Recently divorced Tina Durham is trying to be self-sufficient, but her personal-training career is floundering, her closest friends are swept up in new relationships, and her washing machine has just flooded her kitchen. It’s enough to make a girl cry.
Instead, she calls a plumbing service, and Joanne “Joe Mama” Delario comes to the rescue. Joe is sweet, funny, and good at fixing things. She also sees something special in Tina and invites her to try out for the roller derby team she coaches.

Derby offers Tina an outlet for her frustrations, a chance to excel, and the female friendships she’s never had before. And as Tina starts to thrive at derby, the tension between her and Joe cranks up. Despite their player/coach relationship, they give in to their mutual attraction. Sex in secret is hot, but Tina can’t help but want more.

With work still on the rocks and her relationship in the closet, Tina is forced to reevaluate her life. Can she be content with a secret lover? Or with being dependent on someone else again? It’s time for Tina to tackle her fears, both on and off the track.

Review

Eddie Russell is many things: A wealthy pillar of the community. An outrageous flirt. A doting best friend. A masochist with a kink for brawling with his bedmates. But he is definitely not a man who invites intimacy. His friends are close but few, his lovers rarer still.

When Eddie runs his Mercedes off the road on a hot July afternoon, Wish Carver comes to his aid—and leaves his number in Eddie’s phone. Wish, a road crew worker half Eddie’s age and sexy as sin, seems fascinated by Eddie’s different sides. Mutual attraction and compatible kinks ignite the sheets, but it’s their connection outside the bedroom that Eddie begins to crave.

When the two come down on opposite sides of a local issue, Eddie finds his growing feelings for Wish at odds with his business interests and his devotion to his best friend, local wakeboarding legend Ben Warren. Torn between old loyalties and his new love, Eddie is reluctant to make a choice. But he knows he can’t make Wish wait too long to make up his mind.

Review

Vanessa North writes with wonderful depth and phrasing. 

Both Eddie and Wish are really vibrant characters. We met Eddie in the first book in the series and as his relationship with his best friend Ben is pivotal to the conflict in this book, I think it is best read after the first book but not completely necessary. 

Eddie is a force and it turns out Wish is his own steady strength. Wish is much younger than Eddie but issues of class as Eddie comes from old money bother him a bit more and the age bothers Eddie.

Eddie has never had a relationship and it shows. He needs to learn to shift his understanding but he does so and you will really trust in the HEA, 

The book explores a kink that is the SM in BDSM. It could be too much for some readers but the sexual dynamic arises from the characters of our heroes and is such and embraced part of who they are that it really works.

I liked Eddie and wish so so much.

When Trulane stepped off the bus landing smack dab in the middle of a small mountain town with no prospects or no money, she does what anyone would—finds a job and a place to sleep that won’t cost her any money. The only thing is that there is no such thing as being secretive in Estill County Kentucky—not when you’re about the only black person in the entire town.

With no knowledge that she is about to cross the only person in town that doesn’t gossip about her, True hopes that Clay, the big grumpy and very sexy mountain man won’t turn out like so many others that treat her as if she is beneath them.
True’s Love is a short romance from award winning author Pepper Pace and brings the readers back to the little town That Lt. Christopher Jameson aka Beast is from. If you like the stories about Estill County and its lively inhabitants than be sure to read A Wrong Turn Toward’s love and Beast.

Review

This is just the sweet romance about two working class people. Well, except for the klans men running around, the homelessness...

The heroine and the hero really fall in like and then love with each other. Very tender.

Of all the art forms, I like to watch glass artists create the most. The heat, the liquid nothingness, the color, and fragile strength stun me every time. 

Here is to the Glass Artists of Romance: glassworkers, glass blowers, stain glass artists, and glass painters from every subgenre. 

1.  Edge of Dawn by Patti O'Shea

Glass artist Shona Blackwood has lost her ability to create, but instead of panic, all she feels is apathy. Her detachment is shaken when she narrowly avoids being mugged, thanks to a timely rescue by a man who makes all her senses come roaring to life.

Logan Andrews is a magical troubleshooter assigned to protect Shona from an unseen enemy. Shona is unaware that magic actually exists and Logan is under orders not to tell her, but it isn't long before he finds his loyalty torn between his people and the passionate woman he is guarding.

He thought this would be a straightforward job, but Logan quickly realizes that in an edgy contest between magic and passion, love is destined to win.

2. Rainshadow Road by Lisa Kleypas

Lucy Marinn is a glass artist living in mystical, beautiful, Friday Harbor, Washington.  She is stunned and blindsided by the most bitter kind of betrayal:  her fiancé Kevin has left her.  His new lover is Lucy’s own sister.   Lucy's bitterness over being dumped is multiplied by the fact that she has constantly made the wrong choices in her romantic life.   Facing the severe disapproval of Lucy's parents, Kevin asks his friend Sam Nolan, a local vineyard owner on San Juan Island, to "romance" Lucy and hopefully loosen her up and get her over her anger. Complications ensue when Sam and Lucy begin to fall in love, Kevin has second thoughts, and Lucy discovers that the new relationship in her life began under false pretenses. Questions about love, loyalty, old patterns, mistakes, and new beginnings are explored as Lucy learns that some things in life—even after being broken—can be made into something new and beautiful.

3. The Glass-Blowers by Daphne du Maurier

The world of the glass-blowers has its own traditions, it's own language - and its own rules. 'If you marry into glass' Pierre Labbe warns his daughter, 'you will say goodbye to everything familiar, and enter a closed world'. But crashing into this world comes the violence and terror of the French Revolution, against which the family struggles to survive.

Years later, Sophie Duval reveals to her long-lost nephew the tragic story of a family of master craftsmen in eighteenth-century France. Drawing on her own family's tale of tradition and sorrow, Daphne du Maurier weaves an unforgettable saga of beauty, war, and family.

4. Beautiful Stranger by Ruth Wind

Raised in a gilded cage, she was the chubby twin sister no one noticed. Now her weight loss made Marissa Pierce the kind of woman every man desired—including Robert Martinez. If only she had the courage to return his seductive gaze…

A proud Native American, Robert resented Marissa's privileged lifestyle. Yet this elegant stranger understood his wounded heart. Now Robert was determined to show her how truly beautiful she was—before the princess could escape to her ivory tower forever.

5. Storm Glass by Maria V. Snyder

As a glassmaker and a magician-in-training, Opal Cowan understands trial by fire. Someone has sabotaged the Stormdancer clan's glass orbs, killing their most powerful magicians. The Stormdancers—particularly the mysterious and mercurial Kade—require Opal's unique talents to prevent it from happening again. But when the mission goes awry, Opal must tap into a new kind of magic. Yet the further she delves into the intrigue behind the glass and magic, the more distorted things appear. With lives hanging in the balance—including her own—Opal must control her powers…powers that could lead to disaster beyond anything she's ever known.

6. And the Bride Wore Plaid by Karen Hawkins

Devon St John has never had a problem in his life—until now. Born to wealth and privilege, surrounded by a warm and loving family, he has pursued a life of leisure, chasing the most beautiful women London has to offer. All told, he has the perfect life and no intentions of ever settling down in any shape, form or fashion. So resolved, he heads to his friend’s Scottish castle, unaware that fate is already hard at work.

As the illegitimate half-sister to Viscount Strathmore, Melody Macdonald refuses to reside under his roof and instead lives in a thatched house on the edge of the forest that borders Strathmore Castle. Ever since she ran off at the tender age of twelve to become an apprentice to a master of stained glass, Melody has been deplorably independent and wild. When Devon arrives at Strathmore Castle, he is taken aback by the rude, overbearing, illegitimate Scotswoman who refuses even to pretend to possess any feminine wiles. But Devon is determined to teach the strong-willed Melody a lesson in love ...

7. Tiffany Girl by Deeanne Gist

As preparations for the 1893 World’s Fair set Chicago and the nation on fire, Louis Tiffany—heir to the exclusive Fifth Avenue jewelry empire—seizes the opportunity to unveil his state-of-the-art, stained glass, mosaic chapel, the likes of which the world has never seen.

But when Louis’s dream is threatened by a glassworkers’ strike months before the Fair opens, he turns to an unforeseen source for help: the female students at the Art Students League of New York. Eager for adventure, the young women pick up their skirts, move to boarding houses, take up steel cutters, and assume new identities as the “Tiffany Girls.”

8. Dreamweaver Trail by Emily March

After another lonely Valentine’s Day, Gabi Romano trades mountain snowfall for sunshine and sand at a luxurious Caribbean getaway. There she finds not one but two thrilling new passions: creating art glass, and Flynn Brogan, the sexy caretaker next door who brings her fantasies to life. But when violence interrupts their romantic interlude, she learns that Flynn is living a lie. Heartsick, she decides to concentrate on her craft. Playing with fire is safer than loving a man like Flynn.
 
Flynn is determined to make things right with Gabi—until his enemies interfere. Now damaged and driven by a need he cannot define, he seeks out Gabi’s Colorado community as a mystery man searching for peace, though not expecting redemption. But he never imagined a place like Eternity Springs, where lives are changed, second chances are given, and the possibility exists for two wounded souls to find their way home . . . to each other. 
 

9. The Glassblower of Murano by Marina Fiorato

Venice, 1681. Glassblowing is the lifeblood of the Republic, and Venetian mirrors are more precious than gold. Jealously guarded by the murderous Council of Ten, the glassblowers of Murano are virtually imprisoned on their island in the lagoon. But the greatest of the artists, Corradino Manin, sells his methods and his soul to the Sun King, Louis XIV of France, to protect his secret daughter. In the present day his descendant, Leonora Manin, leaves an unhappy life in London to begin a new one as a glassblower in Venice. As she finds new life and love in her adoptive city, her fate becomes inextricably linked with that of her ancestor and the treacherous secrets of his life begin to come to light.

10. Bedeviled by Maureen Child

Never again will Maggie Donovan complain that her life is boring. "Boring" sounds pretty good compared to man-eating demons, an ill-tempered pixie, and a way-too-sexy Fae warrior who insists that Maggie is destined to claim the throne - or die trying. One breath of faery dust, and suddenly Maggie's dealing with Otherworld powers she never wanted. and very earthy feelings for a certain immortal.

Do you have a favorite glass artist in Romance? Let me know!

To vote for the best of the best, go to my Goodreads list: Blow: Glassworkers in Romance.