Too Hot To Handle

📚 Book Review: Too Hot to Handle 

Portia MacIntosh

🗓️ Publication Date: April 8, 2025

📚 My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

📚 My Review: A fun, lighthearted rom-com full of great banter and fun moments. The double-booked villa was a recipe for chaos (and chemistry), and the rivalry competitions kept things entertaining! While the romance between Molly and Travis was totally predictable, I loved every second of it!! A perfect feel-good read! 

Thank you to Netgalley and BoldwoodEverAfter for the eARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

📚 Goodreads Synopsis: One bachelorette party. One stag do. One double-booked villa and only one way to decide who gets a competition.

Workaholic Molly is buzzing when her best friend tells her she’s getting married. As maid of honour Molly can’t wait for the perfect bachelorette party in Spain. What could be better than a week in a stunning villa? Sun, sea, cocktails and gossiping – and best of all, no boys allowed. But when the hens arrive they discover that they are not alone. The villa has been accidentally double booked by a group of stags who make it very clear they’re not leaving!

It’s a disaster, and no one wants to give up their place in paradise. Attempts at compromising fail instantly, so their only option is to have a winner takes all competition. Battle lines are drawn and it is girls v boys - but will the competition be too hot to handle?

As their rivalry heats up, and Molly finds herself gravitating towards stag Travis, it’s clear that he’s enjoying the attention - but Molly can’t let herself get distracted, and under no circumstances can she fall for the enemy.

Playing For Keeps in Starr's Fall

📚 Book Review: Playing For Keeps in Starr's Fall 

Kate Hewitt

🗓️ Publication Date: March 21, 2025

📚 My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

📚 My Review: This book is full of fresh starts, hope, and romance that makes you smile!! It is the second book in the Starr's Fall series and Kate Hewitt does such a great job creating lovable characters in a charming small-town setting. I love her light writing style and it was a perfect balance of sweet, heartfelt moments and lighthearted fun. If you’re looking for a feel-good escape with just the right touch of warmth and whimsy, this one’s a winner!

Thank you to Netgalley and Boldwood Books for the eARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

📚 Goodreads Synopsis: Spring is in the air in Starr’s Fall, and for two people, love may be just a roll of the dice away…

As the frozen earth gives way to the first spring crocuses, pushing their way into the warmer air, Maggie arrives in Starr’s Fall. She’s looking for a new start, with her lovable but painfully shy teenaged son in tow.

It feels like the odds are against her, but she’s determined to come out winning this time, and to fulfil her dream of opening up a board game café. But not everything’s a game, and when she finds herself attracted to a man who’s known as a different sort of player, she worries she’s setting herself up to lose.

Zach is funny, surprisingly geeky, and, most importantly, bonds with her son. But Zach is also drop-dead gorgeous, has a reputation around town, and is also ten years younger than her.

When he asks her out on a date, Maggie is totally thrown. She can’t deny she’s attracted to him. But is she ready to risk her heart with another roll of the dice?

Book Review: How To survive a Bear Attack

🎧📚 Book Review: How to Survive a Bear Attack: A Memoir

Claire Cameron

🗓️ Publication Date: March 25, 2025

📚 My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐💫

📚 My Review: This memoir was about grief, survival, true crime, and the beauty (and danger) of nature. Claire Cameron’s journey is deeply personal, and the audiobook made it feel even more intimate. Her reflections on loss and illness are powerful, but I found that story jumped around a lot, which made it hard for me to stay fully engaged. That said, some parts were fascinating, and if you love introspective memoirs with a mix of science and nature, it’s worth a listen!

Thank you to @Netgalley and @Penguin Random House Canada Audiobooks | Knopf Canada for the eARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

📚 Goodreads Synopsis: When Claire Cameron was nine years old, her father, a professor of Old English, told her he was dying. In the years after he was gone, she found a way to overcome her grief among the rivers and lakes of Algonquin Park, a vast Canadian wilderness area. Around that same time, in 1991, a couple was killed by a black bear in a rare predatory attack in the park. Claire was shocked and, never fully sure of what happened, the attack haunted her.

      Now older, with children of her own, Cameron was diagnosed with the same kind of deadly skin cancer as her father. Caught in a second wave of grief, she was told by her doctor, “the ideal exposure to UV light is none.” No longer able to venture into the wilderness as she once had, with long scars on her back, she became obsessed with the bear attack in Algonquin Park again. How could terror rip through such a beautiful place? Could she separate truth from fiction? She headed north to investigate.

      Claire seamlessly weaves together nature writing with true crime investigation in this unflinching account of recovery. How to Survive a Bear Attack is at once an intimate portrait of an extraordinary animal, a bracing chronicle of pain, obsession, and love, and a profoundly moving exploration of how we can understand and survive the wildness that lives inside us.

Book Review: I Would Die For You

📚 Book Review: I Would Die For You

Sandie Jones

🗓️ Publication Date: March 25, 2025

📚 My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

📚 My Review: This book had me hooked from the beginning! I loved the dual timeline and the way the story wove together past and present, slowly unraveling long-buried secrets. The writing style was engaging, especially given we all likely had some sort of boy band obsession in our younger days. While most of us never took our fandom to the extremes seen in this book, it still felt relatable. The twists kept me guessing, and the last quarter of the novel was impossible to put down. This was a fast-paced read that will definitely keep you turning the pages!

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press / Minotaur Books for the eARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

📚 Goodreads Synopsis: Now: Nicole Forbes lives a quiet life in a small seaside Californian town with her husband and daughter. She is not expecting a writer to knock on her door asking for her personal insight into the downfall of the biggest British band of the 1980s—unveiling the threads of a life she put behind her years ago. The same day, her daughter goes missing and the school claims her aunt picked her up . . . but she doesn’t have an aunt. Convinced of a link between the two, Nicole is forced to revisit long-abandoned memories from her past to protect everything she now holds dear.

1986: Sixteen-year-old Cassie is obsessed with the hottest band in London, Secret Oktober. Harboring an intense crush on the leading man, Ben Edwards, she will do anything she can to capture his attention among the throngs of groupies at the band’s scandalous backstage parties. But when Ben discovers her older sister Nicole singing at a local bar one night, he can’t help but feel drawn to her, setting in motion a collision course that could tear their family apart.

Infused with the sounds of the 80s, this thrilling new novel from the inimitable Sandie Jones will captivate her readers, as she explores what the frenzy of fandom can lead to in this shocking blockbuster.

Book Review: Expiration Dates

📚 Book Review: Expiration Dates

Rebecca Serle

📚 My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐💫

📚 My Review: The premise of Daphne knowing her relationships’ lengths was intriguing, and the writing kept me engaged. However, the story sometimes felt predictable and fell a bit short for me and I was just left wanting more. That said, the romance was sweet, and the journey of her personal growth stood out. It's a thoughtful and enjoyable read for fans of magical realism in romance!

📚 Goodreads Synopsis: Being single is like playing the lottery. There’s always the chance that with one piece of paper you could win it all.

From the New York Times bestselling author of In Five Years and One Italian Summer comes the romance that will define a generation.

Daphne Bell believes the universe has a plan for her. Every time she meets a new man, she receives a slip of paper with his name and a number on it—the exact amount of time they will be together. The papers told her she’d spend three days with Martin in Paris; five weeks with Noah in San Francisco; and three months with Hugo, her ex-boyfriend turned best friend. Daphne has been receiving the numbered papers for over twenty years, always wondering when there might be one without an expiration. Finally, the night of a blind date at her favorite Los Angeles restaurant, there’s only a name: Jake.

But as Jake and Daphne’s story unfolds, Daphne finds herself doubting the paper’s prediction, and wrestling with what it means to be both committed and truthful. Because Daphne knows things Jake doesn’t, information that—if he found out—would break his heart.

Told with her signature warmth and insight into matters of the heart, Rebecca Serle has finally set her sights on romantic love. The result is a gripping, emotional, passionate, and (yes) heartbreaking novel about what it means to be single, what it means to find love, and ultimately how we define each of them for ourselves. Expiration Dates is the one fans have been waiting for.

Book Review: Just the Beginning

📚 Book Review: Just the Beginning

Sarah Bennett

🗓️ Publication Date: March 15, 2025

📚 My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

📚 My Review: This story is all about fresh starts and second chances, set in a small-town village of Halfmoon Quay. It follows Anya as she rebuilds her life after heartbreak and betrayal, with the help of her childhood crush, Rick. I loved how Sarah Bennett wove complex family dynamics into the story, making it heartfelt and uplifting. This book is the perfect feel-good escape and I’ll definitely be looking out for more from this author!

Thank you to Netgalley and Boldwood Books for the eARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

📚 Goodreads Synopsis: Everyone in Halfmoon Quay, the picture-perfect village clinging to the edge of the Cornish coast, knows Rick Penrose is the person to turn to for help.

Friendly and reliable, not to mention drop-dead gorgeous, he’ll do anything for anyone. When his teenage crush Anya moves back to the quay for a fresh start, he has the perfect solution. She needs a job and his great uncle needs help to run his hotel. It’s a win-win.

Following the death of her husband, Anya Stokes discovered everything about her life was a lie. Without her beautiful home and the luxuries she took for granted, Anya and her daughter, Freya, have no choice but to move in with her aunt and uncle in Halfmoon Quay.

As she begins to turn her life around, Anya realises the perfect man might have been right under her nose all the time. But there’s a fine line between helping and taking over and Rick doesn’t always know where it is. Then Anya discovers he’s been keeping things from her and it’s like the past is repeating itself…