Showing posts with label Alyssa Cole. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alyssa Cole. Show all posts

Friday, May 10, 2019

TOUR w/EXCERPT - A Prince on Paper (Reluctant Royals, #3) by Alyssa Cole



A Prince on Paper
Reluctant Royals, #3
by Alyssa Cole
Publication Date: April 30th 2019
Publisher: Avon Impulse
GenreContemporary Romance




The Reluctant Royals series returns with a good girl searching for the life that’s not too big, and not too small, and the bad boy prince who might be just right for her…


The Book Junkie Reads . . . Review of . . . A PRINCE ON PAPER (Reluctant Royals, #3) . . . Nya has had my heart since the first time I meet her and the things she went through with her father. She needed to get out and be her.  Then there was Johan. He was a character in all three of the novels and he lures you in with each new appearance. I knew when I meet him that I want his story, but just was not sure how that would take place.  

When these two come together or not, you find that they are more alike than you first guess. I loved that the two of them found a bit of common ground and a way to connect. I wanted more for the two of them. Being in each of their countries allowed for you to see more of them both. I loved that Nya finally found a place that she felt good with herself and her surroundings. Johan's vulnerabilities gave you more to fall in love with.

Love my characters old, new, irritating, annoying, conniving, vulnerable, sensible, misunderstood, and more. I love the topic tackled with Johan's younger sibling. Nya understanding heart. Alyssa Cole did a fab job for me. There was a lot here for me to love and it was not just that I finally got a wedding but something extra special. Hope a follow-up to catch up with all the couples (all five of them). 


BLURB
Nya Jerami fled Thesolo for the glitz and glamour of NYC but discovered that her Prince Charming only exists in her virtual dating games. When Nya returns home for a royal wedding, she accidentally finds herself up close and personal—in bed—with the real-life celebrity prince who she loves to hate.

For Johan von Braustein, the red-headed step-prince of Liechtienbourg, acting as paparazzi bait is a ruse that protects his brother—the heir to the throne—and his own heart. When a royal referendum threatens his brother’s future, a fake engagement is the perfect way to keep the cameras on him.

Nya and Johan both have good reasons to avoid love, but as desires are laid bare behind palace doors, they must decide if their fake romance will lead to a happily-ever-after.


Purchase Your Copy Today!
Amazon  |  Avon Romance  |  Barnes & Noble  |  Google Play  |  iBooks


EXCERPT 
The bed suddenly shifted, the tilt of the mattress jarring, and Nya was pulled into a strong, solid embrace. Her nose tickled at the smell of lemon and lavender, citrus and almost abrasive floral, as far from the smell of the eng flower of Thesolo—her father’s poison of choice—as she could get. The arms that clamped around her were lean and muscular, and the body it pulled her against was just as fit. The body was warm—so warm and cradling her so perfectly that she relaxed and sighed at how . . . right it felt before her fear and common sense kicked in.

She was alone on the plane. But someone was in the bed behind her. Holding her. Had her distress been so acute that it had reached Ingoka’s ears? Had she conjured this sudden comfort? She knew the folklore of the lesser gods, of those who gave humans what they wanted but always took more than they gave. No, this is no time for fairy tale silliness. She tried to tug herself free from the stranger’s arm because, be they god or man, something really fucking weird was going on.

The hold tightened. “Reste bei mir.”

The sleep-slurred words came out in an exhalation that tickled Nya’s ear and made her belly jolt. She pushed at one of the arms from below and the hold loosened as the stranger snorted and began to move. A large hand patted her arm, paused, then pulled away.

“What have we here?” The voice was deep and smooth, a European, judging from the strangely accented English. So definitely not a lesser god of Thesolo, and more likely a human—one who might be dangerous.

She jumped up off the bed, listing a bit as the plane hit dipped and tilted, fumbling with her phone as her hands began to tremble slightly. She was on the plane usually reserved for the royal family of Thesolo. Ledi had made her listen to those true crime podcasts so Nya knew that this could be some depraved assassin. What kind of assassin snuggles people to death? Stranger things had happened.

“Who are you and what do you want?” She tried to access the flashlight app, but her thumb was wet from the tears she’d pressed into submission and the fingerprint reader wouldn’t work. She pressed the button along the phone’s side to take photos instead, no unlocking required, and the bright bursts of the camera’s automatic flash revealed the outline of a man stretched out on the bed.

The bed she had just sought out for safety and comfort. A jolt of anger and fear sliced through her as her thumb repetitively pressed the button.

“What do you want?” she asked again, stepping back toward the door.

“Hmm. Biscuits?” The lazy response was punctuated by the sound of shuffling on the sheets. “Biscuits would be super. I missed the in-flight meal.”

Wait. That voice is familiar. And the language . . . A light suddenly flicked on, and Nya blinked several times, and then kept on blinking even after her eyes had adjusted. Her ears hadn’t lied.  Oh! It’s him.

Tour Wide Giveaway

To celebrate the release of A PRINCE ON PAPER by Alyssa Cole, we’re giving away one paperback set of the first three full-length books in the series!
GIVEAWAY TERMS & CONDITIONS:  Open to US shipping addresses only. One winner will receive a paperback set of A Princess in Theory, A Duke By Default, & A Prince on Paper by Alyssa Cole. This giveaway is administered by Pure Textuality PR on behalf of Avon Romance.  Giveaway ends 5/16/2019 @ 11:59pm EST. Avon Romance will send the winning copies out to the winner directly.








About Alyssa Cole


ALYSSA COLE is a science editor, pop culture nerd, and romance junkie who lives in the Caribbean and occasionally returns to her fast-paced NYC life. In addition to writing, she founded and hosted the Jefferson Market Library Romance Book Club and taught Romance Writing for Beginners. She speaks on topics such as writing erotic romance, writing multicultural romance, and self-editing. She has contributed romance-related articles to publications including RT Book Reviews, Heroes and Heartbreakers, Romance at Random, and The Toast. She has also started a bi-monthly column in the Romance Writer’s Report, Romancing the Globe, in which she chats with romance writers from around the world. When she’s not busy writing, traveling, and learning French, she can be found watching anime with her husband or tending to her herd of animals.
Website  |  Facebook  |  Twitter  |  Goodreads  |  Amazon


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Monday, January 7, 2019

TOUR w/EXCERPT - Once Ghosted, Twice Shy: Reluctant Royals Novella by Alyssa Cole



Once Ghosted, Twice Shy
Reluctant Royals Novella

by Alyssa Cole
Publication Date: January 8th 2018
Publisher: Avon Impulse
Genre: Contemporary Romance



Alyssa Cole returns with a fun, sexy romance novella in the Reluctant Royals series!


The Book Junkie Reads . . . Review of . . . ONCE GHOSTED, TWICE SHY (Reluctant Royals, #2.5) . . . Likotsi gets her second chance at the love she left behind (from book one). We get to see another side of Likotsi. She still polished, sophisticated, dedicated, but this time around she gets a second chance. She finally learns why things happened the way they did when she was in New York last. We get to see the woman that dimmed the light that had Likotsi shined brightly before she left New York. The meeting of Fab at the beginning was different and interesting. I found depth to the levels she showed and the way she was revealed to the reader. 

I found this to be a wonderful addition to the entire series. It help to fill in a few blanks and maybe gave a few hints of more to come.  I'm excited to get to the next book of this series. I found the included first chapter to be very alluring. I want to see the next adventure of the circle of friends and family. . 


BLURB

While her boss the prince was busy wooing his betrothed, Likotsi had her own love affair after swiping right on a dating app. But her romance had ended in heartbreak, and now, back in NYC again, she’s determined to rediscover her joy—so of course she runs into the woman who broke her heart.

When Likotsi and Fabiola meet again on a stalled subway train months later, Fab asks for just one cup of tea. Likotsi, hoping to know why she was unceremoniously dumped, agrees. Tea and food soon leads to them exploring the city together, and their past, with Fab slowly revealing why she let Likotsi go, and both of them wondering if they can turn this second chance into a happily ever after.

Purchase Your Copy Today!

Amazon  |  Avon Romance  |  Barnes & Noble  |  Google Play  |  iBooks

EXCERPT

“Attention, passengers, we apologize for the delay.” The MTA conductor’s voice was tinny, but the exasperation rang clear as the voice fuzzed through the speakers in the stalled subway car. “We are being held momentarily by the train’s dispatcher due to a malfunctioning signal. Or something. Thank you for your patience. We will be moving shortly. Maybe.”

Likotsi Adelele, mother of schedules and slayer of inefficiencies, would usually have been quite annoyed with her train being stuck on a bridge for half an hour with no explanation, but it was a special day: she had off from work. The full weekend! Two days to herself, a reprieve from managing meetings with dignitaries, heads of states, and business interests; planning royal dinners, royal date nights, and royal relaxation; and overseeing most aspects of the life of His Royal Highness, Bringer of Light and Love, Prince Thabiso Moshoeshoe of Thesolo, currently situated in Manhattan.

Or more time to think about her.
Likotsi tugged at the thigh of her trousers—teal gabardine with a matching blazer—before crossing her leg so that an ankle rested over her opposite knee, exposing bright yellow socks. She brushed away a speck of dirt that had lodged in one of the diamond-shaped perforations that decorated the aged tan leather of her new brogues. Her father had mailed her the shoes a few weeks back, a Christmas present to go under the giant fir tree lodged into a corner of the royal townhouse, since Naledi enjoyed partaking in Christian holidays. When Likotsi had finally been allowed to open the package, held hostage until four am on December 25 by an ever vigilant Naledi, she’d discovered a note inside: New shoes point toward the future, sweet daughter. You cannot keep wearing that which you have outgrown.
Likotsi had slipped the note and the shoes into her closet for the two weeks following the holiday. Today she would break them in, walking away from memories that should’ve evaporated long ago but had left residual damage, like stains on suede after a sudden downpour.
She winced as the conductor made another announcement, this one completely unintelligible static.
A train delay was fine. A train delay was delightful. Anything she encountered this weekend would be delightful because she was tired of the dejection that had nagged at her for months. Dejection was inefficient, and worse, it was pedestrian. Moping and wallowing had left a green tinge on the memories of her few perfect days in New York the previous spring, like the band of a fake gold ring. It was time to leave the shoes she had outgrown behind.
It was time to create new memories.
As far as interminable train delays went, being stuck on the Manhattan Bridge on a Saturday morning was about as good as one could get. Outside the window of the train, the January sunlight was dappling over the choppy, ice-strewn waves of the East River, tinting the muddy waters a silvery green-gold. The cold blue of the morning sky seemed endless as it stretched out over Brooklyn on one side and Manhattan on the other, holding all the promise of the recently arrived New Year.
A week before, Likotsi had watched the ball drop from the apartment of a translator she’d met at the UN. As she’d walked home, surrounded by drunken revelers, she’d wondered what it would’ve been like to kiss Fab at midnight instead.
No thoughts of her today. Enough.
On the Manhattan side of the river, the sharp angles of the skyscrapers were burnished with light, making it seem as if the impossibly tall buildings were sunbathing. New York City didn’t have majestic mountains or roaring waterfalls or rolling plains, like her homeland, but it was a beautiful city in its own way. It deserved better than to be the receptacle of memories that impeded her forward motion like a badly tailored suit that was too tight at the knees and elbows.
Likotsi had been working double duty as assistant to both Prince Thabiso and Naledi, his betrothed, for months. She’d been particularly dedicated to her job for the last seven months and three weeks, happy to work long hours and not just for the supplemental pay. Thabiso had gone from gently asking that she work less to outright commanding it.
She supposed she had been very. . . focused on keeping their schedules and making sure everything ran like clockwork.
The goat that wanders is the goat that gets lost. She hadn’t allowed herself to be lost to the pain of stinging rejection, especially over such a fleeting affair. She had focused, stayed on the path of international relocation and American apartment hunting and making sure that everything in her boss’s life was handled before he could think of it. There was a certain comfort in putting someone else’s life to order when her own felt uncharacteristically messy.
But now she was on vacation. The last time she’d taken time for herself in this manner had been, coincidentally, eight months before, when Thabiso had been busy hiding his royal identity while wooing Naledi. Likotsi had downloaded a dating app and made the error of swiping right on Fabiola C, located 0.3 miles away.
Fab.
Fab’s bio had been seven words: Math. Jewelry. Dressing down is giving in. Dark brown skin, Bettie Page bangs, and an hourglass figure were what had initially caught Likotsi’s attention. Personality, talent, and drive were what had held it fast. An immediate, theretofore unknown connection was what had made Likotsi sure Fab was the one. Fab’s blunt, cold breakup had shattered that illusion, but the shards remained.
Fabiola C: I can’t do this. You’re leaving, right? It was funlet’s stop before it’s not.
Likotsi had thought the hurt would fade, eventually. It had been a temporary fling after all, and she was no slouch at those. While Thabiso had formerly held the title of the Playboy Pan Afrique, Likotsi had fared just as well in her own dating sphere, minus the fuckboy tendencies. In Thesolo, there were families anxious to settle their daughters with the prince’s right hand, and when she traveled? Well, women found it hard to resist a sharp suit and a soft smile. Surely a woman she’d only spent a few nights with shouldn’t have done her heart more than a glancing blow.
If Likotsi’s obsession with efficiency had taught her anything, it was that sometimes it was the briefest setback that toppled everything afterward like dominoes.

Tour Wide Giveaway

To celebrate the release of ONCE GHOSTED, TWICE SHY by Alyssa Cole, we’re giving away one paperback copy of A PRINCESS IN THEORY!
GIVEAWAY TERMS & CONDITIONS:  Open to US shipping addresses only. One winner will receive a paperback copy of A Princess in Theory by Alyssa Cole.  This giveaway is administered by Pure Textuality PR on behalf of Avon Romance. Giveaway ends 1/14/2019 @ 11:59pm EST. Avon Romance will send the winning copies out to the winner directly. Limit one entry per reader and mailing address.  Duplicates will be deleted. 
 

 






Author Info
ALYSSA COLE is a science editor, pop culture nerd, and romance junkie who lives in the Caribbean and occasionally returns to her fast-paced NYC life. In addition to writing, she founded and hosted the Jefferson Market Library Romance Book Club and taught Romance Writing for Beginners. She speaks on topics such as writing erotic romance, writing multicultural romance, and self-editing. She has contributed romance-related articles to publications including RT Book Reviews, Heroes and Heartbreakers, Romance at Random, and The Toast. She has also started a bi-monthly column in the Romance Writer’s Report, Romancing the Globe, in which she chats with romance writers from around the world. When she’s not busy writing, traveling, and learning French, she can be found watching anime with her husband or tending to her herd of animals.
Website  |  Facebook  |  Twitter  |  Goodreads  |  Amazon

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Monday, July 30, 2018

TOUR w/EXCERPT - A Duke By Default (Reluctant Royals, #2) by Alyssa Cole


A Duke By Default
Reluctant Royals, #2
by Alyssa Cole
Publication Date: July 31st 2018
Publisher: Avon Books
Genre: Adult, Contemporary Romance



The Book Junkie Reads . . . Review of . . . A DUKE BY DEFAULT (Reluctant Royals, #2) . . . I was so hesitant to read about Ms. Portia. I was not very fond of her or her choices in book one of this series. I could see that she was not going easy on the path she was on. She was a bit questionable as a friend. Now, add to that and  her going overseas for another one of her adventures in to art media/project metal working. I find that a broody sexy Scotsman rang a few bells and then some. This one was just as fun as book one. I love Tav. He was the glue for me. He kept me coming back for more. I did also enjoy watching Portia blossom and take hold of her life. A Duke by Default was a delightful addition to the Reluctant Royals.

Watching Portia struggle with herself and what she was feeling and the way that she was so hard on herself allowed for me to connect more with her. She was focused but not focused. She has her own way of connecting with things and making them work for her. She was a people pleaser but it was not plain and simple that way. She wanted to be loved and wanted. She had a hard life at home and with her own family. I did not like her parents not even a little bit. I did however love her sister. Of course, having a chance to see in to the live of the prince and princess was nice also. 

Tav was a unique man. He had is how set of issue to work through. He had a man that wanted what he had and had what was rightfully his. I did not like his cousin and I am still on the fence about his cousin's sister. She seemed to think for herself in one instance and then not in the next. Then there was his brother, mother, father and sister-in-law. they were a loveable set of people along with the neighbors and the children they worked with. 

A Duke by Default  allowed for a deeper connection with the secondary character and a larger understanding of the world around them. The world of society and pomp was worse then just being a no body. Everyone in that world wanted something. I did however love that the queen had a sense of humor and some spunk.

I am very much anticipating the next installment in this series. 


BLURB
Award-winning author Alyssa Cole’s Reluctant Royals series continues with a woman on a quest to be the heroine of her own story and the duke in shining armor she rescues along the way…

New York City socialite and perpetual hot mess Portia Hobbs is tired of disappointing her family, friends, and—most importantly—herself. An apprenticeship with a struggling swordmaker in Scotland is a chance to use her expertise and discover what she’s capable of. Turns out she excels at aggravating her gruff silver fox boss…when she’s not having inappropriate fantasies about his sexy Scottish burr.

Tavish McKenzie doesn’t need a rich, spoiled American telling him how to run his armory…even if she is infuriatingly good at it. Tav tries to rebuff his apprentice—and his attraction to her—but when Portia accidentally discovers that he’s the secret son of a duke, rough-around-the-edges Tav becomes her newest makeover project. 

Forging metal into weapons and armor is one thing, but when desire burns out of control and the media spotlight gets too hot to bear, can a commoner turned duke and his posh apprentice find lasting love?

Purchase Your Copy Today!
Amazon  |  Avon Romance  |  Barnes & Noble  |  Google Play  |  iBooks


EXCERPT:
What was he doing? With his apprentice? In the courtyard?


She was right to pull away from him.


“I’m sorry,” he said, yanking his hand back.


“You should be,” she said. “I have very sensitive skin.” Then she pressed up on her toes and kissed him.


The kiss was not what he’d imagined. Because, of course, he’d imagined kissing her, and in his mind she had been aggressive and take charge, pulling him down and wrapping her legs around him. But this kiss was hesitant, though she’d initiated it, soft and just a whisper of sensitive skin rubbing over sensitive skin, as if she was prepared to pull away and run off at any second.


Can’t be having that, can we?


Tav’s arms slipped around her waist and pulled her up flush against him.

Tour Wide Giveaway

To celebrate the release of A DUKE BY DEFAULT by Alyssa Cole, we’re giving away three paperback copies of A PRINCESS IN THEORY!
GIVEAWAY TERMS & CONDITIONS:  Open to US shipping addresses only. Three winners will each receive a paperback copy of A Princess in Theory by Alyssa Cole. This giveaway is administered by Pure Textuality PR on behalf of Avon Romance.  Giveaway ends 8/10/2018 @ 11:59pm EST. Avon Romance will send the winning copies out to the winner directly. Limit one entry per reader and mailing address. Duplicates will be deleted.  CLICK HERE TO ENTER!


About Alyssa Cole


ALYSSA COLE is a science editor, pop culture nerd, and romance junkie who lives in the Caribbean and occasionally returns to her fast-paced NYC life. In addition to writing, she founded and hosted the Jefferson Market Library Romance Book Club and taught Romance Writing for Beginners. She speaks on topics such as writing erotic romance, writing multicultural romance, and self-editing. She has contributed romance-related articles to publications including RT Book Reviews, Heroes and Heartbreakers, Romance at Random, and The Toast. She has also started a bi-monthly column in the Romance Writer’s Report, Romancing the Globe, in which she chats with romance writers from around the world. When she’s not busy writing, traveling, and learning French, she can be found watching anime with her husband or tending to her herd of animals.
Author Links
Website  |  Facebook  |  Twitter  |  Goodreads  |  Amazon




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