It’s April and time for our first Whatcha Reading of the month!
I’m personally pretty deep into a slump and that’s okay! I’m trying not to focus too much on what I think I should be doing. Instead, I want to listen to my brain and body on what they’d like to do in this weird time.
So far, it’s play Animal Crossing: New Horizons and eat a bunch of string cheese.
Lara: I’m on a major Cat Sebastian kick at the minute, and we’ve chosen one of her books for our next book club book (hey Katusha!) So far, The Ruin of a Rake is everything I want in a Cat Sebastian novel – sizzle, witty banter and so much good book noise!
Shana: I’m reading On the Edge by Ilona Andrews. It was Aarya’s recommendation for a first Andrews book and it’s delightful so far. The story is compelling enough to suck me in via audiobook, which is rare for me.
Sarah: You’ll never guess. I’m still solving crimes with monks in the 1100s. The Leper of Saint Giles ( A ) is a really, really good book in the Cadfael series, too – lots of action and chases, with star-crossed forbidden love amid secondary characters, and wily folks in a leper colony hiding fugitives. This one is both soothing in the way all the Cadfael books are, and lively in a way that’s keeping me very engaged.
Elyse: I am reading The Chestnut Man by Søren Sveistrup. ( A | BN | K | AB ) It’s a great mystery but fairly gory.
Tara: I recently started reading Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall. Because I’ve been following her for years on Twitter, the message isn’t a big surprise to me, but I love getting to spend more time with it as she talks in depth about things like #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen and why hunger is a feminist issue.
Claudia: I’ve strayed from romance and I’m reading The Convert, ( A | BN | K | AB ) which is… interesting! It don’t know if I could call it historical fiction, but the author interestingly enough inserts himself in the story and superimposes modern and medieval times. It’s a nice, different touch. The story is super sad and tragic, though, so I’m also reading an early Julia Quinn (Mr. Cavendish, I Presume) ( A | BN | K | AB ) to temper things a bit.
Carrie: I just finished The Rakess by Scarlett Peckham ( A | BN | K | AB ) and it was AMAZING. Next up – a re-read of The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman, ( A | BN | K | AB ) for my Sacramento Public Library Book Club which we are working on making virtual.
Aarya: I recently read TJ Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea, an m/m fantasy novel with a strong romantic thread. It’s definitely adult fantasy, but the writing is gentler and whimsical. It has vibes of Harry Potter, The Umbrella Academy, Howl’s Moving Castle, and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (I know those are all very different comps, but there are certain aspects that felt similar). I five-starred it on Goodreads and I recommend it for lovers of found family and magic.
I’m also on chapter four of Samira Ahmed’s Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know. ( A | BN | K | AB ) I love books with alternating timeline narratives, and the Parisian setting is lovely so far. In my favorite books, setting often acts like a character. The novel follows two Muslim heroines in Paris, one in present day and the other in the nineteenth century.
Shana: The House in the Cerulean Sea has been languishing in the second tier of my TBR list. Sounds like it’s time to move it on up!
Aarya: It won me over in the second chapter with this passage:
He couldn’t believe it was only Wednesday.
And it was made worse when he realized it was actually Tuesday.
And it only gets better from there!
Sneezy: My copy of Why Does He Do That by Lundy Bancroft ( A | BN | K | G | AB ) has to go back to the library soon. Oops.
So I’ll be powering through that this week. Then there’s On the Corner of Hope and Main by Beverly Jenkins, which just came in, also from the library.
I made heart eyes at my screen for a full minute after I downloaded it.
Catherine: I’m bouncing off a lot of things after a chapter or two at present, and can’t remember the last novel I managed to finish. So, um, do you want my Lent/Holy Week reading? Because Robert Alter’s translations and commentaries on the Old Testament are fantastic, mostly because he loves loves loves the Hebrew language and wants you to love it too and so his footnotes explain every single one of his translation choices and also all the puns and rhymes he wasn’t able to reproduce from the Hebrew (he manages a surprising number), as well as Rabbinical scholarship on particular passages – and as a result they are longer than the translation itself. But awesome. If you are a language and theology nerd like me, they are a fascinating read.
Ellen: I’m reading Headliners by Lucy Parker and loving it–I’m actually feeling more interested in contemporary than usual right now because it’s nice to read about people going outside and doing “normal” everyday things. I’ve also just started The Black Lily by Juliette Cross ( A | BN | K | AB ) which seems promising but I am really only a few pages in.
What books have kicked off your month?
@Wait, what? It’s Kira Jane BUXTON. Proofreading fail 🙁
Right now I’m reading Darren Charlton’s Wranglestone, a really fun YA zombie thriller that’s also a super-cute m/m romance (where EVERYONE, including the hero’s dad, is rolling their eyes at the sweet, geeky hero for the fact that he can’t tell his crush is SO crushing back on him!).
I’m also reading Mo Moulton’s Mutual Admiration Society: How Dorothy Sayers and her Oxford Circle Remade the World for Women, and it’s also really fun in a very different way and totally fascinating.
@ Donna Marie you probably already know this but you can install the Kindle app on a laptop and read from there. I sometimes read while knitting and the big screen makes it easier on the eyes.
::::hops in like the bunny she is:::
Am literally wearing my Sleepy Bunny PJs. Apocalypse uniform in full effect, with bonus holiday vibes. The husband is making breakfast while I play our online church service. The kids slept in, because they’re teenagers and not married to getting up at 4 am to see what they got. They know the baskets will be there. Anyway, I left off on Rules For Vanishing, which I kind of wish I had liked more. Wasn’t spooky enough, and I think i needed more of the modern epistolary stuff. Give me spooks. I followed that up with Spin the Dawn by Elizabeth Lim, and am actively angry at myself for waiting so long to read it. It was some of the most beautiful writing and storytelling I’ve come across recently. The oft-mentioned Mulan/Project Runway vibes are there, but there really is a lot more to it than that. Loved it. After that, it was Honey Badger time. Hufflepuffs don’t give a shit. So I read Badger To the Bone by Shelly Laurenston. The honey badger sisters remain delightful, and having the hero be a cat was genius. There’s one scene where he’s being talked to when he wants to be left alone, and stares unblinkingly at the person as he knocks the stuff they’re holding out of their hands. My husband actually came in the room and was like, “What’s so funny?” as I read that scene. Then I wanted something soft and sweet, so I read The Earl Takes A Fancy by Lorraine Heath. It was sweet and the bookstore was delightful. I did have a few “USE YOUR GD WORDS!” moments, which is just life. If they did, the book would be like 50 pages long. I do think the hero could have used just a touch more grovel for the assumption he made about the heroine toward the end. But again, the bookstore. Which brings us to right now, in which I literally downloaded The House In the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune about 20 minutes before it was mentioned in this very article. Pandemic brain wants something sweet and funny, and my understanding is that this should scratch that itch. Until next time folks, it’s the hip to the hop and you don’t stop.
Oh, this is Not Romance (it’s Not Even Fiction, if you’ll believe it) but I’m loving Mudlark by Lara Maiklem.
I follow her blog (on Facebook, but still) about all the odd things she’s discovered walking the banks of the Thames. She’s got bits and dribs of history in there, too, and the tangible artifacts that make history come alive.
She’s found some incredible things over the years and she writes about a few of them. She’s also given me a new appreciation of the fashion in historical romances–so few of them talk about the pins the women are wearing to keep their clothes together. There’s always sensual unlacing, but not unpinning that dress…
Lovely book.
@DiscoDolly Deb – I hope Losing It All lives up to all your hopes – we all need great reads right now!
@LMC – The Bride Who Got Lucky should have been my jam because it featured a sad business man hero afraid of getting too close to people because of a long estrangement with his Duke father – I should have been eating it right up. But the conflict at the end left me thinking “Are you really a Terrible Person?” And it is funny because I can get on board with alphahole heros, angry heros, heros seeking revenge and all other manner of problematic and questionable heros IF I either see a good core at the center of their being covered in layers of other crap OR the book really shows a lot of growth and thought and character development, but I just didn’t buy it here. For example, the hero of Ruthless by Anne Stuart is hella problematic, but I absolutely loved that book.
With a lot of people quarantined, I have to say I’m kind of jealous(I work at a store). I could put a big dent in my TBR pile if I got to stay home. I guess I will just have to look forward to my vacation the first week of May.
–I read the Bootleg Springs series by authors Lucy Score and Claire Kingsley. Whiskey Chaser, Sidecar Crush, Moonshine Kiss, Bourbon Bliss, Gin Fling and Highball Rush. Each book features a Bodine sibling (or friend of the family) and a mystery that carries over from each book. I really liked all of them but I have to say Bourbon Bliss was probably my favorite out of all of them.
–I preordered A Bad Day for Sunshine by Darynda Jones the day it was listed and when it finally came out I read it all in one day, something I haven’t done in awhile. It is a new series featuring a woman who comes back home to be Sheriff after she won the election she never entered. I have to say it does seem similar to the Charley Davidson series but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I did immediately order it in hardcover after I finished. I should have done that from the start.
–I continued with my Darynda Jones kick with Betwixt, also a start to a new series. Woman discovers the grandmother she never knew leaves her a house across the country and that she is a witch. I liked it but not as much as her other books.
–Dear Enemy by Kristen Callihan. Woman ends up working for her sister’s ex and her own high school nemesis after her sister steals from him. I love everything Callihan writes and even though some people didn’t like the whole sister’s ex trope, I don’t care. I really liked the book.
Stay safe and happy reading. And don’t go to stores just to hang out.
Whoops – the second comment on my last post should have been directed to @Deborah not @LMC
I’m having a good reading month, which is a blessing given all the crazy going on in the world. I really liked Sarah Hogle’s You Deserve Each Other and found it snarky and sweet, often at the same time. I also loved Sandra Antonelli’s True to Your Service. Her In Service series has been all around consistently fun as a spy thriller spoof/romantic suspense/comedy about a middle aged James Bond-like hero in love with his middle aged maid, who prefers to be referred to as a butler, for reasons. I’m just getting into Martha Water’s To Have and to Hoax and am hopeful I’ll enjoy it after reading positive reviews. I also have the next book in C. S. Harris’s Sebastian St. Cyr historical mystery series to read this month. Harris’s books rarely let me down.
I badly WANT to read The House in the Cerulean Sea but in the current situation I really REALLY can’t afford to buy new books, and my ebook library doesn’t have it. I’m glad the ebook library exists, but my small rural library system’s selection is TINY and I’m getting increasingly miserable at how many things aren’t in it. All the recommendations lists people are putting out for “things to read in a global catastrophe” are making me increasingly sad because I go to Libby/Overdrive and it just tells me “no titles found” over and over and over again… I have books, don’t get me wrong. I have an extremely bibliophibian family, a large tbr pile, and I happened to pick up several holds before the physical libraries… stopped. But there won’t be many New Books for a while and I am desperately missing that hit of New Book feel.
My ebook library isn’t COMPLETELY empty so right now I have the new Welcome to Night Vale novel, The Faceless Old Woman who Secretly Lives in Your Home. It came as a surprise, I didn’t expect them to have that and I just happened to stumble over it in their recent acquisitions page. So far it’s a big shift in tone from the first two WtNV novels, a lot less comedic and at least in the very early chapters a lot more grounded in what we think of as realism. I assume it will get weirder; this is an autobiography of The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home, so eventually she will BECOME The Faceless Old Woman and that will necessarily be pretty weird. Right now she’s a Young Woman Who Still Has A Face so we’re not at the weird part yet.
I discovered a new to me author and have read most of their short backlist – Aster Glenn Gray writes lovely, deceptively simple queer romance and I’ve loved immersing myself in these novellas.
Briarley is an mm retelling of Beauty and the Beast set in wartime England. The Girl and the Wolf is an ff retelling of Little Red Riding Hood set in early 20th C pre-revolutionary Russia. The Threefold Tie is not a retelling – it’s a historical poly mmf romance set in post Civil War US.