Will your book be our Valentine?
At Chanticleer we love Romance Books and we love to show it off with our Chatelaine Awards! We’re currently working as hard as we can to get out the Finalist List for those Awards, and you can see the Semi-Finals for them here! Who will win? Only time will tell.
However, right now we just want to celebrate some of the best romantic books we’ve been able to discover. Like chocolate, romance is one of those extraordinary genres that can go with almost anything! Historical Romance, Mystery Romance, YA Romance, SciFi Romance, Fantasy Romance, the list goes on!
Even better, romance is one of the bestselling genres out there! Being able to add that tag to your book makes it that much more marketable! For our own Chatelaine Awards, we’re always happy to crow about our winners!
Our 2022 Chatelaine Grand Prize Winner was Operation Mom by Reenita Malhotra Hora.
What does Chanticleer have to say about Operation Mom?
Master storyteller Reenita Malhotra Hora’s YA romance Operation Mom: My Plan to Get My Mom a Life and a Man takes us on a charming journey through the life of one teen, Ila Isham.
Hora introduces Ila and her best friend Deepali, two boy-crazy teens on a summer quest. Readers will fall in love with the smart, sassy, angst-filled, rebellious Ila. A typical teenage girl, Ila lives in Mumbai with her mom and Sakkubai, their house manager. Ila’s mother calls her obsessed, but that seems unfair. Is she obsessed just because her every waking minute is spent thinking of Ali Zafar, famous pop icon, singer, and heartthrob? Or is she obsessed with fellow classmate Dev?
No, Ila couldn’t be taken with Dev because he’s one of three young men that her best friend Deepali is juggling in her summer experiment of exploring her “feminine mystique.” This turn of phrase becomes just one of many opportunities for Hora’s humor to shine as Ila remarks, “That’s a book by Gloria Steinem . . . no Betty Friedan.” Deepali’s response? “Yaar. Don’t be so literal.” The delightful balance between Ila’s book smarts versus Deepali’s street smarts carries us through Hora’s expertly crafted story.
Read more here!
Operation Mom also took home a First Place Blue in the Dante Rossetti Awards for Young Adult Fiction. We’d love to share other romance books that meet with other genres and why they touch our heart!
A SPYING EYE: A Henrietta and Inspector Howard Novel
By Michelle Cox
2023 Overall Grand Prize
Grand Prize for the M&M Awards for Cozy Mysteries
A Cozy Mystery Romance!
Brooding Château du Freudeneck, just outside Strasbourg, France has villains in the drawing rooms, stolen art hidden in the cellars, and bats in the belfry – all the best elements for a 19th-century Gothic mystery.
However, in Michelle Cox’s novel, A Spying Eye it’s the 20th century. The Great War is passed, but the next war already looms on the horizon. The people of Strasbourg feel the growing conflict sharply, at the heart of Alsace-Lorraine, a fertile region that has been contested between France and Germany since time immemorial.
Which means those bats are in the unfortunate head of the elderly Baron Von Harmon, the current lord and master (as much as he’s still able to be, at least) of the Chateau, while the stolen art is pursued by both the villainous Nazis and the only slightly-less villainous agents of Britain’s MI5.
Read more here!
THE LAST LUMENIAN
By S.G. Blaise
2023 Cygnus Grand Prize Winner
A SciFi Romance!
Nineteen-year-old Lilla could have an idyllic life, but in The Last Lumenian by S.G. Blaise, she comes face to face with a rebellion and their just cause.
Lilla’s father leads the Pax Septum Coalition, a nineteen-planet confederation. As a princess in her own right, she should be enjoying the status and wealth that comes from living on Uhna, the richest planet in the coalition due to the diamond mines found by her pirate ancestors centuries ago. She most definitely shouldn’t be worried about the rebellion brewing right under her father’s nose. However, when Lilla meets rebels in a refugee camp, she thinks she has found her destiny, a true purpose.
Wanting to fight against the injustice and horrific treatment of the refugees, Lilla tries desperately to prove herself, especially after a disastrous first mission where she not only crashes her ship but also ends up in the hands of General Callum, leader of the Teryn Praelium.
Read more here!
NORTH QUEEN
By Nicola Tyche
A Fantasy Romance
Norah Andell, Princess of Mercia and future North Queen, has been missing for three years.
Her father secreted her away to protect her from a prophesied attack in a ten-year war, but he dies shortly after their departure and takes her location to the grave. Alexander Rhemus, Lord Justice to Queen Regent Catherine, Norah’s grandmother, was told by a seer that Norah would be found in the deep forests of the Northern Kingdom, and has searched the woods ceaselessly. Having loved her since they were children, Alexander’s desperation leads him to the Wilds, a legendary and feared area where men often do not return. So opens The North Queen.
To Alexander’s shock, he finds Norah, who has no memories of her former life or even of her own name. At first, she refuses to believe she’s the missing princess, now Queen, and bristles against her newfound world and the restraints it casts upon her.
Norah struggles with a position she doesn’t want, governing a people on the verge of starvation and facing an arranged marriage to protect her people from the Shadow King, a ruthless man hell-bent on taking her kingdom.
Read more here!
A PLACE Of REFUGE: Book Four of First Light
By Linda Cardillo
A Historical Romance
Izzy Monroe has lost herself. Three months after an accident that damaged a portion of her brain, she isolates herself in her parent’s home on Chappaquiddick Island, on the eastern end of Martha’s Vineyard.
She has spent her life in the world of academia, working on a doctorate in literature at Harvard, but now with her short-term memory gone, she has to give up her dreams. Her emptiness and doubt have left her rudderless and deeply depressed.
When her former college roommate, Maria, suggests she intern at Portarello, Maria’s grandfather’s self-sustaining farm in the Italian countryside, Izzy isn’t immediately convinced she can make the journey alone much less work at the successful inn and thriving farm. However, Izzy remembers the peace she felt there on the one visit she and Maria made years ago, and she knows this is her only chance to regain any sense of normalcy.
Read more here!
Thank you for joining us on this adventure of books, and we hope you found a read that caught your fancy!
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Mack Little’s historical fiction novel Daughter of Hades explores the lives of slaves during the age of pirates.
The Short Story Awards recognize emerging talent and outstanding works in Short Stories, Essays, and Novellas. The Short Story Awards is a division of the Chanticleer International Book Awards program.
The I & I Book Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works in Instruction and Insight Non-Fiction that are self-help, how-to, guides, or explanatory. In non-fiction works, the author assumes responsibility (in good faith) for the truth, accuracy, people, places, or information presented. The I & I Book Awards is a division of the Chanticleer International Book Awards (The CIBAs).
