- About Us
- Advertise with Us
- Bios
- Books & Resources
- Books We Love
- Contact Us
- Disclosure
- Glossary
- How We Select Titles
- Our Story
- Resources
- Suggest Your Book
- Where to Find Heart.Wants.Book
- Where to Find Heart.Wants.Books

The following post includes affiliate links. More details here. As you’re doing your Amazon shopping, we’d be ever so grateful if you’d use our affiliate link to do so as it helps pay the bills around here!
Ashley IN MEDIAS RES
- Forbidden Honor (Dragon Royals Book 1) by May Dawson
- Pillars of Wealth: How to Make, Save, and Invest Your Money to Achieve Financial Freedom by David Greene
- The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk*
- Think and Grow Rich for Women: Using Your Power to Create Success and Significance by Sharon L. Lechter *
*Ashley’s still waiting for these two titles to come back off hold at the library…struggle bus.
Nikki IN MEDIAS RES
- Love Every Day by Alexandra H. Solomon
- The Danish Way of Parenting by Jessica Joelle Alexander and Iben Dissing Sandahl narrated by Kim Mai Guest
Ashley FIN
- The House on Biscayne Bay by Chanel Cleeton
- Body Language (The Bootknockers Ranch Book 2) by Em Petrova
- Pushin’ Buttons (The Bootknockers Ranch Book 1) by Em Petrova
- Come Fly the World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am by Julia Cooke
- King of Wrath (Kings of Sin #1) by Ana Huang
- Crossland: A Billionaire’s Game Novel by Samantha Whiskey
- Daughter of Snow and Secrets (Defying the Crown #3) by Kerry Chaput
Nikki FIN
- Under the Tulip Tree by Michelle Shocklee
- Walking in the Wilderness: Seeking God During Lent by Beth A. Richardson
- Coronation Year by Jennifer Robson
- Victory Garden Guide 21st Century Edition: Original 1940’s Edition Updated and Expanded for the 21st Century Victory Gardener by David Powers
- Her Ruthless Duke (Rogue’s Guild #1) by Scarlett Scott
- The Self-Care Prescription by Robyn L. Gobin, PhD
- Hideaway Heart (Cherry Tree Harbor #2) by Melanie Harlow
- Plaid to the Bone (Bad in Plaid #1) by Caroline Lee
- The House on Biscayne Bay by Chanel Cleeton
- He’s Not My Type (The Vancouver Agitators #4) by Meghan Quinn
- Come Fly the World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am by Julia Cooke
- The Duke’s Wicked Widow (Surprise! Dukes #5) by Caroline Lee
- The Duke’s Daring Bride (Surprise! Dukes #4) by Caroline Lee
- Daughter of Snow and Secrets (Defying the Crown #3) by Kerry Chaput
- The Duke’s Counterfeit Wife (Surprise! Dukes #3) by Caroline Lee
Darling readers, I did a thing this month, and I’m not happy about it. I read a book four before I’d read books one through three. Does this need to be resolved ASAP? Sort of. I’m definitely interested in the rest of the series, but that’s not even the issue. The issue is there seems to be a big hairy thing from somewhere in the first three books that came to a head in book four in a real way. It didn’t seem to fit from my context of having only read the fourth book. It’s a struggle when the algorithm presents a fun looking title and then Amazon neglects to share the order of the series, but I shall recover and persist, and maybe Ashley will join me in reading about The Vancouver Agitators if we start with Don’t Kiss and Tell.

In case this is a surprise to you, we love chatting books. Really, that’s how Heart.Wants.Books was born – the two of us buddy reading books and chatting about them during and after. So when a bookish friend with overlapping taste said she’d read and loved Under the Tulip Tree by Michelle Shocklee, I naturally checked OverDrive (not Libby, ew) to see if it was available, and then promptly checked it out (seeing as how I did end my Kindle Unlimited subscription for a bit). Set in Nashville, this novel follows Rena, an almost debutante whose future was dramatically changed when the stock market crashed on her 16th birthday. The bulk of the novel takes place seven years later, when Rena takes a job with the Federal Writers’ Project interviewing people who were formerly enslaved. While the Federal Writers’ Project and Slave Narratives are very real, the story in the book is a work of fiction. Like Rena, I learned much that wasn’t taught to me in school as she interviewed Frankie, a 101 year-old woman who was born into slavery, but my education was more about the Battle of Nashville and the geography of the city in the 1860s and 1930s than slavery (as I had an impressive US history teacher in high school and am eternally grateful for him). While I really enjoyed learning about Nashville in these time periods and the people who inhabited it, as well as the interviews that took place to create the Slave Narratives, I did find the book a bit preachy and I did not enjoy the way Rena relied on Frankie to help process her emotions about slavery and the ways her family interacted with it. That is definitely my 21st century reflection looking back nearly 100 years after the events portrayed in the novel, and I don’t think the character was meant to mind, but I do wonder how Frankie would have felt, had she been written by a Black author. The characters were real, dimensional, and the writing was very engaging, so I’m interested in Shocklee’s other works, particularly those focused on historical settings that are familiar to me. If you’d recommend any fictional works surrounding the Slave Narratives written by Black authors, let me know in the comments!
Overall, I’m giving my March reading life five stars. I think I broke out of the regency rut I fell into, and I’ve read some titles that aren’t romance or for the blog, so I think I’m ready to tackle the next month, at least I hope because it’s a busy one at home. We’ll see next month if I stay ahead of my reading goal or fall back in line with it because of all the events coming my way!
What rating would you give your reading life recently?
~Nikki
I read some books! I read some books that weren’t for the blog! I read some quick and delightful spicy romance books to get some quick wins for my book total and to cleanse my palette of all the other books I have been reading. Ok, ok, I really just needed the smuts. Needed in a desperate way. #IYKYK
I don’t have much else to add about my reading life this month. I read mostly on time for the blog (kinda) and got some fun and some other more serious romance novels onto my read list for March.

What’s kinda been getting me in a tizzy has been that my little sister’s keeping pace with me this year! She’s read 16 books and I’ve read 17 so far. I’m so ding dang proud of her new reading habit. She reads dead tree titles from the library with no other goal than to enjoy the books she reads. That’s a very admirable goal and she’s rocking it. Even our mother said something to me about how I was behind my sister’s book count. (No longer after a couple of quick and dirty Boot Knocker romances!) I’m sad for me for being 8 books behind schedule to meet my 100 books for the year goal, according to Goodreads. I’m happy that my sister is crushing hers.
~Ashley

PLEASE SUPPORT US WHEN YOU SHOP BY FIRST CLICKING ON THE IMAGES BELOW:

The following post includes affiliate links. More details here. As you’re doing your Amazon shopping, we’d be ever so grateful if you’d use our affiliate link to do so as it helps pay the bills around here!
We have another Advanced Review Copy for you this week! If you like the way The House on Biscayne Bay sounds, pre-order it so it arrives on April 2, 2024 for your reading consumption. Special thanks to Berkley Publishing Group, NetGalley, and the amazing publicist who included us on the Blog Blitz Alert!
Let me start with my confessions

- I knew nothing about this book before I read it, other than the title, author, and cover image, and IT WAS GLORIOUS. Darling readers, sometimes you just need to place yourself in the hands of an author and enjoy the ride, and when it’s a season pass author, it’s always when you need to do that. Last summer when we reviewed The Cuban Heiress, I went on record awarding Chanel Cleeton a season pass, and she doubled down with The House on Biscayne Bay and hit a home run!
- It did take me a bit longer to read The House on Biscayne Bay than my last Cleeton novel, meaning two days instead of 25 hours (and two days is still well above my average reading speed). While it was spring break when I read it, I was still working, cat herding children, and making aforementioned children “help” clean out their closets and drawers, so had it been a weekend, it would probably have been faster.

If you enjoy historical fiction, a bit of a mystery, and a dual timeline, The House on Biscayne Bay might just be for you as it contains every bit of that, with a substantial bow at the end. Anna and Carmen both find themselves living at Marbrisa (the titular house) not of their own choosing, Anna with her husband at the end of the Great War, as he gifted it to her, after building the grand house he wanted (eyeroll), and Carmen with her sister and brother-in-law after her parents died in a boating accident. Drama ensues for them both, and they each have a mystery to solve as we go back and forth between them and in time, trying to piece together the stories into one. I want to say more (and the marketing copy does), but I’m going to leave the plot as is.
My favorite aspect of The House on Biscayne Bay is the sense of place, supported by the lush descriptions of the grounds and house. The irony is not lost on me that my rising fourth grader picked Biscayne National Park as one of his top ten national parks he’d like to visit, and Cleeton’s descriptions definitely hold with everything he’s shared with me (except the manatees, but I digress). While Marbrisa is a fictional house, it is also the main character in the book. Both Anna and Carmen, among others, talk about the house as almost a sentient being. It’s not that the house takes action, but it almost has moods, and most definitely gives off vibes (as any house does, if we take the time to listen) and not necessarily by the design of the architect (who you meet early on in the book).
Overall, The House on Biscayne Bay is getting 4.5 stars from me, and rounding up to 5. It was engaging and exciting, well-written across time periods where there was a lot of change in the world, and included a fun mystery for the reader to try to solve alongside Anna and Carmen. I’m delighted to say Cleeton has maintained her season pass status, and I’m even more looking forward to reading more of her backlist.
Who’s a season pass author for you?
~Nikki

The House on Biscayne Bay is the FOURTH title from prolific and multiple times bestselling author Chanel Cleeton we’re reviewing here at Heart.Wants.Books. However, it’s the first advanced review copy that we have received on behalf of Cleeton and we could not be more grateful for the honor bestowed upon us by the publishing gods. Cleeton is her own brand of magic. Not only does she have eight titles (seven novels and one short story) focused on historic Cuban/American women, but she has also published ten other novels in the contemporary romance and thriller genres. In addition to these literary accolades, Cleeton received her bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Richmond, The American International University in London, her master’s in Global Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and her Juris Doctor (that’s her law degree) from the University of South Carolina School of Law. She grew up in Florida and from what little information there is about her current life on the internet, I can only surmise that she still lives there. (Here’s a link to an event on April 9th in Coral Gables, Florida, to celebrate the release happening on April 2nd!)
It should come as no surprise to any of you that I love homes. I love places, I love buildings, the older the better, because they speak to us of the lives that came before us. I also love new builds because they also tell a story but that’s not the story we’re focusing on at this moment. We’re obsessed with The House on Biscayne Bay, Marbrisa, a fictional home designed by fictional architect Michael Harrison and Marbrisa’s owners Robert and Anna Barnes from New York. Even during the home’s construction, the characters talk about how a home, especially a grand home such as Marbrisa, “is a living, breathing organism rather than an expensive heap of stone.” Harrison says to Anna at one point,
“I like to think of the houses I build as having their own personalities. Oh, there’s the people who are their custodians to consider, of course, a symbiosis in the relationship between the house and its owner, but sometimes these grand estates have a way of forcing their residents to their will, of bending and shaping the trajectory of their lives. After all, when our bones turn to dust, these walls will still stand.”
And then there’s Carmen’s point of view, two decades after the Barneses built Marbrisa and how the house was lovingly and expensively restored by her brother in law, Asher, after years of vacancy, neglect, and downright destruction. The house in the daylight is a thing of dreams, but at night a place of nightmares.
I love gothic novels where the house is the location and a character and the impetus of the plot. (I’m a real estate agent with a deep appreciation for historic preservation, so this should not come as a surprise.) Without Marbrisa, without the house on the bay, Cleeton wouldn’t have had a story to tell us. None of the characters would have come together, in either timeline, and the mystery and thrills would not have occurred or had such a grand effect on the reader. The House on Biscayne Bay is a five star read for me from Chanel Cleeton, a season pass author in my life if ever there was one. If you love a grand house that’s built for your dreams but also food for your nightmares, with screaming peacocks, random alligators, dangerous sea cliffs, and weather that can turn from beautiful one minute to harrowing the next, then pick up this title from Chanel Cleeton. You might be asking yourself the same question that’s also the first line of the book: “I cannot for the life of me imagine why anyone would want to live in Florida.”
~Ashley

PLEASE SUPPORT US WHEN YOU SHOP BY FIRST CLICKING ON THE IMAGES BELOW:

The following post includes affiliate links. More details here. As you’re doing your Amazon shopping, we’d be ever so grateful if you’d use our affiliate link to do so as it helps pay the bills around here!
We are going to start with business. I don’t watch much TV, but when I do, I dive head first into loving what I watch. Pan Am was no different. Way back in 2011 when it aired, I was still watching TV, so when I heard Christina Ricci was in a period drama, that was likely all I needed. I’ve seen both seasons and am only sad it didn’t get more (especially now that I’ve finally figured out where I first saw Margot Robbie). Following my adoration of this show, it was an easy few clicks to recommend Come Fly the World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am by Julia Cooke to my library the second I heard about it. Yes, I am that person who wants the nonfiction and the fiction of a period because some days I wing 5 and want to curl up at the bottom of that rabbit hole. Where I heard about it though, I haven’t the slightest idea and my usual searches landed me nothing. And yet, we persist.
Come Fly the World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am is a nonfiction title focusing on the stewardesses of Pan Am, an international only airline that was the height of glamor in the 1960s, back when the career options for young women were slim, and the ways for her to see the world were slimmer still. Cooke does a great job of including the statistics affecting women in the labor force, so we understand just how much our stewardesses have riding on their ability to get and keep their jobs as long as they can… you know, until they get married or age out. The narrative follows the growth of the airline and the allure of the stewardesses through the decades, focusing on a handful of women who break away from societal norms of early marriage to make a jet-setting life for themselves. Included are their experiences applying, training, and flying the friendly (and sometimes unfriendly) skies. Readers also learn of their layovers, stays in foreign countries, and how the political climate of the 1960s and 1970s affected their routes and lives. Cooke includes the lawsuits brought against Pan Am for discriminating against women who married or were beyond their ideal age, and shows the women she was able to learn about overcoming those hurdles to make lengthy careers for themselves. She also writes detailed accounts of Pan Am’s support of the military service members who were stationed in Vietnam, including flying rest and relaxation flights all over the Pacific and flying Operation Babylift to evacuate orphans as the North Vietnamese army made its way south. Cooke wraps up the narrative with a brief discussion of the financial issues that lead Pan Am to cease operations in 1991.
I really enjoyed getting a well-researched, factual take on the height of Pan Am’s powers, and that of its female staff, featuring several personal stories. Come Fly the World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am does a great job of highlighting the women who made flying the skies friendlier, how they worked hard, played hard, and lived by their own terms. As with most of my education of historical women (although I use the term loosely in this case as my grandmother would have been too old to work with them), I am in awe of the chaos they experienced, the barriers they fought, and the paths they cleared for those of us who came along after.
I’m giving Come Fly the World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am 4 emphatic stars. Cooke’s writing is journalistic and concise, yet also picturesque when warranted (including the new InterContinental Hotels and landings in Vietnam). The structure was hard to figure out in the beginning, but then the story she was heading towards made it all make sense in retrospect. While I am interested in Cooke’s other book The Other Side of Paradise, I am not likely to reread Come Fly the World (I’m much more likely to rewatch Pan Am). I’ll definitely be interested in what else she wants to research and share with the world, and readers all around it.
What is a book you were initially interested in because of something else?
~ Nikki

Julia Cooke is a prolific writer of nonfiction. Her essays have been published in Salon, The Threepenny Review, Smithsonian, Tin House, and Virginia Quarterly Review, where she is a contributing editor. Her journalistic efforts have been published in Condé Nast Traveler, The New York Times, Playboy, The Village Voice, The Atavist, Saveur, and more. In 2014, her profile of a young Cuban sex worker won her a finalist place for the LIvingston Award for International Reporting. She’s written about the Portuguese town that inspired Ian Fleming’s James Bond and the reason American TV watchers are obsessed with female spies among other intriguing topics. She’s published two nonfiction books, today’s review Come Fly the World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am and The Other Side of Paradise: Life in the New Cuba a collection of stories about the daily lives of Cubans. She’s currently working on her third book about Emily Hahn, Rebecca West, Martha Gelhorn, and female wanderlust entitled Restless Women: The Writers Who Made A Place For Women In The World.
What I really loved about Come Fly the World were the stories of the specific women Cooke interviewed for the book. Lynne Rawling, Karen Walker Ryan, Tori Werner, Clare Christiansen, and Hazel Bowie are all former Pan Am stewardesses who gave of their time and memories to bring Cooke’s book to life. Lynne left the science lab in order to fly “for any airline” but her father knew that she would end up flying internationally. Karen grew up in Whittier, California, and “preferred hiking boots to heels” and after getting fed up with the army stationed in Germany decided to travel working odd jobs, until finally her incessant restlessness could no longer be satisfied by anything but the air. Tori chose the life of a stewardess when she realized that work in the Foreign Service required a woman to earn a Master’s Degree and her college friends wrote down “one sentence each detailing Tori’s competence and extroversion, her wit and composure”, all reasons that being a stewardess would be a good fit career choice. Clare, a 5’10” sometime model and theatre student from Ohio, knew that she would love working as a stewardess and sent a letter to Pan Am in 1955 stating: “You’re ordering great big new airplanes, will you take a taller woman, too?” – and they did stretch their height rule one whole inch to hire Clare. And then Hazel, a Black woman from Minnesota, also didn’t care which airline would hire her, as long as it got her a job far away from lakes, cornfields, and snowdrifts. These women each had something to run to, run from, or power them from the inside to go, be, and do more than their female peers. Nothing but a life in the skies and in all the exotic and international locales would do. All five of these women remained with Pan Am long after the average stewardess would leave for marriage, babies, or a career on the ground.
I, too, am going to give Come Fly the World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am 4 solid stars. I don’t see myself re-reading this nonfiction work, but stories of the ambitious, career-driven women filled with wanderlust will give me fuel for the fire of my own desires. If women of the 1960s and 1970s could find their joy in a career that not only required them to travel, but also paid well and had many perks for off-hours adventures, then I can accomplish my own goals and find my own joy in the year 2024.
~Ashley

PLEASE SUPPORT US WHEN YOU SHOP BY FIRST CLICKING ON THE IMAGES BELOW:

The following post includes affiliate links. More details here. As you’re doing your Amazon shopping, we’d be ever so grateful if you’d use our affiliate link to do so as it helps pay the bills around here!
Darling readers, please note, this is a review of the third book in a trilogy. Spoilers for the first two books are likely. Proceed, or don’t, with that in mind. We’ve also read and reviewed (and recommended) Daughter of the King (Defying the Crown #1) and Daughter of the Shadows (Defying the Crown #2) if you’re interested in where this story begins.
Also, special thanks to Kerry Chaput and Black Rose Writing for giving us an Advanced Review Copy to read and review here. As always, all opinions are our own. You can pre-order your copy of Daughter of Snow and Secrets now to receive it on publication day, March 21, 2024. You can also check out the trilogy here.
Let me start out by saying, I love a good series. I love digging in deep with characters, getting to know them, and then seeing what antics the author has in store for the plot as these (hopefully) beloved characters navigate whatever chaos ensues. I am on record stating dramatic trilogies scare me because I don’t appreciate the usual cliffhanger of the second book leaving our characters in the worst possible position, so I’m delighted to remind you that darling Kerry Chaput did not leave Isabelle and friends on a cliff at the end of Daughter of Shadows. This made starting Daughter of Snow and Secrets that much more fun! We do jump ahead several more years from the epilogue of the previous book to find Elizabeth nearly grown, and bringing her own sort of chaos with her as she asserts herself into the work of saving Protestants. (If you’re playing along at home, I 100% reread the last couple of chapters in the second book before starting this one. It greatly helped jog my memory!)
In Daughter of Snow and Secrets, Isabelle is living in Geneva and crossing the border into France to help fellow Protestants escape religious persecution and live in freedom. Making matters more interesting is the teenage daughter who’s been raised in a Protestant community with parents and found family who are quite active in the Protestant movement and she has recently decided she’s ready to play her part. We see more of the friends and foes from books one and two, meet a very interesting new character (who Chaput shared she loved writing), and learn a bit about how Isabelle and her husband have been working together to fight for their people, while also trying to protect their souls (not in the religious sense, but more in the maintain some semblance of control of themselves and their hopes for their future sense) and ensure they make it back home at the end of each mission. It’s an interesting balance to read how they determine when violence is and isn’t warranted, and the push and pull of their internal struggles, as well as how they interact with the rest of their group that made the story feel more real and dimensional.
Having watched Marie Antoinette on PBS last spring (and having studied French history), I was aware of the opulence of Versailles, but I wasn’t prepared for how it would strike Isabelle, particularly given her family’s struggles in La Rochelle, and the journey that lead her to the filles du roi program and Canada, then back to France. Even after a chunk of the second book took place in Paris in the palaces there, Versailles was built to be the most extravagant palace, and it clearly struck Isabelle as just that. As someone who hasn’t been there (but has been to the property that inspired it), Versailles definitely hits differently through Isabelle’s eyes, but still, Chaput’s writing took me back to the show, and my other experiences in the palaces of France, especially the scenes that take place on the extensive grounds.
Overall, I’m giving Daughter of Snow and Secrets four solid stars. While I wanted a bit more of a bow than we received, the ending was solid enough. Chaput’s writing is picturesque, and the characters have a lot of development going on while also working their way through the action of the plot. Chaput did a wonderful job with Isabelle’s story, and I’m interested in seeing what story lures her in next.
What’s a book you wanted more from when it was over?
~Nikki
Kerry Chaput is a writer who found published authorship as a second career in her forties. Born in California she now lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, daughters, and dogs, where she takes to the hiking trails for inspiration. She writes about the varied histories of young women, the bonds of found family, and the power of first love. This is the third historical fiction novel we have read by Chaput, in the Defying the Crown series. Her three other stand alone novels take place in three other time periods all following a young girl’s coming of age journey.
I have really enjoyed spending time with Isabelle Beaumont Boucher née Colette from the Protestant ghetto of La Rochelle, to the wilds of New France and Québec City, to the lavishness of Paris, to the relative peace of Geneva. The trails Isabelle takes find her learning something about herself at every turn. At first it’s her ability to lie to the Sun King about her Catholicism before he ships her off to New France as a Fille du Roi, and to repeatedly keep her Huguenot heart protected by letting no one get to know her in Daughter of the King. Then in Daughter of Shadows, she leans into the warrior ways of the Huron, by standing up for herself and her desires and uses them to manipulate her Catholic lieutenant of a husband, in order to return to France and foil the plans of the man who harmed her family. That husband didn’t end up in a good place by the end of the book either…
And now, here we are, ten years after Daughter of the Shadows, finding Isabelle married to the love of her life, Andre Boucher, rescuing Protestants from religious persecution in France and traveling with them to safety in Geneva. It’s during one of these rescues that Isabelle’s mercy for one French dragoon – because she will not harm someone who is not actively attacking her people, her family, or herself – that the plot starts to spiral together in a web that started with her being branded with an H on her arm as a child and ends with her being willing to sacrifice herself at Versailles to kill the man who started her on this path to freedom for herself, her family, and her people.
I’m going to give Daughter of Snow and Secrets 3.5 rounded up to 4 stars. I loved and adored our newest side character’s arc in this third installment of Defying the Crown trilogy, at the same time I was wary of his shenanigans and when his presence was going to blow up in Isabelle’s face. One of his actions I conjectured did not happen, praise be, but the rest…you’ll have to read to find out! Isabelle finally reaches a place of inner peace and contentment in this story that I had waited for her to realize she could have had at the beginning of the story – but a character’s journey and whatnot had to occur first. It makes a good tale either way. I was frustrated at the semblance of ease in the day to day activities, of finding safe houses, of avoiding soldiers, of creating poisons, of knowing who to speak to and where to be amidst the nobility, etc. Versailles should not have been so easy a place to infiltrate as it seemed – since those gardens are immense (I was there once, in the rain) so perhaps it was easier during Isabelle’s time. It doesn’t mean I can’t momentarily suspend my disbelief for the plot and see Isabelle finally satisfied with her life and her family. I’ll always recommend Kerry Chaput, but Isabelle’s story will probably remain my favorite of hers forever.
~Ashley

PLEASE SUPPORT US WHEN YOU SHOP BY FIRST CLICKING ON THE IMAGES BELOW:
- 1
- 2
- 3
- …
- 86
- Next Page »