Roxanne St. Clair Kissed by the Rain Blog Tour with a Review

I am so excited to be hosting Roxanne St. Clair's Kissed by the Rain Blog Tour with a review and giveaway on Paranormal and Romantic Suspense Reviews.

Roxanne St. Clair is currently touring to promote her new release Kissed by the Rain.

For more information about the book, please visit http://www.roxannestclaire.com

Thank you Roxanne and Hachette Book Group for letting me join your blog tour with a Review and Giveaway.

About Roxanne

Looking for the formal bio? Head over to the media kit for awards, credits, and all manner of impressive stuff. I don’t know about you, but when I search an author’s web site, it’s usually because I’ve read a book I liked and wondered about the person behind it…and the formal bio doesn’t tell me much.

So I will. First of all, call me Rocki. Everyone does. Evidently, when my mother brought me home from the hospital I seemed too scrawny and small to pull off “Roxanne” (she’d read Cyrano de Bergerac while pregnant or I would have been Judy) so they called me Rocki.

I grew up in Pittsburgh, PA, the youngest of five (overachievers, every one), and fell in love with words and stories the summer I read Gone With The Wind. That year, for my twelfth birthday, my parents gave me a typewriter (with italic font – it was the coolest thing) and from that day on, I’ve had my fingers on a keyboard, pounding out love stories for fun. My AP English teacher taught me the two most important lessons an aspiring author ever needs: 1) verbs are the key to life and 2) a writer should get a real job. After attending UCLA and graduating with a degree in communications, I tried acting and television broadcasting. Oh, they aren’t real jobs? I learned that the hard way. I changed my last name from Zink to St. Claire because a news producer told me Roxanne Zink had too many harsh consonants for a TV personality – apparently Katie Couric didn’t get the memo. I got some fun gigs, and even met Tom Hanks when I did a guest appearance on Bosom Buddies. I liked on camera work, but wasn’t too crazy about starvation, so I moved to Boston and got that “real” job. In fact, I placed my foot on the bottom rung of the corporate ladder and didn’t look down until I’d climbed all the way up to the level of Senior Vice President at the world’s largest public relations firm. On the way up, I met the man of my dreams in an elevator. Two years later – in the same elevator! – he asked me to marry him and I wisely said yes.

I stayed in PR, moved to Miami, had a few babies, lost my home in a hurricane, built another one a few hours north and all along, I kept writing my “stories” for fun. One night, I read a particularly fabulous romance novel that changed my life for good. That night, I decided I wanted to make someone else feel as whole and happy as that author made me feel. (Everyone asks! It was Nobody’s Baby But Mine by Susan Elizabeth Phillips.) With two small children and one big “real” job, writing my first novel wasn’t easy, but I did finish a manuscript that managed to get the attention of a literary agent. She told me to do one thing and one thing fast: write another book. (The first one is usually a “learner” book, honestly.) That second manuscript sold to Simon & Schuster’s Pocket Books and was released in 2003 as Tropical Getaway. Since then, I’ve written almost thirty more, in multiple genres, and long ago replaced the corporate ladder with the rollercoaster of publishing as a full-time novelist. Finally, writing is my real job.

Today, I live in a small beach community in Florida with my husband and our two teenagers, and one spectacular Australian Terrier named Pepper. When I have spare time, I spend it with my family, but also dig in the dirt with my plants, travel for business and fun, hang out with my many writer friends, and, of course, I love to read. I’m still crazy about words and stories and hope to write at least a hundred books in my lifetime. And, yes, verbs are the key to life. My favorites? Love. Work. Play.

xoxo
Rocki

Barefoot in the Rain (Barefoot Bay) [Mass Market Paperback]

Product Description

A Barefoot Bay Novel

They say you can never go home again . . .

When "Life Coach to the Stars" Jocelyn Bloom is embroiled in scandal, the only place she can hide is the one place she wishes she could forget. She left Barefoot Bay - and the boy next door who knew all her secrets-years ago. Now nothing about the tiny island off the coast of Florida is quite how she remembers it, especially Will Palmer. He's even more gorgeous and tempting . . . and still capable of turning her world inside out.

But what if someone is waiting for you?

To Will Palmer, Guy Bloom is more than the elderly, senile neighbor he looks after-he's the last connection to Jocelyn, the woman Will loved and lost. But the reunion with Jocelyn doesn't go smoothly. Shocked by the change in her father's personality, Jocelyn struggles to reconcile her dark childhood with the sweet, confused man who has grown close to Will. Jocelyn has guided countless clients to happiness-but can she escape the rainy days of her past for a new sunny future with Will?

My Review:

Jocelyn Bloom a "Life Coach to the Stars" finds herself in the middle of a scandal she retreats back to her hometown Barefoot Bay.  She never thought she would return and had hoped to put her dark secret past behind her.

Fifteen years ago Jocelyn and Will Palmer when both of them are about to go on their college journey they decide to make love.  Before they could Jocelyn's abusive father caught them and threatened Will that he could ruin his life.  You don't know what really happened that long ago night but you get flashbacks.  You do find out later though.

Now fifteen years later Jocelyn's father has dementia which has resulted in him being a changed man and Will has become his best friend and caretaker.   Jocelyn's father likes to do needlework and watch HGTV everyday and he doesn't remember Jocelyn is his daughter.  He thinks Will is his loving son.

Jocelyn is a great heroine because she's smart, loyal, very loving and she hasn't let the hard knocks in life bring her down a path she doesn't want to take.

Will is a very likeable guy you would like to bring home to your parents because he's smart, loving, funny and really nice all around guy.  He takes care of Jocelyn's father and forgiven him even though he was a mean man in his earlier years.