Review: Tavin (Conner Brothers Construction Series Book 6) by Cee Bowerman

Tavin: Conner Brothers Construction, Book 6 by Cee Bowerman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fixing A Long Distance Relationship

This is the 6th book in the Conner Brother’s Construction series, but it leans heavily on the storyline from Luke (Texas Kings MC Series Book 15). Without reading at least Luke’s book this story won’t make much sense. The majority of the characters in this book had their stories in the previous books of the CBC series so reading this series will help understand the characters and history of everyone. There is no cliffhanger.

I’m so glad I read this book quick quickly after reading Luke’s book because I was a mess after reading about the fiasco in the family. Reading about the family trying to mend fences wasn’t fun, but was necessary.

Tavin and London have been a couple for around a year, but recently things have become more and more strained between them. This is because London is constantly on the road touring or making appearances in her career as a successful country music singer. Initially, Tavin took some time off to travel with her but felt that he had to come back to pull his weight in the family firm, especially as his siblings were settling down and having kids.

Both Tavin and London want to get married and have a family but they just seem to be drifting further apart. When London takes a phone call in the middle of an important conversation about their future, Tavin reaches his limit. This crisis is the straw that broke the camel’s back for their relationship and they have to decide what their priorities are for their own happiness.

This book is full of emotions from trying to mend bridges between siblings, brothers fighting in the backyard, worry of stalkers and being chased by paparazzi. A lot happens in this slightly shorter than normal book, but you don’t feel like you’ve been short-changed.

I love the Conner Brothers. They are sweet and funny and adore their family. They have faced tragedy in their past and have learnt how to forge on to regain their happiness. It’s nice to read about them fixing the mess from Luke’s book and also getting Tavin and London their HEA. As always, they deal with adversity with sarcasm, banter and teasing with a side of casual violence towards one another. There’s only Chess left now to get his HEA, I hope that the author has the next generation books in mind, because I want to read about the fabulous children that they have all had!

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Review: Smitten

Smitten by Lauren Rowe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hot and Sweet Rockstar Romance

This book is part of a connected world created by the author. I didn’t read any of the previous books and was able to enjoy this book as it stood, but it did make me want to read her other books.

This isn’t your typical rockstar romance book, for one thing, it’s incredibly sweet and romantic, rather than the usual ‘tortured artist in need of a good woman’ trope. Matthew ‘Fish’ Fishberger, is a bass player with a huge rock band, 22 Goats. He’s the nice guy of the band, the one who makes the others laugh and has only just started growing into his fame and charisma recently despite spending 5 years at the top of the business. He’s never had a girlfriend and not for wont of trying, he just hasn’t met anyone who wants him for himself rather than who he is.

Alessandra is a 19-year-old music student who is staying with her step-sister, Georgina, for a week. Georgina happens to be staying with her boyfriend Reed, who also happens to be a really successful record label owner. 22 Goats is signed to his label. When Reed throws a party at his house Alessandra is dumbstruck by all the stars and is totally flummoxed when Fish, the guy from her favourite band, starts to chat to her.

This meeting is the start of an incredibly sweet journey that the two take. They are both really nice people with confidence issues. They learn how to communicate with a long-distance relationship and work at facing their insecurities together.

As well as been immensely sweet this book has plenty of heat and humour to stop things getting too sickly. I love that Fish and Ally educate themselves about sex because they want to be good for each other. It’s sweet, generous and brave all at the same time.

This is a book that will make you feel warm inside and put a smile on your face. It’s definitely one that will cheer you up. It’s a nice easy read that I really enjoyed.

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Review: Sentinel Station (Sentinel Station Series Book 1) by Brittany Rose

Sentinel Station by Brittany Rose
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Completely believable premise for first contact

Set in the 2060s Dr Maya Adams is a professor in linguistics at Harvard. She’s bright, articulate and often the recipient of prejudice against her abilities because she’s beautiful. No one believes she’s capable of her level of attainment because they assume she slept to her position. This means when she is called to investigate the space station that suddenly appeared over Earth she faces a great deal of obstruction from the man in charge who has been lead to believe by jealous colleagues of hers that she is a bimbo.

In fact, Maya may be the only one capable of solving the mystery of the crazy complex language that seems to fit no recognisable pattern. As someone who speaks 15 languages, several of which are ancient languages, she knows better than most that it’s probably not a language at all.

I really enjoyed this book. It’s an interesting premise for how first contact could take place. I love the idea of a space station just appearing over Earth, completely empty, in working order with an open bay just waiting for humans to arrive and start using it, once they can read the instructions.

Maya is an interesting character. She’s young at 28 to be a professor at Harvard. She divorced around 18 months ago after her husband cheated on her after finding out she was infertile. She had retreated into her work and hadn’t dated since, but the space station appearing in the sky woke her up a bit. She has a curious mind and an instinctive intellect that she doesn’t shy away from. She’s not a pushover and resents the prevailing attitude of older male colleagues towards her, but she doesn’t act unprofessionally about it, just allowing her work to speak for her.

I like that she meets at least one good man on the station and Daniel, who is 12 years older, is attractive and very interested in her, but his career comes first.

I like the romantic conflicts that arise as a result of the strange circumstances and that Maya has to re-evaluate what her future relationships are going to look like because of her situation.

My one complaint would be that there was a lot of the book with Maya telling us what she talked about with Daniel, not the actual conversation. It distances us from the action somewhat and makes the development of the relationship seem more dry and intellectual than it should be for such a passionate series of encounters.

There were also a few typos, but they weren’t too bad, just enough to annoy me a little.

I can’t wait to see what happens in the next stage of communication with the alien empire that left the space station. Things could be really interesting.

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Review: Single in Sitka (Odds Are Good Series Book 1) by Katy Regnery

Single in Sitka by Katy Regnery
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sweet Long Distance Romance

This was a good solid romance. It was sweet and a little bit spicy and ticked a lot of trope boxes; single dad, a cheating ex, long-distance relationship, holiday romance, sassy girl reporter, law enforcement. However, when I was reading it the book didn’t feel like I was playing trope bingo, it’s just with hindsight whilst trying to describe the book I realised that was the case.

Luke is has been a widower for 2 years. He is raising three children with the aid of his sister, who has recently had twins and is therefore becoming less available. His parents are deceased and his deceased wife’s parents live hundreds of miles away. He hasn’t dated since the death of his wife and his sister decides to put an advert in a magazine to help him find a new woman.

Amanda has recently broken up with her cheating ex after five years. She lives in Seattle and has done so since college. She writes a column with the Seattle Times with her best friend and after mooning over Luke’s advert imagining what he looks like etc and called to task in a meeting for her distraction she spontaneously makes up a story about bears in Sitka (that she read about whilst researching where Luke came from) and ends up being sent there for 2 weeks to research it.

This book follows Luke and Amanda trying to work through going from a short term fling to a long-distance relationship and trying to find the compromise that works. I really liked that Amanda’s relationship with the kids was a bit mixed, with the three children having very different reactions to their Dad being involved with someone. It wasn’t all smooth sailing and life gets in the way a few times and they have very real conflicting emotions about what to do moving forward.

It was an engaging story with nice characters and a feel-good HEA.

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