Thursday 21 July 2016

Upcoming New Release & Review: To Have And To Hold by Lauren Layne



To Have and to Hold
The Wedding Belles #1
By: Lauren Layne
Releasing July 26, 2016
Pocket Books
To Have And To Hold

Wedding Belles Series


Sex and the City meets The Wedding Planner in The Wedding Belles, her sizzling brand new contemporary romance series about three ambitious wedding planners who can make any bride’s dream come true…but their own.
Discovering her fiancé is an international conman just moments before they exchange vows devastates celebrity wedding planner Brooke Burke’s business—and breaks her heart. Now a pariah in Los Angeles, she seeks a fresh start in New York City and thinks she’s found it with her first bridal client, a sweet, if slightly spoiled, hotel heiress. Then she meets the uptight businessman who’s holding the purse springs.

Seth Tyler wishes he could write a blank check and be done with his sister’s fancy-pants wedding. Unfortunately, micromanaging the event is his only chance at proving Maya’s fiancé is a liar. Standing directly in his way is the stunning blonde wedding planner whose practiced smiles and sassy comebacks both irritate and arouse him. He needs Brooke’s help. But can he persuade a wedding planner on a comeback mission to unplan a wedding? And more importantly, how will he convince her that the wedding she should be planning…is theirs?


Link to Follow Tour: HERE



I was eager to begin this series after reading the novella taster From This Day Forward. Who doesn't love a wedding and a happy ever after?

Seth Tyler became CEO of Tyler Hotel Group after his father died from a heart attack. It's a career move he aspired to, but not so soon and now he's head of the family too. When his younger sister announces her engagement, he's suspicious about the true intentions of the groom. After all, Maya Tyler is a rich woman and the timeline for a wedding heightens his doubts about Neil Garrett's integrity. When the wedding planner mistakes him for the groom, he hopes the stunning blonde will help him prove his suspicions, only the outcome has consequences he never envisaged.

When her ex-fiancé was arrested at the altar just as they were about to say their wedding vows, Brooke Baldwin is left humiliated. With a new job at The Wedding Belles, she's determined to make a fresh start in New York.  Her first assignment is to arrange the wedding for the Tyler family, an opportunity to organise the nuptials with an opened ended budget. Only she doesn't expect the man holding the purse strings to have a strong influence over her too.

As heroes go, Seth is flawed, cynical to relationships and likes to take control. He makes choices based on his belief of doing the right thing but somehow his best-laid plans are opposite to the desired effect. His imperfection are adorable and deep down his heart is always well meaning and sincere, if only he could change his way of doing things...he's direct and too opinionated.

I adored the fact Brooke tried to look past any negativity about Maya's fiancé Neil. She's a woman who had her dreams destroyed by a fraudster, yet she still believes in love...at least for clients.

"No man at all, really. No falling in love. Not ever again."

Seth and Brooke have an instant, intense attraction that neither can deny. I like that both the protagonists are honest about the sizzling chemistry between themselves.

"I'm not looking for anything...romantic. Or sexual. This thing between us-I'm not going to pretend it's not there, but I'm also not going to act on it….."

Both are often blunt with their opinions of situations and each other.

"What?" she asked. 
"A dirty vodka martini...Somehow that seems to be exactly the perfect drink for you." 
Brooke tilted her head. "Do you always mean for things to sound the way they do when they come out of your mouth?" 
"How's that?" 
"Provocative." 
"What's provocative about repeating your drink order?" 
"The dirty part," she muttered, looking away.

To Have And To Hold is full of the elements that I've come to expect when reading a Lauren Layne novel. The witty dialogue, sexy scenes and secondary characters that pull together to create a wonderful literary scene. I'm left with an overwhelming feel good feeling and a desire to read more from the series...Hello, Logan! 

4.5 stars

***arc generously received courtesy of Pocket Books via NetGalley***



It’s not as though Brooke had meant to start dating a con man. She certainly didn’t intend to get engaged to one.
But that’s the thing about con mans. The good ones were good at, well . . . the con.
And Clay Battaglia had been a good one. The best, actually, if you took the word of the FBI agent who’d debriefed Brooke and her family—while she was still in her wedding dress.
Turns out that while Brooke had been happily building her wedding-planning company, Clay had been quietly and competently been getting away with every white-collar crime in the book. While she’d been planning their wedding, he’d apparently been knee-deep in yet another Ponzi scheme.
Brooke hadn’t even known what a Ponzi scheme was when the FBI had told her.
She did now.
Following Clay’s arrest, she spent weeks researching white-collar crime. Wanting to know what he’d been up to all those times he’d quietly kissed her forehead late at night and told her he needed to make some phone calls for “work.” Wanting to know what her life would have been like if the FBI hadn’t taken him down before they’d exchanged vows.
Still, while Brooke would be ever grateful that she’d learned the truth before she’d become Mrs. Clay Battaglia, she’d be lying if she didn’t admit that the timing of it had stung just a little bit.
If they’d only taken him down a day before. Heck, even an hour before.
But no.
Just moments after Brooke kissed her father’s cheek and prepared to marry the man she loved at the wedding she’d poured her heart into, the FBI stormed—yes, stormed—the church.
Clay was in handcuffs before she even registered what was happening.
Numbly she watched as he listened to his Miranda rights at the precise moment he should have been listening to the vows she’d spent months writing.
And as reality slowly sunk in, Brooke waited. Waited for him to look at her. To look at her and say that it was all a lie. All one big misunderstanding, and that they’d be on their way to Bermuda as planned by tomorrow.
He didn’t.
He didn’t even apologize.
No, the man she’d loved for two years with every fiber of her being merely smiled at her and then shrugged.
There’d been plenty of photos taken that day, but that was the one that made it onto the front page of every major newspaper on the West Coast.
The Greatest Con of All.” “Arrested by Love.” And her personal favorite, courtesy of her very own LA Times: “White-Collar Bride.”
The stories all read pretty much like you’d expect. About Clay, mostly, and the litany of accusations against him, but also about Brooke.
The papers had stopped short of defamation, but the implications were there. She was clueless and ditzy at best, a potentially overlooked accomplice at worst. Completely oblivious to the fact that she’d been sharing a roof with the most nefarious white-collar criminal in a generation—or pretending to be.
None of that had bothered her. What had bothered her was that she’d been a fool. Self-absorbed, naive, and downright blind.
Brooke had been dodging dumb-blonde jokes for most of her life, but the debacle with Clay was the first time she thought she might really, truly be deserving of the title.
She hadn’t been surprised when new clients had stopped calling. Hadn’t been surprised when current clients canceled. Nobody wanted to hire that wedding planner.
Brooke had even been relieved, at first. In those first weeks after Clay’s arrest, she hadn’t been able to handle any talk of weddings. Not her own, and not other people’s.
But the worst part of all of this, the part that kept her up long into the lonely nights, wasn’t the negative effect on her career. No, the worst part was that sometimes, in the very darkest corner of her soul, she feared that she might still love Clay, at least a little. Sure, her brain knew that all the things she’d loved about Clay had been a lie. Her brain understood that his name wasn’t even Clay.
But her heart? Her heart was having a harder time forgetting the way he always let her be the little spoon and tuck her cold feet against his warm calves. Or the way he’d brought her coffee in bed every morning. Or the way she’d come home after a long day with the worst sort of bridezilla and Clay would make them cocktails and sit on the deck with her, and watch the sunset and laugh.

She’d imagined that all their nights would be like that. All the nights for the rest of her life, with maybe with a couple of kids thrown into the mix eventually.
Brooke swallowed.
There wouldn’t be any more nights on the patio watching the sunset with Clay. Wouldn’t be any patio at all, because Brooke’s real estate broker had made it quite clear that she should be counting herself lucky to get a dishwasher in New York—a patio was out of the question.
So no patio. No Clay, or whatever his real name was.
No man at all, really.
No falling in love.
Not ever again.


Lauren lives in New York City with her husband (who was her high school sweetheart--cute, right?!) and plus-sized Pomeranian. 

Five years ago, she ditched her corporate career in Seattle to pursue a full-time writing career in Manhattan. 
She writes smart romantic comedies with just enough sexy-times to make your mother blush, and in her ideal world, every stiletto-wearing, Kate Spade wielding woman would carry a Kindle stocked with Lauren Layne books. 
When not bringing The Sexy, she likes to blog about her Instagram addiction, and why mean girls are the worst.




Rafflecopter Giveaway (Five (5) Exclusive Print Copies of FROM THIS DAY FORWARD, A Wedding Belles Novella)

Excerpt Reveal: Ultimate Courage by Piper J. Drake


ULTIMATE COURAGE 
by Piper J. Drake

Hot military heroes, the women who love them, and the devoted dogs that always have their backs. ULTIMATE COURAGE is the second book in a high adrenaline contemporary suspense series from Piper J. Drake published by Forever Romance. Fans of D.D. Ayres K-9 Rescue series and Cindy Gerard’s One Eyed Jacks, will love this action packed romantic suspense series.


Title: Ultimate Courage
Author: Piper J. Drake
Series: True Heroes #2
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Release Date: July 26, 2016
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing- Forever
Print Length: 336 pages
Format: Digital and Mass Market Paperback



Elisa Hall is good at starting from scratch. Leaving an abusive relationship in her rearview, she packs everything she owns into the trunk of her car and heads for refuge with her friend in Hope's Crossing, North Carolina.

Alex Rojas returned from his second deployment as a Navy SEAL to find his condo empty and divorce papers on the breakfast table. Now he's building a life for himself and his daughter at Hope's Crossing kennels training younger dogs and handlers to search and rescue, struggling to adjust to life back in the States and as a single father.

When Elisa shows up at the kennels, it's obvious she's running from something. Luckily, the dogs and trainers at Hope's Crossing are more than capable of warding off trouble. And with every minute he spends with Elisa, Alex becomes even more and more determined to protect the woman he's certain he won't be able to live without...




Beautiful blue-gray eyes met his briefly before the woman dropped her own gaze to focus on someplace lower on his face, like his nose or mouth. Subtle. Most people would probably not even notice the way she avoided direct eye contact.
But then again, not many people made eye contact a challenge the way he and his colleagues did. It wasn’t on purpose, really; more of a common quirk in their personalities.
Funny, he hadn’t expected to see her again. Okay, maybe he’d been hoping to find her at Revolution MMA for those self-defense classes he’d recommended. But here she was. A weird tingle jolted through his chest.
This woman was about as non-aggressive as possible without cowering outright. Despite her upright posture, her hands hung at her sides in a loose, non-defensive position. Her left wrist was covered in a brace and it was easy to see she held something in her right hand. She was far enough back on the landing to easily drop down a step or two without having to back up more than a few inches.
But the mannerisms didn’t fit her energy, the straightness of her shoulders, or the set of her jaw. Whoever this woman was, she’d developed habits. She wasn’t a mouse by nature. He wouldn’t be as irritated to see these behaviors if these things came naturally to her.
Who had forced her to assume those mannerisms to survive?
Mr. Rojas.” Her voice was steady.
Another sign of her being more than what she seemed, as far as he was concerned. The timbre was almost soothing, and he realized he’d balled his hands into fists. Well, shit. He let his hands loosen.
She presented the object she held in her right hand. “I think your daughter left this behind at the ER last night. I hope you don’t mind, but the logo for the kennels was on the inside label, so I googled the address.”
Slowly—because he didn’t want her to snatch her hand back—he took the glove from her. “Thanks.”
The hospital lost and found was overflowing, and I wanted to make sure Boom got her glove back,” the woman continued, then bit her lip. “And I wanted to be sure to thank you.” Her cheeks took on a fascinating pale pink blush.
Caught by surprise, Rojas raised his eyebrows. “Me?”
Maybe his tone had been the right encouragement, because she looked up again, her gaze meeting his, and the chemistry shocked him right down to his toes, hitting every vital organ—including his balls—along the way.
Blue-gray, cool as a calm day out on the water, her gaze held his. “You were very kind last night, and I didn’t thank you then. I try to thank the kind people I meet. So thank you.”
Rojas cleared his throat. “You’re welcome.”
He didn’t know what else to say. He’d only given her some ice, a cup of coffee, and a card about the martial arts center. Boom had a good sense for people, and when she’d said the woman needed the referral for the self-defense classes, he’d been inclined to agree.
She broke their eye contact, and he felt the loss as if someone had broken the circuit on an electrical current. “I should be going now.”
Wait.” He didn’t know what made him ask her to. But she paused, balanced on the balls of her feet at the edge of the landing. He was sure if he didn’t catch her now she’d be gone for good. “I didn’t get your name.”
Oh.” She turned to face him. Another sign that she’d learned caution but she wasn’t afraid by nature. She was open. A people person. Or at least more of one than he was. “Elisa Hall.”






Piper J. Drake (or “PJ”) began her writing career as “PJ Schnyder” writing sci-fi & paranormal romance and steampunk. She has recently received the FF&P PRISM award for her work as well as the NJRW Golden Leaf award and Parsec award.
Now, PJ is exploring the complexity of romantic suspense, incorporating her interests in mixed martial arts and the military into her writing.




Cover Reveal: Blind Landing by Carrie Aarons


Today, we have the gorgeous cover for Carrie Aarons Blind Landing. 
Check it out and add it to your to-read list today!

Title: Blind Landing
Author: Carrie Aarons
Release Date: August 4th 2016
Genre: Sports Romance
Fear stops dreams in their tracks before they even have a chance. Then again, so do injuries.
Natalia Grekov was born to win Olympic gold. As the USA’s top gymnast, she’s calm, confident and ready to make her country proud in just two short months. And her elite athlete lifestyle includes no time for distractions—especially men. When a disastrous fall in practice puts her dreams at risk, it seems the only person who can help her is the one person she wants nothing from.
Spencer Russell is gymnastics’ bad boy. A cocky, laid-back charmer with abs of steel and a witty mouth, he waltzes around the U.S. Gymnastics Training Camp like he owns the place—even though he doesn't anymore. After an injury sidelined his career and any chance at Olympic glory, he’s now just a coach, helping other gymnasts reach their goals. Serious is not a word in Spencer’s vocabulary. But when Natalia tumbles into his life, he's suddenly sincerely interested in helping the blonde beauty in any way he can.
Can they vault over the obstacles standing in their way? Or will Spencer be the distraction that causes Natalia's chance at gold to crash and burn?
Exclusive:
Gerek claps again and I look over in his direction. “Thank you for being able to join us this morning, Spencer.”
Turning towards the gym’s front doors, I watch Spence. It’s still strange, rolling his shortened nickname around in my mouth, but he insisted I call him that after I told him to call me Nat, so here we are. He strolls in, clad in his typical wardrobe of sandals and workout shorts.
And nothing else.
Jesus, he’s sexy. With all of those carved-out-of-stone muscles and short brown buzz cut, it’s like he should be in a Marines uniform instead of a chalk covered training center. He looks like he just rolled out of bed three seconds ago, and I squirm in my split. Which only adds to my building frustration as the carpet and my leotard create friction below my waistline.
Oh, no problem, boss. Anything for you guys.” He gives a lopsided grin and jumps onto a stack of mats, lounging with one elbow propping him up. It’s as if he’s posing for a non-existent camera, like he’s the star model for a shoot in Gymnastics Monthly.
Actually, I think he did have a five-page spread a couple years back and I have it somewhere in my desk at home.
Grace, Julia, Natalia, Peyton, Quinn and Lila … you are headed to the bars gym for the first part of practice today. Spencer, Anka and I will be assessing the men on pommel horse for the first part of the day, so you will be helping with the girl’s bar workout.”
My stomach flips. Bars is my best event, I’m not nervous about that. I could do my routine, which is one of the hardest of anyone at Sikora’s, in my sleep.
But having Spence watching me with those clover green eyes? Tracking my body as it spins and flies through the air? It makes the butterflies in my stomach explode.
I know he likes me, genuinely likes me. I know because he told me. And I genuinely like him too. We also find each other hot, or else we wouldn’t have gotten naked together in the Atlantic Ocean last night. That’s obvious.
But I don’t do boyfriends. Especially not boyfriends who are gymnasts. And don’t even get me started on the gymnast turned coach thing. Even if he isn’t my coach. Point is, I don’t even do hookups. Sure, I have in the past, but most of the time I find that the sex isn’t worth it and things just get awkward. Most would call me more adult than my years in this thought-process, but being an elite athlete means having to grow up fast. My biography might read nineteen, but I’ve been told I have the maturity and life view of a thirty-year-old. Talk about being jaded.
The whole relationship thing, no matter what form it’s in, is just too messy. And as much as I hate the Sikora’s and everything they stand for, I need to focus to achieve my goals. I’m not here to fulfill anyone else’s dreams, just my own.
I don’t have time for Spencer Russell. And what’s more, I have a feeling Spencer Russell does not have time, or serious interest, for me either.
Spence salutes Anka and Gerek, taunting them and crossing the line just a little further than anyone would dare where they’re concerned.
Then he turns to our group. “Alright ladies, let’s get moving. Someone remind me again, what’s this low bar for?”
The rest of our group giggles and bats their eyes at Spencer, but I just roll mine. His humor about the difference between the men’s high bar and the women’s uneven bars is the oldest joke in the book.
Why don’t you watch and learn? We’ll show you what real gymnastics looks like.”
I skirt past him, pulling my gym bag over my shoulder as I exit the building and head to one of the countless warehouse buildings on the grounds that houses all of the bar equipment. The rest of the girls push their way in after me, a sea of brightly colored leotards, bare legs and ponytails.


Author of romance novels such as Red Card and the Captive Heart Duet, Carrie Aarons writes sexy, swoony and sarcastic characters who won't get out of her head until she puts them down on a page.
Carrie has wanted to be an author since the first time she opened a book. She loves spinning tales that include dapper men, women with attitude, and the occasional hunky athlete.
When she isn't in what her husband calls a "writing coma", Carrie is freeing up her jam-packed DVR, starting her latest DIY project, or planning her next travel adventure. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, who is more than happy to watch sports while his wife plots love stories.


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