Rhoda Baxter's Blog, page 3

Bad Men by Julie Mae Cohen

This is an unusual thriller. It was so much fun to read!

Saffy is a serial killer. It’s a hobby, of sorts.
Jon is a true crime podcaster who actually helped catch a serial killer. Two, in fact. His marriage has fallen apart and he’s quite depressed.
Girl is a dog. She is a Very Good Girl.

Saffy has a crush on Jon and she’s worked out exactly how she’s going to meet him and help him fall in love with her.
In the meantime, Jon’s podcast seems to have been provided a place, not just for true ...

Anatomy: A love story by Dana Schwartz

I bought this book because of the cover. It’s so beautiful and clever.

The story is a gothic love story set during the early 1800s in Edinburgh. Hazel wants to become a surgeon – a profession not available to a lady. She’s promised in marriage to a viscount (her cousin Bernard, whom she’s known since childhood).
Jake is a bodysnatcher (or ‘Resurrection man’ as he’d prefer), who removes bodies from graves and sells them to the doctors to practice on.

The story touches on medicine at the ...

Act like It by Lucy Parker

Richard is a grumpy actor known for being a bit miserable and rude. Elaine is an actress known for being nice and kind. In order to save Richard’s reputation, the management of the theatre they work in engineer a fauxmance between them.

Richard was so very, very grumpy. Elaine was fun. She was strong and the polar opposite of Richard in personality.
There’s a lot of fun banter between the two and some of the interactions were hilarious. I always like a fake relationship story too.

I rea...

To Marry A Prince by Sophie Page

I’ve had this book on my Kindle for ages. Since Prince Harry got married, in fact. I finally opened it whilst on holiday.
I loved the voice of the heroine. Bella is a normal, sensible, ‘normal’ person. I loved how down to earth she was. (And how angry she was when she found out who Richard really was, because you would be, wouldn’t you?)
Richard feels quite bad about not telling her who he was. His flaws make him likeable.
I especially liked some of the background stuff about the Royal househol...

How to make transparent gradients in Canva

If you make your own book covers, this feature is a game changer. You can now make gradients that fade to clear in Canva. Gradients are useful in themselves because you can get a nice blur going from one colour to another.

Since I know I’ll be using this most often to make book covers, I’ve made an example book cover. You can buy it from my Etsy shop as a pre-made cover. I give you the jpg image with and without text (you’ll have to tell me your book title and author name, obviously) and the...

ROLE Playing by Cathy Yardley

This was a refreshing book because the protagonists were older. They are friends online but have not met – which, as you know, is completely my catnip. Because of the way their online interaction panned out, she thinks he’s a 20-something youngster and he thinks she’s an old lady in her 80s. When they meet they realise that they are the same age.

Maggie is wonderfully grumpy and anti social (frankly, I can relate). Aiden is a sort-of muted Sunshine to her grumpy. I liked that too.
One of m...

The Secret Lives of Country Gentleman by K J Charles

I bloody loved this book. The gentleman and the smuggler.
Gareth Inglis was abandoned by his father and bullied by his uncle and cousin. He’s very surprised to hear that he has inherited the family pile.
Joss Doomsday is too busy running the smuggling operation to think about other things … normally.

I loved how different the two men were and how the power balance between them ebbed and flowed. You’d think that Gareth would be the needy one, but Joss needs him just as much. I liked how the ...

How to use Lottie Stickers in Canva

Okay, I’m leaning into my nerd side here. I love Lottie stickers. They are versatile little stickers that you can scale up to huge without losing definition AND you can change the colours to match your branding or your book cover.

The most difficult thing about using Lottie stickers is FINDING them. I spent a whole afternoon ferreting out Lottie sticker collections and adding them to a list. You can get a list of 20 sets of Lottie stickers by signing up to my mailing list here:

Here’s th...

Gouda Friends by Cathy Yardley

I enjoyed the first book so much that I bought this one straight away.
As before, this has all the things that I love in a book – geeky people, diverse characters, nice-guy heroes, friends to lovers AND terrible cheese puns! Honestly, what’s not to love?

Josh and Tam have been friends for EVER and they are each other’s safety net, so putting that at risk seems like terrible risk to them both. I love how Josh took care of Tam by feeding her – food is important to them both.
I loved, loved, lo...

How to make a rotating book carousel in Canva

I’m very excited about this. I have enough books now, under each pen name, to make a cool graphic to show them off and this one is very cool indeed.

You don’t have to use the frames, like I did here, but it’s easier, because you don’t have to match the sizes of the covers as carefully. If you do try this, please tag me (@rhodabaxter on Twitter, @jeevanicharika on Tiktok) so that I can share it too!

Click on the big red play button to watch the video in YouTube.

If you’ve found thi...