In honor of the utterly wonderful Hard Times by Cara McKenna and its steamy love letters and texts, the last list of this week goes out to all those sensual notes and other ways the word makes us falls in love in Romance Novels and outside of them. 

 

You may think the love letter faded away with the typewriter and the inkwell but it has just morphed.  And when you get an actual letter it is even sweeter. 

 

Should I tell in you in my freshman year of college that the computer lab tutor and I use to exchange flirty words on the closed server of the writing center? Until we got caught by my professor...awkward. 

 

Should I tell you of the sweet and very naught notes, my husband use to leave under the windshield wiper of my beat up 69 VW Bug in the parking lot of  my work when we were dating? 

 

He always writes for my beloved in the books gives me.

 

And now that we have with a little pitcher with big ears, texting while in the same room is its own kind of date night. 

 

He is smart. The Wordcat likes words. 

 

I bet you do too! 

 

Here are some of my favorite Contemporary Romances where falling in love happens (at least a little bit) in text...

 

In no particular order...

 

1. Hard Time by Cara McKenna

2. Three Little Words by Susan Mallery

3. Geek with the Cat Tattoo by Theresa Weir

4. The Story Guy by Mary Ann Rivers 

5. Neanderthal Seeks Human by Penny Reid

6. Letters to Kelly by Suzanne Brockmann

7. Wait for You by J, Lynn

8. At Last by Billy London 

9. Inside Out by Lauren Dane 

10. Attachments: A Novel by Rainbow Rowell

 

Here are some Contemporary Romances with this theme I have yet to read but want to!

 

1. Accidental Texting by Kimberly Montague 

2. Dear John... by Lyn Ellis

3. Goodnight Tweetheart by Teresa  Medeiros

4. Undeclared by Jen Frederick

5. Letters From Home by Jo Barrett

6. Maverick's Black Cat by Maggie Casper

7. Reckless by Skye Jordan

8. Letters from Home by Rhonda Nelson

9. Kiss Me, Kate by Mari Carr

10. Male Call by Denise A. Agnew 

 

Do you have a favorite I missed? Let me know!

 

To vote for the best of the best, go to the Goodreads list: Love Text: Best Contemporary Romance with Love Notes. 

 

 

Look for Best Historical Romances with love letters next week! 

 

A cute little short story. Still don't know why Noelle had to come home, but she's home for the holidays and needs money. Her best friend's family owns a bar, but Casey's brother, Cash, won't give Noelle a job. He'll give her an orgasm (which is confusing since they had nothing before), but not a job. So Noelle gets a job with a charity to get donations... and is ringing the bell directly across from the bar, which Cash lives above. And her outfit drives Cash crazy until he makes her cover up. They have this strange push-and-pull between them... well mainly on Cash's end. Noelle has always crushed on Cash, but since he's 10 years older and the same age as his sister, Noelle has always been off the menu. But she's not letting him get away with any shit this time. She plays him pretty well! And it works out for them.

Now, this is a really short story. Of course... it's a Quickie. So the declaration of love and marriage proposal after I think three days (maybe four?) was quite abrupt. Sweet, but unrealistic. Still, a bit steamy and enjoyable.

I'm always leery of buying these little Quickies because they are so scattershot in terms of quality. Sometimes you get a great short story and sometimes, as is the case with Maggie Casper's Christmas Cash, you get a dud. I picked this one up as a freebie, and a so happy I did. The Plot: Noelle (see the Christmas theme here?) has moved back home to Chaos, Texas and needs a job. Cash, her best friend's older brother (his whole family has C-names, and I didn't bother to learn any of the rest of them as it got very confusing in only 54 pages) refuses to let her work at his bar (or whatever the place is; it's never actually defined exactly), so she starts off as a bell-ringer dressed as a sexy Mrs. Santa across from where he lives and works.Which is strange, because the Salvation Army bell ringers here are all volunteer. Are they NOT in Texas?At any rate, she continues to annoy him, he continues to ramp up his handsy moves -- because he just can't resist her, you know -- and she finally takes a job at a Hooters-like bar that's competition for whatever his family-owned business is.Well, he can't have that. So he has to sex her up properly. And because this is labeled BDSM, he spanks her. To be honest, in this current culture, a simple spanking is a little tame to be labeled as BDSM in my book, but to each their own. Keeping in mind that this is a 54-page short story that begins with Cash turning her down for a job and a ramping up of their sexual escapades, how would you expect this to end? Yes, folks, that's right. WITH A PROPOSALOnce I scraped my exploded head off the walls, I gave it two stars for the promised sex, zero stars for plot and character, and called it a day. It was a decent freebie if you are just looking for some sex scenes, but I would have been disappointed had I paid for it; there wasn't really much story to it at all.

Well this one was interesting. Short and to the point. Not enough time to get emotionally invested in the characters, but I kinda would have liked to. If you're in the mood for something that won't take a lot of time to read and gets straight to the point, this one will probably fill the bill. I picked this one up as a freebie from Amazon on August 21, 2012 and read it as part of the Why Buy the Cow? Reading Challenge.

Huh. So, while I didn't exactly understand the relationship between Cain and Noelle (I usually like a little more back story), it was still a pleasant way to spend the evening. And no review would be complete without my saying: the sex was nice.Christmas Cash was a free Kindle book I downloaded from Amazon on 8/31/2012 for the Why Buy the Cow? reading challenge.