Adult Fiction

Sports Romance Books

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sports heartSports romance books are becoming increasingly more and more popular.   These athletes are generally at the top of their game, rich, and famous.  They are confident, stubborn,  dedicated, focused, passionate, and have a soft side  – which makes them strong, interesting characters.  All of them eventually realize that the love of a woman is what they need to make their life complete.  These stories are not overloaded with sports scenes or terminology.  There is just enough to give you a realistic insight into the sport and the challenges these athletes and the women in their lives face.

(On a side note:  Model Jed Hill seems the most popular choice for the many “naked chest” covers of sport romance books.  See his “stats” here and his facebook page here.  Enjoy!)

With the  cold days and nights ahead, turn up the heat with a Sport Romance!  Here’s a sampling of some titles available at the Cheshire Library.  Some are series where the first title is listed to get you started, although you don’t need to read them in order.

Tracy Solheim’s  Out of Bounds footballseries.  Book one – Game On.  Book two – Foolish Games. The funny, sexy and heartwarming exploits of the Blaze football stars and the women in their lives.

Susan Elizabeth Phillips has a sports series centering around football called Chicago Stars.  The first title is It Had to be You. A sexy, outrageous New York woman inherits a football team.

Let’s Misbehave by Lisa Plumley is a football story centering around Quarterback Cash Connelly and his need to find a nanny.

Another football themed title is Sweet Spot (book two of the Bakery Sisters trilogy)by Susan Mallery.  A touching, heartwarming story of a youth football coach and a bakery owner going through hard times.

Rachel Gibson has a hockey series, Chinooks Hockey Team.  The first title is Simply Irresistible.  Realisticstory about a hockey jock tamed by an irresistible woman.

Deirdre Martin also has a hockey series, Blades with the first title being Body Check.  Fun, sexy, withwonderful characters and story line.

Just In Time (Alaskan Night series) by Addison Fox about an injured hockey star returning to Alaska to heal and try to make things right with the girl back home.

Molly O’Keefe – two of her best poignant and deeply sensual books are hockey stories – Crazy Thing Called Love and Can’t Buy Me Love.

Jill Shalvis offers two baseball theme books – Double Play and Slow Heat. Jill’s books are humorous,sexy and fast reads.

Stealing Home is part of Sherryl Woods’ series Sweet Magnolias.  It’s about a single mom and her son’s baseball coach.

Staying with baseball, Pitch Perfect (A Cricket Creek Novel) by LuAnn McLane.  A hard-swinging baseball team and three hometown heroes try to revitalize the community.

Let Me Be The One by Bella Andre.  Part of The Sullivans – focusing on baseball pitcher Ryan Sullivan.

Pamela Britton has an exciting NASCAR series.  The first title is Slow Burn.  An action packed, sexy read.

Also in the race car theme – Erin McCarthy’s series, Fast Track.  Try Slow Ride and Jacked Up. Fast paced, steamy with a touch of humor.

Some miscellaneous sports:

Fast & Loose by Elizabeth Bevarly and The Horsemaster’s Daughter by Susan Wiggs. – Equestrian

Table for Five by Susan Wiggs – Golf

On Thin Ice by Susan Andersen. – Ice Skating

Extreme Bachelor and Wedding Survivor by Julia London – Extreme Sports

Crash Into Me by Jill Sorenson – Professional Surfing

Freefall by Jill Sorenson – Rock Climbing/Kayaking

Match Me If You Can by Susan Elizabeth Phillips – Sports Agent

Causing Havoc by Lori Foster. Her series, SBC, is based on the Ultimate Championship fighting world of bad boys and the women they love.

Today Show Book Club Picks Its Third Book – Under The Wide And Starry Sky by Nancy Horan

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On January 23rd, the Today Show announced its third book title for their book club, Under The Wide And Starry Skyby Nancy Horan, best selling author who wrote Loving Frank.

Get ready for a little romance in this historical fiction book centered around the famed Treasure Island author’s life with his wife and muse Fanny Van de Grift.  The old adage, behind every great man, there’s a great woman is the basis for this story of a complex and unconventional love affair between Van de Grift and Robert Louis Stevenson.

The “Today” selections, chosen every four to five weeks, will have stickers on their covers indicating their inclusion in the club. The books, chosen by a team of producers and the show’s co-hosts, will include both fiction and nonfiction, newly released titles and classics. Discussion groups and excerpts will be featured online.

 

Jenn Reads: A Tale For the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

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I love Japanese history. I loved it so much I wrote my senior history thesis in college on the court culture during Lady Murasaki’s time (Lady Murasaki wrote the first ever novel, Tale of Genji in the 900’s).

I was pleased therefore when my friend selected A Tale For the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki as her pick for my girlfriend’s book club. A Tale For the Time Being takes place partially in Tokyo, with a 16 year old narrator named Nao and on a small island off British Columbia, with Ruth.

A Tale For the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki

A Tale For the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki

Ruth discovers while walking on the beach, a plastic bag filled a Hello Kitty lunchbox and other seemingly garbage-like items. Upon opening the bag, Ruth finds that these items are from Japan, and likely floated over after the 2011 tsunami. What ensues is a non-climatic story of Nao finding her place in the world, and Ruth figuring out if Nao was a victim of the tsunami.

There is a lot of word manipulation and double meaning in this book. For example, Nao’s name in English would be pronounced now. Time beings all happen in the now. It goes on and on like this, until you’re almost ready to scream at the book, “OK! I get it!”

It should be mentioned that this book was long-listed for the Booker Prize and is very literary. Perhaps almost too literary for the particular stage I was at in my life while reading this book. It should also be mentioned that everyone LOVES this book. I can’t say I loved it, but I didn’t hate it either.

Ozeki, a New Haven native, crams a lot into this book, which is over 400 pages. There is life in modern Tokyo, life on a small Canadian island, Zen buddhism, extreme bullying, Alzheimer’s, kamikaze, physics, time travel, philosophical theory… it just had too much. After a while there were so many issues and concurring themes I wanted to give up. There were several themes I thought could have been saved for another tale, another day.

There were times when I felt Ruth’s storyline was too personal. For me, it was a look into the real life of Ruth Ozeki, without this being an autobiography. Her husband, Oliver, is a secondary, but main character in Ruth’s narrative, and at times I wanted to cringe at the interactions between the two. It was almost a place for her to air her grievances, but not the right forum.

I did however love Nao’s narrative. Being almost the exact same age as her, I could relate to the pop culture references she referred to, and the difficulties of being a teenager in the 2000’s. Nao’s life was not easy, and she had no one, except her Zen Buddhist nun great-grandmother Jiko, who completely understood her. The scenes with Nao and Jiko are the best in the story- Nao is not judged by Jiko, who listens, provides guidance, and parental affection lacking in her life.

If this book had been just Nao’s story, or we found out what happened to Nao, which to me is the great mystery of the book, I would have rated it higher. I partially read and listened to this book, read by Ozeki herself. I enjoyed listening to her inflections and pronunciations, which can be difficult for those not acquainted with the Japanese language.

Rating: 3 stars out of 5

See you in the stacks,
Jenn

It’s going to be a long winter……..start reading a series.

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winterNow’s a good time to get involved in a gripping series to get you through those long winter days and nights.  Here’s a list of first titles in a series for a variety of Police Procedurals – Mystery, Thriller and Suspense.

Still Life (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache Mysteries) by Louise Penny – An engaging series hero in Inspector Gamache, who commands his forces–and this series–with integrity and quiet courage.

Bruno, Chief of Police: A Novel of the French Countryside by Martin Walker – Meet Benoît Courrèges, aka Bruno, a policeman in a small village in the South of France.  He’s a former soldier who has embraced the pleasures and slow rhythms of country life. He has a gun but never wears it; he has the power to arrest but never uses it.

Naked in Death (In Death) by J.D. Robb – In a world of danger and deception, she walks the line–between seductive passion and scandalous murder.  This series follows the lives of Lt. Eve Dallas and her husband, businessman Roake in mid-21st century New York City.

Eva’s Eye: An Inspector Sejer Mystery by Karin Fossum – A Scandinavian crime fiction starring Inspector konrad Sejer, a shy, old-fashioned, polite dad who never stops thinking of his latest case.

Gallows View (Inspector Banks)by Peter Robinson – A critically acclaimed thriller that first introduced the world to Yorkshire, England Chief Inspector Alan Banks.

Sworn to Silence (Kate Burkholder Mystery)by Linda Castillo –  In a rural, sleepy town in Ohio, the Amish and English have lived peacefully until a series of brutal murders shatters the community.

White Sky, Black Ice (Nathan Active Mysteries)by Stan Jones – Nathan Active is an Inupiat Eskimo and Alaska State Tro0per who patrols the coldest beat in America.

Face of a Killer (Sydney Fitzpatrick Mystery) by Robin Burcell – Author Robin Burcell is currently a criminal investigator in California and was the first female police office hired in Sacramento – which makes this series about a female FBI Special Agent very believable.

The Cove (FBI Thriller) by Catherine Coulter – FBI Agents Dillon Savich and his wife, Lacey Sherlock tackle crime in San Francisco.

Lonely Hearts (A Charles Resnick Mystery)by John Harvey – Charles Resnick is a jazz-loving, melancholy cop in provincial Nottingham, England.

Jenn Reads: Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

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Hey there old friends. Been a while.

Sorry for leaving you for so long, but I’ve been caught up in DVD land for quite some time now, with little time to write a proper post. And I really haven’t read anything worth writing a review for, until the past week, when I’ve finished two books in a row. Yay me!

I must be one of the ten people in the reading world who has not yet read Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. I like to keep those super popular, everyone-and-their-grandmother-has-read-it-right-now books until the popularity has worn off. Since Gone Girl is still going strong, I’ll hold off.

However, Dark Places fell into my lap due to the mystery book club I belong to. Our youngest member selected it as her choice for January, and I was finally introduced into the twisted and weird world of Gillian Flynn.

I’ll start off right away by saying that I give this book 3.5 stars out of 5. It had the potential for 4 stars, but there were several serious flaws. I listened to DP,

Dark Places, by Gillian Flynn

Dark Places, by Gillian Flynn

which was masterfully read by a full cast, with voices for Libby Day, Patty Day, and Ben Day, it was easy to breeze through this book.

A brief premise: Libby Day is now in her early 30’s, but as a seven year old, her mother and two older sisters, Michelle and Debbie, were allegedly murdered by her 15 year old brother, Ben. Libby’s life is a mess- she’s never worked a day in her life and has no money left. Libby herself is a mess- she’s rude, snapping, surly, angry, and just nasty. She would never be your best friend, or a bridesmaid at your wedding.

Libby receives a letter from a college-aged guy named Lyle, requesting her to appear at a group he belongs to. The group is called The Kill Club, and they are intent on proving that Ben did not kill Patty and her two daughters. If that isn’t weird enough, they agree to pay Libby to talk with people from her past who may know more about the story and who was the actual murderer.

The story flashes between present day (2009) Libby and 1985 Patty and Ben, and the events that occurred that fateful January day. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that Ben is not the killer- but who is?

That to me, was the biggest flaw of the book. I’m not one of those mystery readers who sets out from the very beginning to figure out whodunnit. I’d rather take the journey along with the main character and discover with them who the culprit is. Unfortunately, from almost the very beginning, I had figured out who the killer was.

And that was a big bummer.

This is not a book for those who do not like reading books with violence against children, violence, unpleasant circumstances, or those who are easily scared. DP is a dirty, filthy, foul book, with a scenario that could happen in real life. I wasn’t bothered by the violence or foulness of this book, but rather by the lack of depth in the main character, Libby. Only after her life is threatened again (spoiler!) does she finally start to grow as an adult, and the potential to move out of the dark places is opened.

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

See you in the stacks,

Jenn

PS- DP is being made into a film, starring Charlize Theron as Libby Day.