Are you ready for September to be over? Or is it too soon? I love October, but I’m not sure how I feel for 2019 to end already. At least we have books, right?!
Shana: I’m reading The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite. It’s been on my list since Carrie’s review. Women slowly falling in love over conversation is the perfect chaser to all the m/m novels with emotionally inarticulate men that I’ve been reading lately.
Tara: That is waiting for me on my Kindle and I’m so glad to hear you’re loving it!
I’m reading 200 Hours by Natasha West ( A ), which is about two young British women with a major class gap who fall for each other while doing community service. I wasn’t sure about it at first, but it’s totally sucked me in.
In audio, I’m listening to Recipe for Love by Aurora Rey ( A | BN | K | AB ), which is about a new chef at a farm-to-table restaurant in upstate New York who falls for one of the farmers that supplies produce for the restaurant. I had no idea how much I needed this book in my life because it is adorable and the narration is very good.
Catherine: I’ve just finished Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh which is one of the most magical novellas I’ve read in a long time. It’s about the Wild Man of the Greenhallow Woods and it feels properly mythic, and very real, as though if you wandered into the woods at the wrong time this could happen to you. I love it (and yes, I’ll be reviewing it).
And now I’m reading an ARC of Angel in a Devil’s Arms by Julie Anne Long ( A | BN | K | G | AB ), and it’s delightful and very funny. So I’m having a pretty good week for reading!
Susan: I’m reading the reissue of Alexis Hall’s Iron & Velvet ( A | BN | K | G ), which is the first book in his Kate Kane series! It’s about a lesbian paranormal private investigator who really doesn’t want to be dealing with vampire/werewolf politics but DOES need money, and it does brilliant things with noir tropes and pop-culture vampirism.
Catherine: Ooh, that sounds like great fun!
Susan: It really is, especially because Kate Kane is very aware that she makes nothing but terrible life choices.
Elyse: I just started Twice in a Blue Moon by Christina Lauren. They’re one of my go to comfort read authors.
Amanda: I’m so excited to see them in Boston next month!
Aarya: Susan, I have Iron & Velvet on my TBR and this makes me want to pick it up now! I, too, am very aware that sometimes I make nothing but terrible life choices. Lolsob.
In terms of my own reading… I’m coming up blank because I’ve been super busy and stressed lately. Thanks, Real Life Obligations. But I’m reviewing my kindle right now and I think my next read will be Tempted at Midnight by Cheris Hodges ( A | BN | K | G | AB ). I’m a sucker for one-night-stand-oh-crap-guess-we-now-work-together books. Fingers crossed that I’ll like it!
Carrie: I just finished The Institute by Stephen King ( A | BN | K | G | AB ). It was…not his best.
AJ: I just finished The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang. I was trying to find something to help with my Gideon the Ninth ‘goth lesbians in space’ hangover, and it had “black” in the title. It was good, but very different and not goth at all, so it didn’t really hit the spot. I think I might need some real over-the-top nonsense next. Shapeshifters, mermaids, dragons, maybe all three.
Charlotte: I’m reading A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallaro ( A | BN | K | AB ), which was a recent daily deal, and loving it. I rarely read books from a male POV, so it’s an interesting experience.
Sneezy: I’m reading/listening to the Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls by Mona Eltahawy ( A | BN | K | AB ). The audiobook gets me so fired up, I fucking work out to it.
Amanda: I’m waffling between Aurora Blazing by Jessie Mihalik ( A | BN | K | G | AB ) and Heartbreaker by Inara Scott ( A | BN | K | G | AB ).
Aurora is my commute reading, mostly, and is a different feel than Polaris Rising, but I’m still really enjoying it.
Heartbreaker is quite the surprise and if the romance keeps going without any egregious issues, I will be glomming up Scott’s other books. The heroine is prickly and dog-training research was clearly done. This one is for reading at night when I just don’t want to keep my light on any longer and would prefer to read in night mode on my kindle.
Catherine: I cannot wait to get my hands on Aurora Blazing.
Amanda: It’s not as fast paced and has some significant focus on explaining the tech, but the tropes are more my catnip.
Catherine: I’m fine with that.
What were your faves this month? Let us know in the comments!
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Whole bunch of great reads this month! Loved them all.
– GIDEON THE NINTH by Tamsyn Muir – everyone describes this book like, “skeletons! lesbians! Gothic house! In space!” And that’s entirely accurate. It’s insane. INSANE. I need Book 2 nowwww.
– CLEOPATRA: A LIFE by Stacy Schiff (audiobook) – a great listen, a biography that reads like a novel, and since you know the major beats, you can focus on Schiff describing things like the city of Alexandria.
– BRINGING DOWN THE DUKE by Evie Dunmore – what a great first romance! Grounded in the struggles of England’s suffragettes, this reminded me a lot of Courtney Milan, and KJ Charles, especially her Society of Gentlemen series
– THE ASCENT TO GODHOOD by JY Yang – her lover and her country’s tyrant dead, Lady Han [drunkenly] tells the story of her life and evil deeds. I LOVE Yang’s Tensorate series. Each book gives a glimpse of world from completely different angles and genres.
– THE RISE OF KYOSHI by FC Yee – the longest living Avatar gets a great first book. I loved the look at corruption, something AtLA has always done well. And she’s queer! Yay!
– RAZE by Roan Parrish – Parrish writes very emotionally earnest romances. Sometimes that earnestness is hard to reconcile with…the sexiness…I guess? Still loved it though.
– HOW TO BELONG TO A BILLIONAIRE by Alexis Hall – I loved Arden’s personal development, but I would have liked more from Caspian, how mostly yearned.
Currently Reading
– THE VOYAGE OF BASILISK by Marie Brennan (audiobook) – still want more dragons, but these are great listens, if you want something fun, but calmingly charming?
– THE TESTAMENTS by Margaret Atwood – it’s on my night table, very excited
That Ain’t Witchcraft by Seanan McGuire: Her usual excellent writing, but I felt the ending was a bit deus ex machina. A-
Murder Knocks Twice by Susanna Calkins: Murder set in a speakeasy. No overt romance, but there was setup being done. I liked the setting and writing, but the mystery was a bit dull. B+
Marked by Benedict Jacka: I’m following the series, but it’s just kind of there. Anne is way too much of a damsel. C
Polaris Rising by Jessie Mihalik: Very rollicking! I loved the world build and liked both leads. I’ll be very interested in Aurora’s book. A
Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths: I didn’t like the writing in her Ruth Galloway books, but this was a really good mystery. It’s told from 3 different POVs (English professor, her daughter, and female detective). All of the POVs had a different voice, and I especially enjoyed the detective. A+
Lost Man by Jane Harper: I just started this, and it promises to be violent. I like her writing, though.
I avoid stories about billionaires, but I did read the first in a series about female billionaires and I loved it. Lucy Score’s,”The Price of Scandal,” was sexy, funny and smart. The fixer hero has characteristics that are often assigned to the female in a typical story, he’s described as being beautiful and can style hair while at the same time taking excellent care of the heroine. I’m looking forward to the rest of the series.
Lots of good reading—including discovering a new-to-me authors with large backlists. I love it when that happens!
Early in Kate Canterbary’s enjoyable FAR CRY, the prickly-angry heroine and the gruff-grumpy hero have sex for the first time. In the scene, where Canterbary cleverly lets us know more about the h&h than they think they are revealing, the heroine utters this line for the ages to the hero: “Could you talk less? Your cock looks bigger when you’re quiet.” I knew then I was going to like this sexy and emotional book. The hero & heroine grew up in the same small Maine town, but she moved to New York and became a hedge fund manager; he traveled but then came home to run a restaurant-bar. She is back in town taking care of her ailing father; he is trying to expand his distillery business. She has money; he needs an infusion of cash. They try, unsuccessfully of course, to avoid each other, even as their relationship moves forward with stops and starts. It is said that love can make us our best selves but it can never change our essential selves, so I was concerned that the h&h would be magically transformed into different people by luuuurve—but one of the best things about FAR CRY is both h&h keep their edges, even if they’re softened somewhat by falling in love. About the only thing in FAR CRY that didn’t work for me was the vast amount of expository information communicated by text messages between the heroine and her best friend. They live in the same town and see each other frequently, so why are they using text messages (grammatically perfect ones with nary an acronym nor abbreviation in sight) to explain things they should both know? But that’s a minor quibble in a very good book with somewhat “challenging” protagonists. Highly recommended.
I liked FAR CRY so much, I tried another book in Canterbary’s Talbott’s Cove series, HARD PRESSED. I knew I was going to enjoy it when the dedication read, in part, “And Mary and Paul, and Mel and Sue. On your marks, get set, bake!” The heroine here is the best friend of the heroine in FAR CRY. The hero is the town’s sheriff. The h&h’s relationship begins when he has to get her home after she gets screaming drunk at the local bar upon discovering the man she’s loved from afar since high school is gay (that character is one of the heroes of Canterbary’s m/m romance, FRESH CATCH). The heroine bakes the hero muffins (she’s a big fan of the Great British Bake Off) to thank him…and things grow from there. I loved the emphasis on consent (and knowing what you want) in this book, of both hero & heroine wanting to be sure the other is fully on-board with the relationship. The heroine is not sure just how deep of a relationship she want with the hero; this seemed very realistic to me—not everyone goes immediately from first date to picking out china patterns. Key quote from the hero: “To my mind, a real man waited for his woman to be ready and willing. There was nothing sexy about cajoling a woman into something, even if she enjoyed it in the end…I wanted my woman how and when she was ready for me, and nothing less.” Le sigh.
Bodyguard-client romances are my catnip and BEARD by Molly Joseph (aka, Annabel Joseph) is a well-written one with an interesting premise. The heroine is a former actress in her mid-thirties, married for the past ten years to one of Hollywood’s top action-adventure movie stars. But the marriage is a sham—the actor is in the closet and the heroine’s interaction with her husband and with the public is all dictated by legal contracts. A bodyguard is hired for the heroine, ostensibly to protect her from her husband’s crazed fans, but actually to protect her from her husband’s lover whose emotionally-abusive behavior toward her has escalated to physical attacks. The new bodyguard is former military and about a decade younger than the heroine. Joseph does a great job of showing the steady development of sexual tension and emotional interdependence between the heroine and the bodyguard as they are frequently together in close quarters in the actor’s sprawling Hollywood compound. Joseph is also very good at showing the claustrophobic atmosphere, full of distrust and suspicion, of living in a system where everyone knows “the secret” but no one can ever admit that they do (Non-Disclosure Agreements cast a long shadow). I really rooted for the heroine to get her HEA in this one (and I kept hoping her husband would finally realize how unstable his lover was). Very emotional with some real tension (not all of it sexual) in the plot. Highly recommended.
Before I read BEARD, I hadn’t read anything by either Molly Joseph or her alternate name, Annabel Joseph, but I discovered that Molly Joseph publishes relatively “vanilla” romances while Annabel Joseph’s work is much more on the erotic/bdsm side. After finishing BEARD, I tried Annabel Joseph’s LOANED, a bdsm romance where the heroine is “loaned” to the hero, an art dealer. The story contains a lot of really intense, but consensual, pain-infliction—this is definitely not the “restrained with fur-lined cuffs and lightly spanked” variety of bdsm—and I had to gloss over some of those scenes; but Joseph’s style as she charts the emotional development between the couple is truly excellent. Themes of truth, lies, art, collecting, perfection, and imperfection wind through the story—which packs a lot of ideas in its novella length. Whether writing as Molly or Annabel, Joseph is a true discovery. I’m ready to glom her blacklists.
CALLOUS is the latest book in Sybil Bartel’s Alpha Bodyguards series about the interconnected lives and loves of a group of former Marines who now work for a private security firm in Miami. In CALLOUS, Bartel’s hangs her story on the “friend’s sister is forbidden” trope, which I generally don’t care for but Bartel uses skillfully. The hero has loved the heroine (the sister of his friend/former C.O.) from afar for years. She’s a nurse and single mother to a six-year-old son who is deaf, which adds another dimension to the story because much of the interaction with him is through sign language. It’s clear the hero has PTSD (he’s both a war veteran and the victim of child abuse) which manifests itself in an obsessive compulsion to constantly catalog increments of time, numbers, measurements, sights, and sounds (he is always processing probabilities, variables, and anticipated outcomes). I thought Bartel did a good job of showing someone whose coping strategies may not be completely healthy but do at least allow him to function. However, some of the hero’s behavior toward the heroine did rise to the level of stalking and I was glad to see the heroine call him out on it. As is par for the Bartel course, there are bad guys who cause bad things to happen—but that part of the story was quickly off-loaded to another couple who appear to be being set-up for their own future book—so the main focus of CALLOUS is the love story and coming to terms with the past in order to be able to move into the future. Key quote: “Our experiences shape us. You have nothing to apologize for.”
Jane Porter’s HP, HIS SHOCK MARRIAGE IN GREECE, features a full-figured heroine and, I’m pleased to say, a cover that reflects this fact: a woman wearing a lovely green dress that attractively accentuates her curvy hips. The heroine, a Greek-American who has always been compared unfavorably to her willowy older sister, is pressed into marriage when her sister goes AWOL on the day she is supposed to marry a Greek shipping magnate. The new husband is very much the standard HP self-made gazillionaire who has learned only one lesson from his hard-scrabble upbringing (including a traumatic episode in his mid-teens)—that feelings are a weakness and all emotions should remain on eternal lockdown. Naturally, his unwanted wife shows him that love is not a weakness, but there will be the requisite servings of angst and renunciation before that can happen. HIS SHOCK MARRIAGE IN GREECE is a very good—and surprisingly sexy (including some mild D/s elements)—representation of the HP line.
Clare Connelly’s CROSS MY HART begins a new series Connelly is writing for Dare about siblings with the last name Hart. It started out in a rather fluffy way with the heroine having an on-the-rebound one-night-stand with a hot guy she meets at a bar, only to discover the next day that he is a potential buyer for a golf resort represented by her real estate brokerage company. But the story got angstier and more complicated when the couple decide have a no-strings-attached three days together at the resort—because when has no-strings-attached ever worked in Romancelandia? Although they have both been hurt in prior relationships, the heroine is willing to put her heart on the line, but the hero is cagier. I was pleasantly surprised by how much emotional depth Connelly was able to put into the story and I’m now looking forward to the other books in the series.
I’ve had Tessa Bailey’s FOLLOW on my tbr list for ages—but only just got around to reading it. To save her brother from an organized crime boss, the heroine agrees to seduce the boss’s son and lure him back to New York. The son—a hedge fund manager only recently aware of his father’s criminal connections—is taking an extended road trip with his terminally-ill Great Dane. He is also very much the rough, gruff, dirty-talking alpha hero that is Tessa Bailey’s stock in trade. Naturally, the heroine’s plans go awry when some real, hot chemistry quickly develops between her and the hero. Overall, I enjoyed FOLLOW with a few reservations. First, it’s very much insta-love/lust—the h&h are all over each other within a few minutes of meeting. Secondly, I found the heroine too young—she’s 23, but I think Bailey should have made her at least five years older. These concerns aside, I thought Bailey did a pretty good job—especially with the heroine’s conflicted feelings, torn between saving her brother and rapidly falling for the man she’s supposed to see as a means to an end. And, as always with Bailey, there’s the requisite hot & explicit sexy-times, including a couple of page-burning prostitution-role-play scenarios.
Now I must confess to a bit of a quandary: I have been trying to make it through Brenda Rothert’s hockey romance, ANTON—which is famous (or infamous) around these parts for its hot AF cover featuring my alternate-universe boyfriend, Zack Salaun, sporting three-days’ worth of beard scruff, a distinctive thigh tattoo, and…nothing else. Anyway, while ANTON is undeniably well-written with a serious plot involving a woman who is trying to leave an abusive marriage and the hockey player who has silently loved her for years, nothing about the story is really grabbing me and making me want to continue reading it; I’ve started and finished four other books while reading a few pages of ANTON here and there. I almost feel that the promise of that spectacular cover overshadows what seems to be a good, if not great, book. Could it be that, as when I use the term “Brooklynaire Syndrome” for anytime we have had to wait so long for a couple’s story that the actual book turns out to be a bit of a letdown, so I now must introduce to the Romancelandia lexicon the phrase “Anton Syndrome” for when a story fails to live up to the promise of its cover? (Although, in all fairness, it would take a really stupendous book to match the cover of ANTON.) I think I’m going to have to DNF ANTON, at least for the time being, with the old standby: it’s not you, it’s me.
Well, I feel like I haven’t been doing a lot of reading. I’ve been looking at a lot of quilting fabric and quilting designs. Not because I actually quilt (I hate sewing), but just b/c I enjoy the artistry of it.
But there have been some good reads!
In the very good category –
I read “From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home” by Tembi Locke This was about a Black American woman who falls in love and marries to an Italian man who then dies of cancer at a fairly early age. To help her ease her own grief and to keep her daughter connected to her father’s roots, she takes her daughter back to her mother-in-law in Sicily every summer. The story does go back and forth in time, so it also a love story of how she and her husband fell in love (with a bittersweet ending of course). I was really impressed by this book. Not just by the writing (which was beautiful and poignant), but how well she wrote about Sicily and the nuances of culture.
To put in context, I have a very personal pet peeve/grudge against a lot of the “I moved to Italy for a few months or a year and now I’m going to tell you how to live your life” books. So, I lived in Italy for five years. My parents both speak Italian pretty fluently and I have a good passive understanding. I grew up immersed in a lot of aspects of Italian culture, movies, news, you name it. So a lot of these memoirs strike a very shallow “Italy is Disneyland” note that rubs me a the wrong way. There’s no real discussion of how Italy has its own long history of difficult cultural and political issues. I’m sure that’s true of a lot of these travel memoirs, it’s just the Italy ones that I notice it 😉
So me recommending this book is a strong endorsement. She talks about really taking the time to get to know her mother-in-law (which was not easy b/c her husband’s family did not initially accept the relationship or even come to the wedding) and how much they come to love and understand across a huge cultural divide (not just of race and age, but education, exposure to the broader world, you name it). The whole little town comes to really love her and her daughter and she becomes a part of that world. At times the writing may come off as a tiny bit self indulgent, but honestly considering she was a woman that was grieving, it did not annoy me at all. It was more like you were talking to a friend who was going through a difficult time over a glass of wine.
My other good to excellent read was “How to Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy” by Jenny Odell. I thought this was going to be another “digital detox” book, but it was really a little bit more dense and philosophic than that. More about the history and cultural weight of “doing nothing” and what “doing nothing” can look like. I don’t necessarily agree with her thesis statement that we should keep on social media and “just try harder to focus on other things.” “Just use more willpower” is never something that has worked for me and Twitter. I wish I could be on Twitter “just a little bit” but I personally can’t. It also came off as a little bit pretentious at times. *But* those two caveats aside, I really enjoyed it and it caused me to really slow down and observe the world around me, so that’s a good thing.
In the okay to meh category –
“Firestorm” by Nevada Barr. This Anna Pigeon mystery had a really interesting premise (solving a mystery while everyone is trapped by a forest fire), but I kept picking up and putting it down. I think it wasn’t the book, I think it was just too much of the same character/writer in a row. I’ll take a break and come back to her later.
“One Corpse Too Many” by Ellis Peters. Another Brother Cadfael. I didn’t like it as much as the first, but it was another one I kept picking up and putting down, so it may be not giving it enough focused attention. Still good enough for me to keep going. They’re short, which is another plus.
In the not very good –
Well, I finished “The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle” by Stuart Turton, but I found it very underwhelming. Like a lot of books with a really cool premise and opening, it just didn’t stick the landing, in my opinion. I did finish it, so that’s saying something b/c I’m not shy about DNFing, but it just left me grumpy and I felt like the author wrote himself in a corner several times and then twisted things around to write himself out.
I haven’t read much this week, but what I did was fantastic.
Read: GODS OF GOTHAM by Lyndsay Faye
CW for child endangerment and graphic depictions of child death( the children aren’t killed on screen, but the bodies are graphically described and a child’s murder is described after the fact ). Also it’s set in the Victorian Era so also expect Racism and homophobia.
If you can handle that the book really is good and while it definitely is a gritty murder mystery, the book isn’t completely depressing. What really makes me the book is the hero. He’s male but he’s a good guy and I mean that I’m the best possible way. Basically the story follows him as a fire causes him to lose his job as a bar tender and reluctantly joins New York’s first police force. Simply for the sake of making sure justice is done( using violence only to protect those he cares about and self-defense) he dives head first into a case and sets out to solve it. Along the way he adopts an orphan among other genuinely caring things. Seriously Timothy Wilde is the sweetest hard-boiled detective I have ever read about and that alone is reason enough to pick up the book. Lastly there’s also a romantic subplot that is basically Timothy having a one-sided crush on a badass woman that stays a one-sided crush. Seriously pick up this book and read it for yourself !
Reading: SEVEN FOR A SECRET by Lyndsay Faye. This is the sequel to GODS OF GOTHAM. Everything that is good about that book is good about this one. However, I do have to issue another CW since this books deals even more directly with Racism particularly slavery. It also isn’t a white savior novel either. Timothy just helps the African Americans already fighting against slavery and all of them are fully fleshed out characters. Again if you like history, a detailed setting, an awesome hero and a wonderful supporting cast of fully fleshed out people check this series out. All the books can be found on Amazon.
I’m reading BURNING BRIGHT by Nick Petrie, which is an action-adventure thriller (sort of like Jack Reacher/Lee Child). The hero is a former soldier who has PTSD that manifests as claustrophobia.
My local B&N had a very nice display of holiday romances, so I picked up THE TROUBLE WITH CHRISTMAS by Amy Andrews and the CHRISTMAS IN A COWBOY’S ARMS anthology by Leigh Greenwood, Rosanne Bittner, Linda Broday, Margaret Brownley, Anna Schmidt, and Amy Sandas.
I also want to read ROYAL HOLIDAY by Jasmine Guillory and 10 BLIND DATES by Ashley Elston, which both come out next week.
On the romance side: just finished “Motion” by Penny Reid which I thought was a mixed bag. Plot: Mona is pretending to be her identical twin Lisa and ends up in a forced-proximity situation with her older brother’s close and extremely hot friend Abram. I really loved Mona’s inner voice (it’s first person from Mona’s POV), her quirky approach to problem-solving (she needs to protect the very high-maintenance hair and makeup her sister wears, so she constructs a shower helmet out of common kitchen supplies. The hero finds this charming and hilarious, but suggests it would have been easier to take a bath. Later, she needs to clean up again, and considers a bath but then says, but hey, I’ve got this awesome shower helmet now!) and her firm sense of ethics. There is a lot of conversation in this book about consent, from multiple points of view, that I thought was really well done. As someone who was a bright (although not as bright as Mona, who’s a math prodigy) and quirky young woman, a hot guy who found “bright and quirky” adorable, rather than weird, is total catnip for me. Not so successful for me–I thought the best friend’s reactions tended to be over-the-top without a whole lot of explanation as to why, and Mona and Lisa have some plot-driving past conflict which could be resolved in about one conversation, which apparently Mona has tried to have before. My big objection, though, was that when I first saw this was the first of a three-part series, I assumed that the three books covered the three siblings. Nope! Motion ends on a cliff-hanger at about the point where you expect the third act resolving everything to get underway, and apparently all three books are Mona and Abram’s story. I am not thrilled about paying for three books to read what appears to be one book’s worth of story, much as I like these characters. (FYI, these characters are all college-age, so I was willing to accept a bit more immaturity in decision-making than if they were older).
‘Scandal In Spring’, by Lisa Kleypas. This is probably be my favorite out of the Wallflowers series so far. (The second being ‘It Happened One Autumn’.) I didn’t expect to love Daisy this much as a character, and I also like that there’s a lot going on in the book, as well as the friendships between the characters.
I’ve started ‘Once Upon A Dream’, by Nora Roberts and other authors, and I’m still reading ‘The Fiery Cross’.
I am reading “A Little Light Mischief” by Cat Sebastian and enjoying it very much.
On the library TBR stack for my weekend I have “Sweetness in the Belly” by Camilla Gibb – it’s what that movie is based on that Dakota Fanning is taking flak for for playing an Ethiopian Muslim woman (note: the character she plays is not black; the character is the foreign-born daughter of white British expats who has never been to the UK and grew up traveling around the globe with her hippie parents, most notably in Ethiopia and so that’s the culture and language she really knows). I wanted to read it before the movie is available to me.
And “The Testaments”, because that’s a big thing and I have to return it to the library next week. Much reading shall hopefully ensue this weekend.
Borrowed The Mister from the library and was amazed I managed to stick with it until page 80! Not as plasterwork damaging as fifty shades but the hero is not endearing to say the least. If you can get past the icky bedding his brother’s widow (two days after the funeral) you’ll be treated to his internal monologue. This is alternated several times in each chapter by the heroine’s third person POV, sometimes after a couple a paragraphs it’s confusing.
It’s not even a ‘grab a glass of wine and enjoy’ hot mess like fifty shades. It’s just a mess…
I started and abandoned a bunch of books over the last few weeks, but managed to complete three. Happily, two of them were excellent.
The definitely not excellent book was Christina Lauren’s ROOMIES, which I found very irritating. It required so much suspension of disbelief – if your plot hinges on music, Broadway, and immigration, it would be good to know how at least one of those things work. The immigration stuff was really, really bad, but “Oh, no, we’re in New York City and apparently no one here knows how to play the violin” was somehow a bridge too far for me. The heroine didn’t really work for me either, leaving me without anything much to go on.
In happier news, I read EVVIE DRAKE STARTS OVER and loved it. It completely lived up to the hype for me. Apparently my current catnip is mature characters slowly getting to know each other, communicating clearly with each other, and working independently to deal with their issues. Plus it was quite funny at times.
After DNFing four books in a row, I treated myself to THE AUSTEN PLAYBOOK and it did not disappoint. I love that whole series, and I think The Austen Playbook may be my second favorite after Act Like It.
Finally got my hands on The Blacksmith Queen which completely met expectations. A delightful, bawdy good time. Absolutely worth being late for work.
Then there were a couple suspense outings: The Third Mrs. Durst, a revenge story with a much less sociopathic heroine and considerably more violence than Jane Doe, and A Merciful Death by Kendra Elliott which may or may not be the start of another series, and features an FBI agent heroine assigned to a murder investigation in the same rural eastern Washington area where she was raised by end of the world preppers. Nice little budding romance with the local sheriff to round out the mystery.
The real surprise is that I read an actual NON-fiction book. It’s not generally my thing, but for some reason Midnight in Chernobyl came up on my radar. Frightening, sad and enraging by turns. A pretty even handed retelling of a disaster with plenty of blame to go around.
Now the hard part: what to read next because the GBPL dropped a real abundance of riches this week. You’d think The Testaments would be the no brainer choice, but they also provided Alice Hoffman’s The World That We Knew, Never Have I Ever from one of my all time favorites, Alice Hoffman, This Tender Land, a stand alone from William Kent Krueger and The Ten Thousand Doors of January for which I’ve received numerous recommendations.
What to do? what to do? What to do?
Actually, Never Have I Ever is by Joshilyn Jackson. I blame the cold pills.
The Pursuit of William Abbey by Claire North, which I really need to start collecting some thoughts about for Shelf Awareness.
Hallow Point by Ari Marmell, the second in the Mick Oberon urban fantasy series, about a fairy private investigator in Depression era Chicago. These are tons of fun.
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, which I loved. I have to admit that I was concerned about this one because it sort of ticks me off when a book stands alone with an ambiguous ending for decades and then there’s a sequel – looking at YOU, The Giver – but this struck a great balance of expanding the narrative without too directly answering all the questions that were left after the original
Gideon the Ninth by Tasmyn Muir, which I’m glad I read but I definitely concur with the review here that there were times when I had absolutely no idea what was happening, and the mix of tones didn’t really work for me. I probably won’t bother continuing with the series.
Karen Kilgariff & Georgia Hardstark- Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered
MFM is the first podcast I ever listened to and remains my favorite. There’s just something about Karen & Georgia that feels like I’m listening to my friends, like I could jump into the conversation at any time. Plus they talk about all the murders I grew up obsessing over in my anxiety-riddled brain.
So I finally got to the book. Honestly, it’s kiiiiiiiiiiinda a mess, like the show it sometimes jumps all over the place. But if you’re fans of them, that probably won’t matter. Georgia’s story about meeting Ray Bradbury was the one that resonated most with me. But I feel like this is a book I will revisit, jumping into and out of.
Ken Liu- The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
Short stories by Ken Liu. They were mostly ok. Nothing really hit me very hard.
V.E. Schwab- Vengeance
Sequel to the ‘Villains vs. Superheroes’ Vicious. Meh. The characters continued to just feel so flat and stock to me. I’ve liked some Schwab books before but this duology didn’t really work for me and I’m not sure I’m going to keep seeking her work out.
Beth Cato- Call of Fire
This was a sequel to a book I read fairly long ago, an alternate history centered on the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 with a heroine who works magic tied to the earth. There’s a *lot* of plot, but I’m not a huge fan of steampunk (I think it’s steampunk, anyway. There are airships. That always denotes steampunk to me), I did enjoy the characters and their relationships. I have the final book of the trilogy on hold, though I’m a smidge worried about disability rep.
Annabeth Albert- Tight Quarters
I feel like Albert’s books are often essentially the same but that makes for good, quick reading when I just need to get out of my head for a bit. This one’s about a pansexual Navy SEAL and a reporter who seemed pretty much modeled on Anderson Cooper and it was…fine. I don’t even usually like military books, so I honestly don’t know how I got turned on to this series in the first place, but like I said, it’s good when I need to turn off my brain for a day or two.
Soniah Kamal- Unmarriageable
This is a Pride & Prejudice retelling set in Pakistan in 2000. (I’m pretty sure I saw it reviewed here at one point but I haven’t looked it up.) It hits all the P&P beats and I really enjoyed it. I think P&P is particularly adaptable to all kinds of cultures and settings & this one was very cleverly done. Although I did have to laugh at the fact that Alys, the Lizzie, is an English literature teacher who’s constantly referencing books including Austen’s who yet somehow fails to recognize that she is living in an exact parallel to P&P.
My favorite part, though, was that the Lizzie and Jane were older than the Darcy & Bingley. It had absolutely nothing to do with the plot, it was just casually tossed in there, and I kind of loved it. Even if it’s only a few years difference, after reading so very very very very many “older man younger woman” stories my heart did a little “Yes! Normalize older women!” shout.
Cat Sebastian- A Little Light Mischief
f/f novella about women recovering from trauma and taking revenge on the patriarchy. I was starting to think that I just don’t like f/f because no matter how many I try they always seem to not work for me in one way or another, but I liked this one a lot. I wished it were longer.
Rachel DeWoskin- Someday We Will Fly
I finished this this morning, and I found myself actually sobbing through the last half of the book. I don’t usually have a physical reaction to books, I can’t remember the last time it happened but this one really, really broke me.
It’s about a Polish Jewish family that flees to Shanghai in 1940 (One of those things that I was completely unaware ever happened, that Japanese-occupied China was one of the last places that took Jewish refugees). It’s harrowing and gorgeous and heartbreaking, asking so many questions about why human beings do what we do to one another, and what people will do to survive the unimaginable, and how trauma changes people. My library classified it as YA, probably because of the initial age of the protagonist (15), but I feel like it would work for non-YA readers as well. I found it a really remarkable book.
Oh my, I haven’t posted in ages. Among the highlights recently:
the Charlotte Holmes series by Sherry Thomas, which is amazing.
Maria Vale’s books about wolves/werewolves/shifters which were also amazing.
I’m listening to the audiobook of Julian Fellowes’s Belgravia and really enjoying it. It’s structured in a very episodic manner (he wrote Downton Abbey so makes sense). Highly recommended.
Currently reading Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo.
What i read in September:
The Truth About Cads and Dukes – Elisa Braden
Two opposites attract plot but I think the characters were not as well developed as they could and the chemistry between them only worked at times.
The CEO Buys In – Nancy Herkness
I liked another trilogy by the author so I hoped for similar prose but this story was too much of a cliché and it annoyed me to no end how quickly into lust they fell.
Archon – Sabrina Benulis
This UF/angel fantasy had been in my TBR pile for 9 years and it should have been left there.
Once More, My Darling Rogue – Lorraine Heath
I liked this better than the first book in the series but some plot devices were a bit difficult to overcome. I liked how they talked in the end and we could “see” how they had fallen in love.
Island of Glass – Nora Roberts
More of her usual. Her more recent trilogies have felt quite “automatic” in how they are developed.
Salt Magic, Skin Magic – Lee Welch
A good m/m story, quite emotional at times and the historical and fantasy mixing, often difficult to get right, worked out amazingly.
A Rancher’s Heart – Vivian Arend
I thought this would be a sweet western but the relationship between hero and heroine just felt so silly in some moments. I was not convinced their attraction evolved into love.
Homeward Hearts – Alexis Harrington
A sweet oldie. Best thing: how slowly but convincingly the main couple started trusting each other and fell in love.
The Symphony of You and Me – Lucy Robinson
Almost perfect except for some plot devices. What a great story about a woman afraid of the stage but with an amazing voice for opera. The plot, characters…practically everything was good and I’ll certainly try more books by this author.
Immortal Nights – Lynsay Sands
Will not being a favorite by hers but it’s like visiting old friends.
My Oxford Year – Julia Whelan
I could say a lot about this one but I’ll summarize and say the blurb mislead me. I did not see how the blurb indicated such a… extreme possibility so added to the cute cover, I expected a rom-com or one of those sweet chick lit romances… it was not and I feel disappointed.
Say You’re Sorry – Karen Rose
Another great suspense story by this author. I liked several aspects, the characters’ interactions and connections. Not her best for me but good enough for me to keep reading.
The Bookseller from Kabul – Asne Seierstad
Unplanned read I got at the library. Really, the poor women in Afghanistan… it angers me how they live subjugated to men and even if it’s a cultural thing I sometimes wish I could turn into a violent person so I could go there and smack all those chauvinist guys in their faces.
Red, White and Royal Blue – Casey McQuinston
At last, an amazing read that worked fantastically for me! The third book I grade 5 stars this year and of the three, the best. It really worked very well for me.
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Bearing in mind a previous read, it made me think this dystopia isn’t that unthinkable, especially if you’re a woman in Afghanistan. Great prose and ideas, I just missed a bit more objectivity.
A Family Recipe – Veronica Henry
What a completely useless story. A woman discovers her husband had an affair with another women, dumps him but later gets him back. This mixed with an historical tale of her grandmother. The story had potential but the execution was a clear miss to me.
Reading The Girl With Ghost Eyes by M. H. Boroson.
I read and loved The Blacksmith Queen and will be waiting impatiently for the next installment of the series!
For a change of pace, I read Elizabeth the First Wife by Lian Dolan, which I picked up on sale a couple weeks ago. I think that it is probably considered women’s fiction, although there are romantic elements. The heroine is an English professor at a community college, who ends up helping her ex-husband (a now famous actor) with a summer theater production of As You Like It. Lots of Shakespeare references throughout. One of my favorite parts was the fact that one of the characters who is introduced early is called Bumble. I am a child of the 60s, so the name Bumble always reminds me of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. It turns out that the nickname has a great backstory, so I was very glad that I kept reading. The heroine has 2 sisters and the relationship between the adult sisters was very familiar to me — that combination of love, support and occasional intense annoyance — that your sisters can make you feel, all during the same interaction!
I’m currently reading The Chase by Elle Kennedy (another recent sale).
I’m still listening to Notes on a Nervous Planet by Matt Haig.
For a family history research project, I’m reading a biography of Theodore Basselin, who was from Croghan, NY and made most of his money in logging, but left the bulk of his estate to Catholic University in DC. He died in 1914 and one of my relatives bought one of his farms. It is an interesting read and helps to fill in background about Lewis County, NY in the late 1800s and early 1900s. I have another cousin who is writing a book about one branch of our family and I am helping with background research. Next up on the research front is a book about short line railroads in the Adirondacks.
CONVICTION, by Denise Mina. I just loved this. Our heroine listens to Murderino podcasts and ends up on her own investigation. The podcast thing could have been gimmicky but to me felt perfectly woven into this crime book. So fun, so good.
A BIG SHIP AT THE EDGE OF THE UNIVERSE, by Alex White. Car racing! Treasure hunting! In spaaaaace! Lots of fun.
I missed the last Whatcha Reading!
I am just hanging out waiting to go into labor (tired, hot – isn’t it supposed to be fall?, heartburn out the ying yang and lots of hip pain) – watching all the sports on TV and reading!
Excellent:
Paddington Helps Out by Michael Bond: The third book in the children’s literature series. The hijinks of Paddington are just as laugh out loud funny as they were in the first two books.
Very Good:
Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy by Myra J. Wick: I have been reading this off and on throughout my pregnancy and finally finished it. There is a lot of great information about each stage of pregnancy, labor and delivery, and newborn care. It covers problems and complications without being scary or overly alarmist, which I appreciated.
Good:
The Rest is Silence by James R. Benn: The ninth in the WWII-set Billy Boyle series, this one had a lot going on – too much I think for it to fully work. There is a country house mystery with a cast of eccentric characters in the house and the surrounding village. But there is also a secondary subplot involving a large Allied training disaster. CW for suicide, PTSD, depression, and graphic depictions of the aftermath of war violence.
Relative Fortunes by Marlowe Benn: This is the first in the Julia Kydd mystery series set in 1920’s New York. I had such mixed feelings about this – I loved the setting and this book tackled gender issues around money and inheritance. But this also suffered from first book syndrome and needed a stronger editor – sometimes the characters acted completely out of character without any believable reason why, there was a lot of detail about high-end book binding (the MC’s semi-busines/semi-hobby) which made my eyes glaze over at points, AND the ending was so convoluted that I feel only a stronger and/or much more seasoned author could have pulled that off successfully. Still, it was intriguing enough that I would like to read the second one when it comes out next year.
cribsheet: a data-driven guide to better, more relaxed parenting from birth to preschool by Emily Oster: While I liked this book based on the author’s analysis of evidence from well-constructed studies of childhood development and issues, it wasn’t nearly as good of a book as Expecting Better about the evidence behind common pregnancy care. A lot of the conclusions in this book came down to “Do what works for you,” either because of the lack of evidence or because of mixed evidence. And I suppose you can’t blame the author, if the evidence isn’t there, it isn’t there, but it made for a much less helpful and compelling read than Expecting Better.
Meh:
Grace Under Pressure by Julie Hyzy: This is the first in a cozy mystery series set at a large mansion which is also a museum. There was nothing particularly wrong with the book, it just wasn’t that good either. I don’t plan to read the next in the series.
The Bad:
The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches by Alan Bradley: The sixth in the Flavia de Luce mystery series which follows the adventures of smart, awkward tween/teen Flavia who is interested in chemistry and poisons. Perhaps from hints dropped in past books, I should have seen coming some of what was revealed in this book. The writing, as always, was excellent, but I thought several of the plot points were way too much – I felt like the series jumped the shark here. There was a very important and emotional storyline that made up a huge part of the middle of the book and then one relatively minor thing happened and the whole thing was dropped as if it didn’t matter. And unlike in past books, this seemed to be a fantasy of how a child thinks adults behave rather than how they actually do. Finally, the ending was super crazy and completely inexplicable to me – dramatic yes, but completely nonsensical. And there wasn’t even an attempt later to try to explain why things turned out as they did. Even though I loved this series in the past, I don’t like the way it is going, so I think I am going to drop this series going forward.
I’ve spent the past two weeks training for a new position at my current company which means I need to think a lot more than usual and I’ve had less space in my brain to listen to audiobooks. This has actually worked out well as I think I was approaching burnout earlier in the month. I passed my 200th book for the year and was feeling pretty meh about everything so my solution was to re-read some of my favourites. Ilona Andrews can always be counted on to reinvigorate me.
New books of note:
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz – Beutifully written and full of emotion. Seriously way more angsty than I was anticipating, but it also managed to evoke a certain nostalgia for simpler times while still addressing serious issues.
A Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite – There’s not a lot I can add to what has already been said about this book. It took me longer than I thought it would to read, but part of that was that I didn’t feel rushed through the story so It think I just took my time and enjoyed the journey.
The Friend Zone by Abby Jimenez – This book just really didn’t work for me. It started off strong and I really loved what the author was trying to accomplish with some of the themes, but I thought it dragged on far longer than necessary and then the ending undid both MC’s entire journey.
I’ve also been reading a lot of (mostly m/m) mysteries:
All She Wrote by Josh Lanyon – Murder mystery that takes place in a remote mansion with an assembly of eclectic characters. Fun mystery and satisfying relationship development between the MC’s, one of which is just so delightfully prickly.
The Mystery of Nevermore by C.S. Poe – Visually impaired antiques dealer solving literary inspired murders while falling for the lead detective on the case. The mystery was great however I found the romance to be clunky. It’s the first in the series and I’m sure they’ll get better as the author warms to their characters.
The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton – Interesting concept and great execution. There were several twists, a couple I saw coming, but most I didn’t (that’s not saying much, I almost never see anything coming!). Took a few chapters to get going but really sucked me in. Also, not a romance.
@Sonia,
Apparently I read “The Bookseller of Kabul” like 6 years ago per my FB history, but I remember nothing of it. (Pretty standard for most of what I read, actually – my brain is like a colander.)
However, I always take anything written about “the Middle East” and Muslim cultures by Western journalists/authors with a MASSIVE grain of salt. There is far too much of a tendency to go in and impose Western cultural standards on cultures that simply are NOT Western. Attempts to understand them may be in earnest but misguided or they may be feeble, at best, or utterly non-existent. We also have to keep in mind that when this book was published in 2003, the West – especially the US – was using the colonialist and Orientalist rhetoric of “rescuing brown women from oppressive, barbaric brown men” as a justification for warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is still money to be made peddling that perspective, but it was VERY high during that time period.
Also, are women oppressed by men? Heck yes, across the global board. We can chalk part of that up, in the case of Afghanistan, to high rates of illiteracy (when I was there a few years ago, it was 7/10 men and 9/10 women couldn’t read) – meaning un-Islamic cultural traditions continue to be practiced because so many people are unable to educate themselves. They have to take the local Islamic teachers at their word, but those local teachers may or may not be educated or may be pushing some cultural agenda of their own.
There was a group of imams going and educating tribal leaders and elders in Afghanistan some years back on what Islam actually teaches, especially in regards to women; I recall reading that one man expressed deep remorse that in his ignorance of his religion, he had unjustly forced his daughters to marry men of his choosing and had kept their mahr (dowry) for himself. (Islamically, forced marriage (not to be confused with arranged marriage, which is different but can overlap sometimes) is invalid and mahr is a wedding gift of her choosing to the bride from the groom; it doesn’t have to be money and in all cases is not to be paid to the father/family of the bride.)
In short, it sounds like your reaction was exactly what the author was hoping to provoke in Western readers: outrage at “those backwards Afghani men” and pity for the women. The family she stayed with actually ended up suing her because of how she portrayed them; another judge later overturned the damages ruling, but they still won the first time around.
Actually all of the books I read in the last two weeks have been good with the kind of variety to keep it interesting.
THE TROUBLE WITH CHRISTMAS by Amy Andrews — my first book by AA and I liked her writing a lot. I typically don’t read holiday books in September, but was wanting to get a review in on release day. I like grumpy heroes and throw in a veteran rancher and I’m in.
HATE THE GAME by Winter Renshaw — this is a NA college setting with opposites attract and hate-to-love tropes. He has been trying to get a date with her for four years and she has zero interest in football players.
AFTER THE SPY SEDUCES by Anna Harrington — this is the final book in her Capturing the Carlisles series, but i think it can be read as a stand alone. Lovely historical with a dose of spy intrigue. I have been waiting for Kit’s story and it did not disappoint.
AMALGAMATED by Becca Seymour — this is a short M/M story with an age gap set in Australia. Leo has crushed on a ranch hand on his dad’s stud farm since he was a teenager.
I set out to do this two weeks ago, and when I sat down to type–my computer had died! De-ceased, de-funct, and now de-commissioned. So I had to buy a new computer, and set it up, and learn its quirks, and it had to learn mine…Anyway.
***I have my usual mixed bag of reading: start lots, finish a few, like very few, and a combination of fiction and nonfiction.
***I have had the first book of Charlaine Harris’ “Midnight, Texas” trilogy, “Midnight crossing”, sitting around for several years, but I finally got in the mood to read it…and it just sucked me in, once I sorted out all the different characters. I immediately had to find the next two, “Night shift” and “Day shift” to read the whole story arc, and if that’s not a recommendation, I don’t know what is. Harris started out writing mysteries, then hit it big with the Sookie Stackhouse series, which were always paranormals with a mystery at the heart of each book, and these are the same.
***Then I read three books that I had seen recommended a lot, probably here. I was underwhelmed by two of the three. “The Peach keeper” by Sarah Addison Allen boiled down to “Female friendships are good, and don’t let them be spoiled by MEN.” It was not subtle, to the point that she chose to make the bad guy a kind of Svengali. Then there was “House of shadows” by Nicola Cornick. There are several authors at the moment who seem to be trying to be this generation’s “mistress of romantic suspense” a la Mary Stewart, but I haven’t found one yet who is as good. Then, when all of my peers were reading Anne of Green Gables, I was probably reading mysteries and F. Van Wyck Mason-style historical fiction. At any rate, I had never read any of L.M. Montgomery’s books until I happened upon “The Blue Castle”. What a lovely book! It’s set in the mid-1920s, about a young woman who gets a letter from her doctor telling her that she has a terminal heart condition. The letter blows away any fucks she had to give to her emotionally abusive family, and she runs away to live her own life, including proposing to the guy she had a crush on. After they elope they live an idyllic life in a cabin on an island in a lake in Ontario–Montgomery excels at her descriptions of nature–until she finds out that, oops, she got somebody else’s letter, and she’s not dying after all. Will he still love her without an expiration date? I finished the book with a happy sigh, and then thought…wait a minute. They lived in the woods, tromped around in the woods all day every day, and there were no black flies? Mosquitoes? Somehow it seems like everything I read has at least a twinge of fantasy.
***Of course I also read “Sapphire flames”, which I loved, and “The Blacksmith queen” which was also good, but it was more obviously a set-up for the next book; the ending felt rushed, with a lot of plot threads left hanging: what’s with the barbarians and the wood elves? Plus Laurenston/Aikin is not a fast writer (did you read that she’s signed up for another honey badger trilogy?). I AM looking forward to Keeley meeting up with characters from the “Dragon kin” series. I’m voting for the first one she meets to be Rhona the Fearless from “The Dragon who loved me” who is also a smith and weapons maker. And Beatrix the Evil thinks Annwyl can be overthrown, and there are “probably not that many” dragons in the Dark Plains? Bwa-haa-haa-haa–I can’t wait.
***I also read some nonfiction, because I always do. “Coast to coast ghosts: true stories of hauntings across America” is by Ann Rule’s daughter, and although Ann Rule is not a great writer, her daughter can’t even make haunted houses interesting. “Words in a French life” by Kristin Espinasse is one of those books about how an American girl marries a Frenchman, settles in France with him to raise a family, and learns to cope. It’s distinguishes itself from the usual run of these books in that it’s based on her blog, which has a word-a-day format. She will take a word like le linge “laundry” and weave it into an essay about how French washers aren’t big enough to do even the thinnest of blankets, and that dryers, until recently, were considered novelties. There was also a book called “The History of reading” by Alberto Manguel, which I half expected to be as dry as dust, but was surprisingly interesting. Not can’t-put-it-down interesting, but follow-people-around-telling-them-random-factoids interesting. Like, did you know that it wasn’t until after the Romans that people started reading silently? Evidently it’s easier to understand a text with no capital letters or punctuation if you read it aloud. So ancient libraries were full of people with scrolls, mumbling to themselves!
Last there was a novelty book called “Inconsequential dilemmas: 45 flowcharts for life’s peskier questions.” If you have a question like, “Can I wear this shirt in public?” or “Should I post this online?”, there’s a handy flowchart to help you make a decision. Naturally I went first to “Should I read another chapter or go to bed?” If you’re careful, you can always make the answer “read another chapter.”
@susan & @kateb, Its a great month for Alexis Hall fans, right? HOW TO BELONG TO A BILLIONAIRE lived up to my expectations for the Arden St. Ives series. I adore the way Hall takes apart tropes. Bildomsroman! I don’t have the new release of Iron & Velvet yet, but will definitely get it.
K.J. Charles’ “novellette” The Rat-Catcher’s Daughter (.5 in The Lilywhite Boys series,) made me really happy. Sweet trans f/m asexual romance, with tons of danger. If Any Old Diamonds left you wondering who Templeton Lane dropped out a window, here’s your answer!
:::looks around, feeling vaguely like I should be on Pinterest, because my house is almost, almost, ALMOST done and decor is a discussion that has to be had:::
Welp, September is almost at an end, and I am finding myself READY for the SPOOKYSEASON. Left off on The Institute, which had exactly the “superpowered kids fight their oppressors” feel that I needed, but the pacing in it was just a tad weird. There was a lot of the book in which nothing happened. I did like that King made the one kid’s superpower his intelligence, and had it so that that was the last thing the adults respected about him, and it bit them in the ass. That felt…timely. Then, because my mood was still a bit murder-y (when is it not these days, amiright), I read #murdertrending by Gretchen McNeil. Interesting concept, the pointed jokes about the ah, inherent risks to putting a reality “star” in charge of a country were pretty good, and the kills were pretty creative, but I didn’t come out of it particularly motivated to read the sequel. I liked it, but once done, I was like “I’m good here”. Then I decided I wanted something kind of period and sweet, and ended up reading Hello Stranger by Lisa Kleypas. Really liked the characters, especially the lady doctor, and the spy subplot was effective. After that, I went back to the murder-y stuff (I’m sensing a slight tendency within the past month) and read Protect The Prince by Jennifer Estep. I love the main characters, Paloma is amazing, I am highly intrigued by little Gemma and her bestie gargoyle that likes bellyrubs, and the Game of Thrones style intrigues are great. The one caveat that I have is the same thing that bugged me about her Elemental Assassin books too, which is that she tends to be really repetitive in her descriptions. Jalapeno rage, cold vanilla, silverstone knives (that’s from the EA books), you get the picture. She tends to overuse this stuff, and eventually I almost have to push through my annoyance with it because I do like the other stuff so much. Didn’t stop me from preordering Crush the King. I did really enjoy most of it. Which brings us to this day in our lives, in which I am reading SLAY by Brittney Morrison, which is about a black teenage girl that is in charge of the MMORPG that she developed, and what happens when someone is killed due to an incident in the game (I haven’t gotten to it, but I’m thinking it’s probably something similar to the “swatting” incidents that have happened, but I could be wrong). I really like her voice so far, and the game descriptions sound pretty good, even to someone like me, that never got into the MMORPG thing (my greatest gaming victory was beating Jak and Daxter on PS2 back the day). I think I’m really going to enjoy it. Until next time, folks, don’t be afraid of putting some color on the walls, because it might look really, really cool once it’s done.
I just finished WILL MY CAT EAT MY EYEBALLS? by Caitlin Doughty. The subtitle sums it up: Big Questions from Tiny Mortals about Death. It is written by a witty mortician. I could not stop laughing through the entire chapter about what happens if you die on a plane.
I can’t comment on level of disgustingness since I have a pretty high tolerance for gross body stuff.
Also THE VAGINA BIBLE by Jen Gunter. A really great how-to to understand your lady parts no matter what your age.
Over the past two weeks ~
— My book group book also worked for the Judge a Book By Its Cover for my reading challenge from a different site ~ I read This is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel. The front cover of the book shows an orange peel while the back shows a whole orange. I can only recall one mention of oranges in the book and cannot figure out the relevance of the cover to the story; nonetheless, it’s an attractive cover!
This was an intriguing story about Rosie and Penn and their five sons. Claude, the youngest, likes wearing dresses. Life becomes challenging when he starts school. The family moves cross country soon after a traumatic incident, and Claude/now Poppy and family are keepers of a big secret. This is not a romance though Rosie and Penn have a romantic courtship and marriage. Life is mostly happy for them all but keeping a secret is stressful, and Poppy’s secret is revealed one day. I enjoyed this book and would recommend it. In the author’s note, she reveals that this book is not a memoir but that her little boy is now a little girl.
— I stayed up way too late finishing Maria Vale’s Forever Wolf (The Legend of All Wolves); I enjoyed it.
–And I finished a short romance; it was pleasant, but it’s not a book I expect to reread. The Botanist by Dahlia Donovan.
— Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend: A Novel by Matthew Dicks which I read on one day. I quite liked it and had several conversations about it with my husband. It was both entertaining and thought provoking.
— Let’s Get Textual (Texting Series Book 1) by Teagan Hunter which is a contemporary romance. It was an entertaining read, but I don’t think it’s a book I’ll be rereading.
— I read and admired Mah Jongg: The Art of the Game: A Collector’s Guide to Mah Jongg Tiles and Sets by Ann Israel and Gregg Swain. I began playing mah jongg this summer thus my interest in this book.
— For my Older or Younger Hero challenge from a different site ~ I reread Lyn Gala’s Claimings which is my favorite m/m series and consists of four books. The two main characters are Liam and Ondry. Liam is in his late 30s, from Earth, serving as a linguistics tech in the military, a submissive with lots of baggage from past abusive relationships. Ondry is Rownt (two legged, egg-born, looking somewhat turtle like to humans); he is a skilled trader who is driven to succeed, two hundred on a planet where living to a thousand is not unknown. When the book begins, Liam and Ondry have been trading for five years. Much of the story deals with cultural and language differences. There is a lot of tenderness in the relationship between Liam and Ondry, but this is definitely NOT a G-rated book. Fans of the series might be interested to know that book 5 was recently released; be aware that it focuses on new characters.
@Kristin A. Thank you for alerting me to the existence of a new Claire North book in a few weeks! She’s not topped TOUCH for me yet but I love her writing.
I’ve read a lot of historical closed-door romance this month, which is always hit-or-miss for me. For personal reasons I don’t find inspirational romance (which I’d define as primarily focussed on the faith of the characters) very comfortable to read, but sometimes I’ve read a lot of books in a row with very similar or dull sex scenes and I like to switch to closed-door. However, closed-door romances which aren’t inspirational are difficult to find, since it can be hard to tell from the marketing. If you’re in the same boat (and the existence of a “non-Christian” closed-door historicals Goodreads list makes me think at least someone else is), then this might be a helpful post! I’ll mark the ones which are closed-door.
Loved:
VENETIA by Georgette Heyer. Not my favourite Heyer, but you know, it was still great.
A RAKE NEVER CHANGES HIS SPOTS by Samantha Holt. Kindle Unlimited (KU). Lovely bluestocking/rake novella, about a hero who meets the heroine in the library and enlists her help in researching the terms of his inheritance.
GRAVE IMPORTANCE by Vivian Shaw. The third and likely final book in her urban fantasy series following Greta Helsing, doctor to the undead, with many callbacks to 19th century Gothic novels. There is a really sweet M/F romantic subplot all the way through and in book three, we get an M/M relationship too. They’re both so wholesome and uplifting and I cannot recommend the series enough.
THE MRS MACKINNONS by Jayne Davis. KU. Closed-door, slow-burn Georgian romance between a widow and an officer who unexpectedly inherits a barony. TW for alcoholism, as the hero has PTSD and a lot of the book is focussed on his alcohol dependency, which he’s developed to self-medicate, and also TW for a suicide attempt. There’s some Christian elements but only as historical context – the hero won’t go to church and the heroine goes only as a social outing. It’s slow in all respects, and a good editor would likely have cut it substantially, but if you like being immersed in English village life and also a lot of gentle subplots and side characters then this is one for you. I really appreciated that every couple talks about sex and there’s a fade-to-black scene with the main pairing in bed together, so we don’t pretend it’s not happening!
Liked:
THE LACEMAKER and THE CHAPERON by Mary Kingswood. KU. Closed-door, not inspirational. Both feature heroines who’ve hit hard times and must take up employment. THE CHAPERON is the second in a series and you probably do have to read them in order, but it’s enjoyable. Both also have mystery plots which are fine but didn’t have me on the edge of my seat.
AN ENCHANTMENT OF RAVENS by Margaret Rogerson. This is a hot mess of a YA fantasy romance between a mortal painter and an immortal fey lord, but it had some fun ideas. It’s the subreddit r/Fantasy’s HEA Book Club choice so there’s way more reviews over there, which I think broadly agreed that it’s a bad case of insta-love but the prose and world is enjoyable enough to overcome it.
THE IMPERTINENT MISS TEMPLETON by Lynn Messina. KU. Closed-door, not inspirational. Fun enemies-to-lovers romance between a dowdy chaperone and an earl. However, it’s so wordy. The first scene takes chapters even though it’s just one conversation between three women, because the MC mulls over every spoken sentence with a paragraph. Worth it for the banter between the leads but best skimmed judiciously at the beginning.
Just okay:
THE GOVERNESS and THE WIDOW by Mary Kingswood. KU. Also closed-door, not inspirational. The former had a wishy-washy hero, and the latter dragged.
SAUCE FOR THE GANDER by Jayne Davis. KU. Closed-door, again, church-going for context as far as I recall. Terrible title! Also, smuggling plot felt like a rehash of, well, every other historical set in the South West of England. At this point if a historical goes near the coast I expect ominous mentions of smugglers to follow within five pages.
THE LOST LETTER by Mimi Matthews. Closed-door, Victorian second-chance romance, not inspirational. Her newer novels are better, as this one had a thin plot and took a long time to get through it. I like Matthews’ writing though and will keep an eye out for more from her.
I used some of my extremely limited leisure time to watch a couple of movies while I had control of the TV for a week, so my only reading since the last post has been about 2/3 of Terry Pratchett’s REAPER MAN. Death is forced into retirement and gets a new job as a farm hand, and since he’s been fired without a replacement, the dead just… hang around. Shenanigans ensue. I wanted more Death when I read MORT, and this one is delivering.
So I just saw that Cat Sebastian has a new pre-order up and I have to wait 6 months until release day, because why should we have to wait for a book with the delightful title of “Two Rogues Make A Right” when I need it in my eyeballs now?
I’ve been mainlining the Chicagoland Vampire series audiobooks, and I finished books two and three this month. They have humor, a good storyline, relatable characters, and just the right amount of intensity. I’ve found out the hard way that some books ratchet up my blood pressure, and I don’t need that with my commute.
I also listened to The Zig-Zag Girl. It was okay but not great. Decent characters but the culprit was obvious about 3 chapters into the story.
Spin the Dawn was another hit for my commute.
Polaris Rising was great; I’ve pre-ordered the sequel.
I tried a Gina Conkle story but could not get into it. It seemed fine, but I guess I’m very much burned out on historicals.
Last weekend, I read The Summer Guests. I rarely read an entire book in a weekend but this one had me in its thrall. Mary Alice Monroe is one of my favorite beach book writers but this time the story takes place in Tryon, North Carolina, at a horse farm. A group of equestrians fleeing a hurricane all end up in horse country and drama ensues. The horsy details were good and so was the story revolving around the horses and horse people.
I also read Heart and Hand by Rebel Carter which was mentioned as a sale book here but I borrowed it from the Kindle Lending Library. I liked the book well enough but was glad it was “free.” The villainess needed one of those twirly moustaches and the story had more lies of omission than I cared for.
This afternoon, I finished Puppy Love by Lucy Gilmore which I really enjoyed. Bubbles the Pomeranian was the scene stealer, but I loved the romance that grew between Sophie and Harrison.
I started reading Queen Bee by Dorothea Benton Frank this evening, bittersweet because Dottie passed this summer. The few pages I’ve read so far indicate I’ll be entranced by this story as well.
My rec this time is Perfect Match by Jodi Picoult – what a ‘wow!’ novel! I thought I knew what it was about by reading the cover description, but I was wrong. I thought I knew what it was about by reading the prologue chapter, but I was wrong. Five – count ’em five! – times I cursed aloud. I also had to tell my husband *everything* as it was happening (he didn’t care but was a good sport.)
Been going through a phrase of sort of meh books, with a bright spot from K.J. Charles.
THE SCANDALOUS PROPOSAL by Kasey Michaels: Well, I finished this less than a week ago and had to go back into the book to remember what it was about. Adequate but clearly forgettable.
SOMEONE TO HONOR by Mary Balogh. This is the third one I’ve read in the Westcott series. They’re all pretty slow burn and I didn’t particularly care for the evolution of their relationship (marriage of convenience, great sex, but he’s emotionally withholding, and then HEA.) I wanted more emotional competence from the hero.
A ROGUE BY ANY OTHER NAME by Sarah MacLean. I only finished this one because I kept hoping the heroine would bash the hero over the head with a bottle of brandy and someone else would be the hero. The set up: a marquess lost his estate gambling as a young man and is determined to regain his property and get revenge. The piece of land he particularly happens to want is now part of the heroine’s dowry so he decides the obvious solution is to kidnap and ruin her so she has to marry him. The scene where this happens (early on) is just dreadful. He assaults her, refuses to let her leave, swears he will drag her reputation (and her sisters’ reputations) through the mud, but isn’t he a fucking gentleman because he’s not ACTUALLY going to rape her. Sadly, no one brains him over the head with the brandy, and he does moderate over the course of the book, but it’s basically a “hero’s emotional journey at the expense of the heroine” and, seriously, fuck that.
ANY OLD DIAMONDS by K.J. Charles. This was a delight and I’m so glad I grabbed it based on the books on sale recommendations. Jewel thieves and steamy sex, what’s not to love? There was a rather large plot twist later in the book that I found to be totally out of the blue (it involves the appearance of a character from some of her other books), so readers of those may not be surprised. This was my first—though definitely not last—K.J. Charles so it felt rather jarring as a new reader. On the whole though, it definitely improved my mood after the other mediocre ones I’ve read recently. Also, I loved that the key conflict in the book is effectively solved by art and empathy.
I finished Not your sidekick: This was fun! I like when authors come up with different, odd(?) superpowers (different then the typical “flying”)
I read L.A. Witt’s Just Drive: 20 something cab driver(Sean) picks up 40 something Navy guy(Paul). After a hook up, they start a relationship, until it comes out that Paul is Sean’s dad’s boss. This is a career ending situation so they decide to cut ties. But of course they can’t stay away from each other. 4/5 stars. And now that I’ve read and enjoyed a couple military romances, I realize this might be a catnip trope for me. In this specific story there were a couple times when the characters pined, hooked up and then declared it was the last time, just to start pining again that kind of dragged. But the scenes where the characters explored how military life can negatively affect relationships and families really, really hit home. And this was a case where the epilogue gave me the feeling that an HEA was happening instead of a HFN.
And then last night, I read @Harmonyb post and realized that I own The Mystery of Nevermore by C.S. Poe so I thought I would read a couple chapters. Renewal in the Bad Decisions Book Club. I stayed up WAY later then I wanted to and I’m super tired this morning
I’m late as always, but September’s not done yet, so here goes. I plowed through a few books that had good reviews but left me shrugging my shoulders and nit-picking over tedious details. The Last Roses by Martha Hall Kelly was one. As in her Lilac Girls, the author juggled stories about three different women from different backgrounds, this time during World War I. Lots of historical detail, but lots of silliness and the book went on far too long.
Then I read Sarah MacLean’s first two Bareknuckle Bastards books and was left with the same impressions: blah, blah, silliness, blah, blah. The author prides herself on her strong female characters, but the extent of their nonconformity stretches credulity. Many of the small plot details are ludicrous (I’m thinking the author never cracked a rib or had her head slammed into a stone floor because it’s not quite realistic for the hero to undertake the physical feats he does within 24 hours of both, and then there’s the scene where quick action is imperative because ice is melting, but wait – there’s time for LOTS of extended coitus.) Speaking of which, most of the sex scenes just seemed silly to me, and I had attention left to wonder just how recently anyone back then would have bathed. Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman was well-done, but in the end I kind of said, “but?”
I appreciated a sensitive and touching YA book about and by a trans-woman, If I Was Your Girl, by Meredith Russo, but both I and the younger person who recommended it to me thought the ending was too abrupt.
I’ve got a huge pile lined up and am struggling to get a few done that are good so far but have to get back to the library this week, so I’m hoping I’ll have more positive reviews by mid-October!
Just started CLOSER by Kylie Scott, which is a novella in her Stage Dive series. I don’t think we know the characters from this one that well, but I generally enjoy her stuff.
I just finished MISADVENTURES IN BLUE by Sierra Simone, and loved it. Older woman detective/younger man rookie cop, very hot and very emotional like most of Simone’s stuff.
FAST BREAK by Kennedy Ryan, a novella in her Hoops series that just came out with the 2nd Team Player anthology. I love Kennedy Ryan, love the Hoops series, love her heroines and her sexy heroes. I have been waiting for Quinn’s story ever since she was introduced in Block Shot. This one was beautiful just like everything Ryan writes.
FLUFFY by Julia Kent – I had read some meh reviews for this one, but I was looking for something a little lighter. This was cute – a little slapstick, some of the humor reminded me of Pippa Grant. I think I would be more likely to continue reading this series if her stuff was in KU. I liked it, just didn’t love it.
Tessa Bailey recommended the Parallel Duet (PARALLEL and INTERSECT) by Elizabeth O’Roark, and they did not disappoint. I don’t normally read stuff with paranormal elements, but this felt very Time Traveler’s Wife only with a happy ending, and the time traveler is the heroine. A woman who has always had dreams/visions of a life with another man ends up in the hospital for a possible neurological issue and her doctor is the man she’s dreamed about, who has also had dreams about her. A lot of angst and some bananas plot twists along with some sexy times. I would have completely overlooked this one in KU because the cover is very generic, but it was so so good.
–My Favorite Half Night Stand by Christina Lauren. 2 friends hook up and swear they won’t do it again. In the meantime, they are looking for dates online and he unknowingly finds her online profile and falls for her. Christina Lauren books are so good. I don’t think they can go wrong.
–Goodbye Paradise by Sarina Bowen. I didn’t think I would like this one but of course I was wrong. Teenager is thrown out of his cult compound and his best friend escapes to be with him M/M romance
–Beard With Me by Penny Reid. This is Billy and Claire’s origin story. It was so good and so emotional. Can’t wait for the last book in November.
–The Austen Playbook by Lucy Parker. I was reading this book when Beard with Me came out and I stopped reading this one so I could read that one. Beard with Me gave me a massive book hangover, so this book was just ok for me.
–Mister McHottie by Pippa Grant. This was my first book by Pippa Grant and I really enjoyed it. It was really funny and I look forward to reading more by her.
Currently reading Something in the Way by Jessica Hawkins and plan on reading the new Lucy Score book that just came out.