Teaser Tuesday # 166 ~ Love, Chocolate, and Beer (Cactus Creek #1) by Violet Duke

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (Make sure that what you share doesn't give too much away! You don't want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

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Love, Chocolate, and Beer
(Cactus Creek #1)
by
Violet Duke 

First - The Blurb:

Romance has met its most unlikely match-up…

Luke Bradford is a chocolatier on a mission. After moving his chocolate shop, and newly single life, to the quirky town of Cactus Creek, Luke wants nothing more than to devote all his energy into making his business a success—by taking the romance market by storm. But his grand plans get thrown for a loop when he locks horns with the feisty beer-brewing beauty next door who calls his ‘romantic idealism’ a load of fairytale bull. Soon, driving the woman sparking nuts becomes another wickedly fun priority he simply can’t get enough of.

In his defense, she’s addictively easy to incite…and plain impossible to resist.

Beloved local brewmaster Dani Dobson is beyond riled up. It’s bad enough the new shop owner in town comes locked and loaded with both a distractingly rugged charm and sexy flashing dimples, but the whole only-in-the-movies variety of romance he’s selling—the kind her world has been crushed by before—is really doing a number on her allergy to unrealistic clichés. What’s worse, he’s created an annoyingly clever ad campaign that dubs ‘beer joints’ like hers as the “cave where romance goes to hibernate.” The nerve of that man.

Combustible chemistry or not, damn it, this means war. The stakes…very likely, her heart.

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Second - The Tease:

His eyes widened in understanding. She's nervous. With first kiss jitters. The woman was just so unbelievably cute. Not allowing her another second to retreat back into her head, back over that wall she'd erected after their careers and the throw-down got in the way of what they'd started back in that storage closet, he circled his arm around her waist and drew her body flush against his. He drank in the tail end of her gasp as he bent down to quickly brush his lips over hers, nearly growling when she responded like a lit fuse. 

Dani and Luke's story began not in Love, Chocolate and Beer, but in the prequel - A Little Combustible Chemistry (Refer back to my Swoon Thursday post).

Dani and Luke are two amazing characters who fit well together. I loved reading the continuation of their story. It was sweet, funny, and highly romantic. Although there are a few unexpected twists and turns, it's a light read that you leaves you feeling warm and fuzzy.

There are more books to the series featuring the secondary characters, but I'm happy to say that this is a stand-alone novel. You do get to find out if Dani and Luke have a HEA.
Yay! No cliff hangers.


My rating: 4 out of 5


THE CACTUS CREEK SERIES:
BOOK 1: Love, Chocolate, and Beer [Luke & Dani]
BOOK 2: Love, Diamonds, and Spades [Rylan & Quinn]
BOOK 3: Love, Tussles, and Takedowns [Hudson & Lia]
BOOK 4: Love, Exes, and Ohs [Isaac & Xoey]

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Okay, so what do you think?

If you liked my Tease, please leave a comment below.