Huge Deal is a sweet and sexy romance, and is just a lot of fun to read. I have a soft spot for stories of unrequited love turned hot romance, and this story just hit a lot of my marks. Kate is the somewhat mousy assistant to three high powered Wall Street financiers. She had long harboured a crush on one of her bosses, Kennedy, until she overhears him one day make a pact with the other two bankers to never date her. Worse, she also overhears him say that she isn’t even attractive enough to date anyway. Kennedy has indeed never considered Kate a romantic option — or at least has never admitted the possibility to himself — until he sees his brother flirting with her at a wedding and is overcome by jealousy he has no right to feel. Suddenly, he realizes he may be attracted to her after all, but that he may have blown his chances with her long ago without even realizing how.

I absolutely loved this book. I love that Kate is somewhat plain rather than gorgeous-but-doesn’t-realize-it, and that her decision to fall out of love with Kennedy is based on a really relatable and low-key kind of experience. Kennedy can be a bit of an ass, but I fell hard for his super serious demeanour. I also love how even though he’s the less charming brother, he’s also the one who truly goes all in and for the long haul once he makes the decision to love someone. I love that all the players in the love triangle were so respectful of each other, and of the friendships / brotherly bonds beyond the romance.

The main tension between the leads comes from their differing ideas on love. Kate is a staunch romantic who strongly believes in love at first sight, and Kennedy is much more pragmatic who sees love in terms of contracts and rational decisions. I love how this tension was eventually resolved, and how Kennedy discovers his passionate side without ever compromising on the serious and measured parts of his character.

The chemistry between Kate and Kennedy is fantastic. I love the super nerdy flirting over chess, of all things, and I also really enjoyed the more low-key moments of connection, like sharing a meal at the office when only both of them are around. The warm friendships with other characters (presumably from previous books in the series) added texture to Kate and Kennedy’s world, and it’s a circle of friends I definitely enjoyed spending time with.

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Thank you to Thomas Allen for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Cowboy Rebel was sweet, but a bit slow. It’s about Nikki, a nurse who’s long held a torch for Tag, the bad boy brother of her best friend. She’s denied her feelings for years in order to focus on her career and on caring for her difficult mother, but an emergency room visit deepens her friendship with Tag, and makes her realize that he may be serious about leaving his bad boy behaviour behind.

I liked Nikki from Cowboy Brave and am glad to get her story. Her relationship with her mother added some interesting depth to her character, but I kinda wished I understood the mother’s condition a bit more. She was super bitchy and demanding, which was explained as a psychological condition, but I’m not sure what.

Tag’s rebel status seemed more due to his past than anything truly rebellious in his present. So even though it’s called ‘Cowboy Rebel’, this is not at all a bad boy hero. Rather, Tag is a super sweet and caring man, easy to fall in love with and in line with the story’s overall heartwarming vibe, but given the title, I was hoping for a tad more heat.

Also, on a personal note, I’m not keen on guns and it kinda turned me off to see Nikki and other characters talking so casually about how if only Nikki had had her pistol with her, a bad guy would already be dead.

The kidnapping subplot left me meh — though I like that Nikki wasn’t a helpless victim at all, I mostly just wanted to get back to the romance. It possibly fell flat because it was introduced so early on in the story, and seemed a bit too dramatic a development for that part of the story.

The bonus novella at the end was sweet and cute.

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Thank you to Forever Romance for an egalley of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The stories in Catherine Torres’ Mariposa Gang and Other Stories are wistful, and also rather sad. They are about Filipinos whose dreams don’t quite work out the way they intended.

At her best, Torres’ stories leave the reader feeling totally gutted yet not completely sure we know why. Her writing is subtle and restrained, peppered with casually mentioned imagery that evokes a depth and complexity of emotions just beyond our grasp. Take for example the title story “Mariposa Gang,” about a man in Bilibid Prison who joins a volunteer team to capture exotic butterflies for scientific study. One of his fellow prisoners ends up accidentally crushing a butterfly, and other prisoners find butterflies that aren’t actually rare and must therefore be discarded. We later learn the man’s backstory, how he worked on a ship and learned that his daughter had died while he was away. The circumstances of the daughter’s death, and the fallout from the event, are both realistic and tragic. The symbolism of butterflies and its connection to the man and his daughter are hardly obscure, but the image of the crushed wings and the discarded bodies resonate long after the story ends.

Another favourite story for me is “The Bag Lady,” which isn’t quite as heavy on symbolism, but is masterful in its handling of intense emotions. The eponymous Bag Lady is Alice, a former saleswoman with dreams of marrying rich, who ends up marrying a man who’d duped her about the level of his wealth. She ends up working as a domestic helper in Singapore, where she rummages through trash bins for discarded treasures and keeps them stored in her room. What happens to her collection, and later on to her marriage, is heart wrenching yet written with little overt emotion. The result leaves us wanting more — not so much in terms of exposition, but more so in terms of justice and some form of happiness for Alice’s future.

Some stories fell flat for me. Sometimes, it was because it was a tad too obvious, like “Blown Glass”, about a domestic helper and her employer’s Murano vase. The symbolism there was so heavy handed it just left me cold. Other times, I just didn’t connect with the characters nor care about their stories. This was true for “The Sema”, about a love triangle that features a unique ice cream flavour, and “Man of the Cloth”, about a man who becomes a priest. And still other times, I was pretty invested in the story, but the end left me confused about what the point of it all was. This was particularly true for “Mannequins”, about a roommate situation that veered somewhat into gritty crime fiction near the end.

Still, these are minor hiccups in an altogether strong collection. As an immigrant myself, I related hard to “Hibernation”, about an old professor who was abroad during the EDSA Revolution and is compelled to return home for EDSA Dos. And after so many tales of broken dreams, “Cafe Masala” was a wonderful relief. It’s a heartwarming and hopeful story about a woman who dreams of opening a cafe, and the ways in which her relationships with her mother and with her husband help her take a step closer towards this dream. I love the lighthearted banter between husband and wife, and the love they clearly share even when they go through communication snags.

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Thank you to the author for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.