For Weekly at Vivi’s, I have Marianne Rice here with me today, talking about how this pandemic and growing children are shaping her Ester (and generally, her celebrations).

Marianne Rice is the author of more than nineteen small-town romance novels set in rural New England towns. She loves high heels, reading romance, scarfing down dark chocolate, gulping wine, and Chris Hemsworth. Oh, and her husband and three children.

Celebrations with growing children (and pandemic).

Thank you for having me on your blog today, Vivi! April has been a crazy month, hasn’t it? Our Easter celebration was a bit different this year not only because of the pandemic but because my children are growing up *sad tears*.

My oldest daughter will be nineteen next month; she moved to San Diego so we’re down a kid. While she’s three thousand miles away from us in Maine, I’m from California and have more family–and connections–for her out there than on the east coast. She’s thriving and doing well, despite the pandemic. So, already, our Easter was going to be different.

On top of that, my other two children keep growing! My other daughter is sixteen and my son just turned fourteen three days ago. My boy is my baby. We refuse to acknowledge that Santa, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy aren’t real. If the kids don’t believe and play along, then there are no stockings and no Easter baskets.

On the eve of Easter, I told the kids to go in the basement to set their Easter baskets out. My sixteen-year-old ran downstairs to get hers because, well, CANDY! When my son refused, my daughter got even more excited! More candy for her!

With a huff and a gruff, my son finally went to get his basket and grumbled, “I know it’s you and Dad. You don’t have to treat me like a baby.” We did the same thing at Christmas time. Let me tell you about the Easter egg hunt in the morning…there were elbows and shoves as my two teenagers ran around the house fighting to find the most candy-filled plastic eggs. Giggles erupted. Mom win!

As long as my children are living in my house, there WILL be the magic of every holiday. As for my eighteen-year-old princess in San Diego…I sent her a care package. Pandemic and teenage years be damned, we celebrate!

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Weekly At Vivi’s with @mariannericeaut ~ #Celebrations with growing children (oh, and #pandemic) #RomanceBooks #books #BookLover #GreatReads #bookaddict #MustRead #WhatToRead #weekendvibes #MFRAauthor #MFRAtogether

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Marianne brought along her latest novel, Something More (A Well Paired Novel Book 6) by Marianne Rice, that released last month in the Contemporary Romance genre.

Mia Parker needs to reassess her wild lifestyle, get back to her lost passion for writing and drawing. At a quiet beach, she gathers inspiration, finding it in a stranger with mischievous dark chocolate eyes and a quirky passion for marine life. But the more time they spend together the more stoic and mysterious he becomes.

FBI agent Ryan Thorne shut everyone out of his life after a devastating loss six years ago. Safeguarding his emotions and feelings, limiting his interaction with people is the only way he can keep those around him safe. Being unreachable, unlikeable is his MO until Mia gets under his skin. Her snark, her sass, and her persistent nature have Ryan doing things he swore he’d never do again. Like laugh… and open his heart. He finds he likes it, and her, a little too much.

But loving her will put her in danger. It’s a cost too high. A risk he’s not willing to take. The only way to keep her safe is to walk away…but his heart marches to a beat of its own.

Love. How could she be in love when she barely knew the man? Two months was not long enough to fall so hard and make her insides feel like they had been ripped into a million pieces.

Remembering how quickly her friends fell, maybe it was long enough. But they’d spent time with their husbands—their then love interests for days, weeks. They’d gone out on dates.

Heck, Lily even got Ty to go to the drive-in. He hated watching movies with people, but their first time out he went to a double-feature.

Grace spent a lot of time at Brady’s house helping take care of his mother, and Ben flew across the country for Alexis. What had Ryan done for Mia? What had she done for him?

They had just sex and then went on their merry way.

She blinked away the tears and noticed the books on the shelf across from her. Okay, so Ryan sent her two small gifts. Two perfectly perfect gifts that meant more to her than flowers or jewelry.

He may know her well, but she didn’t know him, which didn’t explain why she hurt so much. When her tears had dried, she dragged herself to another shower and went to bed. It didn’t matter that it was only seven-thirty.

There was no point staying up when all she wanted to do was close her eyes and either forget she ever met Agent Ryan Thorne, or dream about him for the rest of her life.

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Keep up with Marianne here:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mariannericeauthor/

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/marianne-rice

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Marianne-Rice/e/B00SICUIRM

Website: http://www.mariannerice.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mariannericeauthor/

Ricecakes (Reader Group): https://www.facebook.com/groups/1255334934501071/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mariannericeaut

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13477232.Marianne_Rice