3.5 stars
CBR14 Bingo: Dough (the hero is a retired hockey player who bakes and cooks the most amazing food – there is some serious food porn in this book).
Lucian “Luc” Osmond was a star hockey player with brilliant career prospects, tons of friends and teammates, not to mention a beautiful fiancee. Then one especially hard tackle has the doctors proclaim that if he continues to play, he’s likely to end up brain damaged or dead. So he has to give up the sport that has dominated his life since he was a teenager, the only thing he really considers himself any good at, and has withdrawn to stay on his grandmother’s big California estate, Rosemont. Here he isolates himself completely from his past life, interacting only with his grandmother or her self-appointed stylist (a flamboyant young man who’s basically like a brother to Luc).
Emma Maron was really enjoying her career, starring as a powerful warrior, sorceress, and princess on wildly popular fantasy show Dark Castle (think Game of Thrones). She considered many of the cast and crew her friends, and loved the opportunities the show gave her. Then, during the read-through of the show’s fourth season finale, Emma (and the rest of the cast and crew) discover that Princess Anya will be killed off, beheaded by her enemies. Suddenly without a job, and completely unable to tell anyone in the industry until after the episode has aired, Emma is bereft. Not helping matters is going home to find her football player boyfriend boinking a waitress in their living room. Jobless and suddenly single, Emma desperately needs an escape and some rest and relaxation. Her grandmother’s best friend just so happens to have a big, almost-empty estate in California which she enthusiastically invites Emma to come to visit, for as long as she wants. You see where this is going.
Full review here.