News and Updates
With school on winter break for President’s Day, our household has a different pace this week. We’re not dashing through carpool while listening to audiobooks or rushing to finish homework, but we do have more time to visit the library and find a cozy spot to curl up with a good book! How are you spending your President’s Day holiday?
This Week
If this week’s reading challenge were a movie, it would be Must Love Dogs! While romance novels with pets can sometimes veer into overly silly or kitschy territory, we’ve found a charming one that strikes just the right balance.
Monthly Reading Challenge: Romance
Weekly Reading Challenge: Featuring a Pet
Kate O’Keefe has written some of my favorite clean romcom books and I was excited to learn about Never Fall for Your Back-Up Guy featuring an adorable puppy!
This is book 1 in the It’s Complicated series that will have you laughing at the follies of these characters who just can’t seem to get out of their own way. In this edition, our heroine is a small business owner trying to outsmart the big chain store all while trying to cope with the idea of being an old maid and training a new puppy. Her best guy friend comes to the rescue with both a great project for her business, puppy training classes, and a proposal to get married if they are both still single when she turns 30!
If you’re looking for other great books for this prompt, try one of these reads recommended by our StoryGraph community:
- The Goode Girls of Maple Lane, Jacqueline Firkins
- The Happy Ever After Playlist, Abby Jimenez
- Much Ado About You, Samantha Young
- The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society, CM Waggoner
New This week
I cannot say enough great things about this week’s newest release!! Terah Shelton Harris is back with Where the Wildflowers Grow, her third novel. I have been a huge fan of this author since her first release a few years ago and every book that has followed has only gotten better and better!
This novel is about second chances in life that don’t come around often, learning how to heal from the hurts of the past, and taking ownership of the mistakes you have made. I loved the focus on a healthy mind and body connection with yoga and meditation, but the slow burn romance really drew me in! You will love this story and the way these scenes come to life off the page.
This book was not only our Top Read of July, it ranked as our Top Book of the Year for 2025! This is a must buy book for readers who like Southern Gothic literature, romance novels, or strong female characters – this one has it all! Grab your copy in our Bookshop.org store here. Did I mention it has sprayed edges and that cover is gorgeous!
In Case You Missed It
Last Week’s Prompt
Tallulah signs on as an au pair thinking she is getting the perfect setup: affordable housing near campus and a job that pays almost too well, as long as she keeps her hands off her ridiculously hot boss. Burgess, a rugged hockey enforcer and single dad, decides the moment he meets her that she is endgame and invites her into his home as the live-in caregiver for his preteen daughter. What could possibly go wrong…except they both are crushing hard for each other…
I am giving Tessa Bailey’s The Au Pair Affair 4.9/5 stars: an adorable grumpy–sunshine hockey romance with slow-burn tension, real family moments, and just a touch too much Hallmark at times. I chose it for the Read With Lindsey challenge prompt “sports romance,” and it definitely scratched the hockey-romance itch.
Last Week’s Articles
Last week was all about the hockey romances for us, including a list of our top 10 recommendations if you loved Heated Rivalry we released on Thursday. We broke this down by category – rivalry and slow burn, hockey and heat, and backlist gems starring a handful of my favorite reads from the past few years. The list has a quick intro listed for each book and a link to make it easy to grab your copy!
There really are a lot of hockey romance books out there – which ones did we miss on this list? Drop your favorites in the comments so I can add them to my TBR!
Last Week’s Preview
El Paso has always been more than a dot on the map—it’s a crossroads of conflict, migration, and identity. In El Paso, journalist Jazmine Ulloa traces that history through deeply reported stories and her own family ties on both sides of the Rio Grande.
This blend of memoir, journalism, and history looks at immigration, racism, and the forces shaping life along the U.S.–Mexico border. Her reporting on the aftermath of the 2019 Walmart mass shooting is especially powerful—urgent, intimate, and hard to shake. I gave this one 4.2 out of 5 stars.
At times, the many overlapping family stories were a little hard for me to follow, but the larger message is thoughtful, compelling, and absolutely worth your time—especially if you care about border history, immigration policy, or journalism that centers real people. Content notes: violence, racism, and tragedy.
Reading Challenge Prompts
I have always enjoyed light-hearted romance novels and I’m having fun with some of these subgenres. Which of our weekly prompts is your favorite type of romance literature?
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What I’m Reading
- Current print book: Mermaid in Manhattan, Jessica Gadziala
- Current audio book: Irish Fairytales and Folklore, WB Yates
- Book I’m most looking forward to: Revenge Prey, John Sandford
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