Tag: Sarah MacLean

Throwback Thursday (27)

Posted January 25, 2018 by Rowena in Features | 0 Comments

Here’s a book nerd throwback to when RWA was in Southern California and I went with my friend Holly. I met so many of my favorite authors and even shared meals with some of them.

Here’s a picture of me with historical romance author, Sarah MacLean. I love her books and I fangirled all over her and a bunch of her colleagues this weekend and honestly??? I regret nothing. She was a good sport about all of my fangirling and even posed for a picture with me. These authors are my rock stars and meeting them is always a treat.

Until next week…enjoy!

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Top Ten Tuesday: Unique Book Titles

Posted October 24, 2017 by Rowena in Features | 0 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke & the Bookish and it’s a feature that everyone participates in so I’m going to try and participate myself and see how long it lasts. Wish me luck.

This week’s prompt is:

October 24: Top Ten Unique Book Titles

If I Stay & Where She Went by Gayle Forman: I really like the way that this series was titled…the first book, If I Stay and then if you read the book you understand the meaning behind the following book, Where She Went. I thought that whole concept was unique and I adored both books.

Results May Vary by Bethany Chase: I really liked this book and how the title fits in with the story. I thought that was done well.

November 9 by Colleen Hoover: I really liked the concept behind this book too. How significant the title for this book is in the story. This was one of the most dramatic books that made me feel every which way about it but holy cow, I liked it.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green: I really liked the sound of this book just by reading the title of the book. I loved the book too and well, it’s a great title.

Overruled, Sustained, Appealed and Sidebarred by Emma Chase: I really liked each of these books except for Overruled but I really liked the way that the titles of each book played well into the lawyer background.

The Day of the Duchess by Sarah MacLean: This was a fantastic historical romance that is really titled well. The Day of the Duchess fits this book and is super unique to any historical romance that I’ve read to date. MacLean does this story so well that gah…I loved it.

Share your favorite unique titles in the comments!

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Review: Nine Rules to Break when Romancing a Rake by Sarah MacLean

Posted February 14, 2017 by Rowena in Reviews | 8 Comments

Review: Nine Rules to Break when Romancing a Rake by Sarah MacLeanNine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake
by Sarah MacLean
Series: Love by Numbers #1
Published by Harper Collins, Avon on March 30th 2010
Genres: Historical, Romance
Point of View:Alternating Third Person
Pages: 422
Format: eBook
Source: Purchased
Add It: Goodreads
four-half-stars

A lady does not smoke cheroot. She does not ride astride. She does not fence or attend duels. She does not fire a pistol, and she never gambles at a gentlemen's club.

Lady Calpurnia Hartwell has always followed the rules, rules that have left her unmarried—and more than a little unsatisfied. And so she's vowed to break the rules and live the life of pleasure she's been missing.

But to dance every dance, to steal a midnight kiss—to do those things, Callie will need a willing partner. Someone who knows everything about rule-breaking. Someone like Gabriel St. John, the Marquess of Ralston—charming and devastatingly handsome, his wicked reputation matched only by his sinful smile.

If she's not careful, she'll break the most important rule of all—the one that says that pleasure-seekers should never fall hopelessly, desperately in love.

You guys, this freaking book.

One of my goals for this year is to write a review for every single book that I read from cover to cover, even re-reads and this was the first book that I re-read this year. It was last month’s book club discussion book but I also read it for my Totally Doable reading challenge and boy am I glad to have revisited these folks because seriously? This book was fantastic!

What a fun book this is. I laughed out loud, I swooned with delight, my heart broke a little bit and in the end, I rejoiced because gah…this book was just good swoony fun.

“I’ve spent twenty-eight years doing what everyone around me expected me to do…being what everyone around me has expected me to be. And it’s horrid to be someone else’s vision of yourself.”

Our Calpurnia, who is affectionately known as Callie is a fixture in the spinster seating section at every ball. She’s a wallflower that sits and watches other ladies dance the night away at the balls with other men. Her younger sister is engaged to a Duke and she was kind of resigned to her life as a spinster until she overhears her younger sisters conversation with her fiance’. Something about that conversation hurts Callie because it’s true? Between that conversation and one she had with her own brother, Callie yearns for adventure. She yearns to live. To be more than a spinster, so she makes a list. A list of adventures she wants to have.

The first item on her list? Kiss someone passionately. Of course, that leads her to the Marquess of Ralston’s home. Ralston is dealing with his own issues at the moment. He just found out that he’s got a long lost sister and the sister is under his care now. He has no idea what to do with this new sister, how to introduce her to society. How to get her ready to introduce her into society but the answer for all of that just showed up on his doorstep, asking for a kiss. Hmm.

Callie’s list cracked me up. From the very beginning, I was so on board with this list. Every single adventure she went on, every single time she got caught made me laugh and laugh and laugh because holy cow, Callie was brave. She was brave and she was determined and those are all things that I admire in a heroine. She put herself out there and she made memories, lived her life the way that she wanted without looking back. You have to admire that. Ralston did. On top of being brave and determined, Callie was extremely normal and incredibly witty. She was my very favorite part of this book and I was rooting for her at every turn. My heart hurt for her as she tried to brave her way through her feelings for Ralston. I just loved her so much.

Ralston was a grumpy hero who I saw great potential in from the very beginning. That scene where he makes a young Callie feel good about herself made me so thirsty to see the two of them fall in love. Don’t get me wrong, he was a cabbage-head from time to time but holy cow does he get right in the end. He won my heart over at the same time he won Callie over and I was rooting for him, too. Ralston was such a great fit for Callie because he didn’t want her to be anything aside from herself. He loved her and even when he was pissing me off by the things he would say and do, I still wanted him for Callie. I still adored him.

I loved the romance between Ralston and Callie because you saw the change in their relationship from friends to lovers. It was a gradual process that started with a bargain and ended with so much more. They were great a part but they were a force to be reckoned with together and I adored the two of them together so much. They were passionate, they were lively and they just worked. This is probably one of my favorite books by Sarah MacLean. It was true the first time I read it and all of these years later, it’s still true. If you haven’t read this book, you should definitely change that.


4.5 out of 5

four-half-stars

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Top 5 Wednesday: Characters You WOULDN’T Want to Trade Places With

Posted September 21, 2016 by Rowena in Features | 11 Comments

T5W

Top 5 Wednesday was created by Lainey at Ginger Reads Lainey but is hosted by Sam at Thoughts on Tomes. You can read more about this meme on the Goodreads Group here.

This weeks topic is:

Characters You WOULDN’T Want to Trade Places With

–We always talk about how cool it would be to be a character in our favorite books, but who would you not want to trade places with?

This was another easy topic for me to cover because there are a lot of characters that either piss me off or that I feel super bad for. Here are my choices for this week’s Top 5 Wednesday.


1. Edie from Who’s That Girl? by Mhairi McFarlane.

When Edie is caught in a compromising position at her colleagues’ wedding, all the blame falls on her – turns out that personal popularity in the office is not that different from your schooldays. Shamed online and ostracised by everyone she knows, Edie’s forced to take an extended sabbatical – ghostwriting an autobiography for hot new acting talent, Elliot Owen. Easy, right?

Read this part of the synopsis and it will tell you why I don’t want to trade places with her. She went to her crush’s wedding and he kissed her and they got caught. If that happened to me, I’d want to be like one of those Southwest Airline commercials…you know, the “Wanna get away?” commercials. How embarrassing to be known as the home and wedding wrecker, especially when it wasn’t even your fault!

2. Lily from A Scot in the Dark by Sarah MacLean.

Miss Lillian Hargrove has lived much of her life alone in a gilded cage, longing for love and companionship. When an artist offers her pretty promises and begs her to pose for a scandalous portrait, Lily doesn’t hesitate…until the lying libertine leaves her in disgrace. With the painting now public, Lily has no choice but to turn to the one man who might save her from ruin.

Lily’s naked body is going to be shown to everyone in England and she is not about that life. Neither am I. I wouldn’t want to trade places with her for obvious reasons. Poor thing.

3. Rachel from The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.

Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning and night. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. Jess and Jason, she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.

Ugh, freaking Rachel. She couldn’t get her shit together, she put her nose where it didn’t belong and for what? A whole lot of trouble. She got on my hot damn nerves throughout the entire book. She just kept right on finding my nerves and stomping on them. I wouldn’t have wanted to trade places with her either.

4. Sofia from Overruled by Emma Chase.

But when Stanton, her “friend with mind-blowing benefits” begs for help, she finds herself out of her element, out of her depth, and obviously out of her mind. Because she agrees to go with him – to The-Middle-Of-Nowhere, Mississippi – to do all she can to help Stanton win back the woman he loves.

Her head tells her she’s crazy…and her heart says something else entirely.

Sofia falls in love with her friend with benefits and things are going swimmingly until her friend with benefits gets a wedding invitation for his main squeeze’s wedding back home and freaks out because the main squeeze wasn’t supposed to get married to anyone…but Sofia’s friend with benefits. So he flies home to try to persuade the main squeeze to NOT marry this other guy and he brings Sofia along for support. I just can’t even with that dumb ass. I felt bad for Sofia at first but the longer she stayed, the more pissed off I got at both the friend with benefits and HER. That whole book was a hot mess and I wouldn’t trade places with Sofia to save my life. Nope. Never.

5. Any heroine in an SEP book.

From Molly in This Heart of Mine and that scene to Rachel in Dream a Little Dream and all of the crap she went through in that book to Meg in Call Me Irresistible and just every single SEP book ever written, each heroine is humiliated and dragged through the mud and we’re a witness to it all. It’s really hard to read those books even though the heroines are strong and their stories end with a huge happy ending but still, I wouldn’t want to be an SEP heroine. I couldn’t deal with all of that madness.

There’s my top 5 for this week. What characters would you not want to trade places with?

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Week in Books (35)

Posted September 19, 2016 by Rowena in Features | 13 Comments

Week in Books v2

..and I’m back! I read 4 books this week and I’m still in my reading groove right now. So stinkin’ excited to be reading again.

The highlight of this week was Brenna’s senior pictures. Here’s a picture that I snapped during her photo shoot. I thought she did great but I’m biased. 🙂

brenna-senior-pictures

Now her senior year is officially under way. Basketball fundraising has started, off-season conditioning has started and I just want everything to slow down.

Currently Reading


The Viscount and the Vixen (Hellions of Havisham #3) by Lorraine Heath.

Love begets madness. Viscount Locksley watched it happen to his father after his cherished wife’s death. But when his sire arranges to marry flame-haired fortune hunter Portia Gadstone, Locke is compelled to take drastic measures to stop the stunning beauty from taking advantage of the marquess. A marriage of mutual pleasure could be convenient, indeed… as long as inconvenient feelings don’t interfere.

Desperation forced Portia to agree to marry a madman. The arrangement will offer the protection she needs. Or so she believes until the marquess’s distractingly handsome son peruses the fine print… and takes his father’s place!

Now the sedate—and, more importantly, secure—union Portia planned has been tossed in favor of one simmering with wicked temptation and potential heartbreak. Because as she begins to fall for her devilishly seductive husband, her dark secrets surface and threaten to ruin them both—unless Locke is willing to risk all and open his heart to love.

It’s Locke time. 🙂

Read

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins | 3.5 out of 5
The Boy is Back (Boy #4) by Meg Cabot | 4 out of 5
To Love and to Cherish (Wedding Belles #3) by Lauren Layne | 4.5 out of 5
The Billionaire Next Door (Billionaire Bad Boys #2) by Jessica Lemmon | 4 out of 5

My favorite read of the week was To Love and to Cherish (Wedding Belles #3) by Lauren Layne. I was looking forward to reading Alexis and Logan’s story and Lauren Layne nailed their romance. It was just as great as the other books and I adored both Alexis and Logan. It was so much fun.

My least favorite read of the week goes to The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. Rachel, Megan and even Anna got on my hot damn nerves throughout the entire book but I still ended up liking the book. I couldn’t put the book down even though I was mad as hell at everyone and everything going on. The mystery was nailed though because as soon as I figured it out, I was shocked as shit and before I could lurch up in bed, my iPad fell on my face. Ha! So while I liked the book, it just wasn’t my favorite of the week.

Book Boyfriend


Logan Harris from To Love and to Cherish (Wedding Belles #3) by Lauren Layne.

He smiled down at her, his hands cupping her face. “Ask me again. Ask me the reason.”

Logan was everything that I was hoping he’d be from the previous books in this series and I finished his book with a great big smile on my face. Loved him.

Reviewed

Just One Week by Alice Gaines
Who’s That Girl? by Mhairi McFarlane
A Scot in the Dark by Sarah MacLean
Wild Embrace by Nalini Singh

New

I’m wrapped up in review books this week so I didn’t look to see what I was going to add to my TBR list. Maybe this week will be different.

For Review

Size Matters by Alison Bliss
Four Weddings and a Sixpence by Julia Quinn, Elizabeth Boyle, Stephanie Sloane & Laura Lee Guhrke
To Love and to Cherish (Wedding Belles #3) by Lauren Layne

There you have it, my week in books. How did your week go?

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