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I am Lover of romance, who indulges in the romantic adventures of literature

My name is Renee, and I am the host of this site. I am a 34 year old woman, on the prowl for her mate, searching out the best of books, exploring the wilds of the imagination and delving into the heart of a beautiful love story.

 

Weekly Recap (Week 28) Lisa Kleypas Celebrations

by | Jul 10, 2022 | Sunday Post, Uncategorized | 13 comments

Happenings of Week 28 of 2022

This was a pretty fun week and such a great start officially to the summer season! This week started out with celebrating Independance Day. I was able to see the balloon festival we do here in Provoi (its where BYU is at), then of course the parade and did a bbq with the family, watching this Nicholas Sparks movie (the only one I have seen that has a happy ending so the only one I actually enjoy watching haha) then my newly married brother and his wife (wow that is weird thinking that) came by and we had smores and my mom almost burned down the house with her marshmallow….oh the good family times. Then this week was super fun on Instagram as its Lisa Kleypas Appreciation Week and it was started by a couple of bookstagrammers. I adore Lisa Kleypas and I also started a new feature on the blog that I think will be really fun. It was so fun to see all the gorgeous photos in honor of one of the queens of romance. My reading for the week was super solid with 12 books this week with two audiobooks. So not too bad of a reading week. A side project is that with Goodreads planning on deleting the “Photos” section of their site, which means that stepbacks won’t be available after the first of September. So I am working on getting a stepback section on my site to include them all so that readers can still have access to these. I understand why Goodreads is doing it, but its also sad because this is the #1 source for romance readers to find stepbacks and alternate covers. I am not sure how I am going to do the page to be honest, currently working different ideas to get something working that will benefit romance readers.

Bookish Posts & Books Read of Week June 3 through July 9

(All my books read and their reviews are on Goodreads)

Book Read-Still Standing by Kristen Ashley (I did a buddy re-read of this book with my KA reading group and it was such fun to delve into this one again)

Book Read-Mistress by Amanda Quick—This was an easy fun historical, and not as outdated as I was expecting it to be, excited to read it, but it did have its slow going pacing in the middle. But I did love the premise of the story and the romance was slow burn and sweet but she knows how to do her heat!

Chasing Morgan by Jennifer Ryan-I was able to continue this series here and it was so fun here to read this book and there was some psychic abilities in the heroine and man that was fun!

Audio Book Listened-Always Be My Banshee by Molly Harper– This was a fun audiobook although its not my favorite of the series, as the romance just felt off to me, but the plot and story was solid so its a 4 star read for me. I really love the Mystic Bayou series and if you like paranormal rom coms, this series is a must.

Cruel Saints by Michelle Heard–This was a very interesting mafia romance, intense in many ways, not as emotional as the first book, but a quick fast read and I loved both characters!

Tied by Carian Cole–This was an amazing read, I am not sure why it took me so long to read but this one was fantastic! It was so emotional and just had me in happy tears in the end! I loved it more than book one!

ReRead-Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas–after seeing all the book love of this author this week, I just had to do a reread of one of my favorites of this one.

Book Read-Decadent by Shayla Black—I adored this book and even though I don’t think I liked it more than book one, it was still a fun sexy book and I really liked how the menage was done here.

Book Read-Stolen by a Sinner by Michelle Heard—This is my FAVORITE book of the series, I honestly couldn’t put this one down here, it was superb. It had a cinderella retelling and it was so so delicious.

Book Read-Lord of London Town by Tillie Cole—I finally picked this one up here and I am so happy that I did because this one was amazing! One of my favorite books by this author. Its a mafia romance set in London, it was fierce and intense and addictive.

Mid-Year Book Freak Out Tag

Audio/ARC Book Review-Harmony’s Fire by Brian Feehan

Book Review-Into the Blue by Chanel Cleeton

Deep Dive with Lisa Kleypas

Current Reads

I absolutely am so excited about my current reads here! I am listening to Getting Schooled and so far it’s really good. This is an author I have been wanting to read forever. And I love both of these narrators so much as its duo pov. It’s basically a student-teacher college romance—it doesn’t feel icky at all which bravo to this author. Then I decided to bing the Empire Nightclub trilogy by K.A. Tucker. The first book I grabbed up this morning as a random pick-up, and I am hooked so I will probably binge the series today and tonight. I am really enjoying it though. The setup is the heroine’s father was put unjustly into prison for defending her when she attacked and the hero has connections to prison and has offered her a deal to help her father and I am really intrigued as it has a frenemies feel to the story.

Book Releases I Am Excited For

Remember Love by Mary Balogh

Get Tragic by Lani Lynn Vale

Love Lessons by Sarina Bowen

Single in Seattle by Kristen Proby

Nobody’s Princess by Erica Ridley

My Weekly TBR

These are books that I have a rough TBR for! I am not sure if I will be in the mood for them all, but they all are different sub genres so I do hope to get to them all if my mood works with me on this! I do think its good to have a loose tbr even though at times I tend to be a mood reader! I am trying to work towards going half and half so I have more balance in my reading!

Favorite Book of the Week

This was such a fabulous book here, and I loved getting back to this world that Cleeton has created and I am realizing why this series is so well loved. I can’t wait for BOOK THREE, I just know that one is going to be GOLD.

New Additions to A&R

Everything She Wanted by Jennifer Ryan

Because of You by Jessica Scott

Reckless in Texas by Kari Lynn Dell

How Was Your last week in June? Have You Read Any Good Books This Week? Let me know in the comments below!

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13 Comments

  1. thebookdisciple

    Glad you had such an enjoyable week. I’m kind of dreading all the changes goodreads is making. I liked having control over things (being able to add new editions when there wasn’t an audio version, etc). Oh well!

    Reply
  2. Kristina

    Ah happy to hear you had a good week!
    A bookworm’s guide to flirting fo sounds good, id need to check it out.

    I just adopted a baby kitty we were fostering at work ?? not sure what I was thinking with my two adults dachshunds, but the first night was pretty hectic! Ahah

    Reply
  3. Tanya @ Girl Plus Books

    Sounds like you had a great holiday weekend. 🙂 I seem to be among the few that isn’t too bothered by the upcoming GR changes. I don’t use the specific things they are changing or deleting, but know others who are pretty disappointed. I oved Carian Cole’s Tied so, so much. It was an extremely rare 5 star book for me.

    Reply
  4. Rachel @Waves of Fiction

    Sounds like a fun 4th of July! Is Goodreads deleting the book cover photos? I use those links in my posts. Hmm…

    I’m also a huge fan of Lisa Kleypas! I’m looking forward to Remember Love by Mary Balogh too.

    Reply
    • Lover of Romance

      Yeah Rachel, so you know how there is a section underneath the rating of the regular book page (not the new book page) of “Other Pictures” its normally where people will uploaded stepback covers or alternate covers, they are completely deleting that section of their site. So sad!

      Reply
      • Rachel @Waves of Fiction

        I usually get the link when I click on the book cover and then right click for the image link. Do you know if that’ll be affected? Sorry, not real techie here, lol!

        Reply
        • Lover of Romance

          If you are talking about just the main cover then no that won’t be affected at all and you will still have access to those.

          Below I have a link to the type of photos I mean: https://www.goodreads.com/photo/tag/stepback if you click on one of the image, you will see that its like an extension of the book cover. Some books(especially romance) will come with what is called a stepback or back cover that has like a romantic pose or something. And so all this artwork that has been uploaded over the years is being deleted. Does that make sense?

  5. Samantha @WLABB

    I am so not knowledgable. I had to google stepbacks. Now I know. There seems to be a lot going on at GR. I hope that beta doesn’t go live. I hate it.

    Reply
    • Lover of Romance

      I like the aesthetic of it, but they are taking away a lot of things as well which I don’t like. I understand why because of the competitors like StoryGraph, but I really don’t like how much they are simplifying. oh you had to google stepbacks? I am a old school romance reader, so I am very familiar with them. But I have a feeling that it will go live. I do hate how small they made the book cover now and how you can’t see all of the reader’s bookshelves unless you look up their review in the review page.

      Reply
  6. Rachel @Waves of Fiction

    Yes, that makes sense. Now I know what you’re talking about. It’s like extra photos for the story/cover. That’s a bummer they’re deleting them. I wonder why? Hopefully the author will save these kinds of photos on their blog! Thanks for enlightening me! I’m such an ostrich sometimes, lol, I know not what is going on around me! Haha!

    Reply
    • Lover of Romance

      Yeah, it really sucks that they are taking them away. Goodreads is such a place where you will find these covers. I am currently saving them all into my files now and going to try to create a section on my site for these, I just need to figure out how I want to do it. and I only know about it because Goodreads has a warning about it and I visit this section of GR frequently as I love these type of covers.

      Reply
  7. Jen

    I didn’t realize that GR is making so many changes. This is the second big change I heard about. Did they have an email? I do use the site to get old covers. I hope we can find other places. I’m glad you had a fun start to summer!

    Reply
  8. jennielyse

    Did you get to see Stadium of Fire or are you just closed enough to BYU that you can watch the high-flying fireworks? My husband and I didn’t really do anything for the 4th. Our neighborhood lit fireworks from the 1st to the 4th as per normal in Utah. But, we didn’t get much fireworks on the 5th through 7th, which isn’t normal. I’m glad you had a good holiday. I hope you’ve had a good week and continue to have one still.

    Reply

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