Tour Review and Giveaway - - The Dane of My Existence

The Dane of My Existence

by Jessica Martin

A Bard's Rest Romance - Book 2

Publisher: Berkley

Release Date: July 4, 2023

Reviewed by PJ

Portia Barnes is the youngest managing partner in her law firm’s history, and she and her stilettos are poised to step into the role of her dreams—leading the firm’s new Boston office. But first she’s taking a summer sabbatical in her hometown of Bard’s Rest, New Hampshire, where she discovers something’s rotten in the midst of the town’s annual Shakespeare festival.

Hotshot commercial developer Benjamin Dane is sniffing around Bard’s, and while Portia isn’t necessarily a Shakespeare fanatic like the rest of her family, she’s not about to let him bulldoze the town’s beloved outdoor theater. Yet to Portia’s dismay, Ben proves as skilled as she is when it comes to outworking, outmaneuvering, and one-upping the competition. While she’s never hesitated to wage war against hyper-successful alpha males, Portia is caught off guard by Ben’s openness and lack of arrogance. As her own long-constructed walls start to come down, Portia begins to wonder if he might be more than an archnemesis.

With her heart on the line and the future of the town hanging in the balance, Portia faces an impossible decision—Ben or Bard’s?—unless she finds a way to broker the merger of her life, and ensures the curtain falls on a happy ending for everyone.

PJ's Thoughts:

Picture a hot-shot attorney climbing the corporate ladder with single-minded determination. Now picture her getting the promotion she wanted but being forced to take a three-month sabbatical before assuming her new role. Even worse, having to spend those months in the Shakespeare-obsessed New England hometown she couldn't wait to escape. It's a recipe for disaster but when a hot-shot commercial developer sets his sights on the island where the town performs its plays during the annual Shakespeare festival, that hot-shot attorney realizes her quirky hometown just may mean more to her than she thought. And so might the hot-shot developer. 

I love complex characters, ones who on the surface appear to have it all together while under the water are paddling as fast as they can.  That's Portia. It's satisfying to watch her story unfold, watch her learn to accept her vulnerabilities, own her mistakes, fight to right injustices, work to grow, and, yes, even fall in love. Ben is a wonderful counterpoint to her: open, supportive, and understanding. He has layers of his own which, maybe, allow him to understand hers a bit better than most. He sees her, not only the hard-driving, take-no-prisoners attorney she is but all the complicated, vulnerable, closet-do-gooder layers swirling within. I couldn't help but cheer for them to find their happy ending.

While there's plenty of emotional depth in this book (Portia's mother is battling cancer and Portia is coming to terns with that), it's balanced with hope, hilarity, and light, with mom leading the charge. I closed the final page fully convinced of mom's full recovery. 

The dialog in the book is crisp, with snappy banter and sly innuendo, and not only between Portia and Ben. The well-established animosity and ongoing point-counterpoint between Portia and the long-time town clerk (the person in small towns who runs everything) and how that all plays out is one of my favorite parts of the book. Other  favorites are the poignant mother-daughter moments, fun sibling dynamics, a lost dog, a hilarious petting zoo scene, and too many more to list. 

If you're looking for a few hours of laugh-out-loud fun cushioned with emotional depth and a happily ever after, all set within a quirky, Shakespeare-obsessed, New Hampshire town, pick up a copy of The Dane of My Existence. It has my enthusiastic recommendation.

This is the second book in Jessica Martin's A Bard's Rest series but I didn't feel like I was missing anything by reading this book first. Having said that, after meeting book one lead characters author Miranda (Portia's sister) and hot veterinarian Adam in book two, I immediately downloaded their story, For the Love of the Bard. 

Have you ever attended a Shakespeare Festival?

Does your town or area host any type of annual festival?

Have you read any Jessica Martin books yet?

One randomly chosen person who posts a comment before 11:00 PM, July 5 will receive a print copy of The Dane of My Existence. 

*U.S. only

*Must be 18

 

Review - - For the Love of the Bard

For the Love of the Bard

by Jessica Martin

A Bard's Best Romance -  Book 1

Publisher: Berkley

Release Date: June 28, 2022

Reviewed by Hellie

Literary agent and writer Miranda Barnes rolls into her hometown of Bard’s Rest with one goal in mind: to spend the summer finally finishing her YA novel, the next installment in her bestselling fantasy series. Yet Miranda’s mother, deep in the planning stages for the centennial of the town’s beloved annual Shakespeare festival, has other ideas.  

Before you can say “all’s fair in love and war,” Miranda is cornered into directing Twelfth Night—while simultaneously scrambling to finish her book, navigating a family health scare, and doing her best to avoid the guy who broke her heart on prom night. 

When it comes to Adam, the veterinarian with a talent for set design and an infuriating knack for winning over Miranda’s dog, the lady doth protest too much. As any Shakespeare lovers knows, the course of true love never did run smooth, and soon Miranda realizes she’ll have to decide whether to trust Adam with her heart again.

 

Hellie’s Heeds: 

You know how I raved about A PROPOSAL THEY CAN’T REFUSE, how it was the MUST READ of Summer 2022? Well, your TBR pile just got a little longer. This book gives APTCR a run for your money in the Laugh Out Loud column because I don’t think there was a single page I wasn’t guffawing and reading tidbits to whoever was in the room at the time.  

The set up is a classic “enemies to lovers” and “second chances” mish mash, complete with previous unresolved high school trauma that only an older sister kissing your boyfriend can create. One of the first lines in which I knew I would be placing this book on a keeper shelf and then buying whatever this author puts out next was this: “It wasn’t that I didn’t like Adam. I loathed Adam. I loathed him in the way that one loathes their most vivid memory of being embarrassed, heartbroken, and humiliated. The kind of memory that follows you into adulthood and echoes through the corridors of your entire existence.” I mean, that paragraph resonated…as did most of Miranda’s tart observations and retorts she dishes out to her siblings, Adam, and the hilarious villain-turned-ally event planner, Candace.  

In lieu of the cute older characters I normally enjoy in a story, this one featured the reliably disastrous and prone to eat anything goofy dog. Puck makes for great scene stealing laughs and bonding moments between this couple. There is also a fun-loving lumberjack-looking hipster book agent that is Miranda’s BFF, named Ian, and he’s as much a scene stealer as Puck, just saying. One hopes that he will also receive his own book. In fact I would read any other love story of any of the other characters in the book…anything in order to be able to visit the Bard’s Rest again. In fact, I vote this town actually be created as an ode to the great man himself, complete with competing mainstages, actors and village people, and the pun-riddled establishments that I wanted to visit (especially if there were food stuffs involved.) I will be there with bells on.  

Miranda is everything I love in a heroine: witty, hilarious, but a little self-deprecating. Adam is kind, funny, sexy, and everything you’d want in a modern hero. Now some readers may wonder why Miranda doesn’t cut Adam a break–I mean, it was high school, after all–but I always figure those readers enjoyed high school more than I did…or my friends did. I figure readers fall into two categories where high school is concerned: those who are willing to attend a high school reunion and those who won’t even friend people they went to high school with on Facebook (let alone attend any reunions.) If you fall into the latter category as I do, this book is for you. Miranda is your heroine; Adam is your wish-fulfillment of what you wished had happened to rectify that time called high school teenage angst. But if you’ve already paid for your therapy and believe we should all not be acting like high school teens any longer (i.e. needless drama and grudges), you may think Adam deserves someone a little better (even though Miranda does grow and become a very worthy heroine, IMO.) In fact I think the author does a great job of creating several “difficult” women to stroll the pages of this book, making them annoying but loveable, making me yearn for all their stories. Even Portia’s. I cannot wait to see what this author does next. Well done.  

I would say more–but it would mostly be every single quote in the book I found hysterical, which we do not have time for–so I think it would be better served if you just picked up your own copy and fell in love with Bard’s Rest.