Kate Pearce Recommends 7 Sinfully Good Reads

If you love Northern Californian cowboys like my Morgan Valley books, you’re going to love Stacy Finz’s Garner Brothers series, or the Nugget romances. Start with Need You or Going Home. One day, Stacy’s cowboys are going to run into mine, and then who knows what will happen when two book worlds collide?

If you prefer an Oregon setting, then you’ll definitely enjoy Maisey Yates Smooth Talking Cowboy, a Gold Valley novel. I love romances with fake boyfriends who end up becoming the real thing, especially if that hero is a cowboy getting it on with the girl next door.

 Love-struck librarians anyone? As someone who spent most of her childhood reading at the library, Olivia Dade’s series starting with My Reckless Valentine, which involves some very interesting maneuvers in a mobile library, might work for you. (Nothing like that ever happened at my library!). I particularly love her cinnamon-roll heroes and feisty independent heroines.

Nisha Sharma’s The Takeover Effect and the entire trilogy about the Singh Family has it all—great sex, cyber espionage spanning both coasts, a thrilling plot, and food so well described that I was drooling when I finished the book. If you like your romance spicy in all ways, then you should definitely try this series. 

If you're looking for a food-centric book with a great plot and great sex scenes, I also enjoyed Suleika Snyder’s Tikka Chance on Me, which is a shorter book that is very funny and all-around excellent.

My next pick is Lucy Parker, who has written a great series called London Celebrities. I originally picked up the first three books in a boxed set and basically sat still for an entire weekend because I couldn’t stop reading them. As I’m originally from London in the UK, it was fun for me to revisit the London theater setting, and my hometown. Book 4 The Austen Playbook has just been released, but I haven’t read it yet. I’m hoarding it until I take my 11-hour flight to London in May. 

Start at book one with Act Like It—a slow burn romance. You’ll meet a great brooding, grumpy hero, and a charmingly funny heroine who end up in a fake relationship to enhance his appalling public persona. I loved all three books, and I can’t wait to read what happens next!

If you are willing to try something a little bit different, then I’d heartily recommend the author KJ Charles. I’d start with the historical romance The Magpie Lord (a Charm of Magpies book), which is such a great introduction to the series. 

If you like magic and menace in your romance, you’ll love Lucien, the tattooed earl hero, reluctantly returning from exile in China after twenty years away, and poor Stephen Day a magician who has all the reasons in the world to hate the Crane family, but can’t resist the outspoken and definitely handsome earl. KJ is another one of those authors that once I started reading her books I had to keep going through her entire backlist.

As you can probably tell by now, my reading tastes are quite varied. This is because when I’m writing something myself I avoid reading that particular kind of book, so that I don’t accidentally borrow any ideas. I also write cozy historical mysteries, and can’t read those while I’m writing one, either. Some readers love one particular sub-genre, and others like to read all over the place. I’m not a big fan of romantic suspense, but other than that, I’ll try anything once. The great thing about today’s book market is that if you love a particular theme you can probably find it. 

As I mentioned, I love the fake boyfriend trope, and in my upcoming book, The Second Chance Rancher that’s exactly what happens when Jackson Lymond pretends to be Daisy Miller’s boyfriend so that she can fool her father and five brothers into believing she’s not moonlighting in a start up in Silicon Valley at all.