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Title: Always the Baker, Never the Bride
Author: Sandra D. Bricker
Contemporary Romance
Form: Kindle edition

Book Description: Always the Baker, Never the Bride


Always the Baker, Never the Bride by Sandra D. Bricker
Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle edition

They say you can’t have your cake and eat it too. But who would want a cake they couldn’t eat?Just ask Emma Rae Travis about that. A baker of confections who is diabetic and can’t enjoy them. When Emma meets Jackson Drake, the escapee from Corporate America who is starting a wedding destination hotel to fulfill a dream that belonged to someone else, this twosome and their crazy family ties bring new meaning to the term "family circus." The Atlanta social scene will never be the same.

Always the Baker, Never the Bride ~ Book Review

I love the recipes - just delicious! Unique set of characters. The story is alright, simple and entertaining in a way. – Ara of My Book and My Coffee

Welcome to Emma Rae Travis’ world. Emma Rae is a diabetic master baker. Yes. It’s a bit sad, right? But you know, it’s also inspiring. 

Jackson Drake is an interesting ex-Corporate guy who’s starting a wedding destination hotel.  The ‘craziness’ begins right after their worlds meet. 

The story, as I’ve mentioned above, is just alright. It’s wonderful in its own way and I find it to be entertaining. There were a few scenarios where I got confused but after re-reading, I did get what was happening or who said what. 

[Spoiler Alert] When Emma Rae started working for Jackson, I knew already that it will start something special. And it eventually did. But since Jackson is still undergoing something painful, their ‘something special’ had to wait for a little bit. One of the things that I can say I’m not that thrilled of is how the story kind of took a long time to head to the direction it should be going. Maybe because of how the story was created but I feel like it could have been better. For me, the story got really exciting when that ‘something special’ finally started between the two main characters. 

This book has a unique set of characters and I appreciated them all. Of course, my favorite character is Emma Rae, our main character, because she did inspire me. I am not diabetic but what her character does is just inspiring. Imagine this: You’re a baker. Oh wait, not just a baker, an award-winning baker and yet you’re diabetic. So you cannot really have cake and eat it, too. Maybe just a taste though. A tiny bite. It’s just cruel, right? But this character proved that it doesn’t matter. If you’re passionate enough with something, do it. Even though you cannot really enjoy the outcome. That’s inspiring… and brave, don’t you think? 

Jackson’s character is also quite lovely. He is lucky to have his sisters and Emma. Jackson’s sisters are also entertaining. I can almost hear their accent and I love, love it! I also like Fee’s character because she's unique and dependable. 

There’s a wedding at the end so I’ll leave you to guess. 

Whose wedding is it? You’ll have to find out for yourself. :)


Thanks for reading!

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Hello lovelies! Amie Denman, author of The Gull Motel, is here today to share a guest post about her 'love affair' with Florida. I haven't been to Florida... yet, and it would be great to have her book on my ever-growing TBR so at least I have an idea. Plus, this sounds like a wonderful story. Check. Added. :) 

Amie is on currently on blog tour to support her newly released novel, The Gull Motel, a sweet contemporary romance. Let's read and share this guest post ... and, oh, don't forget to enter the giveaway after reading! :)

Guest Post @ My Book and My Coffee - The Gull Motel Tour

*****
When Savvy Thorpe rolls into The Gull Motel on the Gulf Coast of Florida, she expects to stay a few weeks. Sure she loves her aunt and uncle’s aging 1950s beach motel, but she has no idea she’s in for much more than a beach vacation.

I totally wish this would happen to me. 

However, I live in Ohio. Ohio, for Pete’s sake. For years, I’ve been tempted to make Florida my permanent home. What am I waiting for? I’m usually terrible at resisting temptation. I’ve told myself all the usual lies people in the North tell. I just love the change of seasons. I’d miss cool autumn days. Pumpkins. Frost. Snow. Shoveling snow. Falling on my ass in the iced-over mall parking lot. Scraping ice off my windshield. Breaking the key off in the door lock because it is That. Damn. Cold.

Who am I kidding? I should end my long-distance love affair with Florida and move a thousand miles south. I could shack up with Florida without even blushing. 

I know where this all started. I grew up in a small Ohio town filled with old people. You know where they went in the winter. The old man next door gave sage advice about travelling: take half the clothes and twice the money. His wife always brought the same sensuous gift to me and my sisters. Orange perfume in a little container shaped like an orange. It was wonderful. I’d hide it and hoard it in my room. I’d open it carefully and smell it. A guilty pleasure for a 7-year-old.

When I wrote The Gull Motel and Savvy’s marketing ideas about a return to “Old Florida” with roadside stands, polka-dot bikinis, Alligator kitsch, and orange blossom perfume, I was thinking about the yearly gift from the elderly couple next door. I wonder if I could find an old souvenir stand somewhere in The Sunshine State that still sells it.

*****

Thanks for sharing the post, Amie! Again, this sounds like a wonderful story.... My love for contemporary romance. :)

More about the book:

The Gull Motel by Amie Denman - Guest post @ My Book and My Coffee
The Gull Motel by Amie Denman
Sweet Contemporary Romance
Amazon | B&N | Kobo | Smashwords | ARe | Turquoise Morning Press

Savvy Thorpe needs a vacation. Finally finished with college, she heads to her favorite shabby motel on Florida’s Gulf Coast where her aunt and uncle always save her room twenty-four. She quickly finds out, though, that The Gull Motel is not just her home away from home. It’s hers to manage while her aunt and uncle take an extended trip. 

Skip McComber, The Gull’s former maintenance man, has been working on Savvy’s nuts and bolts for years. Now the new owner of the bar next door, his mission is to renovate a pirate bar while being a walking temptation for the girl he can’t get off his mind. 

For Savvy, keeping her cool running a motel in Florida heat is one thing, but navigating the steamy waters of a former fling takes a whole other kind of savvy. In addition to the motel and the man next door, Savvy stumbles on a plot to swindle land from the residents of Barefoot Key. Devalued properties tumble like dominoes until Savvy musters her colorful crew from The Gull Motel to make the pillagers walk the plank. 
About the Author: 

Guest Post of Amie Denman @ My Book and My Coffee

Amie Denman lives in a small town in her native Ohio with her husband and sons. Her two cats and large yellow labrador are kind enough to share a sunny office where she lets her imagination run wild. Reading books was her favorite escape as a child, and growing up four houses away from the community library encouraged her addiction. When she's not reading or writing, she enjoys walking and running outside. The helpless victim of a lifetime of curiosity, she's been known to chase fire trucks on her bicycle just to see what's going on. Amie believes that everything is fun: especially roller coasters, wedding cake, and falling in love. 
Connect with Amie: Website | Facebook | Twitter

... Giveaway: 

Amie Denman is giving away a paperback copy of The Gull Motel (US only)

a Rafflecopter giveaway



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It's time for another international giveaway here @ My Book and My Coffee! 

Enter this giveaway for a chance to win an eBook copy (Nook or Kindle version) of Getting By (A Knight’s Tale I), a new-adult contemporary romance novel by Claudia Y. Burgoa. 

WW Giveaway: Getting By (A Knight’s Tale I) by Claudia Y. Burgoa
Getting By (A Knight’s Tale I) by Claudia Y. Burgoa
New Adult Contemporary Romance
Release Date: February 18, 2014
When Emma Anderson arrived at San Francisco International Airport, she regretted accepting the distinction of being the maid of honor to Gaby’s—her childhood friend—wedding. It had been years since the last time she set foot in Menlo Park, where her parents had been killed. The rug where she had been shoving her feelings since that day looked bumpier than a camel’s hump. Who could blame her; if she hadn’t been selfish they’d still be around. Ever since that fateful day, Emma has been perfecting the knack of Getting By.

Cade’s wedding in Menlo Park—a city close to San Francisco—might be the perfect place for Jake Knight to shake the memories of his ex, Emma Anderson for good. Single, available women galore for an entire week was the perfect medication, one he intended to take three times a day for an entire week to return to his player days. It was a plan the former spy thought flawless until he came face to face with the maid of honor. Jake’s perfect retreat turns into a flight, fight or hide week of celebrations.
Pretty exciting, don't you think? Oh.. And I LOVE THAT COVER! :)

About the Author: 


Claudia Y. Burgoa - Author of Getting By
Claudia lives in Colorado with her family and three dogs. While managing life, she works as a CFO at a small IT Company. She’s a dreamer who enjoys music, laughter and a good story. Claudia writes romance, sci-fi, and fantasy. She has published two novels: Where Life Takes You and Getting By. Claudia is currently working on Standing By, the second book in the Knight series. For 2014, Claudia plans to released three, perhaps four novels. 
Connect with Claudia: Website | Goodreads | Facebook | Twitter

... Enter the Giveaway here: 

1 lucky winner 
Kindle or Nook version 
Giveaway is international 
Ends on May 4, 11:59 PM 
Winner will be chosen on May 5, 2014

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Ara of My Book and My Coffee
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Blog Tour - Yours to Keep by Serena Bell

Today, let's all welcome Serena Bell, author of Yours to Keep, a Loveswept contemporary romance novel. Take a look at her guest post >> Don't forget to check out the giveaway below as well! :)

********
Welcome to My Book and My Coffee where I’m delighted to be making a stop on my Yours to Keep blog tour. Yours to Keep is the story of Ana, a Dominican-American woman who has been hiding her undocumented status for twenty years, since her parents’ immigration mistake forced her into a life of secrecy. Ana begins tutoring the son of a handsome, wealthy pediatrician in a town near the beleaguered city where she lives, and discovers that her passionate feelings for her student’s father are overcoming her fear of opening her life and heart.

I decided I wanted to write a romance after a friend got me hooked on Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander and another friend started me down the path of reading all the books on All About Romance’s top 100 list (http://likesbooks.com/top1002010results.htm). I’d read a little bit of romance as a teenager, but it had been a long time, and I was thrilled to rediscover a kind of reading that was totally transporting. I wanted to make people feel the joy and giddiness romance authors had made me feel. 

I was torn between writing historical and writing contemporary. I didn’t want to do the research that historicals required, but I loved how in historicals, the hero and heroine were driven apart by real, it implacable social forces—they weren’t just having trouble working things out because one of them had had a bad breakup a few years ago. Plus I loved the tropes in historicals: wagers, marriages of convenience, loving the governess. 

They say the best way to become a writer is to write the book you wish existed, so ultimately, that’s what I did.  I decided to write a contemporary using a historical trope. Arranged marriage was my favorite trope, so I decided to work with that one. The first question I asked myself was, “Under what circumstances might people decide to have an arranged marriage in the contemporary U.S.?”

I’d been researching illegal immigration for a series of nonfiction articles. I wasn’t thinking about movies like Green Card or The Proposal. I was only thinking about the people I’d met who were undocumented, and how complicated their lives were. I decided that an arranged marriage between an undocumented immigrant and a U.S. citizen would come closest to the kind of book I was trying to write—one where the stakes, social and personal, were real, and the consequences of falling in love could ruin lives.

I didn’t know anything about the rules of romance. The only thing I knew was that the characters usually had sex around the halfway point, and something really bad happened around the three quarters point, and right at the end, when there was about ten percent left to the book, there was a big climactic moment. I’d figured that out by reading a whole bunch of paperbacks and sticking my thumbnail in the book every time I reached one of these recognizable points. It wasn’t very scientific.  But that—and a gut sense of narrative structure I’d learned writing literary fiction—was enough to get the job done. Ana and Ethan, Theo and Ricky, and their whole cast of crazy family members were born, and I hope you enjoy spending time with them as much as I enjoyed discovering them and dreaming up their antics.


What is your favorite romance trope? Do you read both historical and contemporary, and if so, do you have a preference?  Are there things you like more about one subgenre than the other, and do you think that the subgenres can learn and borrow more from each other?

****************

About Serena's book, Yours to Keep:

Guest Post for Yours to Keep Blog Tour - Serena Bell
Yours to Keep by Serena Bell
A Loveswept Contemporary Romance
On sale: November 11, 2013
Serena Bell makes her Loveswept debut with the captivating story of a woman living on the edge—and the man who’s destined to love her.

Ana Travares has been looking over her shoulder her whole life. Her U.S. visa expired when she was a young girl, and if her secret is discovered, she’ll be forced to return to the Dominican Republic. Ana allowed herself to get close to someone once before—and after he broke her heart, she swore never to make the same mistake again. But when a handsome doctor asks for her assistance, she fantasizes about breaking all her rules.

Even though pediatrician Ethan Hansen is a natural when it comes to little kids, as the single father of a teenage son he just can’t seem to get it right . . . except for the Spanish tutor he’s hired for his son, Theo. Ana has managed to crack Theo’s shell—and he isn’t the only one taken with her. The sexy tutor has fired up Ethan with a potent mix of lust and protectiveness. But as he starts to envision a future with Ana, Ethan is devastated to learn the truth about her citizenship. Somehow he’s got to find a way to help her—and hold on to the woman he’s falling hopelessly in love with.
About the Author: 

Serena Bell - Author
Serena Bell writes stories about how sex messes with your head, why smart people do stupid things sometimes, and how love can make it all better. She wrote her first steamy romance before she was old enough to understand what all the words meant and has been perfecting the art of hiding pages and screens from curious eyes ever since—a skill that’s particularly useful now that she’s the mother of two school-age children. 
Connect with Serena: Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

... GIVEAWAY 

a Rafflecopter giveaway




Ara of My Book and My Coffee
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Happy Monday! Let's start this day with an awesome giveaway, shall we? 

Enter this giveaway for a chance to win an eBook copy of Marcel Proust in Taos: In Search of Times Past, a contemporary romance novel by Jon Foyt.

WW Giveaway: Marcel Proust in Taos
Marcel Proust in Taos: In Search of Times Past by Jon Foyt
Contemporary Romance
Marcel Proust in Taos tells the story of Christopher and Marlene, two recent immigrants to Taos, New Mexico, who fall in love with their adopted city and eventually each other. Christopher, a retired nuclear physicist, works on his first novel, while Marlene, newly arrived from Germany, spends her days painting the landscape and people around her. The two team up to open a microbrewery, and their relationship is tested by the hurdles they deal with along the way: Christopher hits a rough patch in his book, and a powerful enemy of Marlene’s threatens to destroy everything. They find themselves confronting terrorism of a new sort with the matriarch of the Taos community, Agnes Havelock Powers, who strongly opposes having a brewery in town. Agnes is rich, powerful, and influential. She has the city authorities tucked in her purse next to her checkbook. Follow the exciting and charming love story of Marlene and Christopher in historical Taos, as they experience the challenges of confronting abusive power.
About the Author: 

Photo courtesy of JonFoyt.com
Striving for new heights on the literary landscape, along with his late wife Lois, Jon Foyt began writing novels 20 years ago, following careers in radio, commercial banking, and real estate. He holds a degree in journalism and an MBA from Stanford and a second masters degree in historic preservation from the University of Georgia. An octogenarian prostate cancer survivor, Jon is a runner, hiker and political columnist in a large active adult retirement community near San Francisco.
... Enter the giveaway here:
1 lucky winner
eBook copy
Giveaway is international
Giveaway ends on November 21, 11:59 PM EST
Winner will be chosen on November 23

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Ara of My Book and My Coffee
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Let's all welcome Simi K. Rao, author of contemporary romance novel, An Incurable Insanity, here at My Book and My Coffee. She's prepared a rather helpful guest post for us. Check it out! 

Don't forget to enter the giveaway below. :)

************

Hmm..let’s see.

1. READ: Yes, reading is a must for any writer. I fell in love with books at a very young age, thanks to my father. My first book was ‘Black Beauty’ by Anna Sewell. The story of the beautiful black horse touched an emotional cord and continues to reside in my heart as do many others. Reading a lot and widely, helps open up the mind and expand the possibilities.

2. Write because you love to: Don’t write if you’d rather spend the time watching TV or doing something else. Write because you want to, because you love to and write from the heart. Be sincere--it shows.

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” --Ernest Hemingway

3. Develop your own writing voice: Though there may be several authors you are inspired by, there is no replacement for your own voice. Develop your own unique style and stick to it. Often I will buy a book not because I like the plot summary but because I love the way a particular author writes.

4. Don’t edit a lot; let it flow.

5. Try not to write about what you don’t know without adequate research: If you do, then be prepared for the expert comments.

6. Write frequently: Can’t stress this enough. Make it a habit. Write something, anything, but write everyday.


****************
About Simi's Book ~ An Incurable Insanity: 

An Incurable Insanity by Simi K. Rao ~ Guest Post and Giveaway
An Incurable Insanity by Simi K. Rao
Contemporary Romance
Published by: Tate Publishing
Release Date: October 8, 2013

Shaan is a recent 27 year old aerospace masters grad, who lands the perfect job in a leading aeronautics and space exploration company in Los Angeles. At the urging of his parents' he goes down the traditional arranged marriage route, leaving behind a lover and a complicated relationship in Los Angeles. As a result, Shaan and Ruhi's marriage has an awkward and uncomfortable start. The begrudging spouses make a pact: Ruhi will stay with Shaan in the United States only long enough to avoid embarrassment from their family and peers. Ruhi, remaining optimistic thinks that she can use this time to try and win Shaan's heart, but to no avail. Follow Ruhi and Shaan on a roller coaster ride as they attempt to be “friends without benefits” and expose their true selves to each other in search of love and happiness.

While An Incurable Insanity provides fascinating glimpses into traditional Indian culture, it is an intriguing love story with universal appeal. 
About the Author: 


Simi K. Rao was born in India and has been living in the United States for several years. The inspiration for An Incurable Insanity came from what she has seen transpire among and within the immigrant community. Some of the experiences included are her own; some have been garnered from friends and casual conversations with acquaintances.
Connect with Simi:  Twitter | Goodreads


... Enter the giveaway here:
1 lucky winner
eBook copy
Giveaway is International
Ends on November 19
Winner will be chosen on November 21

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Ara of My Book and My Coffee
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Hello! Hallo! Aloha!

Welcome to My Book and My Coffee blog. I'm ARA, the owner of this blog.
I'm a book blogger and reviewer.

Learn more here: About Ara

I am NOT accepting review requests at the moment. I still have too many books in my queue. Sorry. ~ Check out my Review Policy here.

For advertising inquiries, please email me at ara@mybookandmycoffee.com.

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