Romance Gets Real Diverse Book Club

*We moved this book back due to the holiday.*

This fortnight we're reading Fake It by Lily Seabrooke.

From the author's blurb: This is a fake-dating celebrity romance between a disillusioned TV cooking star and a bright-eyed restaurant owner who’s sure she can manifest a solution to her hard times if she believes hard enough. Features an agent named Tay who calls their brilliant ideas “inspir-Tay-tion,” plenty of descriptions of food that made me hungry while I wrote the book, and a cute bisexual trans girl who gets to fall in love.

It is available as a Kindle Unlimited ebook:https://www.amazon.com/Fake-Taste-Port-Andrea-Seabrooke-ebook/dp/B0991NNHZG

SYNOPSIS:
To spark interest in Avery’s restaurant, and to revitalize Holly’s image, a fake relationship is the answer to both their problems.

And the start of a pressing new problem: falling in love.

Avery Lindt finally opened her dream restaurant—and there’s no customers. She’s staying optimistic, though: she’s confident she can fake it till she makes it, roll with the punches, and find a way to save her luxury restaurant, Paramour.

But it gets harder when she gets restaurant mogul and star chef Mike Wallace angry, and finds herself on the other end of a campaign to shut down Paramour.

Celebrity chef Holly Mason’s show is in trouble: people are bored with her routine of helping struggling restaurants. Worse, her ex-boyfriend Mike Wallace is making backdoor deals trying to steal the starring role.

Luckily, Holly’s agent Tay has a solution: ditch her show plans for the season, throw their lot in with luxury restaurant Paramour against Mike Wallace’s racketeering operation of a restaurant partnership. The cherry on top? A fake relationship between Holly and Avery to stir up drama.

It would already be a mess if Holly and Avery weren’t already struggling to hold back their attraction for one another. Despite their promise not to date, the lines between acting and reality get awfully blurry sometimes.

CW: Open-door sex scenes that get a little bit kinky, a gross man who won’t stop calling his ex-girlfriend babe, and sapphics getting in the way of their own feelings, like they always do.

This fortnight we're reading Get It Right by Skye Kilaen.

Really appreciate the blurb already recognizing the inital power dynamics and saying the book doesn't go there. Fingers-crossed for this parolee-nurse second chance (due to changing jobs) romance. F/F, Contemporary Romance, Second Chance Romance

It is available as a Kindle Unlimited ebook: https://www.amazon.com/Get-Right-Love-Knockdown-Book-ebook/dp/B089WGW9MV/ref=sr_1_1

SYNOPSIS:
A butch lesbian parolee. The pretty pansexual nurse who got away. Is this their second chance at a happily ever after?

Finn is finally out of prison, which is great. Having no job, no car, and no place to sleep except her cousin's couch? Not so great. Plus, her felony theft conviction isn't doing wonders for her employment prospects, so she can't afford her migraine meds without the public clinic.

The last thing she ever expected was for the gal who stole her heart to come walking down that clinic's hallway: Vivi, the manicure-loving nurse who spent two years fighting the prison system to get proper medical care for her patients, including Finn.

Finn could never believe she imagined the attraction and affection between them. But acting on that in prison, especially as nurse and patient, had been a serious No Way. She's had eight months to get over Vivi, who abruptly left her job without saying goodbye. Finn is over it. Honest! It's totally and completely fine.

Except Vivi, here and now, doesn't seem fine. And Finn couldn't live with herself if she didn't try to help.

Is fate offering Finn a second chance? Or is finding love as likely as finding a job with health insurance?

A high heat F/F contemporary romance novella with a guaranteed HEA. Detailed content warnings are available in the book's front matter and on the author's website for those who need them.

CW: explicit sex; reflection on negative prison experience including: delay of medical care and observing trans inmates being housed in the wrong prison; reflection on factors that lead to people being in prison including: abuse, addiction, poverty; housing insecurity; prospect of living with homophobic parents; difficlty accessing aprescription from a gov't-funded program; chronic migraines; unintended preganancy and considering abortion and continuing the pregnancy; vomiting; former police officer; inebriated phone call; mention of character's mother dying; description of parental rejection for sexual orientation; recovery of car accident injuries; weaning of pain meds; bio-parent not being able to raise child; parent with children abandoned by spouse; abortion clinic volunteer