Carries Book Reviews

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Take Any Chance
Brenna Aubrey
(Gaming the System, #10)
Publication date: April 30th 2024
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance

In the game of life, Mia Drake has leveled up like a pro. Just out of medical school, she’s landed her dream job—a medical residency at a prestigious hospital. She has a beautiful home and an amazing husband. But there’s one more achievement she’s determined to unlock: becoming a mother.

In the business world, Adam Drake is a beast. He can face any threat. Conquer any boardroom. But when Mia issues the challenge to start a family, Adam will have to take up a sword to fight the ultimate boss—his own fear.

The path forward is clear, but are Adam and Mia truly ready to embark on this epic quest?

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Author Bio:

Brenna Aubrey is a USA TODAY Bestselling Author of contemporary romance stories that center on geek culture. Her debut novel, At Any Price, is currently free on all platforms. Her books are on over a million e-readers worldwide, have been translated into German, French, Italian and Dutch. They’ve also been adapted as an interactive app game. Look for the brand new POINT OF NO RETURN series and her extremely popular GAMING THE SYSTEM series.

She has always sought comfort in good books and the long, involved stories she weaves in her head. Brenna is a city girl with a nature-lover’s heart. She therefore finds herself out in green open spaces any chance she can get. She currently resides on the west coast of the US with her husband and children (both human and furry).

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The Science of Attraction
Jay Hogan
(A Mackenzie Country Story, #3)
Publication date: February 22nd 2024
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, LGBTQ+, Romance

I am Mackenzie Country born and bred. Farming the high country runs in my blood, like my father, and his father, and my great grandfather before him. My future has been mapped out for me since the day I was born. Or at least it was, until Liam Skelton walks onto Lane Station, lights a fire in my heart, and turns my whole world upside down.

Bossy, tatted, and out and proud, Liam is everything my father abhors.

And I want him.

Badly.

But having a chance with Liam means risking everything. My family. My future. And my life in these mountains that I love.

Still, the heart wants what it wants, and mine wants Liam.

With so many things against us, maybe we don’t have a chance.

Maybe we’ll crash and burn.

Or maybe we’ll find a way to have it all.

Goodreads / Amazon

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EXCERPT:

Julian Lane unsettled me in a way not many men did, and it was troubling, to say the least. I’d had a couple of long-term relationships in my life, but I’d never lived with anyone or wanted more. Being a fairly self-contained person, I liked my own company. I spent most days working intimately with people’s complex needs. It was intense, challenging work, and at the end of the day or the finish of a contract, my home was my sanctuary, and I guarded it with my life.

The idea of a man cluttering up that space with their things, inconvenient demands, or just the mere fact of their presence sent horrifying chills racing down my spine. I rarely got flustered by a guy, and certainly not the way Julian unnerved me with his capable air, glittering grey eyes, and that profound sense of knowing his place in the world.

Julian had the air of a man who knew who he was and where he belonged. You wouldn’t need to jolly a man like Jules along to make him feel wanted, soothe an ego bent out of shape, or play down your success so as not to threaten his by comparison. Men like that were rare and held an intoxicating allure for someone like me.

But Jules was also my client’s son, and that alone should’ve made him forbidden fruit even for a bit of harmless crushing. Should’ve. But there’d been something about his smile that first day. Something about the way I’d caught him looking at me when he didn’t think I was watching. And maybe the way I felt when he looked at me, as well.

The whole thing was fucking with my head.

 

Author Bio:

Heart, humour and keeping it real.

Jay is a 2020 Lambda Literary Award Finalist in Gay Romance and her book Off Balance was the 2021 New Zealand Romance Book of the Year.

She is a New Zealand author writing mm romance and romantic suspense, primarily set in New Zealand. She writes character driven romances with lots of humour, a good dose of reality and a splash of angst. She’s travelled extensively, lived in many countries, and in a past life she was a critical care nurse, nurse educator and counsellor. Jay is owned by a huge Maine Coon cat and a gorgeous Cocker Spaniel

Find Jay in all the places: https://www.jayhoganauthor.com/landingpage

 

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The Demon’s Discovery
L. Alexander
(The Demon Princes, #2)
Publication date: February 21st 2024
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Paranormal, Romance

My whole life I’ve been trapped, but fate has provided a way out.

Orphaned.

Hidden.

Rescued by a Demon Prince.

As a child I became the ward of a duke and his wife, but I’m just a servant in the house, not family.

An accidental encounter with one of their most prestigious guests opens the door to a life I hadn’t dared to dream of.

Residence at the Collegium d’Arcan. A family. Freedom.

The handsome mystic arts teacher nurtures not only my talent in alchemy and my confidence … but also my happiness. His protective affection is unwavering, especially after the duke promises my hand to a merchant without my consent.

Delving into my past reveals things that have the demon prince I’m falling for swearing vengeance on my behalf. Our lives are far more intertwined than anyone could have guessed, and nearly nothing is as it seems.

His secrets might be dangerous, but mine could change the fate of a kingdom.

The Demon’s Discovery is a fated mates romance with a cinnamon roll hero, magic, monsters and a guaranteed happily ever after. It’s a full-length novel with no cliffhanger for the couple and is the second book in this series.

Goodreads / Amazon

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EXCERPT:

Greta ended up with her back pressed against the supplies cabinet, my forearms flat against the glass, her chest heaving and her cheeks flushed as she gazed up at me with wide eyes.

“Are you alright?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

There was no way to miss the way her eyes tracked my mouth, the way I was steeped in her scent or how my heart kept trying to reach for her directly through my chest. It had been the sweetest torture to spend the day pressed up against her from behind, able to smell her hair and feel the curves of her body line up with the planes of mine. And now, with her dressed in my clothing, after what we’d been through earlier, I hardly had any restraint at all left.

“Greta,” I warned.

“It’s okay. I want …” she swallowed, my eyes following every movement of her throat and the way her tongue dipped out to wet her bottom lip.

I cupped her cheek with one hand, warring with myself as every impulse in my body screamed at me.

Her eyes became glazed, half closed … and I lost all hold on my control.

I dove in like a man starved, plundering her mouth with my own. I swallowed her noises of surprise, growling back as she pressed herself further against me instead of trying to run away.

She tasted like the berries we’d had with lunch, and I marveled at the softness of her body under my hands, my lips. I teased at her bottom lip with one fang, swiping at the tiny droplet of blood I’d made rush to the surface with my tongue as she sucked in a breath. To my great pleasure, she didn’t pull away as a brief collage of her here at the collegium danced across my mind. If anything, she hovered closer, asking for more in the way her eyes lingered half-closed, her hands fisted in my shirt.

“Vassago …” My name was music on her lips, speaking to the darkest parts of me. The neediest.

The most dangerous ones.

“Greta.” I pressed my lips to hers again, but gently, taking my time exploring. I mapped the way her cupid’s bow formed perfect points in her lush upper lip and a tiny scar caused an imperfection in her bottom one. The way she was reaching for me the way I was for her. The way she hesitated, but just barely, when I requested she open for me by swiping along her lips with my tongue. As I drank from her lips she followed my lead, making another of those incendiary sounds.

I lost myself in her, and it was glorious.

Author Bio:

L. Alexander writes Paranormal and Fantasy romance with sweet & spicy cinnamon roll heroes, fated mates, monsters, magic and more. She guarantees a happily ever after no matter what and has a soft spot for broody anime characters.

L. also writes Contemporary Romance under the name Lily Alexander.

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Catch and Release
Tracy Solheim
(Milwaukee Growlers Football Romance, #3)
Publication date: February 26th 2024
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance, Sports

A second chance, enemies-to-lovers football romance.

He’s the pro athlete everyone wants to be.

Quarterback Trey Van Horn didn’t become the league’s MVP by accident. Years of self-discipline and iron-clad control have made him the envy of everyone in and around the game of football. But when he comes face-to-face with the one who got away, his tightly managed life is turned upside down. Now he’ll do whatever it takes to score the greatest comeback of his life.

She’s tired of being every guy’s doormat.

London Headley is on the verge of having the career she’s always dreamed of. Too bad the path to her promotion runs through the guy who broke her heart a decade earlier. So what if everything about the Milwaukee Growlers QB sets her panties on fire? She’s determined to keep things professional. Life has taught her that men will always choose something—or someone—over her. It’s going to take more than a Hail Mary to get her to buy into the fairy tale.

The only problem? Her lips don’t seem to want to follow the game plan. Not when Trey is executing an all-out blitz to prove he’s worth a second chance.

Goodreads / Amazon / Barnes & Noble / iBooks

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EXCERPT:

“I’m all in,” he repeated softly, his breath teasing the skin near her ear. “You can count on me, London.”

Could she?

It wasn’t like she had a choice. Besides, Bennie said Trey’s reputation with advertisers was nothing but professional.

“I’d like it if we could get through this without every moment in each other’s presence being a battle,” he added.

Well damn if he wasn’t being the mature one.

She was the one being ridiculous by reading too much into everything he said and did, that’s all. If he could approach the situation like a grown up, then so could she. After all, she wasn’t that naïve eighteen-year-old any longer. No way was she falling for Trey Van Horn again. If he could keep things light and businesslike, she would put on her big girl panties and do the same.

But not if he kept touching her. It was impossible for her to think with his body so close to hers. She hurriedly untangled her fingers from his and put some distance between them.

“I’d like that as well.” Too bad her voice didn’t sound as steady and committed to the new plan as she’d like. She managed a smile that she hoped looked more assured than she felt. “I’m looking forward to making this campaign a success.”

He returned her smile with one of his own. Only his bordered on sly, as if he knew what the words were costing her.

“Me, too.” He opened her office door and gestured for her to exit first.

 

Author Bio:

USA Today bestselling author Tracy Solheim writes books with shirtless men on the cover. Some of them are actually best-sellers. The books, not the men. When she’s not writing, she’s practicing her curling. . . bottles of wine, that is. She’s been known to cook dinner but no more than two nights in a row. Most days, she’d rather be reading, which to her is just necessary research. She lives in the suburbs of Atlanta with her husband and a neurotic Labrador retriever. Her two adult children visit but not often enough. (See the note above about cooking.) Check out her romantic suspense series featuring the Men of the Secret Service–shirtless, of course! See what she’s up to at http://www.tracysolheim.com

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Title: A Step Past Darkness

Author: Vera Kurian

Publisher: Park Row

Publication Date: February 20, 2024

Page Count: 448

About the book:

I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER meets Stephen King in this character-driven thriller about a study group of six teenagers who witness something tragic in an abandoned mine, which comes back to haunt them 20 years later.

SIX CLASSMATES.

ONE TERRIFYING NIGHT.

A MURDER TWENTY YEARS IN THE MAKING…

There’s more to Wesley Falls than meets the eye, but for six high school students, it’s home.

Kelly, the new girl and rule-follower.

Maddy, the beauty and the church favorite.

Padma, the brains and all-A student.

Casey, the jock and football star.

James, the burnout and just trying to make it to graduation.

And Jia, the psychic, who can see the future.

When these six are assigned to work on a summer group project, their lives are forever changed. At an end of the year party in the abandoned mine, they witness a preventable tragedy, but no one will take them seriously. As things escalate, they realize the church, the police, and the town’s founders are all conspiring to cover up what happened. When James is targeted as the scapegoat, to avoid suspicion, they vow their silence and to never contact each other again. Their plan works – almost.

Twenty years later, Maddy is found murdered is Wesley Falls, and the remaining five are forced to confront their past and work together to finally put right what happened all those years ago. If they can survive…

Find this book online:

Goodreads  /  Amazon  /  BookShop.org / Barnes & Noble 

Excerpt:

1

August 17, 2015

The mountain had existed long before there had been anyone around to name it, pushed up by the inevitable forces that made the Appalachian Range millions of years ago. Hulking, it stood with a peculiar formation at its apex, two peaks like a pair of horns, giving the mountain its eventual name of Devil’s Peak. The coal mine inside was abandoned long ago.

On the southern side of Devil’s Peak was the town of Wesley Falls, where there were no remnants of the mine except for the overgrown paths crisscrossing up to two entrances, ineffectually boarded up, partially hidden but available to anyone looking hard enough. Down the western side were the steeper paths, far more overgrown with vegetation, leading down to the abandoned town of Evansville. That side of the mountain and beyond grew strange because of the coal fire that had been burning underground for almost a century. The Bureau of Mines had managed to contain the fire to the western side of the mountain so that only Evansville suffered. Only Evansville had bouts of noxious gases, open cracks of brimstone in the roads, residents complaining of hot basements and well water. Over time they left town, leaving behind a ghost.

Unlike its unfortunate neighbor, Wesley Falls had avoided the mine fire and transitioned from a coal-mining town to something not unlike Pennsylvania suburbia. It was the sort of town where one of the billboards outside the Golden Praise megachurch proclaimed, “Wesley Falls: the BEST place to raise a family!” and most adults agreed with that assessment. The sort of place where the city council had voted against a bid to allow a McDonalds to open, arguing that it would “lead to the deterioration of the character of Wesley Falls.” This had less to do with concerns about childhood obesity or dense traffic than it did a desire to keep the town trapped in amber. The sort of town where the sheriff was the son of the previous sheriff. 

Jia Kwon, stepping off a train at the station some miles away from Wesley Falls, looked around the crowded station for that son—the sheriff—now in his thirties, though she had trouble picturing this. Sheriff Zachary Springsteen had an air of formality that she couldn’t match up with the image of the boy she knew from high school, whom everyone called Blub. He was an inoffensive, nondescript kid who delivered papers via his clackety bike, who then grew to be the generic teen who stood in the back row of yearbook pictures. She had always been friendly with him, but never quite friends, starting from when she had transferred from St. Francis to the Wesley Falls public school system and Blub sat next to her in homeroom.

Was the fact that she had chosen to keep in contact with this not-quite-friend after she moved away from Wesley Falls an accident? No—she knew that now. Blub had been the perfect person to report back town news over the years because he never suspected her interest was anything more than curiosity. Their exchanges over the years had been just enough for him to feel comfortable, or compelled enough, to make the phone call that had brought her here.

Jia paused to put her phone in her purse, pretending she did not notice any stares. No one looked twice at her in Philly, but here she stood out as the only Asian, drawing even more attention to herself because she had dyed her hair a shade of silvery gray with hints of lavender in it. It would only be worse when she got into town, but even as a kid she had been so used to being stared at that she just exaggerated her strangeness, opting for bright clothes rather than trying to blend in.

“Jia?” said an uncertain voice.

She turned her head and instantly recognized Blub, who stood with the gawky awkwardness of someone uncomfortable with his own height. “Blub!” she exclaimed, coming closer. She embraced him, her head only coming up to his midchest. “You’ve grown two feet!”

He shoved his hands into his pockets, smiling. “Want to ask me if I play basketball?” Their smiles felt hollow, she realized, because of the strangeness of the situation and everything they weren’t saying. “I appreciate you taking the time to come out here. I know you’re probably busy but…” He led her to his patrol car. “Sorry, you’ll have to ride in the back.”

“It’s no problem,” she murmured, surprised to see that he had brought someone along for the ride.

“This is Deputy Sheriff Henry,” Blub said, turning the car on. A smaller man whom she did not recognize half turned and nodded at her curtly, though Jia could see him looking at her in the rearview mirror as they pulled away from the station. What on earth had Blub told him?

That once, in one of their email exchanges, when he complained about having to repair his roof, she made a joke about which team to bet on for the Super Bowl, and he did, and she had been right? That she had one too many stock tips that turned out to be good? That she inexplicably sent him a “You okay?” email at 8:16 a.m. on September eleventh, thirty minutes before American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center? There had been enough incidents as strange as these that when he called her last year asking for help, it felt like something clicking into place. Something that was supposed to happen. Over the years, she had started to feel comfortable with that clicking feeling, rather than being afraid of it. Last winter he had called her saying that Jane Merrick was missing from the old-folks home—she was prone to running— and she was outside in the freezing weather in only a nightgown, and they were worried about her. He did not say why he was asking her, a person who hadn’t lived in Wesley Falls for two decades, a person who neither knew nor liked Jane Merrick. She told him to look in the barn on the Dandriges’ property without providing an explanation of how she knew. She knew because she saw it. She knew because sometimes she could call up things when she wanted to, though not all the time, but this was still significantly better than when she was a kid and she couldn’t control when the visions hit her, or stop them, or even understand them.

And now, in the peak of summer heat, he had called again, saying that there was a missing person, could she help, friends were worried. She did not ask who because she felt something like the deepest note on a double bass vibrating, reverberating through her body. She saw herself walking, her white maxi dress—the one she was wearing right now—catching on brambles as she maneuvered her way down the overgrown path to the ghost town.

She had to go back to Wesley Falls. It was time.

“You all went to school together?” Deputy Sheriff Henry said when they pulled onto the highway.

“Yeah,” she said. “We didn’t overlap with you, did we?” Henry shook his head. “Blub and I go way back,” she said, meeting Blub’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

“I’ll never get over the fact that people call you Blub,” Henry remarked. “How’d you get that name anyway? Were you chubby or something?”

“I don’t think there’s an origin story,” Blub said, looking like he wanted the subject to change.

“I remember!” Jia exclaimed. “It’s when you threw up in fourth grade.” She leaned forward, pressing against the grate that divided the car, addressing Henry directly. “It was during homeroom. He threw up on his pile of books. I remember because it was clear and ran down the sides like pancake syrup.”

Henry laughed and Blub flushed. “Jia, you can’t remember that because you weren’t there. You were at St. Francis in grade school!”

She stopped laughing abruptly. “I could have sworn I remember that happening!”

“Sometimes when enough people tell you a story, you start to remember it like you were there,” Henry mused.

Sometimes, Jia thought. But there were other people who could see things that had happened or would happen, even if they weren’t there.

As they drove down the highway and drew closer to Wesley Falls, the mood shifted to an anxious silence. Jia checked her phone for anything work related. She ran a small solar panel company called Green Solutions with her two best friends, both hyper-competent, both probably picking up on Jia’s strange tone when she said she had to go back home for a short trip. They probably thought that it had to do with the settling of her mother’s estate, and Jia, even though she was uncomfortable with lying, allowed them to believe this. When her mother had died, Jia had come to Wesley Falls to liquidate everything in The Gem Shop and sell the store itself to the least annoying bidder: a fifty-something-year-old former teacher who wanted to open a bakery. A significant part of the decision had been not that her baked items were good—they were—but something about her aggressive combinations of spices had seemed witchy, and, most importantly, she did not attend Golden Praise. Jia’s mother, Su-Jin, would have approved.

And now, with Blub turning off the highway, her heart felt torn in different directions. Wesley Falls wasn’t home, but it was, because it was where most of her memories of Su-Jin lived. As the car moved it felt as if they traveled through an invisible veil, something that felt uncomfortable in a way she could not put into words anyone else would understand, but was familiar and, she knew, strange. Strange like how she was strange.

But then it came: the feeling that arose every time she had gone home to visit her mother—the feeling that she shouldn’t be here. Except this time, it was worse. They had just arrived in Wesley Falls, passing Wiley’s Bar, which was on the outskirts of town. It was frequented by truckers stopping for a cheap burger and beer.

“That place is still here?” she murmured.

“They got karaoke now,” Blub offered.

“Please kill me,” Jia responded, trying to sound light. Blub laughed, then turned onto Throckmartin Lane. The street hadn’t changed in twenty years: it still housed Greenbriar Park, which everyone called “The Good Park,” and the larger homes where the wealthier families lived. Built before McMansions had hit this part of Pennsylvania, the houses differed in their architecture—some colonial, some farmhouse—but were all similar with their immaculate lawns, American flags, and WESLEY FALLS FOOTBALL signs.

Blub slowed to a stop, making eye contact with her in the rearview mirror. He was waiting for directions.

She gestured for him to turn onto Main Street, that old, curved road with the bottom half of the C drawn out like a jaw that had dropped wide open—it was impossible to drive anywhere in Wesley Falls without driving on Main Street at some point. They passed the police station, then the row of shops. Some of the mom-and-pop stores that lined Main Street had changed, but Wesley Falls still didn’t have a Target, a chain grocery store, or a reasonable place to buy clothes. Indeed, the best place to raise a family was apparently a place where you had to drive ten miles to the mall to get many of the things people wanted. She gazed at the bakery that used to be The Gem Shop. Spade’s Hardware was still there—her mother had had a grudging friendship with the owners. The candy shop had changed ownership but it was still a candy shop. They drove along the north side of town, by the lake and the Neskaseet River—called Chicken River by locals because of its proximity to and usage by the chicken processing plant at the north edge of town.

Wesley Falls and Evansville had both popped up in the 1800s, their economies at first built entirely around the Wesley coal mine, which resided inside Devil’s Peak. No matter how many times well-meaning adults attempted to close off the entrance of the mine, which had been abandoned in the 1930s when the coal ran out, high school kids always found their way in. Drawn to the allure of ghost stories, rumors that if you found the right path you could find the mine fire in Evansville, and the inevitable urban legends about the Heart.

Jia pointed and Blub turned onto the unpaved road that crossed the Neskaseet and wound up the side of Devil’s Peak to Evansville. From this elevation, she could see the entire tiny, abandoned town. The simple, squared-off eight shape of the town’s few roads, the dilapidated strip of larger buildings at the center, then the rectangles of homes, all identical because they had been provided by the mining company.

The road came to an end, trees and shrubbery blocking their passage. Blub put the car in Park, turning to face Jia. “Can’t drive farther.”

“Then we walk,” she said. She led the way, ignoring the looks from both men as she freed herself from prickly branches that caught onto her dress. Blub used his nightstick to whack away a tangle of vegetation, then Jia found a path that led down to the town.

It smelled like sulfur with a hint of cigar. Jia picked her way gingerly down the main road, which was buckled and cracked in places, then turned a corner behind the old church and stopped. There was someone in the road wearing a bright fuchsia shirt. She could only see the top half of the figure’s body. The lower part, from the stomach down, was trapped inside the road in what looked like a fresh sinkhole.

Jia knew without looking. Some part of her had known from the moment Blub called her. He needed help finding a missing person, but he hadn’t said who. This was the thing that had pulled her back, made her feel an insistent anxiety for the past few months.

Blub and Henry were running to the body, the latter yelling. When Jia finally approached, Blub was trying to get a pulse. She watched the two men huddle over the body, Henry almost making an attempt to pull her from the chasm before Blub stopped him. This could be a crime scene.

Blub sat back on his haunches. The fuchsia T-shirt was soaked with last night’s rain. Her blond hair was pulled into a ponytail, tendrils stuck to the sides of her face. That face. Familiar but different. She’s still so pretty, Jia thought. Her mouth was open and a scratch stood out livid on her pale cheek. Her eyes were closed.

“It’s her,” Blub stated.

“Maddy Wesley,” Henry said, disturbed and awed.

“You knew that Maddy was the missing person? You didn’t tell me,” Jia said, trying to keep her voice stable.

Blub remained crouched, his elbows on his knees with his hands dangling down. “Didn’t think I needed to,” he stated, his voice devoid of the warmth it had had while in the car. He didn’t look at her as he examined the scene, and it occurred to Jia that he was actually the sheriff. Not Blub, the kid who threw up on his pile of books, but an actual agent of the law.

Jia edged backward, fearful that the road could break under her.

“You know her?” Henry asked.

His gaze made her self-conscious. Jia had never been a good liar. Much of the lying she had done that summer so many years ago had been by omission. She was working on a project. She was hanging out with Padma. These things had been true, but misleading.

“She was in our year,” Jia managed. “We all went to high school together.”

Blub’s eyes went from the body to Jia. “You weren’t friends, though, were you?” Maddy ran with the popular crowd, the Golden Praise crowd. Jia had been the opposite of that.

“No,” she said finally. “We weren’t friends.”

Excerpted from A Step Past Darkness by Vera Kurian, Copyright © 2024 by Albi Literary Inc. Published by Park Row Books.  

About the Author:

Vera Kurian is a writer and scientist based in Washington DC. Her debut novel, NEVER SAW ME COMING (Park Row Books, 2021 was an Edgar Award nominee and was named one of the New York Times’ Best Thrillers of 2021. Her short fiction has been published in magazines such as Glimmer Train, Day One, and The Pinch. She has a PhD in Social Psychology, where she studied intergroup relations, ideology, and quantitative methods. She blogs irregularly about writing, horror movies and pop culture/terrible TV.

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