Cuba Undercover by Linda Bond

Blurb:

His revenge will change her life forever...

Cuban-American TV reporter Rebecca Menendez's success comes from playing by the rules. When she's kidnapped by a fierce and intensely handsome man who needs her help. However, all of those rules seem pointless. Nothing could have prepared her for being taken hostage...or the irresistible reward if she complies: information about her long-thought-dead father.

Antonio Vega has spent almost every day of his adult life dreaming of revenging his father's death. With his sister's life and freedom in jeopardy, Antonio isn't taking any chances. But once Rebecca and Antonio are in Cuba, they're immersed in a world of corruption, deceit, and betrayal. It's a deadly game...and there are no rules.

Review by Rochelle:

According to her biography, Linda Bond is an Emmy-winning journalist. She’s able to draw on her work experiences when she creates her characters, and has even reported from Cuba. That’s where she met her husband and adopted one of her sons. So when she describes the view of the Havana skyline from the wall of the Castillo De Los Tres Reyes Del Morro or Morrow Castle, or the feel of balancing on that wall, it’s from being there. She has seen the poverty of that island country firsthand, and felt the struggle of its people for a better life.

In addition to putting you there as though you’re seeing it through her cameraman’s lens, Ms. Bond takes you on a nail-biting ride across the Florida Straight, through the Cuban jungle, and into the heart of Havana. And along the way, you meet and fall in love with the people. You feel the hunger, the poverty, and the heartbreak of broken families. I once went an entire school year in which I only got to spend five minutes with my children. I spoke to them weekly on the phone, but it was one of the worst years of my life. I can’t imagine going ten years without seeing them. I think I’d die. Yet so many Cuban families are broken with no hope of ever again seeing their loved ones, because that trip can be fatal, and it’s one way only.

Oh, yeah—Cuba Undercover has a hot hero and plenty of sexual tension as well. You’ll devour it, and want more from this journalist-turned-novelist. I can’t wait to see what awards Ms. Bond wins in this phase of her career.

Length:  221 Pages

Digital Price:  $3.99

Buy Link:  http://www.amazon.com/Cuba-Undercover-Entangled-Select-Suspense-ebook/dp/B00ZOIDG2W/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1435947819&sr=1-1&keywords=cuba+undercover

Thanks for visiting. Julie, Donna, & Rochelle

Still Yellowblown™ Away! Rhyolite Drifts: Yellowblown™, Book Two by J. Hughey

Blurb:

Abandoned by Hotness.

Held hostage by the Yellowstone eruption, I’m stuck at home instead of loving life at college.

Sanity is restored when my college roommate arrives, but I’m still trapped in my hometown with a bunch of people just trying to survive. Some of them are surprisingly interesting, like the HAM radio opera singer lady. Or the pop star who crushes on me while waiting for an air filter for his tour bus.

Unfortunately there’s also my roommate’s gangster little brother who pushes Grandma to her conservative edge, and the local entrepreneurs determined to capitalize on hard times. They tick me off.

Despite all this I’m determined to find a path to the fabled land of Adulthood even if my heart is broken and all the roads are ash covered.

And where the heck did that Nebraskan cattle rancher go, anyway?

Review by Rochelle Weber:

Violet Perch is bereft with the loss of Boone Ramer, aka Hotness, when her college roommate, Mia Carbone straggles up in the drive with her kid brother, Tony. Mia and her grandmother hoped that by getting Tony out of Camden, New Jersey, they could get him away from the punks and hoodlums with whom he was running, but I could have told them from sad experience that a geographic change is not a cure. Tony refuses to help around the house and soon finds his own kind of “friends” to hang with in town. Mia tries to control him, but the damage was done long before she came home from college.

One would think Violet would perk up when a rock star asks her to accompany him back to Miami where the sun still shines, fruit still grows, and people still laze on a beach that is not yet ash-covered, but she just can’t quite accept. His kisses don’t quite make her spine tingle. He’s hot, but he’s not Hotness. Not that she’s heard from “The Nebraskan” since he left or even ever expects to.

Meanwhile, she survives. She helps her family survive. She puts one foot in front of the other, delivering the rural mail via bicycle, shooting and skinning squirrels and rabbits, trying to learn to shoot deer, trying to help her family fend off entrepreneurs who want to turn the family’s free spring water into a business, even if it means evicting them from land they’ve lived on for almost two centuries, showing a heck of a lot more courage and guts than I fear I’d have in similar circumstances.

Even though Rhyolite Drifts picks up exactly where Eruption left off, each book stands well on its own. Again, I had real problems putting the book down, and the only reason it took a couple of days to read it is that I was trying to finish the Marketing for Romance Writers Newsletter, and get caught up with some editing before helping a friend move downstate from the Chicago area. As it was, I read until 4 a.m. one night when I had an 8 a.m. appointment that morning.

The Yellowblown™ books tend to stay with me. Ms. Hughey knows whereof she speaks, as the Yellowstone caldera is a good ten thousand years overdue to blow. I was telling a friend about these books. He said while he was up there last year part of the park was closed, because the ground was so hot the asphalt was melting on the roads. Furthermore, Ms. Hughey is a literate writer. Her dialog could be a smidge looser, but I do love an author who learned grammar and spelling somewhere along the way and uses it in her writing. Brava, Ms. Hughey. I can’t wait for Coldera, but I suspect I shall be bereft knowing the series is finished.

Length:  321 Pages

Digital Price:  $0.99

Buy Link:  http://www.amazon.com/Rhyolite-Drifts-YellowblownTM-Book-2-ebook/dp/B00VGOQ9VS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1430757416&sr=8-1&keywords=rhyolite+drifts+hughey

Thanks for visiting. Rose, Julie, Donna, & Rochelle