Mists of the Serengeti by Leylah Attar

Where are all of my Contemporary Romance readers?!

 

Have I got a book for you!

 

Rodel Emerson is looking for a place to call home. After a nomadic upbringing with her parents and sister, she yearns for roots and a place to plant them. Unlike her fun loving, free-spirited sister Mo, she is content with her position as a teacher and quiet afternoons spent reading in her library.

Jack Warden is as rugged and wild as the Tanzanian coffee farm where he grew up. A single father, he spends his days tending to the needs of his farm and doting on his daughter Lily who is the light of his life. Lily embodies everything free spirited and wonderful for Jack – sunshine, rainbows and yellow balloons, and together they live a happy existence on the farm.

When a bomb explodes in an attack at a local mall, Lily and Mo are caught in the blast, their lives abruptly taken from those they love, lost amidst the rubble and wreckage of the explosion.

Rodel comes to Tanzania to retrieve Mo’s belongings and finds that her sister’s time in Africa was spent helping children in danger find safe harbor – her mission only half complete. Rodel takes it upon herself to finish the work Mo started, and goes in search of a Tanzanian coffee farmer named Jack to help her. Bound by tragic circumstances, Jack and Rodel begin a journey to bring the children on Mo’s list to safety, and find their lives inextricably tangled in ways they never thought possible.

Mists of the Serengeti is a lush, evocative journey through the African plains. This book is beautifully written, emotional and stirring. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel; I found the setting to be unique and the characters well developed. The plot of the story falls a little flat for me – but this is not a plot book, it is a love story about grief, loss and finding purpose and new beginnings through tragedy. There are weak parts in the book where I feel like the author got a little caught up in the burning romance, but the final pages of this book are spectacular and soul crushing – I loved it.

Because I read and review a wide variety of books and genres and write for a broad audience, I feel a little compelled to let you know that while this book is categorized as part women’s contemporary fiction, part romance, it is largely a romance. If you are a reader who is sensitive to intimate love scenes, I would not recommend this book for you.
Just saying…

BUT - If you’re a fan of women’s contemporary/contemporary romance and are looking for a fabulous story with all the steamy, swoony scenes – you will not be disappointed.

You may even feel a little like Cher here...

Enjoy!! 

Buy Mists of the Serengeti

Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Book Review: It Ends With Us, Colleen Hoover

Title: It Ends With Us, Colleen Hoover

Print Length: 384 pages

Publisher: Atria Books (August 2, 2016)

Publication Date: August 2, 2016

Rating: 4 Stars

M Y  T A K E

Have you ever read a book that just wrecks you?
I did over the weekend and it's called It Ends With Us.

Collen Hoover has been on of my favorite contemporary female authors for quite a while. I love her books, Hopeless, Slammed, and Point of Retreat. She's the kind of author that writes steamy romance scenes, and troubled characters with emotional, heart rendering storylines. It Ends With Us is no different. It wouldn't be honest of me to say that every single part of this book is wonderful. There are some flaws and there were things that bothered me. I'm not bothered by romantic/racy scenes as long as they're well executed - for me a lot of the these types of exchanges between the characters were abrupt and hardly believable but there is an audience for this type of writing and for those people who are into it - you'll love this. That aside I absolutely loved this book for the true purpose of it - which was to explore the inner workings of abusive relationships and what it does to those who are involved. If you can get past the sexiness of this book - there's a real story to be told here and for that I loved this book and gave it a four star rating. I don't want to talk too much about the plot of this novel, I think that it's better if the reader goes in to it blind and just reads the book. It's what I did - and I am so happy that I didn't read any reviews of this novel before I read it.

But for those of you who need a synopsis this is the one I pulled from Barnes & Noble's website: