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First, a little history…
It may come as a shock but I wasn’t always aboard the digital book-reading bandwagon. For the longest time, even after I was given my first Kindle Fire (which I named Firelizard, my current Kindle is named Fire Drake – you know it’s adorable and you love it), I would still read all the dead tree books. At some point in 2016, (as I look at my digital content manager on Amazon) I realized that there are gloriously cheap reads to be purchased from the Amazon digital store – from Free to $3.99 is what I consider cheap – as well as the Amazon First Reads Program where Prime members get one or two free Kindle new titles a month, the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (accessible only from the Books App on your Kindle), and the Prime Reading Library. Please note, this was all before Nikki taught me the magic that is the public library’s Overdrive system (log-in with your library card in participating counties via Overdrive or Libby). I’m slow on the uptake, y’all.
And then, in 2018 I realized that I needed to entertain myself for the 30 hour drive across the country to California, toting two cats who at that point only ever meowed incessantly while in the car. I decided to subscribe to Kindle Unlimited for the first time using one of the occasional sales, because I had researched enough to know that lots of audio books are included in the service. Tricky thing is that after about an hour in the car the cats calmed down and I decided the Dixie Chicks would see me through the 3 day trek to L.A., Cowboy Take Me Away. So much for using those audiobooks.
When August of 2018 rolled around, I realized that my subscription was going to expire/renew at the monthly rate, so I wanted to take better advantage of all the available reading material. I started reading non-fiction things, like The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod – highly recommend to anyone seeking self-development tactics – and real estate and finance books. All of which is still my jam, buy then I allowed my subscription to expire and Nikki taught me the Ways of The Overdrive. However when November’s shopping season rolled around, and we both received notification of a new KU sale during the Black Friday/Cyber Monday hoopla, we decided to both jump in at the same time and see what kind of shenanigans we could get into together…
~Ashley
I blame Facebook and Amazon. Somehow (algorithms, I know), they together decided I needed to see all these ads for Kindle Unlimited books, but like specific books. There were sponsored ads from authors and groups, and ads for Kindle Unlimited itself. I also blame my love of watching a good fictional (and hypothetical) train wreck. I’d click to view the full text, get amused, take a screenshot and text it to Ashley. And so it began. And now we have a Kindle Unlimited Potential list on Amazon to which we both add titles, some of which are romance novels and some of which are not, but because Facebook + Amazon like to suggest romance novels, it’s mostly that. We are not sad at all. We’ve found some really fun titles through this rabbit hole, and now we’re going to share some of our favorites with you.
~Nikki
It started with a banana…
The first ad that got me was for His Banana by Penelope Bloom. Y’all, just look at the cover. And early in this open door romantic comedy, the heroine eats the hero’s banana (not a euphemism) while waiting to interview at his company. Comical Antics Ensue. It’s the first book in a series called Objects of Attraction, and Granny is my favorite, seconded by William, who does have his own book. For giggles the other titles include: Her Cherry, His Treat, His Package, Her Secret, Her Bush, and Her Secret. I *may* have just discovered After His Banana, published this month, which is now on my TBR.
And then there were shifters…
By this point in our narrative, we were enjoying the ads so much we started our Amazon KU TBR list. The requirements for which are: fun and entertaining premise, good reviews, which for us means four to five stars with at least 50 reviews in total, no complaints of copy editing issues, and a minimum of approximately 150 digital pages. We were also wanting to expand the genres of romance we were reading. When we came upon Celia Kyle and Marina Maddix’s Real Men Shift series, we decided it was a great way to dip our toes in the water. These open door romance novels follow the Blackwood Pack of werewolves in the mountains of north Georgia. The pack lives peacefully outside a small town, interacting with the (human) residents and working among them. There is drama, suspense, and oh so many mates. The pack structure, both within the pack and in the nation, was interesting to learn about, while also seeing how it plays out in the town. Start with Real Men Howl and go in order from there, if you’d like a solid introduction to the shifters genre.
Next came a Surprise Package & Fast Girl Media…
Somehow, I feel like we (I, whatever) kept getting better and better recommendations (I know, algorithms). And last Christmas (much like this December), I discovered some delightful titles. The most memorable title last year was Donna Alam’s Surprise Package. Our modern-day heroine is traveling to a wedding in Scotland, is abandoned by her friend/fellow guest, and goes to her weekend cabin anyway. *Spoiler Alert* Someone is already there, and they get snowed in together! Who’s in the wrong place? What are two people to do stuck inside for the weekend? What happens when the weekend is over? All of these questions and more are answered in this entertaining open door romance. This is technically #3 of the Great Scots Series, however I’m glad I read Surprise Package first, because it was a great introduction into Alam’s style. Easy is a bit more…risque, but we proceeded from there and were very delighted to discover that at least some of Alam’s series have intersecting characters, which is really my favorite because they feel like a continuation of the same story but with a different focus. Our favorite thread within the series (both the Great Scots and Aussies/Phillips Brothers series at least) is Fast Girl Media. This is a media company that makes adult films and is run by Chastity, yes a woman (she’s the heroine of In Like Flynn) and we are here for the concept both in print and in real life.
And finally, hockey twins sealed the deal with a gif…
Last, but certainly not least, we discovered Stud in the Stacks by Pippa Grant. A male librarian whose patrons rely on him for romance book recommendations. That’s all we needed to be interested, but additionally the book opens with a date auction, there’s an outrageous Granny, and so much autocorrect that is anything but correct. This was a 2019 favorite of ours, and actually #2 in the series, but again, I’m not sad we started with #2. Mr. McHottie is the first in the series, and is also great, and also just extra. Think glitter bombs and the weinermobile, and no, I’m not exaggerating.
Y’all, these open door romantic comedies are hilarious, like over the top, in the most amazing, laugh out loud ways! If you go down this rabbit hole, let us know, but first check out the reading order! There are several interconnected/overlapping series that cover a (fictional) pro-hockey team, a trio of siblings, a boy band, an all-girl band who specializes in boy band covers, and a group of royals.
My OUR FAVORITES of the series though, are the Berger twins, who both play hockey. One is outspoken, the other is not and prefers to text exclusively through gifs. Oh, and their names are Zeus and Ares. Naturally, their sister, Ambrosia, is a force to be reckoned with and is the heroine in Mr. McHottie. (Ashley also wants to point out that she started reading Samantha Whiskey’s Seattle Sharks series, another hockey romance series on KU, and is gloriously happy about it in every way possible.) Pippa is how we found the Bluewater Billionaires Series, and that’s the entire story of how our February focus came to be.
There’s a lot more to be found on Kindle Unlimited than romance novels, of any type, including the Harry Potter Series and Anne Bogel’s books! Ashley reads a lot of finance, real estate, and personal growth books. Nikki has also read business and leadership books. If you love to read, and read quickly enough to justify the cost, you should definitely look into Kindle Unlimited because there is SO much to choose from, not just romance.
What actually IS Kindle Unlimited, you say?
You can find Amazon’s answers here, but it’s a subscription service from Amazon where subscribers can read (or listen when available) to as many Kindle Unlimited books as they want per month, but you can only have 10 titles checked out at a time. Your first 30 days are free, and after that it’s $9.99 a month (unless you catch a sale, which generally happens a few times a year – like $1.99 for three months). We don’t always have a subscription, but when we do, we tend to read a lot of Kindle Unlimited titles! Take a look at the selection of titles before you purchase a subscription. The latest books from large publishers probably won’t be included, but many, many independent authors who publish on Amazon are included, and that brings us a lot of joy.
Have you checked out Kindle Unlimited? If so, what are your favorite titles, or perhaps some you’re excited about?
The following post includes affiliate links. More details here.
True confession time – I read The Price of Scandal in a day. Less than actually. I woke up with about 30 pages left in a book, and this was up next, so I started it on a Saturday morning and fell asleep (well after my bedtime) during the bonus epilogue with only a few pages left, which were completed first thing Sunday. It was the weekend, we didn’t have a ton of plans, and I just wanted to lay around, so I did. And it was fantastic.
Let me back up, this is an open door romantic comedy with the tropes of enemies to lovers and billionaires, but it’s more than that too. Emily Stanton is the CEO of a research-based skin care brand with a fast approaching IPO. Her work is her life, her family is a mess, and her friends are the only thing keeping her functional. Drama happens in the form of a blind date gone horribly wrong, and our hero, Derek Price, steps in to save the day. Because that’s his job, he’s a celebrity scandal fixer. There are complex family issues to navigate, the paparazzi to manage, and Derek has to make the ice queen Emily likeable to the public so her IPO will succeed because that’s what she wants, or so she says. That’s the tame part. There’s also a meet-nude, an injured alligator with a 3-D printed prosthesis, and a bit of a mystery about who can Emily really trust. Oh and, Emily and her friends developed and manage the community they live in, so we also have a town hall to attend with the eccentric residents of Bluewater in Biscayne Bay. This is a great escape read that is thoughtful and includes characters I’d love to be friends with, or even sit at the next table at brunch from, to eavesdrop on their amazing conversations (which they do to a group of romance novelists – yes, the authors of the series have a cameo!).
This book is entertaining, well-written, and funny. It is clearly out to be deep and astonishing and it succeeds. I imagine (seriously, this is all me, I have no idea, but I’d love to) these books were written something like Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. After the text of that novel, there’s an about or notes section wherein Pratchett and Gaiman tell you how they started writing Good Omens back and forth with the goal of creating an astonishing comedy and generally making it superbly challenging to raise the stakes in the next section. That book is creative and very funny (also very British), and so is this book (not the British part, but the rest). Score took a typical trope and turned it around, while also being respectful of all the characters involved.
Derek isn’t Emily’s assistant, he’s a very successful CEO in his own right. Emily isn’t a damsel in distress, but she is outside of her skill set with this situation and the way it may influence the upcoming IPO. Emily has struggles that feel very typical to successful women (even those who aren’t billionaires or CEOs), as when Emily says “I took my time with my hair and makeup. On a good day, they were weapons. But today they would also be a shield.” I hope I’m not the only one who does that, because she feels the need for a little extra, some days. Oh and also, “When in doubt, dress in head-to-toe black.” I *may* have done both on the same day last week, and y’all, all of it helped me feel better about my day and what I needed to accomplish (and it went superbly, thanks for asking)!
The bonus epilogue – y’all. If you know much about kids or have kids, YOU NEED TO READ THIS. The action is just as ridiculous as the rest of the book, but the way they talk about their kids, the realness of the fierce love for them and the desperate need to get away from them was just what my soul needed after a lot of togetherness with my children during the holidays.
~Nikki
Photo Credit: Brianna Wilbur
When we started seeing algorithmic advertisements for the Bluewater Billionaire series of books in early Fall 2019, I had not read any books by author Lucy Score, even though her oeuvre had been on my Romance Radar for quite a while. She pops up as a suggestion every time in Amazon’s ‘Recommended For You’ carousel. All of her books are available for free with a Kindle Unlimited Subscription, or you can purchase the kindle books from between $2.99 to $4.99, depending on the title, or in paperback. According to her bio pages, “Small town contemporary rom-coms are her lady jam.” Lucy didn’t disappoint in the small town, contemporary, rom-com, or lady jam genres when Nikki and I read The Christmas Fix during our 2019 Kindle Unlimited Holiday Romance Binge. (Caveat Lector: Secondary characters are the hero and heroine of Mr. Fixer Upper, so if reading a timeline out of order bothers you, read Mr. Fixer Upper first!)
Since Nikki covered the plot of The Price of Scandal so well, I want to discuss my favorite part of this book, besides the smut, sass, and general awesomeness, which is the characters’ relationships. I am not just talking about the romance between Derek and Emily, but all of the relationships that surround them. Of course, there is the deeper-than-friendship between our four badass billionaire heroines, Emily, Cameron, Luna, and Daisy. #SquadGoals for damn sure. What makes Emily and Derek so relatable, however, is that even though they are uber-successful in their own fields, they still act like a typical human being when relating to their employees and relatives. (Not all trope-y billionaires act like human beings to their relatives ::cough:: Christian Grey ::cough::) I am saddened by Emily’s relationship with her mother. She doesn’t feel supported by her mother who still thinks a woman without a man is nothing, even if that woman is a billionaire CEO and badass scientist. Emily is even jealous of the easy relationship Derek has with his own mom, ugh the feels. However, my favorite relationship of Emily’s might be the friendship she has with Jane, her bodyguard/chauffeuse/girl-Friday. (I am so here for Jane’s story, Lucy. #sorrynotsorry) There is such trust between them, and Jane is there for Emily in whatever way she needs (or doesn’t even know she needs) to be supported – breakfast carbs or questionable bottles of Fireball are prime examples. OK, fine, and how Jane was #TeamDerek way before Emily had even agreed to play the game.
There are so many more things I want to talk about, but they are too spoilery for a blog post. (Perhaps like the double-meaning of ‘price’ in the title…) I still want to leave you with my favorite laugh out loud quote, the context for which you will need to read the book!… “Good Luck, Orphan Derek.”
~Ashley
The following post includes affiliate links. More details here.
When I think of February, I think of Valentine’s Day and love and romance. Gag, I know. (Ashley wants to point out that Galentine’s Day is also a legitimate and perfectly reasonable addition to February’s love-fest where female friendships are celebrated for the empowering, nuanced relationships that they are.) But still, we wanted to bring you something we loved in February out of respect for the general season. We didn’t want to be super theme-focused after Jane in January, but we do like order, so connection was required. We considered many, many, different authors, titles, and other aspects of love. As we were discussing potential directions, we also started discussing Kindle Unlimited titles we really wanted to dig into, and then, magically, the decision became very clear about what we needed to bring you in February, and it fits both Valentine’s and Galentine’s!
Here at Heart.Wants.Books, we love a good romance novel and we love stories of empowering female friendships. We bonded over open door romance novels eons ago, and continue to do so regularly. So, when one of our new (to us) beloved romance novel authors (Pippa Grant, of 2019 mutual favorite Stud in the Stacks) announced a new project with three other authors to do a romantic comedy novel series, we were in (and it didn’t hurt Nikki had also already read and loved three novels by Claire Kingsley – the Book Boyfriends Trilogy). This new project came out in the Fall of 2019 and is called the Bluewater Billionaires.
What we have is four romance authors, each writing one novel in a series of four books, about a group of four billionaires who are all best friends, all female, and all live in the same fictional community together in Miami, FL. There is language, there is snark, and there are bedroom scenes. (Please do not read these books if any of the above is a no-go for you.)
So, for the next few weeks, we’ll be bringing you our commentary on Lucy Score’s The Price of Scandal, Claire Kingsley’s The Mogul and the Muscle, Kathryn Nolan’s Wild Open Hearts, and Pippa Grant’s Crazy for Loving You, as well as some more information about Kindle Unlimited and what happens when two voracious readers happen upon plan to purchase subscriptions at the same time.
~Nikki (and Ashley)
Nota Bene: We’d love for you to read along with us. These books are a series, and we’ll be following that order, which is listed above.
The following post includes affiliate links. More details here.
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES – Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.”
And so begins Seth Grahame-Smith’s delightful retelling – nay, reworking – of Jane Austen’s classic romantic novel. Set in an alternate 19th Century England, the world has been overrun by unmentionables, and the English on their island are not immune to the plague of the undead. Wealthy English families send their children to study the deadly arts of the Orient and that an accomplished woman
“must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages; she must be well trained in the fighting styles of the Kyoto masters and the modern tactics and weaponry of Europe. And besides all this she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the world will be but half-deserved. All this she must possess, and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.”
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
Or, at least so says Colonel Fitzwilliam Darcy to a perturbed and insulted Lizzie Bennet, who was taught the Chinese deadly arts, rather than the Japanese as Darcy was taught. The characters we know and love from Austen’s original are well and truly represented, the cadence and manner of dialogue is recreated almost word for word, and Mrs. Bennet is still only concerned with her daughters’ marriage prospects rather than with keeping them from joining the legions of the undead.
With the addition of zombies, other anachronisms were bound to be unearthed. My favorite addition to Jane’s witty and stimulating discourse is the obvious innuendo predicated by the discussion of balls being held and enjoyed by all…attendees. My second favorite is the obvious and unbridled bloodlust bubbling in the breast of every Bennet sister. Even subdued and studious Mary attempts to attack Mr. Collins at the dinner table with a fork at a perceived insult to her sister. Can you imagine the violence and hijinks in which our dauntless LIzzie finds herself?
Thankfully, we don’t have to imagine much, because Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was made into a gloriously campy zombie film that absolutely bombed at the box office. It’s such a shame the movie didn’t do well, because it is a real zombie filled delight! I find that it not only respects and celebrates the original Austen work but also the previous, well-known, and well-loved film versions. Yes, dear readers, we get another handsome Darcy randomly swimming in a pond! And, as much as I loved Simon Woods as Bingley in the 2006 version, Douglas Booth has a jawline that is sharp enough to decapitate the undead.
I will even go so far as to say that I appreciate the film more than the book. There is the usual gore, violence, and decaying flesh found in this film as you would expect. If you’re not into that, skip the movie and appreciate the book where the gore is implied and not obvious. I especially appreciated that the film clarifies certain facts about the zombie plague that were not as obvious in the novel, specifically that if a person who is bitten and contracts the plague does not consume human brains, they remain a rational, coherent being for much longer, even though their body is decaying and covered in sores. This knowledge would be helpful to readers regarding a very important plot point between Charlotte and Mr. Collins that is fortunately or unfortunately lacking from the film version.
But, oh, does Matt Smith create the Mr. Collins we have always, always deserved! Not to say that the star power of Lily James, Lena Heady, and Charles Dance is disappointing, on the contrary. However, Smith’s Mr. Collins is just that right bit of extra that you didn’t know you needed, and that truly showers the film with comic relief rather than anxious awkwardness.
Those who prefer the sedate and plodding seduction of Lizzie Bennet by the gentlemanly Fitzwilliam Darcy will be less likely to appreciate the violent passion shown by Miss Bennet to Colonel Darcy in both versions of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. However, such a change of pace is what I needed to really appreciate Austen’s work for what it is, a story of that most human of conditions, love, both romantic and familial, that transcends centuries and cultures and proves direct communication is better proof of a person’s character than gossip and hearsay.
At my first read of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I struggled. Probably because it came so close on the heels of my first read of the original, which I didn’t love. However, after re-watching the film in preparation for this post, I will give the book a 3.5 star rating, I liked it, but I’m not going to read it again. (Or the prequel, Dawn of the Dreadfuls, or sequel, Dreadfully Ever After, both written by Steve Hockensmith.) I will, however, watch the movie at any opportunity…probably again tonight…
~Ashley
Was Pride and Prejudice everything you needed, or would you also benefit from a change of pace to truly appreciate the original?
