Why I feature #ChocLitSaturdays (book reviews & guest author features)
and I feature Romance & Women’s Fiction authors during @SatBookChat:

I wanted to create a bit of a niche on Jorie Loves A Story to showcase romance fiction steeped in relationships, courtships, and the breadth of marriage enveloped by characters written honestly whose lives not only endear you to them but they nestle into your heart as their story is being read!

I am always seeking relationship-based romance which strikes a chord within my mind’s eye as well as my heart! I’m a romantic optimist, and I love curling into a romance where I can be swept inside the past, as history becomes lit alive in the fullness of the narrative and I can wander amongst the supporting cast observing the principal characters fall in love and sort out if they are a proper match for each other!

I love how an Indie Publisher like ChocLitUK is such a positive alternative for those of us who do not identify ourselves as girls and women who read ‘chick-lit’. I appreciate the stories which alight in my hands from ChocLit as much as I appreciate the inspirational romances I gravitate towards because there is a certain level of depth to both outlets in romance which encourage my spirits and gives me a beautiful story to absorb! Whilst sorting out how to promote my book reviews on behalf of ChocLit, I coined the phrase “ChocLitSaturdays”, which is a nod to the fact my ChocLit reviews & features debut on ‘a Saturday’ but further to the point that on the ‘weekend’ we want to dip into a world wholly ideal and romantic during our hours off from the work week!

Acquired Book By: I am a regular reviewer for ChocLitUK, where I hand select which books in either their backlist and/or current releases I would like to read next for my #ChocLitSaturdays blog feature. As of June 2016, I became a member of the ChocLit Stars Team in tandem with being on the Cover Reveal Team which I joined in May 2016. I reference the Stars as this is a lovely new reader contribution team of sending feedback to the publisher ahead of new book releases. As always, even if I’m involved with a publisher in this sort of fashion, each review is never influenced by that participation and will always be my honest impression as I read the story. Whether the author is one I have previously read or never had the pleasure to read until the book greets my shelf.

I received a complimentary copy of “Please Don’t Stop the Music” from ChocLit in exchange for an honest review! I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.

a bit of back-history on this sequence of roms:

I started reading the Yorkshire Romances with the sixth installment of the series: Can’t Buy Me Love as I have been wanting to start reading the stories by Ms Lovering for quite an age at that point. I felt it was a good place to start – to get familiar with her quirky humour & become acquainted with her style! I had intended to read more stories within this series and am thankful I can pick up where I left off this Spring through my readings of Hubble Bubble and Please Don’t Stop the Music.

As you’ll notice, these are all one-off stories which can be read out of sequences as it is not a series where each story conjoins into the new one – the setting is what unites the stories together, therefore, despite my preference of reading ‘series’ in order of sequence, in this particular instance I get to have the happy folly of moving in and out of the series per each story which feels it ought to be ‘read’ next vs having to stick to the order of publication!

The Yorkshire Romances in sequence:

{please note: all of these are stand-alone; only the setting unites them}

• Please Don’t Stop the Music (Synopsis)
  
• Hubble Bubble (Synopsis)
• Star Struck (Synopsis)
• How I Wonder What You Are (Synopsis)
• I Don’t Want to Talk About It (Synopsis)
• Can’t Buy Me Love (see also Review)
• The Little Teashop of Horrors (see also Cover Reveal)

To properly recap my ruminative pre-reading thoughts about the series,

kindly visit my Spotlight w/ Notes!

Why I enjoyed my readings of ‘Hubble Bubble’:

Quite immediately I was charmed by Hubble Bubble – how you can grow lost in the humour and wit of Ms Lovering whilst trying to acquaint yourself with the current cast of characters. They’re blessedly flawed, genuinely open about their character traits and otherwise, have had the pleasure of random moments bridging them all together in a way that truly does feel believable.

There are some seriously lovely comedic moments sprinkled throughout this novel – such as the moment where Megan brought her newly beloved dog (Rufus) with her to the woman’s group and scared the ever-loving minds of the cats therein something crazy! Laughs. The wit and satire is peppered round the edges of the headier subjects being explored – such as Kai’s search for identity but really what he’s keen on finding most is emotional wellness, forgiveness and a proper sense of who wants to be rather than the bloke he’s become by default. Megan by far makes me giggle – she has the most outrageous adventures and yet, she lives a rather ordinary life! She just happens to have the luck of being in the midst of a particular drama and the outcomes of such is quite hilarious!

For all the levity of this Rom Com, it is more of a dramedy due to the journals of Kai’s self-examination of his soul and his emotional health. There are a lot of darker shades of relationship issues being explored including self-projecting pessimism and the ways in which people choose to self-destruct their connections before they allow themselves the joy of living in the moment of seeing a relationship develop organically. There are moments where I truly can say the context was difficult to read – as Kai truly pushed me a bit for what can be accepted for someone whose going through as much as he is – the hardest part truly is why he allowed himself to spiral into such a state of self-hate and loathing for a mother he never knew and for circumstances he never was explained. As this personally set-up a sequence of his patterns in life which were hard to read, as on one hand you can agree his past is hard to put to rights by heart and mind but why would that kind of past lead to his other behaviour issues is harder to reconcile.

Equality in Lit:

Nicholas, Holly’s brother has special needs – yet the compassion and the protectiveness of Holly’s presence in his life is refreshing. In some ways, I think her brother gave her purpose but also, an air of distrust of men as she didn’t want to complicate her life further than it had already become by being her brother’s keeper.

Kai shows the darker side of adoption – where due to different experiences and life moments within his after adoption care in foster homes, he truly had deep seeded emotional angst to where it affected his perspective on women and life in general. He had a lot of psychological issues – all of which are openly disclosed and discussed.

Holly on the other hand is one of the rare examples of how women can purposely disconnect their emotions from their rational mind. She had a hard road due to Nicholas but it’s how she approached living outside of having a special needs sibling which truly became the backbone of the story alongside Kai’s own journey towards self-healing. The two of them had dual purposes in the story-line and thereby expanded the depth of what Ms Lovering was trying to say and accomplish by showing their sides of how toxic you can live through your relationships.

-quoted from my review of Hubble Bubble

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