In A Little Light Magic, Tory Morgan wants the family she’s never had while Nick Santagelo wants his large, chaotic family to stop driving him nuts. When Nick shows up to do renovations on Tory’s New Age tourist shop by the beach, they each know the other is the last thing they are looking for. And yet, there’s an undeniable spark. All it takes to light the fire is a little magic.

Joy Nash kindly offered me a galley of her latest book, A Little Light Magic, a while ago.  I started A Little Light Magic at bedtime and ended up reading until the wee hours of the morning and finishing it up the next day. Nash’s book delivers exactly what it promises: a light, fun read.

This was the perfect escape book for me and captures the feel of a small town. I liked the contrast between Tory’s and Nick’s pasts and views on life as well as the complications Nash threw in their way. I’d tell you more, but that would ruin the surprise.

I was a little leery of how magic was going to be addressed in this book. I prefer to have magic as a major plot element or to forgo it completely so I wasn’t sure how a book with only a little magic would work for me. As it turns out, Nash has written the story so that it is entirely up to the reader to choose whether they believe magic or serendipity is at work. When you think about it, that’s how most of us experience magic, miracles, and curses.

Joy Nash is having a little summer party on her blog this month to celebrate the coming of summer and her book release. This week she’s doing a draw for five books by various authors. Enter the draw by commenting on her blog posts this week (also there’s a recipe for corn fritters that you can have for free ).

A Little Light Magic is due out May 26th. You can find Joy Nash’s books at amazon.com, amazon.ca, and amazon.co.uk as well other online and bricks & mortar sellers.

Note: I’ll be posting a giveaway for this book later today or early tomorrow.

Vexing the Viscount by Emily Bryan is all about treasure hunting (in and out of the bedroom). Lucian Beaumont (the viscount of the title) is looking for money to fund his hunt for a Roman treasure. Conveniently, Daisy Drake has the money and the desire for both the treasure hunt and the treasure hunter. Inconveniently, Lucian Beaumont wants nothing to do with Daisy Drake–on any level. Enter infamous French courtesan Mademoiselle La Tour who is offering more than money to Beaumont. There’s just one slight complication to this love triangle: Daisy Drake and Mademoiselle La Tour are one and the same. And everything Daisy’s alter ego knows about what goes on in the bedroom she learned from a diary she found in her aunt’s library. What could possibly go wrong?

If you're curious as to what a galley looks like, here it is in all its glory (Yup, it's a stack'o'photocopied pages).

When I got the galley of Vexing the Viscount I was more than ready for a little escape and some adventure after all the non-fiction I’d been reading. I wasn’t disappointed.

Vexing the Viscount has double lives, treasure hunts, treason, betrayal, love/hate (always a fine line and the characters dance on both sides), and those pesky familial and social obligations that make life so unbearably complicated.

One thing that kept me reading past my bedtime was Bryan’s knack for snappy dialogue between her two main characters. It was fun to watch them bait each other. If you want to see what I mean, you can check out the first chapter on the author’s site (no download required). The first chapter hooked me.

Of course, there’s more to the story than the relationship between Daisy/La Tour and Lucien. The treasure hunt and its associated intrigues are well done and add to the tension between characters. One interesting touch is that the artifacts dug up during the treasure hunt are, well, depictions of erotic acts. Apparently, Roman knick knacks were a little more explicit than what we’re used to displaying in our living rooms these days (at least in the circles I travel in). It’s a small detail in the grand scheme of the book, but it makes for some interesting interactions and lets Bryan express her humour.

I started reading Vexing the Viscount late at night intending to only read the first chapter or so. I did finally get some sleep (or more accurately I fell asleep with my face in a stack of paper), but I finished reading the next day. That’s my definition of a good book. Period.

You can find Emily Bryan’s books at amazon.com, amazon.ca, and amazon.co.uk. Or you can enter to win a copy here just as soon as I get the giveaway post up (tomorrow, for sure because the drawing is on the 15th).

Note: Since I am busy writing this month, I am posting some older reviews I’ve been meaning to move to Booklorn.com.

Outlander was Diana Gabaldon‘s debut and is the beginning of the six book (so far) series detailing the lives of Claire and Jamie Fraser.

Claire is on a second honeymoon in Scotland after World War II when she steps into a Stonehenge-like ring of stones and passes out. When she awakens she finds herself watching what she thinks is a movie shoot of a historical Scottish battle. She soon realizes that, as impossible as it seems, she has actually travelled back in time several centuries, and the battle taking place in front of her is real. She spends the rest of the book trying to find her way back to her own time. Along her journey she finds herself married off to Jamie Fraser to keep her out of the hands of a particularly unsavoury ancestor of her first husband.

Gabaldon has created a rich world where certain people can travel through time with the protection of gem stones and the help of sacred sites around the world. Her writing is vivid and well-researched. Although the book is a complete story, the reader is left hungry for the next adventure in the saga—a feat she has been able to repeat in each of the next five books.