It’s the first Whatcha Reading of 2017! And I’m sure we’re all diving into books for a variety of reasons – self-care, comfort, getting cozy in the winter weather, or maybe even using it to relax on a warm beach somewhere. We hope you’ve been reading something great, but if not, feel free to rant about it in the comments!
Sarah: I’m listening to Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach ( A | BN | K | AB ), which was an audible deal a week or so ago. It’s about accepting yourself (duh) as you are, but the part that has stuck with me so far is the idea that acceptance isn’t resignation. The point isn’t to give up, or presume one cannot change, but to accept yourself as you are so you can evolve and grow from the present moment. It’s good for listening while walking the dogs, like walking meditation, only with poop bags.
I’m reading Pretty Face by Lucy Parker, the follow up book to Act Like It, which you might have heard me talking about once or twice. The characters from Act Like It appear briefly, too. The heroine, Lily, is an actress typecast into a blonde bimbo role on an evening soap, and she’s cast as one of three female leads in a new and very prominent stage production of a play. The hero, Luc, is the director and theatre owner, and there are a number of barriers between them, including workplace boundaries (he’s her boss), age difference (He’s older), and her determination NOT to live up to her television role – which is further complicated by her own parents. Her mother had an affair with her father while he was married (and still is), and her mother was and is pretty well known for affairs that advanced her professional performance ambition. So it’s a pretty powerful attraction and emotional connection that surmounts (hur) those obstacles. Sometimes I’ve got my hand over my eyes reading between my fingers out of cringe horror (No, no, don’t do that this will not end well…), which is often not my thing, but Luc and Lily have wonderful, delicious chemistry. It’s hard to put down.
Elyse: I just started To Catch a Stolen Soul by RL Naquin ( A | BN | K | AB ). It involves a djinn searching for missing souls–and she opens a food truck. It’s delightful
Carrie: I just finished March by John Lewis ( A | BN | K | AB ) and am finishing Alexander HamiltonĀ ( A | BN | K | G | AB ) and also The Glass Universe which is by Dana Sobel ( A | BN | K | AB ).
Amanda: I’ve been making a concerted effort to stop going to the library temporarily in order to make a dent on my Kindle TBR. So the two books I PLAN to read and I’m looking forward to are The List by Tawna Fenske. Computer repair hero, soil scientist heroine, and a sex list. It’s seems pretty cute.
Second, the Too Taboo erotic romance anthology ( A | BN | K | AB ). It has three stories, all of which seems pretty steamy. What initially interested me is the first story, which has a licensed sex surrogate. The concept of a sex surrogate was something I read about in Off the Clock by Roni Loren and my spidey senses immediately tingled.
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, that’s so great ofĀ you, and if you’d prefer not to, that’s cool too.Ā Thanks for being a part of another year of SBTB and hopefully, you’ve found some great books to read!
I gave my mom a bunch of Jennifer Crusie ebooks for Christmas. She loved Agnes and The Hitman, so that made me want to re-read it again. Love it still. Fingers crossed Ms. Crusie will release something new soon.
I grabbed Prime Minister by Ainsley Booth and Sadie Haller thanks to a SmartBitches sales post. I enjoyed the preview and decided it was totally worth the $.99 deal. A fun, fast, sexy read. I’ll probably snag the rest of the series if/when they go on sale. My TBR pile is pretty insane right now so I’m trying not to buy anything new. But those sale deals are hard to resist!
After drowning my inauguration sorrows in repeated viewings of Mad Max Fury Road, I was looking for something light and fluffy to read. So I started Tessa Dare’s Do You Want to Start a Scandal, which I’d been holding on to for awhile. It was just what I needed. Then I realized I have another Tessa Dare Spindle Cove book that I bought but never got around to reading –Any Duchess Will Do. So I plan to start that one next.
I picked up Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye at the library and am excited to dig into that. Also grabbed a couple audiobooks from hoopla. They have quite a few items I want to check out, but my borrow limit is 6 items a month. I grabbed Rookie Move by Sarina Bowen and Dragon Actually by G.A. Aiken. And I just snagged the new Amanda Bouchet, Breath of Fire. Hoopla had that title in ebook format which was a rare find for me. The audiobook collection on hoopla is great. But I tend to have better luck finding ebook titles on Overdrive. I’m very lucky that my library offers both services.
@KateB and @Amanda. I am also a fan of books about Louis XIV. I have a couple suggestions for you.
1. The Oracle Glass by Judith Merkle Riley is set during the reign of Louis XIV. Madame de Montespan is one of the main characters. It has a touch of paranormal and was one of my favorite books in the late 1990s. I highly recommend it.
2. Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth. This is also a retelling of Rapunzel and is partially set during King Louis XIV’s reign. If you like retelling of fairy tales, this is very good. I really enjoyed it and also recommend it.
I’ve been reading Hamilton by Ron Chernow but it is such a looooonnnggg book.
Been in a bit of a reading slump lately, so I can’t wait for the new Darynda Jones and Jill Shalvis releases this week and the new Kelly Bowen and Sarina Bowen/Elle Kennedy releases the following week!
The problem with reading a really really good book is that it’s hard to follow it up with less than a really really good book, so you either end up re-reading it endlessly, and if you can, re-reading the whole series again, or you re-read something else that you know is really really good, or you read a bunch of stuff looking for that good book high again, and usually not finding it. The really really good books I’ve read in the past month include “Moonshadow” by Thea Harrison. I really like the direction she’s taken this Elder Races spin-off. There was also “One fell sweep” by Ilona Andrews. I know it’s been serialized over the course of the year, but I reached a point where I couldn’t keep reading one segment at a time, with one cliffhanger after another. I had to stop around October and wait until I could read the whole thing, and I’m sooo glad I did. The really good books were Lumberjanes 5,”Band together,” which finally showed the first day of camp, and Stephanie Laurens’ “The masterful Mr. Montague.” I know the Laurens has been out a while, but I hadn’t tried that series, and the mystery was better than in most romances. I am currently reading a book that is slow going, not because it’s boring, but because I really can’t read it at meals or at bedtime. It’s called “Premature burial: the terrifying history of our most primal fear.” I’ll probably need to read cozies after that.
Wow, people are doing A LOT of reading!! I, on the other hand, have been concentrating on the New Year’s resolution to clean house. Five boxes for Goodwill, one for HPB and one for the library sale.
That’s not to say I haven’t read anything. Archangel’s Heart was a nice addition to the Guild Hunter series, and I enjoyed it more than the last two books.
There was also Island of Glass. Time spent with your nose in a Nora Roberts book is never regretted.
And this morning I finished Kitty and The Midnight Hour which has been languishing on my TBR pile for ages. Now I have to go get the rest of the series. GBPL, here I come.
@Francesca – I loved Versailles. It *is* very much in that The Tudors or Borgias mode (though, to be fair, Louis and his brother, Phillipe did cut a swath through the entire court). If you enjoy over the top soapy, sexy period dramas, then this is the show for you.
@Anne – thanks for the recs!!
Just finished Wedding Wager by Jane Feather and was reminded how long it’s been since I read a Georgian. Liked the fact that the heroine managed to keep the protective hero from interfering with her plans and that he albeit grudgingly accepted the fact that she could take care of herself for the most part and held off killing the villain until she said it was OK. However casual sex was not that acceptable in period, no matter what class you were in, and I was disappointed that there actually was no wager in any form anywhere in the book.
Just started Nora Roberts’ Blue Dahlia trilogy because I need brain-in-neutral right now.
And thanks to all you Bitches for all the recommendations about Saga. I got the first two volumes, glommed them and need MORE. I adored Marko’s dad; I ugly-cried all the way through his arc. And I love that the whole revolution starts because of a romance novel!
Amanda, for a sex surrogate book, I recommend The Mating of Michael by Eli Easton. It’s m/m romance. Got 5 stars from me.
Another strong reading month for me! And I was able to end 2016 with a total of 98 books read just shy of my goal of 100.
Excellent:
– Christmas in His Bed by Sasha Summers: This one gave me all the feels. A second chance love story – the hero did something stupid as a teenager in order to protect the heroine (TW for abuse in the heroine’s backstory), but it hurt her because she didn’t understand. And what he did was really stupid, but it seemed like he really thought he was doing the right thing. I also realized partway in that I read a story about the hero’s brother which I also like Seducing the Best Man, although not as much as this book.
– Tongues of Serpents by Naomi Novak: The sixth book in the Temeraire series and as I have told my husband multiple times the world is a better place because Naomi Novak created the character of Temeraire. I wish I could live in an alternate universe where he and other dragons like him live amongst us.
– Home by Nightfall by Charles Finch – Ninth in the historical mystery series following British gentleman detective Charles Lenox, the writing is amazing and the puzzle of the mystery just great. And even though it is a historical mystery and not a cozy, the setting of London and the English countryside in the autumn in the late 1800’s makes me feel cozy.
The Very Good:
-Lighting the Flames by SB Sarah: I loved the winter camp setting and friends to lovers story, especially the characters’ backstories – different and interesting.
– Beautiful Bastard by Christina Lauren – I liked that the hero didn’t have an angsty backstory about why he couldn’t love or commit, just a young guy that hadn’t found the right person yet. However, the way the relationship started between the hero and heroine when he was the boss and just initiated physical contact without talking about it gave the book a slight ick factor that I couldn’t quite shake despite enjoying the rest of the story.
-Murder, She Barked by Krista Davis – cute cozy mystery set in a small town which reinvented itself as a pet friendly resort destination – I would love to live in a town like that.
The Good:
– Santa, Baby by Lisa Renee Jones
– Sweet Light by Judith Arnold
The Bad:
– Holiday with the Mystery Italian by Ellie Darkins: the heroine spent the entire novel with a chip on her shoulder and in a grumpy mood – no idea why the two main characters decided they liked each other.
– Come Home for Christmas, Cowboy by Megan Crane: A story about a couple who has been married for several years and is on the brink of divorce. At the end of the book, I could imagine them having the exact same problems they had in the book every few years. I wasn’t convinced that their problems were solved and wouldn’t just keep cropping up again and again.
– Toasting Up Trouble by Linda Wiken: Cozy mystery set in a small New England town centering on a party planner. The writing was so atrocious, the plotting horrible and the characters so wooden and flat that I had a hard time believing this was actually published by a major publishing house and kept checking the spine to confirm that this was in fact true.
I’ll be getting back to books either Sunday or Monday, after taking a few months off. I’ve had this need to sketch and color for all of that time, and making eight sketches over the last week, (and upping my ability at it) burned me out for a little while so now I might have more time to read.
I did buy ‘Heartless’ by Marissa Meyer, and four of the novels in the ‘Once Upon’ series by Nora Roberts and other authors. They’re collections of short stories. I miss collecting books, now I need to get back to actually reading them.
I finally bought Camilla Monk’s Spotless which I liked enough to buy the next titles, Beating Ruby and Chrystal Whisperer. I like them, but sometimes the main charachter’s uber cutesy inner monolog gives me a headache from all my eye-rolling.
Somebody here recommended a book by Sherry Thomas, which was a little too expensive for my wallet, but I found her Burning Sky series from my library’s e-book selection. I gobbled the first book and now I’m “hoovering” the second book The Perilous Sea. It’s a YA fantasy /historical epic adventure with magic, cross dressing heroine, occasional dragons, and so much feels. LOVE IT!
I just finished The Hanging Tree by Ben Aaronovitch – great addition to the Rivers of London series.
I have been glomming Sarina Bowen – I am not usually a great fan of NA, bur I have enjoyed her books.
I can recommend Summer Harvest by Georgina Penny – and if you are looking for something to listen to her podcast, which she does with Rhiell Biest, Bookish Tarts, is always entertaining.
:::the riff from The Real Slim Shady kicks in, everyone looks around because random music does not JUST START PLAYING:::
I finished Nevernight. It finished less stabby than it started. Hee hee hee. I really wish Godsgrave were already available.
Turned around started The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden. So far, very lush, and fairy tales are beautiful. I see, just from the lushness of the writing, why it’s getting a lot of comparisons to The Night Circus.
One of my goals for 2017 is to start reading the TBR books on my Kindle. Amazon lets you sort your kindle content by date, so I started from the oldest books and began there. Although I try to remember to put new books in a TBR folder, I have not always done this and there are quite a few on my kindle that apparently aren’t in that folder. I set a very low bar (1 TBR ebook/month), since I am (1) not sure how many there are (lots); and (2) I have been doing lots of comfort re-reads since the election and expect that I will need to do more during the next year.
I started the year by reading The Irish Bride by Alexis Harrington, purchased in March 2012. This was sort of a mix of historical with some suspense and I enjoyed it. Then, I read Don’t Say a Word by Barbara Freethy (purchased in October 2011). I am not always a fan of romantic suspense, but this was really very enjoyable and I was genuinely surprised at a couple of the plot twists. The third TBR folder book that I read was The Passion of Patrick O’Neill by Virginia Kantra (purchased in May 2014). Of course, this sent me off to buy and read the rest of the series, so I will try to get back to the TBR folder in February.
I also read Playing the Score by Kat Latham (which was a SBTB deal and recommended by SB Amanda). I enjoyed it and plan to read the rest of the series (hopefully bought on sale). I also bought a read A Lady’s Heart by Vivian Arend, which is a novella set in her shifter’s world. This one was about bear shifters, although some of the shifter characters from prior books make brief appearances.
Currently, I’m listening to My Mother Was Nuts (Penny Marshall’s Memoir), which she narrates. Her memoir is about as entertaining as you would expect and makde household chores go faster, although I spend quite a bit of time giggling. I’m also reading The Devil’s Brood by Sharon Kay Penman, which is part of a series about Henry II. It is a big thick historical and suits my mood lately.
Love these posts, although they definitely add to my book wishlist.
Box Brown’s TETRIS: THE GAMES PEOPLE PLAY is absolutely fascinating! It’s in graphic-novel format (using only three colors), which was definitely the right choice. I never knew how involved the whole story is (or how video game intellectual-property rights are, yeesh)…I’m definitely giving a copy to my software-designer buddy for her birthday, and to my video game-loving nieces.
@kkw – H is for Hawk is the Feb book for one of my book groups. I’ve checked it out but haven’t actually started reading it yet. Glad to hear you liked it. I’ve heard good things about it from everyone except my mother (our reading tastes overlap but are not the same).
I read a fair number of good books this month.
My favorite read was Wanted, A Gentleman by K J Charles – standalone mm historical. Fun, snarky Georgian road trip with lots of call outs to gothic romamces of the era and a Snidely Wiplash type villain. If you liked What Stays in London by Julia Quinn, you’ll probably like this. There are no pigeons but it’s hilarious.
The good:
Resistance by Amy Rae Durreson – m/m PNR between a cranky physician dragon and a local god. Book 2 in her current series. I loved this – the romance is understated – I read it for the fantasy and the world building.
Honorable mentions
Off Base by Annabeth Albert – mm contemporary between an out and proud mathmatician and a heavily closeted Marine who end up rehabbing an apartment together. It’s a spin off from her #gaymers series but it’s pretty stand alone. I enjoyed the flirting and the slow burn, although the contours of the plot felt very familiar to me.
The Obession Saga by Liliana Lee (aka Jeannie Lin). I read books 2 & 3. I’d call it erotica more than erotic romance – although book 3 has a wonderful central love story and a satisfying hea, not to mention a lot of sex. It’s about a princess with an extensive male harem and a brother who’s a crazy despotic emperor – she falls for the one man who resists her. It reminded me of 90s era Black Lace historical erotica, complete with multiple partners, intrigue, crazy-sauce plot twists and lots and lots of inventive sex. There’s a little dub con in books 1&2.
Misc
I read Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin for a book group. I’m glad I read it, it was a good book to discuss but I don’t think I can recommend it for pleasure reading. It’s the story of David, a white American living in Paris – it opens with him dreading the execution of his ex-lover Giovanni, and most of the novella are flashbacks explaining how it happened. It’s so dreary – like reading Hemingway but with unlikeable queer male characters instead of unlikeable straight men. The true villian of the piece is the lack of gay rights and the closet.
Wow, I just wrote out a long comment, went to check on a book series, and somehow lost everything I wrote! I blame the cold medicine I’m on…
So, I’ll try again, and hope that somehow this doesn’t double post.
I’ve read several new to me authors this month (thanks SBTB reviews), and I’ve really enjoyed them. Sarina Bowen and her Brooklyn Bruiser’s series (hockey), Kat Latham and her London Legends series (rugby, which I freaking love and can’t believe I didn’t know about these books), and Marie Harte-her Body Shop Bad Boys, McCauley and Donnigans series.
I tend to read a lot of historical fiction, and my romance inclination skews that way too. But I have enjoyed every one of these contemporary romances! For some reason I also kind of avoided ones set in the sport’s world-not sure why, but Latham and Bowen do a great job setting up the world and having very strong heroines that hold their own.
I’m totally enamored of Marie Harte, and her working class heroes who are anything but one dimensional, and her sparky, funny heroines that usually have a wonderful bunch of female friends. I’ve been home sick since Wednesday, and I’ve read 7 or 8 of her books, that is how much I love her! Has put a crimp in my knitting (although I did finish my scarf, and learned to cast off-thanks Wool and the Gang!)-but really perfect for being sick, and the stress of the political climate. I read all Friday, instead of watching TV!
I also read The Turn of the Screw by Henry James for book club, it was a quick read, but creepy. Not in a fun, suspenseful way-but in a way where you feared what actually was happening with the children.
I saw Sarah’s first live stream and immediately went and got God Smites and Other Muslim Girl Problems by Ishara Deen. Love! What a wonderful find. Have you read Ms. Marvel yet? If not,get yourself to the library straight away!
Just finished a comfort reread of some of Mercedes Lackey’s 500 Kingdoms books, The Sleeping Beauty and A Tangled Web.
Also reading (well, playing, but with a heavily text based game it counts as reading) a couple of visual novels, Muv Luv and Backstage Pass.
Muv Luv is… infuriating, frankly, it’s a Japanese romance game aimed at men, and the particular brand of male wish fulfillment makes me want to punch things. The CONCEPT is intriguing enough to make me want to stay with it, but good GOD I hate the protagonist and wish I had a multiple choice dialogue option that would let me drop him off a cliff.
Backstage Pass is a new adult indie romance for women, and I ADORE all the characters, but the mechanics are frustrating. Gameplay involves a LOT of juggling stats and life management and trying to figure out where and how to actually spend TIME with all these wonderful characters the heroine is meeting while keeping her grades and bank account up and clothes on her back and not keeling over from exhaustion and THIS LIFE SIM IS SLIGHTLY TOO LIFELIKE.
The last couple weeks have been heavy on reading, as I did a lot less NPR and even stopped facebook sometimes …
NK Jemisin’s THE OBELISK GATE, #2 of the Broken Earth Trilogy (and a fast reread of parts of #1, THE FIFTH SEASON, because Obelisk Gate was so awesome.) Everyone should read these. Really blew my mind.
A bunch of Molly O’Keefe that I had somehow not previously read – I finished off the Boys of Bishop series and started the Crooked Creek Ranch books. Excellent! I think #3 in Boys of Bishop, Between the Sheets, was my favorite of that series and WOW, there is some serious anger on display in Can’t Buy Me Love (Crooked Creek #1). It worked for me right now. I love her books so much.
I FINALLY started Last Hour of Gann on the treadmill! Liking it so far, but I’m exercising self-discipline and ONLY reading it on the treadmill. (Wow, I paid full price at Amazon and that was a surprise. I’ve been spoiled with library ebooks).
Tons of binge watching – perils of Prime – I finished Bosch and started Night Manager. I liked Bosch the TV show so much I checked out Lincoln Lawyer, by Michael Connolly, from the library and boom that was another day and half I got nothing but escapism accomplished. Still, I’m keeping a lid on my anger, so that’s good. I have holds on a lot of Connolly books. Hopefully they are just as good.
And – I finally received the latest Lee Child, Night School, from the library and read it last week – I thought it was great, but oddly my mother, who usually likes Reacher, did not. Opinions from other Reacher fans? I thought Night School was a return to more classic form, although a bit leaner and shorter than many of Child’s books – and I liked that it didn’t feel like Reacher was full of angsty self-examination like he had been in the last couple. I wanted a break. I expect when he returns to a current book, he’ll be ‘grown up’ darker Reacher, but seeing him back in the 90s in the army felt like the change I needed. Anyone else?
Right now, I’m reading “White Trash” and also “A Perilous Undertaking” – they’re both excellent works, albeit very different works: one a sweeping and thoughtful social history of aspects of class and race in America and the other a giddy addition to the Veronica Speedwell historical mystery series.
I was in a 6-month reading slump and finally got out of it near the end of last year. Dragon Bound by Thea Harrison was the book that got me reading romance again, and I subsequently read the sequel and novellas with the same couple from Dragon Bound: Lord’s Fall, Dragos Goes to Washington, Pia Does Hollywood. I’m currently reading Liam Takes Manhattan. Pia and Dragos are such a fun couple and I love how they are very opposites attract. Eventually, I might go back and read some of the other Elder Races novels, but I’ve read mixed reviews on the rest of the series.
I also read Sweet Girl by Cristin Harber, which was a freebie on Kindle that had my catnip – brother’s best friend. I didn’t find out until I had finished the book that it was a new adult prequel to the author’s romantic suspense series. (SPOILERS) The couple doesn’t achieve their HEA until ten years after the events in the book I read (END SPOILERS). I wasn’t too pleased. Plus, I think the plotting and characterization was poorly planned to match up with the events in the other series. The romantic suspense plot in the book came out of nowhere and the end felt completely unearned. I was left so unsatisfied and confused that I decided not to pick up the sequel.
I also just finished Dark Lover by J.R. Ward. It’s been sitting on my TBR pile for a few years. I bought it during a period where I wanted to read “the classics” of the romance genre. That desire passed quickly and several books now languish on my bookshelf waiting for a flight of fancy. I could see why Dark Lover was interesting during its time but I don’t think it has the same hold nowadays. The plot was too sprawling with too many pov characters. And I found the overt toxic masculinity that the male characters reveled in old-fashioned and distasteful.
I’m re-reading Nalini Singh’s Guild Hunter series and really enjoying it. I’m two books behind in the series and want to catch up before her next release. So Archangel’s Enigma is queued up as my next book.
@Nancy, I would recommend Moonshadow, Thea Harrison’s latest book. It’s a spinoff of the Elder Races world so it helps to be a bit familiar with the world, but there are no crossover characters that I noticed. It’s got my favorite couple since Pia and Dragos. I have been working my way very slowly through the original series (I just recently read through Lord’s Fall) but I have enjoyed each book, just not quite to the level that I love Dragon Bound. I think my favorite in that group is Oracle’s Moon. Watching Khalil, the ancient Djinn fall in love with Grace’s young nephew and niece was really sweet.
As for my own reading, Moonshadow and Lord’s Fall have inspired me to continue on with the rest of the Elder Races series and I’m looking forward to that. I also read an interesting rock star romance called Color Me Crazy by Carol Pavliska that featured a hero with synesthesia who sees sounds as colors.
I also had a bunch of library holds come through at the same time, so on the top of the TBR mountain at the moment are two fiction books, Baron by Joanna Shupe, and The Little Paris Bookstore by Nina George, and two nonfiction books, Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance and Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are by Frans De Waal. I’m almost done with The Little Paris Bookshop which is a lovely book, but filled with lots of thoughts on life and grief, so I find I have to read it in small bits. It’s funny because the friend who recommended it to me raced through it and pulled an all-nighter to read it, whereas I find I just have to put it down occasionally to take a break and read some romance. As for Hillbilly Elegy, I requested it in hopes of getting some insight into the forces that have created our current political situation, but I’m not sure I’m going to be able to read it right now. It may have to wait until a later date when I’m not so depressed about the state of the world.
@Jennifer, how did you get your hands on The Hanging Tree already?? Is it the UK edition? I have to wait til Jan 31 š
I pledged at the beginning of the year to plow through my TBR and To Be Finished pile before starting anything new.
So far I’ve finished:
The Fireman by Joe Hill – good popcorn read, liked it better than NOS4A2, more of a thriller than horror
Black and Blue Magic by Zilpha Keatley Snyder – not one of her better-known ones, very sweet
Just started Unveiled by Courtney Milan
@Jennifer, how did you get your hands on The Hanging Tree already?? Is it the UK edition? I have to wait til Jan 31 š
I pledged at the beginning of the year to plow through my TBR and To Be Finished pile before starting anything new.
So far I’ve finished:
The Fireman by Joe Hill – good popcorn read, liked it better than NOS4A2, more of a thriller than horror
Black and Blue Magic by Zilpha Keatley Snyder – not one of her better-known ones, very sweet
Just started Unveiled by Courtney Milan
I’m just over halfway through ARABELLA OF MARS, which is best described as Regency “sailpunk”. I love the concept, and it’s not badly written, but I’m finding it surprisingly easy to put down. Maybe because it’s a “chicks in pants” book? That isn’t my favorite trope, even when the Divine Georgette does it. (And just once, couldn’t someone write a Regency heroine who *enjoys* needlework and/or is good at it? I’m disturbed by the suggestion, even–or perhaps especially–when it’s done by women, that there’s something inherently superior in the heroine who turns her nose up at traditionally female pursuits.)
I must be in a slump because nothing’s really doing it for me. I enjoyed A Perilous Undertaking–I listened to it part on audiobook and the narrator is great. But I was really disappointed in the second Amanda Bouchet book, especially on audiobook. There’s a scene near the beginning (vague spoiler?) where the heroine discloses a secret she’s kept for years, blithely, in a moment of retort, to a roomful of people. And that one scene honestly ruined the whole book for me–this is supposed to be a smart, powerful woman who has lived secretly and safely for years and she can’t remember what her biggest secret is or why she shouldn’t tell it to people? I don’t like instalove of background characters–I hate it when the H/H get along with each other’s families or friends too perfectly, because it usually reads like they’re getting along because they’re exactly the same person! And the Bouchet book reads very much like she’s a new writer still getting her pacing down.
I did love KJ Charles’ Wanted, A Gentleman, which I initially didn’t buy because it’s $4.99 for a novella, but I have no regrets that I eventually did cave. I also enjoyed the second two books of Ilona Andrews’ Innkeeper Chronicles, though I found the first one unengaging.
I may just be grumpy right now about the world in general, and it’s making it harder to enjoy things. I’ve got a slew of preorders for January 31 that I’m looking forward to.
I just discovered Penny Reid’s books, and am working my way through her catalog. A hero named Cletus? AWESOME. A criminal hacker who’s younger and a virgin? HERE FOR THAT. Joy Nash, one of the narrators for Beard Science has just the right voice for Jennifer.
I’m also making my way through Seventh Grave and No Body by Darynda Jones (#7 in the Charley Davidson series). I’ve only listened to Lorelei King’s narration for this series, and it’s great.
ALSO: Archangel’s Shadows by Nalini Singh (#7 in the Guild Hunter series).
It just depends on my mood.
NB: I dearly wish the Shelly Laurenston Call of Crows series wasn’t narrated by the same actress who did the Sookie Stackhouse books. I loved her for Southern-set Bontemps, but I don’t buy her voice for the Crows–not enough rage (Very Important).
*not sure how I posted this in the wrong thread but I guess it fits in the single mom looking for love thread too so I’ll keep it there too anyway. :p *
Reading The Stolen Princess by Anne Gracie and loving it SO much. Gabriel is such a fantastic hero, sexy, charming sense of humour, justā¦.sigh. Callie is a wonderful heroine, strong but at least thus far (Iām halfway through) not proven herself to be too stupid to let the hero help her when needed. (I HATE those kind of āoh Iām so independent I donāt need a man to rescue me even though I canāt possibly get myself out of this dangerous situation without helpā heroines.) Sheās afraid to depend on him because of the horrible power the men in her life have wielded over her, yes, but heās slowly proving himself not to want to control her but to be there for her and sheās letting him. And her little boy Nickyā¦.Oh that little boy. <3
@JenM Thanks for the Moonshadow recommendation! And I’m glad to hear you liked Oracle’s Moon – out of all of the non-Dragos/Pia books, that one interested me the most.