I’m running out of time to do the content for this week, which means I might not have a post for the rest of the week, but I will try my best. I seem to be unable to get a break health-wise. On the bright side, I have been finishing a novel/novella a day, which is better than I thought I would do even if they weren’t on my current TBR. Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Artsy Reader Girl, who has a new weekly topic.
July 29: Beach/Beachy Reads (Share books you’d take to the beach OR books that take place at the beach.)
Goodreads Blurb:
Between dusty shelves of vintage mysteries and rare limited editions, Helga Henderson finds more than she bargained for.
Helga Henderson thought, as the new owner of Between the Lines bookstore, her biggest challenge would be living up to her grandmother’s legacy. Seeing it as the perfect opportunity to establish herself in the small Michigan town, she agrees to host Birchwood Bay’s Annual Literary Festival.
But then the notoriously unpleasant festival director turns up dead in her Rare Books Room. Even worse, he was poisoned by a plant growing in Helga’s own garden!
Now with her store shuttered as a crime scene and suspicion falling on her, Helga’s fresh start is turning into a nightmare.
With the help of her oddball animal companions—her dog Watson, her cat Dickens, Poe the crow—and one disarmingly helpful Coast Guard officer, Helga starts looking for her own answers to clear her name. As she digs deeper, she discovers that nearly everyone in town had a reason to want Preston gone.
Someone killed to silence him. And if Helga can’t turn the page on this mystery fast, her new beginning may be the end of the story.
Goodreads Blurb:
Historian Nora Sullivan arrives at the Women’s Festival on Lesvos to present her research on Sappho, never expecting to uncover a decades-old secret romance within the walls of her guesthouse. As she discovers passionate love letters from the 1950s between Melina, a married Greek woman, and Marcella, an Athenian artist, Nora finds herself increasingly drawn to Daphne, the guarded local historian who seems strangely connected to the story.
Together, they piece together a remarkable tale of forbidden love that persisted across continents and decades despite impossible odds. But as they unearth buried tokens and hidden paintings, Nora and Daphne discover more than just historical artifacts—they find themselves writing the beginning of their own love story.
Set against the sun-drenched backdrop of a Greek island steeped in sapphic history, The Lost Love Letter weaves together past and present, showing how love leaves traces that endure beyond separation, beyond hiding, beyond time itself.
Goodreads Blurb:
Former NYPD detective turned photographer Val Monroe arrives in sultry New Orleans to investigate insurance fraud at a historic jazz club, but finds herself drawn into a web of family secrets, cultural conspiracy, and dangerous desire. When priceless vintage instruments disappear from the Preservation Society, Val must choose between professional distance and personal truth—especially when the club’s enigmatic owner, Celeste Boudreaux, awakens feelings she’s spent three years running from. As corrupt cops and greedy collectors close in, Val discovers that some stories can only be told by living them, and some truths are worth risking everything to protect. In a city where music is resistance and love is revolution, two women must decide what’s worth preserving—and what’s worth fighting for.
Goodreads Blurb:
Guarded Hearts is a poignant tale of love, resilience, and courage set in a world where every heartbeat feels like an act of defiance.
Minjae, the son of South Korea’s powerful Prime Minister, has spent his life under the watchful eye of Jihoon—a bodyguard handpicked and adopted to shield him from a world brimming with danger and secrets. Together since childhood, their bond is undeniable, but forbidden.
When their love blossoms amidst the political turmoil of a nation on edge, they must fight not only for each other but for the right to choose their own destiny. Betrayal, sacrifice, and the weight of family expectations threaten to tear them apart. Yet in the shadows of power and corruption, Minjae and Jihoon learn that true strength comes from standing together, even when the world stands against them.
Guarded Hearts is a heart-wrenching, triumphant journey of two souls who refuse to be defined by fear—proving that love can shatter even the strongest chains.
Goodreads Blurb:
In the soft-lit hum of a small English town in the late 1970s, where polyester reigns and repression hangs thick in the air, two girls find each other across the shelves of a struggling record shop. Nora Whitman is the sensible bookish, buttoned-up, and quietly counting the days until she can leave suburbia behind. Charlie Green is all chaos and a sharp-tongued ABBA devotee with a talent for zine-making, a rainbow collection of band tees, and an unshakable belief that disco can save your life.
When a fumbled ABBA lyric and a shared enemy in the town’s resident moral crusader spark an unlikely friendship, Vinyl Haven becomes their refuge, equal parts glitter bunker and cultural rebellion. Amid dodgy electrics, clandestine mixtapes, and one increasingly flamboyant co-worker named Elliot, Charlie and Nora transform their corner of the world into something loud, defiant, and defiantly them.
From school hall disasters and post-punk dance parties to late-night zine printing and one ill-advised glitter cannon, their connection deepens, funny, fumbling, and achingly real. But with family expectations tightening and old secrets rising like needle scratches on a favourite record, love might not be enough to keep the beat going. As Pride comes to their sleepy village and a long-forgotten kiss comes back in a letter from Paris, Charlie and Nora must decide whether their duet was just a one-hit wonder… or the start of something legendary.
With a cast of queer misfits, well-meaning chaos goblins, and a local scandal or five, Vinyl ABBA’s Last Dance is a love letter to secret crushes, chosen family, and the glittery resistance of queer joy in quiet places. Spanning 1978 to 1983, this is a story of zines and slow dances, of first love in all its awkward magic, and of the songs that say what we can’t.
Goodreads Blurb:
When freelance photographer Val Monroe gets trapped in a Vermont blizzard while chasing a climate change story, she never expects to find herself performing emergency surgery on a wounded dog—or falling for the enigmatic veterinarian who saves him. Dr. Sarah Bennett has been hiding in rural Millbrook since her partner’s death, using her work to numb the guilt that follows her everywhere. But as the storm forces these two guarded women together, they discover that sometimes the most dangerous thing you can do is let yourself care about someone who might actually stay. A tender, atmospheric romance about finding home in unexpected places and learning that healing happens not in isolation, but in the brave act of letting someone else help carry the weight.
Goodreads Blutb:
When skeptical therapist Dr. Sarah Kim manifests “clear communication and a logical partner” during Mercury retrograde, the universe delivers the opposite—total communication chaos and Cosmic, an astrophysicist who makes beautiful sense of beautiful confusion. Between autocorrect disasters, accidental coffee dates, and a government research grant investigating whether astrology is just psychology in cosmic packaging, Sarah discovers that sometimes the best relationships begin when you can’t say what you mean but somehow understand each other perfectly.
Goodreads Blurb:
To Be With Her is a 7-poem chapbook that blurs the line between love and longing, memory and mystery.
A lonely man begins meeting a strange girl by the pond each night. She speaks with an old-fashioned accent, wears faded clothes from another era, and appears only after sundown. Her name is Nuray.
As their bond deepens, he begins to why can no one else see her? Why does she disappear without a sound? Is she a ghost?
Goodreads Blurb:
Marcus arrives at Aurora Grove Queer Co-op with three months, one deadline, and zero tolerance for chaos. What he finds is August—a free-spirited gardener who talks to tomatoes, builds art from bicycle parts, and believes the most beautiful things grow wild.
One stolen kiss in a midnight pond. One summer of learning that love, like gardens, can’t be controlled—only tended. One choice between the safety of plans and the terrifying beauty of growing something real.
Can a man who lives by schedules fall for someone who plants by moonlight? In a season where everything blooms, Marcus must will he harvest what they’ve planted together, or let love wither when summer ends?
Goodreads Blurb:
When skeptical engineer Alex Murphy’s perfectly ordered world collides with mystical cruise director Luna Hartwell’s cosmic chaos, sparks fly higher than the Northern Lights. Can a woman who believes in electromagnetic fields learn to trust in magic? Can a woman who reads tarot cards convince a scientist that love is the most powerful force in the universe? Aboard the lesbian cruise ship Sappho’s Dream, opposites don’t just attract—they create miracles that defy the laws of physics and prove that some equations balance perfectly when you stop trying to solve them and start living them instead.
Goodreads Blurb:
Can a dog have a bad hair day?
Brooke Palmer owns Pawlish, an exclusive doggie spa and grooming business in upper Manhattan, but when a client’s champion poodle gets a bad poodle cut and has to undergo therapy to recover, the client sues. The lawyer they send is drop dead gorgeous, but Brooke won’t be wooed by a corporate shark in a sharp suit.
Corporate lawyer Drew Hudson has better things to do then take on this ridiculous lawsuit, but since he works for the client’s husband, he has no choice. After meeting the beautiful, sweet-tempered owner, he can’t keep his mind on the silly case. But when the client turns up dog gone dead, Brooke may be a conflict of interest when she’s charged with the murder. All Drew wants to do is prove that this sexy entrepreneur is not dangerous, except to his heart.
Can she take a chance on him?
Alex
Mybookworld24 
Vinyl Vows looks interesting.
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