Top 5 Romances of 2013

Ok, admittedly I am still in a Christmas induced food coma and haven't had that much time to do any reading or reviewing, but I thought that it'd be a nice way to wrap up the year with a quick overview of some of my favourite romances of 2013.

Review: Christmas at Claridge's - Karen Swan

‘This was where her dreams drifted to if she didn’t blot her nights out with drink; this was where her thoughts settled if she didn’t fill her days with chat. She remembered this tiny, remote foreign village on a molecular level and the sight of it soaked into her like water into sand, because this was where her old life had ended and her new one had begun. 

Portobello – home to the world-famous street market, Notting Hill Carnival and Clem Alderton. She’s the queen of the scene, the girl everyone wants to be or be with. But beneath the morning-after makeup, Clem is keeping a secret, and when she goes too far one reckless night she endangers everything – her home, her job and even her adored brother’s love. 

Portofino – a place of wild beauty and old-school glamour, and where a neglected villa has been bought by a handsome stranger. He wants Clem to restore it for him and it seems like the answer to all her problems – except that Clem has been there once before and vowed, for her own protection, never to return . . .

You know, it's been a long time since I've liked a book so much that I wanted to savour it and not sit there and gobble it up all in one sitting. You might have guessed that Christmas at Claridge's is a book that I loved, to the point that I started to worry a little bit when I saw I only had a hundred pages left (gasp!).