this was a really interesting concept, the characters were great and I really enjoyed the mystery part of the story.

“Cold reality brought him up short. A smart, beautiful woman like Pallas was not likely to abandon the chance of a lucrative partnership in San Francisco to hang around a guy up to his eyebrows in hock.”*

As a big fan of poker and mythology, I was eager to read GAMBLING WITH THE GODDESS. Unfortunately, I felt the gambling scenes lacked authenticity and the mythology part doesn’t extend much beyond the name of the heroine, Pallas, as in Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. Her father “Lucky Jack” named his daughters after the queens in a deck of cards. I did, however, like how Pallas leverages both her intelligence and intuition to win at blackjack and poker, and that the Pallas is the high-stakes poker player, not Danny her male love interest.

Conflict abounds in the attempts to sabotage Danny’s new Lake Tahoe casino, a revenge-seeking spurned suitor of Pallas, the need for Pallas to win a half million dollars for a new business venture in San Francisco, and the couple’s geographic incompatibility. The strongest conflict for me is the need for Pallas to learn why her father was accused of cheating and banned from gambling in Lake Tahoe as well as Danny’s father’s role in the incident.

A few characters stand out in the crowded cast, such as Bru, the charismatic slinger of Moon Goddess cocktails, who happens to be Danny’s best friend, and Sassy, Pallas’s sister. The concept of four daughters named after the queens in a card deck makes a fun hook for a romance series.

Setting the novel in Lake Tahoe rather than Las Vegas is refreshing. While the poker elements of this novel didn’t work for me as I would have liked, this may be a positive for romance readers who may be reluctant to dive into a novel with the word “gambling” in the title. There’s plenty to this novel beyond the gambling elements.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Thanks to Backlit PR, NetGalley, and The Wild Rose Press, Inc, for providing an Advance Reader Copy.

*Please note that my review is based on uncorrected text.