Episode 10-08: A book about a forbidden romance - Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange

Welcome to Reading With Libraries!

Thank you for joining us again on our book group and Reader’s advisory podcast!

We are here to talk about books and share library ideas!

This season we are exploring all new ideas for books and book suggestions, so you can expand your reading horizons, and share more information with your library community. We are looking at prompts from the 2023 PopSugar reading challenge this season. You can read along with their challenge, linked in our show notes, or just enjoy some different books.

This week will be filled with drama, intrigue, hijinks, and of course romance! So basically yes: it will be the best week for finding all kinds of good books to read! You know that Ariel is our romance expert, and we can all count on her to share some great book ideas and insights.

Check out our show notes page for links to our beverages, our resources, and the books we share today.

Beverages:

This is, of course, a book group. And every book group needs to have beverages, so

you really get the feel for your reading!

From the website adultbar.com.au, we look at the article Five Forbidden Cocktails for some ideas we can enjoy.

Forbidden Snifter Cocktail

Forbidden Fruit Cocktail

Genre Discussion:

Forbidden love – it can make the actual falling in love so much more emotional and so much more dramatic that it would be otherwise. Whether it is parents, or schools, or jobs, or organizations, or religions, or other issues keeping the potential lovers apart – reading through the process of the love development is a little extra intense and romantic.

Of course the classic story here is Romeo and Juliet, but we can do better now than some confused teenagers who could have made better choices. This genre is filled with all kinds of stories of different people, different rules, and the pull of their romance despite it all.

Suggested Reading Resources:

Our Book Discussion

We have our beverages, we are familiar with this week’s genre, let’s get to the book discussion! We will give you a list of all the books we share today. You can click on any of these links to go to Amazon.com for more information.

Destined: A Forbidden Standalone Romance, by Susana Mohel

My brother’s ex-girlfriend is off-limits.

She’s forbidden.

She’s a temptress with a killer set of legs.

Destinee’s here, starting a new life in a city where I’m the king.

I made billions, and now I make the rules. And rule number one is I need to make sure my feelings for her stay hidden.

She needs a friendly hand. I need to keep away.

But one taste of those sweet lips, and I’ll fight like hell to lay the world at her feet. Temptation leads to sin… and sin leads the path down to Hades.

But how could I resist? She’s gorgeous.

She’s fierce.

And I’m going to help her shine.

My brother made a mistake. He let her go.

I won’t make the same one.

It’s destined.

Priest: A Love Story, by Sierra Simone

There are many rules a priest can’t break. A priest cannot marry. A priest cannot abandon his flock. A priest cannot forsake his God.

I’ve always been good at following rules.

Until she came. Then I learned new rules.

My name is Tyler Anselm Bell. I’m 29 years old. Six months ago I broke my vow of celibacy on the altar of my own church, and God help me, I would do it again. I am a priest, and this is my confession.

Priest is a full-length stand-alone with an HEA. For mature audiences only.

Red, White & Royal Blue, by Casey McQuiston

What happens when America’s First Son falls in love with the Prince of Wales?

When his mother became President, Alex Claremont-Diaz was promptly cast as the American equivalent of a young royal. Handsome, charismatic, genius―his image is pure millennial-marketing gold for the White House. There’s only one problem: Alex has a beef with the actual prince, Henry, across the pond. And when the tabloids get hold of a photo involving an Alex-Henry altercation, U.S./British relations take a turn for the worse.

Heads of family, state, and other handlers devise a plan for damage control: staging a truce between the two rivals. What at first begins as a fake, Instragramable friendship grows deeper, and more dangerous, than either Alex or Henry could have imagined. Soon Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret romance with a surprisingly unstuffy Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations and begs the question: Can love save the world after all? Where do we find the courage, and the power, to be the people we are meant to be? And how can we learn to let our true colors shine through? Casey McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue proves: true love isn’t always diplomatic.

Your Dad Will Do (A Touch of Taboo), by Katee Robert

I’ve been harboring a dark secret for two long years. I’ve been fantasizing about my fiancé’s father, thinking filthy thoughts that a good daughter-in-law should not be indulging in. So when I catch my fiancé cheating on me, there’s only one revenge that will fulfill all my needs.

I’m going to seduce his father. It’s dirty and it’s wrong, and I don’t care. I want him, so I mean to have him.

After this weekend, my ex won’t be the only one who calls his father Daddy.

Charm Offensive, by Alison Cochrun

Dev Deshpande has always believed in fairy tales. So it’s no wonder then that he’s spent his career crafting them on the long-running reality dating show Ever After. As the most successful producer in the franchise’s history, Dev always scripts the perfect love story for his contestants, even as his own love life crashes and burns. But then the show casts disgraced tech wunderkind Charlie Winshaw as its star.

Charlie is far from the romantic Prince Charming Ever After expects. He doesn’t believe in true love, and only agreed to the show as a last-ditch effort to rehabilitate his image. In front of the cameras, he’s a stiff, anxious mess with no idea how to date twenty women on national television. Behind the scenes, he’s cold, awkward, and emotionally closed-off.

As Dev fights to get Charlie to connect with the contestants on a whirlwind, worldwide tour, they begin to open up to each other, and Charlie realizes he has better chemistry with Dev than with any of his female co-stars. But even reality TV has a script, and in order to find happily ever after, they’ll have to reconsider whose love story gets told.

An Ember in the Ashes

One of Time Magazine’s 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time

One of Time Magazine’s 100 Best YA Books of All Time

Instant New York Times bestseller

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Sabaa Tahir

Amazon’s Best Young Adult Book of 2015

People’s Choice Award winner – Favorite Fantasy

Bustle’s Best Young Adult Book of 2015

Laia is a slave. Elias is a soldier. Neither is free.

Under the Martial Empire, defiance is met with death. Those who do not vow their blood and bodies to the Emperor risk the execution of their loved ones and the destruction of all they hold dear.

It is in this brutal world, inspired by ancient Rome, that Laia lives with her grandparents and older brother. The family ekes out an existence in the Empire’s impoverished backstreets. They do not challenge the Empire. They’ve seen what happens to those who do.

But when Laia’s brother is arrested for treason, Laia is forced to make a decision. In exchange for help from rebels who promise to rescue her brother, she will risk her life to spy for them from within the Empire’s greatest military academy.

There, Laia meets Elias, the school’s finest soldier—and secretly, its most unwilling. Elias wants only to be free of the tyranny he’s being trained to enforce. He and Laia will soon realize that their destinies are intertwined—and that their choices will change the fate of the Empire itself.

An Enchantment Of Ravens, by Margaret Rogerson

Isobel is an artistic prodigy with a dangerous set of clients: the sinister fair folk, immortal creatures who cannot bake bread or put a pen to paper without crumbling to dust. They crave human Craft with a terrible thirst, and Isobel’s paintings are highly prized. But when she receives her first royal patron—Rook, the autumn prince—she makes a terrible mistake. She paints mortal sorrow in his eyes—a weakness that could cost him his life.

Furious, Rook spirits her away to his kingdom to stand trial for her crime. But something is seriously wrong in his world, and they are attacked from every side. With Isobel and Rook depending on each other for survival, their alliance blossoms into trust, then love—and that love violates the fair folks’ ruthless laws. Now both of their lives are forfeit, unless Isobel can use her skill as an artist to fight the fairy courts. Because secretly, her Craft represents a threat the fair folk have never faced in all the millennia of their unchanging lives: for the first time, her portraits have the power to make them feel.

Red, White & Royal Blue, by Casey McQuiston

What happens when America’s First Son falls in love with the Prince of Wales?

Conclusion:

Thank you so much for joining us on Reading With Libraries! Join us next Thursday with another topic or genre and many more books to share and discuss. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you don’t miss a single episode!

And if you want to hear more about the work we do in libraries or expand your library skills, check out our podcast Linking Our Libraries! Right now that is dropping short episodes with a few book suggestions; so subscribe to get that every Tuesday.

Bring your book ideas, bring your beverages, and join us back here on Thursday!

Beverages:

Genre Discussion:

Our Book Discussion

Conclusion:

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