Review: First & Then - Emma Mills

Devon Tennyson wouldn't change a thing. She's happy watching Friday night games from the bleachers, silently crushing on best friend Cas, and blissfully ignoring the future after high school. But the universe has other plans. It delivers Devon's cousin Foster, an unrepentant social outlier with a surprising talent for football, and the obnoxiously superior and maddeningly attractive star running back, Ezra, right where she doesn't want them first into her P.E. class and then into every other aspect of her life.

Pride and Prejudice meets Friday Night Lights in this contemporary novel about falling in love with the unexpected boy, with a new brother, and with yourself.

Emma Mills is not a new name to me, I've long been a fan of her YouTube channel Elmify and I was very intrigued when she announced the publication of her first novel over 18 months ago. Emma's online presence is, unjustly in my opinion, over shadowed by bigger YouTube stars and I was initially worried that her book would be too. However, I needn't have worried;  First & Then is a fantastic novel that easily outstrips many others I've read this year.

Review: You Don't Have to Say You Love Me - Sarra Manning

Sweet, bookish Neve Slater always plays by the rules. And the number one rule is that good-natured fat girls like her don't get guys like gorgeous, handsome William, heir to Neve's heart since university. But William's been in LA for three years, and Neve's been slimming down and re-inventing herself so that when he returns, he'll fall head over heels in love with the new, improved her.

So she's not that interested in other men. Until her sister Celia points out that if Neve wants William to think she's an experienced love-goddess and not the fumbling, awkward girl he left behind, then she'd better get some, well, experience.What Neve needs is someone to show her the ropes, someone like Celia's colleague Max. Wicked, shallow, sexy Max. And since he's such a man-slut, and so not Neve's type, she certainly won't fall for him. Because William is the man for her... right?Somewhere between losing weight and losing her inhibitions, Neve's lost her heart - but to who?

A few weeks ago I reviewed my first ever Manning novel It Felt Like a Kiss and since then I have been predictably squeezing in a few of her older reads in between everything else that has been languishing on my TBR pile. It has to be said that You Don't Have to Say You Love Me could have over taken It Felt Like a Kiss as my favourite Manning novel to date.

Review: It Felt Like a Kiss - Sarra Manning

Ellie manages a swank Mayfair gallery, but it’s her life that’s a real work of art. Great job, really good hair, loyal friends, loving family. It’s only her succession of lame duck boyfriends that ruin the picture. 

Oh, and the world-famous rock-star father she’s never met, who won’t even acknowledge her existence. 

Then Ellie’s perfect life is smashed to pieces when her secret is sold to the highest bidder and her name, face (and pictures of her bottom) are splashed across the tabloids. Suddenly everyone thinks she’s a gold-digging, sex-crazy, famewhore. 

Enter David Gold. Charming and handsome David Gold. On paper he’s even more perfect than Ellie, if only he wasn’t her father’s ruthlessly ambitious lawyer whose job is to manage the crisis – and her. He certainly doesn’t think that Ellie’s the innocent party and she doesn’t trust him at all. So why is it that every time they’re alone together, damage limitation is the last thing on their minds?

New favourite author alert! Brit-lit (as I like to call it) has been going from strength to strength recently and I am so pleased to be discovering new authors to add to my hallowed hall of "favourite reads". Whilst Sarra Manning isn't a new author, she's new to me and I love finding someone that I love who has a whole back catalogue for me to devour.

Review: This is a Love Story - Jessica Thompson

This is a love story. 

Boy meets girl and girl falls for boy - that much is true.

But when Sienna meets Nick it's not the way it happens in love stories. It's because of a squirrel on water skis... 

She sees Nick's dangerous brown eyes and thinks, 

Don't.

Fall. 

Into. 

Them. 

Who will be there to catch Siena when she falls? She is so fragile. She has so many secrets, and he is not that serious.

Funny and sad, this is the story of two people destined never to come together in the great love affair they crave more than anything else.

Have you ever started a book and just known that you won't be able to go to sleep until you know the fate of all those involved? It can't just be me surely. This is a Love Story was started innocently enough in the evening as a little wind-down before bed and wasn't put down until 4am when I was bleary eyed but safe in the knowledge that I'd reached the conclusion and knew that all was as it should be.

RARM: My Favourite Romance Reads

 

So here it is, my favourite romance reads. I hope you all appreciate the agonising effort that went into picking my favourites. 

Review: Welcome to Rosie Hopkins' Sweet Shop of Dreams - Jenny Colgan

Were you a sherbet lemon or chocolate lime fan? Soft chewy ones or hard boiled sweeties (you do get more for your money that way)? The jangle of your pocket money . . . the rustle of the pink and green striped paper bag . . . 

Rosie Hopkins thinks leaving her busy London life, and her boyfriend Gerard, to sort out her elderly Aunt Lilian s sweetshop in a small country village is going to be dull. Boy, is she wrong. 

Lilian Hopkins has spent her life running Lipton s sweetshop, through wartime and family feuds. As she struggles with the idea that it might finally be time to settle up, she also wrestles with the secret history hidden behind the jars of beautifully coloured sweets.

Welcome to Rosie Hopkins Sweetshop of Dreams, a novel, with recipes.

Warning: Do not read this novel if you are on any sort of diet or health kick. Seriously.

Back in May Welcome to Rosie Hopkins' Sweet Shop of Dreams (let's just call it Sweet Shop for short) won the Romance Novelists' Association's Romantic Novel of the Year, 2013, and with an accolade like that you can't not pick up this calorie packed indulgence.

Review: Anyone But You - Jennifer Crusie

For Nina Askew, turning forty means freedom--from the ex-husband, freedom from their stuffy suburban home, freedom to focus on what she wants for a change. And what she wants is something her ex always vetoed--a puppy. A bouncy, adorable puppy. Instead she gets...Fred. 

Overweight, middle-aged, a bit smelly and obviously depressed, Fred is light-years from perky. But he does manage to put Nina in the path of Alex Moore, her gorgeous, younger-by-a-decade neighbor. 

Alex seems perfect--he's a sexy, seemingly sane, surprisingly single E.R. doctor--but the age gap convinces Nina that anyone but Alex would be better relationship material. But with every silver-haired stiff she dates, the more she suspects it's the young, dog-loving doc she wants to sit and stay.