2019 Best of the Year & Choose Your Own Giveaway

January 25, 2020 06:45 PM Posted by juliannadouglas

After being an avid reader all my life, in 2008, I decided to start reviewing books, as well. That’s when I joined GoodReads and founded my review website, The Hope Chest Reviews. Since becoming a published author, I haven’t stopped writing reviews of the books I read for pleasure, in part, because I’m now more aware than ever just how important reviews can be to an author in helping readers discover them.

Ever since I started my review site, I’ve had an annual tradition of posting my Best of the Year list to highlight all the very best books I read the previous year. As in past years, I have an eclectic group of books on it from a wide variety of genres. Since I’m a romance writer and long-time romance reader, my focus is mostly on romance, but I also have a nice selection of other books, including fantasy, YA, historical fiction, memoirs, and non-fiction.

Breaking Dawn Book Cover

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Categories: Giveaways

Tags: Best of the Year, Nalini Singh, Stephenie Meyer


December 2019 Book of the Month Giveaway

January 25, 2020 03:53 PM Posted by juliannadouglas

During December, I read four full-length novels and four novellas and short stories. All but one of the novels received four stars or higher from me, including two five-star reads, but one stood out a little above the other one as my favorite read of the month. It was a story by my favorite romantic suspense author who I haven’t yet featured in my Book of the Month. This author usually writes pretty chunky books, but this one was one of her shorter works that is probably in the range of a long novella/short novel. I wondered how she would handle this shorter format, and as it turns out, the answer is extremely well. It’s the story of two people who were very good friends in high school, but who drifted apart and lost touch over the years. Then while the heroine is cleaning out her dead husband’s belongings, she runs across an old high school yearbook in which she finds a love letter written to her by her friend. She’d never read it before and feels badly for leaving him hanging all these years, so she looks him up. They reconnect and fall in love while evading a killer who is murdering his graduate students.

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Categories: Book of the Month, Giveaways

Tags: Karen Rose