Set abroad
Jen’s 2024 Diversify Your Romance Challenge
These three books represent my To Be Toured list as well as my To Be Read. I’ve been to Ireland but am always ready to go back. South Africa and New Zealand are on my bucket list. I tried to find not only stories set in these faraway (from me!) places, but also by romance novelists from there.
Week 8: Set in a country other than the US
South Africa
The Best Next Thing by Natasha Anders, narrated by Janina Edwards
After years of torment and pain, Charity Cole has found refuge within the confines of the isolated house where she lives and works. Safe from the weight of her past, Charity can finally breathe again, but her sanctuary is invaded when her billionaire boss shows up unannounced.
Miles Hollingsworth is a stone-cold workaholic. His life revolves around his company until a health scare forces him to take time off. He heads to is holiday home expecting solitude, instead he finds himself seeing his housekeeper, Charity, in a whole new light.
Cut off by violent winter storms and trapped alone in the huge house, Miles and Charity are forced to spend time together, and the attraction that sparks between them burns fiercely. He steals behind her carefully constructed walls, and she shows her boss there is more to life than bottom lines.
With so much at stake for both of them, can Miles and Charity resist, or will they give in to the fire threatening to consume them?
Ireland
The Rebound by Catherine Walsh, narrated by Niamh Watson
It’s seven a.m. on a Monday morning, and Abby Reynolds isn’t where she wants to be. She wants to be in her beautiful loft apartment in Manhattan, drinking a coffee with her fiancé.
Instead, she’s heading back to her childhood home in rural Ireland - the place she swore she’d never return to, with some big, old secrets. Namely, that she’s suddenly found herself unemployed, homeless, and absolutely 100 percent single.
She’s feeling all out of luck. Until the first person she meets after she touches down is an absurdly hot guy called Luke who offers her a lift home. Gazing deep into his sparkling emerald green eyes, Abby knows instantly that he’s exactly what she needs to take her mind off everything. The perfect rebound.
It’s a flawless plan. Until the next day, when Abby realizes who he actually is. Not just a stranger. He is, in fact, Luke Bailey, a.k.a. the boy next door. Luke Bailey who - so help her God - she’s pretty sure she once shared baths with, back when they were kids. Not that she can allow herself to imagine him in a bath now, not without blushing from head to foot.
And judging by the smirk on his face, the same Luke Bailey who’s known exactly who she was the whole time.... And who, like everyone in the village, still thinks she’s a high-flying New Yorker who’s getting married next year.
Abby is certain that getting under Luke will help her get over her ex. But the truth is stopping her. Can she admit to everyone back home that she’s single and has lost everything? Because if she wants the boy next door, she may just have to....
New Zealand
Melting into You (Stewart Island Series Book 2) by Tracey Alvarez, narrated by Amy Soakes
Big, sexy men who don’t relate well to kids need not apply....
Ben Harland is, by his own admission, a bit of a grouch. He doesn’t do soppy chick flicks or cozy home and family. He sure doesn’t need any more drama in his world. But life has a way of biting him in the ass. Cue insta-daddyhood to an eight-year-old girl who lands on his doorstep and an out-of-control attraction to Stewart Island's hot school teacher.
Kezia Murphy plays her widow card well. When you don’t trust people not to let you down, you don’t get involved. Though Ben makes her skin sizzle just by looking at him, he’s counting the days until he’s once again a single man. But no matter how much Kezia yearns for his touch, and her daughter Zoe longs for a daddy, can Ben ever be the right man for the job?
What romance novels set abroad have you loved? I especially would love recommendations from people who don’t live where I live (USA).
