Sex (with your ex!) in the City

Marrying the Manhattan Millionaire

By: Jackie Braun   

The Setting: Modern times, New York City, USA 

The Happy Couple:

Samantha (Sam) Bradford – drop-dead gorgeous account executive at her father’s midtown advertising agency

Michael Lewis – irresistibly sexy, secret millionaire advertising executive

The Set-Up: Samantha and Michael were hot n’ heavy…seven years ago. Since their intense breakup, Sam’s been channeling her inner Taylor Swift and Michael’s been sexually frustrated on the west coast. 

Now, they’re back in New York, vying for the same multi-million dollar advertising client.

The Issue: It would be so easy for Sam to hate Michael, her biggest business rival and the man who once broke her heart…if she didn’t find him so irresistible after all these years. Michael would love to concentrate fully on work, but he can’t seem to keep Sam out of his mind (or his increasingly erotic dreams).

Happily Ever After: Thrown together in high stakes business meetings, Sam and Michael quickly fall into old patterns. Their fierce competition in the boardroom is no match for their rekindled passion in the bedroom.

After both Sam and Michael fail to land a big account, the pair realizes they’ll work better in business if they’re working together.

Scandalous Scale: Getting Warmer

Italian Stallion to the Rescue

Hired: The Italian’s Bride

By: Donna Alward   

The Setting: Modern times, Banff, Alberta, Canada

The Happy Couple:

Mariella (Mari) Ross: beautiful manager of the Fiori Cascade hotel with a dark and tragic past

Luca Fiori: an Italian Stallion, owner of the Fiori hotel chain 

The Set-Up: When Luca flies to town to renovate and rebrand his newest hotel, he meets resistance at every turn from Mari, the hotel manager. She can’t stand his take-charge attitude; he finds her beautiful but strangely fragile. 

The hours are long as renovations get under way and the attraction between the two deepens with every meeting, every lingering glance.

The Issue: Still smarting from his last relationship that ended in ruin, Luca swears love is just not for him. He’s in Banff for business, and nothing more. Mari is trying to rebuild her life after a past of violent abuse at the hands of her stepfather. She hasn’t let anyone get close to her for years, but something about Luca sets her heart aflutter.

Happily Ever After: When her past comes back to haunt her, Mari turns to Luca—and his strong, muscled shoulder—to cry on. When it comes time for Luca to fly back to Florence, Mari realizes she’s fallen in love with her protector. He’d sworn to never love again, but Luca can’t resist Mari, she’s simply bellissima.

Scandalous Scale: Getting Warmer

Canadian Cowboy

Her Lone Cowboy

By: Donna Alward  

The Setting: Modern times, Grand Prairie, Alberta, Canada

The Happy Couple:

Lily Germaine – beautiful brunette, hell-bent on helping people

Noah Lamarie – wounded army Captain, turned cowboy

The Set-Up: Noah’s brother Andrew and Lily’s best friend Jen are getting married, and guess who they’ve asked to be best man and maid of honour?

Thrown together in wedding planning, Lily volunteers to help Noah as he re-adjusts to life on the farm with only one arm.

The Issue: After a tragic accident in Afghanistan, Captain Noah Lamarie has returned home without an arm and with a wounded sense of pride. How could anyone ever love him now? Lily, still stinging from being left at the alter years ago, is not sure she can ever love again. 

As the pair helps Andrew and Jen with wedding plans, it’s best if they just stay friends…right?

Happily Ever After: After a series of lingering glances, intimate dancing lessons and a teasingly erotic tuxedo measurement scene, Noah and Lily definitely cross into ‘more than just friends’ territory. Lily falls hard for Noah’s strength and his ability to beat the odds, and Noah can’t help but love a woman who sees past his stump and into his soul.

Scandalous Scale: Tame

BONUS: Casting the Cowboy

Definitely sexy Jake Gyllenhall (circa the Brokeback Mountain years) as Noah.

They could totally figure out how to make Jake armless, look how well Hollywood’s doing with Dr. Arizona Robbins on Grey’s Anatomy.

    Who do you think would make the sexiest cowboy?

Wet, Wild and Knocked Up

Walk on the Wild Side

By: Natalie Anderson 

The Setting: Modern times, New Zealand 

The Happy Couple:

Kelsi Reid – violet-eyed petite redhead, web designer

Jack Greene – “sinfully hot champion snowboarder”

The Set-Up: Love at first sight, with a dangerous twist. When Kelsi runs into Jack with her car, he can’t help but notice the sexy siren behind the wheel. 

After a get-to-know-you coffee, the pair enjoys an afternoon of raunchy sexcapades in the surf at the beach. Their one-day affair turns into more when Kelsi realizes she’s pregnant.

The Issue: Jack is a snowboarding sex god who can’t be tied down. He’s forever chasing snowy mountains (and girls) and has never faced commitment. Kelsi thinks she’s ugly because she has pale skin, freckles and red hair she tries to hide with excessive amounts of bleach. 

She wants stability and a man to love her for her. With a baby thrown into the mix, how can the two ever get along?

Happily Ever After: After some tears (Kelsi) and explosive cursing (Jack), the pair reunites (in the bedroom at least…and on the kitchen floor…and in the foyer). But was their weekend-long sex fest a mistake? Jack seriously needs to get back to training if he is ever going to get an Olympic gold medal. 

After some soul searching (and a little bit more bedroom fun) Jack realizes Kelsi is all he ever wanted.

Scandalous Scale: Hot n’ Heavy

BONUS: Best Euphemism

Anatomical words just so aren’t the Harlequin way. This week’s best penile comparison? The Eiffel Tower.

A Cougar in the Outback

 

Surprise: Outback Proposal

By: Jennie Adams

The Setting: Modern times, Australian Outback

The Happy Couple:

Jayne Cutter – 35-year-old tourism company executive

Alex MacKay – 25-year-old wholesale gift supplier (Brent MacKay's younger brother)

The Set-Up: One project away from a partnership at her dad’s tourism company, Jayne teams up with super sexy Alex MacKay to create unique souvenirs for visitors touring the Australian Outback.

The Issue: As the pair explores the Outback, their mutual attraction is instant. But Jayne is a decade older than Alex and is afraid of becoming a clichéd cougar. 

Obviously she has yet to watch Cougar Town and is unaware that cougars are staging a comeback. Even Taylor Swift has jumped on the cougar bandwagon a few times.

Happily Ever After: A gusty dust storm strands Alex and Jayne at a pilot’s hangar. Everyone knows how romantic wind can be…think Ralph Fiennes in The English Patient. As the two ride out the storm, things get a little PG13. The pair realizes that age is just a number that their love can most certainly conquer. All ends happily ever after with a proposal under the Australian sun.

Scandalous Scale: Getting Warmer 

Romance Down Under

Uh oh! Fiona Donner has some serious 

competition: this mysterious brunette who appears 

on the cover…but not in the story

Australian Boss: 

Diamond Ring By: Jennie Adams

The Setting: Modern times, suburbs of Sydney, Australia

The Happy Couple:  

Fiona Donner – tall, blond, blue-eyed, graphic designer/artist

Brent MacKay – tall, green-eyed, millionaire landscape designer

The Set-Up:

Brent hires Fiona to his landscape company as a graphic designer and their mutual attraction is instant. 

She falls for his ‘aura’ of strength, he appreciates her ‘peaches and cream complexion’ and her ‘curvy in all the right places’ figure.

The Issue: Initially their working relationship keeps the pair apart, but nothing can stop their passion from brewing. Though Fiona melts every time Brent comes in the room, she’s insecure about her height and weight. 

Brent wants nothing more than to hold and protect Fiona, but his dark family past and his acute autism threaten to spoil his newfound love.

Happily Ever After:  An overnight trip to the mountains and a slow dance bring the pair ever closer, but it’s not until a near brush with death in a snowstorm that Fiona and Brent realize their love can beat all the odds. 

Brent proposes on their favourite hiking trail and the pair lives happily ever after.

 

Scandalous Scale: Tame 

Welcome to the Harlequin Book Club!

 

I was watching the new season of The Bachelor the other night when the idea for this blog came to me. Harlequin, the massive romance novel publisher, ran a cover photo contest on the show. All the girls vying for Sean’s affection had to pose with him for Harlequin-style cover photos, all romantic country themed, or modern vampire or old-fashioned harlotry.

It was basically 20 ways Sean could smolder on camera without a shirt on. I’m not complaining. I still think Emily Maynard was crazy for passing Sean up for Jef…and we all know how that turned out.

Anyways, seeing the photo shoot was like a jolt. Harlequin novels, that’s perfect! I can write a blog about them, I’ve been reading them for years. They are probably my guiltiest pleasure, beyond my obsessions with Air Supply and Little House on the Prairie re-runs.

They’re a lot of people’s guiltiest pleasure it seems. Harlequin, which publishes out of a main office in Toronto (Canada represent!), pumps out 110 titles a month, and yearly, over 300 of those titles make it onto bestseller lists.

In this blog I’m going to read and review titles under the Harlequin umbrella, covering a wide array of sub-categories within the romance genre, including historical, adventure, desire, medical intrigue and more.

Ready for romance? Keep reading.