The Dish for At Last by Jill Shalvis

HER LOVE HAS COME ALONG…

Amy Michaels loves her new life in Lucky Harbor. A waitress in the local diner, she’s looking forward to her first weekend hike through the mountains. But when a wrong turn takes her off the trail, she finds herself up close and personal with forest ranger Matt Bowers. And even though she’s tempted to kiss that sexy smile right off his face, she won’t make the mistake of getting involved with the town heartthrob.

A former cop whose life went south, Matt doesn’t let anyone get too close. But something about the feisty beauty caught his eye the moment he first saw her in the diner. After a hot night under a starry sky, Matt can’t deny their attraction-or the fact that for the first time in a long time, he feels the stirrings of something more. Now it’s up to Matt to help Amy see that, no matter what is in their past, together they can build a future in Lucky Harbor.

 

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A few years ago, we went camping.  We brought our boat, and on the first day there, we launched the boat on the lake for the duration.  My husband gave me my choice of driving the truck and trailer to the campsite, or driving the boat across the lake to dock.  It was windy, and I’m a boat wuss, so I picked the truck.  Halfway around the lake, I got the trailer stuck on a weird hair-pin turn and had to be rescued by a forest ranger.  He was big and tough and armed and overworked, and undoubtedly underpaid as well, but the man helped me out of a jam so my husband wouldn’t kill me.  Ever since then I’ve wanted to write a forest ranger as a hero in one of my books.

 

Enter Matt Bowers.  Big and tough and armed and overworked and underpaid.  Like my real life hero, he also stopped and helped a damsel in distress.  Of course Matt gets a lot more in the bargain than my poor beleaguered actual forest ranger ever got.  Matt Bowers gets Amy Michaels, beautiful, tough, jaded … and in desperate need of rescuing.  She just doesn’t know it yet.

 

Hope you enjoy watching these two circle each other on their path to true love.  Like me, neither of them take the easy way.  I mean what’s the fun in that?

 

Don’t forget to pick up At Last’s two sister books, Lucky In Love and Forever And A Day.

 

Happy Reading,

Jill Shalvis

http://www.jillshalvis.com

http://www.facebook.com/jillshalvis

 

Excerpt

From around the blind curve of the trail, the man appeared. He was tall, built, and armed and dangerous, though not to her physical well-being. Nope, nothing about the tough, sinewy, gorgeous forest ranger was a threat to her body.

 

But Matt Bowers was lethal to her peace of mind.

 

She knew who he was from all the nights he’d come into the diner after a long shift, seeking food. Lucky Harbor residents fawned over him, especially the women. Amy attributed this to an electrifying mix of testosterone and the uniform. He was sipping a Big Gulp, which she’d bet her last dollar had Dr. Pepper in it. The man was a serious soda addict.

 

She understood his appeal, even felt the tug of it herself, but that was her body’s response to him. Her brain was smarter than the rest of her and resisted.

 

He wore dark, wraparound Oakley sunglasses, but she happened to know that his eyes were light brown, sharp, and missed nothing. Those eyes were in complete contrast with his smile, which was all laid-back and easygoing, and said he was a pussy cat.

 

That smile lied.

 

Nothing about Matt Bowers was sweet and tame. Not one little hair on his sun-kissed head, not a single spectacular muscle, nothing. He was trouble with a capital T, and Amy had given up trouble a long time ago.

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For a chance to win a copy of At Last by Jill Shalvis, just leave a comment below. Good luck!

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DFRAT – Alice Gaines Guest Blog and Giveaway

Why digital publishing?  Let me count the reasons.

1) It gives us tree huggers a warm and fuzzy feeling to know that we can put our stories out there for people to read without causing any damage to forests..  Seriously, digital books are better for the environment than print books.

2) As a corollary, digital books don’t have to be warehoused and shipped.  They don’t take up room on shelves in book stores. They don’t end up stripped and thrown away after a few weeks to make room for new books.  (Stripping a book consists of ripping the cover off, returning it for credit to the publisher, and discarding the rest of the book.  An extremely wasteful process.)

3) Because of the above, it costs a lot less to create and publish a digital book.  No paper, printing, and binding.  No warehousing and shipping.  No returns for credit.  As a result, digital publishers can pay much higher royalty rates.  Granted, many houses don’t pay advances on digital books (although some do), but when it comes right down to it, success in this business depends on how many books you sell, not how many advances you get.

4) Digital books have become mainstream as Kindles, Nooks, and other readers have become more and more common in large numbers of households.  We tend to forget that e-publishing has been “the next big thing” since the mid 1990s.  My first digital book, Moon of the Jaguar, came out in 1999.

From the beginning, e-publishers established themselves as sources for good books that fell outside the boundaries of what print publishers were looking for.  Back in 1999, no one would have bought Moon of the Jaguar for print.  The hero and heroine were university professors on an expedition to the ruins of an ancient Mayan city.  The ghosts of a Mayan king and queen were secondary characters.

Since then, I’ve written e-stories about men who shape-shift into motorcycles, a casino in hell where the booze and the sex are free and everyone wins, next door neighbors engaged in a battle over some hedge clippers and their wives who go on a sex strike to stop the nonsense (can you say Lysistrata?), a woman who likes to spy on her hunky bi-sexual neighbor, and a super heroine named Wonderslut.

Clearly, the huge majority of the stories I’ve e-published are erotic romance, and e-publishing has been a great boon for hotter fiction.  It’s delivered to the customer’s reader instantly and privately.  But more and more, e-publishers are looking for all kinds of stories.  This is especially true of some of the big print publishers who are entering the e-pubbing market.  The chances of getting an unusual story to readers get better and better.

If you’d like to read an erotic short story that introduces my Cabin Fever series of novellas that’ll be out this summer from Avon Impulse, check out:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/brief-encounter-alice-gaines/1110563462?ean=9780062228239

http://www.amazon.com/Brief-Encounter-ebook/dp/B008239R6A

Find me on the web at www.alicegaines.blogspot.com

 

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For a chance to win a digital book from Alice’s Changeling Press backlist (winner’s choice!), leave a comment below. Click here to see the choices. Good luck!

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Sharing Hailey by Samantha Ann King – Review

The blurb

Hailey Anderson’s deep, dark secret? She’s been madly in lust with her overprotective brother’s two best friends for years. Gorgeous woodworking artist Mark Allen and sexy doctor Tony Adamo have no idea they star in her fantasies every night.

After a nasty breakup with her abusive boyfriend, Hailey’s looking for a little distance. Headed for a two-week Hawaiian vacation with her brother and his hot friends, Hailey can’t wait to feast her eyes on Mark’s and Tony’s rock-hard, ocean-slick bodies. Even if she can’t touch.

But instead of treating her like their little sister, Mark and Tony have a surprising proposition: a monogamous ménage à trois. The three of them—and no one else. Both men want Hailey and have agreed to share her. The red-hot reality is even better than the forbidden fantasy. Until Hailey’s ex threatens their newfound happiness…

The review

I’m not going to try to summarize the beginning of Sharing Hailey because the blurb is spot-on. When Mark and Tony reveal their feelings to Hailey, hot sexy times occur. The lush descriptions of Hawaii sets a perfect backdrop as they explore their feelings and hide everything from Hailey’s brother, Jake. The author includes a cast of secondary characters and makes every one of them count. They all add to the story and made me want to know more about them as they helped Hailey and the guys keep their blossoming relationship a secret from Jake.

The “secretly in love with best bud’s sister” is one of my favorite tropes and when the big secret was revealed, it gave me everything I was hoping for. If the book had ended there, I would have been satisfied but a deeper, more serious layer was added in. Hailey was operating under the belief that her ex-boyfriend Daniel would just move on after she ended their relationship. She didn’t want to see how dangerous he was. When Daniel shows up and threatens her pregnant sister-in-law, their time in paradise is over and Hailey must admit to how abusive her relationship with him was.

That was one of the most compelling parts of Sharing Hailey. She never saw herself as being abused. He insulted her, he isolated her from her friends, he slammed her into walls but since he never hit her, it wasn’t abuse in her mind. Once they are back home, Daniel’s rage and violence escalates. Living in a healthy relationship with her guys and meeting an advocate for victims of domestic abuse brings about realizations that were poignant.

As Hailey takes out a restraining order, her confusion and pain comes through clearly.

Things like this don’t happen to people like me. I’m smart. I’ve got a college degree and a job. My father didn’t beat my mother. This isn’t me.

While this is very much a heroine centered story, Mark and Tony can’t be ignored. They share over twenty years of friendship with Hailey and that caring and respect comes across beautifully. They want to wrap her in bubble wrap and keep her safe but know that real life doesn’t work that way. Their struggle to protect her while still living their lives in an unconventional relationship made me fall in love with both guys. They don’t ignore the tough realities and deal with it all in a realistic way, while still being incredibly hot.

I loved this book. My only complaint is this is Samantha Ann King’s debut novel and she doesn’t have a massive backlist for me to dive into. I’m very excited to see what this author does next.

4.5 out of 5 stars

Genre: Erotic Romance
Release Date: July 9th, 2012
Format: digital

Preorder:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble

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