Tacos for Two - Betsy St. Amant

 

Rory Perez has been working hard to keep her aunt's food truck, and family legacy, alive.  Finding no joy in cooking, she remains out of family loyalty and dedication.  As the business struggles, she looks for ways to keep it afloat and to keep those she loves safe.

Jude Worthington doesn't struggle for money, but he also doesn't find joy in what he does.  Under family obligations of his own, he wonders what it would be like to break free and to strike out on his own, doing something unconventional, like running a food truck.  

Rory and Jude's lives and hopes become entangled in each other and through each other's choices.  Can they each find a way to find the joy of their hearts again?

This book had me at "tacos."  Add in food trucks, and family complications, and I found myself reading late at night and googling for taco places in my neighborhood.  This is definitely my favorite of Betsy St. Amant's works so far.  I love the food truck storyline, and the need to find joy, not just obligation.  While family is important, and caring for them is honorable, knowing that they want you to love your own life as well is a good lesson for Rory to learn.  

Even the small things in this book made me love it.  I love the banter between the online personalities.  I love that each main character has a best friend - we don't always see male characters have a supportive friend in fiction.  And I love that Rory finds confidence in what she's doing, even if she doesn't love doing it. 

I give this book 4 stars.  Fun, good characters, and it left me wanting Mexican food every day I read it.

You can find Tacos for Two HERE.
You can find the author HERE. 

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, in exchange for my honest review.

The Key to Love - Betsy St. Amant

 

From christianbook.com:

"The only thing Bri Duval loves more than baking petit fours is romance. So much so, she's created her own version of the famous Parisian lovelock wall at her bakery in Story, Kansas. She never expects it to go viral--or for Trek Magazine to send travel writer Gerard Fortier to feature the bakery. He's definitely handsome, but Bri has been holding out for a love story like the one her parents had, and that certainly will not include the love-scorned-and-therefore-love-scorning Gerard.

Just when it seems Bri's bakery is poised for unprecedented success, a series of events threaten not just her business but the pedestal she's kept her parents on all these years. Maybe Gerard is right about romance. Or maybe Bri's recipe just needs to be tweaked.

Novelist Betsy St. Amant invites you to experience this sweet story of how love doesn't always look the way we expect--and maybe that's a good thing."

This was a cute story, with some deeper meaning.  Is anyone's story as perfect as it looks?  Is being comfortable enough, or are risks necessary?  Should you believe in someone's take on love, or experience it for yourself?

I ached for Bri - all she wanted was to believe in her parents' perfect love story and experience it for herself.  She was clinging to the bakery as her safe place for memories of her mother.  But as all of those security blankets fell apart on her, she had to choose to look somewhere else for her security, and she had to choose a messy imperfect love. knowing there's only One who can love perfectly.  Her growth wasn't easy and she didn't necessarily go willingly, but it was important to see her finally realize that she'd only had a shell of what she was looking for when she tried to stay in her box.

3 stars; this story was cute, but a little light for me. 

You can find The Key to Love HERE.
You can find the author HERE. 

I received a digital copy of this book from the publishers, via NetGalley, in exchange for my honest review.

To Have and to Hold - Three Autumn Love Stories

This collection of wedding novellas includes:
Love Takes the Cake, by Betsy St. Amant
The Perfect Arrangement, by Katie Ganshert
Love in the Details, by Becky Wade

Three authors join together in this autumn-themed collection of short, romantic wedding stories.  In Love Takes the Cake, Charlotte finds herself baking for a wedding involving the worst Bridezilla she's encountered, but also giving her the chance to interact with her mysterious weekly patron.  Is he available or isn't he?  Should she even be wondering, because he doesn't look safe, and "safe" is what she wants, isn't it? Amelia finds herself literally running into a handsome man in The Perfect Arrangement, and somehow that invites him into her life more than she intended.  What will happen if he finds out just how intertwined their lives are?  In Love in the Details, Holly is coordinating a wedding where her ex-boyfriend, her high school sweetheart, is the best man.  Having broken up with him years ago, under false pretenses, what kind of interactions can she expect?  Should she let her heart get more involved?

This collection involved some of my favorite romance authors, and I jumped at the chance to review it.  I probably shouldn't have jumped quite so quickly, as it turned out I had already read two of the three novellas!  I guess I'm consistent in my author choices.  Despite the slight disappointment of 2/3 of the book not being new, I enjoyed the book anyway.

Novellas are a difficult genre for me to enjoy; either there isn't enough time to develop the characters well, or the characters are well done and the story feels too short.  These three stories, however, manage to create well-rounded characters, and feel complete within their limited space.  Of course, it doesn't mean I wouldn't love to read longer novels with these characters!  In particular, I would love to see Will and Charlotte take on life together, and to see how their difficult backgrounds play out in their life as a family.  I really loved Nate and Amelia's e-mail exchanges, and would enjoy reading more of their movie-banter references.  Also - who was the mystery man for real?!  Holly and Josh's story served pretty well as a stand-alone, but how would their lives change going forward?

I give this collection 5 stars; short, easy to read, yet complete, this is a great book for some light, fun reading.

You can find the authors:
Besty St. Amant HERE
Katie Ganshert HERE
Becky Wade HERE

All three authors have active social media presences, and I recommend you follow them!

You can find To Have and to Hold HERE.

I received this e-book, via NetGalley, from the publisher, in exchange for my honest review.

Love Arrives in Pieces - Betsy St. Amant

Stella Varland has not ended up where she expected; divorced at 25, depending on her parents for assistance and job leads, she suffers debilitating panic attacks over her memories of being left.  Now, she has a chance at a fantastic job to boost her interior designer resume, only it comes at the cost of working with the man who broke both her and her sister's heart and caused years of rift between them.  Chase Taylor has returned to Bayou Bend, also damaged but with a renewed faith and a determination to not waste any more time.  Can these two broken people find healing, or will they get in each other's way of finding the true Healer?

When I started this book, I hadn't realized it was a sequel to All's Fair in Love and Cupcakes. If I had realized they went together, I would have tried to read them closer together, because it was hard for me to remember the backstories of the characters who carried over.  It would have been helpful to remember afresh the hurt and heartache between Kat and Stella, and to know how Chase and Lucas were connected.  Even so, this book functioned fairly well as a stand alone.  On the surface, it was just another light romance, but there was a lot of deep stuff there to uncover about our brokenness and how the healing can seem just as hard as staying broken.  The author uses some unusual characters to get her main characters to think - the "homeless" woman, Dixie, and the fire department chaplain serve as catalysts for changing how Stella and Chase see not only each other but themselves as well.

The only hard part of this book for me was to believe that Stella could reconnect with Chase so quickly.  If he really had caused a years-long rift between Stella and Kat, it seems natural that there would have been more distrust or conversations, or that he would have had to prove that he'd really changed.  There just weren't enough details on why he'd run; there were a lot of allusions to Kat having reinterpreted the story of what happened, but her version versus what really happened were never fleshed out.  I think a flashback to what had happened and what each of the three of them had felt at the time would have served to make the story fuller and more cohesive.

I enjoyed this book, and give it 3 stars.  The themes of brokenness and beauty added depth to the story that made it more thought provoking than a typical romance.

You can find Love Arrives in Pieces HERE.
You can find the Author's website HERE.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, in exchange for my honest review.