Tag: Victorine E. Lieske

Her Big Fat Foxy Billionaire Best Friend

Posted on by Frances

If you are a fan of romance novels, you probably know of the newest fad: billionaire romances. I was actually intrigued with this myself, and decided to read one by a well-known author: Victorine E. Lieske! You may remember I have read many of her romances that are part of her Marriage series. Anyway, many billionaire romances won’t be clean by any stretch of the imagination, so this is nice that I can have a clean read and a billionaire romance in one. 

The first thing you’ll notice is the title. It’s actually a funny, interesting title. It’s called “Her Big Fat Foxy Billionaire Best Friend”. You’ll also notice this is book two in Victorine’s Billionaire series. They are all standalones so it doesn’t matter that I read this first. 

Let me share with you a picture and the blurb:

 

Miranda Moore is devastated when her fiancé dumps her right before her wedding. Luckily her best friend, Drew Tucker, comes to her rescue, agreeing to go with her on the Star Venture cruise trip she booked. But he’s changed, and strange new feelings towards him are making it hard for Miranda to stay focused. She needs to keep her friendship with Drew. Falling in love would ruin everything!

Drew’s been in love with Miranda since he could remember. But unfortunately, she only thinks of him as a friend. When she gets dumped right before her dream cruise trip, he agrees to go with her to get her mind off her ex. Too bad it kills him to be with her, knowing she could never return his affections.

 

The first thing I want to mention is that this book is right in line with what I would expect from Victorine. It was a sweet romance with a happy ending. Completely clean in every sense of the word. I enjoyed the cruise part of the book, and the “geeky” nature of it. I’d say it was fun and enjoyable.

However, I do want to say that it didn’t stand out to me as anything spectacular. There was no ‘wow’ factor. Basically, nothing that would make me remember this book years from now. It doesn’t mean this is necessarily bad, it’s just nothing awesome. 

For all the reasons above, I rated this book 4 stars. 

If you’d like to get a copy of Her Big Fat Foxy Billionaire Best Friend by Victorine E. Lieske, please go here:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0781614VF/

Acting Married

Posted on by Frances

I bring to you another review installment from one of Victorine E. Lieske’s The Married Series books. This time I read the book ‘Acting Married’. It’s the fifth book in this series. If you recall, I’ve also read the second book called ‘Reluctantly Married’ and the third book called ‘Mistakenly Married’. You can find their respective reviews HERE and HERE. And, as you can see, The Married Series books do not need to be read in order. All of them are standalone sweet romances. 

Without further ado, here is the information on Acting Married, as well as my review!

 

ACTING MARRIED

By: Victorine E. Lieske

Tara McDermott needed a job, so she took the only thing available—cleaning house for the swoon-worthy actor, and Hollywood Bad Boy, Rick Shade. When he comes up with a crazy plan to tame his wild reputation by marrying her, she reluctantly agrees so she can pay off her debts and move her daughter back to the Midwest where life is simpler. If only he wouldn’t make her heart pound every time he kisses her.

Rick’s reputation is in the toilet and it’s affecting his job. In order to get a good role, he needs to show Hollywood he’s now a family man. After enticing Tara with a large sum of money to go through with the farce, he sets out to show the public he’s in love. But Tara’s soft lips keep calling to him and soon he doesn’t know what’s pretend and what’s real.

 

I have to admit that out of the three books I’ve read so far in this Married Series, I enjoyed this one the best. However, I think it fits right in line with the others. They’re sweet. They’re clean. They end happily-ever-after, the way a good romance should, in my opinion. Perhaps what made me like this one most was that it has some Hollywood-ness to it. 

The author did a great job writing this book. It flowed nice, and I loved how each character had the same amount of time devoted to them. It helped me to connect with them, and have a deeper grasp on how they felt towards the other. In my opinion, that just makes for good attraction, tension, and ultimately, a head-over-heels-in-love romance.

With all of this in mind, I rated the book four stars. It was one star away from perfect because of the ending. It’s not that the ending was bad. It’s just that I felt it lacked a punch or something. I can’t put my finger on it, so I apologize for being very vague. I still enjoyed the book very much, and would totally recommend to those looking for a clean, sweet romance to read. 

To get your own copy, you can go to this link:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073TKH2VK

Not What She Seems

Posted on by Frances

How about another thriller? I’ve been doing a lot of those lately, haven’t I. All for good reasons, as I’ve shared before. This one, however, isn’t quite a thriller. It’s more a suspense. There’s also a romantic element to it, which sweetens it up a bit. Would you like to know more about this book? Let me share!

 

Not What She Seems

By: Victorine E. Lieske

 

Steven Ashton, a billionaire from New York, and Emily Grant, on the run from the law…and when they meet he can’t help falling for her. What he doesn’t know is that interfering in her life will put his own life in danger.

When billionaire Steven Ashton couldn’t stand his high society social life anymore, he left the stress of New York on a vacation for his soul. The need to meet real down to earth people led him to a small Nebraska town. He didn’t want to lie about who he was, but he couldn’t exactly tell them the truth.

Emily could have easily fallen in love with Steven, under different circumstances, but her past was catching up with her and she needed a new life. If the authorities found out about her, she could lose the one thing that meant everything, her four year old son.

 

I have read other books by Victorine E. Lieske before. I figured this one would be a good one to try. After all, she’s great with her romance novels! So how does she do with suspense? Let’s find out. I’ll first share what I liked.

Not What She Seems is very well-written. I thought the storyline was enjoyable and easy to follow. I love that it’s a clean novel. Many books in this genre tend to be even just a slightly bit dirty. This one wasn’t whatsoever. So that’s a huge plus. Especially for those younger people who like to read suspense. Another huge plus was that you never find out the culprit until the very end. I have to admit that it wasn’t someone I had suspected so kudos to Victorine for keeping it a mystery!

Was there anything I didn’t like? There were a couple of things. The first was that toward the end, I had to reread some parts just to make sure I was following right. Overall, the book is very easy to follow and makes tons of sense. There was just a few parts at the end where I had to recheck. Another downfall is that much of the story was predictable. Not so much the biggest part of the book, but much of the rest was. Lastly, I wasn’t feeling the romance aspect of the story at all. It was cute, but didn’t do anything for me.

All in all, I rated this four stars! If you go to the Amazon page for this novel, which I have the link just below, you’ll see that it has tons of reviews all in favor of this story. It’s also a New York Times Bestseller so that says something, right? Okay. Now that I said my piece, go check it out!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003HS5LRO

Reluctantly Married

Posted on by Frances

Reluctantly Married is the second installment of the Married Series by best-selling author Victorine E. Lieske. This is also the second book from this series that I have read. You can find my post about Mistakenly Married HERE.

Because these are all standalone novels, you can read them in any order. That explains why I have yet to read the first, lol! Someday, though!

Anyway, back to the review. Let me share with you the cover to this book, as well as its blurb, before filling you in on what I liked, didn’t like, and my overall rating.

 

Megan Holloway can’t stand her local morning show co-host, Adam Warner, even though he’s a total hunk. He goads her on-air until she says things she regrets. But since ratings increase each time they have an on-air fight, the producer encourages his behavior.

When a relationship specialist comes onto the show purporting that Adam has hidden feelings for her, she reluctantly agrees to go out with him—on camera. What starts out as one date turns into a viral dating show with Megan and Adam alternating between locking lips and knocking heads.

As Megan fights her growing attraction to Adam, their popularity increases and ABC takes notice, offering them their own program. Not a morning show like Megan is hoping, but a dating show in which she and Adam must marry at the end. With the promise of a hundred thousand dollars and the possibility of scoring what she really wants, her own national program, she signs on.

What she doesn’t know is that Adam has fallen in love with her, and his objective is to get her to do the same.

 

MY REVIEW

This book reminded me of two TV shows. One was Full House. There is an episode where Danny Tanner and Vicki Larson bicker on set. Maybe not exactly bicker, but you can tell there’s tension. Later in the season you see they end up dating and so forth. This is exactly the type of atmosphere you’ll find in Reluctantly Married. The two main characters are co-hosts. You can tell there’s tension. At first it’s for ratings, but things eventually get real.

Another show it reminded me of was The Bachelorette. The climax of this story is the two main characters doing a show pretty much exactly the way The Bachelorette goes. There’s more than one man trying to win the female’s heart. In the end they get engaged.

So having said that, I thought it was kind of cool to relate to some things I have seen before.

The storyline is clean and well written, and started out fun at first. I liked having the “war” between the two characters. There’s even this one date night activity I’d like to try with my husband. If I do, I’ll blog it so you can all know!

There were a couple of things I didn’t like. I didn’t think this was a comedy, even though that’s what the book’s page on Amazon stated. However, that’s just my opinion. I also thought that the storyline got old. Like I said, started out fun at first. After that, though, I just wanted them to move on with it. The whole dating dragged on.

One final thing was how it ended. For most of the book, we see the female’s view. She’s falling for the male. Occasionally you get a small idea that the male is falling for the female, but not enough to warrant the ending. Basically, at the end, it’s the male character declaring his “love”, but I just didn’t feel it. I would have thought the female would have.

All that said, the ending was still great. I always like happy endings!

I have rated this book 4 stars! If you’d like to read for yourself, please go to:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QEE7MHA

Mistakenly Married

Posted on by Frances

I’m sure that a few of you reading the title of this blog are scratching your heads, wondering what this one is all about. I promise you it’s not something weird! Mistakenly Married is actually a book! Let me share with you some things about it!

Mistakenly Married

By: Victorine E. Lieske

 

 

Penny’s gotten herself into another one of her crazy messes. She’s broke and about to be evicted. When her online boyfriend suggests they elope, she agrees. Why not? She loves him, even though she hasn’t met him, so she blows the last of her cash on a fun Las Vegas wedding. Except, William stands her up and the limo driver picks up the wrong guy. A smokin’ hot wrong guy. Too bad she doesn’t find out who he really is until after the wedding.

Harrison Williams needs a wife to gain access to his trust fund account. He goes to Las Vegas to meet someone, but there’s a mix up and he ends up at the Chapel-O-Love exchanging vows with Penny, a spirited girl in a cheap veil. When they realize the mistake, he convinces her to go back to Bel Air with him to prove that he’s married, and he agrees to pretend to be William so her family doesn’t have to know about her big mistake. Sounds like a good plan. What could go wrong?

 

If you’re into clean romances, this book is a must read! It does say on the Amazon page that it is a romantic comedy, which for those of you who like that will appreciate it all the more. However, I don’t consider it a romantic comedy myself. There was nothing that really made me laugh. But that doesn’t mean the book wasn’t good!

Quite the opposite, really. I think this book was great on many levels! I thoroughly enjoyed the character development and descriptive elements that were part of the story. Though the two main characters made a mistake, it was neat how they ended up falling in love with one another in the end. The build up of attraction and desire between the two was amazingly written!

Although I loved the ending where the two do end up together, I wish the way the book got there was different. But that’s not something I would change the rating of the book for. It’s just a personal opinion. The ending it has is still good!

Overall, Mistakenly Married is very well written! It was a fun, clean, and enjoyable read. I found myself wanting to read more each and every time I had to put it down! And, as a side note, I hear Victorine E. Lieske is kind of the queen of clean romance novels, having books on the New York Times and USA Today best sellers lists. So you know that this book is going to be good! I totally recommend reading if this is your sort of style!

 

To purchase, please visit the book’s Amazon page at:

www.amazon.com/dp/B01D3U63NG