September’s Reading Challenge: Read a Book from Another Reading Challenge

September’s Reading Challenge is to read a book from another Reading Challenge.

If you are participating in the Goodreads Reading Challenge, any book you read in September counts for this month’s challenge. If you belong to a book club, the book you’re reading for September also works.

I belong to a group called “Aussie Readers” on Goodreads. Every month we have two group reads. We vote on four different selections and the one with the most votes wins.

One of this month’s books is Wild Dogs by Michael Trant. It’s been in my TBR for a while and I’m excited to finally read it!

Here are links to other Book Challenges:

Booklist Queen has a book a week challenge: https://www.booklistqueen.com/reading-challenge-2023/

The Candid Cover has links to other Book Challenges: https://candidcover.net/2023-reading-challenges-list/

You can also try googling Book Challenge for other ideas.

Please click HERE to learn more about Wild Dogs.

I am looking forward to your selection!
Happy Reading!!

If you participated in last month’s challenge, check out the discussion post HERE and let us know if you met your challenge!

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August Reading Challenge Discussion

August’s Reading Challenge was to read a book from a bestseller list.

I read Debbie Macomber’s The Best Is Yet to Come. I absolutely loved this sweet novel of healing and love. The war in Afghanistan leaves scars on both Hope and Cade although they are for very different reasons. Since Hope is a high school teacher, there is an intriguing story arc featuring two of her students. A traumatized dog also has a starring role in this heartwarming story. Although this wonderful novel is the third installment in the Oceanside series, it can be read as a standalone.

Please click HERE to learn more about The Best Is Yet to Come.

Did you enjoy the book you selected for the challenge? Leave a comment and let us know your thoughts about your selection!

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Check out September’s challenge HERE.

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Friday Feature: Love on the Byline by Xio Axelrod

Do you love a good romance? Then you might like today’s Friday Feature!

Title: Love on the Byline by Xio Axelrod
Plays and Players Book One
Publisher: Blue Box Press
Genre: Contemporary, Romantic Comedy
Length: 294 pages

Summary:

Blake Dillon isn’t exactly living the dream. She longs to follow in her grandfather’s footsteps and make a difference in the world as a journalist. Unfortunately, her current job has her paying-off hotel staff for celebrity gossip. Tasked with shadowing a film star for an in-depth profile, Blake sees it as a chance to finally prove her worth. She never expected the interview to reconnect her with her old college crush.

Oliver Benjamin agrees to move to Los Angeles to work as the executive assistant to his best friend, a rising star. He hopes it will give him some direction. However, he soon discovers the only difference between being a frat boy and a Hollywood heartthrob is the amount of free stuff and the level of media attention. Ollie spends most of his time putting out fires, leaving little time for anything else. When Blake is sent to chronicle their lives, he finds himself face-to-face with the one that got away.

Blake and Ollie are smart enough to recognize the signs—there are enough sparks between them to melt glass—but they agree to put a lid on it until the article is finished. Much easier said than done when they’re forced to spend more time together than apart. There’s more going on than a simple interview, but they’re both professionals. They must resist temptation or risk unraveling both their lives.

Goodreads

Purchase Links: Amazon * B&N

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Thrifty Thursday: Throttled by Veronica West

Do you love gay romances? Do you have Kindle Unlimited? If not, are you looking for a book that costs less than $5.00? Then you might want to check out:

Title: Throttled by Veronica West
Publisher: Veronica West
Genre: Contemporary, Gay, Romance
Length: 306 pages

Summary:

Callum Davis
I don’t like men, I remind myself. But something about this man makes me question everything about myself. This man. He angers me like no other. He challenges everything I say like he has any right to argue. I’m the son of legendary driver Carl Davis. I know cars and racing like I was born to do it. And this guy walks through the door with his air of superiority and flamboyance and expects me to cower?
His very presence annoys me, so why does he make me feel things I’ve never felt before?
It doesn’t matter because this could never happen. It’s just not an option in our world. I was born to race, it’s what’s expected of me and I have to put that above everything else.
Even my heart.

Elijah Hayes
Out of all the drivers, why was I chosen to work with NASCARs bad boy Callum Davis?
God must have a screwed-up sense of humor.
His debauchery is plastered all over social media and newspapers. Snapshots of him drinking, partying, and hanging all over women are the center page spreads. He had a shit season last year and rumor has it, Eisenhower has given him an ultimatum.
Maybe I won’t have to deal with him for long.
Being the only openly gay mechanic in NASCAR is enough to deal with, I don’t need a driver with a chip the size of Texas on his shoulder to deal with.
But you know what they say about best-laid plans…they were run over by an eighteen-wheeler truck the second my eyes meet the sad dark gaze of the man who was made to be mine.
Let the games begin.

Goodreads

Purchase Link: Amazon

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eBook Contest 8/30

Here are the eBooks for this week’s Winning Wednesday contest:

Title: The Love Plot by Samantha Young
Publisher: Berkley
Genre: Contemporary, Romantic Comedy
Length: 352 pages

Summary:

There’s a magnetic attraction when a happy-go-lucky gig worker agrees to a fake relationship with a rich, uptight New Yorker in this steamy romantic comedy from New York Times bestselling author Samantha Young.

Star Shine Meadows is all about freedom, thanks to the hippie parents who raised her. Juggling her jobs as a professional costume character actor and a line sitter, she believes in no expectations, no stressful ambitions, and no-strings-attached relationships. So when she meets a birthday girl’s grumpy uncle while working a princess party, she can’t help but needle him. She’ll never see him again, and honestly, he’s pretty hot.

Rafe Whitman may be a veterinarian with a great bedside manner, but that doesn’t mean his patience extends to anyone with opposable thumbs. His family will not stop nagging him about finding “the one,” so when he runs into obnoxiously cheery Star again, he makes her an offer: He’ll pay her more than she would make doing her odd jobs if she’ll pretend to be his girlfriend at family gatherings. She can stop sitting in line waiting for someone else’s new phone, and he’ll get his family off his back.

When the tension between them heats to a breaking point, Star’s desire for “no strings” is tested against Rafe’s staunch stability. They say opposites attract, after all….


Title: Kissing Kosher by Jean Meltzer
Publisher: MIRA
Genre: Contemporary, Romantic Comedy
Length: 400 pages

Summary:

From the author of THE MATZAH BALL and MR. PERFECT ON PAPER comes this hilarious and emotional rivals-to-lovers romance.

Step 1: Get the secret recipe. Step 2: Don’t fall in love…

Avital Cohen isn’t wearing underpants—woefully, for unsexy reasons. Chronic pelvic pain has forced her to sideline her photography dreams and her love life. It’s all she can do to manage her family’s kosher bakery, Best Babka in Brooklyn, without collapsing.

She needs hired help.

And distractingly handsome Ethan Lippmann seems the perfect fit.

Except Ethan isn’t there to work—he’s undercover, at the behest of his ironfisted grandfather. Though Lippmann’s is a household name when it comes to mass-produced kosher baked goods, they don’t have the charm of Avital’s bakery. Or her grandfather’s world-famous pumpkin spice babka recipe.

As they bake side by side, Ethan soon finds himself more interested in Avital than in stealing family secrets, especially as he helps her find the chronic pain relief—and pleasure—she’s been missing.

But perfecting the recipe for romance calls for leaving out the lies…even if coming clean means risking everything.


Title: Mann Hunt by Peter E. Fenton
Publisher: Pride Publishing
Genre: Contemporary, Gay, Erotic Romance, Mystery
Length: 289 pages

Summary:

How far would you be willing to go to finish the job?

Declan Hunt is having a bad week. His kidnapping case is showing little progress, his office assistant has left him on short notice and his latest investigation has left him literally battered and bruised. But things change when he hires twenty-four-year-old Charlie Watts to help out at the office. They form an unlikely partnership while trying to solve two seemingly unrelated cases whose threads begin to weave together when the missing person’s case turns to murder.

The investigation takes them from the dark alleys, gay bars and bath houses of Calgary to the richest parts of the city during the world-famous Calgary Stampede.

But will they be able to discover who the killer is before another life is lost? And will Declan be able to solve the mystery of his relationship with Charlie, who is clearly attracted to him—especially since it is evident that the attraction is becoming mutual?

Reader advisory: This book contains scenes of violence, murder, and homophobia.


Wednesday is contest day on Book Talk and More with Kathy. Three lucky winners will win the eBook of their choice! Here’s how to enter:

You must do the Following:

1. Sign up for e-mail updates (below). One email daily with the day’s posts.

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Make sure you have filled out the contest entry form:

3. To be eligible to enter contests on Book Talk and More with Kathy you MUST fill out the contest entry form (found HERE). This form only needs to be filled out ONCE. Your privacy is important to me, and I will not share your information.

And don't forget to:

4. Fill out the form below by 4 PM Mountain Time Friday afternoon:

CONTEST OVER

* I am the only person who will have access to info that is submitted to me UNLESS a publisher or author has donated an eBook for the giveaway. For a prize donated by an author or publisher, I will forward your e-mail and format selection to the person responsible for distributing the eBook. Please refer to the privacy page HERE if you have questions about how your information is used. In the event the contest form is not working, please leave your book selection in the comments below.*

It’s that easy! The winners will be selected using random.org. I will e-mail the winners the eBook of their choice in their preferred format. The winners will be posted HERE on Saturday.

***The eBooks in this giveaway have been purchased by Book Talk & More with Kathy.***

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Teen Tuesday: After You Vanished by E. A Neeves

Teenage or adult readers who like Young Adult novels might enjoy this week’s spotlight:

Title: After You Vanished by E. A Neeves
Publisher: Disney Hyperion
Genre: Contemporary, Young Adult, Mystery
Length: 314 pages

Summary:

SADIE meets WE WERE LIARS in this heartfelt mystery, in which one girl desperately searches to find out what happened to her missing sister.

Teddy’s favorite place is Bottomrock Lake, where sunfish swim in their little saucer nests and lilypads edge the shore. She’s worked there as a lifeguard every summer, including last year, when her twin sister Izzy waded into the lake for a midnight swim and never came out. Now, Teddy can’t stop scripting stories for where she went. Izzy was an accomplished swimmer, so she couldn’t possibly have drowned. And if she did somehow drown, where’s her body and why is her passport missing?

When Toby, the gorgeous jerk who was with Izzy on the night she vanished, comes to Bottomrock to work as a lifeguard alongside Teddy, she can’t help but be suspicious. How many of her sister’s secrets does he hold? And how can Teddy unearth them—without falling for the boy who watched her sister disappear?

Told from Teddy’s point of view directly to Izzy, AFTER YOU VANISHED is a mystery that will have readers trying to piece together the secret life of a sister who’s gone.

Goodreads

Purchase Link: Amazon * B&N

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