Audiobook Review: Checking it Twice by Kendall Ryan
🐾🐾🐾🐾 — One fake girlfriend, one Christmas trip home, and feelings that refuse to stay pretend.
Review Date: December 24, 2025 | Release Date: November 25, 2025
Checking It Twice delivers everything I want in a holiday sports romance: fake dating, forced proximity, small-town Christmas charm, and a hockey hero who absolutely knows how to lean into the bit—until it stops being a bit at all.
Clare Johnson is smart, capable, and fiercely professional, which makes her reluctant agreement to fake-date a hockey player feel both risky and refreshingly grounded. As the PR rep for the Dallas Stampede, she knows exactly why Mitchell Drake is off-limits. But when his family pressure and lingering fallout from a very public broken engagement collide, Clare becomes the perfect solution—cool under scrutiny, sharp with comebacks, and completely believable as the girlfriend he desperately needs for one week.
Mitchell is charming without being careless. Beneath the fan-favorite smile is a man still nursing old wounds and trying to protect himself from more heartbreak. What starts as a mutually beneficial arrangement quickly softens into something more intimate as snowy nights, family dinners, and small-town traditions chip away at their emotional armor. The chemistry builds naturally, fueled by shared moments rather than instant declarations.
Kendall Ryan excels at making the holiday setting feel essential instead of decorative. Pond hockey games, flannel-filled family gatherings, and meddling relatives create an atmosphere that pushes the characters closer together while raising the stakes of their fake relationship. Clare’s ease with Mitchell’s family—especially his grandmother—adds emotional depth and makes the eventual shift from pretend to real feel inevitable.
Checking It Twice is cozy, flirty, and emotionally satisfying, with just the right balance of heat and heart. It’s a reminder that sometimes love sneaks up on you when you’re too busy pretending not to want it—and that the best Christmas gifts don’t come wrapped at all.
Book Review: Drive Me Crazy by Lizzy Dent
🐾🐾🐾🐾 — A high-speed second chance where love, ambition, and redemption race toward the same finish line.
Review Date: December 24, 2025 | Release Date: January 6, 2026
Drive Me Crazy is a high-octane romance that blends the glamour and pressure of Formula 1 with a deeply emotional second-chance love story. Lizzy Dent delivers a romance that’s not just about speed and spectacle, but about ambition, accountability, and the risk of letting someone back into your heart when everything is on the line.
Chloe Coleman is a standout heroine—sharp, determined, and navigating the brutal scrutiny that comes with being one of the first female team principals in Formula 1. Her determination to rebuild a failing team is compelling, but what truly makes her shine is her emotional complexity. She’s confident on the surface, guarded underneath, and constantly fighting to be taken seriously in a world that expects her to fail.
Enter Matt Warner: former champion, fallen star, and the childhood crush Chloe never quite forgot. His struggle with guilt, fear, and a shaken sense of self adds real emotional weight to the story. Matt isn’t just trying to win races—he’s trying to believe in himself again. Watching Chloe and Matt reconnect through long race weekends, strategic tension, and quiet moments between the chaos makes their chemistry feel earned and electric.
The romance builds at a delicious slow burn, balancing professional boundaries with undeniable attraction. The stakes feel real—both personally and professionally—and the Formula 1 backdrop is woven seamlessly into the story without overpowering the romance. Drive Me Crazy is swoony, intense, and surprisingly tender, delivering a love story that proves sometimes the biggest risks lead to the greatest rewards.
Book Review: Unlucky in Love by Kiva Hart
🐾🐾🐾🐾 — Sometimes the love you’re waiting for has been writing to your heart all along.
Review Date: December 18, 2025
There’s something undeniably magical about a romance built on history, unanswered feelings, and words left unsaid—and Unlucky in Love leans into that magic beautifully. This is a story about timing, second chances, and the quiet hope that maybe the love you thought you lost was only waiting for the right moment to return.
Taylor has built a life she’s proud of, running her café and keeping her heart carefully guarded. Years ago, one impulsive kiss shattered her certainty, leaving her hurt by Ryan Carter—the boy who was too old, too close, and too forbidden. Being dismissed as “just a kid” before he disappeared from her life left a scar she never quite acknowledged, choosing instead to move forward without looking back.
Ryan’s return to town reopens everything Taylor thought she’d buried. He’s changed—softer around the edges, bruised by his past, and clearly carrying regrets he never voiced. But before Taylor can decide what his presence means, anonymous love notes begin appearing in her café. Each one is thoughtful, intimate, and filled with memories only someone who truly knows her could write. Suddenly, the entire town is buzzing, and Taylor is caught between the thrill of being seen and the fear of hoping again.
What makes this story shine is its emotional restraint. The romance unfolds slowly, letting glances linger and words matter. Ryan doesn’t rush forgiveness, and Taylor doesn’t hand over trust easily. Their connection is layered with shared history, unresolved hurt, and genuine tenderness, making every moment between them feel earned.
The small-town setting adds warmth and charm, amplifying the mischief, speculation, and collective investment in Taylor’s mysterious admirer. And with Valentine’s Day approaching, the stakes feel higher, the emotions sharper, and the payoff sweeter.
Unlucky in Love is a soft, heartfelt rom-com that celebrates love letters, healing, and the courage it takes to open your heart again. It’s cozy, romantic, and quietly swoony—proof that sometimes the love meant for you never really leaves.
Book Review: Addicted to Chaos by Kiva Hart
🐾🐾🐾🐾 — When chaos crashes into control, love writes its own rules.
Review Date: December 18, 2025
Addicted to Chaos is the kind of workplace rom-com that thrives on delightful disruption. It takes the familiar push-and-pull of office proximity and injects it with a heroine who refuses to color inside the lines — and a hero whose carefully controlled world never stood a chance.
What makes this story shine is its balance. The chaos isn’t just quirky for the sake of humor; it’s purposeful. It challenges routines, expectations, and emotional walls that feel very real. Watching order slowly bend — not break — under the weight of attraction and vulnerability is deeply satisfying. The romance builds naturally, fueled by banter that snaps and sparks without tipping into cruelty or caricature.
The workplace setting adds stakes without overwhelming the romance. There’s tension in what’s unsaid, in what can’t happen yet, and in the quiet moments where the characters realize they’re no longer in control of their feelings. The slow-burn pacing gives space for emotional growth, allowing the relationship to feel earned rather than rushed.
Beyond the romance, the book has heart. It leans into the idea that chaos doesn’t mean broken — sometimes it means alive, creative, and brave enough to want more. The humor lands, the chemistry crackles, and the emotional beats hit just right.
If you love romances where opposites challenge each other into becoming better, bolder versions of themselves — with plenty of laughter along the way — Addicted to Chaos is an absolute treat.
Book Review: Chosen by Chase by Lily Birch
🐾🐾🐾🐾 — A bold marriage auction romance with mountain man energy, instant obsession, and heat that burns fast and fierce.
Review Date: December 18, 2025
Chosen by Chase is the kind of unapologetically bold, spicy instalove romance that knows exactly what it’s doing—and leans all the way in. From the moment the marriage auction on Red Oak Mountain kicks off, this story delivers high heat, high stakes, and a surprisingly tender emotional undercurrent beneath its OTT premise.
Nicole is refreshingly pragmatic. She’s not chasing fairy tales or grand romantic gestures—she’s chasing freedom. Specifically, freedom from student loan debt and the emotional exhaustion of hoping love will magically work itself out. Her decision to put herself up at a marriage auction feels daring but grounded in self-preservation, and that practicality makes her instantly compelling. She’s confident, self-aware, and very clear about the one-year expiration date on her marriage.
Chase, on the other hand, is a billionaire with a problem money can’t solve: trust. After selling his dating app empire, he’s spent years questioning motives and intentions. The anonymity of the auction—and Nicole herself—offers him something rare: clarity. What starts as a calculated plan quickly becomes something far more intense as chemistry ignites and emotional lines blur.
Despite being a short read, the story packs a punch. The pacing is fast, the attraction immediate, and the dynamic deliciously unbalanced in that classic alpha-instinct-meets-curvy-heroine way. What elevates this novella is the heart threaded through the heat—moments where vulnerability sneaks in and turns lust into something deeper.
If you love mountain men, bold heroines, marriage-of-convenience chaos, and romances that waste zero time getting to the good stuff, Chosen by Chase delivers exactly what it promises: spicy, indulgent escapism with a guaranteed happily ever after.