Top Ten Tuesday/ Next On My TBR

I’m mad at myself since I barely finished any books last week. I needed extra sleep and most of the books I picked couldn’t give much love for, outside the two I got and read straight away. Let me tell you; it was a good thing that I didn’t put a book ban on myself this year since I did get three books from a couple of series I read from already, so I’m familiar with the settings. Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by thatartsyreadergirl, which has a new weekly topic.

January 21: The Ten Most Recent Additions to My Book Collection (or to your to-read list!). I’m using this prompt as a way to pick the following reads for my TBR.

Goodreads Blurb:

The only thing she knows better than walking into a disaster is digging herself out of one.

Tess Greene knows disaster—dating disasters, computer disasters, family disasters, you name it. But just when her life is finally almost perfect, she’s targeted by an internet celebrity who runs a revenge porn site admired by douchebags across the country. She has one month before the entire world will have an up-close-and-personal view of her sexual history. Tess has always handled everything on her own, but for this disaster, she needs backup.

Max Hampshire, a brilliant hacker, is exactly the lifeline Tess needs. What she doesn’t need is Max himself. She does not need his quick wit, sexy black-framed glasses, or all-around sweetness. The last guy who helped Tess left with his life crushed and his heart broken, so she knows that staying far away from Max would be safer for everyone.

But safety isn’t really an option when dealing with sleazy predators—or love…

Goodreads Blurb:

She swims with great white sharks.
And he will film it …

“I’m going to freedive with the whites. I know you have a lot of experience filming sharks, but this will be different. You’ll likely have to leave the cage. I need to know you’re up for it.”

Dr. Grace Mann knows great white sharks. As the daughter of an obsessed shark researcher, Grace spent her childhood in the company of these elegant and massive creatures. Now, finally, she’s testing a prototype shark array that may lead to a reliable alert system for swimmers and sharks to coexist. All that stands in her way are two men—her ex, Brad Michaels, fellow shark researcher and the man trying to steal her work, and Alec Galloway, an underwater filmmaker hired to produce a documentary about Grace’s project. Grace mixed her work and love life before and it was a disaster. No matter how sexy Galloway is, she won’t make that mistake again …

Alec Galloway prides himself on being the best in the business, so he’s baffled when Dr. Mann rejects his application to capture her work on film. When her boss overrules her decision and gives Alec the job, he learns that winning over Grace won’t come easy. But Alec is accustomed to dealing with unpredictable creatures, and Grace’s passionate focus on great whites puts her in a class of danger all her own. As his fan-boy crush on the woman quickly turns into something more, his greatest competition turns out to be the sharks themselves.

Goodreads Blurb:

Asking for a friend…I captured a thief. Does that mean I get to keep him?

Lainey
My ex-fiancé was a gaslighting cheater, so I broke up with him and moved to a small mountain town for a fresh start. Now I’m working as an assistant to a professional rich woman while I launch my side business offering services for women who have been trampled on in bad breakups.

I love my new life, but everything changes when a smooth-talking charmer tries to steal my boss’s very expensive necklace. I catch him in a compromising position, but I don’t turn him in, because it turns out the necklace was already taken by someone else.

Jake claims he’s gone legit and only got pulled into this job because his brother ran into trouble with their former employer. The last thing I want to do is fall under the spell of another charming liar, but if he’s telling the truth, he needs me.

So I agree to help him, and the next thing I know, he’s watching trash TV with me when I can’t sleep, helping me deliver FU cookies for my side business, and snuggling with my cat…

He may be a former criminal, but he’s better to me than my ex ever was.

Jake
No one could accuse me of being a standup guy, but Lainey makes me want to be one. The more time I spend with this perplexing, gorgeous woman, the more I want to make her mine.

Goodreads Blurb:

Two broken hearts that never mended. An impossible favor. And a hurricane that forces us to share a bed.

I had it all – a legendary baseball career, sponsorships, all the women I could want.

But the only one I wanted was Eden Mitchell, the woman who gave me her heart years ago until I broke it.

It was only a matter of time before my house of cards came tumbling down in a public scandal that ruined my career for good.

I had no choice but to return to my hometown of Cape Sands.

Then Eden finds me, asking for my help to save her business.

I’ve never been able to deny her, especially when she begs, but it means traveling to the scene of my demise.

Hard pass.

She doesn’t know the whole truth about my downfall, and I don’t want her to know.

But when a hurricane traps us in my house, with only one bed, we can’t keep our hands off each other.

I want to win her heart again. And going back to my past is the best way to do it.

My head says hell no, but my body and heart say to make her mine forever.

Goodreads Blurb:

My life revolves around just one thing: my daughter. I don’t have the time or energy for anything else—not my foolish dream of an acting career and definitely not the annoying woman who opened a gym in the warehouse behind my garage.

Piper’s a menace to society, between her loud music, hurling weights around like a shot putter, and her building that is definitely not up to code.

Unfortunately, my kid thinks she’s the best thing since unlimited screen-time. It’s getting harder to avoid Piper when my daughter keeps going over there to ask about hair braids and sports teams.

Maybe I took things too far when I called the building inspector on Piper, but she can’t keep bringing clients into that fire hazard of a gym. And I can’t have her behind my house all the time, clad in spandex and making me think about things I have no business wishing for.

I’m done with relationships. Whatever I feel for Piper is passing. If I drive her away, I can get back to raising my daughter in peace. Anything else is just a pipe dream…

Goodreads Blurb:

She has his dead wife’s heart; the one she wants is his. The author of The Family Plot brings her signature prose to a twisty novel about a heart transplant patient who becomes romantically obsessed with her donor’s husband.

Rosie Lachlan wants nothing more than to find The One.

A year after she was dumped in her wedding dress, she’s working at her parents’ bridal salon, anxious for a happy ending that can’t come soon enough. After receiving a life-saving heart transplant, Rosie knows her health is precious and precarious. She suspects her heart donor is Daphne Thorne, the wife of local celebrity author Morgan Thorne, who she begins messaging via an anonymous service called DonorConnect, ostensibly to learn more about Daphne. But Rosie has a secret: She’s convinced that now that she has his wife’s heart, she and Morgan are meant to be together.

As she and Morgan correspond, the pretense of avoiding personal details soon disappears, even if Rosie’s keeping some cards close to her chest. But as she digs deeper into Morgan’s previous marriage, she discovers disturbing rumors about the man she’s falling for. Could Morgan have had something to do with his late wife’s death? And can Rosie’s heart sustain another break—or is she next?

Goodreads Blurb:

He can’t escape his past–or his future.

Bitter and weary, homicide detective Niall Hamarsson burns his last bridge, retreating to the only place he’s ever called home.

But murder beats him there.

Sheriff Mat Dempsey is a glass-half-full kind of guy. He returned to the island after his father drowned to take care of his mom. Life is quiet and simple, until Niall Hamarsson’s return.

Nothing about Niall Hamarsson is simple.

Maybe Niall’s childhood refuge will allow him the space to re-evaluate his future. Maybe he’ll be able to keep the kind, competent sheriff at arm’s length.

Mat needs Niall to stay away from the investigation, he doesn’t want the ex-detective muddying the waters of Hidden Harbor.

Niall’s not meddling so much as keeping his hand in. The case is a distraction from the unwanted memories that are popping up like weeds after a rainstorm.

How long will it take for the two of them to realize they work better together than apart? In more ways than one?

Goodreads Blurb:

ow long can you go learning about your body and its wants while ignoring your heart? And how do you ignore your heart while learning about your body?

Nic Quinn is tired. Tired of her family, tired of masking, and tired of Josh Henry. After successfully avoiding her childhood enemy for a decade, of course she runs into him not once, but twice when she’s at her worst. The bigger surprise is that she wants to continue seeing him.

After her own less than satisfying experiences and learning of Josh’s prowess in the bedroom, Nic realizes he can help her. Just lessons between two enemies, no risk of pesky emotions getting in the way.

Josh Henry knows that nothing lasts, and lives his life as such. But when Nic Quinn shows up on his doorstep asking him for help, Josh agrees—despite everything he’s forced himself to believe about intimacy and relationships.

The longer the lessons continue, the more Nic and Josh find themselves unwilling to admit that they’re enjoying much more than just the physical aspect of their arrangement.

The hardest thing to learn, it turns out, is that your enemy can love you exactly as you are.

Goodreads Blurb:

Brooke always dreamed big, but this is ridiculous…

FBI Agent Brooke Neal is ready to take on the world—or at least make a few arrests. Following a high profile art theft, she’s itching to travel to Oslo to chase the thieves responsible, but when her nemesis coworker steals the case out from under her, she’s stuck in DC licking her wounds.

Brooke doesn’t think it can get any worse until her boss assigns her a new training her nemesis’ young protege, Lucas Cole.

Lucas is awkward. He’s unprepared. He’s also the size of a space shuttle, which seems like an insult given Brooke isn’t even five feet tall. But like it or not, she’s stuck with him, at least until the Oslo job is over.

But like a planet with its own gravitational field, the longer Brooke spends around Lucas, the further she gets pulled in. He’s hardworking and kind—and he has abs you could grate cheese on. As Brooke sinks deeper and deeper into his well, she’s left where exactly is the line between superior and subordinate, and how bad would it be to cross it?

Goodreads Blurb:

It was supposed to be one job…

Miriam Jackson’s life is not going to plan. She dropped out of MIT, she’s flat broke, and now a Chinese bookie has her ass in a sling. So when smooth-talking grifter Diego Cabrera bails her out, her only way to pay him back is to help him with a con. Once.

But that’s before she meets Eddie Wheeler. He’s the muscle in the operation, and boy does he have plenty of it. She figures he’ll be as shallow as a puddle, but turns out he’s sweet and thoughtful and makes her laugh. So when money troubles make her approach Diego about pulling another job, she’s not too upset—as long as Eddie’s along for the ride.

But as two heists turns into three, Eddie’s evolving from a friend into something more. Miriam’s desire for him is growing, but a deep-seated fear from her past keeps holding her back. And when someone new joins the crew, every relationship is about to be turned upside down overnight.