Barbara Kingsolver Novel

She was never meant to be loved—only used. Lorelie Montgomery was the illegitimate daughter of a powerful political dynasty, raised in silence and trained to serve. When her family arranged a marriage between her and Governor Sebastian Kingston, she knew it was just another move in a game she never asked to play. To the public, they were the perfect political couple. Behind closed doors, there were strangers bound by suspicion, secrets and hidden agendas. Sebastian saw her as his pawn to get close to her corrupt family. Lorelie never trusted him and wanted nothing more than to escape from him and her family. Every smile was rehearsed. Every word was measured. Every laugh was practiced. Every touch was calculated. But as the lines between ally and enemy blur, and buried truths claw their way to the surface, Lorelie begins to see the cracks in Sebastian’s armor—and he starts to question everything he thought he knew about his wife. Can love save them from the lies that built their world? Or will it be the reason they lose everything?

"A talented and ambitious chef, Jaime Martinez knows the value of hard work. Now the executive chef at his best friend’s vineyard in Heron’s Landing, Jaime only wants to make his mark on the culinary world. Romance? Not in the cards for him. And definitely not with his best friend’s little sister, who’s recently grown into a beautiful young woman. A painter and an innocent, Grace Danvers is a temptation that would only end in disaster. Yet when Grace confesses her feelings for Jaime one night, he’s suddenly torn between his attraction to her and his loyalty to her brother. Soon that loyalty is tested when Jaime comes under scrutiny for a crime he didn’t commit, a crime that could jeopardize all of his hard work and his blossoming romance with Grace. As things heat to a boiling point between the forbidden lovers, Jaime must now decide if he’s willing to sacrifice everything for the woman he loves. This title was previously published as Tempt Me Tenderly. It’s been rereleased with a brand-new look and with lightly edited content."

Desperate and with nowhere left to turn, Ivy Carter accepts the strangest job offer of her life. Marry a dying billionaire. The deal is simple. A wealthy heiress who no longer wants to marry her disabled fiancé needs a substitute bride. Ivy looks enough like her to fool everyone. She only has to play the role of a loving wife for six months. After the billionaire dies, she'll walk away with a fortune, and the real bride will return to claim everything. It should have been easy, except the billionaire isn't the cold, broken man everyone believes him to be. Beneath his pain is a lonely soul who has been betrayed by the people he trusted most, and as Ivy's kindness begins to heal wounds no doctor ever could, the impossible happens, her husband starts to fight for life again. But miracles have consequences. When the woman who abandoned him returns to reclaim her place, she discovers the man she expected to inherit is no longer dying, and the substitute bride she hired has become the only woman he truly loves. With jealous rivals, dangerous family secrets, and a fortune worth killing for, Ivy must decide whether to walk away with the money she was promised, or risk everything for the man she was never supposed to love.

We love reading novels, fall in love with the characters, sometimes envy the main girl for getting the perfect male lead... but what happens when you get inside your own novel and get to meet your perfect main lead and bonus...get treated like the female lead?! As the clock struck 12, Arielle Taylor is pulled inside her own novel. This cinderella is over the moon as her Prince Charming showers her with his attention but what would happen when she finds herself falling for her fairy godmother instead? Please read my interview with Goodnovel at: https://tinyurl.com/y5zb3tug Cover pic: pixabay

Nicole Evans never asked to be followed. She never asked for eyes in the dark, for a man like Vane to orbit her life with silence and devotion sharp enough to wound. But obsession doesn’t ask permission. It waits. It watches. It becomes inevitable. What began with missing men and shadows on rooftops soon unraveled into something far more intimate—an assassin who couldn’t let go, and a woman who, piece by piece, stopped trying to make him. As friends vanished and her world narrowed, Nicole found herself drawn toward the very thing she feared most—not out of love, but recognition. In his violence, there was something terrifyingly tender. In his silence, something that listened more closely than anyone else ever had. Theirs is not a love story in any ordinary sense. It’s a descent—a long, slow collapse into dependency, into surrender. A story told in bruises and shared tea, in blood and in stillness. A quiet unraveling that doesn’t end in escape, but in a house by the sea, where memory lingers and echoes never fade. Some stories don’t ask to be understood. Only remembered.

If we psychologically damage an individual beyond repair, what will be the consequence of it? We all have a limit to the amount of mental and psychological stress we can take. Once the stress exceeds the limit, we’ll reach our breaking point. What happens after that is a mystery no one can solve, or is it? Lydia Johnson faces a similar situation. She is a complex young woman who faces a downfall stemming from the mental and physical abuse of her father and siblings, the negligence of her mother, and a chilling secret. From abused to loved, to abused again--that’s how life is for Lydia. Her family taught her only one lesson: emotions are for the weak and the weak don’t have a place in this world. With each kill, Lydia atones for the loss of her innocence by getting rid of another emotion and also rids the world of someone undeserving of her love and forgiveness. What lengths will she go to, for revenge, and prove her resilience? Will she ever be able to live her life like a normal person again? Or will she continue killing everyone until her own death?