Naughty Times in Northumberland

Different cover, same great romance. 

Secretary by Day, Mistress by Night

By: Maggie Cox   

The Setting: Modern times, Northumberland, England  

The Happy Couple:

Maya Hayward – a quiet brunette bombshell with a dark and tragic past

Blaise Walker – a playboy playwright with a violent upbringing  

The Set-Up: When Blaise saves Maya from a handsy encounter with her horny boss, she feels like she can’t say no to his request that she come work for him instead. When the pair travels to Blaise’s stately home in Northumberland, he can’t wait to start work on his new play with the beautiful Maya researching by his side.

The Issue: To say Maya has daddy issues would be a severe understatement. Her father was a world-renowned yet incredibly unstable and depressed painter who committed suicide when she was just 17. She’s had some trouble fully trusting men ever since. Blaise is afraid to commit fully to a relationship after seeing the violent streak in his parent’s marriage.

Happily Ever After: The sexual chemistry between the pair is fierce, and just cannot be denied. What starts off as a casual, no strings attached affair, quickly turns to more. On an afternoon stroll along Hadrian’s Wall, troubled pasts are revealed and the two begin to fall in love.

Scandalous Scale: Getting Steamy  

The Verdict: This is not your typical Harlequin as…dare I say it? There’s CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT! Maya and Blaise (such stupid names) each have rich and storied pasts that explain their current temperaments. There’s also an interesting subplot about the play Blaise writes. It actually sounds like a play I’d want to see. Also the setting sounds super pretty. 

Bad Boys and Baby Drama

The Sabbides Secret Baby

By: Jacqueline Baird

The Setting: Modern times, Split between: Athens, Greece and Dorsetshire, England   

The Happy Couple:

Phoebe Brown – a naïve young girl in love, turned baby mama

Jed Sabbides – a multimillionaire hotel magnate with a bad boy appeal

The Set-Up: Phoebe meets Jed when she’s in her early twenties, working at one of his hotels to put her way through university. She immediately falls for his good looks and charm. She thinks its love. 

When she tells him she’s pregnant, she expects Jed to get down on one knee. He splits instead and she miscarries, and poor Phoebe is left with a broken heart.

The Issue: As Phoebe flees Athens to seek comfort back home in England, Jed is certain he’ll never see her again. And good riddance, right? Its not like he was ready to give up his playboy ways. As Phoebe settles back into life in Dorsetshire, she gets a surprise…of the baby kind. 

Turns out she was pregnant with twins and only one miscarried (a medical rarity and convenient plot point).

Happily Ever After: Phoebe can’t disguise her panic (or her arousal) when she runs into Jed five years later. He has no idea that Ben, their son, exists. When he comes to her house to rekindle the fire, he realizes the baby he thought miscarried is alive and well.  

A lot has changed for Jed, he’s no longer the bad boy philanderer he used to be. He’s ready to be a family man, but how can he make Phoebe see he’ll never break her heart again?

Scandalous Scale: Hot n’ Heavy

BONUS: Bad Boy Appeal

Jed Sabbides is a total classic when it comes to bad boys. He’s controlling, he likes to get his way, and he’ll stop at almost nothing to get what he wants. But we can’t exactly hate him. 

We should hate all bad boys on principle. But we rarely do. Why? Because bad boys are usually SO. DAMN. SEXY. Especially fictional ones.

My total swoonfest? Damon Salvatore in the Vampire Diaries.

Who’s your favourite fictional bad boy?