Welcome to recently read, my weekly post where I share what I’ve read the week before. Please feel free to join in 🙂
The Experiment by Amy Alves
*** A fake relationship, neighbors, small-town romance ***
WANTED: a dating coach.
I’m thirty years old and have no clue what a healthy, committed relationship is like. It doesn’t help that I have the social skills of a pineapple and coping mechanisms that veer toward avoidance.
Enter my hot new neighbor.
Jess Caldwell—the gorgeous green-eyed man next door—might be perfectly content with short-term flings, consisting mostly of sweaty, salacious, clothing-optional fun, but his family is not. He needs a girlfriend to get them off his back.
I propose a mutually beneficial—regrettably platonic—dating arrangement. He’ll be my dating coach, and I’ll be his fake girlfriend.
Jess has his work cut out for him trying to turn a painfully awkward relationship novice like me into a flirty, seductive siren. But my side of the arrangement isn’t exactly easy either.
I can look at his broad-shouldered, glistening runner’s body every morning, but I can’t touch. I can’t attack him with my lips. I can’t climb him like a tree and press my eager body to his.
And I definitely can’t let my love-deprived heart fall for the man who is quickly making me feel… everything.
No matter how much I want to.
Because not only is our relationship pretend, but our time together has an expiration date. Jess is leaving this town—and me—in just a few months.
Wrong Text, Right Love by Claudia Burgoa
USA TODAY Bestselling Author Claudia Burgoa presents an engaging love story full of mistaken identity, drunk texts, and hysterical mishaps.
Sex talk is my job. I’m an influencer. I run a popular blog where I give all kinds of dating tips, and girls all over the world thank me for helping them with their love lives.
I wish I could follow my own advice because my love life is totally dead. I just drunk texted my ex-boyfriend… except, I didn’t. That text ended up going to someone else.
Oops.
This new relationship is almost picture-perfect, just like my online life. I guess I give good… text.
He doesn’t have to put up with my colorful personality — as my hot next-door neighbor describes me. Or my messy schedule.
This long-distance relationship is the best thing that’s happened to me and I plan to keep it that way.
Until we agree to meet up, and I’m freaking out.
When he meets the real me, will he hate me forever?
Or will we be one day telling our grandkids about that wrong text, right love?
Heart of the Raven Prince by Tessonja Odette
A playboy prince in want of a decoy bride.
A servant girl desperate for a disguise…
Raven shifter Prince Franco is every social climbing debutante’s dream. He’s handsome, heir to the Lunar Court throne, and deliciously single. Every young woman wants to bed him, wed him, or steal a moment of his time. Except, of course, for Ember Montgomery.
Half fae Ember craves freedom from her conniving stepfamily. As if they weren’t enough to deal with, a chance encounter with the arrogant Prince Franco leaves her humiliated and in a fiery rage. Nothing could convince her the prince is anything but a rake. But when the opportunity to evade her scheming stepmother falls into her lap, she’ll pay the price—even if it means impersonating the prince’s newest flame…
To prove himself a worthy heir, Prince Franco must marry a princess. But after far too many unsatisfying trysts, he’s given up on love. With the social season in full swing, and bringing with it a horde of husband-hungry socialites, he’ll do anything to delay the pressures of both marriage and the crown. And what better solution than an alliance with a desperate servant girl glamoured as his false future bride?
Locked in a bargain, Ember must pose as a princess until midnight at the full moon ball. Until then, all she has to do is wear the glamour, pretend to court the prince, and above all else, not fall in love. But when feelings emerge on both sides, she starts to wonder if there’s more to their contrived courtship than either of them planned…
Can Ember and Franco find love when the masks come off? Or will illusions and lies prove stronger than their hearts?
ACOTAR meets Bridgerton in this standalone fairytale retelling of Cinderella. If you like slow burn romance, fake engagements, and snarky fae royals, then you’ll love this swoon-worthy story in the Entangled with Fae series.
Books & Other Pursuits 