Loving the Earl by Sharon Cullen

After the death of her physically and emotionally abusive husband, Claire Hartford is ready for an adventure. She is headed to Italy to find herself an Italian lover.  Trying to get out from under the careful watch of her brother, she schedules her departure on a ship not in his fleet. Unfortunately for her, Claire's brother has found out and instead of stopping her, he has sent his best friend to keep an eye on her.

Nathan Ferguson will do anything for his best friend, even watch over his wayward sister. He manages to tag along with Claire without her knowing that he is keeping an eye out for her.

Because of one mishap after another, Nathan and Claire end up traveling to Italy together.  Nathan is after some answers to his father's death and that brings some trouble to their door.

Of course during their journey, they start to feel an attraction to each other.  Claire gets her lover, but he is not Italian. Will she seek out another when they reach their destination? How will Claire feel when she finds out that Nathan was looking out for her at the request of her brother?

Mistletoe and Magic by Katie Rose

Mistletoe and Magic by Katie Rose.

This is book 2.5 in the Appleton Sisters series and a novella.

Penelope Appleton knows who the love of her life is suppose to be. She comes from a family that made a living of spiritualism seances, but unknown to her family Penelope really can see into the future. She has seen the man whom she will marry.

Unfortunately, when they finally connect, Penelope has a vision of his death. She gets away as fast as she can. She can't get involved with a man, just to have her heart broken when he dies.

Jared Marton can't believe that he has finally found the woman he wants to settle down with and she doesn't want anything to do with him.  He knows that she felt the same attraction that he did, but she is doing everything in her power to keep them apart.

Fortunately for Jared, Penelope's family is on his side and does everything they can to help him out.

I really wanted to like this story, but the writing was just off to me.  I liked the premise of the story, but found myself not liking Penelope.  Jared was also hard to like as he instantly fell in love with Penelope and claimed that it wasn't her looks that did it.  Maybe it was the length of the story that that made it a little "cheesy" to me. Possibly with a longer story, the author would have been able to add some "meat" to it. Since I liked the theme of the story, I will probably check out the other two books in the series and see if a full length novel is any better.

You can find this book at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Thanks go to NetGalley and Loveswept for a copy of the book for an honest review.