35. The Love Haters by Katherine Center

listened on Libby (TPPL)

320 pgs.

2025
Adult CRF/Romance - Chick Lit
Finished 7/22/25
Goodreads rating: 3.85
My rating: 4.5
Setting: Contemporary Key West, Florida

My comments: 4.5  This is a just-plain-feel-good book.  You KNOW that all the bad stuff that happens will end up okay, and there's so much humor, even in the serious places, that you're chuckling the whole way through.  You have to let go of some of the feelings of disbelief (would this really ever happen?) as well as a little of the protagonist's SEL ramblings (which are explained really nicely by the author in the afterword of the book).  I loved Frank Bailey, 170-pound Great Dane extraordinaire, which is saying a lot because I'd never be considered a "dog person."

Goodreads synopsis:  It’s a thin line between love and love-hating.

Katie Vaughn has been burned by love in the past—now she may be lighting her career on fire. She has two choices: wait to get laid off from her job as a video producer or, at her coworker Cole’s request, take a career-making gig profiling Tom “Hutch” Hutcheson, a Coast Guard rescue swimmer in Key West.

The catch? Katie’s not exactly qualified. She can’t swim—but fakes it that she can.

Plus: Cole is Hutch’s brother. And they don’t get along. Next stop paradise!

But paradise is messier than it seems. As Katie gets entangled with Hutch (the most scientifically good looking man she has ever seen . . . but also a bit of a love hater), along with his colorful Aunt Rue and his rescue Great Dane, she gets trapped in a lie. Or two.

Swim lessons, helicopter flights, conga lines, drinking contests, hurricanes, and stolen kisses ensue—along with chances to tell the truth, to face old fears, and to be truly brave at last.

20. The Fall Risk - a short story by Abby Jimenez

listened on Audible

96 pgs.

2025
Adult RomCom/ChickLit
Finished 4/27/2025
Goodreads rating: 4.09
My rating: 3.75

My comments: There's a stalker, his stalk-ee, and adorable neighbor, and a long weekend with no stairs to either go up or down to their apartments.  And within the short story the stalker problem is solved and love ensues.

Goodreads synopsis:  Two good neighbors make the best of a bad Valentine’s Day in a funny and improbably romantic short story by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Just for the Summer.

It’s Valentine’s Day weekend, and Charlotte and Seth are not looking for romance. Armed with emotional-support bear spray, Charlotte is in self-imposed isolation and on guard from men. Having a stalker can do that to a person’s nerves. Just across the hall and giving off woodsy vibes is Seth, a recently divorced arborist. As in today recently. Heights, he’s fine with. Trust? Not so much. But when disaster traps them one flight up and no way down, an outrageously precarious predicament forces a tree-loving guy and a rattled girl next door to embrace their captivity. Soon their defenses are breaking away. Considering how close they both are to the edge, Charlotte and Seth could be in danger of falling—in love.

32. Community Board by Tara Conklin

listened on Libby

272 pgs.

2023
Adult CRF/Chick Lit
Finished 5/9/2023
Goodreads rating: 3.34
My rating: 5
Setting: Contemporary fictional western Massachusetts town of Murbridge

My comments: Great cast of characters!  Darcy, the protagonist, is an absolute hoot.  After her marriage crumbles and dissolves, she heads home to western Massachusetts to her beloved parents.  However, when she gets there she discovers they have gone to Arizona to try out retirement there.  What follows is months of depression, but her antics throughout are basolutely riotous.  Most of it was really quite ridiculous, and I loved it and wanted more....and it included a great HEA!

74. Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center

listened on Audible

2019
320 pgs.
Adult Chicklit
Finished 12/3/2022
Goodreads rating: 4.02
My rating: 4
Setting: Contemporary Rockport, MA

My comments: An almost too-good-to-be-true paramedic/firefighter moves to Rockport, Massachusetts to help her estranged terminally ill mother.  Too-good-to-be-true in that she is stronger, smarter, savvier than all the other (male) firefighters in her department.  At 26 years old she has sworn off love and has never even dated since two things happened on her 16th birthday - her mother abandoned her and she was raped.  But on her first day in her new job in Massachusetts she has partnered with a rookie firefighter who she instantly falls for.  Turned out to be a definite romance novel with a firefighting twist.

Goodreads synopsis:  Cassie Hanwell was born for emergencies. As one of the only female firefighters in her Texas firehouse, she's seen her fair share of them, and she's excellent at dealing with other people's tragedies. But when her estranged and ailing mother asks her to uproot her life and move to Boston, it's an emergency of a kind Cassie never anticipated.

The tough, old-school Boston firehouse is as different from Cassie's old job as it could possibly be. Hazing, a lack of funding, and poor facilities mean that the firemen aren't exactly thrilled to have a "lady" on the crew, even one as competent and smart as Cassie. Except for the handsome rookie, who doesn't seem to mind having Cassie around. But she can't think about that. Because she doesn't fall in love. And because of the advice her old captain gave her: don't date firefighters. Cassie can feel her resolve slipping...but will she jeopardize her place in a career where she's worked so hard to be taken seriously?

Katherine Center's Things You Save in a Fire is a heartfelt, affecting novel about life, love, and the true meaning of courage.

9. Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren

listened on Libby, borrowed from library

2018
432 pgs.
Chick-Lit Romance
Finished 1/29/2022
Goodreads rating: 4.33
My rating: 5
Setting: Contemporary San Francisco, Berkeley, and Healdsburg, California

My comments: The setting was awesome, I knew everything they were talking about and could see it in my mind's eye.  Christina Lauren's storytelling gets better and better.  Not just the plot, but the way she weaves words together seems unusual for this sort of "chick-lit romance."  Bringing two time periods, 12 to 15 years apart, together, was done smoothly and deftly.  In the "then," two young people care intensely about each other, not pushing each other physically, but being able to talk about most everything without embarrassment.  And two 29-year olds in the "now," trying to make their way towards each other knowing that the caring is still as strong as it ever was.  This is a wonderful story, a true love story, as unbelievable as that might be!

Goodreads synopsis:  The story of the heart can never be unwritten.

Macy Sorensen is settling into an ambitious if emotionally tepid routine: work hard as a new pediatrics resident, plan her wedding to an older, financially secure man, keep her head down and heart tucked away.

But when she runs into Elliot Petropoulos—the first and only love of her life—the careful bubble she’s constructed begins to dissolve. Once upon a time, Elliot was Macy’s entire world—growing from her gangly bookish friend into the man who coaxed her heart open again after the loss of her mother...only to break it on the very night he declared his love for her.

Told in alternating timelines between Then and Now, teenage Elliot and Macy grow from friends to much more—spending weekends and lazy summers together in a house outside of San Francisco devouring books, sharing favorite words, and talking through their growing pains and triumphs. As adults, they have become strangers to one another until their chance reunion. Although their memories are obscured by the agony of what happened that night so many years ago, Elliot will come to understand the truth behind Macy’s decade-long silence, and will have to overcome the past and himself to revive her faith in the possibility of an all-consuming love.

141. The Lost Husband by Katherine Center

Audio

2013

304 pgs.
Adult CRF
Finished 11/13/2020
Goodreads rating: 3.85
My rating: 3.9
Setting: contemporary Texas

My comments: Don't like the title of this, it was misleading.  There were so many things I enjoyed about this story and just a few things that I didn't.  The protagonist went from an almost-whiny, afraid of everything kind of woman to a much braver, smarter one a little bit too rapidly.  She went from immediately wanting to scrub her hands after meeting O'Connor to never mentioning the original grumpy feeling for him again.  The big secret that her aunt and mother had kept from her, including the history of the "haunted house" wasn't such a big secret if she had had any kind of sense at all.  The frustration of having your child bullied over and over again and the helpless feeling that goes along with it were very real and written quite well.  And...I'm still not sure about Sunshine, the tabloid bimbo who is now a goth weirdo, close friend, confidant and coworker....I think Ms. Center wanted to create as many quirky characters as she possibly could.  It WAS good reading.  Not quite a 4.

Goodreads synopsis:  "Dear Libby, It occurs to me that you and your two children have been living with your mother for -- Dear Lord! -- two whole years, and I'm writing to see if you'd like to be rescued." The letter comes out of the blue, and just in time for Libby Moran, who, after the sudden death of her husband, Danny, went to stay with her hypercritical mother. Now her crazy Aunt Jean has offered Libby an escape, a job and a place to live on her farm in the Texas Hill Country. Before she can talk herself out of it, Libby is packing the minivan, grabbing the kids, and hitting the road.

Life on Aunt Jean's goat farm is both more wonderful and more mysterious than Libby could have imagined. Beyond the animals and the strenuous work, there is quiet, deep, country quiet. But there is also a shaggy, gruff (though purportedly handsome, under all that hair) farm manager with a tragic home life, a formerly famous feed-store clerk who claims she can contact Danny "on the other side," and the eccentric aunt Libby never really knew but who turns out to be exactly what she's been looking for. And despite everything she's lost, Libby soon realizes how much more she's found. Libby hasn't just traded one kind of crazy for another; she may actually have found the place to bring her little family, and herself, back to life.

127. Happiness for Beginners by Katherine Center

listened on Audible

2015
352 pgs.
Adult Chick Lit/RomCom
Finished 8/31/2020
Goodreads rating: 4.09
My rating:  4.5
Setting: Contemporary Wyoming mountain wilderness

My comments: Didn't want this one to end a charming, fun story that you knew would end wonderfully and couldn't wait to see how you got there.  The two protagonists were incredibly lovable and believable and their survival/hiking part of the story was great to listen to.  I've got to read another by this author. A totally feel-good story, not without some sadness, but worth.  Great narrator, she nailed the different voices beautifully.

Goodreads synopsis:   A year after getting divorced, Helen Carpenter, thirty-two, lets her annoying, ten years younger brother talk her into signing up for a wilderness survival course. It's supposed to be a chance for her to pull herself together again, but when she discovers that her brother's even-more-annoying best friend is also coming on the trip, she can't imagine how it will be anything other than a disaster. Thus begins the strangest adventure of Helen's well-behaved life: three weeks in the remotest wilderness of a mountain range in Wyoming where she will survive mosquito infestations, a surprise summer blizzard, and a group of sorority girls.

Yet, despite everything, the vast wilderness has a way of making Helen's own little life seem bigger, too. And, somehow the people who annoy her the most start teaching her the very things she needs to learn. Like how to stand up for herself. And how being scared can make you brave. And how sometimes you just have to get really, really lost before you can even have a hope of being found.

11. The Life List - Lori Nelson Spielman

read on my iPhone
2013, Bantam
368 pgs.
Chick Lit/ CRF
Finished 2/20/16
Goodreads rating: 4.09
My rating: 4 (lots of 4s lately, it seems.....)
Setting: Contemporary Chicago

First line/s: "Voices from the dining room echo up the walnut staircase, indistinct, buzzing, intrusive.  With trembling hands I lock the door behind me.My world goes silent."

My comments:  Definitely chick lit, of which I'm not the biggest fan, but every chick needs to read one every so often.  I found this sitting in my Nook app, not sure where it came from or how long it had been there, so with nothing better to do, dug right in.  Entertaining, predictable, aggravating, interesting, and fun.  I learned a bit about the geography of the city of Chicago, which was a nice bonus.

Goodreads synopsis:  In this utterly charming debut — one woman sets out to complete her old list of childhood goals, and finds that her lifelong dreams lead her down a path she never expects.
1. Go to Paris
2. Perform live, on a super big stage
3. Have a baby, maybe two
4. Fall in love 
          Brett Bohlinger has forgotten all about the list of life goals she’d written as a naïve teenager. In fact, at thirty-four, Brett seems to have it all—a plum job at her family’s multimillion-dollar company and a spacious loft with her irresistibly handsome boyfriend. But when her beloved mother, Elizabeth, dies, Brett’s world is turned upside down. Rather than simply naming her daughter the new CEO of Bohlinger Cosmetics, Elizabeth’s will comes with one big stipulation: Brett must fulfill the list of childhood dreams she made so long ago. 
          Grief-stricken, Brett can barely make sense of her mother’s decision. Some of her old hopes seem impossible. How can she possibly have a relationship with a father who died seven years ago? Other dreams (Be an awesome teacher!) would require her to reinvent her entire future. For each goal attempted, her mother has left behind a bittersweet letter, offering words of wisdom, warmth, and—just when Brett needs it—tough love. 
          As Brett struggles to complete her abandoned life list, one thing becomes clear: Sometimes life’s sweetest gifts can be found in the most unexpected places.