CONTEST: Wild Holiday Nights

So here's a very cool contest for you all. I have in my possession five paper copies of the upcoming Harlequin Blaze, Wild Holiday Nights - with stories from Samantha Hunter, Meg Maguire, and Debbi Rawlins. Comment on my blog for a chance to win. If only five of you comment, you all get the book. Otherwise, I'll throw it into a random decider thingy.

Here's the blurb:

Satisfy your Christmas cravings with…  

HOLIDAY RUSH by Samantha Hunter Cake guru Calla Michaels is canceling Christmas to deal with fondant, batter and an attempted robbery. Then officer Gideon Stone shows up at her door. Calla thought her kitchen was hot enough before…  

PLAYING GAMES by Meg Maguire With her plane grounded on Christmas Eve, Carrie Baxter agrees to share a rental car with her secret high school crush. Sure, Daniel Barber is hotter than ever, but he's still just as prickly, too. It's gonna be one looong drive…and an unforgettably X-rated night!  

ALL NIGHT LONG by Debbi Rawlins Overworked paralegal Carly Watts needs Jack Carrington's signature, but he'll do whatever it takes to buy more time before selling his grandfather's company. Including having one very naughty night before Christmas! 

Now, that doesn't give you nearly enough information to say what these stories are really about, so I'll try to give you a little taste. Each story takes place right over Christmas. At least one character in each story wants to get home for Christmas, even if they can't. With the size of the stories (3-in-1 Blaze only gives you about 75 pages per story), they are very compact with no outside characters contributing to the romance. They have very little conflict and none of the characters take very long to ruminate about if love is important to them.

Oh, and being Blaze novels, they have a little bit of sexytimes, but they were actually a lot tamer than what I've been reading lately. None of the relationships quite made it to happily-ever-after, but all of them gave an indication that everything would work out.

Holiday Rush by Samantha Hunter was a friend-of-the-big-brother story. It was sweet and fun. There was a burglary and a "bad guy", but it was all packaged up all neat and tidy in a short amount of time. Once or twice, we heard that "oh, we couldn't break big brother's trust", but honestly, it's a short story. None of that stops them for long.

Playing Games by Meg Maguire was un-put-down-able and made me cry. The emotion was spot on, even though neither of the characters seem to like each other at the start. This one was a friend-of-the-ex story, but I loved seeing how they both had feelings for each other for so long. It was a little gritty, with a dirty hotel and a snowstorm and I felt it was very signature Meg Maguire.

All Night Long by Debbi Rawlins definitely amused me. There were a couple places I laughed out loud. The word choice and explanations were lots of fun. It's got a business owner/lawyer falling in love with a paralegal/almost lawyer. They had only met once before, so there was a bit more Insta-Lust in this one, but it also left the characters at the earliest stage of their relationship. I felt it was a good compromise for the length. We didn't find out much about HOW they would work things out, but I was happy with their attraction and their personalities.

So, once again, comment here to win. Eligibility ends on Friday, November 14th, 2014. If you win and send me your address quickly enough, I will mail the books out on November 15th so you'll have lots of time to enjoy, possibly even before they hit shelves.

 

Squash Soup Recipe

I found and adapted this recipe from my VitaMix cookbook, but it looks like it's not on their website. I don't think I've tried it without the VitaMix, but I would assume you could cook on the stove and use a blender.

Squash Soup

2 cups water plus 1 tsp Better Than Bouillon Chicken Base
2 cups of cooked squash or pumpkin
1/4 small onion, peeled
1/2 medium apple, seeded
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp dried ground sage
1/4 tsp dried rosemary
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup heavy cream

To cook squash or pumpkin
Preheat over to 400 degrees. Slice squash or pumpkin in half and remove all the seeds and strings. Lay flat side down on a foil lined cookie sheet. Spread a little olive oil over the top (the part with the skin). Cook for 45 minutes to an hour and a half, until a push on the skin feels like the insides are all soft and squishy. (At high altitude, it needs the hour and a half. Low altitude, it might only be 45 minutes.) When it's cool enough, turn each half over and scrape out the flesh with a spoon. One regular size pumpkin normally gives me at least 4 cups of meat - enough for one or two batches of soup, plus sometimes pumpkin bread.

For the soup
Place all the ingredients, except the heavy cream, into the Vitamix container in the order listed. Put the lid on. Start at Variable Speed 1 and quickly increase to Variable 10, then High. Blend for 6-7 minutes or until heavy steam escapes from the lid plug.

Reduce speed to Variable 4 and remove the lid plug. Add in the heavy cream through the opening. Blend for an additional 20 seconds.

Best served with french bread. Even my kids will gobble this soup up if there's french bread for dipping.

Intrusion by Charlotte Stein

Intrusion
by Charlotte Stein
Rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

My Review:
I really couldn't put this book down. In some Charlotte Stein novels, it's because the characters are so amusing. But this one, oh wow, it was so intense and full of creepy tension. There was no way I could stop readings until I got past the anxious sections – it would have been too disturbing to try to sleep with the eerie parts in my brain.

Honestly though, it wasn't as bad as I had been expecting. I heard rumors that it was going to be a bit more of a thriller and I was gearing up for pretty much start to finish spine-tingling (which would have been really hard for me to stick with), but instead it turned out to be very touching with some allusions to disturbing events in the past and then one big creepy factor right near the end.

This one is written in 1^st person present tense and still has all the great Charlotte Stein high points - a really deep POV, very compact plot, and some deep insight into what the rest of the characters are thinking. Unlike a lot of her other novels, this one is very light on the amusement factor. I had a slightly twitter-pated smile for a little while, but no laughing.

In fact, I think this is the first Charlotte Stein book that I was in tears for. These characters both have a lot of pain, especially in their past, but they work through their problems in an believable manner. They were weighty and intense with quite a bit of angst, but I loved how instead of solving problems with a magical relationship, she allows the characters to overcome their problems by taking back their power. Each step in their journey felt empowering and a blossoming of their potential.

That's not to say these two grew separately. Their relationship was the catalyst for everything that happened and Charlotte Stein has a great voice for distilling an entire relationship to it's focal points. We don't see much of jobs, friends, even surroundings outside the one small house. But we get every single detail of their relationship's forward progress. I felt like I was taking each step right along with the characters.

I had so many heart-warming feelings for this story. It's a book you want to read while snuggled in a blanket – to hold in the emotional parts and stay safe from the creepiness. I'd read it again when I need to be reminded of the hope of healing, even when things look mentally messed up. But I might not read it just before bed.

I received an ARC of this book from the author in exchange for my honest review.


**This review is archived on my blog: The Theory of LietoFine