Tina's Reading Books

The final part of my four part best of books of 2013.  The first three looked at my top 10.

This one looks at those books that I enjoyed but just missed my top ten.

Part 4 - The Honorable Mentions

Nicest surprise I got all year.  Caper plot.  Kick ass heroine of color.  I am stalking for a sequel.

This author is my rich romance hero antidote.  She writes some of the best blue collar, down to earth romances that happen to have dirty-hot-sexy scenes!  I love romances grounded in realism and you can't get more real than Kelly and Erin.  They are not rich, they do not live in a shiny happy small town and they both have decidedly unglamorous jobs. And yet their romance gives me more feels than the umpteenth one about some billionaire somewhere.

Didn't love this one as much as the first one which was one of my top ten reads of 2012.  But the continuing adventures of Constable Peter Grant, sorcerer in training is great stuff.  So happy to have two more yet to read.

Eve.  Roarke.  Fabulousness.  Ready for the next one.

I've pretty much given up on historical romances.  But Emma Wildes intrigues me.  I think she is massively underrated.  I am enjoying this series because it is a hybrid of a romance-mystery-ongoing serial.  It does something that not a lot of historical romances do in that it is taking a page from fantasy/Urban fantasy models and allowing a continuous story arc to wind through multiple books complete with a central character.  You get enough closure with each book to feel like you've read a complete story, but still there is a big bad out there whose motivations have yet to be uncovered.  And it isn't just the mystery that is incomplete from one book to the next, the central romance is also a work in progress.  I am liking the structure and hope she is able to continue writing this.

set in the 1960s in the heat of the civil rights movement in the South.  A young black woman and a white man begin to fall in love.  Tense and emotional.  Beautifully written.