Fuel for Fire by Julie Ann Walker

Title: Fuel for Fire

Author: Julie Ann Walker

Publication Date: July 4, 2017

Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca

Blurb from the Book:  Dagan Zoelner has made three huge mistakes.  The first two left blood on his hands.  The third left him wondering…what if? What if he had told the woman of his dreams how he felt before his world fell apart?

Spitfire CIA agent Chelsea Duvall has always had a thing for bossy, brooding Dagan.  It’s just as well that he’s never given her a second look, since she carries a combustible secret about his past that threatens to torch their lives.

Review:

Fuel for Fire has action, romance, and… the potential for a future male/male romance novel by Julie Ann Walker?  One can only speculate, but I’m sure rooting for it.  Moving on from that titillating possibility, Fuel for Fire is another winner by Mrs. Walker.  Until now I thought my favorite characters were Becky and Frank from In Rides Trouble, but I’m starting to think that the tides might be turning towards Dagan and Chelsea.

I’ve always had a thing for men with unique names, so it makes sense that Dagan would be my new fictional crush.  What doesn’t make sense is that fact that I married a ‘Robert’.  I still can’t get over that one.  Dagan is not the smoothest talker in the romance novel world.  In fact, he tends to bungle most conversations and he has absolutely no idea how to compliment a woman, but he’s rugged and sexy and in need of a little bit of feminine touch.

Chelsea is exactly the woman Dagan needs.  I loved that she was unique and independent and powerful, but not without weakness.  She speaks her mind.  She’s loves herself, but has plenty of love left for those around her.  I wanted to become Chelsea.

There’s chemistry between these two that’s out of this world (evidenced by some scenes that will make your blood boil in the very best way).  The verbal sparring is witty and hilarious, but the real action happens when the talking stops.  The first sex scene in Fuel for Fire is one for the books… literally.  You’re going to reread it over and over and over again and it’ll only get better and better.

My favorite part of this book (and boy, was it hard to choose) is honestly probably the secondary characters Mrs. Walker has focused on in Fuel for Fire.  Christian and Emily and Ace and Rusty.  They’re some of her most brilliant characters yet and I cannot wait to see where she takes them.  Sometimes when I’m in between sex scenes or fights in books I find myself a little bored and wondering when the next bit of action will come.  In Fuel for Fire there’s never a boring moment.  Everything is amazing.  Every little bit.

You can pre-order her upcoming book at your nearest indie bookstore, located here.  If you read on Kindle you can purchase your book here.

Follow us on Instagram.  Like us on Facebook.

A Distant Heart by Sonali Dev

Title: A Distant Heart

Author: Sonali Dev

Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp.

Publication Date: December 26, 2017

Blurb:

Kimaya is a miracle baby; the first child to survive following her parent’s seven miscarriages.  At the age of ten she develops a rare form of aplastic anemia that severely compromises her immune system and requires her complete isolation from the world around her.

Rahul was thirteen when his father died protecting Kimaya’s father, a popular politician.  Though he is, at first, filled with hate and rage towards Kimaya’s family he accepts their gift of financial assistance for his family, with the caveat that he work to pay them back.  Then, one afternoon, while washing bird poop off windows Rahul comes across Kimaya, trapped and lonely behind the glass windows of her bedroom.

As the years go by Rahul and Kimi develop a unique and deep friendship. He becomes her eyes to the outside world and she becomes his refuge in a cruel world. With Kimi’s encouragement, Rahul makes his way into the extremely selective Indian Civil Services Police Cadre. When Kimi is given a new lease on life via a life-saving procedure, she and Rahul must navigate their undeniable attraction, their lost friendship, complicated family dynamics, and a web of lies that cut too close to home to learn the real meaning of courage, loss and love.

Review:

Sonali Dev, author of The Bollywood Bride (review here), is an absolute wonder of an author.  The Bollywood Bride is the first in a series that I wouldn’t really call a ‘standalone series’.  You’re going to need to read The Bollywood Bride and The Bollywood Affair and A Change of Heart.  I’ll admit that I only read The Bollywood Bride, as of yet (ah-mazing) and I was able to get the gist of A Distant Heart’s background stories, but it would have been so much easier had I snapped up those other books first.

Have you ever wanted to read a book and immerse yourself in another culture?  Honestly, prior to this book that was never my goal with romance novels.  I don’t want to think.  I want a distraction from my life when I read romance.  I guess the reality is that I’d never found an author who could bring me so deeply into another culture, another country, another world quite like Sonali Dev does with the Indian culture.  Her books are an experience unlike any other.

Sonali Dev’s writing is like poetry (but better because I honestly don’t enjoy poetry that much, or maybe I just never found the right poetry).  She doesn’t just write a book, she creates an experience; a tour of India and of its people.  This book is quite the journey even without the geography lesson though.  You become Kimaya.  You become Rahul.  You understand their pain and their suffering as if it was your own.  Your heart hurts even as it soars with love and understanding for their circumstances.

The passion within these pages isn’t like your typical romance novel.  The love between Kimaya and Rahul is a different sort of love than we’re used to reading between the pages.  It’s innocent and wholesome, a relationship formed between two lonely children who were desperate for friendship and understanding.  In the same breath, however, you can see the co-dependent, borderline unhealthy, bond that the two of them have for one another.  You war with yourself over what is right and what is necessary for these two to have their happy-ending.

You won’t regret picking up these books.  They’re heart-warming, moving novels that challenge what you think a romance novel is and can be.  Your life will be forever changed by what you read between the covers of these books. In case you weren’t pulled in by this review alone here’s a few more words about this book: gangsters, heart transplants, & murder. Hooked?

The Pirate's Bride by Cathy Skendrovich

Title: A Pirate’s Bride

Author: Cathy Skendrovich

Publisher: Literary Wanderlust LLC

Blurb from Goodreads:

All Sophie Bellard wants is her freedom, freedom to sail the seven seas, and freedom to be her own person without interference from some controlling husband. But an arranged marriage to handsome and dangerous Captain Andre Dubois derails all her hopes. After a disastrous wedding night where a ruinous secret is discovered, the two go their separate ways with hopes of never meeting again.

Sophie becomes a pirate, while Andre sets off for the Orient where he makes a murderous enemy. After escaping with his life, Andre returns to home waters, and in an unexpected twist of pirate fate, reunites with his estranged and unwilling wife. When Andre’s murderous enemy threatens Sophie’s life, he vows to protect what is his, and attempts to win his wife’s forgiveness and love, once and for all.

Review:

The Pirate’s Bride is your typical rough-and-tumble pirate novel except it does something that I think a lot of pirate novels tend to forget about, it includes the pirate lingo!  I mean, is it really a pirate novel if the characters sound like they could come from any Midwestern state in the U.S.?   Right from the start author Cathy Skendovich lets you know that you should prepare yourself that this is going to be a pirate novel.

The characters are dynamic to say the least.  I had a love/hate relationship with Captain Andre Dubois.  You know he must be tough because, well, he’s a pirate, but you’re begging him to reveal some of that soft interior to Ms. Sophie Bellard lest she give up on him.  And you want Sophie to soften (because otherwise what’s the point of reading a romance novel). Meanwhile, you’re simultaneously hoping Sophie never opens her heart back up to that S.O.B. who treated her with such disregard.  This book really has your emotions warring with one another.

What I think is most important though is that despite the fact that at times I literally hated Andre Dubois and wished nothing more than for him to fall off a bridge I still managed to root for him, which should say something about Ms. Skendrovich’s writing and character building abilities.  Their passion was real and believable. 

The difficult part of this book was that both characters are pirates.  Not happy-go-lucky Peter Pan pirates, but honest to goodness pirates who rob and pillage and kill.  It’s sort of hard to wrap your mind around that when you’re reading because you want to love the characters and believe that, despite their faults, they’re good people.  Sophie and Andre aren’t good people.  They’re good characters though, and that’s really all that matters; especially if you remember that even pirates to fall in love.

All in all, this book makes a pleasant vacation read (and that’s where I read it).  Buy the book for $1.99 here.