Heart Wants Books

PBS Masterpiece Classic – Update

March 9, 2020

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Readers, I feel a bit like mixing business with pleasure today, but business first. We discussed a bit of Masterpiece back in January, and I want to provide some more information about our viewing habits and intentions as well as an update to that post (aka the pleasure part, I hope at least). I am particularly interested in Masterpiece Classic and don’t watch much else. I’m not going to tune in for Masterpiece Mystery, as that’s just not my jam, but others adore it. I may watch some of the spring programming, but we’ll see. World on Fire looks amazing, but as publishers have oversaturated the WWII market, this may not be the right time for me to watch this show. We’ll see.

The summer is a very different story though. Beecham House is the summer show for Masterpiece, and I am SO excited. What feels like eons ago, I spent several weeks in South India with a study abroad group from my university and it was the most amazing, transformative experience! I watched and loved Indian Summers when it aired, and even went back and watched The Jewel of the Crown shortly after. I was super excited, then I found out some of my favorite PBS actors will be starring, and now I am anxiously awaiting the start date!

Now for the pleasure piece, drama first. There may be slight spoilers, but I do mean them to be slight (at least before the warning) in case you haven’t and plan to watch Sanditon or Howard’s End.

Social media has been all a buzz with Sanditon and not in all good ways. Individuals are threatening to pull their funding and not watch new programs because Sanditon isn’t getting a second season, and because of how the first one ends. This is all the things that are wrong with social media. First, if you’re donating to an organization and don’t like what it’s doing, don’t fund them. If you want to see them change how they operate, have a calm conversation with the staff, realizing that unless your gift is significant (which likely means it includes a comma), then your influence may not be substantial. My guess is if you’re berating the social media person of a $500,000,000 organization (yes, I looked), your gift isn’t significant and your comments will be ignored, but that’s just a guess.

Now, for the series itself, this is Jane Austen, so I expected the ending to be more blunt than I wanted. We’ve discussed how I needed more at the end of Pride and Prejudice than Austen offers, so with her last, unfinished work, I expected more of the same, and that was before reading what there is of the text she wrote. On the Masterpiece Studio Podcast (which I highly suggest for any show you’re watching – spoilers usually included for that week’s episode), screenwriter Andrew Davies confirms Austen’s text takes up the first 20ish minutes of the eight episode series, so there’s that.

Here’s the spoilery part in case you need to jump to the next paragraph. Lady Denham’s storyline proceeded mostly as I expected it would. I was delighted we had one couple end up exactly as I’d hoped by the end (oh y’all when Esther screams “YOU KNOW NOTHING” at the Crow, I mean Babington, it is AMAZING! About the two minute mark, if you need to relive it). Our sweet Charlotte is another matter entirely, but I don’t hate it. Sidney did what he had to do for his family, as much as it’s awful, there isn’t another way to save Tom (who doesn’t deserve it) and Mary (who does). Throughout the show, I actually wanted to see Charlotte with Young Stringer because she seems to fit better with him than with the dark, mysterious Sidney Parker. Stringer has his own issues to overcome now, and he may yet do so. Will we ever know? Not likely. Just like with Austen herself, she won’t ever tell us what happened with Mary or Kitty Bennett or how the youngest Dashwood sister grows up with her two older sisters guiding her, and I doubt Davies will break with tradition, even if the ratings and funding was there to make it feasible (and they aren’t right now). Do I like it? Nope. Does that make it wrong? Also, nope.

Less spoilery bits: People have also blasted Sanditon for being too modern, but really, looking at the different film versions of Pride and Prejudice, each one tweaks and adjusts for the audience of its day. Would Fitzwilliam Darcy come out of the pond in wet clothing a la Colin Firth? Nope. Do I adore that scene? Absolutely! Would Fitzwilliam Darcy follow Elizabeth on a walk to a secluded garden folly risking both their reputations? Nope. Is that among my favorite scenes (and handwashing memes)? Hundop! Sanditon doesn’t feel off to me though, honestly. It is modern leaning, but the original text is also more satirical than others I’ve read from Austen, so it makes sense to me. Austen was older, and it felt like she was going for it, all out of cares to give. Perhaps the screen version is a bit more risque than Austen would have written, but really, they all are, and that’s ok by me.

Rose Williams looking amazing at a Ball as Charlotte Heywood in PBS’s Sanditon.

The pieces that aggravate me though are the costume and hair. Let me back up. I adore Rose Williams. She was AMAZING in Reign, as is most of the cast. (If you like period drama and don’t shy away from a smidge of mysticism and paranormal, give it a try.) While I adore the actress and think she did a great job, Williams’s costuming was aggravating because historically her dresses were too short for her age and her hair should have been up for the vast majority of the scenes. Her hair was mostly down about her shoulders, and honestly, looked about like mine does on a normal (i.e. lazy) day. This did not feel like a small budget production, so why we couldn’t or didn’t pay attention to historically correct costumes and hair for this lead actress felt ridiculous, particularly paired with the excellent coiffures of Mary Parker and Miss Lambe.

Bottom line – will I rewatch Sanditon? Probably. (Ashley agrees as she appreciates looking at Theo James, Mark Stanley, and Leo Suter just as much or more than I do…) Do I feel like it did justice to Austen’s text, what there is of it? Yes! Do I want a second season? So. Very. Much. Do I think it’s coming? Not even sort of. :::le sigh:::

Now for Howard’s End

Matthew MacFayden and Hayley Atwell as Henry Wilcox and Margaret Schlegel in Starz/PBS’s Howard’s End.

I realize I’m late to the game, as Starz did this a yearish ago. Oh well. I watched Howard’s End on Amazon Prime, although it’s also available through Masterpiece’s Passport. I enjoyed the film version so very much more than the book! It doesn’t ramble, it honors the characters as laid out in the text, and I love Hayley Atwell and Matthew MacFayden, and thought the entire cast was amazing! (If you haven’t seen Agent Carter, starring Hayley Atwell, I highly encourage it, even though there are only two seasons. Blah blah Avengers, I know, but I like her show better!) I did not appreciate that MacFayden was playing a character old enough to have grown children. Yes, I realize this is my issue and the actor is old enough, but that doesn’t help. Just like his IMDB profile, my first thought of him is in 2005’s Pride and Prejudice and no, I will not be doing the math about how many years ago that was (eons, just like my aforementioned time in South India). Moving on. Like the book, the screen version of Howard’s End is slow and builds into an amazing crescendo then calms into a mostly delightful ending. It starts off relatively calm and adds drama bit by bit until it explodes then settles.

Will I watch this again? Perhaps. Will I be looking into the 1992 version with Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson to discover why it won best picture and was nominated for nine Academy Awards? Absolutely! Honestly, as much as I enjoyed Atwell and MacFayden and thought they did a great job, the age gap didn’t feel big enough. Henry Wilcox’s oldest son is engaged as the book opens (which to me indicates Wilcox to be late 40s or early 50s) and Margaret Schlegel is 29. MacFayden and Atwell are 43 and 35 respectively at the time of filming. They make sense together in a way that I don’t think Hopkins and Thompson can to me, even though it does, without having seen this version, seem to fit much better with the text.
Have you seen other versions of Howard’s End? What do you find to be your favorite parts?

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I’d Rather Be Reading by Anne Bogel

March 5, 2020

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“For us, reading isn’t just a hobby or a pastime; it’s a lifestyle.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself, Anne. I’d Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life is a collection of short, non-fiction essays on the reading life. It’s the second of three books published by Anne Bogel, who you should all know by now is the creator of Modern Mrs. Darcy, “a lifestyle blog for nerds,” and the What Should I Read Next and One Great Book podcasts. What Should I Read Next? launched in 2016 and focuses on bibliotherapy, literary matchmaking with one or two guests per show, and all other things books and reading. One Great Book is where Anne “pulls one book off her personal bookshelf and tells us all about it in ten minutes or less” which just launched in 2019. In addition to the blog and podcasts, she hosts a monthly subscription Book Club where there are live and recorded discussions with the authors, members, booksellers, and other bookish life experts. She lives in Louisville, KY with her husband, four children, and dog.

The cover is a based on a watercolor of a picture of the author’s home library!

The day I was reading this amazing collection of essays I texted my mother about how I had already met my Goodreads goal of 75 books for the year…in the first week of July. And that amazing woman decided to share this semi-personal (I only had 8 Goodreads friends when I was reading this book in 2019, and 15 now, the list is growing!) reading goal accomplishment on Facebook. I was a little embarrassed that she decided to tell the world about this milestone without my knowledge, because I wasn’t looking for any kind of public acknowledgement or kudos. I also feel like someone reading that post would feel despair over their own reading life by comparing their list to mine. I would never want to dissuade anyone from reading! I wouldn’t want someone to play the comparison game and feel lesser because of the ridiculous number of books I consume. One’s reading life is a solitary and personal challenge (that we’re currently sharing with you, our readerly friends). I’m all about helping someone reach their personal goals, but please don’t set those goals based on anyone else’s reading life besides your own! Your reading life is about what is going to bring YOU joy, not about being ‘better’ than someone else. A healthy reading life is a life in which you ARE reading, whatever that looks like for you. This quote from Anne kinda gets to the point:

Reading should always be about pleasure, friends.

In the pursuit of readerly pleasure, I read a lot of non-fiction, but it’s not usually biographical and personal in nature, so this was a breath of fresh air about LIFE in a way that’s not about business, or money, or woo-woo self-helpy. It makes you feel like you’re looking through a window into the reading life of your nextdoor neighbor. That much of the book is about how Anne lived literally next door to her local library is part of the charm. I seriously don’t know if there are enough words to describe my feelings about this book. I need to share my goodreads comment on an update of Nikki’s, as I think it sums up those feelings rather nicely. I said: “It might be 10:50[pm] and I might be drinky on one bottle of white wine and I am LOVING this book. I am crying and laughing and seriously I just want to read it out loud to all my friends because I FEEL ALL THE THINGS!” I have since purchased a hardback copy of this book, hidden somewhere in the storage unit, and chances are high it’ll be purchased for the kindle as well, since I read it on Kindle Unlimited last year (it’s still available there). You never know when you’ll need a quick reminder that you are not the only one who has these feelings about books and reading. Because even Anne says this little gem: “Reader, you’re not the only one. Keep confessing to your fellow readers; tell them what your reading life is really like. They’ll understand. They may even say, “You too?” And when they do, you’ve found a friend. And the beginnings of a great book club.” Or a blog.

But I think my favorite part of the whole book was chapter/essay #8 “How to Organize Your Bookshelves.” It’s 14 poignantly hilarious statements about every book addict’s never ending struggle. I would have highlighted the entire chapter but I limited myself to 5. Just remember #4, “You’re a reader; your hobby is organizing your bookshelves.” Or for those times when “you accept that it’s time to cull your personal library. You lovingly handle each book, determining if it brings you joy. It does. They all do. You are full of bookish joy, but still woefully short on shelf space.” Even though you’ve bought $350 worth of Billy bookshelves from Ikea for your collection and the shelves still aren’t big enough to fit all the books your husband brings into the house, too… And you’re not remotely sorry about any of it, until you have to up and move across the country AGAIN, and then it’s only for the minutes you’re worried about the weight-limit in the uhaul truck. – A true life story –

~Ashley

Anne Bogel and I go back, way back to maybe 2013 when I started reading the Modern Mrs. Darcy blog. I enjoyed the blog (and still do), and adored the shift into literary matchmaking on the page. When Anne started her first podcast, What Should I Read Next?, I just didn’t get podcasts and wasn’t about to listen to one. After skimming the show notes for two years, I finally started listening and haven’t looked back since. Ok, so I have looked back to the episodes I missed because I’m 100% working my way through the backlog and finding some AMAZING titles there, including a couple of favorites (at least three favorites annually for the past three years actually). It is not unusual in our reading life to #BlameAnne for bookish struggles of lacking sleep due to reading too late, having too many books in the TBR pile, and being too distracted by a current title to have any desire to adult. I do try to restrict the blame to when the title (or the rabbit hole that led to the title) actually came from Anne or one of her guests, and I guess I can’t really blame her for my current reread of A Court of Thorns and Roses, or can I?

I’d Rather Be Reading is like a delightful cup of coffee with a good friend, on a couch, with a blanket, on a rainy afternoon. Perhaps it is the years I’ve spent reading Modern Mrs. Darcy, how bookish I really am, or a combination of the two, but this was a really nice collection of essays about readerly things. Nice seems condescending (just me? ok), but I don’t mean it that way at all. It’s really thoughtful, the prose is carefully selected, and if you enjoy this title, then you should try some of Anne’s other offerings (or vice versa). This book gets me and my bookish struggles and I adore it. Will I reread it? Maybe. Did I purchase a hard copy just to loan out to bookish friends and have on my shelf because it’s gorgeous? Absolutely. This title does make me want to dig more into the backlog of What Should I Read Next Podcast and pick up Anne’s other books (especially Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything). Anne is insightful and skilled, and her essays say things most readers have experienced at some point. If “you’re looking for a book that reminds you why you read in the first place,” this is probably a good choice.

Learning how much I have in common with Duke Ellington was a highlight of this book for me. “I don’t need time. What I need is a deadline.” This…this is why my library books get read and my purchased books don’t. I’d Rather Be Reading is really a blessing and a curse – I feel seen by this book, by Anne, and by other readers in it. While I want to be seen as a reader who loves to talk about books I’ve enjoyed, I don’t want to be seen as a reader whose “house is a disaster because a clean house is a sign of a misspent life, and [I] spend [mine] reading.” Oh well, the secret is out.

This book is nostalgic for readers. It’s light, fun, and thought provoking. I’m not sure how Anne does it, but I’m ready for more! Oh readers, how Anne gets us, because she’s one of us.

If this is you, we want to be your friend, and we want to know your fictional friends too, if we don’t already.

~Nikki

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March 2020

March 2, 2020

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MADNESS! Mad. Ness. Mad. mad…mad… no, no, I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed… disappointed down to the core of my shriveled, grinchy heart. The first part of our blog plans for you this month, darling, readerly friends, has been stomped upon. Body slammed to the ground and made to yield by several well-placed kicks to the kidneys. I am broken. My heart is in pieces. The honest to goodness HIGHLIGHT of this readerly month has been canceled. By which I mean that Sarah J. Maas’s entire book tour has been canceled/put on hold for the foreseeable future. We have been planning this HWB outing since January, preparing to read the entire 816 pre-ordered kindle pages of House of Earth and Blood in the 5 days between Tuesday’s book release and Saturday’s (now canceled) event in order to avoid spoilers. I was thrilled to be receiving my first S.J.M. signed book at Nashville’s War Memorial Auditorium. But, still, I’m not mad, just disappointed. I still plan on spending the entirety of that evening with Nikki, and maybe that’s just what we need to bring you all the maddening March content you’ve come to expect.

This unexpected twist to our March plan for you, has brought to my attention the fact that this month has beaucoup new releases from my TBR list. Tomorrow ALONE has 3, THREE!, books that I have either pre-ordered or intend to purchase. In addition to the new Maas series starter, there’s a new trilogy from Cassandra Clare’s Shadowhunters universe, Chain of Gold, The Last Hours book #1. Our favorite readerly podcaster and bookish matchmaker, Anne Bogel of the Modern Mrs. Darcy blog and What Should I Read Next podcast, releases her third book, Don’t Overthink It. March 3rd is a busy, busy day for us! I wanted to double check all the other books that are being released this month and with help from this list from Goodreads I am reminded that Victoria Lee’s sophomore novel and second in the Feverwake duology The Electric Heir will be sent straight to my kindle on St. Patrick’s Day! This was a book I immediately pre-ordered last year, March 3rd, 2019 as soon as I had finished reading the first book, which was a Prime First Reads Young Adult novel that did not disappoint. (You can also read them both with a Kindle Unlimited Membership.)

I will be busy for weeks (ok, maybe just a week in total, let’s be real, I’m going to devour every single one of these books…) reading March’s new releases. What is it about March – the time change, the arrival of Spring, a deluge of new reading material – that makes it so very…maddening?!

~Ashley

March is madness. I’m not just talking about basketball. I keep thinking if I just get past this next hurtle, life will slow down. That’s literally the definition of insanity, so, instead of thinking it will change, I’m working to embrace it. I say that, however this portion was actually Ashley’s idea. We’ve had two theme-heavy months, and we’ve really enjoyed them, and hope you did too, but for March, it’s going to be madness. By that we mean, whatever we feel like sharing. We’ll have specific titles on Thursdays and bookish-related things on Mondays. That’s our ongoing commitment to you, darling readers. Specifically for March, each week we’ll bring you something that inspires us. I can tell you now, Sarah J. Maas inspires us, so we’ll be talking about her March 3 release, House of Earth and Blood. (If you’re planning to read it and don’t like spoilers, we’re here for you. We won’t be publishing about it until at least March 12, and you’ll have to click for spoilers. Sorry, but we probably won’t leave them out entirely.) Masterpiece inspires me, so I’ll be discussing this season’s screen versions Howard’s End and Sanditon and comparing the text to the screen versions. The rest, it’s all madness. We’ve been reading a lot and one of us has been writing a lot (to minimize the quantity of plot/ character corrections the other has to do if she delays writing more than a few days post finishing a title), so there are lots of inspiring titles and bookish things to choose from. We’re also open to suggestions. Hint, Hint.

~Nikki

Book Review

Crazy for Loving You by Pippa Grant

February 27, 2020

The following post includes affiliate links. More details here.

What would you do if your cousin left you co-guardianship of her infant son after she and her husband died by wrecking their sailboat into a pirate tourist ship because they were being chased by a pod of horny dolphins? Change your whole life around and fall in love with your co-guardian who was a stranger until the attorneys informed you both of your new title after the funeral…cause that’s exactly what Daisy Imogen Carter-Kincaid does in Pippa Grant’s Crazy for Loving You. Westly Jaeger, recently retired Marine, is trying to get his construction business off the ground in Miami, but is thrown into co-parenting his former client’s son with an billionaire party-girl from a family filled with larger than life personalities. Daisy’s mother is (in)famous for her phallic art, jewelry, and home decor items – hello chandeliers. Julienne, the dearly departed, was an ‘influencer’ famous for her one-star reviews on literally everything, whose husband was a notorious womanizer – all three of his mistresses were seen at their funeral. And then there’s The Dame, Imogen Carter, real estate mogul, family matriarch, and Daisy’s give-no-effs grandmother/boss who threatens to disinherit Daisy if she does not adequately care for Remington Nathaniel Roderick.

This book, y’all. You would think that the scenario would be pretty straight forward. The hard-partying, flamboyant mistress-of-real-estate-negotiation Daisy would be able to pull together all the help she and West need to raise a baby that neither of them were prepared for. And she tries, oh yes, but all the drama and shenanigans, that you never thought could happen to a person in their lifetime, much less over the span of a few weeks, well…it happens. If I were to tell you the series of fortunate and unfortunate events that Westley and Daisy encounter I would spoil all the best parts of the book, but it wouldn’t be a Pippa Grant novel without glitter and unicorns and an animal or two.

We love Pippa because she writes rom-coms that have laugh-out-loud antics and dialogue, with characters you just can’t help wishing you knew in real life. We know because her books have been the biggest joy to buddy read over the past year (including 2019 dual favorite Stud in the Stacks) and the only author from whom we had previously read extensively before this series was published. It was recently announced that she previously wrote books as Jamie Farrell, but we have not read any of those yet. Besides writing, reading, and sleeping, she is a wife and mother ‘trying to prepare her adorable demon spawn to be productive members of society.’ She also really loves cookies.

~Ashley

Y’all, this book. If you’ve been reading along (either the books or just the posts), you know these women and the situations they find themselves in are larger than life, ridiculous in the most hilarious ways, and at the same time, there are real life themes as well that don’t require being a billionaire to resemble. This book is all that, complete with an extra helping!

So far we have three very well done open-door romantic comedies in the Bluewater Billionaires series. In my head (I have no idea if this is remotely accurate, but I’d love it if anyone with insight cares to share), the authors were having Drag Queen Brunch and decided to tackle a series focusing on female billionaires as a trope, with each of them having their own title in the series. Over the course of developing the overlapping characters and the plots of the individual titles, they shared and discussed, and as the author of the fourth and final book, Pippa sat back, perhaps in her unicorn head or perhaps not, and watched, listened, and waited. When the first three books were mostly plotted, Pippa looked at Lucy, Claire, and Kathryn (maybe in person, perhaps via text with a plethora of gifs) and said something to the effect of “Ladies, please hold my beer. We’re ending this series with a gigantic glitter bomb of a book.” Is this correct? No clue. Does this read like it? HundoP. Just to start with Daisy’s initials, yup, her name is Daisy Imogen Carter-Kincaid and she uses both last names in her initials. Take a look back, we’ll wait. Mom’s phallic art is up all over her house, chandelier and all, partially because she adores her mom and partially because she sees it as giving her grandmother a rude gesture. And the opening scene is a funeral of not one, but two people no one actually likes, and it just. Keeps. Coming. This book was SO much fun and I adored every word of it!

Now, for the real life part – families can be messy and we are a product of our families and our own resilience. Daisy’s family is messy, and she’s resilient. She works for her grandmother who seems like a terrifying boss. Her grandmother who’s already disowned her mother, although mom seems like she’s doing just fine, and is now threatening to disown Daisy if she doesn’t do right by her cousin’s child. Oh, and then there’s cousin Julienne, who’s made a name for herself by only giving one-star reviews. Those one-star reviews do include West’s construction company. Yes, folks, she made a contractor she did not know before he completed one job for her AND gave a one-star review to him for that job the legal guardian of her child. Now for Daisy specifically, she claims she’s only good at her job because the people she works with know her grandmother is the next line of defense and they don’t want to work with her directly. She globe-trots to manage real estate deals and developments, yet she’s only successful because she works for her grandmother? Nope. I’m calling BS, and I’m calling imposter syndrome. What’s that you ask? When intelligent, competent people think they only got where they are/achieved their accomplishments because of luck because it couldn’t possibly be because they’re intelligent and competent. (This is my definition. If you’d like to dig in, I’d suggest checking out Lead Stories Podcast or your favorite leadership guru.) If you think it’s an accident that you’ve gotten where you are, well, it may have started out that way, but that’s probably not the full story. My professional story starts with struggling to find an unpaid internship (yes, I was free for 300 hours, as a graduate student, and still struggled to find a spot) and then working hard to prove myself. (Spoiler alert – it worked, and it wasn’t an accident or luck.) From personal experience, both mine and others I know well, this is fairly common in over achievers and also adult children of alcoholics. If people around you are always impressed by what you’ve accomplished and you’re always struggling for more, feeling like it isn’t enough, chat with a trusted person about imposter syndrome and see what they think. If you regularly interact with someone who seems to always brush off accomplishments and continues to shirk all other responsibilities in pursuit of achievement, perhaps encourage them to investigate this (or just email the podcast link to them and tell them you see them…not that I’ve done that…I totally have, complete with a burnout warning). And for another related soap box – we’re millennials here. I, for one, never got a participation trophy and I didn’t want one. I wanted the giant first place trophy and I busted it to get it (and as it’s cold today, my wrist is currently asking me if those color guard trophies were worth it all those years ago. Yup. They were and are, every time). Millennials get a bad reputation for not working in the same way that baby boomers work and for being more vocal than Gen X, and while the facts are true, that doesn’t make either bad. The reputation being negative, however, does feed into those suffering from imposter syndrome and make them try even harder to be enough. Y’all! We are enough. Daisy is enough! You are enough! Show up, do what you’re supposed to do, and be as kind as possible while doing it. That is enough! I am SO grateful to romance authors for bringing up these issues because they are important and we need to be talking about them! Thank you to Pippa Grant for digging into Daisy’s imposter syndrome so that we can talk about it and be more confident in ourselves and our abilities because…say it with me…WE ARE ENOUGH.

Claire Kingsley, Lucy Score, Kathryn Nolan, and Pippa Grant – Shared by Kathryn Nolan in The Pipsquad

Now for more chill topics, I think I’ve relayed my need for books to end with a nice shiny bow on them (not like Pride and Prejudice because there is SO much more to that story), so one thing I adore about the Bluewater Billionaires series, and especially Crazy for Loving You. as the last title, is that we get a bit of that bow in each book and in the series as a whole. We have four books to get to know our leading ladies, and as the men join in the fold, they too have cameos throughout. My absolute favorite cameo is in this book. Celebrity scandal fixer Derek becomes a Billionaire Boyfriend in The Price of Scandal, and then introduces Jude, retired CIA agent/ personal security professional, to Cam in The Mogul and the Muscle, but they’re already friends and boxing buddies. Then we add in Beck, who was raised in a motorcycle gang, in Wild Open Hearts. One might imagine these three to be, well, a bit protective, so it should surprise no one, when they grill West before inducting him into their club. Also not surprising is when they accompany the ladies to Drag Queen Brunch. While I don’t think my husband would appreciate DQB as much as I do, he’ll happily stay home with the littles while Ashley and I visit our local DQB again in the not too distant future. We are so very grateful to the Bluewater Billionaire authors for putting the idea on our radar, and would be delighted to sit next to, or with, any or all of them at our local spot any time!

~Nikki

What do you look for in a romance novel, other than HEA? What about do you like more rom or com in your rom-coms?