Blog Tour + Excerpt + Review: "Bad Luck Club" by Denise Grover Swank and A.R. Casella

Today, I am super excited to join the blog tour celebrating the release of "Bad Luck Club" by Denise Grover Swank and A.R. Casella, book #4 of the Asheville Brewing series. While it reads as a standalone, I highly recommend picking up the previous books in the series as well as this one because I've loved them all.

 

The male lead of "Bad Luck Club," Lee Buchanan, was kind of a jerk in the earlier books of this series, but after facing scandal and betrayal by his father and ex-girlfriend, he was in a much different place by the time this story began. There was so much more to Lee than I ever thought possible, and his journey turned out to be one of the most emotional character arcs of the entire series. His had father forced him to hide his emotions for years because he considered them to be a weakness, but when Lee was finally allowed to show that side of himself, he turned out to be incredibly sweet, thoughtful, and supportive. I loved how that was reflected in the bond Lee and his siblings started to establish by the end of the book.

 

Lee's love interest, artist and yoga instructor Enid "Blue" Combs, had fought hard for her independence, and she was determined to build a new life for herself in Asheville. Part of that was joining the Bad Luck Club and working through the baggage of her past through a series of challenges set out by her sponsor, one of which indirectly led her to Lee. They couldn't help being drawn to each other even though it was against the rules of the Bad Luck Club, and that wasn't the only challenge standing in the way of their relationship. I loved the two of them together, however, and it was very easy for me to cheer them on to their HEA.

Overall, "Bad Luck Club" gave me all the feels and I highly recommend it for fans of contemporary romance and romantic comedy. While I'm sad that the Buchanan family's story has come to an end, I am very excited about the spinoff series coming this summer, which will feature at least one of Blue's friends from the Bad Luck Club.

*Review copy provided by the authors via Social Butterfly PR. All opinions expressed are my own.

 

 

About "Bad Luck Club"

Bad Luck Club, an all-new, not-to-be-missed, opposites attract standalone romance in the laugh-out-loud Asheville Brewery Series by New York Times bestselling author Denise Grover Swank and A.R. Casella is available now!

A grumpy man. A recovering people-pleaser. And the secret club that brings them together.

Lee Buchanan is a hot mess.

Turning one’s father in to the feds can do that to a man.

He had nothing to do with his father’s Ponzi scheme, but he’s blacklisted from commercial real estate all the same. Which is how he ends up in Asheville, working at the brewery he inherited with his siblings. He’s salty as hell, and he doesn’t care who knows it.

Until the gorgeous, intriguing Blue Combs issues the most peculiar invitation he’s ever received: Come to the Bad Luck Club. We can help you.

It sounds like a cult or, worse, a group of Mary Sues, but Blue is different from any woman he’s ever met. For better or worse, he’s drawn to her.

Just like she’s drawn to him, even if she has no intention of going all in with another man. She’s been there, done that, twice, and the life she’s built for herself is too important to risk.

What starts as one person’s desire to help another turns into a connection too powerful to be denied—but can two broken people grow together, or will they tear each other apart?  

Read an Excerpt from "Bad Luck Club"

She turned into Bear’s long drive, and Lee cursed a little under his breath.

“We’re here, aren’t we?”

“This is it. You’re looking at the Cluster.”

There was plenty of parking for everyone, thankfully, but the people who lived closest to each other usually carpooled for meetings. That made it hard to tell who’d already arrived, but it looked like they were among the last. She couldn’t decide whether that was a good thing.

She parked the car and turned to Lee, who was giving her a pointed glance. “Cloister? That isn’t helping dissuade me about the whole cult thing. The whole cabin in the woods thing doesn’t seem like a great sign either.”

“Not cloister. Cluster, like cluster…fudge.”

A smile played on his lips. “Let me guess, your father didn’t like it when you swore.”

“Of course not,” she said, smiling back. “It wouldn’t be ladylike.”

“And why, may I ask, do they call their own house a cluster—” he gave her a wicked look, “—fudge?”

“I guess you’re about to find out.”

They both unbuckled their seat belts, but he made no move for the door. Gazing at her, the gold flecks in his eyes like mica, he asked, “Blue, what part of last night convinced you to break things off with Dan?”

She didn’t answer right away, her heart still choking her, and he smiled at her—a sexy, unreserved smile—the kind that made her wonder how many people he’d looked at this way.

“Radical honesty, remember?”

Her whole body hummed like a tuned instrument. It hadn’t been like this since the beginning with Remy.

And if that wasn’t a thought to wake her up . . .

Except it didn’t jar her enough. Because she found herself leaning toward Lee a little, as if caught up in a whirlwind of his making. As if those vines were cinching their very bodies together. “Because I wanted you to kiss me,” she admitted. She silently added, Because I felt more connected to you in one night than I did to him in two months…

But Lee was reaching for her then, his hand weaving into her hair, pulling her to him, and those lips that had driven her to distraction the night before, the ones that had hovered over her neck, were suddenly on hers. They were warm and commanding, and Blue felt lost to the longing that unfurled within her, to the heat that ignited in her core. He’d probably meant it to be a soft kiss, exploratory, but his hand burrowed deeper into her hair, pulling her closer, and she found herself moaning as his tongue swept into her mouth. She wrapped her hands around his arms, mindlessly trying to bring him closer, needing to feel him against her like she had last night, like she’d dreamed of, and suddenly he was lifting her up onto his lap. They were facing each other this time, and she had a flash of what it would have been like if they’d talked like this last night—looking into each other’s eyes, bodies locked together—and the intimacy of it was more arousing than anything she’d ever experienced. She was the one who kissed him this time, reveling in the fact that he’d given her control by pulling her on top of him, until she caught a glimpse of the bench Cal had made, beneath the willow tree in the Cluster’s back yard, and oh God, what the hell was she doing? 

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