I can hardly believe it’s time for Whatcha Reading already. It always sneaks up on me and I can hear my book budget weeping quietly in the background. If you’re new to the site, this is where we recap the books we’ve been reading and how we feel about them.
Let us know in the comments how much or little you’ve whittled down your TBR pile!
Sarah: One of the benefits to developing and then testing the course I’m building on using Google Calendar to declutter your schedule is that I am finding more and more time to read, and making it a priority. It’s too easy to set it aside like I’ll have time later, when reading is one of the best ways for me to recharge and comfort myself. So while I’m working a lot lately, I’m also reading a lot more, which makes me really happy.
This week, I finished the books in the Peter Grant series and read Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman by Anne Helen Petersen (review forthcoming!). I’ve also read one of Olivia Dade’s books and close to finishing another.
I struggled with the rapid pace of the emotional development in Broken Resolutions ( A | BN | K | G | AB ), and didn’t quite buy the HEA, though I learned that reclusive writers are a particular strand of my catnip. I caught the Jane Eyre references, though, which I did rather like.
Elyse: I just fell down the In Death rabbit hole so I’ll see you all in a year.
Amanda: Goodbye, Elyse! We’ll miss you!
Sarah: Hidden Hearts ( A | BN | K | G | AB )I’m enjoying more, as there is more space to develop the emotional connection, and there’s email back and forth which is another strand of my catnip. Epistolary romances with reclusive writer characters are apparently my ultra-catnip.
Carrie: I have been reading There Is No Lovely End by Patty Templeton ( A | BN ). It’s fictional weird western horror story about Sarah Winchester, who built the Winchester Mystery House.
Amanda: I checked out Crash Into You by Roni Loren from the library. It was on sale a couple weeks ago. It’s the first in an erotic romance series and I’ve enjoyed Loren’s writing before. I’m also anticipating the release of the Royally Mine anthology ( A | BN | K | AB ), which comes out on the 22nd this month. There was a great discussion in a recent sale post about some of the descriptions. Like with most anthologies, I know there are going to be some highs and lows and I’m eager to see how the collection shakes out.
Sarah: Next I’m reading Ink & Bone by Rachel Caine ( A | BN | K | AB ), recommended by Beverly Jenkins in the recent podcast interview we did. The podcast episodes are just as dangerous to my TBR pile, I promise.
How has your month been for reading? What books have you loved or hated?
By request, since we can’t link to every book you mention in the comments, here are bookstore links that help support the site with your purchases. If you use them, thank you so much, and if you’d prefer not to, no worries. Thanks for being a part of SBTB and hopefully, you’ve found some great books to read!
This month is brought to you by comics! Hoopla has really opened up the world of comics to me and I can’t get enough. Also, I’ve moved and I only have a handful of boxes left to unpack! *happy dance*
Faves (these are all so great)
– “Saga Vol. 4-7” by Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples – it’s funny, it’s weird, it’s touching, it’s heartbreaking, and there are royal robots with tv heads!
– “The One Hundred Nights of Hero” by Isabel Greenberg – a feminist take on “One Thousand and One Nights”, this comic features women you want to cheer for, a f/f romance, and great art.
– “Alias Grace” by Margaret Atwood – I picked this up solely because of the coming Netflix adaption but I really loved it. Murder, upstairs/downstairs conflict, an unreliable narrator. Can’t wait for the show!
– “Down Among the Sticks and Bones” by Seanan McGuire – the second of McGuire’s Wayward Children novellas, this managed to sneak up on me and tear out my heart as effectively as the first (bonus: f/f relationship!)
– “Monstress, Vol. 1: Awakening” by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda – a tale of horror, adventure, myths, and a heroine/monster. The art is GORGEOUS. Sort of anime meets Art Deco. I want prints on my wall.
– “The Gracekeepers” by Kirsty Logan – I’ll just say, if you liked “The Night Circus”, try this! It’s weird and dreamy and there’s a circus on a boat! (Bonus: f/f relationship!)
– “The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet” by Becky Chambers (audiobook) – if you want sci-fi with lovely characters and a cheerful vibe, try this. It’s slow, but by the end, the characters have wrapped themselves around you. Very Firefly. (Bonus: f/f relationship!)
– “The Guns Above” by Robyn Bennis – picked this up because of the review here and it was great. Very 1930’s comedy meets steampunk meets Temeraire.
– “League of Dragons” by Naomi Novik (audiobook) – speaking of Temeraire! Oh nooo it’s over! I want to listen from Book 1 all over again. I love that dragon.
– “The Days of Anna Madrigal” by Armistead Maupin (audiobook) – Oh nooo, this series is over, too!! I want to start this all over again, too!! Good news is that I’ve got my mom hooked on the series after blabbing on and on about the audiobook.
– “Big Little Lies” by Liane Moriarty – I didn’t expect this to be so funny! Now I need to watch the miniseries.
Good/Okay
– “The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O” by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland – started out strong and funny, sort of like “The Rook”, which I love. But it lost its way halfway through. Too many threads.
– “Master of Crows” by Grace Draven – this was okay but I never really warmed up to the characters.
– “Bridget Jones’s Baby” by Helen Fielding – I watched the movie and was surprised by how much I loved it. This… was somehow less nuanced than the film? Any choice Bridget made was somehow ridiculous and predictable, it was just disappointing in comparison.
Currently Reading
– “A Closed and Common Orbit” by Becky Chambers (audiobook) – Chambers really knows how to write characters. They just leap out at you. Also, the relaxed style reminds me a lot of Seanan McGuire.
– “The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue” by Mackenzi Lee – Monty, Percy, and Monty’s sister, Felicity, traipse across 18th century Europe on a Grand Tour. Monty is bi and in love with Percy. I’m 50 pages in and it’s delightful. Very Gail Carriger.
I only have one more Temeraire book left and I’m trying to hold out, but it’s so hard because it’s all I want these days. I’ve just read like five Shannon McKenna books in a row instead. Any day now I’ll figure out how self control works and stop ruining series for myself. On the bright side, the fact that I can’t remember what else I’ve read recently means none of it really pissed me off, even if nothing was spectacular.
I’m still slumping. I think it’s a combination of the news, the weather, and my local library deciding to make the summer reading program kids only. 🙁
I read a choose your own adventure type book, Mars:You Decide How to Survive It was okay. Didn’t take me that long to get all the endings, but more educational than I remember CYOA books being.
I reread all of Ursula Vernon’s Hamster Princess series yesterday. They’re still a delight.
And I’m about halfway through The Stone Sky, by N.K. Jemisin. It’s really good.
Right now I’m in the middle of “An Extraordinary Union” by Alyssa Cole. I’ve read a lot of her stuff, she’s one of the rare automatic buys for me, but I’m not sure that I’m buying the romance in this particular book. Not that I don’t like the two main characters, or want things to work out for them, because I do. It’s that their romance (at least on his side) is a bit insta love, and she’s so smart and pragmatic and has so many reasons not to want to be with him that I’m having a hard time getting into the romance. The parts I’m enjoying the most are the pair of them acting as super spies. I could read a whole series of that. In fact, I think that’s part of my problem. If the romance aspect unfolded slower over the course of several books, where he was immediately into her, but it took her a much longer time to trust him, instead of the course of like a week or so that’s in the book, I’d probably really dig the romance between them. The obstacles and issues between them just feel way too big for just one book.
I also read “Heaven’s Fire” by Patricia Ryan, which I enjoyed even though I’m not really into Medieval romances usually. My only complaints are that the book seemed to run about five chapters too long and that the hero does way too much saving of the heroine.
“Match Me if You Can” by Susan Elizabeth Phillips was a fun fluffy diversion. The only thing I didn’t like was that it was clearly a part of a series, and all of the previous heroes and heroines showed up super happy taking up space in chapters, when I just didn’t care about them because I hadn’t read their books.
And finally, I read “At any Price” by Brenna Aubrey, which even though it was for a book club, I couldn’t finish it, it irritated me so much. The heroine was just obnoxious, the hero was a clueless tool, and the premise of the book was just pretty dumb in general. Add to the fact that the heroine was supposed to be a hardcore game girl and a pre med student when the author really didn’t know enough about either of those things to make them believable, and it was a DNF for me.
This has been actually a pretty good month for reading, but not a great month for keeping track of what I’m reading.
Sooo, let’s see. In the audiobok category, I loved –
– “The Sun is Also a Star” by Nicola Yoon. YA with two people falling in love over a day in New York City with a dash of quirky fate. I don’t believe in fate in real life, but I seemingly love fate stories.
-“The Parfit Knight” by Stella Riley. Old-fashioned, sweet Georgian. Gorgeous writing that reminded me of Patrick O’Brian or Dorothy Dunnett, if they wrote straight romance and weren’t quite so abstruse. Great narrator too.
-“All the Ways to Ruin a Rogue” by Sophie Jordan. I found this because it was a HABO! Cute, sexy historical with a great love/hate vibe. I had a mini Sophie Jordan glom I also really enjoyed the audio for “A Good Debutante’s Guide to Ruin.”
I tried to read “While the Duke was Sleeping” too but it didn’t work quite as well, partially b/c I was starting to burn out and partially b/c I just love Bill Pullman’s nice guy sweet beta hero in “While You Were Sleeping” and I just don’t think that translated to the kind of books Sophie Jordan writes. I will definitely keep her in mind, though.
-Also loved the audio version of “Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert. It wasn’t anything revolutionary, but it was just what I needed to hear?
So what else did I love this month?
“The Year of Yes” by Shonda Rhimes. Fast, fun read.
“The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue” by Mackenzi Lee. Yes! This was funny and she is a beautifully descriptive writer. I don’t want to return to the library. I want to reread my favorite bits like it is my precious. 😉
“Time At the Top” by Edward Ormondroyd. Cute old-fashioned children’s time travel book. I’m a sucker for these and I couldn’t believe I’d never read or heard of it. Read it in about a day (thank you Kindle Unlimited!) and I’m working on the sequel.
Also, for someone looking for a beginner reader book, I really liked “Inspector Flytrap” by Tom Angleberger. I read it out loud to the 8 and 5 year old on vacation. It was a hit, silly fun, and it didn’t set my teeth on edge like a lot of the books they like..
I won’t even bother with the stuff I truly disliked (I find I DNF books pretty freely these days) but as for the meh –
-“Miss Lockharte’s Letters” by Barbara Metzger. I keep picking up these books with the “heroine thinks she’s dying” trope and hoping they’ll be as good as “The Blue Castle” and they never are. It’s not fair to the books really, since “The Blue Castle” is in my top ten of all time. I wouldn’t have finished this one except for the fact I’d picked it as my TBR challenge for the month. Decent farce, very lacking in romance, and with a very high handed old-fashioned Regency “hero” who is more sexist jerk than funny.
“Hoot” by Carl Hiaasen. I’m reading this out loud to the 8 year old, and it’s dragging for both of us, I think. This just doesn’t quite have the verve of his grownup books. I suppose it is hard to translate his style to something child appropriate, but I’m surprised it won the Newberry. It also reads to me like an older person who is trying to write about young people today unconvincingly. None of the kids play video games. All the moms seemingly stay home. The boys have names like Roy and Dana (!) and the main character loves cowboys, which isn’t unheard of, but add it all up and it feels like it’s set in the fifties. It’s not horrible, just disappointing. Trying to wrap it up quickly so I can move on.
“Our Souls at Night” by Kent Haruf. I checked this out of the library because I pumped about the Robert Redford, Jane Fonda movie based on it premiering on Netflix soon. I grew up watching “Barefoot in the Park” and “Electric Horseman” and I didn’t think I’d get to see them together again in a new movie. I can see how it will make a good movie and I read it in one night. But, the author’s “literary” style was painful to read. Everyone wants to be Ernest Hemingway, but not everyone can be Ernest Hemingway (who I don’t care for, but I do admit he was talented). Also, for romance readers, it doesn’t have a straight up happy ending, cuz “literary.” I was expecting it to be even more depressing, so I wasn’t disappointed. I think I could have skipped the book though.
“Their Finest” by Lissa Evans. This took a long time for me to get through. Just a little too slow and not quite what I hoped for. Too many characters to juggle. But I loved, loved, the movie and reading the book first did enrich the movie experience. The last time I liked a movie better than the book was “The Commitments”, twenty years ago.
And finally “The Green Rider” by Kristen Britain. I checked this out of the library on a whim. I don’t usually read epic fantasy, but a good college friend loved these. I woke up early one morning, started reading and read for hours. Then I put it down and I’m having a hard time picking it up again. Isn’t that strange? There was the weird focus of being on vacation and a new environment and once that was gone, the book just didn’t appeal to me anymore.
I’m reading The Queen of Blood by Sarah Beth Durst.
I’m also looking forward to getting Holiday in the Hamptons by Sarah Morgan and Wonder Woman: Warbringer by Leigh Bardugo later this month.
I read a lot of series books this month–and, amazingly, I read most of them in order:
I gulped down the first five books in Amy Gamet’s H.E.R.O. Force books (the sixth one is scheduled for release in September) about a group of former Navy Seals who now work various undercover operations. Each book takes a standard romance novel trope as its starting point: Enforced proximity (STRANDED WITH THE SEAL); secret pregnancy (SHELTERED BY THE SEAL); forbidden because of close friendship with object of desire’s sibling (HARBORED BY THE SEAL); unknowing affair with someone who is later of pivotal importance (JUSTICE FOR THE SEAL, which features an older-than-the-hero heroine who is also a breast cancer survivor); and fake marriage (MARRIED TO THE SEAL). But in each one, Gamet finds a way to make the stories (all of them on the dark/angsty side, with quite a bit of violence related to the various operations the team undertakes) both individualized and fresh (even the aforementioned “forbidden due to friendship with sibling” trope–which I generally dislike intensely). Although each book can stand alone, I would recommend reading them in order to see how the characters develop over the course of the series.
Sophie Jordan’s DEVIL’S ROCK series includes three books (a fourth one is scheduled for publication in December) featuring ex-cons (all of whom were imprisoned unjustly): ALL CHAINED UP, HELL BREAKS LOOSE, and FURY ON FIRE. I enjoyed these but if you don’t like ex-con heroes ymmv.
Juliana Stone’s BARKER TRIPLETS series features three books (OFFSIDE, COLLIDE, and CONCEAL), each one about the romance of one of the aforementioned triplets. I enjoyed each book, all had just the right amount of angst without being too depressing. However, Stone desperately needed a good copyeditor–or she at least needed to learn how to use commas appropriately: some sentences were almost incomprehensible because of misplaced or unnecessary commas. And don’t get me started on the correct use of pronouns and their antecedents!
Vi Keeland’s WORTH THE FIGHT is the first in a series about MMA fighters. A fighter begins a relationship with the lawyer who is reviewing one of his endorsement contracts (I liked the fact that the couple met in a plausible way). They both have significant traumas in their pasts and have to work toward resolution. The hero’s behavior occasionally verged on controlling which kept me from full-fledged enjoyment of the love story–but that did not stop me from reading the other two books in the series: WORTH THE CHANCE and WORTH FORGIVING. Dysfunctional families and some very dark themes (including abusive parents and exes) and, again, almost too controlling/possessive heroes.
I downloaded a free selection of CD Reiss books called ALPHAS. There were three series books–each of which was the first book in its own series–and one (very good) standalone called HARDBALL. The collection also included a long sample of Reiss’s MARRIAGE GAMES, which I liked enough to purchase. All of the books (with the exception of HARDBALL) are dark and angsty, most with dom/sub relationships and bdsm themes. I also downloaded Reiss’s FORBIDDEN, an expanded version of her novella KICK.
Other books read:
Sarina Bowen’s SHOOTING FOR THE STARS is the third in her DEFYING GRAVITY series (I’d previously read the first two) about the interconnected lives and loves of a group of winter sports athletes. The book is full of good technical information about snowboarding and the athletes on the circuit, but the story features that rather tiresome trope of the heroine being “forbidden” because she’s the younger sister of the hero’s best friend. Plus, I never felt there was a real erotic charge between the couple, especially because the hero constantly kept calling the heroine “buddy”–which made me think of the Skipper and Gilligan and was a complete romance killer.
Anna Campbell’s Regency, UNTOUCHED, was a recommendation in the post about virgin heroes. That’s not generally my catnip, but this was a marvelous book. The hero (a nobleman) has been imprisoned for years by his greedy uncle. The heroine is a virtuous widow mistakenly for a prostitute and delivered to the prisoner.
I read Kari Lynn Dell’s TANGLED IN TEXAS because it was a 99-cent download. I was unfamiliar with her, but I enjoyed the book. However, despite a couple of moderately-hot love scenes, I would classify this less as a romance and more as a character-study of two people (both involved in the rodeo circuit) learning from their mistakes while rekindling their past relationship. There’s a ton of technical information about various types of rodeo events and a large cast of supporting characters (some of whom have their own books in the TEXAS RODEO series). One review referred to these books as “dense”, I would say “slow-moving–but not in a bad way–and detailed” is more accurate. Give yourself time and don’t try to race through this one.
Claire Kent’s HOLD was a free download. It’s an SF romance and I liked the set-up: in a totalitarian universe, an archeologist digging in a forbidden zone is captured and sentenced to prison. To protect herself from other inmates, she gives herself to the prison’s alpha male. He protects her in exchange for sex. The sex scenes are hot, but I would have liked the character development and story to be fleshed out a little more.
I could not finish Nashoda Rose’s WITH YOU. I should have known it was gonna be a bucketful of “nope” for me when the heroine asserts she has not been raped because the man who attacked her “only” penetrated her digitally! Anyway, the story (about a young woman falling in love with the man she hired to give her self-defense lessons) dragged on for a while until I gave up. On the other hand, it was a free download and I’d only selected it because it had the exact same cover (except in reverse, with tattoos drawn on the hero’s arm) as one of my favorite books, TIME SERVED by Julianna Keyes.
Another free download was Holly Blackstone’s AN ACCIDENTAL AFFAIR. Again, I liked the premise: a woman rescues a man whose car has been struck and forced onto railroad tracks. After he is released from the hospital, they begin a relationship. But the coincidences were hard to swallow (both hero and heroine work in the exact same field), the execution was blah (changing points-of-view mid-paragraph, using such formal/archaic language that I thought perhaps Blackstone had originally planned the book as a Regency), and the bdsm elements included no discussions of limits or safe words. The book is the first in a series, but I’m not interested in reading the others.
I have read several books lately, but have already forgotten half of them.
“The Secret Lives of the Four Wives” – a really interesting story, engagingly written, about an older man who takes a young, college-educated fourth wife, and how family dynamics play out between the wives, their husband, and their kids. I found it neither condemned nor promoted polygyny, but simply took it as a fact of life. Each woman is a distinct character with her own voice, and the husband is boorish and uneducated, but he is not abusive, neglectful, or mean. The discussion of the cultural divide between educated, modern young people and the older, less educated, and more superstitious generation is also interesting.
“Ms Marvel vol 7” – Loved it, of course. Kamala is invariably delightful.
Currently reading:
“Labyrinth” by Kate Mosse. I watched the miniseries last year and really enjoyed it. So far I am liking the book a lot, too.
Waiting for:
“Wonder Woman: Warbringer” by Leigh Bardugo. Because there is no such thing as too much WW.
“Catwoman vol 1” by Jim Balent, which collects #0-14 of his awesome 90s run. I am wildly anticipating this one, because it’s the first time the series will be collected into graphic novel form. I have the whole thing in single issues, but will buy the GNs for easy reading and to let DC know that, yes, it’s worth reprinting the entire series because I want it.
I’ve been super stressed this month (1 year anniversary of the death of the man I was divorcing with attendant family drama plus moving) so I have fallen into a Betty Neels re-read. So comfortable. Course of True Love and Christmas Wish and The Doctor’s Girl all great. Silver Thaw OK but not quite her best.
Also re-read Someone Else’s Fairy Tale by E M Tippetts, another comfort re-read.
Winter Tide by Ruthanna Emrys. My goddess, the writing is beautiful. A story set in the Cthulhu mythos in a way that makes sense and explores the longing for home, among other things. Just loved it!
I also read Kate Elliott’s Cold Fire. I totally loved the first book in this series but was a little overwhelmed by this book. It was so full of incident and drama and the action was all over the place. Also, I was not sure the cousin’s choices made complete sense.
I found Greensleeves by Eloise Jarvis McGraw. I read the book as a teen and loved it. It was originally published in 1968. A coming of age story (including romance) of a teen taking a year between high school and college, working in a coffee shop and doing a little “investigation” work for her lawyer uncle. Sweet and fun and thoughtful.
The Stolen Child, by Lisa Carey. Set on an isolated Irish island, some magical realism, a dark story and a look at women’s lives. Engrossing.
Now reading The Fifth Season by N K Jemisin. Enjoying and thinking I am going have to read it a second time to really understand it. She is a brilliant writer and story-teller and her writing demands engagement and thought on the part of the reader.
Just finished rereading The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss, the unabridged version. A bit heavy-handed in the religious department, but at its heart still a good book. Saw it when I was checking out of the library and thought, “why not?”. I love to reread the oldies.
Before that was Spellbinder by Thea Harrison, second in the Moonshadow subset series of the Elder Races. This took me almost half the book to warm up to. It was only because of who the author was that I stuck with it. But the ending was well worth it all. Super angsty! Which I was in the mood for.
Sadly, nothing else to report bookwise. Haven’t been much in the mood, been mostly reading fanfiction. There are some fine writers on that front, writers that don’t always get the respect that they deserve. Hoping to break the drought soon.
@Nikki P. Yes! I had the same problem with An Extraordinary Union, in fact I put it down and need to go back and finish it and I think it was because I just wasn’t buying the romance.
My favorite book this month was All Systems Red by Martha Wells. It’s the first in the Murderbot diaries series and I am so excited there are going to be more. It’s short, novella length, but packs so many ideas. A part human/part security robot being hacks it’s own governer module but instead of going on a killing spree it develops feelings and ideas that are totally new to it. Lots of thoughts (sometimes hilarious) about what it is to be human and I can’t wait to see where she takes this character
I’m catching up on my TBR pile before the school year starts.
“The Stone Sky” by N K Jemisin – 5 stars, 3rd in a trilogy, cannot be read as a stand-alone. The first two books both won the Hugo Award.
“Raven Stratagem” by Yoon Ha Lee – terrific first half, second in a series, can actually be read as a stand-alone although it will make more sense if you read the first novel (Nine Fox Gambit) and a couple of the short stories first.
“The Course of Honor” by Avoliot – four stars, stand-alone M/M SF romance, space princes in arranged marriage to cement a treaty… available for free, and utterly worth your time to read it.
“An Oath of Dogs” by Wendy N Wagner – three stars, stand-alone SF. The first 90% is a great creepy mystery and the last 10% utterly fails to resolve anything to my satisfaction. Maybe there’s a sequel coming.
“The Dispatcher” by John Scalzi – four stars, a creepy little fantasy mystery novella with a truly nasty streak.
“The Headmaster’s Wife” by Thomas Christopher Greene – more literary than I usually get, but quite enjoyable. 3.5 stars?
“Bittersweet” by Sarina Bowen – three stars, M/F contemporary romance. I bought this at the 99cent sale, and glad I didn’t pay more for it. The characters were bad at communication with each other and some major obstacles early in the book just kind of disappeared by the end of it.
@kkw, Pace yourself woman! I’ve been telling you people for years (including the sale post earlier this week) that those McKenna books are crack. Up all night, WTF just happened? crack.
It’s been a pretty good month, book-wise.
Loved, loved, loved The Almost Sisters, as I seem to do with everything by Joshilyn Jackson. There are just some writers who always seem to hit the right notes with you and it looks like she’s one of them for me. Plus,the heroine ends up oops! pregnant after a Comic-Con one night stand with Batman. Honestly people, how can you not love this stuff?
Continued my new obsession with Anne Bishop’s Others series with Murder of Crows. Such great world building. Such amazing story telling. Happily book three is waiting at the GBPL drive thru as we speak.
Finished Midnight Riot coincidentally timed for Sarah’s post earlier this week. Just what I needed, another series to follow.
Currently reading: On the patio, Hot In Hellcat Canyon. I find Jill Shalvis hit or miss, but took the RITA reviews to heart and gave it a chance. I’m REALLY enjoying it. Starting to feel grabby hands for the next book.
On the nightstand, In His Hands, the latest from Adriana Anders. Evil religious cult, socially awkward loner grape grower, rescue dog. I am inhaling it, which is good, because the GBPL coughed up Hate To Want You just in time for the Book Club this Wednesday. If it lives up to the hype, should finish it in plenty of time.
After that it’s a toss up. The GBPL also generously provided Falling from Simona Ahrnstedt. YAY! Swedish romance! This one looks to be enemies to lovers, but that’s how the last one seemed to start and ended up giving me an Oprah’s Favorite Things level of my fav secret baby trope. Competing for attention will be Viola Carr’s latest, The Dastardly Miss Lizzy. Since I find Lizzy the more likeable of the two personalities, this should be fun.
Off to clean house so I can reward myself with patio time and peach sangria while I finish up that Shalvis book.
Still have a ways to go with my TBR pile, but my favourite so far this month is The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley. It’s a beautiful, beautiful book. It’s an expedition/adventure story but it’s also a story that muses on the nature of time and human connections–both are pulled off wonderfully.
Right now I’m close to finishing The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin. It’s even better than the previous two and has cemented the trilogy as Jemisin’s best work. Third Hugo here we come!
Just finished Loretta Chase’s “Dukes Prefer Blondes.” Haven’t read a Chase in years. Need to remedy that immediately.
Also Tracey Garvis Graves’ “On the Island.” I remember wanting to read this when it came out, but it slipped through without joining my TBR pile. Enjoyed the difference of it.
Now on Rhys Bowen’s “In Farleigh Field.” Not sure how much of a romance it is, but I do love the WWII setting and the intrigue.
When Amanda requested manga recommendations in June I checked out some of the suggestions and then just jumped into the deep end of the pool. I feel like Ive been flailing there but I’m just now starting to get a preference direction. And it has dominated my reading time.
But I did stop long enough to read K.J. Charles The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal and Spectred Isle both of which I liked very much and stuck with me after I read. I’m working my way through K.J. Charles back list but I know if I start one of her books I’m going to read until its done so I’m saving her books for days when I have no other commitments
I also read Heart of the Steal by Avon Gale and Roan Parrish. Not my favorite by these authors
On a Lee Shore by Elin Gregory.
Antisocial by Heidi Cullinan with an asexual/gray-spectrum MC. The characters bond over manga so I was ready to settle in with them for their journey. I liked it a lot.
After listening to his interview, I think I’m going to check out a Santino Hassell book
I just finished Christine Feehan’s “Dark Dreams,” which is book 7 in her Carpathian series.
I have *such* a love/hate relationship with this series–I love them, they’re my comfort reads, but at the same time I could write a rant about everything wrong with them. If I think too much about the lifemate “you cannot live without me and you are only made for me” tropes they piss me off…but I keep going back to the series. Why.
I’m tempted to go on to book 8, but do I really want to do that to myself?
So… The Sceptred Isle. I read it, and thought there were problems with pacing and worldbuilding, but I got hooked anyway. Then I went back and re-read The Secret Casebooks of Simon Feximal, and liked it better than I did the first time around, while still recognizing it has flaws. Then I re-read The Sceptred Isle, and seriously, it has flaws but I love it. The characterization, the characterization! So many subtle character details, and neither protagonist like any hero the author has written before. I’m fascinated by all the characters in the book, and love them all (except the guys from the Shadow Ministry) and I can’t wait for more. I want to talk about the characters but I will refrain for now.
What else was noteworthy this month?
* Let Us Dream by Alyssa Cole. Marvellous historical recreation… I love a novel that really draws me into its time, and this has the bonus that I didn’t know a thing about old New York’s Bengali community before. The romance wasn’t quite as exciting, but there was a nice balance of trying to adjust to each other on each side, and Bertha’s need for public respect, so difficult to maintain, made for a tricky conflict.
* Shatterproof by Xen Sanders, which I reviewed in detail here. This was… something else. As I said in the review, it’s the best depiction I’ve ever read of what it’s like to live with chronic depression long-term. And it can be difficult reading. But this book is special to me.
* A horror anthology (really!): Behold! Oddities, Curiosities and Undefinable Wonders, edited by Doug Murano. The editor helpfully arranged it into three sections; the first being gruesome, the second dark, and the third strange. I knew to skip the first six stories because I’m not much for gore. After that, there were some truly original and fascinating stories (some of them more fantasy-with-a-hint-of-unease than horror). Richard Thomas writes of a lonely man and his search for healing witchcraft; Brian Hodge follows four hoboes in the Great Depression; Sarah Read creates a welcome for the unwanted underground; and many more, including my favorite, “Knitter” by Christopher Coake, where a world almost like ours is haunted by beings that make and unmake parts of the world with a stroke of their needles.
My favorite of the month was a re-read, Agatha Christie writing as Mary Westmacott, Absent in the Spring. A comfortable middle-aged woman spends several days in isolation with nothing to do, and finds herself seeing the events of her life in a new light. It’s merciless, a book that stuck with me after the original read. The Westmacotts seem to be in ebook limbo in the US, but library or used copies are easy to come by.
I enjoyed Ilona Andrews’ White Hot – Innkeeper is my favorite, but I think this is my second favorite of their series.
I think Sherry Thomas’ Not Quite a Husband was a Rec League recommendation to me, and I read it in a straight shot. I’m going to look up her other work.
I’ll second Jill Q on Edward Ormondroyd’s Time at the Top – I’ve read and enjoyed it as a kid and as an adult.
I spent the first week of the month reading and re-reading Ilona Andrews’ Hidden Legacy series, which is supposed to be a trilogy, and is therefore finished. But…it doesn’t FEEL finished. The authors are too good to leave that many loose ends. Who’s Caesar? What about Evil Cousin Kelly? The prologue to “Sweep in peace” has what amounts to an epilogue to the Edge series: maybe they’ll do something like that? I just want closure. And I wouldn’t mind spending more time with Rogan and Nevada and her family.
Then, FINALLY, the next book in Karen Chance’s Cassie Palmer series came out, and I had to re-read the whole series plus the related Dorina series plus the free-on-her-website novellas to get back up to speed before I tackled #8, “Ride the storm.” I guess she had had a stand-off for a couple of years about the size of the book. But now that we’re past that, maybe we’ll not go 3 years between books. It’s not that I begrudge authors their time off, or fail to realize that stuff happens and books get delayed. It’s just that it seems like most books come in series these days, but unlike the old series, like, say, Sherlock Holmes or Nancy Drew or Maigret, where you could read them in any order because it was the main character you were following and there was a resolution/solution in each book. Nowadays, it seems like most series have an overarching theme, and as a reader you need to know that there will be a resolution to that story arc–all Game of Thrones readers know what I’m talking about–and if the last book you have ends in a cliffhanger…well. There are a couple of series that I have in which there hasn’t been a new book in several years, and dammit! I want to know how they end!
My first Fred Vargas!
What a week. I don’t think I can be the only one that needed a Whatcha Reading thread after the utter weirdness of this week. It’s oddly comforting being able to internet up and just focus on what complete strangers are reading as opposed to how sad and strange my country is right now.
:::pops open the Goodreads:::
I did read a lot more this month, but it was mostly because my semester ended, then I got sick, and oh, yeah, didn’t read two Robin Hobb books (which are excellent, but large and in charge) back to back. Shall we begin?
I’m currently reading An Extraordinary Union by Alyssa Cole. I enjoy her writing quite a bit, and the spycraft in this bad boy is legit. I can see why the other two commenters are having the problems they have, but the relationship has not been a problem for me, so it’s probably a bit of a YMMV thing. And the initial love scene…hoo boy. I plan to read it to my husband just to see if it makes him blush. He can do violence all day long (case in point, he’s reading Morning Star by Pierce Brown at the moment), but once the prose gets super-sexual, he blushes like a schoolboy.
After the Robin Hobb joints from last month, I read When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon. It was a really good read from both the romance perspective and the getting some insight into a culture that tends to approach marriage and relationships a bit differently, and how varied the response from some of the younger members of that culture can be. I did have a few moments where I wanted to whap Dimple and tell her to make better decisions, but I have those moments quite a bit when I read a YA contemporary, because, well, teenagers are not renowned for their decision-making skills. After that, it was The Dark Days Club by Alison Goodman, which was awesome. Those reviews that described it as “Regency Buffy” were dead-on, and since Buffy remains my favorite show of all time, it was a happy read. Then I read The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee, which was a lovely, sneaky read, a bit like its main character, actually. The end both broke my heart a bit and made me cheer. I wanted a quick, sweet read after that, so I went with The Girl With the Make-Believe Husband by Julia Quinn, which was exactly that, quick and sweet. The Hamilton fan in me was very interested in the Revolutionary War background, and I don’t think I got enough information on what exactly it was the hero and the heroine’s brother were getting up to that necessitated such secrecy on their part. Or maybe I did and it didn’t register, but either way, that felt almost like a dangling thread to me. In what is admittedly a bit of a pivot, I followed that one up with All Systems Red by Martha Wells. I can identify with an AI that just really wants to be left the hell alone to watch TV. This wasn’t a HAL, “let me kill everyone on the ship” type of deal. It was more, “Feelings are weird, humans make no sense at all, I’m just going to watch this space soap opera now”, and I enjoyed it. Then, I had some Halloween in August with Strange Practice by Vivian Shaw. It was a book about Greta Helsing (the family dropped the “Van” sometimes last century when fleeing their original country), a GP in London that works with monsters. Yup, monsters. She helps repair bone damage in mummies, depression in vampires and ghouls, and ear infections in baby monsters. And also some asshole extremist monks are going around getting murder-y on both her patients and humans, because hey, conflict! It was excellent. The two vampires are both very pleasant guys, and Fastitocalon was my sweetie, but I’m not going into what he is, since his backstory is interesting and should be read for yourself. The tone was very dry and had some dry British humor, which is also appealing to me, and many others, I imagine. I will definitely be watching out for the next one, since it’s the first in a series.
I’ve actually read quite a bit this month.
-I don’t know if I mentioned this last month, but I read A COURT OF THORNS AND ROSES by Sara J. Maas, it was okay and I have yet to read the sequel although I own it.
-After that, I read ALINOR by Roberta Gellis and loved it, although I had some issues with it to to a lot of values dissonance, some intentional and some from the fact that the book was written in 1978. If you don’t really like Romance novels that go outside modern sensibilities you won’t like this because Gellis tried her best to not only get the medieval setting correct but how medieval men and women thought. I think this enhanced the book, but that’s just me.
-After that, I read STRAWBERRY SUMMER by Melissa Brayden. It was highly experimental on that part of the writer and that hurt the book for me.Not to mention it was short, so there was less time to create fully fleshed out characters, although the author did try her best, her efforts just feel flat(for me). I stopped reading at about 10% because the book also suffered
from ending fatigue. However, I think there are some merits that other people might enjoy.
-Lastly, I’m currently in the middle of reading ONLY A KISS by Mary Balogh. It’s the first book in THE SURVIVOR’S CLUB I’ve read, although I’ve heard a lot of good things about it. So far I’m really enjoying this book and intend to read the rest of the series.
Just finished “Heartstone” by Elle Katherine White. This book happened to me at RT when I walked into the Avon party and someone held up two books and said “Do you want THIS book or THIS book?” and this one had a dragon on the cover so I made grabbyhands.
You guys, you guys, you guys, this book is freakin adorable. Pride and Prejudice with dragons and a side order of Labyrinth. And monsters. Lots and lots of monsters. But not gross zombie monsters, classier monsters like gryphons and harpies. And dragonriders that fight them with swords and lances and glittery armor.
The plot follows the main beats of P&P, but there is a lot more action and many of the less likeable characters from the original have been softened up and made more sympathetic. White exploits our own prejudices with them; we expect them to be as unlikeable as their original counterparts, but then she reveals virtues we do not expect, so that we find ourselves changing our opinions about them as Aliza changes hers. By the end of the book you understand how much Mrs Bentaine really loves her girls and the Mr Collins character turns out to have a surprising side of his personality and it’s not the aunt you have to watch out for, IT’S HER DRAGON. Alastair Daired, her Darcy analogue, comes off less as arrogant than as gruff and socially awkward. Aliza Bentaine is one of those people who is so intent on taking care of her family and those around her that she doesn’t even twig to her own needs and feelings (although she does spend much of the book blaming herself unjustly for the death of her youngest sister at the claws of marauding gryphons.) Younger sister Leyda doesn’t want to get married, SHE WANTS TO FIGHT MONSTERS DAMMIT. And even bluestocking Mari turns out to be quite useful with her encyclopedic knowledge of monsters. All of this with the background of some immensely creative worldbuilding that utilizes both familiar creatures and some highly original creations. (Love the Forgewights, and I want to learn more about the Minister! That was one plot thread that was sort of half-wrapped-up but didn’t have enough background for me. Can we get his story next?)
As in the original the romance is emotion-based and there is only a kiss or two; the violence is also not too graphic or gory so it’s perfectly suitable for YA reading, although I think it’s very enjoyable for all ages. If you know a tween who gets bored or put off by the period language and slower pace of the original, “Heartstone” may be just the ticket. For that matter, if you’ve ever wanted to see Darcy as a badass monster-slaying dragonrider, this is the book for you.
Just starting “Mad For the Plaid” by Karen Hawkins; enjoying it so far but being of Russian descent myself the stereotypes are a bit heavy-handed for me.
* I meant I stopped STRAWBERRY SUMMER when I had about 10% left.
Enjoyed The Woman in Blue by Elly Griffiths — part of a police procedural/mystery series set in Norfolk, with a university anthropologist protagonist. If you don’t mind that the writing is present tense, this is a good series (but you should start at the beginning).
Picked up and put down a lot of stuff but reverted to Mary Balogh’s Heartless and that hit the spot.
Found Lingus by M. Zapata hilarious and a fun train read.
Just started Ancillary Justice and am still at the early part where I keep thinking “I NEED BACKGROUND ON THIS WORLD” but figure it will fall into place soon.
It’s been an age since I’ve posted. The most recent books I’ve finished have been a couple of parallel time stories. One of them, A Moment Forever by Cat Gardiner, was one I recommended earlier this year but only recently got around to finishing and reviewing on the blog I run with my best friend. I loved this book for it’s World War II setting, and was reminded of it when I heard about the events in Virginia. This is because our main World War II characters are a Christian female and a Jewish male, and her father is a Nazi sympathizer. This is all set in America, with a framing story in the 1990’s, and the author brings up some pretty difficult issues, but I felt the ending was satisfying with all that.
My second, Golden Earrings by Belinda Alexandra, takes place in 1970’s Paris, with the heart of the story set in Spain before and during the Spanish Civil War. The second setting I didn’t know about much and I’m always interested in different settings in my historical fiction. This book also dealt a lot with Flamenco dance which I found interesting. While there are several love stories, not all end happily, so mileage may vary. This was my first book by this author, and I enjoyed it enough to read more.
I’m currently reading the Wild Rose which is the third in Jennifer Donnelly’s Tea Rose trilogy and while I don’t like it as well as the previous installment, my favorite for the romance aspect, I like the family saga aspect to these books.
The Avon Instafreebie book I got, “Falling Into Bed With a Duke” by Lorraine Heath, was very good. Thanks SBTB!
@EC Spurlock– I also read and loved HEARTSTONE this month! I was a little surprised how much I enjoyed it, but it was truly a delightful retelling (one of the more successful ones I’ve read at making the story their own)
This was my month of non-fiction- EVICTED by Matthew Desmond, ALL THE SINGLE LADIES by Rebecca Traister, TRAINWRECK by Sady Doyle, WHITE TRASH by Nancy Isenberg, and HUNGER by Roxane Gay… all really amazing! HUNGER is my favorite read of the year so far for sure, followed by WHITE TRASH.
And I’m like Elyse- I’m in the “In Death” wormhole and I don’t want out. About to finish LOYALTY IN DEATH and I think it’s my favorite of the series to date.
It’s official, I need to have more than half a cup of coffee before typing. I find Julie Ann Long hit or miss, but having just finished Hot In Hellcat Canyon I have to say she hit a homerun with this one. Where the hell Jill Shalvis’ name came from is in a pre- coffee fog.
While looking for a particular title by Georgetter Heyer I noticed that many of her books are available on kindle unlimited, so I joined. Ten nights and ten novels later I’m thinking of this as a one reader, one author book festival. Interesting to note that Heyer’s books are approximately 100 pages longer than most romance novels published today.
I had a really horrible reading month. Between being sick, having problems concentrating, cramming for my Jeopardy audition, traveling to and just getting back a couple hours ago from the audition, and just life in general, I’ve barely been able to get anything read. Here’s what I did manage:
Burn for Me (reread), White Hot, and Burn for Me by Ilona Andrews- I love this series and hopefully she’ll do more. Her website says she’s contracted for three books so hopefully there will be a future contract or self-publishing. I felt like Caesar was revealed in the end. At least there was a big hint that lead me to make a guess at who it was, but I suppose it could have been a misdirection. I’d still love to see more Nevada and Rogan or possibly spin-offs with her family and Cornelius getting their own stories.
Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch- I enjoyed this one, but it took me forever to get through. I didn’t like Peter’s attitude towards woman, but since I’ve heard that gets better in the following books it didn’t ruin the book for me. I also counted this toward a reading challenge I’m doing as the first book in a series.
Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout- This was another reading challenge one, a book by a local author, and I thought it was just okay.
The Westing Game by Ellen Rankin- Another challenge book, this time a childhood favorite. It definitely held up for me.
Scandalous Ever After by Theresa Romain- I really enjoyed this one. The hero has been in love with the heroine forever so it was a really lovely friends to lovers story. The hero also suffers from mild depression and I thought it was well-depicted in the book.
Right now I’m reading another challenge book, The Power of Habit, which fits my book in a genre I don’t usually read. I read everything, but nonfiction is definitely my least read genre. I’m enjoying it so far. Then I have about a million books I want to read. I have When Dishi Met Rishi from the library and it’s due soon, I really want to read Hate to Want You before the bookclub, I have arcs of the upcoming Sherry Thomas Charlotte Holmes book and Juliana Gray’s new book, and after reading these comments I really want to start Heartstone. I also want to reread everything Sherry Thomas has written and the Wallflower series by Lisa Kleypas. We’ll see what happens.
Continuing my re-read of the Psy-Changeling series and now I’m into the books I haven’t read yet! Finished Shield of Winter and liked it well enough, plus I enjoyed the Judd appearances, as he’s still my favorite Psy hero in that series.
Working my way through the K-9 Rescue series by DD Ayres as well. Very impressed with how much information about the different types of K-9 service and working dogs are included in each book – AND that they get cover dogs to match the breeds inside! I now want a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever of my own, thanks to Lily in Rival Forces.
Lucky enough to find an ARC of Tessa Dare’s upcoming book, The Duchess Deal, and absolutely loved and devoured it. But now I have to wait even longer for the next one!
Also read an ARC of Irresistible You by Kate Meader and really liked it. Remy is truly a romantic romance hero, and I think Meader did a great job imagining the reaction if three women were to inherit an NHL team.
I branched out a bit into some “books with romantic elements” titles and ended up liking both of them. River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey has a unique premise (hippo ranching in the 1890s!) that she manages to make plausible in the space of a novella. It does end with a bit of a cliffhanger, but the sequel is due out September 12th. I also checked The Girl Who Knew Too Much by Amanda Quick off my TBR pile – loved the 1930’s Hollywood setting and enjoyed both hero and heroine. Mysteries aren’t usually my thing, but this one had enough other things I like (smart heroine, maybe-beta hero, romance) going on that I was sucked in.
On the flip side of that, I read the last of the Dashing Widows novellas by Anna Campbell, Catching Captain Nash, and was let down. It felt like there was no “there” there to the plot, and what I wanted more of (conversation between H/h, hearing about how he adapted back into society) was cut in favor of more sex scenes. Meh.
I’ve been in a PNR mood lately, and thought Waking the Bear by Kerry Adrienne would be a good alternative to re-reading something for the 10th time. If the author name sounds familiar, the second in the series was featured here either in a books on sale or Cover Snark post. I got both the first and second books on sale, and thank goodness for that! There’s a lot of internal monologuing from both the hero and heroine, a heroine who’s supposed to be spending time relaxing and painting, but hasn’t done more than a cursory sketch by the halfway point of the book, and a villain who’s just too brooding and obsessive for me.
I’ve been devouring every Grace Draven book I can get my hands on ever since I read “Radiance.”
One of my favorite recurring posts!! I am always reading three books at a time, but I have just started these ones so not much to report yet:
On my Kindle – “Unaccustomed Earth” by Jhumpa Lahiri (She is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and so talented! This is a collection of short stories.)
For my YA Bookclub – “Six of Crows” by Leigh Bardugo (first in a series)
By my Bedside – “The Law of Similars” by Chris Bohjalian (Maybe a love story? The main character is a lawyer who falls in love with his homeopathic doctor and she is later charged with murder! Not his murder.)
Whoo hoo! I love this thread 😀
I only read/listened a little bit this month, studying is taking up too much brain-matter.
LUCIEN’S FALL, Barbara Samuel – Got it from one of the sale posts, thank you! The first half was really engrossing although the second half dragged a bit too much and I started thinking “towards what end? what does it all mean?!” Also, I got a little annoyed with how the fiance was constantly referred to as being too chubby and how lucky he was to have a fiance whose looks were way out of his league. I like heroes that can etch glass with their chins as much as the next person but pointing out his chub when he is kind, smart, patient, and forgiving was like….is that such a problem??? I would totally read a sequel where he was the Hero. Anyway, I really liked Sameul’s writing style and the way she wrote everyone’s relationships.
THE CARDTURNER, Louis Sachar – I couldn’t stop listening to this book. It’s one of those stories you can’t put down and for me the magic is I couldn’t even say why. There was no super dramatic plot, he wasn’t having deep soul-filled conversations with his uncle…I guess it was the normalcy of such a well-sketched character that was engrossing. I don’t think Louis Sachar gets enough credit. The ending might be a bit YMMV for some. I’d recommend this on audio – it’s a first person story in a very conversational style so hearing it read by the author, probably as he imagines how Alton would speak, is very interesting. Also, they have a clever workaround for the explanations on bridge rules which is only possible in audio.
SPECTRED ISLE, KJ Charles – I squealed with glee when the Green Men read the letter in chapter 2. I didn’t know she was going to do that so I was just…so happy! FAVES! ALL OF THEM!
TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG, Connie Willis – It was my turn to pick for book club this month and I picked this book and I think it was a mistaaaaaake. 70 pages in and I have no idea what Ned Henry is like or what the stakes are and I kind of don’t care. It might be my being burned out but this book really needs to stop being so pleased with itself and just get on with the story. I picked up a copy 7 years ago because I read the passage about how some Arthurian lady’s river burial would have ended with her getting caught up in an eddy and stuck in the reeds 20′ downshore and it was just so funny. The bit where Ned and Cyril go looking for the cat and get attacked by a swan is hysterical! But why is getting there such a slog?
LEMPRIERE’S DICTIONARY, Lawrence Norfolk – I really admire Lawrence Norfolk. I feel really intimidated by his work because he just knows what he wants to do and then does it – and he does it so beautifully. I guess I’m just really impressed by authors who have a really strong presence but are also really deft. I’m saying a lot of words here at the risk of sounding like I know what I’m talking about lol; he’s too smart for me but I enjoy his work anyway. It’s about a young classicist who is trying to solve his father’s murder and uncovers a connection his family has to the East India Company and then people around him start dying in ways that mirror myths. I feel like I’m going to end up reading a lot of Wikipedia articles too. I like to think I’m a mythology nerd but…Erichthonius, who? Norfolk recently emerged from the hole he spent 8+ years in with a new book, John Saturnall’s Feast, which I’m looking forward to as well 🙂
Oh, I also read “The Bookshop on the Corner” by Jenny Colgan. I was legit eating this book up with a spoon for pretty decent chunk of it… but the romance ultimately spoiled it for me. I was finding it as delightful as everyone had been saying, but once the heroine and guy started getting it on, it felt forced. Like, this guy hardly says anything and then they bone and are madly in love but they never really even talk to each other because they’re mindreaders or something? I felt like the story would have been much more satisfying without all the sudden boning and appearance of the “evil” ex as a catalyst. I enjoyed it more when the heroine’s big task to overcome was to win over the community with her bookmobile. Enjoyed the first half so much, so the second was fairly disappointing.
Jill Q! I second the Stella Riley books. The Parfait Knight is the first and I both listened to the narration (the wonderful Alex Wyndham) and read the ebook. It was scrumptious. I think I enjoyed The Mesalliance even from that series even more. I think these only recently came out in ebook and sidenote: there is a huge gap in the series where Riley quite writing altogether for a couple of decades and then picked up where she left off seamlessly.
I also read Trust by Kylie Scott which I really liked but i WISH we could have less teenage heroines out there. I know! I know! YA is where the money is but I’m tired of them saving the world all the time. you know?
I also read Wildfire by Ilona Andrews and loved it along with Dim Sum Asylum by Rhys Ford. I had kind of drifted away from Ford and was unaware she wrote any supernatural/fantasy books but this one was excellent. Rounding out the excellent was K J Charles An Unnatural Vice.
In the mediocre pile would be the latest K J Charles Spectred Isle which I truly wanted to love but thought it was just ok. Also in the OK pile was Truth or Beard by Penny Reid, Heart of Steal by Gale Avon and Silver Silence by Nalini Singh (book 16!). Singh’s book was supposed to be the start of another series but sounded like the same old people and same old problems to me.
The stink pile (in my opinion) would be Kristen Ashley’s Breathe. I know hear gasps on that one but I’m so fed up with the monosyllabic hero who seems unable to pronounce the “G” in his sentences turning common words like ‘nothin’, ‘doin’ and ‘feelin’ into IQ draining conversation. Pretty soon her heroes will only grunt for dialogue. Just no. The other no in the pile was The Champion of Baresh. It had potential that was never realized and poorly written action. Also, I had a few issues. Prince Klark has to redeem his honor by having a winning sports team? This seemed trivial. Overall a good reading month.
I’ve had a really good month when it comes to reading I’ve read
Saga Vol 1-4 by Brian K. Vaughan. Finally found them on my library’s Overdrive app and read the four first volumes in one day. Didn’t like the fourth one as much as I liked the three first volumes.
I have listened to 2 audiobooks. First I listened to The Gunslinger by Stephen King, which I liked for the first 75% by didn’t like nor understand the ending. The second one was And Then You’re Dead: What really Happens If You Get Swallowed by a Whale, Are Shot from a Cannon, or Go Barreling Over Niagara by Cody Cassidy. Dispite the stupidly log subtitle this book got me laughing out loud several times. They look at rare and improbable ways to die, and give nice scientific explanations, spiced with a lot of humour, to what happens to you if you do something stupid like jump into a black hole.
Oh and read Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire, which I found to be a strange and wonderful book about doors to other worlds and the children who walk through them. Recommend it for all Neil Gaiman fans!
And thanks to the podcast and Beverly Jenkins I started reading the The Great Library series.Two books read, Ink and Bone and Paper and Fire, next up the third book Ash and Quill.
CK, I’ve heard SO MANY good things about Connie Willis’ TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG. Unfortunately, every time I try to read it, I put it down after about fifty pages. I want to hear from you (perhaps next month?) if I should give it another try.