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Hi reader,
Wednesday is for romance, and this week the lane gave us two releases that are almost comically far apart. One is a closed-door small-town love story with cinnamon rolls at stake. The other is an open-door fantasy about two married people who cannot stop keeping secrets. Pick by the ache you are in the mood for.
Sweet, small-town, closed-door: Love at First Brew, by Jennie Wren Foster
Aspen Ridge Romance, Book One. Rivals to lovers, meddling town, happily ever after guaranteed. Abby Winters pours coffee for the whole town, smiles at everybody, and does the math in her head. Her mother's cafe is her family legacy, and the bank has given her until January. Then a moving truck pulls up across the street, and out steps Jake Campbell: former big-city pastry chef, infuriatingly observant, and the new owner of the only bakery on Main Street. He critiques her muffins. She declares war. The town prints it in the newspaper.
"Abby Winters smacked the side plate of the old La Marzocco with the heel of her hand, the same way her mother used to, a fix passed down like a family recipe. The machine groaned, hissed, and went silent."
High heat, open door, married and complicated: The Fracture Courts, by Kira Deveraux
The Thornbound Chronicles, Book Two. For readers of ACOTAR Books 2 and up and The Bridge Kingdom. Six weeks after Elowen and Caelan remade the Crown, the bond they chose to diminish has given them the one thing neither was raised to survive: privacy. She is hiding a dead ward-anchor and a meeting with a rebel commander. He is hiding eleven visits to the prisoner who buried her father. And something patient is bleeding the kingdom's defenses through the channels everyone forgot to watch. Book One was the slow burn. Book Two is the ignition.
"I know it from ten feet up the watchtower stair, the way you know a hearth has gone out behind a closed door. Ward anchors hum. Not a sound, exactly. A pressure against the teeth. This one sits in its housing like a pulled tooth."
Second chances and grown-up heart: Clara Langford
If you want the human ache of romance, start Clara's Mercy General series. In New Beginnings at Mercy General, a charge nurse who has given twenty-five years to the job comes home from twelve days in Tuscany with a sourdough starter and a decision, right as the man sent to decide whether her hospital survives walks in the door. Some second chances arrive right on time.
All of it lives here: https://www.jlcollinspublishing.com/books
Want the next romance before it is out? Jennie, Kira, and Clara all run their teams through Read It First, the JL Collins Publishing launch team: early copies, free, for an honest review. Reply and tell me which you want early (sweet, spicy, or grown-up second chance) and I will add you, plus send a bonus scene as a welcome.
Tell me your ache: sweet small-town, high-heat fantasy, or a grown-up second chance? Hit reply. I love knowing which lane you are in.
Happy reading,
Jennie, Kira and Clara
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