Andrea Jenelle's Blog

Perfection. Still trying to put my thoughts in some semblance of order. BUT THE WAY HE SEES AND ACCEPTS HER! 🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌 I’ve been waiting for Imogen’s story since she first strode across the page with her carpet bag full of explosives. All her life she’s been told she’s too much. Too volatile. Too brash. Too curvy. But to Tom, she’s exactly enough. He’s been dreaming of her from the moment she disrupted his crime scene. She challenges him and tricks him and confuses him. When she runs into a burning building to save him and he carries her out in his arms, all the denial and the running between them leads to what’s been inevitable from the beginning. The worlds between them don’t matter. She’s his match, lighting up the recklessness and passion he keeps buried. He’s her blade, protecting her and cherishing her and empowering her. Loved it loved it loved it! There were so many moments that made me swoon and laugh and feel all of the things that fuel Imogen’s devil-may-care attitude. If you’re a fan of the PBS series Miss Scarlet and the Duke, you’re already familiar with the level of tension that builds when you put a man dedicated to rules because they helped him rise from his humble origins with a woman who uses every tool at her disposal to change the world one life at a time. He’s determined to resist her because they come from different worlds and he’s convinced himself he’s unworthy. But what Tommy Peck will come to realize is that Imogen doesn’t care about his origins or his misgivings. She cares that he sees her. She cares that he accepts her. She cares that he wants her wild spirit and her craving for adventure and the convoluted way her mind works sometimes. And when Imogen wants something as much as she wants Tommy Peck, she’ll move heaven and earth, and walk through hell, to claim it. Just a few of my favorite quotes: “And what were you going to do when you found me in my office?” Kiss you. No, wait. That wasn’t right. But now, that was all she could think of. She wanted to kiss him. She wanted him to kiss her. And she didn’t care for a moment that they were in the uniform room at Scotland Yard. All she cared was that he was there, and he smelled like leather and amber, and he radiated heat like the sun, and her heart was banging about in her chest, and his fingers were stroking over her wrist in little circles that were going to make her mad if he didn’t . . . Because now he had to face the truth. That women like Lady Imogen Loveless, no matter the way they took hold of the world and flouted convention, were not for men like Thomas Peck, born in the streets of Shoreditch, without money or title or power to recommend them. “Mmm. I confess, there is a lady I am tempted by right now.” The words sizzled through her. “But you misunderstand,” he added. “When I say you don’t need a weapon tonight, it’s because I am your weapon, now. You have me.” Her eyes flew open and she pulled back to meet his, intensely blue. “My guard?” “Your blade.” “It would take a lifetime to catalogue all the ways I have wondered about you, Imogen Loveless,” he said. “I have wondered about the color of your skin and the shape of your body and the feel of you against me . . .”

I really enjoyed this enemies to lovers, opposites attract romance! Bobbi and Benjamin struck sparks off each other when they met - and then he stuck his foot in his mouth and ruined it before it could even begin. They’ve been circling each other like sharks looking for blood in the water ever since. Until they have to declare a truce and work together to make sure the wedding of their best friends is the best day ever. She’s a wedding planner who’s trying to make her mark. The wedding of her best friend will cement her reputation as the place to go. There are only two obstacles in the way. Someone’s trying to sabotage her new gig by canceling orders. She has to work with the best man. Who just happens to be her arch nemesis. He’s a chef trying to distance himself from the family business. He’s in the middle of a new venture and can’t afford distractions. When he’s paired with the woman who haunts his dreams even though she won’t give him the time of day, his loss of control becomes inevitable.This reimagined Much Ado About Nothing will make you laugh and swoon!Highly recommended for fans of The Hating Game and Book Lovers.

I loved this unconventional story about the romance between a jaded, widowed duke and a spirited bookstore owner. It’s a beguiling take on the ugly ducking and Pygmalion tropes.He saunters into her shop intent on winning a bet. His mission is to transform her into the irresistible diamond of the season. She rebuffs his offer because she doesn’t suffer fools and she thinks he’s both ridiculous and insulting. When tragedy strikes her shop, she’s forced to enter into his devil’s bargain.The things I loved the most: 1. He actually tells her about the bet that is the reason for his attention and the impetus behind the makeover. I loved that she was a willing participant and fully on board. 2. The dancing lessons! His patience and encouragement were so wonderful.3. He appreciates her intellect and defends it. He makes it clear he would never stand in the way of her pursuit of anything- whether society deems it ladylike or not.

She’s a widow finally able to seek pleasure and happiness.He’s a rake who uses sex as a way to relieve his stress. They have an anonymous tryst on a night scented full of uninhibited surrender.The next day they find out he’s engaged to marry her daughter. I loved this unique age gap romance! Just some of the things I adored: 1. The heroine’s emotional vulnerability and the way the hero both recognized it and supported her journey toward self-actualization. 2. The open lines of communication between the MCs from the very beginning. 3. The very realistic depiction of the freedom of choice and body autonomy.

They have an anonymous tryst that makes them crave nothing but each other.

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Happy Release Week to the incredibly talented Ali Hazelwood. Ali’s newest release features one of my favorite tropes….. ENEMIES TO LOVERS.Elsie Hanaway finally has the chance to ditch her underpaid, overworked adjunct teaching position for the opportunity of a lifetime. There’s only one snag. He’s broody and gorgeous. He has those judging eyes. And he knows her secret. She’s been paying the bills by gigs as a fake girlfriend for hire for those awkward social and family situations. And one of her clients is the younger brother of Mr. Broody and Gorgeous.Normally, it wouldn’t faze her. But of course he’s on the hiring committee and he’s basically the one sponsoring the research project she’s gunning for. This is my favorite book from Ali so far! Here are a couple of reasons why:The feminist examination of academia politics. This is always a plot point and element I adore in Ali’s books, but this story takes a deeper dive and exposes the ugly underbelly of advisorship and the way steminists are encouraged to settle instead of reaching.The dynamic between Jack and Elsie is ELECTRIC. The banter is on fire and Elsie isn’t afraid to stand up to him when he makes assumptions.Jack steps up to the plate and stands up for her in ways she’s not used to and never expected. He clearly values her insight and research and tells her so on several occasions. He forces her to confront the fact she never shows anyone her true self, that she holds back because she’s afraid of rejection. The best thing about this story is the way Jack and Elsie force each other out of habitually safe comfort zones. They show each other how to be vulnerable and give each other a soft place to fall when the world is throwing giant dodgeballs at you that are impossible to avoid.

MY FAVORITE QUOTES “In my weird fantasies, Elsie . . .” He shifts me till our curves and angles match up. Perfectly. “In my fantasies, you allow me to keep an eye on you.” I feel his lips at my temple. “And when I really let go, I imagine that you let me take care of you, too.” My hands are on him, and his hands are on me, and I’m thinking of two-, five-, ten-year-old Jack, alone in the world, calling someone Mom, being told not to. The only fair-haired Smith. I’m thinking of a young boy determined to shape his surroundings. He chose his own world in the end, didn’t he? Greg. Millicent. His friends. He carved a place for himself. And I’m certain he’s thinking of me. All the Elsies I’ve created to fit all the worlds I’ve inhabited, all the people in them. He’s stripping them off me one by one, like he has since the day we met. “I want you, Elsie. All the time. I think of you. All. The. Fucking. Time. I’m distracted. I’m shit at work. And my first instinct, the very first time I saw you, was to run away. Because I knew that if we’d start doing this, we would never stop. And that’s exactly how it is. There is no universe in which I’m going to let you go. I want to be with you, on you, every second of every day. I think—I dream of crazy things. I want you to marry me tomorrow so you can go on my health insurance. I want to lock you in my room for a couple of weeks. I want to buy groceries based on what you like. I want to play it cool, like I’m attracted to you and not obsessed out of my mind, but that’s not where I’m at. Not at all. And I need you to keep us in check. I need you to pace us, because wherever it is that we’re going . . . I’m here. I’m already right here.”

How to Best A Marquess was the perfect wrapup to Janna Macgregor’s groundbreaking Widow Rules series. This series has been characterized by its focus on unconventional heroines, unusual relationships and intimate scenes so hot they light the pages on fire.If she doesn’t want to be bartered off to groom more than three times her age, Beth has to find her lost dowry. Her only hope is retracing the steps of her deceased bigamist partner. But she can’t do it by herself. So she seeks the help of the one man who has every reason to refuse her. But he made her a promise and it’s time to extract it.Julian is her former fiance and he’s been pining since their broken engagement. He’ll never admit it though. He’d rather just be surly and recalcitrant. He agrees to the madcap roadtrip despite his misgivings, because he wants to keep Beth out of trouble and protect her. But we all know what happens when you’re stuck in a carriage with someone for DAYS. We all know what happens when THERE’S ONLY ONE BED. We all know what happens when he FINALLY LOSES HIS CONTROL.When everything falls in place, but not the way you expected, and the journey becomes the most important destination because it shows you who your person is, what do you do?Beth wants a lover. Her reputation is tainted and she’s not going to jeopardize his future,Julian wants marriage and children. And he only wants them with her.How does he convince her that he’s her HEA and she’s his?MY FAVORITE QUOTES“Let me hold you,” he said softly, then dismounted. Two huge granite lions flanked the estate’s entrance. He’d always thought they stood watch over the home and the people who resided there. Tonight, they, along with him, would watch over his precious Beth.If she didn’t have him in her life, it would be a rather bleak existence. Like living her life in the darkness without any light.This was home. This was always home. During these days, she had discovered that whenever she was lost or angry or sad it was Julian’s arms she sought. It was his comfort that made her feel whole again.Look at me,” he softly commanded. Only when she forced her gaze to his did he continue, “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. And that beauty is not only on the outside, but more importantly, it’s on the inside as well.” He placed one hand between her breasts where her heart pounded. “In this special place where it counts.”

Five cartwheeling stars of perfect go to Mazey for giving us this incredible, evocative book! They’ve always been in each other’s back pockets. They snark and snap and malign each other like there’s no tomorrow. To Jude, Indira was always his best friend’s annoying little sister. She could always be counted on to give him grief and target him with her sharp tongue. To Indira, Jude’s always been someone she had to tolerate. Someone who can be just as mean and snarky as she can. Someone she tolerates out of necessity. Indira is a trained psychologist, and when Jude reacts to noise and stimuli she approaches him because she’s worried about him. And they start to see past the impressions that have clouded the way they see each other. They are both staying at her brother’s house and helping plan the wedding, The forced proximity leads an acute awareness of each other. The awareness blooms as Indira intercepts for Jude in situations that bring out the impacts of his trauma, and they come to depend on each other.Falling in love is a series of distilled moments that tell how a story happened. I want to be Indira and I want to hug Jude. Actually, I want to hug them both because of their courage.Indira and Jude have been building their story since they were kids … they just didn’t know it then. Their story is….I’ll stand in the corner with you shoulder to shoulder and we can make snarky observations.It’s cheesesteak.And he remembers what you always order.It’s bumblebee costumes- and how does the sight of you in that turn me on so much.It’s tent wrestling.It’s floor picnics courtesy of Grubhub for your birthday.It’s someone willing to step in and help you haul away all the broken furniture that makes you feel broken too.It’s someone who sees inside you and loves the mess that’s there - because it makes you who you are and it’s made up of all the reasons why they’re your person.It’s someone who tells you it’s okay to let your emotions swamp you, whether they’re good or bad, because then you’re giving yourself permission to heal.I absolutely love this book. It has on point mental health rep and realistically depicts and handles trauma and emotional wounds- especially those inflicted by those we love. Especially those we inflict on ourselves because we are trying to become the version of ourselves we think the world demands. This book delicately handles the mental health struggles of its main characters and showcases the coexistence of resilience and fragility. It deftly portrays the stigma attached to confessing mental health struggles, and beautifully depicts what the journey of self-acceptance and healing is like. Jude and Indira both have personal trauma that shapes the way they love and live, and this story emphasizes that our trauma is part and parcel of who we are. It doesn’t mean we’re broken . It means we have greater understanding of the vulnerabilities of others and ourselves.

Alexandra Vasti’s exclusively released duology deserves all the accolades it has received. It has all the swoon of the swashbuckling, rakish heroes I read during my teen years. It has all the laughter and banter of my favorite rom coms. It has all the insight and deft craft of books by some of my favorite authors, especially Laura Kinsale, Judith Ivory and Meredith Duran.It takes the typical plot formula used in historical romance and completely upends it. In the most wonderful ways. In Which Margo Halifax Earns Her Shocking ReputationIn Margo’s book, the rakish hero we typically encounter becomes a hooligan of a heroine whose brash youth seems ill-advised in retrospect. Margo’s youthful shenanigans have ensured she’ll be enshrined as enviable and enticing. But all of the decisions she took such pride in, and the conventions she was so eager to flout, are now the very things that will hem in the expectations and future of both she and her sister. Unless she steps in to rescue her twin fron certain disaster.The last travel companion on earth she expected to accompany her ends up sitting across from her. The one man whose approbation she feels like she’s never earned - even though she’s always sought it. The one man who drives her to be even more reckless - for reasons she doesn;t care to examine very closely. A series of calamitous accidents ensures Margo and Henry are thrown together in ways they never imagined. Ways that end in laughter and grass stains. Ways that will win over the heart she’s kept behind a fortress, enlighten Henry’s virgin sensibilities, and leave them both breathless in the wake of delightful exertions in the great wide open. Exertions that are revelations and epiphanies because they realize this is just the beginning of their journey together.TROPES: Roadtrip, brother’s best friend, opposites attract, virgin hero. My favorite quotes: She was inside him, too, under his skin, in his heart, and he could not separate his want and his love and his need for her. He could not take a breath without her scent in his nose, and when he pulled back and drove hard into her body, her hips met his stroke for stroke, two halves made one.He was so good at listening, so patient and diligent and earnest. And more, she was learning, much more than she’d known, more playful and relentless and demanding. So many facets of him, newly brought into the light and shimmering in it.“I bring irises to Number Twelve because they’re the color of your eyes. I didn’t take the position with Chatham’s in Bath because I didn’t want to move—not if you were in London. I buy the fruit-sellers out of cherries all summer long because they make me think of you, and most of the time I think of nothing else.”In Which Matilda Halifax Learns the Value of RestraintMattie and Christian have a special place in my heart. Especially since they share the given names of the one true pairing from one of my favorite books of all time- Flowers from the Storm by Laura Kinsale. And there’s also the fact that Christian reminds me of one of my favorite heroes from Julie Anne Long’s Pennyroyal Green series - the enigmatic Alexander Montcrieffe, Duke of Falconbridge.Matilda is the less reckless of the twins - by a slim margin. She’s fantasized what the touch of the man society calls demon and depraved would feel like against her skin. She can’t help but notice the color of his eyes and the way he seems to have been formed by divine hands as an instrument of pleasure and temptation. Her fascination leads to an unintentional depiction of him indulging in scandalous pursuits. And when she is determined to compensate him for the injury she’s caused, he rebuffs her. He believes she’s too innocent for his appetites - despite any wildness of spirit she may claim. She’s determined to rectify her mistake and offers up herself as an art tutor to his sister. She finally coerces him into relenting - but only because he is appalled at his own drunken overtures. The roadtrip that ensues is the definition of torture for the both of them. The close scent of anticipation and arousal in the carriage all the way from London to Northumberland. The way he refers to her as “my wife”, his reading spectacles. Her dextrous, cunning mind and her soft heart and the two freckles beneath her right ear. They discover that the convenient situation they’ve agreed to, the necessity of it, isn’t enough to quell the desire for more. They discover that they have more in common than not. That they have more to offer each other than anyone else. More sanctuary. More empathy. More acceptance. The feelings that awaken between them are undeniable and insurmountable - what choice do they have but surrender?TROPES: Age Gap; Roadtrip; Soulmates My favorite quotes: His mind fled from the old hurt, like fingers from a flame, and when he closed his eyes, there was nothing waiting for him in the warm darkness but Matilda’s smile.Later he would regret it. Later he would lie awake and think about how wrong it was for him to hold her, how dangerous it was, how little he had left to lose, and how closely and ferociously he guarded what was left. Later. Later he could think that he’d made a mistake, his arms around Matilda, the waterfall a distant gallop in his ears and the taste of the wine they’d shared still in his mouth.“I know you, Christian de Bord. I want you as you are, with all your scowls and your looming. I like your dreadful old house and your absurd reaction to cats. I see all the kindness and carefulness and love that you try so hard to hide.”

I absolutely adored Lynn Painter’s newest release. It’s the perfect blend of irreverent banter, warm hugs, and steamy intimacy. It’s exactly the kind of book that restores your belief that there’s someone out there for each of us and everyone’s love story is simply waiting to be discovered.It has whiskey kisses in the elevator, french fries in bed, dissection of the 2005 Pride and Orejudice adaptation, New Girl marathons. It has a fake relationship, a one night stand that evolves into friendship and eventually blossoms into love, and an exquisitely tender and hilarious ONLY ONE BED scenario. Hallie doesn’t want to admit to Jack that she remembers every unforgettable swoon worthy toe-tingling second of their drunk dance between the sheets. She’s finally getting her life on track. She’s finally getting her own apartment and acquiring a pet. She’s finally giving herself the me-time and the makeover that were long overdue. Jack is in a perpetual state of self-denial about the depth of his feelings for Hallie. Until he isn’t. But he’s never been more scared to let someone know the truth because he’s too afraid of changing the dynamic with the person who somehow knows him better than anyone else. The one person who truly sees him. This modern adaptation of the classic reforming the rake trope was utter perfection.

Love has a way of finding you when you least expect it…She’s the maid of honor and he’s the best man. They’re supposed to be booking it to get to the wedding celebration and be there to provide moral support. Instead the sparks fly from the second they meet and an unforgettable night together turns into a trek across the Irish countryside and an adventure that leaves an indelible mark on their hearts.There is narrow escape from what may or may not be a bull who can be distracted by sangria.There are two twin beds that should be shoved together to make one. There is a fast and furious bang inside a tent. There are two people who bond over their mutual love of their unique vintage vehicles..He may be obsessed with her ability to crawl under a hood.She may be obsessed with the mischief he hides behind his button down.But she’s running away from the threat of impending loss as she watches her father descend into dementia. Watching the man who raised her fade before her eyes during Facetime check-ins makes her question her rootless life and what it all means and if she should be running toward something instead of away from it.He’s in Ireland, and even though he wants to travel the world, there are things he needs to wrap up before he can jump into life on the road. Some of the reasons I loved it:1. The achingly real portrayal of family dynamics- especially with aging parents.2. The relatable emotional struggles of the heroine.3. The hero’s struggle to finally take the leap to do what makes him happy instead of what everyone (esp. his family) expects him to do.She’s the maid of honor and he’s the best man. They’re supposed to be booking it to get to the wedding celebration and be there to provide moral support. Instead the sparks fly from the second they meet and an unforgettable night together turns into a trek across the Irish countryside and an adventure that leaves an indelible mark on their hearts.TROPES: Roadtrip; opposites attract; one-night-stand=finding your soulmatePlot- ️️️️️5 StarsCharacters- ️️️️️5 StarsSpice- (fairly explicit, open door, consensual- at least 4 scenes)Favorite quotes:The heat radiating from his body surrounds me like an embrace, and there’s something about the way he smells . . . it’s nothing identifiable, but it gives me the same feeling I get when I’m lying in a hammock under a canopy of stars. Like the whole universe belongs to me. I’ve never gotten that feeling from another person before.I’ve traveled many places and met plenty of good-looking men, so I can’t pinpoint why Eamon is the one who feels at once like the safe cradle of my hammock and the wide expanse of the universe.“Once the emotional rope bridge starts swaying in the breeze, you’re gripping the rails, ready to turn back.”