For What It's Worth


Wednesday, December 14, 2016

Cover reveal: a crown of bitter orange by laura florand

Whenever I hear that Laura Florand has a new book coming out I squee in excitement! Her romances are so smart, emotional and swoon worthy. They always leave me happy, happy, happy!
Crown of Bitter Orange is the third book in her La Vie en Roses series (there are also 3 novellas for the series) that follow the Rosier family and their perfume business in a valley of France.

Reading her books is the next best thing to traveling to France yourself.

I’m so happy to help join in for the cover reveal this week.


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FRIENDS BECOME LOVERS IN LAURA FLORAND’S CROWN OF BITTER ORANGE

Book 3 – La Vie en Roses – on sale February 2016
“Silky and addictive.” – RT Book Reviews

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Laura Florand, bestselling author of The Chocolate Kiss, combines lush description, smart dialogue, provocative sensuality, and the perfume of love itself in A Crown of Bitter Orange, an irresistibly lush novel that is an ode to the scents and pleasures of the south of France and the beauty of falling in love.

ABOUT

Childhood friends. Tristan Rosier might have asked Malorie Monsard to marry him when he was five years old, but things had only gone downhill from there. She’d spent the rest of their lives ignoring him, abandoning him, and destroying his perfumes. Now she was back, to wreak who knew what havoc on his life.

Lifelong enemies. Tristan might choose to dismiss the generations-long enmity between their two families, but Malorie didn’t have that privilege. Like all the other privileges wealthy, gorgeous Tristan took for granted that she couldn’t. But if she was going to restore her family company to glory, she might just need his help.

Or the perfect match? They’d known each other all their lives. Could these childhood friends and lifelong enemies ever uncross their stars and find happily ever after.

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EXCERPT
© Laura Florand, 2016

Well, look at that. Prince Charming. Malorie should have known she’d stumble over him the instant she set foot back in his kingdom. The man was the bane of her existence even when she was halfway around the world.

She put her hands on her hips and looked down at him, so peacefully dozing out in the open that he hadn’t even stirred at the sound of her feet in the great white pebbles by the river.

Tristan Rosier asleep looked exactly how Malorie had always imagined. Gorgeous. Insouciant. Not vulnerable in the least, except to being over-kissed by the sun. A wicked little smile curving his mouth as if that sun was a woman and he was quite used to this kind of treatment.

Shirtless and completely ripped, the definition of his muscles visible even relaxed in sleep. He’d probably just come down from that beautiful limestone cliff face rising on the other side of the gorge and his muscles were still pumped from it. One hand held a half-eaten apple, the other a small white paperback—Giono’s Hussard sur le toit—and they had both slumped to his torso when he dozed off. In full sun.

She sighed. It would serve Tristan right to have his nose peeling for a week, but then forty years from now, if he got skin cancer, it would be all her fault, and the last thing a Monsard needed was more lives on her conscience. 

Plus, knowing Tristan, a peeling nose would probably improve his ability to flirt with hot actresses, not weaken it—he always managed flips like that. And his ability to flirt with hot actresses was already freaking annoying.

Fine. She dipped her hands in the milky green river, high from the recently melted snow in the peaks, limestone giving it that beautiful color. She carried the water back across the round white pebbles, tightened herself and double-checked her buttons to make sure her clothes weren’t going to melt off as soon as he winked at her, and then tossed the icy water over his bare torso.

Muscles flicked like a cat’s—powerful, lean, surging awake—and he opened his eyes, blinking sleepily at her as if she was all shadow in too much light. “Malorie Monsard,” he said, with a sensual, lazy pleasure, as if he’d just woken up on a Sunday morning and was quite happy to see that she was the woman draped in his bathrobe bringing him coffee in the hopes he would ask her to stay.
She had to dive fast into irony to protect herself, as she always did with him.

“You make a good Sleeping Beauty, Tristan.” She used the masculine beau au bois dormant. “Or should I say Snow White?” A nod to the half-eaten apple resting against his washboard abs.
Tristan sat up, blinking, his eyes clearing. “Malorie Monsard.” His voice flattened. He shifted to sit on the rock against which his head had been resting, cushioned by his backpack. “Trust you to replace the kiss in the story with ice water on a man’s skin.”

Yeah. Tristan had been as friendly to her as to any other female on the planet when they were in high school, but when they met again in New York, it had not gone well. For him.

Supple, expressive eyebrows that could lilt up subtly in amusement, invite a woman in with laughter, tease her wickedly, did what they always did when she was around. They drew together. “Malorie,” he said for the third time, looking around them at the limestone cliffs and the rushing spring river as if finally processing it. “What the hell are you doing here?”

PRE-ORDER LINKS
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo: link not yet available | iBooks: link not yet available | Google



https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_QpHPgzlEBe3QGPJUmN6PWp2pI5sj_7OxtOXoDY73P9qwHzhw74zSNsXLPq_rykNxKKfX2dNCZCEHApEo3b78RS7vMZv3Uzf746BrIg8Y56EQjXSb1A_lnhLtBaGeUNRpCnuqVT6jml4/s1600/Laura+Florand+-+Author+Photo.jpgABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laura Florand burst on the contemporary romance scene in 2012 with her award-winning Amour et Chocolat series. Her international bestselling books have appeared in ten languages, been named among the Best Books of the Year by Romantic Times and Barnes & Noble, received the RT Seal of Excellence and starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Booklist, and been recommended by NPR, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal, among others.
After a Fulbright year in Tahiti and backpacking everywhere from New Zealand to Greece, and several years living in Madrid and Paris, Laura now teaches Romance Studies at Duke University.

Contrary to popular opinion, this means she primarily teaches French language and culture and does a great deal of research on French gastronomy, particularly chocolate. For more information, please see her website: www.lauraflorand.com.  



23 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. I find it soothing...which I need more of in my life right now lol

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  2. I like it but why midseries !!! Argh..so tired of this. Another mismatched series.
    I love my paperbacks for a reason.

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    1. I love the title.

      I'm not sure why she changed them.

      Honestly, I gave up collecting series long ago for this very reason though.

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  3. You aren't the only one who really loves this author. I so need to read her stuff! I have a couple marked at the library and so I need to just start reading them. Hopefully after my reading slump has resolved itself. :)

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    1. My absolute favorite is The Chocolate Kiss but I adore it all.

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  4. Pretty field of lavenders?

    Happy hump day!

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    Replies
    1. Yes, the family owns fields of different types of flowers to make perfume.

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  5. Ooh smart romances. I can get behind that! Thanks for sharing. :)

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    1. I'm not sure if her books are your thing but they are lovely.

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  6. Love the lavender. I'll have to check these out.

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  7. Some beautifully descriptive writing. Whilst not a fan of the whole romance genre myself I can at least appreciate this.

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  8. I love Laura Florand’s stories and happy to hear you are a fan too. Being a foreigner I was very late to start reading her books, so I haven’t read her Chocolate series yet.

    I’m sad to see this cover change. I love love love previous covers for Once Upon a Rose and A Wish Upon Jasmine. It was one of those rare cases when cover model looked exactly as I imagined the character. I impatiently waited cover reveal for the third book. Well this is not how I pictured it at all.

    I’m looking forward to read Tristan, and this excerpt made my hands twitch in anticipation.

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    1. That makes me so happy! I love her so much!

      I have no idea why there's a cover change. I like how these all look together but yeah changes mid-series suck. I was upset when the chocolate series changed covers. The originals were adorable and whimsical - very different.

      But it happens a lot I guess. For various reasons sometimes out of the authors control.

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    2. I’ve seen the first cover version for the chocolate series, and I agree they are very different. But I wasn’t upset since this series only came on my radar when it was released, so I’ve seen both versions at the same time.

      And I came across comments from authors where they complaint that they don’t have much control over covers; publishers decide for them. So self-published-indie authors have more say in this aspect.

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    3. I have also heard cases where they go from self pub and a publisher picks it up they change the covers or if they were published then get their rights back to self pub lose rights to the original covers.

      I don't collect books that much anymore because of it though. If I do, I wait until the series is done and buy them all lol

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    4. Yes, matching covers for books in a series definitely look better on our shelfs.

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  9. oh this book sounds so different, and I like that the characters known each other.

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    Replies
    1. Have you read anything by Laura yet? I think you would really like her.

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  10. I love me an enemies to lovers romance, there's so few of them around too. French perfume, the rolling hills of the countryside, it sounds like a brilliant setting for a swoony read. I'm pretty sure I purchased a Kindle edition of book one not too long ago so sounds like a binge read is in order. Fabulous review Karen, really enjoyed it.

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    Replies
    1. Her books are so beautiful to read. They just take you away.

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  11. Pretty! I'd love to smell that field of flowers :D

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