It’s always amazing when an author hits one straight out of the park so each month I’ll highlight my Five Star Reads from the previous month.
If you’ve read anything five-star worthy recently, please let me know in the comments. I’m always looking to add to my to-read list.
Happy reading x
Chosen as the Sheikh’s Royal Bride by Jennie Lucas
Swept from her ordinary world…into the royal bedchamber!
Among the many beautiful, accomplished candidates hoping to be chosen as Sheikh Omar’s wife, shop assistant Beth can’t believe this powerful desert king would even notice her.
Yet Omar does select her – and his heated gaze sets her alight, making her innocent body crave caresses she’s only dreamed about! She’s instantly thrown into his world of unimagined luxury, but can this shy Cinderella ever be a queen?
Links: Amazon UK / Amazon US (Paperback) / Goodreads
Moonlighter (The Company #1) by Sarina Bowen
Five nights. Two adversaries. Only one bed in their hotel room.
I’m at the height of my hockey career. Yet my arrogant brother is always trying to recruit me into the family business: a global security company so secretive that I don’t even know its name.
Pass, thanks. I don’t need a summer job.
But the jerk ambushes me with a damsel in distress. That damsel is Alex, the competitive, sassy girl I knew when we were kids. Now she’s a drop-dead gorgeous woman in deep trouble.
So guess who’s on a flight to Hawaii?
It’s going to be a long week in paradise. My job is keeping Alex safe, while her job is torturing me with her tiny bikinis. Or maybe we’re torturing each other. It’s all snark and flirting until the threat against Alex gets serious. And this jock must become her major league protector.
Links: Amazon UK / Amazon US / Goodreads
Misadventures with a Professor (Misadventures #15) by Sierra Simone
Zandy Lynch never planned on going to grad school a virgin. So when her professor father finds her a job abroad as a research assistant the summer before she starts her master’s program, she sees her chance. She’s got one night in London to lose her V-card to a Mr. Darcy lookalike before she has to join some ancient professor in the country.
Oliver Graeme is not looking forward to having some American co-ed hovering around while he’s trying to work, but he owes her father the favor, and besides, his office is an untidy mess of uncatalogued research. He needs the help. Still, he decides to take the edge off his frustration while visiting a colleague in London, and winds up having the sexiest, sweetest night of his life with a stranger, who vanishes in the morning without a trace…
To Zandy’s shock when she arrives at Professor Graeme’s house a day later, the door isn’t opened by a fussy old scholar, but by the wild, passionate man she met in London. Cold and reserved by day, Oliver is ferociously greedy with her at night, and it’s not long before Zandy finds herself falling for both versions of him—the aloof professor and the generous, rough lover. The trouble is that summer only lasts so long, and Zandy already has a plane ticket waiting to take her home…
Links: Amazon UK / Amazon US / Goodreads
As Dust Dances (Play On #2) by Samantha Young
Once upon a time I was a pop-rock princess. It was a dream that turned into a nightmare. I lost everything to that world.
Scotland was supposed to be a refuge. I hid in Glasgow, singing on street corners for money. But then he found me. Killian O’Dea. A record executive. An ambitious one.
I didn’t want anything to do with the brooding and ruthless Scot. Until the day I realized it wasn’t safe for me to be on the streets, and I had no one else to turn to but Killian. In exchange for help, I agreed to give Killian what he wants. But what he wants is to return me to a life I hate.
And to make things worse, there’s something growing between us. Something hot and dark. A bond. A passion that can’t be denied. I made a deal with the devil. And now I’m falling in love with him.
Killian O’Dea is going to ruin me. I wonder if he realizes… I’m going to ruin him right back.
*This is a complete standalone. The Play On Series are books connected by the theme of the arts industry, not by characters.
Links: Amazon UK / Amazon US / Goodreads
Wham! George & Me by Andrew Ridgeley
For the first time, Andrew Ridgeley – one half of one of the most famous bands in the world – tells the inside story of Wham!, his life-long friendship with George Michael and the formation of a band that changed the shape of the music scene in the early eighties.
In 1975 Andrew took a shy new boy at school under his wing. They instantly hit it off and their boyhood escapades at Bushey Meads School built a bond that was never broken. The duo found themselves riding an astonishing rollercoaster of success, taking them all over the world. They made and broke iconic records, they were treated like gods, but they stayed true to their friendship and ultimately to themselves. It was a party that seemed as if it would never end. And then it did, in front of tens of thousands of tearful fans at Wembley Stadium in 1986.
Andrew’s memoir covers in wonderful detail those years, up until that last iconic concert: the scrapes, the laughs, the relationships, the good and the bad. It’s a unique and one-and-only time to remember that era, that band and those boys.
Links: Amazon UK / Amazon US (Hardcover) / Goodreads
Wham! was the soundtrack to my childhood and I was lucky enough to get my book signed by Andrew last year. He was just as lovely as I’d hoped he would be. I’m so glad that in this case that old adage about never meeting your idols was 100% wrong.
Gilded Lily (Bennet Brothers # 2) by Staci Hart
They say there’s no such thing as perfect.
But I’ve built my life to perfection—the perfect boyfriend, the perfect apartment, the perfect career planning celebrity weddings. My job—my only job—is to make sure every event is absolutely and completely perfect.
What’s not perfect? Kash Bennet.
And I wish I didn’t find that so appealing.
I could have told you every perfectly imperfect thing about the gardener at Longbourne. Like his hair, lush and black and far too long. Or his nose, the flat bridge of a Greek god, bent a little like it’s been broken. Or his size. Beastly. Roped and corded with muscles, gleaming with sweat and peppered with dirt. There’s no escaping him, not if I’m going to use his family’s flower shop for my events.
But nothing is what it seems. And in the span of a heartbeat, my perfect life is turned inside out. They say the best way to get over somebody is to get under somebody new. When Kash offers his services to the cause, it sounds like the perfect plan.
What’s not part of the plan? Falling in love with the gardener.
But they were right—there’s no such thing as perfect.
And I’m the fool who finds out the hard way.
Links: Amazon UK / Amazon US / Goodreads
Louise Hall 
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