Spotlight: Claiming Carlos by Rachelle Ayala

Book #2 of Sanchez Sisters Series

Choco Sanchez is stuck in a rut. She's never hit a softball and has been friends forever with Carlos Lopez, the head cook at her family's Filipino restaurant. When flashy restaurant consultant Johnny Dee hits her with a pitch, she falls head over heels and gets a makeover.

Carlos Lopez is not about to lose one for the home team. Johnny launches a full scale change on the menu, and Carlos sends him straight into the dumpster. Claiming Choco's heart proves more difficult. But never underestimate a man who can cook hot, spicy, and steamy, and we ain't talking just food.



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Love to Hate Miranda

“Stop.” Miranda waves a spatula and blocks our way. “No members of the wait staff allowed in the kitchen.”

“I need another order of vegan spring rolls. No meat!” Sarah yells.

“She stole my gluten-free bangus.” Susie pushes her way past Miranda, who bounces against the door to the cold room, opening it.

“Out, out of the kitchen.” Miranda sticks a finger in Susie’s chest. Big mistake.

Susie’s nostrils flare and her piercings dance. “Out of my way.”

With a hefty push, she shoves Miranda who stumbles back into the cold room. Her arms windmilling, she falls in between the sides of raw pork belly hanging up to dry.

“Ai ya!” Miranda slaps at the pork bellies and pulls on a trussed whole duck for balance, right when a wooden tray of balut, fertilized duck eggs with the intact embryo, falls and splatters over her. The slime and partially formed embryos ooze down her hair and face.

Everyone except Johnny bursts out laughing. I whip out my cell phone and snap as many pictures as I can before Johnny blocks my view to help his mother.

Out of nowhere, Carlos appears, and he gives Johnny a kick on the back of his tight leopard printed butt, sending him sprawling against the skewered suckling pigs. They tumble like dominoes, knocking Johnny on top of his balut-covered mother.

Carlos picks up a tray of the Vietnamese style transparently wrapped no-fry spring rolls and flings the contents into the cold room all over Johnny and Miranda. “Vegan spring rolls is off the menu.”

About the Author

Rachelle Ayala is a bestselling Asian American author of dramatic romantic suspense and humorous, sexy contemporary romances. Her heroines are feisty and her heroes hot. She writes emotionally challenging stories but believes in the power of love and hope.

Rachelle is the founder of an online writing group, Romance in a Month, an active member of the California Writer's Club, Fremont Chapter, and a volunteer for the World Literary Cafe. She is a very happy woman and lives in California with her husband. She has won awards in multicultural and historical romance

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Suspicion by Joseph Finder

Blurb: Single father Danny Goodman would do anything — anything — to protect his teenaged daughter, Abby, from more unhappiness after her mother’s death. Struggling to keep her at the private school she loves, he accepts a favor from an unexpected benefactor: Thomas Galvin, father of Abby’s best friend and one of the wealthiest men in Boston. Galvin offers Danny a loan that would be enough to pay Abby’s tuition and relieve some of Danny’s other financial pressures, and Danny can’t help but be charmed by Galvin’s generosity and kindness.

Danny’s new friend, however, turns out to have some dangerous enemies — including some Federal investigators who think Danny’s in a perfect position to collect evidence against Galvin. The moment Galvin’s loan hits Danny’s account, Danny finds himself trapped into a dangerous undercover assignment that will put both his life and his daughter’s at risk. Danny tells one lie after another to hide more and more secrets, weaving a net that will ultimately require a desperate plan of action.

Review: I received the book from the publisher for review.

Not having read Joseph Finder before, I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. I was surprised - in a good way. What drew me to the book (aside from a good storyline) is that it had quite a few twists and turns throughout. I also found myself liking the characters - all of them to a greater or lesser degree. Dan Goodman and Tom Galvin especially.

Aside from the above, what I really liked about the book were the themes that I found when reading it - family, the ties that bind, what we do for those we love, things not always being what they seemed, and trying to do what is right.

Enjoyable read and I look forward to reading more of Mr. Finder's works.

(Cover image and blurb (c)Joseph Finder)

Phantom Instinct by Meg Gardiner

Blurb: When your own eyes betray you, who can you trust?

At the door, the harsh-eyed man and woman surveyed the room in slow tandem, like twin Terminators. Drew leaned on the bar, rattling the ice in his glass. Harper took the Cuervo Gold from the shelf. The first sound was a muffled pop. The man and woman with the gunslinger eyes turned toward the high roller’s booth. Harper’s skin prickled. A second report hammered beneath the drumbeat. It was unmistakable, a noise she knew from the firing range and a thousand TV shows, a sound it seemed she had been expecting all her life: gunfire.

In Edgar Award-winning author Meg Gardiner’s new stand-alone thriller, an injured cop and an ex-thief hunt down a killer nobody else believes exists.

When shots ring out in a crowded L.A. club, bartender Harper Flynn watches helplessly as her boyfriend, Drew, is gunned down in the crossfire. Then somebody throws a Molotov cocktail and the club is quickly engulfed in flames. L.A. Sheriff’s detective Aiden Garrison sees a gunman in a hoodie and gas mask taking aim at Harper, but before he can help her, a wall collapses, bringing the building down and badly injuring him.

A year later, Harper is trying to rebuild her life. She has quit her job and gone back to college. Meanwhile, the investigation into the shootout has been closed. The two gunmen were killed when the building collapsed.

Certain that a third gunman escaped and is targeting the survivors, Harper enlists the help of Aiden Garrison, the only person willing to listen. But the traumatic brain injury he suffered has cut his career short and left him with Fregoli Syndrome, a rare type of face blindness that causes the delusion that random people are actually a single person changing disguises.

As Harper and Aiden delve into the case, Harper realizes that her presence during the attack was no coincidence—and that her only ally is unstable, mistrustful of her, and seeing the same enemy everywhere he looks.

Review: I looked forward to reading this book (received from publisher for review) as I liked the premise and I had read about Ms. Gardiner before, but had not yet read any of her books.

I enjoyed reading Phantom Instinct very much. It was fast paced, great characters, enough twists and turns to satisfy my reading tastes, and a good plot.

I liked seeing how the characters grew and changed as the story unfolded. I liked seeing how each character dealt with the different issues that cropped up. The themes were something else I enjoyed - who to trust, who to turn to, how far to go, instinct - good or bad.

Great read and I look forward to reading more of Ms. Gardiner's books.

(Cover image and blurb (c)Meg Gardiner)