On Sale Today: February 28, 2012

Some Tuesdays are packed with new releases that deserve to be added to our TBR stacks. Today is one such Tuesday. If you haven’t pre-ordered these five novels, be sure to visit your favorite brick-and-mortar or online bookstore to add them to your TBR stack.  Each of the five offers readers something special, and I recommend them all. Click on the title of the book to read my full review.

Redwood Bend, Robyn Carr

The eighteenth novel in Carr’s popular Virgin River series, Redwood Bend features Katie Malone, sister of the hero in #17 Hidden Summit, and Dylan Childress, a former teen idol who is still star material.  Neither is looking for a long-term relationship, but the heart againg proves wiser than the head. Other VR characters show up, of course, including brother Conner and Leslie, the woman in his life. This is a solid addition to one of the series responsible for the popularity of small-town contemporaries.

Rainshadow Road, Lisa Kleypas

Last year was a Kleypasless year, but 2012 will give fans two books in this author’s Friday Harbor series, which was introduced in 2010 with Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor. Rainshadow Road is on my best of 2012 list. This story introduces Lucy Marinn, a glass artist, and returns Sam Nolan, a former geek, who is passionate about his vineyard. Lucy and Sam’s story is filled with heat, heart, and humor with a bit of magic as a bonus.  I loved it, and I am counting the days until August 7 and the third Friday Harbor book, Dream Lake.

Blame It on Bath, Caroline Linden

Gerard de Lacey needs a rich wife before a family scandal makes one difficult to find. Wealthy widow Katherine Howe needs a way out of the marriage she’s being pressured to make. She proposes to him, he disposes of her boring and determined suitor, and what begins as a marriage of convenience becomes something altogether different. If you like marriage of convenience stories or plain heroines who are true treasures, you’ll love Blame It on Bath. It’s the second in Linden’s The Truth About the Duke series.

A Rogue by Any Other Name, Sarah MacLean

Lady Penelope Marbury, the woman Simon Pearson jilted to wed Juliana Fiori in Eleven Scandals To Start to Win a Duke’s Heart (2011), is the heroine of this first book Maclean’s new Rules for Scoundrels series. She is paired with Michael Lawler, Marquess of Bourne, the light-hearted companion of her youth whom betrayal and the thirst for revenge have transformed into a dark hero who has lost his humanity. Penelope is a wonderful heroine, one with the strength and tenacity to work a transformation of her own. Darker than Maclean’s other books, A Rogue by Any Other Name has the same emotional punch.

Between the Duke and the Deep Blue Sea, Sophia Nash

It’s been two years since Secrets of a Scandalous Bride, Nash’s last book, but her new series, the Royal Entourage, which is being described as The Hangover meets the Regency, is worth waiting for. Between the Duke and the Deep Blue Sea features a new duke exiled from London for excessive partying, a countess who was a commoner and the survivor of an “accident” that almost claimed her life, and disguises, villains, and derring do enough to delight the hearts of historical romance fans everywhere. The second in the series, The Art of Duke Hunting, will be released March 27. They are both winners.

What's on your to-be-bought list for this week?

Tuesday Review: Rainshadow Road

Rainshadow Road

By Lisa Kleypas
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
Release Date: February 28, 2012
Five Stars

The pattern of Lucy Marinn’s life was altered permanently when she was seven years old. Her younger sister Alice had meningitis. Alice survived, but her brush with death left her parents so fearful for her well being that they indulged her every wish and insured that Lucy did as well. Lucy also began a life-long fascination with glass making, and she discovered a magical connection between her emotions, the glass she loved, and a magic all her own.

Lucy does indeed grow up to be a successful glass artist. She has a studio in Friday Harbor and a boyfriend with whom she’s been living for two years. Life seems good.  Everything changes when her boyfriend breaks up with her because he has fallen in love with her sister. In a matter of minutes, Lucy loses her lover, her home, and her sense of security, all of it to a sister who has been taking what belonged to Lucy for years.

Sam Nolan is a native of the island, the middle brother in a dysfunctional family of three sons and one daughter. Readers who have read the novella that introduced the series, Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor, will recognize Sam as the vineyard owner who shares his home with brother Mark and their newly orphaned niece Holly. Giving up his privacy and the freedom of the single life is typical of Sam. He’s a good guy, terrified of commitment in a romantic relationship because of the horrendous example of his alcoholic parents, but essentially the best kind of hero—intelligent, kind, and charming with sea-colored eyes and a terrific sense of humor.

Lucy and Sam meet when she falls at his feet literally, and he administers first aid and listens to her. They meet again when he rescues her from a persistent drunk. When Lucy needs a place to stay after she’s injured when her bike is struck by a car, Sam offers house room and some nursing that leads to interesting contacts. But Sam thinks he’s incapable of a long-term relationship, and Lucy has lost faith in her own judgment.

I read romance fiction because I’m interested in relationships, but sometimes the relationships prove a disappointment. I like the heroine better than I like the hero or vice versa, or I like them both but have doubts about their HEA really lasting ever after. Lucy and Sam’s relationship was not a disappointment. I liked Sam in the first Friday Harbor book, and I quickly fell in love with him in this one. He’s not just another hot hero. He’s an interesting, complicated person. A former geek with a passion for his vineyards, an indulgent uncle who teaches his niece to tie her shoes and puts away bits of her past that will help her remember her mother, a tender lover who gives perfect, unexpected gifts—he is all of these things and more. Lucy longs to tell him, “You’re more than you think you are.” The reader shares her longing.

Lucy is just as likeable and interesting. An endearing combination of toughness and vulnerability, her passion for glass making matches Sam’s for his vines. She recognizes the flaws in her family, she allows herself to be angry or exasperated with them, but she loves them—even the sister who betrays her. The kinds of friends she has and their loyalty to her says a great deal about the kind of person she is.

Lucy and Sam deserve each other. Yes, they have great chemistry, and the novel contains some wonderful love scenes that are a mix of heat, heart, and humor. But they are more than sex partners. They talk to one another, revealing themselves through sharing their histories and their thoughts. They laugh together. They like each other. I don’t want to include spoilers, so I’ll just say there are two incidents in the novel where Kleypas had a choice about what her characters would do, one fairly early in the story and one near the end. In both cases, one choice would have destroyed the book for me. It would have become just another in a long list of books that leave me regretting the book that could have been if only . . . Both times, these characters make the choice that maintains the integrity of the people I have come to believe they are.

What else can I say? The setting is wonderful, detailed enough to give a sense of the island’s beauty and uniqueness. The secondary characters are great. Kleypas gives readers pieces of many stories so that even minor characters achieve multi-dimensions. I loved seeing Mark, Maggie, and Holly again, and I loved that their presence was natural and never threatened to distract from the central story. I find Alex, the youngest Nolan brother, fascinating. I hope the next book will be his. I loved the magic in the story. It seemed closer to magical realism to me.  As Lucy concludes, “[W]hether she called her gift a phenomenon of molecular physics, or magic, both definitions were true, and the words didn’t matter anyway.”

I give Rainshadow Road my highest recommendation and Lisa Kleypas my gratitude for writing a book that I will read again and again. And I'm counting the days until August and Crystal Cove.

What’s your favorite Lisa Kleypas book? 

Note: I am one of Lisa’s Divas, a group of “super fans” who share news of LK’s books and receive terrific stuff such as an Advance Readers’ Edition of Rainshadow Road.  I will point out that I’ve been a Lisa Kleypas fan for fifteen years, and no sway would have persuaded me to give a dishonest review.

Tuesday Review: A Handful of Christmas Stars to a Reread and a New Read

Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor
By Lisa Kleypas
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Release Date: October 26, 2010

Mark Nolan’s strongest commitment is to his coffee business, not withstanding his long-term girlfriend. That changes when his sister Victoria is killed in an automobile accident and Mark finds that she has named him as guardian of her six-year-old daughter, Holly. Her happiness becomes Mark’s primary concern: “For the first time in his life he knew what it felt like to have his heart broken… not broken in a sad or romantic sense, but broken open. He had never known this before, the desire to surround another human being with perfect happiness.” But Holly, grieving for her mother, has stopped speaking, and Mark feels helpless to end her silence.

Maggie Collins is no stranger to grief. A widow, she has opened a toy store, the Magic Mirror, in Friday Harbor as one more step in building a new life. Even a mute child loves a toy store, and so it’s hardly surprising that Mark and Holly visit the Magic Mirror. Holly is enchanted by a fairy house that Maggie has made, and the two are clearly kindred spirits in their love for the imaginary world of fairy lore and other magic. Mark’s not happy about this departure from reality, but he tolerates it since, with Maggie’s encouragement, Holly begins to speak.

Both Maggie and Mark are quickly aware of their attraction to one another, but neither is ready to act on it. Mark feels a certain loyalty to his girlfriend, Shelby, and Maggie, two years after her husband’s death from cancer, is leery of opening herself to the possibility of more loss. So the two settle for friendship. They enjoy one another; they talk to one another, sharing the best kind of conversation: “As they continued to talk, it somehow slipped into the bonelessly comfortable, unstructured conversation of longtime friends, both of them letting it go where it would.”

But the attraction doesn’t disappear, and Holly’s letter to Santa adds a layer of complication. But Maggie has to be willing to take a risk and Mark has to learn to believe in magic before a little girl’s Christmas wish can come true.

More novella than novel, Kleypas’s first Friday Harbor book has less sizzle than her usual fiction, but it has the memorable characters the mix of sigh-worthy romance and real-life issues that characterized her Travis family contemporaries. Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor is several love stories—the love of a child, the love of family (even dysfunctional ones), and the love between a man and a woman—all tied up in a Christmas bow.               

Reading it, or rereading it, is also great preparation for the next Friday Harbor book, Rainshadow Road, which will be released in February. I’m excited about reading a Lisa Kleypas book, especially after no new books from her in 2011. Rainshadow Road Sam Nolan’s story, and I’m already a little bit in love with Sam. You can read an excerpt here.

Note: I am one of "Lisa's Divas" - a group of select fans who share info and content related to Lisa's novels and get sneak peeks and swag in return.  

Once Upon a Winter’s Eve

By Tessa Dare
Publisher: Samhain

Release Date: November 15, 2011

Spindle Cove’s Christmas ball is in progress, and Violet Winterbottom, an experienced wallflower, has claimed a corner from which to watch the dancing when a stranger, wet and bloody, staggers into the room and falls unconscious at her feet.  The language he speaks is a strange one to the citizens of Spindle Cove; only Violet can understand him. She identifies his language as Breton, the language of Brittany-- “As in Brittany, France,” as Bram Rycliff (hero of A Night to Surrender) says. Bram and the other members of the militia are suspicious of the stranger.  He may be a spy or the scout for an invasion force.

Violet isn’t sure she trusts him either, nor is she sure she trusts herself. The last time she gave her trust to a man, she ended up with a broken heart and indelible memories of The Disappointment.  Should she listen to her excellent mind that tells her this man is a mystery and a stranger, and an enemy stranger at that, or dare she listen once again to her heart?

Broken heads and broken hearts, language games and a truncated letter, pistols and promises—Dare weaves them all into a story with humor and heat and heart-capturing characters. You can read an excerpt here.

I knew I’d love this book from the moment I read the tagline: “Some wallflowers bloom at night...” and I did.  I loved Violet’s intelligence, vulnerability, and courage. I loved her stranger in the night. And I loved seeing Bram and Susanna’s happiness continuing to grow. Spindle Cove has become one of my favorite fictional settings. My second visit there was a rare treat, and I look forward to returning with A Week to Be Wicked (March 27, 2012).

I want to share the love by giving away two ecopies of Once Upon a Winter’s Eve--one in honor of a terrific author and one in honor of an equally terrific editor. Winners will be chosen randomly from among those who comment. With apologies to international visitors, the contest is open only to visitors within the  U. S.

What’s your favorite Christmas novella? To what 2012 books are you most looking forward?