Hello, and welcome back! We've gotten a brief taste of winter again over the weekend, but the unseasonably warm stuff is coming back in another day or so--I'm torn between wanting some real winter now and wanting spring to come so the flowers do their thing. But spring means baseball craziness, so I think I'll opt for the winter. Now if Mother Nature would cooperate a little.... Anyway, the cold outside makes it perfectly all right to stay indoors with some reading material, and these two books will warm you right up.

Pleasure Beach (Aphrodisia) by P.J. Mellor starts things off with three tales set along the same stretch of shoreline, which seems to inspire all kinds of sexy ideas: 'Pretender' has a pair that shouldn't be together; luckily, neither realizes who the other is. 'Same Time Next Week' has a woman trying to decide on marriage and ends up taking her sister's advice to have a little fun instead with a man she meets after a drunken bridal shower. 'Jack of Hearts' has a man hooking up with a woman he's tried to ignore for years. Each story here is hot and filled with emotion, though the last is lacking a little of the emotional aspect of the first two. I enjoyed this one very much and hope that Ms. Mellor turns out to be very productive in her writing. It's earned three and a half of Cupid's five arrows.

Champagne Rules (Aphrodisia) by Susan Lyons falls more under the 'erotica' category than 'erotic romance', I think. Suzanne Brennan's friends convince her she should look up the hunk from her Grecian fling four years ago, and Jaxon Navarre is willing to give it another go, as long as they follow the same rules as last time. I won't deny this one is plenty steamy all the way through, but the ending left me immensely dissatisfied. It's not a keeper for me, but if you're looking just for steamy sex, as opposed to a sexy romance, this one might fit the bill.

Until next time, happy reading!