Christina Berry

"Hearts on fire" is a short, sweet small-town romance that will melt your heart (quite literally).

It's a romantic story between a woman, who returned to her roots, and a firefighter, who doesn't have any. And even though their start is not the nicest, the end is, for sure, the happiest.

I enjoyed the story; the writing was lovely, and the characters were quite likable. I feel guilty, but I really found Chloe quite irritable, and she was definitely not the best heroine, but Drew was a sweetheart and stole my heart.

The fact that there were cats in the story gave it an additional star, especially since the MMC was the cat person (and not the FMC, as it is popular in the genre).

The spice was hot, but I thought a bit more wouldn't be that bad. However, the main characters had chemistry, and I loved their scenes together.

So if anyone is looking for a short, spicy, and well-written small-town romance, I'd definitely recommend this one.… (meer)

The Road Home is the second novel in the Lost in Austin series by Christina Berry.

Content Note: rape (mentioned), miscarriage (mentioned)

Plot:
Jake has always been a ladies’ man, never the type to settle with anyone. It fits his lifestyle as the singer of a rock band, and it fits him, personally. But when his best friend Ari gets into an accident and ends up in the hospital, Jake is jolted from his non-committed life and has to confront the time another accident took his home away from him. Is it any wonder that he tries to find a bit of a distraction with Nicole, aka Arson Nic, abrasive roller derby queen? Before Jake can really decide whether Nicole is more than a distraction, he gets the once in a lifetime chance to go on tour, though – and that tour not only makes him think long and hard about where his home is, but also brings him to the Cherokee reservation where he grew up.

I was very pleasantly surprised by Up for Air, the first novel in the series, so I was really looking forward to The Road Home – and I was not disappointed. It’s a thoughtful book that lets Jake grow beautifully, and it’s also a sweet romance that I very much enjoyed.

Read more on my blog: https://kalafudra.com/2021/10/05/the-road-home-christina-berry/… (meer)

I was given this book via LibraryThing giveaways in exchange for the honest review.

I would say 3,5 stars from me. It has mainly to do with my taste in books and kind of different expectations... Why do I mean by this?

Well, first good half of the book rotates a lot about sex, like truly a lot - details of the scenes and all that, to a point you would expect sex scene on every other page. I do get it that it is part of the story, says a lot about the main character and his life, etc etc. Yet, far too much for me - duh, spicy it up with other character traits, will you?
And exactly that is exactly what happens in the middle of the book, which I think, is the very best part of it. This personal drama, where character's past catches up with him, mixes up with the present, where the other sides of the person becames visible, more of his background and so on. I truly wanted this to last longer but it didn't.
I'm not going to write anymore spoilers I'll just say, that it ends up very much fairy tale like. So so very sweet. Tooth achingly sweet. I mean, a lot people like it, so whom am I to judge?
All this aside, the book is written well, is engaging and easy to read, so I swallowed it really quickly. It is quite good for a light read.… (meer)

Up For Air is the first novel in the Lost in Austin series by Christina Berry.

Plot:
Ari met Greg and Jake when they were just teenagers. Jake became her best friend, and Greg her husband soon after. Ari has left a very shelterd life that way for 12 years, but a funeral causes her to take stock of her life, and the bottom line is that Ari isn’t happy anymore. She feels limited and suffocated by her lack of experiences. So she asks Greg whether they could open their marriage to try new things. To her surprise, Greg agrees and their decision pushes them both on new paths. But where those paths lead, they could not have foreseen.

Up For Air is a really good read with nice characters and a good understanding of what its story is actually writing about. There were a couple of moments where I wanted to get my own editing pen out, to polish things a little more, but other than that, I really enjoyed it.

Read more on my blog: https://kalafudra.com/2021/05/09/up-for-air-christina-berry/… (meer)