I enjoy writing stories, but I love to read. So I thought it would be fun to start a new blogging tradition with a year-end post about the five books I enjoyed reading most during the year. Since I started this writing journey, the number of books per year has lessened considerably, which makes each read that much more special.
This year, I read books from several different categories: romance, of course, from sweet to steamy, historical fiction, and literary fiction. Here are the books I enjoyed most...
Rough & Tumble by Rhenna Morgan
Live hard, f*ck harder and make their own rules. Those are the cornerstones the six Men of Haven bleed by: taking what they want, always watching each other's backs, and loving the women they claim with unyielding tenderness and fierce passion.
A self-made man with his fingers in a variety of successful businesses, Jace Kennedy lives for the challenge. From the start, he sees Vivienne Moore's hidden wild side and knows she's his perfect match, if only he can break it free. Earning this woman's trust is a task unlike any he's faced so far, but Jace didn't get where he is by giving up.
Vivienne's determined to ditch the rough lifestyle she grew up in, even if that means hiding her true self behind a bland socialite veneer. Dragging her party-hound sister out of a club was
not how she wanted to ring in the New Year, but Viv knows the drill. Get in, get her sister and get back to the safe, stable life she's built for herself as fast as humanly possible. But Viv's plans are derailed when she meets the club's seriously sexy owner.
Jace is everything Vivienne swore she never wanted, but the more time she spends with him, the more she starts to see that he loves just as fiercely as he fights. He can walk society's walk and talk society's talk, but when he wants something, he finds a way to get it. He's proud of who he is and where he came from, and he'll be damned if he lets Vivienne go before showing her the safest place of all is in his arms.
Find
Rough & Tumble at
Amazon.
Skin Deep by Marissa Doyle
After a painful divorce, Garland Durrell looks forward to settling into her home on Cape Cod to make the quilts that are her passion. On the first morning of her new life she finds a man and a small boy washed up on the beach, both badly wounded. Since the town chief of police is strangely reluctant to help, Garland takes on the care of the mysterious pair who don't seem to remember what happened to them--and feels her own heart begin to heal.
Alasdair does remember. He and his son Conn are the last of the ruling family of selkies from the waters around the Cape, locked in a decades-long struggle with an evil that threatens all, selkie and human. He’s not sure if he can trust the lovely, blue-eyed woman who takes them in until he touches one of her quilts and feels the magic she’s sewn into it...and the emotions that he never thought he’d feel again.
But the evil entity that stole Alasdair’s sealskin and left him for dead quickly senses both his presence and Garland’s magic, and is determined to destroy one and possess the other. Only Garland and her quilts, made with a power she barely believes she has, can save them all from destruction—if she can avoid being destroyed first.
Find
Skin Deep at
Amazon.
Camino Island by John Grisham
A gang of thieves stage a daring heist from a secure vault deep below Princeton University’s Firestone Library. Their loot is priceless, but Princeton has insured it for twenty-five million dollars.
Bruce Cable owns a popular bookstore in the sleepy resort town of Santa Rosa on Camino Island in Florida. He makes his real money, though, as a prominent dealer in rare books. Very few people know that he occasionally dabbles in the black market of stolen books and manuscripts.
Mercer Mann is a young novelist with a severe case of writer’s block who has recently been laid off from her teaching position. She is approached by an elegant, mysterious woman working for an even more mysterious company. A generous offer of money convinces Mercer to go undercover and infiltrate Bruce Cable’s circle of literary friends, ideally getting close enough to him to learn his secrets.
But eventually Mercer learns far too much, and there’s trouble in paradise as only John Grisham can deliver it.
Find
Camino Island at
Amazon.
The Highlander's Crusader Bride by Cathy & DD MacRae
Born in the Holy Land only a few years after the Third Crusade, half-Armenian, half-Scot Arbela MacLean is a true daughter of the desert, beautiful and untamed. Trained to be a warrior to avoid her gentle mother’s fate, Arbela has honed her skills with Turkish bow and arrow, sword and throwing darts—and dreads the day her father choses a man for her to marry.
After more than thirty years in the Holy Land, Donal MacLean, Baron of Batroun, is recalled to Scotland, the last son available to take up leadership of clan MacLean. He brings with him knights, treasure, trade—and a daughter of marriageable age.
Caelen MacKern, known as the Bull of the Highlands, is cynical about women. His first marriage formed an alliance, and he did not grieve when his spoiled, immature bride passed away. He has agreed to marry again—against his better judgement—for the men, means and coin to recover from a devastating pestilence that all but wiped out his clan.
Though more than a little resentful at finding himself forced to remarry, Caelen’s proposal to Donal MacLean’s headstrong daughter nevertheless piques her interest. Each will receive what they want most from life—the ability to live as they please without interference from a meddling spouse. But their marriage of indifference will soon change to one of passion that neither Arbela nor Caelen could have predicted.
Find
The Highlander's Crusader Bride at
Amazon.
Alex Campbell by Cate Parke
Alex Campbell is a physician, the youngest pediatric oncologist anywhere. She’s brilliant and driven to succeed. Work fulfills her—until she meets Richard Wales and he becomes the dream she believed might never come true.
Richard Wales is the spare, not the heir, with a Navy career to develop. But when he meets Alex Campbell in Heatherton’s bookshop, he discovers he must defy far more than social convention—or risk losing the only woman who ever mattered.
Find
Alex Campbell at
Amazon.
Wishing you a magical 2018!
~Dawn Marie
Daniel Kilcannon, the veterinarian known as the Dogfather, has been widowed for four years. He's spent the time running the largest canine rescue and training facility in North Carolina and pulling some strings to make sure each of his six grown children find a love like the one he lost when his beloved Annie died.
