Tuesday, December 31, 2019

2019 TOP READS

Liza’s 2019 Top Picks

So I shared my top audiobook picks yesterday, and wanted to spotlight my top picks I read as well. Seriously I was super lucky to read so many amazing books this year, and it was really hard to narrow down my favorites from the 150 books I read this year. These books are in no particular order, and I loved each and every book.

Easy Ride by Breezie Bennett

Breezie Bennett is a new author who has hooked me as a reader from her very first book. Lots of sexy football players, smart women, laughter and tears in each book.

Tomboy by Avery Flynn

We finally got Fallon Hartigan’s story and it was totally worth the wait. She is probably my favorite character every written by Avery Flynn. I own this book in print, digital and audio I love it so much!

Old Dog New Tricks by Roxanne St. Claire

We waited forever for the Dogfather to get his books after he took care of helping his adult children each find their mates. I knew it would be a tough thing for Daniel to love again after his true love Annie had passed away. This story was full of love, along with some laughter and tears. Loved every moment of this story!

Total Surrender/Absolute Pleasure by Erika Wilde

I love the grown up fairy tale series of books from Erika Wilde. Seriously I couldn’t pick which one was my favorite so far, so I had to list them both. Super sexy stories with a bit of intrigue along the way. Highly recommend this series of books!

As Long As I Have You by Bella Andre

We finally got to meet the London part of the Sullivan clan, and I fell just as in love with this part of the family as all the other members of the family. The Sullivan series of books remains some of my favorite stories I’ve ever read.

Dare Me Tonight/More Than Sexy by Carly Phillips

I love the Dare family so much!!! With Dare Me Tonight we got the baby of both family’s story, Sienna Dare. I’ve wanted her story from the beginning and loved seeing her meet her match in Ethan Knight. More Than Sexy wrapped up our Florida Dare siblings with Jason Dare’s story and introduced us to the best friends in his life who are just like brothers to him. Loved both stories so much, I’ve read them each multiple times this year.

Wolf Rain by Nalini Singh

The newest Psy-Changeling book took us back to DarkRiver/SnowDancer territory and I was so freaking happy to be back with so many of my favorite characters. Memory and Alexei’s story was a wonderful addition to the series and I felt like I was coming home with this story.

Storm Cursed by Patricia Briggs

Honestly one of my favorites in the Mercy Thompson series. I love that Mercy seems to become stronger with each new book. I also really loved the time we got with Mercy and Adam together and seeing Mercy and Mary Jo finally find some peace.

Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev

Seriously this was such an amazing contemporary retelling of Pride & Prejudice. Sonali Dev pulled me in from the very first page and I loved the entire ride. I fell in love with the entire Raje family and can’t wait to read more of their stories in the future.

Black List by Lynn Raye Harirs

The first book with Ian Black’s Bandits, and I totally loved this first book. Loved Jace and Maddy, and especially the times we got to spend with Ian Black. These books have every bit as much suspense as the Hostile Operations Team books, and I can’t wait for future stories.

Nikki’s Top 2019 Picks

2019 was an amazing year filled with great romance books. The titles listed below are in no particular order. It would be difficult to do that because I love them all. I've included links to my reviews for all the novels listed, with the exception of the last trilogy because I haven't written it yet. I hope you find my suggestions helpful in your quest for your next great read!

I've included links to my reviews on the blog for the ones that have a review.

1. Choose Me by RC Boldt


2. Too Good At Goodbyes by RC Boldt


3. Butterfly in Frost by Sylvia Day


4. Love Story Duet by Robin Huber


5. Wages of Sin Duet by Tara Leigh


6. At the Pleasure of the President by Lexi Blake and Shayla Black


7. I Want You Back by Lorelei James


8. Spun Out by Lorelei James


9. The Sutter Lake series by Catherine Cowles



10. The Sugar Bowl Trilogy by Sawyer Bennett



Monday, December 30, 2019

TOP AUDIOBOOK PICKS OF 2019

Liza’s Top Audiobook Picks of 2019

Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Random House Audio)

New to me author and OMG I loved this story so much. I’m really hoping it’s true it will soon be made into a show on Amazon Prime.

Veronica Speedwell series 1 – 4 by Deanna Raybourn (Recorded Books/Audible Audio)

I glommed this series as quickly as I could after listening to the first book in the series. I’m anxiously awaiting the next book in the series!

The Lemon Sisters by Jill Shalvis (Harper Audio)


One of my favorite books ever from Jill Shalvis! The romance was strong in this story, but it’s the sisters’ relationship that makes this such an amazing story.

Protect the Prince by Jennifer Estep (Harper Audio)

Loved the growth of all the characters in this book. I can’t wait to read the 3rd book in 2020!

The Rest of the Story by Sarah Dessen (Harper Audio)

Somehow this was my first book from Sarah Dessen, and I loved her voice. Her books are classified as YA, but her voice speaks to everyone.

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (Audible Audio)

I really enjoyed this story very much. While I figured out most of the mystery involved in this story rather early on, it was still such an engaging story from start to finish.

Rebel by Beverly Jenkins  (Harper Audio)

I admit it…somehow this is my first book by Ms. Bev. I absolutely loved her voice and was pulled into the story from page one.  Yes Rebel was my first book, but definitely won’t be my last!

Sapphire Flames by Ilona Andrews (Harper Audio)

I love the Hidden Legacy series of books and really loved the first book with Catalina as the head of House Baylor.

Barenuckle Bastards series by Sarah MacLean (Harper Audio)

I listened to both books after hearing Sarah MacLean speak at RWA in July. I absolutely fell in love with her voice in these books, and can’t wait to see what happens in the 3rd Barenuckle Bastards books.

Well Met by Jen DeLuca (Penguin Audio)


This romantic comedy story was one of the best stories I listened to this year. I actually had tried to get a print copy at RWA at the publisher’s signing and Ms. DeLuca ran out as I got to her table. I have to say it was more than worth the wait to listen to the story!

The A.I. Who Loved Me by Alyssa Cole (Audible Audio)

Alyssa Cole could probably write and updated phone book and I’d love it. Her Reluctant Royals books have been some of my favorites from the very beginning. I grabbed The A.I. Who Loved Me as soon as it hit Audible and loved every minute of this story. I really hope we get more stories in the future with these characters as well.

Heidi’s Guide to Four Letter Words by Tara Sivec & Andi Arndt (Audible Originals)

I signed up for Audible Escapes in December and one of the books suggested to me was this book. I literally was laughing out loud as I was grocery shopping and again at work while listening to this story. It hit on all my happy places and I could read about these characters over and over again.


Nikki’s Top Audiobook Picks of 2019

Cold Fury Hockey series by Sawyer Bennett

1. Alex
2. Garrett
3. Zack
4. Ryker
5. Hawks
6. Max
7. Roman
8. Lucas
9. Can
10. Reed
11. Marek
All Tantor Audio
The Cold Fury Series by Sawyer Bennett 


This series was my first foray into Sawyer Bennett’s amazing world of romance novels. It took me a while to get there, I missed the bus so many times, but sweet Baby Jesus...I have arrived! 

I was looking for an audiobook from my local library to fill the silence while I was knitting a blanket, and I downloaded book 1 in the series, Alex. I was floored by how much much I loved it. I’m not typically a fan of sports romance, but the Cold Fury won me over. It’s an 11 book series and I gobbled them all up, in audiobook, over the course of 4 weeks. If I had to pick my favourite, I think it might be Zack. It’s book 3. It’s full of angst and heartbreak...my weakness in romance! I love that the book was narrated by both a man and a woman. All the books are read by Cris Dukehart and Graham Halstead. They did an amazing job bringing the characters to life.


Ethan Frost series by Tracy Wolff

1. Ruined
2. Addicted
3. Exposed
All Tantor Audio
The Ethan Frost series by Tracy Wolff


I really loved this series. It was dark and twisted, and heartbreakingly beautiful. This series deals with some sensitive, possible trigger inducing, topics. But the love story between Ethan and Chloe consumed me until I read all the books. I will say that I wasn’t a huge fan of the narrator, Tess Chalmers. Her voice grated on me a bit. It reminded me of a stereotypical “valley girl” from the 80’s. Sometimes, her voice would pull me out of the story, but most of time I was able to brush it off. 


DOWN AND DIRTY COVER REVEAL

Down and Dirty
By Kendall Ryan
Release Day: March 9, 2020


About the Book

Your favorite hot jocks are back with an all new stand-alone novel. 

Whoops.

Last night in Vegas is a blur. There were drunken shenanigans … And now I’m waking up naked wrapped around Landon freaking Covington, my incredibly hot younger guy friend, with a wedding ring on my finger and a marriage certificate on the table next to me. 

Like I said, whoops. I’m thirty. I should know better, but what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right? 

Well, apparently not. 

Because I’ve married the last alpha-male virgin on the planet. Yep, virgin. And my stubborn, oddly traditional new husband doesn’t want a divorce. He wants me

If you like sexy, confident men who know how to handle a stick (on and off the ice), and smart women who are strong enough to keep all those big egos in check, this series of athlete romances is perfect for you!

(Books can be enjoyed in any order.) 


Amazon US  https://amzn.to/35RMeX3
Amazon UK  https://amzn.to/2SneM6K

Add to Goodreads  http://bit.ly/2EOQcUs


About Kendall Ryan

A New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author of more than three dozen titles, Kendall Ryan has sold over 3 million books and her books have been translated into several languages in countries around the world.
Her books have also appeared on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists more than 70 times. Ryan has been featured in such publications as USA Today, Newsweek, and InTouch Magazine.

She lives in Texas with her husband and two sons.

Visit her at: www.kendallryanbooks.com for the latest book news, and fun extras.

Subscriber to the newsletter: http://www.kendallryanbooks.com/newsletter/



GOOD GIRLS LIE BLOG TOUR

Good Girls Lie
Author: J.T. Ellison
ISBN: 9780778330776
Publication Date: 12/30/19
Publisher: MIRA Books

Book Summary:
Perched atop a hill in the tiny town of Marchburg, Virginia, The Goode School is a prestigious prep school known as a Silent Ivy. The boarding school of choice for daughters of the rich and influential, it accepts only the best and the brightest. Its elite status, long-held traditions and honor code are ideal for preparing exceptional young women for brilliant futures at Ivy League universities and beyond. But a stranger has come to Goode, and this ivy has turned poisonous.

In a world where appearances are everything, as long as students pretend to follow the rules, no one questions the cruelties of the secret societies or the dubious behavior of the privileged young women who expect to get away with murder. But when a popular student is found dead, the truth cannot be ignored. Rumors suggest she was struggling with a secret that drove her to suicide.

But look closely…because there are truths and there are lies, and then there is everything that really happened.
J.T. Ellison’s pulse-pounding new novel examines the tenuous bonds of friendship, the power of lies and the desperate lengths people will go to to protect their secrets.



Buy Links: 


Social Links:
Twitter: @thrillerchick
Facebook: @JTEllison14
Instagram: @thrillerchick

Author Bio: J.T. Ellison is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than 20 novels, and the EMMY-award winning co-host of A WORD ON WORDS, Nashville's premier literary show. With millions of books in print, her work has won critical acclaim, prestigious awards, and has been published in 26 countries. Ellison lives in Nashville with her husband and twin kittens.







1
THE HANGING

The girl’s body dangles from the tall iron gates guarding the school’s entrance. A closer examination shows the ends of a red silk tie peeking out like a cardinal on a winter branch, forcing her neck into a brutal angle. She wears her graduation robe and multicolored stole as if knowing she’ll never see the achievement. It rained overnight and the thin robe clings to her body, dew sparkling on the edges. The last tendrils of dawn’s fog laze about her legs, which are five feet from the ground. 
There is no breeze, no birds singing or squirrels industriously gathering for the long winter ahead, no cars passing along the street, only the cool, misty morning air and the gentle metallic creaking of the gates under the weight of the dead girl. She is suspended in midair, her back to the street, her face hidden behind a curtain of dirty, wet hair, dark from the rains. 
Because of the damage to her face, it will take them some time to officially identify her. In the beginning, it isn’t even clear she attends the school, despite wearing The Goode School robes. 
But she does. 
The fingerprints will prove it. Of course, there are a few people who know exactly who is hanging from the school’s gates. Know who, and know why. But they will never tell. As word spreads of the apparent suicide, The Goode School’s all-female student body begin to gather, paying silent, terrified homage to their fallen compatriot. The gates are closed and locked—as they always are overnight—buttressed on either side by an ivy-covered, ten-foot-high, redbrick wall, but it tapers off into a knee-wall near the back entrance to the school parking lot, and so is escapable by foot. The girls of Goode silently filter out from the dorms, around the end of Old West Hall and Old East Hall to Front Street—the main street of Marchburg, the small Virginia town housing the elite prep school—and take up their positions in front of the gate in a wedge of crying, scared, worried young women who glance over shoulders looking for the one who is missing from their ranks. To reassure themselves this isn’t their friend, their sister, their roommate. 
Another girl joins them, but no one notices she comes from the opposite direction, from town. She was not behind the redbrick wall. 
Whispers rise from the small crowd, nothing loud enough to be overheard but forming a single question. 
Who is it? Who? 
A solitary siren pierces the morning air, the sound bleeding upward from the bottom of the hill, a rising crescendo. Someone has called the sheriff. 
Goode perches like a gargoyle above the city’s small downtown, huddles behind its ivy-covered brick wall. The campus is flanked by two blocks of restaurants, bars, and necessary shops. The school’s buildings are tied together with trolleys—enclosed glass-and-wood bridges that make it easy for the girls to move from building to building in climate-controlled comfort. It is quiet, dignified, isolated. As are the girls who attend the school; serious, studious. Good. Goode girls are always good. They go on to great things. 
The headmistress, or dean, as she prefers to call herself, Ford Julianne Westhaven, great-granddaughter several times removed from the founder of The Goode School, arrives in a flurry, her driver, Rumi, braking the family Bentley with a screech one hundred feet away from the gates. The crowd in the street blocks the car and, for a moment, the sight of the dangling girl. No one stops to think about why the dean might be off campus this early in the morning. Not yet, anyway. 
Dean Westhaven rushes out of the back of the dove-gray car and runs to the crowd, her face white, lips pressed firmly together, eyes roving. It is a look all the girls at Goode recognize and shrink from. 
The dean’s irritability is legendary, outweighed only by her kindness. It is said she alone approves every application to the school, that she chooses the Goode girls by hand for their intelligence, their character. Her say is final. Absolute. But for all her goodness, her compassion, her kindness, Dean Westhaven has a temper. 
She begins to gather the girls into groups, small knots of natural blondes and brunettes and redheads, no fantastical dye allowed. Some shiver in oversize school sweatshirts and running shorts, some are still in their pajamas. The dean is looking for the chick missing from her flock. She casts occasional glances over her shoulder at the grim scene behind her. She, too, is unsure of the identity of the body, or so it seems. Perhaps she simply doesn’t want to acknowledge the truth. 
The siren grows to an earsplitting shriek and dies midrange, a soprano newly castrated. The deputies from the sheriff’s office have arrived, the sheriff hot on their heels. Within moments, they cordon off the gates, move the students back, away, away. One approaches the body, cataloging; another begins taking discreet photographs, a macabre paparazzi. 
They speak to Dean Westhaven, who quietly, breathlessly, admits she hasn’t approached the body and has no idea who it might be. 
She is lying, though. She knows. Of course, she knows. It was inevitable. 
The sheriff, six sturdy feet of muscle and sinew, approaches the gate and takes a few shots with his iPhone. He reaches for the foot of the dead girl and slowly, slowly turns her around. 
The eerie morning silence is broken by the words, soft and gasping, murmurs moving sinuously through the crowd of girls, their feet shuffling in the morning chill, the fog’s tendrils disappearing from around the posts. 
They say her name, an unbroken chain of accusation and misery. 
Ash. 
Ash.
Ash.

2
THE LIES

There are truths, and there are lies, and then there is everything that really happened, which is where you and I will meet. My truth is your lie, and my lie is your truth, and there is a vast expanse between them. 
Take, for example, Ash Carlisle. 
Six feet tall, glowing skin, a sheaf of blond hair in a ponytail. She wears black jeans with rips in the knees and a loose greenand-white plaid button-down with white Adidas Stan Smiths; casual, efficient travel clothes. A waiter delivers a fresh cup of tea to her nest in the British Airways first-class lounge, and when she smiles her thanks, he nearly drops his tray—so pure and happy is that smile. The smile of an innocent. 
Or not so innocent? You’ll have to decide that for yourself. Soon. 
She’s perfected that smile, by the way. Practiced it. Stood in the dingy bathroom of the flat on Broad Street and watched herself in the mirror, lips pulling back from her teeth over and over and over again until it becomes natural, until her eyes sparkle and deep dimples appear in her cheeks. It is a full-toothed smile, her teeth straight and blindingly white, and when combined with the china-blue eyes and naturally streaked blond hair, it is devastating. 
Isn’t this what a sociopath does? Work on their camouflage? What better disguise is there than an open, thankful, gracious smile? It’s an exceptionally dangerous tool, in the right hands. 
And how does a young sociopath end up flying first class, you might ask? You’ll be assuming her family comes from money, naturally, but let me assure you, this isn’t the case. Not at all. Not really. Not anymore. 
No, the dean of the school sent the ticket.
Why? 
Because Ash Carlisle leads a charmed life, and somehow managed to hoodwink the dean into not only paying her way but paying for her studies this first term, as well. A full scholarship, based on her exemplary intellect, prodigy piano playing, and sudden, extraordinary need. Such a shame she lost her parents so unexpectedly. 
Yes, Ash is smart. Smart and beautiful and talented, and capable of murder. Don’t think for a moment she’s not. Don’t let her fool you. 
Sipping the tea, she types and thinks, stops to chew on a nail, then reads it again. The essay she is obsessing over gained her access to the prestigious, elite school she is shipping off to. The challenges ahead—transferring to a new school, especially one as impossible to get into as The Goode School—frighten her, excite her, make her more determined than ever to get away from Oxford, from her past. 
A new life. A new beginning. A new chapter for Ash. 
But can you ever escape your past? 
Ash sets down the tea, and I can tell she is worrying again about fitting in. Marchburg, Virginia—population five hundred on a normal summer day, which expands to seven hundred once the students arrive for term—is a long way from Oxford, England. She worries about fitting in with the daughters of the DC elite—daughters of senators and congressmen and ambassadors and reporters and the just plain filthy rich. She can rely on her looks—she knows how pretty she is, isn’t vain about it, exactly, but knows she’s more than acceptable on the looks scale—and on her intelligence, her exceptional smarts. Some would say cunning, but I think this is a disservice to her. She’s both booksmart and street-smart, the rarest of combinations. Despite her concerns, if she sticks to the story, she will fit in with no issues. 
The only strike against her, of course, is me, but no one knows about me. 
No one can ever know about me.


Friday, December 27, 2019

SALE BLAST: GOING DOWN EASY

"Steamy, sexy and emotionally charged. Carly's most erotic book to date."  J. Kenner, New York Times bestselling author

Going Down Easy, a sexy and unforgettable standalone romance from New York Times bestselling author Carly Phillips is free for a limited time only! 

Don’t miss out! Read for free today!
Amazon: https://amzn.to/2PHi7M4 

Meet Kaden Barnes.

Alpha-licious in the most unexpected ways, Kaden Barnes always gets what he wants.

Enigmatic and exacting, he's unable to keep an assistant for long. Until Lexie Parker arrives. She's no-nonsense, efficient and all business… She’s also hot as sin and soon starring in Kaden's dirtiest fantasies.

When their passion for each other reaches a boiling point, Kaden may think he’s calling the shots, but for this billionaire bad boy, going down easy has never felt so good.