I can hardly believe it’s August already. Where has this summer gone?

I officially return to full-time office work this week to get ready for this academic year. Work in higher education is cyclical, which I love, except when it’s really busy (it cuts into my reading time – wink, wink).

Just a reminder, my rating scale is as follows:
Five-star: I LOVED this book and would highly recommend it to anyone that asked me for a recommendation. I believe the writing is quality, the characters are so loveable that you can’t help but love their story, and the plot has little or no gaps in my opinion. A five-star book often results in a re-read because I loved it so much.
Four-star: I really liked this book and would recommend it to most readers. The writing is good, the character development is great, and the plot has just a few areas that I think needed more development.
Three-star: I liked this book. I wouldn’t necessarily re-read it again, but I didn’t stop reading because I felt compelled to find out what happened. There might be errors or other editorial complaints.
Two-star: This book was not for me. I couldn’t get into it for whatever reason. There were likely many things that turned me off, including but not limited to: a poor choice in POV, character development, flow, energy, attention grabbing, etc. I would not recommend this book to my friends.
One-star: Likely, a one-star is a DNF book for me. There were too many problems. Would not recommend this book to anyone.

Started my week off by reading My Always One by Aleatha Romig.

I received this as an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC), and you can see my honest review here!

Rating: 4 Stars

My Favorite Half-Night Stand by Christina Lauren

Blurb:

Millie Morris has always been one of the guys. A UC Santa Barbara professor, she’s a female-serial-killer expert who’s quick with a deflection joke and terrible at getting personal. And she, just like her four best guy friends and fellow professors, is perma-single.

So when a routine university function turns into a black tie gala, Mille and her circle make a pact that they’ll join an online dating service to find plus-ones for the event. There’s only one hitch: after making the pact, Millie and one of the guys, Reid Campbell, secretly spend the sexiest half-night of their lives together, but mutually decide the friendship would be better off strictly platonic.

But online dating isn’t for the faint of heart. While the guys are inundated with quality matches and potential dates, Millie’s first profile attempt garners nothing but dick pics and creepers. Enter “Catherine”—Millie’s fictional profile persona, in whose make-believe shoes she can be more vulnerable than she’s ever been in person. Soon “Catherine”and Reid strike up a digital pen-pal-ship…but Millie can’t resist temptation in real life, either. Soon, Millie will have to face her worst fear—intimacy—or risk losing her best friend, forever.

Perfect for fans of Roxanne and She’s the Man, Christina Lauren’s latest romantic comedy is full of mistaken identities, hijinks, and a classic love story with a modern twist. Funny and fresh, you’ll want to swipe right on My Favorite Half-Night Stand.

Rating: 4 Stars

Millie and Reid. Reid and Millie. Man, I really liked these two.

And all of their friends, too. This friend group is what every adult dreams of… supportive, fun, encouraging, and honest. This ensemble and their antics make this book so much more than just a love story between two people. In a commentary on what modern relationships look like, Christina Lauren successfully open us all to feelings of family, friendship, and catfishing.

This book made me crack up, made me pull my hair out, made me want to throw it across the room, but I couldn’t put it down.

I ended up binge reading this in one afternoon and I wish I would have taken my time to love these characters longer.

Burned by SE Rose and Sierra Hill

I received this as an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC), and you can see my honest review here!

Rating: 4 Stars

The Spark by Vi Keeland

Blurb: Before I even met Donovan Decker, I knew his shoe size.
You see, I’d gone away for a few days, and in my haste to get out of the airport, I’d grabbed the wrong suitcase.
After checking out the expensive footwear and tailored clothes, I dialed the number on the luggage tag hoping maybe Mister Big Spender might have my bag.
A deep, velvety voice answered, and as luck would have it, he had my suitcase, too.
Donovan and I met at a coffee shop to do the exchange.
Turned out, it wasn’t just his voice that was sexy. The man holding my luggage was absolutely gorgeous, and we had an immediate spark.
He got me to admit that I’d snooped in his bag and then convinced me to make it up to him by letting him buy me coffee.
Coffee led to dinner, dinner led to dessert, and dessert led to spending an entire weekend together. Donovan wasn’t just handsome with a panty-dropping voice. He was also funny, smart, and surprisingly down to earth for a man who wore seven-hundred-dollar shoes.
Did I mention he also did my laundry while I slept? Definitely too good to be true.
So what did I do to repay him for his kindness?
I waited until he was in the shower, then ghosted him.
My life was too complicated for such a great guy.
In the months that passed, I thought about Donovan often.
But New York City had eight-million people, so what were the chances I’d run into him?
Then again, what were the chances I’d run into him a year later…when I’d just started dating his boss?

Rating: 5 Stars

I just simply loved this book. Autumn and Donovan are both characters you can root for.

Their meet-cute over (accidentally) stolen luggage, their second chance meet-cute at a police station, and their commitment to stay friends (Autumn) and to prove their relationship is worth something (Donovan) make you pull for these characters from page one until the very end.

Autumn dates men with no emotional connection because of a past relationship, while Donovan had a rough childhood growing up in rough neighborhoods/on the streets. Both characters have fought to be who they are today and are committed to helping and serving their communities to make them better places. This book was a great example about remembering your roots but also being brave enough to step out of the shadow of your past.

The Wall of Winnipeg and Me by Mariana Zapata

Blurb: Vanessa Mazur knows she’s doing the right thing. She shouldn’t feel bad for quitting. Being an assistant/housekeeper/fairy godmother to the top defensive end in the National Football Organization was always supposed to be temporary. She has plans and none of them include washing extra-large underwear longer than necessary.

But when Aiden Graves shows up at her door wanting her to come back, she’s beyond shocked.

For two years, the man known as The Wall of Winnipeg couldn’t find it in him to tell her good morning or congratulate her on her birthday. Now? He’s asking for the unthinkable.

What do you say to the man who is used to getting everything he wants?

Rating: 5 Stars

LET’S TALK ABOUT THIS SLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW BURN.

I was in quite a slump last week (started and stopped three books in the first chapter) and I asked for recommendations from one of my favorite groups on Facebook AND THEY DID NOT DISAPPOINT.

This is my first read by Mariana Zapata, and it certainly won’t be my last. I see what all the hype was about. This book came HIGHLY recommended by some of my favorite book babes!

Not only is this a slow burn, marriage-of-convenience story, it’s also a sports romance, which is basically one of my favorite things of all time. Add in that the hero is grumpy/shy, and basically it’s love for me, okay?

Vanessa and Aiden start out in an employee/employer relationship before Vanessa quits to run her own graphic design business. She departs her time with Aiden, nicknamed by football fans around America as the Wall of Winnipeg, thinking that he hates her and isn’t sad to see her go.

Turns out, Aiden shows up on her doorstep and begs her to marry him so he can get a green card. Vanessa is opposed because she thinks they hate each other, but eventually agrees when Aiden offers to buy her way out of debt.

They don’t even jump right into faking their relationship in public, even though they run off to Vegas and get married. Between the four walls of the home they share with Zac, they’re basically roommates who “signed papers.”

Day by day, small interactions build between them, until one day, Vanessa realizes how much she actually likes Aiden, and even more, she likes spending time with him.

In a world where Vanessa counts on no one, she begins to count on Aiden. Similarly, in a world where Aiden loves no one, he begins to love Van, protecting her, defending her, caring for her.

By the end, I was practically jumping up and down. The ending was PERFECT. These two.

It’s hard to make a book trope feel new, but Zapata did just that. I’ve read hundreds of books (literally) this year, and this story felt so unique and genuine.

People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry

Blurb: Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.
 
Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since.
 
Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees.
 
Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?

Rating: 5 Stars

Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. I have all the feelings for this book. I loved the format of this book and how Henry jumps from present day (This Summer) to all ten of the summers that came before. These two best friends take a summer trip every summer beginning after their freshmen year in college.

The unlikely friendship develops because of a chance encounter at freshmen orientation, eight months apart, and then a car ride home to their side-by-side hometowns in Ohio.

Poppy hated high school and dreads going home except to her family, and Alex loved high school but carried the burden of helping to raise his three younger brothers after his mother died in childbirth.

Poppy draws out Naked Alex, a.k.a. the person that Alex becomes when someone gives him permission to be who HE is. Alex gives Poppy space to be exactly who she is unapologetically.

Both Poppy and Alex have their dreams come true: Poppy, a travel influencer/writer for a magazine; Alex, a literature professor/English teacher. Yet, neither are happy.

Poppy desperately tries to use ONE LAST summer trip to solidify her place in Alex’s life, on a horrendous trip to Palm Springs in the dead of the summer. Basically everything that can go wrong does. Basically both Poppy and Alex have feelings for each other but won’t act on them because they’d rather be friends than nothing at all.

I literally cried at the end when Poppy finally took some brave steps to go after what she wanted.

“You watch someone date all these people, and you see how different they are with each of them, and then you watch them choose. Some people choose the person they have the best chemistry with, or that they have the most fun with, and some choose the one they think will make an amazing father, or who they’ve felt the safest opening up to. It’s fascinating. How so much of love is about who you are with someone.”

Read this book. And also read her other book, Beach Read. Okay. That’s all.

Broken French by Tasha Boyd

Blurb: Josie thought she was getting a promotion at her architectural firm, but instead her career implodes. She impulsively takes up her roommates’ offer to nanny for a little girl on a mega yacht in the South of France. Even though she can’t stand boats, this seems like fate giving her an opportunity to lick her wounds in a bucket list paradise while she figures out how to get her life back.

But this little girl she’s arrived to look after has a daddy. A widowed, hot, billionaire of a daddy. And if there’s anything that Josie needs less than having to be stuck on a yacht, no matter how luxurious, it’s an inconvenient and highly-combustible attraction to her new boss. A man who, for all his wealth, is grumpy, conceited, and utterly closed off.

Xavier Pascale is on an emotional island of his own making. It’s just him and his daughter and he likes it that way. He works hard, his shareholders are happy, his best friends are his body guard, and the people who work for him. What’s wrong with that? But then he meets Josephine Marin. Her arrival in his life is like a deep ocean tremor along a catastrophic emotional fault line. And now… well, now, he’s very, very aware of his isolation and his very human need. But he can’t be distracted. When he gets distracted terrible things happen.

He should send the nanny home.

He really should.

But what if he just takes what he wants, just this one time …

This is a standalone, contemporary romance. It includes luscious scenes of sparkling blue ocean, and tantalizing, seductive food, was well as a smoking hot, dirty-talking Frenchman. If traveling scares you, or sexy times scare you, then this book is not for you. But if you’re looking for a decadent armchair vacation after being stuck in one place for over a year–a story that will make you laugh, swoon, fan yourself, and cry–then this one is for you!

Rating: 4 Stars

This was a surprising and delicious read. I love a good billionaire romance, but this book gets some seriously extra bonus points because SINGLE DAD + FRENCH. Swoon.

Josie reminded me a bit of myself… a little scared to leave my hometown, a little stuck in my job, a little ready for some adventure, terrified of the ocean.

Xavier is a grumpy single dad, who also happens to be really famous and have some sort of princess for a daughter? His late wife died two years ago, and he’s been broken ever since (hence, the title). There are too many people interested in his life, his work, and his daughter, and he’s constantly worried about safety and security.

When Josie’s best friend asks her to nanny for the Pascale family on a whim, Josie can’t say no. She just lost her job at the firm she’s been working for since graduation. She has no prospects on the horizon, very little in savings, and no family name to fall back on. Her dad’s family was French. What could go wrong?

Josie immediately bonds with Dauphine, Xavier’s ten-year-old daughter. They spend days eating delicious food, jumping into the beautiful Mediterranean Sea, shopping in fancy markets, watching movies, and drawing. She’s basically getting paid to be on vacation.

The hardest part of her job? Her attraction to her boss.

There’s some small twists, some steamy romance, some heavy feelings, and a boat load of miscommunication (also hence the title… Broken French).

Repeat by Kylie Scott

Blurb: When a vicious attack leaves 25-year-old Clementine Johns with no memory, she’s forced to start over. Now she has to figure out who she was and why she made the choices she did – which includes leaving the supposed love of her life, tattoo artist Ed Larsen, only a month before.   

Ed can hardly believe it when his ex shows up at his tattoo parlor with no memory of their past, asking about the breakup that nearly destroyed him. The last thing he needs is more heartache, but he can’t seem to let her go again.

Should they walk away for good, or does their love deserve a repeat performance?

Rating: 4 Stars

This is my second read from Kylie Scott (Fake was my first) and I love her style of storytelling.

Clem and Ed are reunited after a terrible heartbreak because… Clem gets attacked and gets amnesia.

Clem’s sister tries to take care of her, but the danger is still out there. After the attack, Clem’s car gets vandalized. She recognizes no one. She has to figure out who she was and who she is.

Ed can’t help but help her. Circumstances lead to Clem moving back in with Ed for safety reasons, and these two discover new ways to love each other.

Scott surprised me a bit with the twist in this one. I was convinced I knew exactly who was behind Clem’s attack… and then I changed my mind about halfway through the book and THEN I was right! (haha)

This is a really interesting and quick read!

What are you reading this week?