Featured New Release Of The Week: Dancing With The Sun by Kay Bratt

This week, we’re looking at a book from yet another new-to-me Lake Union author. This week, we’re looking at Dancing With the Sun by Kay Bratt.

This book was all about a mother’s love for her daughter, and read very much like a love song from a mother to her daughter. Learning later that Bratt actually has two daughters, one hopes that both of them reads this book and realizes just how much their mother truly loves them.The story itself opens with the mother having the difficult duty of telling her daughter that after many years of marriage to the daughter’s father, she is ending the marriage. But the daughter has plans of her own, and wants to take her mother to a beautiful place she found in Yosemite National Park. Except a freak severe rain storm comes up, and they get lost on the way. Now, the battle for survival is on – with neither woman prepared for such a battle.

I wasn’t joking earlier when I said that this book reads like a love song from a mother to a daughter. That is absolutely the main thing you will remember about this book months later. The absolute determination to do whatever it takes to ensure her daughter lives almost screams across every page once the survival part of the story kicks into gear. Yes, the mother battles her own doubts and demons, and has an excellent character arc as a woman of her own right. But the main focus is absolutely the mother/ daughter dynamic, and in that focus this book truly shines. This may have been my first book from Bratt, but it won’t be my last.

And as always, time for the Goodreads/ Amazon version of the review:
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Featured New Release Of The Week: Claiming Amber by Vi Carter

This week, we’re looking at the second book in a new series whose opener we looked at just last month. This week, we’re looking at Claiming Amber by Vi Carter.

As this book is the second in a series, the lead couple were both first introduced in Saving Grace – Amber, Grace’s best friend, and… Grace’s brother, Emmett. Now, we know from the first book that Emmett is a pretty big cheese in some pretty dangerous stuff. In this book, we get an in-depth look at just how dark and dangerous it is. Along the way, we get to see just how care free Amber can be yet still have a very trusting heart – one that Emmett could use a bit of, even if he finds it too dangerous given his work.

Overall this book definitely had elements to satisfy both romance readers and in particular mafia-style romance readers while also giving people who were looking for a more drama-driven, some action kind of book something to both love. Excellent character development on many fronts. not just including the primary couple but also some of the other characters both introduced here and previously. Yet again looking forward to where this series goes.

And the Goodreads/ Amazon:
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Featured New Release Of The Week: The Perfect Match by Maggie Dallen

This week, we continue Maggie Dallen’s Kissing The Enemy series with the story of introvert Kate and new guy Levi. This week, we’re looking at The Perfect Match by Maggie Dallen.

This is the middle book of a short series of high school romances centered on different high school sports, in this case soccer. And in this particular book, we actually get the most sports of any of the three books in the series, though that isn’t really saying much. The book steers away from the couple featured in the first book – neither Callie nor Noah show up very much at all in this book. Instead, this book uses Callie’s friend Maddie as the real glue between The Perfect Catch and The Perfect Match, even though all six people that feature as the couples of this trilogy were introduced in The Perfect Catch. But that allows us to focus more on the high school drama side of things, which can be entertaining. When you’re no longer in high school.

Overall, the tale of Kate finding a way to be more expressive while Levi struggles to feel at home in his new environment was great, fun, and mostly light. Very much looking forward to Maddie and Ox’s story to finish the trilogy.
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Featured New Release Of The Week: Girls On The Line by Aimie K Runyan

This week, we go back to WWI just in time for the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day. This week, we’re looking at Girls On The Line by Aimie K Runyan.

This book opens with a woman trapped in the Philadelphia High Society scene due to the era and her parents’ desire to try to break into it. Her problem is that she doesn’t want that life – she wants to be a fully independent woman, and has even taken part in the suffrage movement while in college. She already works as a switchboard operator, and when the call comes that the Army needs just such ladies for the war effort in Europe, she leaves the social pages and heads to the front lines.

This was an excellent historical fiction book that got most of the details I remember from my not overly detailed studies of the era correct and weaves a great story of people trying to find their way during the social turmoil of life in the 1910s. While historical fiction isn’t normally my thing, Runyan’s work here proves that I may need to explore opening myself even more. Yet another stand out work from Lake Union Publishing, and I’m looking forward to seeing more from Runyan in particular.
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