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ARC review

Making Waves by Tawna Fenske

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Welcome to Sugarbeat’s Books – The Home of the Romance Novel

Today I’m reviewing an ARC of Making Waves by Tawna Fenske that I received from the publisher. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would like to pass it on so that someone else could enjoy it as well. Have a read through my review and decide if you would like to enter the giveaway for a copy. If you are interested in entering to win, fill out the form found below.

Making Waves by Tawna Fenske
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Release: August 2011
Source: The publisher gave me a copy to read and review

 When Alex Bradshaw’s unscrupulous boss kicks him to the curb after 20 faithful years as an executive with the world’s largest shipping company, he sets out to reclaim his dignity and his pension. Assembling a team of fellow corporate castoffs, he sails to the Caribbean to intercept an illegal diamond shipment. None of them counted on quirky blonde stowaway Juli Flynn, who has a perplexing array of talents, a few big secrets, and an intoxicating romantic chemistry with Alex…

Making Waves begins with Juli Flynn finding out that she has to take her uncle’s ashes to the Caribbean as one of his last requests. We discover that Juli has a few problems keeping jobs and since she is on the verge of losing her latest one, she decides to take a package, honor her uncle’s last wish and take his ashes to St. Thomas. Meanwhile, Alex Bradshaw and his co-workers are fired from their jobs with a large shipping firm without working long enough to qualify for their pensions. Broke and without job prospects they hatch a plan to hijack their ex-boss’s illegal diamond shipment. Juli and Alex meet by chance in a bar the night before they are both to leave on their respective adventures. Alex leaves after a steamy make out session and leaves Juli wondering why.

Making Waves by Tawna Fenske was a complete surprise to me. This is the first book that I have read by Tawna and was totally delighted. All the characters are a delight to read about. Juli is still trying to find her place in life. She’s too bright to easily fit in and her experiences in her young life mark her as different. Alex was hurt many years ago by a woman and has been afraid of commitment ever since. Juli and Alex are the most “normal” characters in the book. There is Malcolm, a Shakesphere quoting pirate, and his two well muscled, if slightly dense brothers and Juli’s mom who seems to spend her life combining incompatible items into “dinner”.  Simply amazing what this woman puts in a jellied salad. Alex’s former coworkers are made up of Phyllis, the former Olympic steeplechase winner turned socially inept computer genius, Cody, the former NFL tight-end who dreams of being a chef and wants to be called “Cookie”, and Jake, the former head of accounting who is aware of their mob-involved former boss’s diamond smuggling operation. Reading this list of characters, you just have to know that the book is pretty funny! A comment on the back of the book is: “Dive into Tawna Fenske’s hilarious world of wacky, quirky, heartwarming romance.” I love that description as it is very true. This book is hilariously funny; it is wacky and quirky; most of all it is filled with wonderfully written happily ever afters……yes plural 🙂

There are so many memorably scenes in this book that I can’t list them all. The first one that comes to mind is where Alex and Juli meet in a bar and decide to enter a contest for newlyweds in order to win $500.00. The sticky point is that they just met and know nothing about each other. The section where Juli is giving advice to Phyllis on how to attract a man is downright hysterical.

Making Waves is a fast moving story.  There are quite a few characters and it took me a while to keep everyone straight.  Once everyone was set in my mind, I was wondering why I had to work to figure out the characters as they seemed so individual!  I laughed out loud enough times to draw attention to myself!  Ms. Fenske has the ability to develop a storyline and characters that has the reader cheering for some characters and booing others!  I totally enjoyed my romp through this book! Although I am new to this author, I will certainly be on the look out for more of her books in the future!

As I said at the beginning of this post – I’m giving away my ARC of Making Waves to someone in Canada or the US.  Fill out the form below to be entered to win.
****Giveaway is over – thanks for supporting this giveaway! ****

Cowboy Fever by Joanne Kennedy

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ISBN: 978-1402251412
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Release: April 1, 2011
Source: I received an ARC from the publisher to read and review


She thought she had it all….
A modeling contract with Wrangler got this Miss Rodeo a first class ticket out of town, but somewhere along the way Jodie Bryce lost her soul.  When she gets back to her hometown, her childhood friend Teague Treadwell’s rugged cowboy charm hits her like a ton of bricks….

He believed he wasn’t good enough….
Teague is convinced Jodie’s success lifted her out of his reach.  now he’s got to shed his bad boy image to be worthy of the girl next door….
But whoever heard of a beauty queen settling for a down and dirty cowboy….

Jodie Bryce is coming back to Purvis, Wyoming.  The town that she left as Miss Rodeo, she’s coming back to as a riding therapist.  She is hoping to use the ranch that was essentially abandoned when her dad died, to open a non-profit riding therapy program for special needs kids.  She used her time away modeling for Wrangler to attend school and get ready to follow her dreams.

The thing about small towns, is that everyone knows everyone.  When Jodie arrives back in town, she runs into Darla the town’s biggest gossip who declares she looks sick – maybe cancer – and her childhood friend Teague.  Teague is the bad boy from the roughest family in town.  His father was a wife beater and Teague got in all sorts of trouble growing up.  Boy, has Teague cleaned up good!

Jodie and Teague immediately feel that attraction that existed before Jodi left. The following exerpt says it all!

“Jodie had felt something pulling her toward Teague from the moment she’d seen him at the Rexall and now that they were alone the attraction intensified to the point where she wasn’t sure she had a shred of free will left.  One more second of silence, one more touch of his hand, and she’d drag him over to that bed and rip his clothes off.

The thought made her squirm inside, and something reckless swelled up in her heart.  What the hell was wrong with acting on your impulses once in a while?  She wasn’t an eighteen-year-old anymore.  More important, she wasn’t a virgin anymore.  Teague had see to that the last time they’d been together in his bedroom.  She wondered if he knew he’d been her first.

But the main thing was, she was a woman now.  She’d had casual relationships.  She’d learned to separate sex from love and enjoy it for its own sake.

So what the hell? Why not?
She hiked up on her toes and touched her lips to his.  The moment she did it, she knew she’d made a mistake.”

This book comes across as a simple, pretty clean romance.  It’s more than that.  Yes, the romance is present and the love scenes between Teague and Jodi are pretty steamy with out being at all graphic.  This story brings in Troy, Teague’s older brother who has Down’s Syndrome.  The book talks about all the things Troy CAN do, without focusing on what he can’t do.  It talks about the prejudices that Troy, Teague, and Jodie encounter.

I like this book on many levels.  It was on the surface a wonderfully gentle romance.  Essentially childhood sweethearts finally being at a point in their lives where they can explore an adult relationship.  It discusses the death of a parent and atoning for poor behavior during a time of grief.  It even deals with small town mentalities and outsiders that don’t fit in.

At first when I finished this book, I felt that it had gone on too long.  The story should have stopped about 75 pages before it did.  I put it aside and thought about it for a few days, and came to the conclusion that I was wrong with my initial thoughts.  I like how the story deals with all the threads and everything is brought to closure.

This book is the third Cowboy themed book that Joanne Kennedy has written.  The other two books have received positive reviews by most reviewers.  Pick up this book and settle in for a few hours of great reading!

For more information about Joanne Kennedy, visit her website.  This book is a new release available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

Twas The Night by Sandra Hill, Trish Jensen & Kate Holmes

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ISBN: 9781611940022
Publisher: Bell Bridge Books
Release Date: Nov 15, 2010
Source: I requested from NetGalley to read and review

TWAS THE NIGHT was co-written by three very successful and well-known romance authors: Sandra Hill, Trish Jensen and Kate Holmes. Collectively they have published dozens of novels and are brand names to a very large romance-reading audience.
This sexy, funny and fast-paced romance novel is perfect for light reading during the holidays. Three irresistible guys are trying to get home for Christmas across the snowbound northeast roads. The last chartered bus out of Philadelphia is full of rambunctious senior citizens who call themselves the Santa Brigade. Their fearless driver (a woman) is a retired NASCAR racer.
Our heroes hop a ride with the Brigade and immediately (Christmas magic?) they collide with three fellow hitchhikers who are women from their pasts: these gorgeous gals have not forgotten or forgiven old heartaches, and so it’s going to be a very long night on the bus . . .

Twas the Night is a book that I requested from NetGalley for the Christmas Reading Challenge I’m participating in and also because I’ve not read anything from these three authors before and I was curious.
As the blurb says, this story is about three men who are childhood friends trying to get back to the small town in which they grew up,  so that they can attend the Christmas Eve wedding of their mentor George.   For various reasons, they each need a method to get back to Snowden and the only way of getting through the snow storm is on the “Santa Bus”.  Sam, a Blue Angel pilot arranges to parachute to the bus to impress Reba his old girlfriend, whom he has never forgotten.  Kevin (or JD) is the private investigator who brings Callie-a woman whom he’s been hired to find and take into custody for failing to show at a criminal trial in NY-on the bus.  Stan the injured pro football player, was asked by George to pick up Dana, whom he calls the forest ranger, and bring her to the wedding.  When the roads are closed, Stan and Dana take her snowmobile to meet the bus so that they can get to the wedding on time.  The Santa Brigade is on the bus and is a bunch of senior citizens who travel around the area bringing Christmas cheer to people in need.

Somewhere I read that this book is created by three authors each writing a chapter in turn.  As you read through the book each chapter is labeled with either Sam, Kevin or Stan, but they follow an orderly progression of time from when Sam joins the bus to when they arrive at George’s wedding.  Each chapter is told from one couple’s point of view.  The other characters may be mentioned, but only as observed by the main character of the chapter.  I don’t know for sure if what I read was true, but if it is, these three authors have created a very cohesive book!  It certainly reads as if written by one person.
All three men come from disadvantaged backgrounds and most of the seniors on the bus were adults when the men were kids.  They witnessed all the shenanigans that went on, and are proud of what them men have made of their lives.  As the men work their way through their various issues and convince the women to fall in love with them, their feisty seniors add unwanted advice, and general hilarity!  All of this is told with vivid clarity.  One could just shut one’s eyes and picture the various seniors and what was going on on that bus!
This book is a feel-good heart-warming book for the Christmas season!  A lovely book to curl up by a fire with!