, 2010
Retail: $2.99
Pages: 336
Format: Digital

What happens when Mr. Slow and Steady…

The forecast is smooth sailing for Oliver Chancellor, scion of Galveston’s premier financier. Destined to take his place in the hallowed marble corridors of his family’s bank, Chance is content with the future that’s been mapped out for him, right down to his upcoming engagement to a prim debutante enthusiastically approved by his socialite mother.

Finds himself on a collision course…

But when beautiful Rory St. Claire crosses his path, Chance recklessly plunges into uncharted territory with nothing but his heart to guide him-and a beautiful woman to tempt him…

With Ms. Full-Speed-Ahead?

Propelled by a lifelong goal to buy the island home reportedly haunted by her colorful ancestors, Rory desperately needs Chance’s help in securing a business loan, and she won’t take no for an answer. In the midst of convincing the hesitant blue blood to take a chance on her dream, Rory unexpectedly lands in Chance’s arms, stunned by his red-blooded passion-and her own awakened desire. Now, the mismatched pair can’t keep their hands off one another, and something tells Rory she’s headed for trouble-trouble in the name of love…

~*~*~

A vivacious heroine plus a feeble hero equals a missed opportunity.

When a historic house is foreclosed on, Aurora St. Claire (Rory) decides she and her siblings must buy it and turn it into a B&B. Their ancestor was killed in the house 150 years ago in a romantic tale that’s become local legend, and Rory has always felt connected to the house.

She finds out it’s on the market when she sees Oliver Chancellor (Chance) pounding a foreclosure sign into the ground, an act he’s been cowed into doing by the east-coast owners of his father’s bank. Chance went to school with Rory’s brother and was attracted to her in high school, when he was a skinny geek and she was quite young. He hasn’t seen her in years and is immediately taken by her exotic beauty.

Rory comes to him to find out about getting a loan, but Chance advises her to put together a business plan first. Rory struggles with analytical tasks, which gives Chance an opportunity to help her out, and puts him in direct opposition to his father, who wants to give the island’s owner—and long-time bank customer—an opportunity to get the place back.

I had some major issues with this novel, but I’ll start with what I liked—the heroine. Though Rory is bubbly and outgoing, she sometimes has low self-esteem moments because of her dyslexia. She worries about people thinking she’s stupid, but she has no qualms about accepting Chance’s help putting together a business plan. I loved that she’s a complex character who works to overcome her limitations and recognizes when she needs help. Rock on, Rory.

My main problems were with the hero and the conflicts. Chance is weak and immature, and I found him difficult to respect. I’m all for a beta hero and a flawed hero, but Chance lets his parents make his most important decisions for him and toys with the affections of two women while he vacillates between them. What’s more, I got the feeling I was supposed to be sympathetic toward him because his flaws are never adequately addressed.

Within a few pages of the reader meeting him, he thinks about his fiancée Paige. It later turns out he hasn’t proposed to her; it’s just always been assumed (including by him) that they’ll get married. This convention works in historical novels, when arranged marriages between the upper classes were more common, but unless it’s connected to a contemporary character’s culture, I’ll need a good reason to buy it. “It’s the easy option” makes the hero seem spineless, and “He’s from money” doesn’t cut it for me. Plenty of rich people marry the person they want, not the person their parents choose. Furthermore, because it’s unrealistic it comes across as a false problem—something the author put in the characters’ way simply to create conflict.

Though Chance and Paige have had an understood arrangement for years, he hasn’t even kissed her. It was moments like this one that made me think the hero had the emotional maturity of a teenager:

He should want to kiss Paige. But once he kissed her—kissed her the way a man kisses a woman he wants to take to bed—the courtship would officially begin. It would no longer be a thing in the future. They’d be headed straight down the path of dating, engagement, matrimony, mortgage, children, diapers, IRAs, retirement, and vacations spent on cruise ships.

It all loomed over his head, ready to crash down on him the minute his lips made contact with hers.

Yet instead of telling Paige he doesn’t want to marry her, he continues to let her and their families think the engagement will eventually happen, all the while fighting his growing attraction to Rory.

He’s overcome by lust and has sex with Rory while Paige (and all of Galveston) believes they’re getting married. This is a massive mark against him. Paige may be as interesting as skimmed milk, but she still deserves better than that. He mistreats Rory as well. After having sex with her the first time, he decides just not to call her, hoping she’ll realize herself how unsuited they are. Of course, she thinks she’s in love and is broken-hearted that he’d use her.

I found his actions not only deplorable but unrealistic. Unless he’s under 15, I can’t imagine his lust is so uncontrollable that he’d repeatedly fall on Rory pelvis-first without thinking about Paige first. He always remembers her afterward, and hustles Rory out of his apartment at dawn the first time they sleep together, telling her it’s in order to protect *her* reputation.

It’s also hard to warm to a hero who fights his attraction to the heroine because it’s impractical. As far as I could see, there are two “impractical” things about it: 1) she’s exciting; and 2) his parents didn’t choose her for him.

When Rory and Chance finally admit their feelings for each other, there’s still quite a bit of the book left. Unfortunately, the story is kept going through a series of misunderstandings that could easily be resolved if the hero and heroine had one good conversation.

I’m sorry I didn’t like the novel more, but I couldn’t help thinking Rory deserved a much better hero, and I needed more realistic conflicts to draw me in.

Rating: 5 (Fair)

Heat-Level: 3 (Sensual)

Congratulations, Susan! Please email me at contests at theseasonforromance dot com so I can give you a list of the books you have to choose from. You have one week to contact me.

Nothing But Deception
Author: Allegra Gray
Publisher: Zebra / Kensington
Pub. Date: August 3, 2010
ISBN-13: 978-1420108262
Retail: $5.99
Pages: 352

Beatrice, Lady Pullingham, knows the type of captivating beauty who inspires great art–or at least, she thinks she does, until Paris’ most exciting young painter invites her to pose for him. Incredulous, Bea nonetheless has the sense to accept Philippe’s invitation, and in so doing, signs on for lessons in seduction that give her the courage to embark on the adventure of a lifetime…

Secrets. Jean-Philippe Durand has had enough of them. First, his mother’s deathbed revelation – the one that brought him to England in search of his true father. And now, the secrets kept by the Englishwoman who has become his muse. Philippe wants more than just to paint Beatrice, he wants to show her every pleasure society has denied her – and she’s denied herself. But there’s something Beatrice isn’t telling him, and his art only allows for truth…

Other books in the series

~**~**~

Do you believe that some relationships are Meant To Be?

I was thinking about this question this weekend, spurred on by the fantastic Yvonne Lindsay book I’m reading.  Stand In Bride’s Seduction is about one of those classic romance novel situations – an identical twin is asked by her sister to stand in for her with her fiance while the first sister rushes off to deal with a mysterious crisis. Of course, the first sister and the hero have no chemistry, but things are hugely different with the stand-in sister – even though they’re identical twins, there’s just something about the second sister that cooks the hero’s goose.
Which, as I said, got me thinking. There are lots of scientific theories about sexual attraction and love and pheromones, but as a romance reader (and writer!) I tend to favor the idea that some couples are just meant to be.  I know of a real life example of this – my good friend and her husband met while they were both working overseas and the night of their first date, she went home and told her flat mate that he was the man she was going to marry. Two weeks later, he proposed, and she said yes.  Ten years later, they have three children and a great marriage.

As a big believer in love, I am seriously invested in the idea that sometimes you just know that the person standing across the room from you is The One. It appeals to me on so many levels, even though I know that in real life love probably sneaks up on most of us in small increments as intimacy deepens.

As a writer, I like to play with the idea that sometimes my characters are aware on a deeply unconscious level that the other person is The One – but for reasons of their own they’re not quite ready to plunge head-first into all that that represents.  Sometimes that unwelcome awareness manifests itself as a niggling sort of irritation with the other person - why are they unsettling me so much? Why do I feel so uncomfortable when they’re around? – and other times it manifests itself as straight-up I-can’t-stand-you conflict.

In my current release, Hot Island Nights, my hero and heroine definitely do not hit it off on their first meeting, even though on a very primitive level they are aware of each other. Elizabeth is tired and jet-lagged and keyed up, having flown all the way from England to hunt down the man she believes is her biological father, while Nate is hung-over and deeply reluctant to get sucked into someone else’s personal crisis. As Elizabeth eventually discovers, Nate may look like a care-for-nothing surfie with a hot body and no conscience, but in reality he is doing his best to cope with the aftermath of serious trauma.

~*~*~

Hot Island Nights
Author: Sarah Mayberry
Publisher: Harlequin Blaze
Pub. Date: September 1, 2010
ISBN-13: 978-0373795703
Retail: $4.99
Pages: 224

Elizabeth Morgan didn’t intend to abandon her very proper life. But that’s the best way to find her true—and less proper—self. So here she is in Australia, standing in front of a man who’s clad only in a towel. Nathan Jones is so tempting he could be the ideal candidate to help this good girl be very bad!

Sure enough, thanks to Nathan’s talented hands, Elizabeth is living all her sensual fantasies. And while the sex is great, something more is developing. She trusts him, and wants to share her secrets with him, and… Suddenly this feels more like a real relationship than some fun in the sun. Luckily, there’s a cure for too much commitment—more wickedness!

Click here to read my review

~*~*~

These two people need each other – they just don’t know it in those first few moments. But they also can’t stay away from or stop thinking thinking about each other.  And when Elizabeth discovers the extent of Nate’s problems – and they’re sizable – she faces a tough choice: disengage and move on from the messy, difficult challenge he represents, or dig in and do her best to help him come to terms with his past. A hard decision to make at the best of times, but when her fling with Nate is supposed to be a holiday romance, it becomes even more daunting.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and stories about instant attraction, love at first sight and The One. Do you believe in any of the above? If not, why not? And if you do, what makes you believe? I’ll be giving away 2 (two copies) of Hot Island Nights to two random posters  – just comment and you’ll be in the running to win. So, over to you… I’m looking forward to your responses.

Other books by Sarah Mayberry:

I guess it depends, right? Obviously, if we’re talking a story with paranormal/fantasy elements in it, not as much as say a contemporary set in a small fictitious town, or a historical being played out in Victorian England.

In a contemporary, we’d expect at least mention of the current electronic accoutrements such as cell phones, computers and modern conveniences. Though the town may be fictitious the containing environs (state, country) would not. We’d expect our hero and heroine to display sensibilities of the current day as opposed to those of the 1950s.

On the other hand, in historical romances we tend to allow fiction a much freer reign. Our heroines and heroes, not surprisingly, display more modern sensibilities than they do for the day of their age. Women tend to be much more prone to independent thinking than their real counterparts of the time and men tend to be much more progressive in their thinking than theirs. While men prior to the onset of the 1970s tended to act the sole role as breadwinners and not nurturers (taking a equal hand in child rearing), our historical heroes would certainly be looked down upon if they didn’t express great delight in frolicking  with and caring for their children.

In  historical romances, we see women who are spies, seek adventure on the open seas, are intrepid almost to a fault. These heroines  may throw all caution to the wind–and sometimes a portion of common sense–putting themselves in harm’s way not unlike some of the people we see in those slasher films who come upon a dark and desolate house in the middle of nowhere. We, the movie watcher, tell them not to go in (somethings yelling it at the screen), but do they listen? Nope. They go in and get themselves killed. Of course, nothing so horrible happens to our intrepid heroine, but something bad happens nonetheless.

Some readers might gripe about the inaccuracy of an unmarried young women of aristocrat birth traveling a long distance without a chaperone. They’d tell you it just wasn’t done. Others don’t care about things like that and would underscore the word fiction and claim they aren’t looking for a recounting of history. I’ve even heard readers claim that vampires are nocturnal creatures and are seldom seen in the daylight, so such and such a book is a travesty. It appears we now have rigid rules around the fictional creatures we’ve invented.

In most contemporary novels I have read, the hero and heroine (mostly the hero) are almost like religious zealots when it comes to birth control. It’s not even enough that the heroine is taking birth control. Here is where political correctness and social responsibility comes into play. Do I believe that, on the whole, men are truly like this? No, not so much. But then this is romance fiction written by woman, on the most part, for woman, and we get to write about the kind of hero we want, not who necessarily exist in real life. And same goes for the depiction of our heroine, ten parts beautiful, gutsy and intelligent all rolled into one spectacular package.

Every once in a while though, depending on your internal acceptable use of fiction gauge, you come upon some characteristic, perhaps an incident, or a storyline that sets that gauge of yours beeping. It just doesn’t pass the smell test, so to speak. Mine, I know, are those too intrepid heroines, who in my opinion, are more danger to themselves and others than brave and daring. What are your ‘fictional’ pet peeves?

I’m still giving away books from my Anniversary stash. A comment will get you an entry to win 2 (two) of those books.

Congratulations, Camille! Please email me at contests at theseasonforromance dot com so I can give you a list of the books you have to choose from. You have one week to contact me.

Click to pre-order from Amazon

I decided it would be fun to move the Book Club to the blog. The thought is, it will get more readers participating if they don’t have to belong to a forum. At least, that’s my hope.  Usually, I would have visitors vote and choose from about 8-10 releases. For September, I’m just going to choose because it’s a book I really want to read, and really want to know everyone’s opinion.

It won’t come as a huge surprise (given Friday’s post) that the September Book Club Pick is Zoë Archer’s WARRIOR. For all those who want to participate, the book officially releases Sept 7th and you’ll have one month to read. On October 5th, I will post the discussion on the blog. To have your comments included in the post,  please email me at contact at theseasonforromance dot com at least 2 days prior to posting date. Of course, you can also wait until October 5th and add your thoughts in the comment section. I’ll also have a random drawing and 2 (two) participants will receive 2 (two) books each from the new crop of October releases.

I hope everyone will join me and take this trip with me to Mongolia!