Tara’s string of bad luck has her convinced nothing good will ever happen to her again. When a hurricane hits the island, she gets stranded with the town’s sexy, new judge. Maybe her luck isn’t so bad after all... Readers who love Kennedy Ryan and Nicole Snow will love KISS OF LIFE by Louise Lennox, a forced proximity, small town romance.

Blurb

The Carolina Lowcountry is sexier, because the beautiful Kiawah Kisses rule the Sea Islands with strength, spice, and sass. This summer, each friend will reconnect with a Gullah hometown hero and learn to love again. This is Tara’s story…

When hurricane Maria hits Kiawah Island, newly divorced single mom Tara Kent braces to add another pearl, on her string of bad luck. Between an ex-husband who won’t go away, a mother acting like a child, and a stagnant career; she’s convinced nothing good will ever happen again.

But when she steps inside the courtroom of the Sea Islands’ new sexy dreadlocked motorcycle riding judge; she’s tempted to think things can change. But will they?

Judge Cameron Sinclair is new in town. When the beautiful but battered Tara sheds tears in his courtroom, he makes it his business to get her what she deserves. And when he’s stranded with her in the eye of a deadly storm, he realizes what she really deserves is love. But he isn’t the man to give it to her. Or is he?

Kiss of Life, book 2 in the Kiawah Kisses Series, is a steamy, small town, contemporary romance featuring a strong, smart heroine and the compassionate, sexy judge who redeems her heart. Download it today and get ready to fall in love with your next favorite book boyfriend.

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Excerpt:

Copyright 2021 @Louise Lennox

“All Rise! The honorable Judge Cameron Sinclair is presiding.”

I look up and every molecule in my body rises.

Fuck! 

Mr., I have an important job, is my judge? This has to be bad juju. There’s no other way to explain the coincidence. 

I cursed this man all the way out and then ruined his clothes. Now he’s going to decide whether my children and I get what we deserve? This can’t be good.

Keisha gives me a sidelong glance, but my attention is fully on the man standing behind the bench. Lately, desire is a foreign feeling. Since Jason, I largely ignore my vagina and any pleasure it may bring. But this man carries an energy that makes me want to wake my girl out of hibernation and do all the things another woman won’t do.

But I won’t.

That’s partly why I snapped on him in the coffee shop. The man is seriously fuckable. He is easily over six feet tall and the color of a cinnamon stick. His dreadlocks are pulled back into a fishtail, accented by a beard and goatee so perfect, the lines look painted on. He’s in his robes, but I can tell he is in incredible shape. His shoulders are broad, and his hands are huge-I see them from here. When he opens his mouth to speak, his deep timbre commands the room but calms my anxiety at the same time. I didn’t get those vibes at the coffee shop. There, his voice made me want to fight.

“I’ve reviewed the evidence presented in discovery, and I don’t know why we are here. Dr. Kent, since you have forgone council, I will be direct. You have the means to pay your child support but have refused to do so. However, in the spirit of fairness and the law this courtroom observes, I will allow you to speak and provide me with a reason I should grant this reduction in support.”

Jason stands and moves to the dais to speak. He’s representing himself today because he actually thinks he can-idiot. He didn’t know Keisha was in town. He looks back at his silly fiancée and winks at me before clearing his voice to speak.

I hate him. But God, how I used to love him. His very presence used to make me weak in the knees, and it poised me to do anything for a ray of his sunshine to fall my way. I thought the family we were building together was all I’d ever need in life. He was my first lover, the first man I ever called friend, and the person who made me feel needed the most. And I wanted to be needed. That all changed once he became Dr. Jason Kent.

“Your honor. This is not about my ability to pay. It is about the fairness of the judgement. Mrs. Kent has received a promotion to Vice Principal of her school. Her raise calls for a reduction in my contribution.”

This motherfucker.

The judge stares right through him before speaking.

“Do I look like a fool to you, Dr. Kent? Because I assure you, the only fool here is you.”

I snort under my breath and quickly cover my mouth. Jason holds on to the dais so tightly his knuckles bulge. He hates being talked down to. Hopefully, he knows better than to talk crazy to a judge.

“No, your honor, you are not a fool... and neither am I.”

Mr. Hot as fuck Judge crosses his arms and leans back a bit, looming over Jason. He’s making him wait. His extra theatrics are not lost upon me, and I smile to myself. The big dick energy is powerful with this one.

“Then don’t talk to me like one. We both know your ex-wife did not receive a promotion but is rather covering for her vice-principal during summer school. Her boost in pay is temporary. To be regarded as a bonus, not an increase in salary.”

Jason scoffs. “I don’t see why that matters, a raise is a raise and money is money. I am tired of Tara draining my household dry while she spends her money on whatever she wants.”

That’s it.

I won’t sit here and let him talk about me like I’m not here. Keisha tries to hold me down, but I snap to my feet and speak. “Objection your honor.”

Jason rolls his eyes, and Judge Sinclair looks into mine like he just realized who I am...and he’s pleased. I didn’t expect that. His eyes sparkle. What color are they...blue? How can a black man have such blue-green eyes? They are mesmerizing. I’m shaken out of my thoughts when his firm tone addresses me.

“Mrs. Kent, what exactly is the nature of your objection?”

Jason snickers. “Yeah, maybe you should leave the talking to your lawyer. Someone who knows what she is doing.”

“Fuck You!” The words fly from my mouth before my mind registers where we are.

Judge Sinclair bangs his gavel three times and points it at Jason. 

“You, sir, are on thin ice. One more outburst from you and I’ll hold you in contempt. Is that clear?”

Judge Sinclair cuts his eyes at me. A warning. Before turning back to Jason, expecting an answer.

Jason bites his tongue. “Yes, your honor.”

Judge Sexy... I mean Sinclair turns back to me. 

“Now Ms. Kent. You would like to address the court?”

I want to approach your bench.

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About Louise Lennox 

Contemporary romance Author Louise Lennox is a hopeful romantic writing steamy romances full of heart and healing.

A Spelman College and Georgetown University graduate, Louise provides women with diverse and meaningful representation in romance novel pages. Not seeing enough women like herself headlining positive love stories, she launched #HappyBlackRomance; a community of readers and writers committed to the creation and sharing of positive romance stories featuring Black heroines.

Louise Lennox plots highlight the joys of Black relationships across the diaspora; pushing readers from all cultural backgrounds to admire them for their strength and downright sexiness. In her novels sparks always fly; the sex amazes; and the characters always leave the world better than they found it through their love.

When she’s not writing, Louise is enjoying her work as a school leader, wife, and mother of the two cutest dragons to ever walk the earth!

To learn more about #HappyBlackRomance and to score a free book or two, check out her website www.lovelouiselennox.com.

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‘Don’t Judge’ is the fourth book in A.E. Via’s ‘Nothing Special’ series and it’s also the fourth book in the series narrated by Aiden Snow, who has once again created an incredibly enjoyable audio experience.

Having the same narrator for audio book series is without a doubt one of the things that I enjoy the most and if I’m really lucky that narrator is not only the same person…they also do an awesome job with the narration and for me, Aiden Snow has proven his ability to do this.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the best way to enjoy this series is by not expecting things to resemble the real world especially when it comes to the legal aspects of this story and having done that I can honestly say that I found this story much easier to enjoy. I’ve also accepted that there are going to be over the top names as we go along…we started with ‘God’ and now we’re adding the bounty hunter ‘Judge’ and his dog, the Great Dane…’Book’em and yes, as someone who’s old enough to remember ‘Hawaii 5-0’ every time I read ‘Book ‘em’ my brain added ‘Danno’…seriously it’s like an auto-reflex reaction…I couldn’t stop so I just kind of rolled. Let me just add I’ve read a lot of other books with strange/weird/giggle worthy names so for me this is just a bit of entertainment and really has no bearing on my rating.

So far it’s a bit of a toss up on whether I like this book or the last one better so we’re going to call it a draw. While Judge is a new character for this series, we have met Michaels in previous stories as part of God and Day’s task force. What we didn’t see was that Michaels is a man with serious anger issues…like really serious anger issues and I have to say that was a little worrisome for me because anger issues + weapons = not good…in the real world but here in God & Days world…not a problem it’s nothing that some hot, steamy, hard and fast sex won’t fix…and thankfully Judge is just the man for the task. This probably wouldn’t have worked for me at all…except we also get moments of Michaels and Judge interacting and getting to know each other as people in a work environment, as individuals and yes…in the bedroom…just like a relationship in the real world…well sort of.

Just like in previous stories these men are larger than life with personalities that are for want of a better term…blown out of proportion and I may not want this…well, actually I know I don’t want this in every story but sometimes it’s fun and entertaining to read/listen to a story where the real world is only a vague role model…a starting point if you will for what happens on the pages of the story and not something that’s reflective of what’s outside our front door or how we wish the world worked…just some entertaining fun something to distract us from the real world for a few hours.

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An audio book of ‘Don’t Judge’ was graciously provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Late to today's party and most of my really big favorites have already made an appearance in other folks' posts, so I figured I'll just list mine and showcase at the top of my post some of the books that haven't yet been highlighted by others.  By bingo category, with suspense and mysteries together in one block and an extra block for the children's books instead:

MYSTERIES / SUSPENSE

Dorothy L. Sayers: Lord Peter Wimsey series, especially the Wimsey & Vane subseries / quartet

Arthur Conan Doyle: Sherlock Holmes series
Agatha Christie: Poirot, Miss Marple and Tommy & Tuppence series, The Witness for the Prosecution, The Mousetrap, And Then There Were None, Crooked House, Towards Zero, The Sittaford Mystery
Patricia Wentworth: Miss Silver series
Ngaio Marsh: Roderick Alleyn series
Josephine Tey: Brat Farrar, The Daughter of Time, The Franchise Affair
John Dickson Carr: The Hollow Man
Anthony Wynne: Murder of a Lady
Mavis Doriel Hay: The Santa Klaus Murder
Georgette Heyer: Envious Casca
Robert van Gulik: Judge Dee series
Georges Simenon: Maigret series
Graham Greene: The Third Man
John Mortimer: Rumpole series
Ruth Rendell: Inspector Wexford series
P.D. James: Inspector Dalgliesh series
Dennis Wheatley: Who Killed Robert Prentice?
Q. Patrick: File on Fenton and Farr
Mary Roberts Rinehart: Locked Doors
Rex Stout: Nero Wolfe series
Patricia Highsmith: The Talented Mr. Ripley
Raymond Chandler: The Big Sleep
Dashiell Hammett: The Maltese Falcon
Cornell Woolrich: Rear Window, The Bride Wore Black
James M. Cain: Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice
John Dudley Ball: In the Heat of the Night
Mario Puzo: The Godfather
Neil Simon, H.R.F. Keating: Murder by Death

SUPERNATURAL (FANTASY, SCIENCE FICTION), DYSTOPIA
William Shakespeare: The Tempest
J.R.R. Tolkien: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings
C.S. Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia
Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451
Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale
George Orwell: 1984
Aldous Huxley: Brave New World
Philip K. Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Sheri S. Tepper: The True Game
Alfred Lord Tennyson: The Lady of Shalott

GOTHIC & HORROR
William Shakespeare: Macbeth
Jane Austen: Northanger Abbey
Charlotte Brontë: Jane Eyre
Anne Brontë: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Daphne Du Maurier: Rebecca
Christina Rossetti: Goblin Market
Charles Dickens: Bleak House, A Christmas Carol, The Signalman
Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Canterville Ghost
Wilkie Collins: The Moonstone
Theodor Storm: Der Schimmelreiter (The Dykemaster)
Edith Wharton: Ghost Stories
Edgar Allan Poe: The Cask of Amontillado, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Raven, The Mask of the Red Death
Bram Stoker: Dracula
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
Robert Louis Stevenson: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Henry James: The Turn of the Screw
Shirley Jackson: The Lottery, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

CHILDREN'S BOOKS
Otfried Preußler: The Little Witch, The Little Ghost
Robert Arthur, et al.: The Three Investigators series
T.H. White: The Sword in the Stone
Wilhelm Hauff: Fairy Tales

In this book, Judge Dee handles three cases. In the first, two traveling silk merchants stay at a hostel and are later found murdered. The hostel owner is accused of robbing and killing them, although it's immediately clear to Judge Dee that there's more to the case than that. In the second, Judge Dee listens to an old woman's story about her son's death and her daughter-in-law's strange behavior in the period since then. He immediately suspects that the son was poisoned and that his wife had something to do with it. But can he get her to confess? The third case involves a beautiful young bride who may have been poisoned by a jealous scholar.

Although van Gulik explained in his notes that, contrary to modern Western mystery readers' expectations, Judge Dee would be handling these cases simultaneously, I didn't initially understand what that meant. I figured that it would be like mystery novels where one mystery takes precedence but little ones crop up in the middle for a bit of variety. Or perhaps it would be more like a short story anthology, with each story stitched together with transitional scenes in which criminals were punished or Judge Dee got caught up on his paperwork.

Instead, Judge Dee went hunting for clues/information about the double murder and accidentally stumbled across another mystery. He couldn't just ignore it, so he started investigating that one too. And, although a single symbolism-filled dream gave Judge Dee hints for all three cases, none of the cases were related in any way. It was definitely different from what I'm used to in my mystery reading, but not in a bad way.

All right, backing up a bit: I originally bought this during a used book shopping trip because I remembered watching and enjoying Detective Dee and the Phantom Flame. It was way more action-packed than this book, and I don't recall the movie's Detective Dee ever torturing anyone the way Judge Dee did, but I might have blocked that out. Still, despite the differences, I'm glad the movie got me to try this book.

While I probably would have found the mysteries interesting without van Gulik's notes, there are several aspects of the book that likely would have taken me aback without the context that he provided. The torture, for one thing, as well as the way some of the final sentencing was carried out. There was also a bit of an edutainment factor - van Gulik's analysis of the legal aspects of the book was fascinating, and I'm looking forward to eventually reading the original Judge Dee books he wrote after translating this book.

I was somewhat worried that this would be a dry read, but thankfully that turned out not to be the case, and van Gulik's notes added another level to my enjoyment. Although this can't quite be read with the same expectations one might have for a modern Western mystery - it was a shock when, before even seeing the crime scene, Judge Dee had a warden beaten for the way he'd handled the investigation's initial steps, and I winced at the part where Judge Dee decided to forgo an autopsy on a poisoning victim because the victim's family was so scholarly and respectable - it wasn't as far outside modern mystery expectations as I thought it might be. There were even a few nice humorous bits here and there (or at least humorous to me). I got a kick out of the false name Judge Dee chose for himself at one point in the story, as well as Ma Joong (one of Judge Dee's lieutenants) excitement at getting to play the part of a thief.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

I'm still going over the translator's notes, but I'm finished with all the rest of it.

I doubt I'd have picked this book up if I hadn't seen one of the Judge/Detective Dee movies (Detective Dee and the Phantom Flame - lots of fun). It turned out to be really good, although there were way more torture scenes than I expected. The preface does warn readers about that, though.

I'd like to read Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee novels at some point. I loved all the information and details he included in his notes in this book.