Page Turners

June

The Fake Fiancée
By Megan Kelly
Reviewed by Caroline Springer

The Fake Fiancée opens on an indecent proposal by Joe Riley, a gorgeous playboy and corporate shark, to Lisa Meyer, a struggling small business owner and single mom. Joe needs a woman to pose as his fiancée in order to appease his overbearing mother. Lisa needs Joe’s business to keep her catering company afloat and support her family. Thus begins a charming tale of love overcoming all obstacles.

Recently divorced Lisa craves peace and stability for her kids and success for her fledgling catering business. Her husband ran off with another woman leaving her with a mountain of debt and two kids struggling to adjust to their father’s defection. When Joe makes the contract to cater his company’s party contingent on her agreement to pose as his fiancée, Lisa reluctantly agrees because the money will allow her to enroll her son in a much-needed enrichment program at school. As Lisa and Joe spend time together to give the appearance of
being engaged, Lisa’s fundamental distrust of men foils Joe’s attempts to insinuate himself into her life.

Happily for the reader, physical attraction leads to much more as Joe and Lisa learn to trust and love aided, and many times hindered, by a great cast of supporting characters. Will Joe be able to convince Lisa to forget her deadbeat ex and take a chance on him? Can Lisa and her children teach Joe the value of family? Will Joe’s mother ever stop interfering?

Megan Kelly’s writing combines wit, sexual tension, and sincerity for an honest and hopeful portrayal of love and the American family. This reviewer highly recommends The Fake Fiancée.

Love and Lore
by Carolan Ivey, Gia Dawn and Sela Carsen
Reviewed by Charlotte Hubbard

This anthology centers around Celtic legends in three novellas that celebrate love in forms that seem unusual to us mere humans! In Carolan Ivey’s “Wildish Things,” an Irish bad-boy type and his lover stir up the lust of an ancient goddess, while “A Fairy Special Gift” by Gia Dawn features the Celtic god Lugh plus pixies, fairies and even a Banshee.

 Sela Carsen’s “Heart of the Sea” tells the tale of Meriel Byrne, who falls into the sea at Ronan Burbank’s party and becomes a Selkie. For seven long years she lives out her curse as a seal, and things don’t get a lot easier for her after she rescues Ronan from a shipwreck. While he enjoys seeing her naked when her pelt comes off, Meriel’s disappearance has cost him the family mega-business and reduced him to living in the shed behind the mansion while he crafts racing boats to make ends meet. Can Meriel overcome Ronan’s bitterness and her curse, or is she doomed to return to life as a sea creature?

Lots of tongue-in-cheek humor and interesting insights into the Selkie legend (and life as a seal who returns to human form) make this a quick, enjoyable read!

Out of the Storm
By Allie Harrison
Reviewed by Barbara Scott

Welcome back, Allie Harrison. After a long hiatus, Harrison returns with the outstanding Out of the Storm. In this compelling romantic suspense, heroine Alissa Montgomery answers a baby’s cry and a mysterious voice calling her name that come to her on the winds of an approaching storm. She rescues the baby apparently abandoned in a meadow and rushes to safety in her familiar country home. But she is accosted on her doorstep by a stranger who knows her name and claims to be her husband.

What follows for Alissa is a bewildering week in which she tries to understand her step two years into her own future. Two years in which she married Rafe Blackwell, bore a child, the baby she found, and changed from small town newspaper reporter to stay-at-home mom. Trouble is, her husband, family, and friends attribute her strange behavior and loss of memory to postpartum depression and possible abuse of prescription drugs. Events including a puzzling accident in the barn, a break in, and the drowning of the bank officer who threatens to foreclose on her brother’s home seem to suggest even more sinister causes.

Harrison deftly juggles the pieces of her puzzle and the emotional conflict of the romance between Alissa and the husband she barely knows. Out of the Storm kept me guessing to the very last page. The surprise ending is a delight and a perfect fit.

Allie Harrison is the author of romantic suspense and thrillers. Her previous work includes Dead Reckoning and Dream a Deadly Dream. Out of the Storm is available from New Concepts Publishing.

Barbara Scott is the author of Cast a Pale Shadow, a psychological suspense coming soon from The Wild Rose Press, and Haunts of the Heart, an historical paranormal coming in September from Aspen Mountain Press.