Yes, you’ve read correctly!

Jorie Loves A Story turns eight today!!

And, yes, I’ve spent the last 8 years explaining I purposely capitalised the A!

On the 31st of March, 2013 Jorie Loves A Story was in its infancy – being tinkered with behind the scenes of the internet as I as not yet *live!* to the world (that came along lateron in August, 2013 – hence why this blog has a ‘blog birthday’ as well as a ‘blogoversary’!). In the humbled origins of Jorie Loves A Story – I had no idea what was going to come out of this project I had undertaken. I wasn’t self-hosted until 2014 and the earlier days of the blog – I was experimenting with both the style of how I wanted to blog and the ways in which I would showcase stories and authors alike. There were always reviews but its the interviews which have provided me with a hearty challenge and a bounty of unexpected joy to host.

I’ve been exploring genres of interest (both known to me and unknown), styles of literary voice as much as cross-global literary markets and the unique variants of literature as seen through both mainstream and faith-based markets of interest, too. I have tackled reading poetry and works of poetic drama which took me into a different layering of how stories can be told through prose and poetic voice. I helped develop @WyrdAndWonder which is about to celebrate its 4th Year this May, 2021 and I founded the Romance, Women’s Fiction & Feminist Fiction bookish chat @SatBookChat in 2014.

I’ve participated in bookish reading challenges, readathons and other book blogger community events throughout the years as well as #ArmchairBEA. My second favourite annual event I am always a part of in some fashion is @SciFiMonth as it co-anchours my interests as I explore Fantasy during #WyrdAndWonder.

Yet. What remains are the memories. The conversations. The characters and their stories. The settings and timescapes I’ve traversed. The people I’ve communicated with in the comments and the interviews I’ve organised to get to the heart of what inspires the creative economnist to create their style of story. There is a lot of History on Jorie Loves A Story – of a reader redefining her journey into literature and the origins of a writer moonlighting as a book blogger and finding herself wholly inspired back into her own writings. Even if her season of publishing hasn’t yet arrived – the stories she can read and digest as she articulates her reactions throughout Jorie Loves A Story has been a blissitude of its own.

Here’s to celebrating ringing in my 8th Year of blogging on Jorie Loves A Story. May the stories and the authors who write them continue to inspire this blog and the writer behind it.

Acquired Book By: I started hosting with Prism Book Tours at the end of [2017], having noticed the badge on Tressa’s blog (Wishful Endings) whilst I was visiting as we would partake in the same blog tours and/or book blogosphere memes. I had to put the memes on hold for several months (until I started to resume them (with Top Ten Tuesday) in January 2018). When I enquiried about hosting for Prism, I found I liked the niche of authors and stories they were featuring regularly. This is how I came to love discovering the Harlequin Heartwarming authors & series as much as it has been an honour to regularly request INSPY stories and authors. Whenever I host for Prism, I know I am in for an uplifting read and a journey into the stories which give me a lot of joy to find in my readerly queue of #nextreads. It is an honour to be a part of their team of book bloggers.

I received a complimentary copy of “Catching Mr Right” direct from author Carol Ross in exchange for an honest review. I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.

Why I love reading Carol Ross & Harlequin Heartwarming novelists:

→ my #TopTenTuesday where I disclosed how much I personally LOVE reading Harlequin Heartwarming novelists

→ Return of the #BlackwellBrothers of which I had an ardent & passionate attachment of

→her small towne series Seasons of Alaska which bewitched my heart & soul

I regularly express gratitude to Prism Book Tours for helping me become introduced with Harlequin Heartwarming and for inspiring me to fetch their stories regularly through inter-library loans at my local library and/or borrowing directly from a reciprocal library which has a few of their authors in their card catalogue! In future, I’ll be ‘filling in gaps’ of my personal library and in my reading queues by frequenting Thrift Books online as I found they are one of the best resources for purchasing these novels second hand which makes collecting them fit my book buying budget! On the latter note – there will be announcement in APRIL 2021.

→ my 6th Blogoversary on Jorie Loves A Story lamenting about my love for Ms Ross’s Seasons of Alaska series and now that I’ve just celebrated my 7th Blogoversary on Jorie Loves A Story 

→ my first Heartwarming #SatBookChat this Autumn, 2020 featured Claire McEwen in September, 2020 (whilst you can read why I am dearly attached inside her Heartwarming series #HeroesOfShelterCreek)

→November, 2020 showcased ALL *5* #BlackwellBrothers & #BlackwellSisters authors on @SatBookChat for a seriously EPIC #SatBookChat!!

You might have noticed these features & showcases throughout the years of Jorie Loves A Story. In truth, I have only been reading the stories by Ms Ross since [2018] – it has been such a wicked wonderful journey into her different series and seeing how she attaches us with the vision of her characters’ worlds simply by how she creates the drama behind their lives. I have felt dearly attached now to *Seasons of Alaska* as I had the pleasure of joy binge reading this series via interlibrary loan. One of these days I’m going to bring the series home to roost on my shelf in full point of pride as it has given me an infinite delight of happiness to discover, read and savour.

It is hard to capture *why!* I love Harlequin Heartwarming as much as I do except to say – if you’re seeking relationship-based Romances with a deepening centre of focus on family (biological, adopted, found, etc) and the strength of community – these are realistically told romantic dramas with a particular encaptured portrait of contemporary modern life within the backdrop of realistic characters living real lives. You can tell what inspires these stories by the authors who pen them and how much heart and soul of themselves they etch into the stories as you’re reading them. You don’t want to put these lovelies down – their #unputdownable, memorable and they knit themselves into your heart. The epitome of a #bookHUG if there ever were one to be had, too!

Whilst in regards to Ms Ross – I had the chance to speak with her shortly after her guest appearance on #SatBookChat and it was one of the most cherished convos I’ve shared because I had the chance to talk to one of the authors whose given me such a positive boost of encouragement during the months/years where life felt especially adverse and where the future was looming off in the distance with more than a shadowing of stormy weather. Her stories anchoured me in moments of where I needed a respite and a settling of mind – her characters gave me something I needed during the hours I visited with them and for that I shall remain forever grateful.

More than that even,.. Heartwarming stories give all of us singletons the hope of what tomorrow can bring when we least expect our lives to intersect with a bit of romance & the unexpected blissitudes of meeting someone who understands us without having to explain ourselves. Romance is an uplift for the heart and a pulse of inspired joy for the joy and that is why I love reading Harlequin Heartwarming stories. Their the kind of Romances I crave to read and the kind of Romances I cannot get enough of as a reader.

Catching Mr Right
Source: Author via Prism Book Tours

They can’t both win…

Can they?

Louisiana angler Victoria Thibodeaux needs the spokesperson contract with Romeo Reels to keep her business going and give her daughter a better life. But her hard-won confidence sinks to the bottom of the bayou when her rival, Alaskan fisherman Seth James, arrives. With his smooth-talking charm, handsome Seth could steal both her job and her heart, unless secrets from her past catch up with her first…

Genres: Contemporary (Modern) Fiction (post 1945), Contemporary Romance, Romance Fiction

Places to find the book:

Borrow from a Public Library

Add to LibraryThing

ISBN: 978-1335179746

Published by Harlequin Heartwarming

on 9th February, 2021

Format: Larger Print (Mass Market Paperback)

Pages: 384

Published by: Harlequin Heartwarming (@HarlequinBooks) | imprint of Harlequin

A quick recapturing of the JOY I had reading the last novel in this series:

Rankins is coming up in the world now – the hospital is fully staffed and ready for receiving patients – a feat in of itself, as most of the more remote areas of Alaska in today’s world still require the efforts of real-life Tag’s to fly you out to the nearest hospital; generally speaking, those are located in Fairbanks, Anchorage and Juneau – whilst having subscriptions to the three main air ambulances to get you evac’d is a good idea as sometimes your best bet is to get to a hospital in Canada rather than stay in Alaska depending on where you are when the emergency occurs. When Tag asks Ally to fly to either Alaska Regional or to Bartlett – you can have a better understanding where Rankins is located as Bartlett is in Juneau and Alaska Regional is in Anchorage. I’ve been trying to discern since I first began reading Seasons of Alaska where Ms Ross might pin down Rankins on a map. The problem of course is that there are 23 hours separating the two cities and a world of wilderness, small townes and cities between the two hospitals. Juneau is tucked under the Yukon and is next door to British Columbia – so I was a bit surprised Tag hadn’t mentioned going to the Yukon to reach the hospital in Whitehorse. This is what made me question if Rankins is somewhere in the more remote areas of interior Alaska outside of the cities which have hospitals and why Rankins getting their own hospital was as imperative as it was to become a more established city with self-sufficient means to help their own community.

Ross broached the option taboo topic of ageism in relationships and how old/young is too much of a chasm to bridge between two people who are falling in love? Technically speaking – I think more people ought to learn about Tony Randall’s life and realise when it comes to true love – age is never a barrier you should entertain. I personally found it a bit ironic that Tag was thinking that a woman aged 22 and a bloke aged 38 was too big of a difference in age – as realistically, he was only 16 years older than Ally. Generally, the upper limit I’ve seen is a 15 year difference but if you factor in how Ally had grown up and what she’d accomplished in her 22 years – to me she felt closer to 35, which would make plausible sense and also might have been why I observed their ease with each other was as natural as it seemed. I think maybe even Ms Ross felt that herself – as emotionally Ally was much older than her lived years.

I loved seeing this side of her writing explored – it gave a lovely tug-of-war aspect to the relationship – where you can see what conflicted Tag and how enlightened Ally truly was before Tag could wrap his head round why he was feeling any attraction at all. Men, truly! Sometimes they can be quite thick-headed about what they don’t or choose not to understand.

By the time I started to see how Iris and Flynn’s story-line was expanding and evolving to become inclusive of the entire James’ family – where updates on marriages within the series were coming back to centre focus and how the children of the series were maturing towards adulthood, my feelings for the series deepened. The continuity is brilliant and as I felt this was a duology attached to Bachelor Remedy I couldn’t be happier for how everything tied together in the end.

-quoted from my review of In the Doctor’s Arms

Season of Alaska series:

Mountains Apart (Book One)

A Case for Forgiveness (Book Two) | see also Reviews of Book One & Two

If Not for A Bee (Book Three)

A Family Like Hannah’s (Book Four) see also Reviews of Book Three & Four

Bachelor Remedy (Book Five)

In the Doctor’s Arms (Book Six) see also Reviews of Book Five & Six

Catching Mr Right (Book Seven)

Formats Available: Paperback* and Ebook

*Harlequin has the luxury of offering Regular, Large & Larger Print editions which I personally can attest are lovely to be reading! Especially after a migraine or when my eyes are fatigued.

Converse on Twitter via: #ContemporaryRomance & #HarlequinHeartwarming
as well as #SeasonsOfAlaska and #CarolRoss

Read More