ARC Review: Wired by Julie Garwood

Julie Garwood’s thirteenth Buchanan-Renard book Wired is a romance driven story, technically classified as Romantic Suspense, it however does not have enough suspense for me to call it that. The overall romance is the driving force behind the story and the book is just a series of events that ties these two characters together they just happen to be moderately suspenseful in nature. The characters I enjoyed; Liam Scott is a FBI agent and because the FBI encourages their agents to have a degree in either law, accounting, or engineering Liam like many other agents also has a law degree. Allison Trent is kind of like a savant when it comes to finding patterns, she can decipher things easily and programming code just came natural to her. Unfortunately for Alison she wasn’t raised in a loving environment and was taken advantage of, she was discovered by a fashion designer who begged her to become his model. She models for the extra money, not like she gets much her Aunt and Uncle are taking it all; but she gets to keep the clothes!  The fact the Alison is beautiful is inconsequential she can be both beautiful and brilliant those two things are not mutually exclusive. 

Liam and Alison initially meet because the FBI has a leak. Liam knows it is coming from the inside and after hearing Alison debate with her best friend at a seminar he knows she the right person for the job. Talking her into is another matter entirely. Alison originally agrees just for that one job but then her cousin fucks up and she uses her pull to get him probation the downside is that she now has to work for the FBI for six months. Alison is hesitant at first because she isn’t quite the law-abiding computer programmer, she hacks into different computers and just looks keeping an eye out for virus and bugs and if she finds them she gets rid of them she also she has found other hackers who have stolen money and handed them over to the FBI, all anonymously of course. She does this because her plan is to write a write a security program that is full proof, in fact she has already done so she just waiting to graduate. Only now she suspects her former roommate to have stolen her program, but she’s got that covered.

Liam and Alison both acknowledge their attraction but both agree that while she’s working with him they shouldn’t act upon it, so as soon as she has found the leak they sleep together. It’s after he leaves that Alison realized she not made for one night stands. Liam and Alison don’t see each other again for over two months and when they do see again he ties himself up with everything going on in her life, ‘cause at this point there is quite a bit going on. Liam has never been in love before and he’s not handling it well and his mixed signals are really starting to mess with Alison’s heart.

Overall, it was a good read. I have read a couple of the books in this series but they are all written in a way they are standalone novels as well. The romance was great I liked the chemistry between Liam and Alison and the fact that they waited for the job to be over before sleeping together was nice. I completely sympathized with Alison about Liam’s mixed signals. I personally love that Alison was so smart and yet so humble. I like that Julie Garwood writes intelligent women.        

**ARC provided by Publisher**

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ARC Review: One Pink Rose by Julie Garwood

Books like “One Pink Rose” are the reason I fell in love with romance novels years ago. This is a classic Julie Garwood love story. Julie Garwood was one of my all-time favorite writers and I stayed up many nights during my summers reading her and loving her heroes and heroines. This book was written in 1997 so I can see how romance novels have changed and evolved but let me tell you “One Pink Rose” is proof that classics are still better! “One Pink Rose” is part of the Claybourne’s series. The Claybourne’s are a family in Montana. They are typical rough and tumble type of heroes. They have very good old-fashion values and love their family. This is about the youngest Claybourne, Travis.

Travis is a great hero. He is looking for a man that he believes swindled his mom. Travis adores his family and mom and is determined to find the man he believes stole from her. His mother asks him to do a favor, she wants him to accompany Emily Finnegan to Golden Crest Montana so she can marry the man she has been corresponding with. Travis and Emily instantly react to each other. Travis thinks that Emily is crazy and Emily doesn’t care what Travis thinks. After nursing a broken heart, she is determined to take her destiny into her own hands and marry.

Travis can’t believe that Emily would set out to marry a man she has only shared letters with. He can’t believe that he promised to accompany her after three previous couples couldn’t complete the task and most importantly, he can’t believe that he wants Emily from himself. But Travis is not the marrying type and he refuses to give his heart away.

I absolutely loved this story. It was funny, sweet, romantic, and full of unexpected fights, flying frying pans and some very dangerous men. This is classic Garwood-which I love. Travis and Emily were so cute and funny together. I started reading and when I looked up I was half way through the story. I couldn’t put it down, the writing was engaging and the story moved along so smoothly. This is a very chaste story, no sweaty hot and heavy action but it was still very sweet and I really enjoyed it. I wish there were more stories like these!

Needless to say, this was a fun read. I really enjoyed it and was reminded about why I fell in love with romance novels.

**ARC provided by Publisher**

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My Favorite Book Couple with Erin Kellison

Erin Kellison is the USA Today bestselling and award-winning author of the Shadow series and Shadow Kissed series, which share the same world, where dark fantasy meets modern fairy tale. Delve into dreamscapes in her new Reveler series, releasing Summer 2014.

Places to find Erin:

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My Favorite Book Couple with Cynthia Eden

Award-winning author Cynthia Eden writes dark tales of paranormal romance and romantic suspense. She is a New York Times, USA Today, Digital Book World, and IndieReader best-seller. Cynthia is also a two-time finalist for the RITA® award (she was a finalist both in the romantic suspense category and in the paranormal romance category). Since she began writing full-time in 2005, Cynthia has written over thirty novels and novellas.

Cynthia is a “hybrid” author. She has published extensively with New York (her New York publishers include Kensington, Grand Central, and Harlequin), and she has also enjoyed success in her indie writing career.

Cynthia lives along the Alabama Gulf Coast. She loves romance novels, horror movies, and chocolate. Her favorite hobbies including hiking in the mountains (searching for waterfalls) and spelunking.

Places to find Cynthia: 

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ARC Review: Hotshot by Julie Garwood

I keep hoping that Julie Garwood—once (and still) an institution in romance and my gateway to the genre—will return to my auto-buy list, but she keeps letting me down. Some time after FIRE AND ICE (her last decent contemporary title) in 2008, and discounting SHADOW MUSIC (the debacle that was her return to historicals) in 2007, it’s like she underwent a writing lobotomy. The quirky heroines, the alpha-but-loveable heroes, the witty dialogue, and the pizazz of the writing have been replaced with wooden characters, flat prose, and ridiculously formulaic plots—especially as she’s edged away from the straight-up romantic suspense that characterized her early contemporary releases and toward more mainstream contemporary romance with slight suspense undertones. Her latest release, HOTSHOT, continues in that same vein, though it is an improvement over her previous novel.

My biggest problem with the last few Garwood releases has been my inability to connect with the hero and heroine, who’ve turned into incredibly perfect people doing incredibly perfect things and wanting each other from the get-go without any character development. Finn MacBain is a typical new-Garwood hero: academically gifted, a triple Olympic gold swimmer (before age 18!), a crack FBI agent, a natural-born protector, and soured on love thanks to a woman. I know this is romance and a combination of qualities no mortal man would possess is common, but COME ON! This is really taking it too far. And Ms. Garwood’s unwillingness to describe her male lead (presumably so her readers can imagine whomever they want) irks me—I don’t need a complete character sketch that includes whom you’d cast in a movie version, but at least tell me what colour his eyes are! With heroine Peyton Lockhart and her long list of hilarious romantic failures Ms. Garwood’s tried to return to her endearingly clueless but quirky heroines of yore, with mixed results: her determination and perseverance make up the mould of a potentially great character and her misadventures in dating make her personable and relatable, but her naiveté almost edges over into TSTL territory. The way she swoons every time Finn is in the room and goes from hero worship of the boy that saved her life to being helplessly in love with the man he’s become is typical for a contemporary Garwood novel, but it’s hindered by the lack of emotional chemistry between the protagonists. Yes, they both pontificate about the other’s hotness (repeatedly), but their connection feels entirely physical—despite being the most earth-shattering sex for both of them—and, in turn, makes it difficult to become emotionally invested in either of them or the HEA.

There’s a decent attempt at a plot—though I wouldn’t really call it ‘suspense’—and a moderately heinous letch of a ‘villain’, but the stilted writing makes the bad guys feel a bit like caricatures. With the exception of Christopher and Finn’s FBI partner Ronan (surely the hero of a future book), the secondary characters go a bit overboard with the melodrama, and cousin Debi is so blatantly overdone that you can’t help but wonder if Ms. Garwood did it on purpose just for fun. If you don’t take her seriously as a character, she and her shenanigans are truly laugh-out-loud hilarious. The secondary romance feels a bit rushed, but it does provide an additional point of interest and a way to become somewhat invested in the characters.

Overall, HOTSHOT was only a mediocre read for me—which, sadly, has been par for the course with Julie Garwood’s books lately. It reads very much like SWEET TALK and THE IDEAL MAN before it, so if you enjoyed those books you’ll surely enjoy this one. Her recent writing style just doesn’t work for me.

**ARC provided by Publisher**

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My Favorite Book Boyfriend with Heather Snow and Giveaway

Heather Snow is an award winning historical romance author with a degree in Chemistry who discovered she preferred creating chemistry on the page rather than in the lab. The final book in her Veiled Seduction series, SWEET MADNESS, hits shelves April 2, 2013. RT Book Reviews Magazine gives it 4 ½ stars, saying “In this emotional, compassionate romance...the powerful love story will sweep readers away." RT also gave her hero a K.I.S.S. designation, saying he “makes you weak in the knees as he accepts the healing power of love.” Book Obsessed Chicks gave it 5 stars, saying, “Heather Snow is cutting edge…a master storyteller. Sweet Madness is a magnificent story.” And Night Owl Reviews chose it as a top pick, saying, “Fresh and unique…sweet and heart-wrenching, with characters so complex, flawed, and emotionally scarred that they feel flesh and blood real.”

Places to find Heather:

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