The Red Diary
A Toni Blake classic reissued!
Buy the Book
eBook: Amazon, B&N, Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play
Print: Avon Romance, Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Walmart
Audiobook: Avon Romance, Audible, Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play
“This is an author to put at the top of one’s auto-buy list!”
Sun, sand, and one woman’s private fantasies recorded in a seductive red book.
Prim and proper Lauren Ash has a secret side no one else sees – she records her sexual fantasies, in intimate detail, in a very personal book meant for her eyes only.
When hired-hand Nick Armstrong finds the red diary, he's shocked…and aroused. Never before has he come across anything so private—or so sensual. And given the way the Ash family has hurt his, he soon begins to see this as a potent weapon for righting an old wrong. Wouldn't it serve the haughty Lauren right if he used her own fantasies to seduce her, make her fall in love, and then break her heart?
But there's much more to Lauren than Nick expects, and before he quite realizes it, he's opening himself – and his heart – to her. Can Nick let go of the past and surrender to Lauren, body and soul?
A Note from Toni
The original 2004 cover for The Red Diary.
Awards & Honors
Road to Romance's Reviewers Choice Award
Favorite Hot Contemporary on Pat Rouse's Top Romance Picks of 2004
Words cannot express how thrilled I am to see a new edition of The Red Diary being released. I'm excited to share this book with my newer readers, and also glad it will be available again for my long time readers who want to revisit my first single title novel. Below is what I wrote about the book back when it was originally released, and it all pretty much still holds true.
I can't say where I first got the idea for The Red Diary, but I know I dreamed it up about ten years ago, deciding it would be a great hook if I ever wanted to break into single title and write longer books. Of course, a finished book is never exactly the way you first imagine it, and The Red Diary, changed a lot along the way — but I think, and hope, that it's a better book than the one I first envisioned, with a lot more layers and character depth.
Clearwater Beach, Florida and the surrounding area seemed a natural setting for this book. First, I love the beach — I’ve always felt there’s something very sensual about all the elements there: the heat, the water, the rhythm of the tide, the sand beneath your toes. And second, Clearwater Beach has been a home away from home for my husband and I ever since we met. Our aunt and uncle live in the area, and not only have we vacationed there frequently, but staying with our relatives has given us a chance to learn about the community outside what most tourists see. So it was a joy to put all that accumulated knowledge to use.
I knew from the start that Nick would be a very dark character, but it was only as I wrote the book that I really understood the things that had happened in his past. And I discovered that I really enjoy writing a “meatier” story like this. I hope readers like the results!
