We’re about to finish up March and you know what that means…
APRIL FOOL’S DAY!
We like to go a bit big for that goofy holiday and yes, we do have something planned this year. I hope you’ll mark your calendars and be sure to join us on the start of the month.
Anywho, let’s get into what we’re reading!
Lara: I’m a teacher and my life has been swallowed by work of late. I only manage about a paragraph (!) before I fall asleep. So it’s been WEEKS with no real reading. But the major deadlines are behind me now and I intend on dedicating this long weekend (in South Africa) to reading and napping. My first foray back into the reading world was inspired by my friend Katusha: Grace Draven’s Phoenix Unbound. I’m loving it!
Elyse: I’m reading Life’s Too Short by Abby Jimenez and it’s totally an ugly cry book.
Sarah: I just finished What Abigail Did That Summer by Ben Aaronovitch ( A | BN | K ) (and am waiting for Adam to finish it so we can talk about it). Last night I started Confident Women by Tori Telfer about con women through history and oh, yeah, this is exactly my jam, confit, reduction and reading coulis.
Tara: I’m finally reading The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers ( A | BN | K | G | AB ) and I am loving it. It’s so soft and the characters are lovely.
Carrie: That book is my everything.
EllenM: I’ve been reading the Elder Races series by Thea Harrison ( A | BN | K | G | AB | Au ) and really enjoying it; they are just fun and let me turn off my brain in a very relaxing way.
Sneezy: Rereading Wild Rain by Beverly Jenkins and A Touch of Stone and Snow by Milla Vane, because I am in severe need of comfort.
Carrie: I’m almost done with Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor and gracious it is zipping along but I have been forewarned that it is about 1000 pages long and ends on a cliffhanger. The author meant to write a sequel but never did. This seems oddly fitting as it means that Amber, the main character, just keeps chasing her true love, sleeping with everyone she meets, and spending money she does not have, forever, as the title indicates.
If Amber St. Clare and Scarlett O’Hara teamed up the world would cower before them but they’d never manage to team up and would instead scratch each other to bits and die in vast piles of expensive fabric.
Shana: Well, that devolved fast.
Carrie: They are equally horrible people. Gone With the Wind and Forever Amber are basically the same book only Forever Amber is set in Restoration Era England and features, so far, a war, the plague, the Great Fire of London, an invasion, and court intrigue.
Shana: I can’t disagree there. I am still reading in sloth mode, so I’m keeping on with Eight Kinky Nights by Xan West. ( A | K | AB ) It’s only 372 pages, but it feel longer somehow. Not in a bad way, I find the endless scenes of couch cuddling and feeding each other tasty snacks very relaxing to read. It’s a VERY low conflict book.
Catherine: I just finished Accidentally Engaged by Farah Heron, and was DELIGHTED. Not least because the hero clearly shares my views on sourdough starters and that is why I will never have a sourdough starter.
Kiki: In the brief moments that I’m not watching Grey’s Anatomy I’m reading Love Code by Ann Aguirre which is so, so lovely and gentle and at only 25% I already feel confident that it’s going on my best of 2021 list.
Which books are you finishing right now? Tell us all about them!
I’m really enjoying my reading as of late. It’s all been F/F romances and it’s just what I needed because I felt like I was about to go into a reading slump.
GIDEON THE NINTH BY TAMSYN MUIR – [A-) I’m so glad that I’ve finally read this book because I’m not gonna lie, the hype was putting me off. I tend to not enjoy hyped books but this series is definitely worth it. I immediately continued on to HARROW THE NINTH [B+] and I’m so excited to see where this series goes next. It’s funny, off the wall and so much fun.
I then read the prequel novella, THE MYSTERIOUS STUDY OF DOCTOR SEX[C+] and it was fine but man do I love Muir’s writing.
And then I finished my Muir binge with PRINCESS FLORALINDA AND THE FORTY-FLIGHT TOWER BY TAMSYN MUIR [A-] and absolutely loved it. Very unique and felt so much like a classic fairytale. I’ve read everything she currently has out and am itching for more.
After that I read SWEET & BITTER MAGIC BY ADRIENNE TOOLEY [C]. Strong YA fantasy debut but the romance between the two heroines was lacking severely. The characters themselves were great and I loved everything else but the romance left so much to be desired.
THORN BY ANNA BURKE [A] was easily my favorite thing that I’ve read. It was wonderful. F/F Beauty and The Beast retelling and it was enchanting and deeply romantic. Highly recommend it!
And last, but certainly not least, I read OF IRON AND GOLD BY LEXA LUTHOR [A-]. This was the most unique read of the week for me. F/F Omegaverse fantasy and it was a rollercoaster. Emotional and super sexy. Loved it but I don’t think it would be for everyone and I would highly suggest reading the author’s content warnings.
As for what I’m currently reading that would be BURN OUR BODIES DOWN BY RORY POWER. It’s okay so far, a bit slow and tedious but I do really like the writing style and I feel like the plot has potential. I’m about 30% in so I hope it picks up steam soon.
My last comments got eaten (I think, I apologize if I double-post), so the short and sweet version is –
MARRYING THE CAPTAIN by Carla Kelly
LOVE AT FIRST by Kate Clayborn
SUN DOWN MOTEL by Simone St. James
All excellent, all exactly what I needed. I’m still DNFing a lot of books (I think that is just my normal now), but these convinced me I deserved to hold out for something I really am enjoying and not just tolerating.
Our hammock is up and I’m hoping to get in some good hammock reading time soon if the weather cooperates.
Hope everyone’s March goes out like a lamb and not like a lion.
All systems red by Martha wells. Who knew that I desperately needed Murderbots in my life.
I’m the last week I’ve read Alien Quarantine Rescue by Robin Lovett and Tycoon by Molly O’Keefe both mentioned in this site! The former was very meh despite the vibrating appendage and dayglow erm, emissions, I just felt it was trying too hard to be a parody and a post apocalyptic erotic romance. It was a very confused mess. I enjoyed Tycoon more than I thought, I thought I’d hit billionaire romance saturation point a long time ago, but both main characters were fleshed out and the hero wasn’t a dominant jerk, he did enough grovelling to make up for it. The heroine was not a pushover and rare for a lot of romances, contraception was mentioned. Every time I read about a woman surprised that she’s in the family way after unprotected sex I think: “we’re you asleep during sex ed?” And roll my eyes. Bonus points for no epilogue (and no baby at the end). Definitely putting the rest of the series on a holiday read list (if I ever go on one this year. I have a week away at the end of May, postponed from last year that I’m probably going to get a refund on at this rate).
Apart from that it’s RH and Zoe Chant until my KU ends on the 1st.
Yo, March 31 is right around the corner. I have to think up a few tricks for April 1st… Maybe tell the kids the Easter Bunny called and can’t make it this year? *cackling*
Last WAYR, I was getting towards the end of The Improbability of Love. It took me another week to finish it and it was such a relief to move on to something else. It ended up being MARKED BY DEATH by Kaje Harper (Necromancer book 1). I loved it! Not sure if it was because it was good, or if it was because I was so glad to be done with The Improbability of Love so I could go back to reading ROMANCE at last (Yeah! Romance is the best!) It takes place in the 60s, in a world where magic practioners are “out” but actively work to make it seems like they’re charlatans to the laymen (their mindset is: better to be sneered at than feared). A young man decides to seek out a necromancer after he starts to hear voices non stop and tatoos appears on his skin. On reflexion, the book is maybe not that great – the timeline is only one week and their falling in love felt forced, but I liked Silas the necromancer and his cat familiar, and I liked how Silas and Darian fit together. Darian made less of an impact but I could totally relate to his exhaustion & desire to sleep… I’d be open to read book 2 if I come across it. I wonder if Darian gets his own familiar?
I then read ANOTHER PLACE IN TIME anthology. M/M historical fiction. The KJ Charles and Joanna Chambers stories were excellent, and the Tamara Allen one was sweetly written despite dealing with WWI veterans and the trauma that comes with. The Kaje Harper story set in WWII was also good. Jordan L. Hawk’s was a continuation of Widdershins – these stories always fall flat for me when I haven’t read the original work. And lastly, I confirmed I really don’t like Aleksandr Voinov’s writing. Urgh.
Next I finally ceded to temptation and bought books I’d been eyeing askance for a while. Theodora Taylor really is a mixed bag for me. She writes BWWM romance (I discovered this acronym because of her in fact, black woman/white man), she has a brassy and unsubtle style and probably 85% of her books has a secret baby. BUT, she writes very engaging stories and when it works, they’re outstanding. When it doesn’t work… Well, I found most of her time-travelling werewolves barely palatable (coercitive mating heat… not my trope). In that series, Knud is great and so is Her Dragon Everlasting. HER DRAGON CAPTOR and HER DRAGON KING duology is the end of the series. Before going on, I want point out what a dick move it is to put that story into 2 books, to make readers fork up the cash. Because it’s the direct sequel to Her Dragon Everlasting, one of my favorite, I broke down and bought both books but I feel exploited and I hate it, especially since the story is not tight. It could easily (in fact, it really, really should) have been edited and maybe fit into one book. Anyway. This was not among Taylor’s best, but it could have – there’s enough twists and mind games for it, if only it had been streamlined and polished. Damianos is the villain in Her Dragon Everlasting, the condescending, anthros-are-cattle bad dragon serving in contrast to the good dragon. Being the hero in Her Dragon Captor/Dragon King does not make him less of a villain and the back and forth between him and Ola at the beginning was edge-of-seat worthy, always on the verge of crossing the line into too much (too mean, too extortive, too unredeemable). But luckily Ola is a happily assumed ball buster and she gave back good. They’re not needlessly stubborn though – that’s a force of T. Taylor’s characters – and they were helped along by a very cool plot twist. There were some chapters with other characters’ POV, but they were not extraneous – I liked to see where the others were at (hello there Knud, liking your father-in-law yet?) and they served the wrapping up of the series.
Now, what I didn’t like:
– Since we’re on the kids of couples from the previous books, the story takes place in the near future. While the author managed to integrate it flawlessly in Knud, here it doesn’t work so well. Taylor presupposes that with internet access embedded biologically, kids raised in this age would integrate internet speak in their own internal monologue. It’s an interesting idea, but the execution is lacking. The chapters in Ola’s pov are full of emojis descriptions and it’s ANNOYING. What bugged me is the fact that they’re descriptions, like “Total side-eye emoji” and there were much too many (edits!). If she’d used real emojis in the book I might’ve found it clever (maybe) (to think emojis might one day soon appear in book narratives is not that far-fetched… I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t already being done, TBH).
– The other point is a pet peeve of mine: I’m fed up with authors of futuristic books constantly making references to music/movies contemporary to the author & readers. An awful lot of future chicks are amateur historians, fans of “oldies” entertainment. Ola constantly refers to “early 21st” stuff. What? Is there no pop culture, iconic movies, sensations of the moment in her present? The author is good enough to extrapolate some, she made references to the fact that reality TV stardom is somewhat hereditary, the 2nd gen having grown up in it and now having their own contracts. In the 2nd book, she adjusts by saying like so-and-so movie reboot instead, but then it’s the word reboot that comes up much too often (again: EDITS!)
– As for the end, I found it… weird? I like the meta-theater of an author putting herself in her book, and the circuity of her intersection with Chloe/Fenris (the first couple of the series) but the structure in which it happens was a Fail. Honestly.
So, Dragon Captor/Dragon King goes into the “just okay” Theodora Taylor shelf, and instead I’ll keep rereading the Fairgoods, the Russian Billionaires and the 2 books of the time-travelling werewolves I actually like.
It’s been…a couple of weeks around here. My grandmother passed away, my boss resigned, and my work BFF (who I adore and who I have worked with for 14 years) also submitted her resignation. So, reading has been a little thinner.
A COURT OF SILVER FLAMES—I don’t really know what to say about this. Maas writes great epic fantasy and trauma recovery narratives, but after the trauma there’s no growth or depth. Basically people get better and then are still horny, petulant teenagers (even though they’re 500 year old immortals.) There are also several characters (Elain, Lucien, Mor) who are barely mentioned. It would be nice if there were at least a hint of where their stories were headed. I kinda feel like Maas has strayed into George RR Martin territory where both the author and editor are so entranced by the world they’ve created that they can’t see how much more aggressively the story needs to be cut to really work.
WIDDERSHINS by Jordan L. Hawk—fluffy m/m with supernatural shenanigans. Enjoying this one so far.
BUSMAN’S HONEYMOON by Dorothy Sayers. I am going slightly slower on this one because it’s paper and the font is small. Sayers is such a gifted writer; there are parts where she’s writing local dialect and I actually have to read it aloud to be able to understand it (like, the word “boil” is written as “bile” in one place.)
ROMANCING MR. BRIDGERTON. I was really hoping I would like this one because I love Penelope, but I felt like she actually deserved better than Colin (who comes across as a bit aimless and vapid.)
Not sure what I am going to read next, so will be scrolling for suggestions in this thread!
I know I read a couple of new books over the past weeks, but none of them stick in my head so they couldn’t have been particularly memorable.
Currently reading The Queen’s Gambit. So far, so good. I think I enjoyed the show more because I don’t know much about chess, so just reading the moves is kind of mystifying.
I reread Forever Amber several months ago. I’ve always loved that book for the costume porn. The chapters about the plague seem eerily relevant these days.
The best of the past two weeks was Everina Maxwell’s WINTER ORBIT as read by Raphael Corkhill. This was mentioned on this site a while back, and my library hold for the audiobook came in this week. Corkhill’s narration made this book work for me. Both primary characters (m/m) were caring and responsible with very different personalities (outgoing apparent ne’er-do-well and an introverted scholar/diplomat from another planet) and a marriage of convenience. CW for [past] domestic abuse that was central to the plot and the characters. The domestic abuse was thoughtfully addressed as it emerged throughout the story. This is the first book I remember where the outgoing socially adept personality was shown to be a remarkable type of intelligence rather than merely (undeserved)charisma gifted by the gods or fairies or some such. [I’m on the “I love lockdown” end of introversion, so I usually have little to no patience for chatty, friendly folk, much to my shame.] The two characters grew through their association with the other, and both plot and characterizations were excellent.
@FashionablyEvil, sorry to hear that. I hope you’re doing as well as you can.
It’s been a decent reading period here…very busy at work, so I am much quicker with the DNFs, but I still read some great books.
SEA CHANGE by Darlene Marshall: This was a lot of fun. Woman who pretends to be a man to train as a doctor on a ship winds up being kidnapped on to a pirate ship, where she falls in love with the captain. I first heard of this from a different SBTB post and it was an excellent find.
DUCHESS BY DESIGN by Maya Rodale: Another SBTB suggestion. The heroine is a dressmaker and the hero is a duke who goes to NYC to get a rich heiress to marry him and save his estate. It was fun and I liked the heroine.
SOME LIKE IT SCANDALOUS by Maya Rodale: This is the next book after Duchess by Design and it is great, possibly even better than the first. The heroine and hero are pressured to get married and go through a fake engagement. The heroine is a scientist and not typically beautiful, whereas the hero is conventionally attractive. It’s a mix of enemies to lovers, fake engagement and also redemption/second chances – definitely worth picking up.
THE SATANIC MECHANIC by Sally Andrew: This is the second in the Tannie Marie mystery series. There’s lots of good cooking and recipes as an older auntie in post-apartheid South Africa solves mysteries. It was good, but started slowly and dragged quite a bit in the middle before picking up at the end. Not sure I’ll get the third in the series.
A WICKED KIND OF HUSBAND by Mia Vincy: This was so-so. It had a lot of potential but I felt the hero was such a jerk initially that he needed to grovel more. Also, both the hero and heroine go through so much that I felt they needed counselling so that they could stay together.
Currently reading THE SECRET LIVES OF BATS by Merlin Tuttle and then THE SURVIVORS by Jane Harper. After that, SOMETHING TO ROMANCE by Mary Balogh.
Glad it’s Saturday, it was a busy work week for me (and honestly next week probably won’t be much better).
Romance:
HUNTING GROUND by Patricia Briggs: Re-read for me, I’m finding the Alpha and Omega series very comforting right now. (Also, I’ve still got a few weeks until my hold on WILD SIGN comes in at the library, so this was scratching that itch.) I think my favorite of the “Charles and Anna go somewhere else to solve a supernatural crime” is actually the third book, set in Boston, but this one is set in Seattle and it was a nice little fictional trip in that regard.
THE JADE TEMPTRESS by Jeannie Lin: A-, loved Mingyu and Kaifeng together, and I enjoyed the twists in the mystery. It was quite a week to be reading about a Chinese sex worker heroine, I will say, and one of the subplots for Mingyu had me much more alarmed than she seemed to be/than that was resolved.
ACT YOUR AGE, EVE BROWN by Talia Hibbert: A-, I love a good enemies-to-lovers, and sunshine-y + grumpy is also a favorite trope. Eve and Jacob were delightful together and individually. I realized partway through reading this that Hibbert basically took the plot of SEP’s CALL ME IRRESISTIBLE (which infuriated me when I read it–I liked Meg as a heroine, but SEP really likes to put some of her heroines through the wringer in upsetting ways, and I could not get past how awful Ted was to Meg) and fixed some of the balance-of-power issues and made it so much less distressing. Eve messes up and she gets a chance to fix it. (Versus, Meg messes up and an entire town is out to get her for it.)
Non-Romance:
INVISIBLE WOMEN: DATA BIAS IN A WORLD DESIGNED FOR MEN by Caroline Criado Perez: I have mixed feelings about this and am not sure I’d recommend it, or at least I’d only do so with lots of caution. The thing that bothered me most was a vaguely TERF-y sense of biological binary thinking in the chapters around the body and medicine. At bare minimum, there was a slight laziness to not specifying “cis women”–I get that most medical research for “women” would probably be cis women, certainly–and it weakened the argument. (For example, in discussing the issues with crash safety dummies, the author focuses on the average (cis) woman being much shorter than the standard dummy. I’d agree crash testing should involve multiple sizes of test dummy before awarding a safety rating–but I’d go for not just an “average” cis man + cis woman, but several sizes and shapes of people–not all women are 5’2″, not all men are 5’10” or whatever.) Anyway, there *is* a lot of good information in here, and it’s organized by subject in such a way that one could skip the medical chapters easily enough. I need to track down an explainer for why so many British feminists are so sympathetic to “gender critical” ideologies, I genuinely don’t understand that way of thinking.
THE PAPER BARK TREE MYSTERY by Ovidia Yu: A-, loving this series still. I really enjoyed the mystery in this one, and I think Su Lin’s character growth has occurred in a believable way where she’s starting to question some ideas she was taught as a result of imperialism, which was great. Awaiting my library’s on-order copy of the next one!
THE AGE OF PHILLIS by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers: A, what an outstanding work–meticulously researched, the versatility of poetic forms, deeply moving subject matter. Jeffers researched the life of Phillis Wheatley, whose poetry was published as I think the first Black woman to be published in English in America? Something along those lines–an early poet, whose talents were largely doubted by the white men around her because she had been taken from her homeland–likely the Gambia–and enslaved as a child. (Thomas Jefferson can rot in hell.) Jeffers wrote a book of poems in tribute to the life of Phillis and this act of historical imagination is just so beautifully rendered. Highly, highly recommend for poetry and history fans.
On Deck / Currently:
HIGH HEEL by Summer Brennan: this is part of that Object Lessons series, which are nonfiction books with long essays on certain topics–in this case, high heels. She gets into the history of the shoes, as well as why they’re such a flashpoint for contemporary feminist discourse. I was delighted to discover this book is also about Ovid’s METAMORPHOSES in many ways, and ties it to observations about the physical movements of women.
I have THE EX TALK by Rachel Lynn Solomon in from the library and should probably read that. I also will likely start PIRANESI by Susanna Clarke soon.
A quick recommendation to those who enter long comments which somehow get lost (it seems as if every WAYR post has at least one “Arrrggghhh—my long post got lost!” moment—I feel your pain, it happened to me several times): I started writing my comments in the Notes section of my phone or pad. Then, on WAYR days, I just copy and paste to the comment box. That way if the comment is lost, I still have it in all its glory to copy and paste again.
I didn’t feel as if the last few weeks were particularly busy, but I ended up only finishing five books, which is pretty low for me. Spring Break this year is limited to five days (two of those being next Saturday and Sunday), so I won’t be able to luxuriate in endless reading time until summer break starts in early June. Still, onward and upward:
Skye Warren’s latest, PRIVATE PROPERTY, is the first of her new Rochester Trilogy, a modern interpretation of JANE EYRE. When it comes to duets and trilogies, I usually try to wait until all two or three books have been published to read them, but I make an exception for Warren—one of my favorite writers of dark romance—and I read PRIVATE PROPERTY even though I knew it would end on a cliffhanger. 19-year-old Texas native Jane Mendoza has spent the year since she aged out of the foster system working multiple jobs, trying desperately to save enough money to attend college (PRIVATE PROPERTY, similar to Warren’s Trust Fund duet, is extremely perceptive about the role money—and lack of it—plays in creating pervasive inequality of all kinds). Offered an opportunity to earn a significant salary as a nanny to Paige Rochester, a recently orphaned child, Jane arrives at a forbiddingly large, gloomy, and cold house on the cliffs of coastal Maine (there’s a moment where Jane laments not having any cold-weather clothes because no one needs them in Texas—which lets me know this book was at the publishers prior to the recent Texas blizzard). Beau Rochester (Paige’s uncle and guardian) is very much the “unknowable hero” of the Gothic tradition: handsome, wealthy, secretive, and much older than Jane. It goes without saying that PRIVATE PROPERTY is full of all sorts of triggers—the heroine’s physical and sexual abuse in the foster system, the age gap and unequal sexual dynamic between Jane and Rochester, the transgressive sexual activity (very little of it actual p-in-v)—all written in Warren’s understated style. I knew there’d be a cliffhanger—and it’s a doozy—so now I have to wait until May for book two (STRICT CONFIDENCE).
CD Reiss is another writer for whom I make an exception to my “wait for all the books in a trilogy to be published before I read them” rule. Her MAFIA BRIDE is the first book her new DiLustro Arrangement trilogy (the book’s release slipped in under the radar—I had no idea Reiss had a new book coming out). Although generally not as dark as Skye Warren, Reiss can get fairly dark (for example, the books in her Edge series) and MAFIA BRIDE gets pretty damn dark in places (cw/tw for violence, attempted abduction). If you are familiar with Reiss, you know she takes a trope (in this case, forced/arranged mafia marriage) and puts her own spin on things. The heroine is a nursing student (like the heroine of PRIVATE PROPERTY, she is 19-years-old) suddenly thrust into marriage with the mafia capo of their Italian-American community. For the first half of the book, I was irritated with the heroine who seemed to careen from one emotional extreme to another at the drop of a hat—I couldn’t get a handle on her and kept having to remind myself that she was still a teenager; I also felt Reiss waited a little too long to present any of the story from the hero’s point-of-view. However, the action—and dark revelations from the past—picked up in the second half of the book and I was eagerly turning the pages until the inevitable end-of-book cliffhanger. Now I’m avidly awaiting Reiss’s next installment, MAFIA KING, due in May.
Tamsen Parker’s INSIDE TRACK was recommended in the recent Rec League for books with one flamboyant partner and one more practical one. When I saw it was on KU, I grabbed it. I’ve liked a number of Parker’s other books and I especially appreciate the empathy and understanding she brings to characters with mental health challenges (Parker has been frank about her own struggles with mental illness). Both MCs in INSIDE TRACK are living lives impacted by mental illness: the hero is a rock musician with ADHD (Parker does an excellent job of showing the creative but exhausting leaps of thought his mind is always making); while the heroine is a former child actress turned financial advisor who suffers from agoraphobia and panic attacks (cw/tw: she has a history of drug addiction and of being exploited—monetarily and sexually; these things happened in the past and are not described in detail, but references are made to them). It was interesting to see how elements of each of the MCs’ personalities knitted together so neatly and how things about them that might be deal-breakers with other partners (she never leaves the house; he never thinks things through and has poor impulse control) are actually fine with the other. (Also, if you like books where dogs are supporting characters, the hero’s English bulldog, Fiona, is quite the canine personality.) Another thing I appreciated about INSIDE TRACK is that luuuurve doesn’t magically cure the h&h: the heroine continues to have panic attacks and rarely leave her home; the hero usually acts on the first thought he has; but Parker shows two people who love each other and are better together than apart, regardless of the challenges they face. Recommended.
You know you’ve been reading a series for a long time when the most recent books involve the children of couples from the earlier books. So it is with Cora Reilly’s FRAGILE LONGING, the latest of her arranged-marriage mafia romances: characters who were toddlers in prior books are now in their late teens and early twenties. FRAGILE LONGING’s heroine is a young woman who must marry her sister’s former fiancé despite the fact that the fiancé is still carrying a torch for the sister—a woman who has long since married the rival mob boss who abducted her (that story was told in TWISTED PRIDE). Reilly’s timelines are a little vague, but I like the hermetically-sealed universe she has created—full of “made mafia men” and young women raised to know they will be married more for dynastic than romantic reasons. Despite the bloodshed, mob wars, casual violence, virginity fetishism, and acceptance that everyone is part of a mob family, Reilly’s books are remarkably similar to Regency romances where women are destined for arranged marriages and must rely on their courage, resourcefulness, and a little luck to turn an arrangement into a love match. You know if this sort of story floats your boat. Read, or don’t read, accordingly.
I enjoyed Zoey Castile’s take on Beauty & the Beast, FLASHED, despite the fact that the hero was such a “beast”—not physically (although he is badly scarred from an automobile collision that was completely his fault) but emotionally. He’s a former model & stripper who has become a recluse. He forbids the heroine from seeing him, even while she’s cleaning his house (which she does to earn money to pay her tuition and support her younger sister). If it’s any indication how difficult it was to like the hero, here are the two quotes I highlighted during my reading, both said by the heroine to the hero regarding his actions: “At a certain point, you have to stop being sorry and stop doing things to be sorry for,” and “There are only so many times you can forgive someone for the same mistake.” However, I thought the book was redeemed by the wonderful heroine—an art student in her mid-twenties who admittedly “takes in too many strays”—and the group of found-family friends she acquires while attending university in Montana. (As an aside, FLASHED is one of the few books I’ve read that is set in Montana but does not involve cowboys or ranchers.) If you can get beyond the hero, FLASHED is a well-written story with a great heroine. It also seemed as if Castile were setting up future stories for several other characters in the book, but as far as I can tell—other than STRIPPED AND HIRED—Castile has not published anything else. I would love to read more romances featuring some of the secondary characters from FLASHED.
I have several sci-fi and fantasy books waiting on my TBR pile, including NAVIGATING THE STARS by Maria V. Snyder; UNCONQUERABLE SUN by Kate Elliott; and SEVEN WAYS TO KILL A KING by Melissa Wright.
I also want to check out FALCON & WINTER SOLDIER VOL. 1 comics by Derek Landy to tide me over in between new episodes of the Marvel/Disney+ show, which has had a lot of good action so far.
Happy weekend to all! 🙂
I thought I had read a ton more books than has been become the pandemic norm for me since the last WAYR, but my list only shows two completed (possibly, this discrepancy in my expectations is due to me falling down a fanfic hole and, incidentally, also writing something like 35000 words of fic in the past month and a half which…how the heck did that happen?)
In any case, the two I finished:
Kyung-sook Shin – Please Look After Mom. This is a Korean novel about a family dealing in the aftermath of their elderly mother’s disappearance from a Seoul train station. I thought it was really beautiful; there are multiple perspectives in different styles (it kinda reminded me of Faulkner in that way…though admittedly, it has been a very long time since I read Faulkner.) And reading it at the same time my aging mother has encountered certain health issues it was…an interesting choice. I like novels in translation that both take you to a completely different culture and place but really show the universality of certain emotions. I’ve been studying Korean for a while and I’d like to try and read this in the original one day (I’m far away from that, but it’s short enough that…maybe one day) particularly because there’s a portion in second person that I don’t know how is actually done in Korean.
Kat Cho – Wicked Fox
A YA novel about a half-gumiho girl and the boy she falls in star-crossed love with. I started this before my ereader quit, and finally decided that I just needed to get it from the library, already. It was meh. Perhaps because I had such a long gap in reading, the narrative pacing didn’t work well for me. Also I felt that the “twists,” while not exactly expected, were unearned. Certain plot developments required me to care about characters in ways that I just didn’t. Also the epilogue was completely tacked on for sequel bait with no actual justification. So. Meh.
A couple of duds in my latest reading.
I can heartily and absolutely not recommend The Heart of Devin MacKade by Nora Roberts. The books of hers that my library holds tend to be from around the 90s, and they’re fine, although the heroes are a bit too domineering for me, and I quite like a bossy hero. However, the guy in this one crossed the line and went sprinting headlong into utter arsehole territory.
The heroine escaped a year ago from a twelve-year-long abusive marriage. The town policeman is Devin MacKade but I shall call Sheriff Dickbag ManBaby, because that is a right and just name for him, has loved her from afar for all those years, and now sees the time to make his move. Then he gets offended because she gets scared and backs off. And she apologises! My face does that that Leslie Knope whole face frown about him.
He’s angry because he’s been waiting so long! And it’s been so hard for him all this waiting. You know, while she and her children have endured over a decade of terror. So tough for him. Sheriff Dickbag’s sister-in-law is worried about heroine, but appears more worried that heroine will break his heart. Fuck you, Sheriff Dickbag and fuck you, Sheriff Dickbag’s sister-in-law.
Then her son, who’s also suffered abuse, says he doesn’t want his mum to marry Sheriff Dickbag because he’s frightened that although he seems nice now (huh), how does he know this guy won’t turn abusive too, once he’s tied the heroine into marriage.
So Heroine tells him that she can’t marry him, and he gets angry and sulky again, because she’s putting her children’s welfare first. And he’s waited so long, you guys. All about the empathy, this one. At this point, the sad violin I would be playing for him is so minuscule it would have to be engraved with a laser on a microchip.
Heroine and son go and apologise to Sheriff Dickbag Manbaby FOR WANTING HER CHILDREN TO FEEL SAFE. A happy ending is decreed despite him having no patience or understanding for her trauma. I am angry. The end.
The only outlet I have for my rage is SBTB whatcha reading. So sorry everyone, for dumping this one on you.
Can anyone tell me if Nora improves in this regard in more recent books?
Mr McHottie, by Pippa Grant. This was a freebie, which I am glad about. A woman holds a grudge for ten years about her teenage nemesis, because she had to go to a less prestigious college after kind of stealing a van shaped like giant bratwurst after they hate-shag in it. It’s ridiculous, but I like ridiculous, and I will easily suspend my disbelief if the author can carry me along and make me care about the characters. And I was ready to like it. I found the writing quite funny. At first. But the humour quickly became forced, very tee-hee, aren’t I wacky. The heroine was so very, very immature. She’s meant to be professional and good at her job, but she comes across as a filter-free generator of unnecessary drama. The hero didn’t sound like a peach either, but you got a bit more insight into his character and how it was formed by a difficult family background, and how he’s trying to run his businesses more ethically. This was underdeveloped, though, so it never really made me feel particularly invested in him or the HEA. Not rage-inducing like the Nora Roberts book, but I just got tired of spending time with them. A series of vignettes of stupidity. Skim read to the end.
I re-read The Italian’s Final Redemption by Jackie Ashenden and enjoyed it a lot more this time round – I think I must have been having a bit of a slump at the time because I read several books that should have been sure-fire winners and I couldn’t get enthusiastic about them. I also read another of Ashenden’s books, Come Home to Deep River, and liked it. It’s a lot less angsty than her previous books, about a man who’s inherited a town, and how he has to deal with the responsibility, and having to settle in one place, while the h is getting itchy feet. The town as a whole also has to face up to the fact that oil has been found under its territory, and while it’ll bring in money, it’s going to ruin what makes the town special. But people aren’t demonised for wanting money – some need the money, and some want to escape because the town has felt like a trap, rather than a refuge. Ashenden is very good at unpicking the knots in peoples’ behaviour, and this is a good example.
I really loved Elizabeth Bright’s THE DUKE’S WICKED WIFE, it was an effervescent delight. Two good friends bantering and trying not to end up together. More and more is revealed about the characters to each other and to the reader as the book progresses. Recommended to lovers of Tessa Dare, Julia Quinn, Megan Frampton. I picked up the other books in the series, but this one is by far the best.
Also enjoyed:
THE TROUBLE WITH KINGS by Sherwood Smith, a fantasy story with a surprising amount of political plot.
Tamsin Parker’s THE INSIDE TRACK, about a rocker with ADHD and a financial planner with agoraphobia and anxiety who are somehow right for each other. It was alot to be in the head of someone with extreme ADHD.
The TYCOON, sexy, but all could have been cleared up by some talking.
WE HAVE Til Dawn, a Pretty Woman m/m story.
I forgot to mention another thing that annoyed me about Mr Hottie: the heroine at the end does a little recap about how she came to New York with a degree from a second-rate university and a criminal record (I paraphrase slightly). Ok, it’s accurate that she has a record, but it’s not like she’s been on a bank-robbing spree across the country – she’s done something that was not good, but that most people would probably write off as a stupid teenage prank
It’s a ‘poor little me’ moment that feels mostly unearned. She’s an attractive, educated white woman who’s landed a good job without too much trouble, and her life hasn’t been knocked that far off course, and I keep thinking of how so many other people have suffered much larger repercussions for doing much less (or even nothing at all).
I don’t think every book has to be a polemic on society’s ill, but she’s so completely unaware of her privilege, and I find myself liking her less and less every time I think of this.
That indie yarn post a while back inspired me to get some crochet supplies and an “easy” scarf pattern, so for the past few days I’ve been learning how to do that instead of reading.
Before that, I DNF’d a bunch. Why are we still doing protagonists with revenge plots that target someone other than the person who did them wrong? “That villain’s soldiers slaughtered my family, so I’m going to kill his daughter and make him suffer as I have suffered!” Even if the villain isn’t heartless toward his kid (he is), the rich, powerful adult surrounded by flunkies in his palace will not suffer like the juvenile peasant who is alone, homeless, and vulnerable to all sorts of abuse. I’m totally here for revenge, but if you’re not going to be noble about it, I need you to at least be smart. There is no spin you can put on “I’ll feel better if I harm someone who did absolutely nothing to anybody” to make it heroic.
I’m near the beginning of Laura Lee Guhrke’s THE TROUBLE WITH TRUE LOVE. I must have grabbed it on sale because it’s a second-in-series and I don’t have the first, but I’m not lost without having read the previous book, so thumbs up. Heroine has been left in charge of her honeymooning sister’s dating advice column and is woefully unequipped for the task. She’s inspired by an overheard conversation between two cads, one of whom is (obviously) the hero. I anticipate shenanigans ensue following publication of the column.
@FashionablyEvil, I hope you have an uneventful rest of the spring. My condolences for your loss. For reading, you are in for a treat with the rest of the Widdershins series. It keeps on getting better. Also, by the same author, the Hexworld series is great. Happy reading!
I didn’t post last time so I will start further back.
The book that made a big impression was Girl A by Abigail Dean. Interesting and well done study of a family during and after (TW) horrific abuse. It kept me reading. It’s told from the point of view of the oldest daughter, identified in the press as Girl A. Her mother has just died in prison and named her executor. We see her deal with meeting her mother and then finding and dealing with her surviving siblings. Along the way, we get to see the family, through their memories, slide from pretty normal to amazingly bad. Some of the abuse is on page though nothing really explicit. And how the sibs coped afterwards. I found it interesting and well done, though not for everyone.
The recent book that made a big impression was The Lost Man by Jane Harper, a book that could use a trigger warning or two, also. It, too, was well done and interesting, a look at a family in crisis due to the murder of one of the adult sons and a look back at how the family may have arrived there. It is bleak and sad at times and it is unflinching. I would recommend for most.
I also read The Runaway Wife by Dee McDonald. Mid sixties wife taken for granted by all leaves on road trip. She meets many interesting people, rediscovers herself, decides what she wants. It was fun, especially since it was also a tour of England. An amazing number of men she met along the way found her interesting. I did find the resolution of the marriage a little out of the blue. Would recommend if you want a book with a mature heroine. Not really a romance but definitely romance adjacent.
Midnight Curse by Melissa Olson. A human who nullifies magic within her personal space deals with murderous vampires in Los Angeles. Some romance, mostly urban fantasy. I enjoyed it.
True to Me by Kay Bratt is about a 30ish business woman whose DNA test shows she is not who she thinks she is and that she has a brother in Hawaii. She leaves fiance in GA (which, after this week, seems like a good idea), and flies to HI to find out who she is. Yes, romance and a complicated history to unravel. It was interesting.
Marrying Winterbourne and Devil in Winter both by Lisa Kleypas. Both fun historical romance with some family angst, liked Winterbourne a little better. Would recommend both.
How to Fail at Flirting by Denise Williams. College professor now s/p abusive relationship is encouraged to start getting out there by her friends, does one-nighter with guy from bar who, yes, they like each other and there are also reasons they should not be together. I enjoyed this book a lot when I read it three weeks ago and now I am having trouble remembering deets. It was fun, though.
Plus some comfort reads (hello, Anne Bishop) and a few romances that came and went. Hope you are all reading and enjoying.
For the last WARY I was about a third of the way through Bitterburn by Ann Aguirre. I have since finished it, and overall liked it. It was low angst, the conflict I expected when Amarrah went back to the village and then returned to the castle never really appeared. And I actually appreciated that! I find I have little patience for manufactured drama that could easily be avoided by a short conversation.
Then it was on to Lord of Stariel by AJ Lancaster. Again, overall enjoyed it. I figured out the mystery, well all of the mysteries, by the time we had met all of the characters. And can I say that I’m totally over the trope of “you’re the chosen one, but we’re not going to tell you anything that you need to know about your duties/quest/responsibilities.” I’m unsure whether I will continue with the series, I think I’m satisfied with the story at this point.
Now I’m about a third of the way into The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley. For me, RM’s books read very much like fairy tales. I feel at a distance from the characters and events, like they are things that happened “long ago and far away,” so the traumas and dramas are not affecting or involving. That being said, I am still enjoying the story and will most likely read other RM books in the future.
I realize that my recent reading has been kind of meh! I’m really more of a SciFi/Fantasy reader, but have difficulty finding books in those genres that I enjoy and connect with. There are a lot of less-than-great books out there. Well, at least in my opinion 🙂
I had some unexpected time for audiobooks at work, so I listened to WE COULD BE HEROES by Mike Chen. I half expected a romance the entire time, but their relationship is equally delightful even as friends. The supervillain reads memoirs and has a cat named Normal, whom the superhero is allergic to. It’s all a delight. Too many hints were dropped to think it would be a standalone, but the book still works on its own.
Also, finally ACT YOUR AGE, EVE BROWN came in, and I devoured it! It felt shorter than I expected. Still, it was quite lovely, although I felt the hero was a little unreasonable with the argument that led to their split, because it had been such a short amount of time. Eve did not have a spare minute to make the call she needed to make between everything that happened that night/morning. And no true Gingerbread Festival! I was disappointed.
I haven’t been reading serious, because life is too serious, and work is too…
GREAT
FOR THE LOVE OF PURPLE series by Audrey Faye. Lovely MF contemporary romances set on Vancouver island in an artist community/small town. Perfect for a cup of tea and looking out at the rain.
SHERWOOD, AJ – I blew through all her backlog books. My favorites were her Jon’s Mystery series, starting with Jon’s Downright Ridiculous Shooting Case, a MM contemporary series of a psychic and his bodyguard; and Fourth Point of Contact, a non-magical fantasy MM about two generals after the war.
VERY GOOD
DARK SPACE trilogy by Lisa Henry. MM military sci-fi. It didn’t go as I thought it would, and I enjoyed the trip.
NOT DEAD YET series by Jenn Burke – MM about a not-a-ghost solving mysteries in Toronto. This was recommended on SBTB and I can’t wait for the spin off series.
STARIEL series by AJ Lancaster – MF alternate Victorian with magical elements. The world, and the main characters, drew me in.
PEACE ON EARTH: an assassin Christmas carol, by Audrey Faye -I’m not sure what to call this, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. An action adventure romp?
GOOD
MAGES OF RAVENSHIRE series by Stella Rainbow – Contemporary MM with Magic and Fated Mates. The stories are sweet although not deep, some have ace/Gray Sexual. Very angst free.
THE EAST WITCH by Cedar Sanderson. A Fantasy novel in a world of Russian Fairy Tales. The fantasy was interesting, the romance not so much.
THE PRINCESS KNIGHT by G. A. Aiken. Fantasy. Not as good as the Blacksmith Queen or the Dragon books, hope the next is better.
LET’S CONNECT / LET’S GO OUT by Kelly Jensen. MM Contemporary. Sweet friends/romance set in Philadelphia.
So-So
The City Between series by W.R. Gingell – A YA Urban Fantasy series set in Hobart Tasmania. Interesting setup, but heroine is young and and acts younger, replacing common sense with snark. Three books in but may stop at 3.
Little Daddy, by A. Little – Short and sweet MM between a Vampire and Little.
Siren Song by Audrey Faye – Urban Fantasy of a modern academic dealing with an ancient curse. It just didn’t work for me.
CREA series – by JD Light. MM Paranormal Shifters/Others. These are like Pringles. You know they aren’t good, but they are so much fun to eat. Also start at the beginning – otherwise it does not make sense.
Change of Heart series by Mary Calmes. MM Paranormal Shifters. I liked her other series better, especially The Marshals. Sometimes I just want the people to sit down and talk things out instead of emoting and not listening.
Currently reading CEMETERY BOYS by Aidan Thomas – it’s slightly more high-stress than I really want, but the story is so delightful that I cannot put it down.
Just finished HER MAGICAL PETS (thanks to Kindle Unlimited), which is delightfully fluffy and low-stress.
Next up is PALADIN’S STRENGTH by T. Kingfisher because I saw a delightful review of it here, and remembered how much I enjoyed the first book in the series.
PROMISED LAND by Cynthia Felice and Connie Willis. Found this through a Rec League post from a few years back. It’s one of my favourite reads so far this year. So this is basically like SF Sweet Home Alabama. The heroine left her backwater planet as child to go to a fancy school in the “big city” while the hero remains on the farm their families jointly own. Heroine comes back years later after her mother dies to sell of her half of the land and then leave ASAP but due to the laws of their planet, turns out they are legally married and she can’t sell off immediately. The heroine is a bit hard to take at first, treating everyone she meets with disdain and being a self-entitled brat but she gets over it quickly and she later on acknowledges her behaviour. The hero is really sweet and lovely. The supporting characters are a big reason why I love this book. So their planet has this ham radio network they use to pass along messages, weather reports, and mostly gossip and its basically what passes for entertainment. People on the ham just start off like gossipy neighbours but eventually the heroine realises they’re basically how the community keep tabs on each other and help each other out. Honestly, this book is wonderful.
BUSINESS OF BLOOD by Kerrigan Byrne. Book 1 of the Fiona Mahoney series . Fiona is a post-mortem sanitation specialist—she cleans up murders basically, for the police and sometimes for…private clients. Despite having many issues with the book (overuse of the word ‘exotic’ to describe a Native American characters; constantly saying Jack the Ripper’s victims were all prostitutes; reducing Oscar Wilde to the gay best friend) I still enjoyed it and was very disappointed to find out Book 2 won’t be out till September!
DIVORCE CAN BE DEADLY by Emma Jameson. This was also from a Rec League. I cannot thank all these recs enough! Second book in the Benjamin Bones Mysteries. I skipped the first just cause I can. Ben is a London physician sent to the quaint village of Birdswing in Cornwall on the eve of WWII. In between looking after his patients, he also solves murders ably assisted by Juliet, the local lord’s daughter and Gaston the special constable—both students of the Private Dick Academy. I really enjoyed this even if the mystery was less than compelling and the last 50 pages doesn’t quite have the charm of the rest of book.
For someone who started out reading almost exclusively historical m/f romance, I’ve been reading mostly m/m for months now! Hmmm, I blame this on how disillusioning navigating dating apps as a woman has been, and how I just need to avoid straight male mediocrity for now-if one more guy asks me to debate the merits of pineapple on pizza… anyway, I digress. I haven’t posted on WAYR for a while so this is a long list!
The good stuff:
THROWN OFF THE ICE by Taylor Fitzpatrick: This book was recommended here by a bunch of people and damn. I was mind blown, absolutely crushed, shaken, in love – just many feelings okay?! Hockey m/m romance with an age difference. Absolutely not a conventional HEA or HFN. More of a love story than romance tbh. Read it if you can emotionally handle it. Absolutely wonderful but devastating.
THE GENTLE ART OF FORTUNE HUNTING: KJ Charles knocks it out of the park as usual, absolutely loved it, and by her standards this was gentle enough to feel like such a pandemic comfort read. I have nothing to say except that if you haven’t read it yet, do so.
WINTER’S ORBIT by Everine Maxwell: This m/m sci-fi romance has gotten a lot of hype, and while I liked it, and thought the romance was very sweet, and that an abusive ex storyline was explored well, the lack of communication really started to frustrate me. Still, I recommend for the sweetness factor alone; although sci fi is not really my thing.
HEXWORLD series by Jordan L Hawk: Really liked this – I went through this whole (so far) 4 book historical/paranormal m/m series set in 1890s New York last week. Hawk has a real talent for creating a sense of time and place and the romances were lovely too. Especially loved book 1. Each book follows a different couple but there’s a continuing mystery through the series.
CHECK PLEASE! by Ngozi Ukazu: Did I think I’d ever fall in love with a webcomic? No. Did I think it would be about a bunch of preppy hockey players in a fictional east coast elite college? Also no. Did I obsessively read the whole thing in two days and sigh happily while following the grumpy/sunshine m/m romance in it every two minutes? Yup.
GLITTERLAND by Alexis Hall: m/m contemporary. Wow. This book was so powerful, the characters were so wonderfully drawn. You can tell this is a debut novel because Hall gets a bit carried away with verbose prose sometimes but it packs a strong emotional punch and has an incredibly realistic depiction of mental illness as well as class difference between the two MCs. This one will stay with me for a long time.
The meh stuff:
A lot of people recommended R Cooper in the pining rec league a few weeks ago and I’m sorry to report I tried to read PLAY IT AGAIN CHARLIE and it was a DNF for me 🙁 winding inner monologues and an incoherent writing style made me abandon it pretty early on.
Roan Parrish gets a lot of love so I read a book by her for the first time – RIVEN, a rockstar m/m romance. People warned that it was angsty but I didn’t find myself interested in either of the characters and didn’t find it particularly angsty either. I don’t know if I will try this author again.
FAKE OUT by Eden Finley: m/m contemporary with a fake relationship trope. This book was so annoying, the two heroes were so alike in dialogue and character I had to keep going back to figure out which one was speaking. Also, they were boring. I don’t mind jock characters; I read lots of sports romance but jocks need depth that goes beyond “dude” and “bro”.
There’s more, but I really do need to get back to work 🙂 Happy reading!!
NO ONE WANTS TO BE MISS HAVISHAM by Brigid Coady: I had trouble starting this because main character Edie Dickens was so unlikable. Fortunately I hung in there and was delighted with her inch-by-grudging/painful-inch growth as a human being. The Ghosts of Weddings past, present and future were well done and while Edie is still a work in progress by the end, there is hope.
FATE OF THE FALLEN by Kel Kade: Went in expecting a bog-standard hero’s quest and, whoo boy, was I glad to be wrong. The Prophecy, as told by all, was not going well or as written. The hero and sidekick/best friend are beset at every turn and, quite literally, all is lost. The ending is less cliffhanger, more everyone saying “this shit is hard, let’s give up.” Except for the best friend. I am so eager for the next book.
WILD SIGN by Patricia Briggs: Although I’ve read everything in this series, keeping past/possibly dead characters/plots clear was tough. Still, what a great addition to Anna and Charles’ story, what a wonderful team they make. Plus long-awaited answers about Bran and Leah–more questions, too–but much is explained.
SLOUGH HOUSE by Mick Herron: My love for the MI-6 Slow Horses is vast and deep. They are not so much incompetent as completely FUBAR and unable to see anything clearly. This time, someone is killing off retired Joes (spies) and Jackson Lamb is having none of it. I understand a TV series is forthcoming, at least in the UK, and Gary Oldman has been cast as Lamb. Not sure how I feel about that.
LINCOLN IN THE BARDO by George Saunders: Currently reading this for book club and, well, it’s a masterpiece, I guess. No, it is, it’s also WORK. I should be glad there are ghosts and non-reality, but Lincoln’s grief is gut-wrenching. I’ll keep going for the, alleged, funny parts.
I’ve been doing some rereading, or relistening as the case may be. I’m relistening to the Rockcliffe series by Stella Riley, narrated by Alex Wyndham. I’m on book 3 now. Fantastic books. I’ve also restarted the Him series by Sarina Bown and Elle Kennedy narrated by Teddy Hamilton and Jason Clark.
Mixed in with these comfort reads were:
Penny for Your Secrets-book 3 of the “Verity Kent” series by Anna Lee Huber, in print. A decent mystery.
At Attention, book three in Annabeth Albert’s “Out of Uniform” series,on audio. Very good.
Wicked Widow by Amanda Quick,on audio narrated by Barbara Rosenblat. Good narration, not-so-good book.
I decided to listen to UF series I’ve read in print: Guild Codex: Spellbound by Annette Marie.My library has all the book on Hoopla. I’ve finished the first 2 on audio.
Earlier this month I listened to the entire “Not Dead Yet” series by Jenn Burke, narrated by Greg Boudreaux, and they were great! Fantastic narration.
JD Robb! I read the first 5 books a couple years ago, and they fell within the “liked but didn’t loved” category, but Facebook kept suggesting the JD Robb facebook page, so I thought I would give them anoher chance. And my brain feels that they are exactly what I need.
:::yawns all the way in with the happy expression of a woman that took a needle to the arm this past week:::
Dose 1 is in, the semester is almost dunzo (maybe we don’t talk about my progress on my final paper, I’ll get there, ok?), and my daughter is watching Rupaul’s Drag Race. Not bad.
We’ll start with my eternal love for Claudia Gray’s Star Wars, and she is kicking in on the new High Republic series with Into the Dark. I was particularly fond of the fact that this book featured a young Jedi that is frankly, a nerd. He is less interested in being out having adventures and getting into lightsaber fights than he is in hanging out in the Jedi Archives reading ancient scrolls. It doesn’t mean that he can’t do those things, he’s capable, even when it comes to things that he’s not naturally adept at, simply because he’s a nerd and will study the shit out of it. But I can very much identify with, “I don’t want go off to some remote frontier planet, I want to stay in the city planet and read my books”. Relatable. Then I followed it up with Michael Connelly’s Nine Dragons, number whatever of the Harry Bosch series. I’m pretty sure that of Connelly’s two brothers, I like Mickey Haller more, but this was a solid mystery. That said, it came at a weird time for me, as I was reading a book with several Asian and Asian-American supporting characters, and Harry was at times, straight up racist. The book doesn’t let him off, one of the other characters (very correctly) calls him on his racist shit, and Harry recognizes that the character is right and that racism is hampering his ability to investigate the crime effectively. Also, Mickey shows up toward the end, and proceeds to be entertaining. That said, I was reading this at a time when we were obviously seeing a tragic escalation in crime against Asian-Americans, Harry’s racism made me grouchy. Then I read The Secret, Book, and Scone Society by Ellery James. There was a lot to like about this book. I enjoyed the characters, the scone descriptions were scrumptious-sounding, and I loved the conceit of the bookseller listening to people’s problems, thinking about what books would help them handle their shit, and connecting them to those books. That said, there were two things that bothered me. In just a few parts, the dialogue would get just a touch too flowery, to the point where I was like, “Okay, even people who read a ton don’t talk like that, and I would know”. The other was that one of the villains really fell into the “fat=evil/stupid” descriptive trope, and a lot of the telling us what a dipshit he was was depended on telling us about his weight and the “good” characters making insulting comments about it. Lazy trope is lazy, and I would have enjoyed the book a lot more without it. It won’t stop me from continuing the series, because there was a lot I liked, but that chafed my cookies. Which brings us to today, in which I am reading That Ain’t Witchcraft by Seanan McGuire. I usually enjoy these a great deal, as they are fun, have a lot of action, and her descriptions almost always make me laugh (e.g. her referring to sylphs and their ability to change their mass as basically a “giant fuck you to physics”). So far, no Aeslin Mice, but it’s early. So until next time, fly my pretties, fly.
I just seem to be reading historical regencies. I finished up the Chance Sisters series and as I mentioned I’m reading The Lost Lieutenant by Erica This is first in a series Again, a Moc theme. I think with the chaos in the world I just feel staying away from the real world at least when I read.
I have been just powering my way through my TBRs! I’m mainly getting caught up on historical mystery series, so I’m now on the 3rd Wrexford & Sloane book, Murder at Kensington Palace by Andrea Penrose, and I finished the 4th Lizzie Martin/Inspector Ross mystery, by Ann Granger, A Particular Eye for Villainy. The Granger book was objectively a better mystery plot, but now that Lizzie & Ben Ross are married there really is no romance element or tension/progression in the relationship. Also, the couple are not equal partners in solving the mystery, he’s a Scotland Yard inspector, and she just assists/interferes with his job as the case may be. The Penrose book was better in the romantic tension department, and has a pair of equal partners in the solving of the mystery, but the writing is sometimes a bit meandering, imho. I’ve also reached book 7 in the Lady Darby mystery series, which continues to be quite good, and I’ve read all but the last of Anne Lee Huber’s post World War I series, which I like even more. So I got ambitious and decided to tackle Deanna Raybourn’s Veronica Speedwell series. Another Victorian setting, but a bit more humor, tongue-in-cheek to these. My library only has these on paper, so I made my first trip to the library in over a year to pick up “A Perilous Undertaking”, very exciting! (I’ve had my first shot of Moderna, but the name always makes me think of a style of 1950’ish Scandinavian furniture.
In between those, I read Michelle Diener’s Rising Wave books, so far there is a prequel, The Rising Wave, and a full length book, The Turncoat King. It’s a very military oriented fantasy, set in a low-tech imaginary world where people fight with swords and ride horses, but the characters and tropes are very much like her previous sci-fi romances. There is a good bit of violence and instalust, it starts off with the MCs escaping from prison together, then joining a rebel army to overthrow the ruling regime. For some reason this is my crack. I definitely renewed my membership in the Bad Decisions book club by starting and finishing this book the same night that the clocks went forward, so I had already lost an hour’s sleep from the get go.
Thank you to Vivi12 for the Duke’s Wicked Wife recommendation. Friends to lovers and witty repartee are catnip for me. I’ve been having some non-HR DNF’s lately and just wasn’t able to come up with a new author to try. My default comfort read is Regency romance and my brain has been demanding it almost exclusively of late.
And bless you Bitchery for your awesomeness – I don’t know what I’d do without y’all (and my digital library access).
Since last time ~
— read with pleasure two fan fiction pieces for a favorite series (Lyn Gala’s Claimings series). I obtained them from Archive of Our Own: Deviations and Revelations, both by allonym.
— Healing Glass: A Gifted Guilds Novel by Jackie Keswick which I enjoyed. This is m/m fantasy.
— I read Once Upon A Haunted Moor (The Tyack & Frayne Mysteries Book 1) and then the next six books in the series. I enjoyed them all.
— quite enjoyed Heart of Malice (Alice Worth Book 1) by Lisa Edmonds and went on to read the novella Blood Money as well as books 2 and 3, Heart of Fire and Heart of Ice. Now I need to get my hands on the remainder of the series!
— read and enjoyed One’s Aspect to the Sun (Nearspace Book 1) by Sherry D. Ramsey. I’d read on in this series; however, my library does not own the sequels.
— the anthology Fantastic Hope by Laurel K. Hamilton, Patricia Briggs and more. As with most anthologies, I found that I liked some of the stories, was ambivalent about others, and did not finish several. My favorite story was “Asil and the Not-Date” by Patricia Briggs; it featured Asil from her Alpha and Omega series.
— and a host of samples.
Not getting near as much reading done as I would like.
I enjoyed Anna Harrington’s AN UNEXPECTED EARL. This is a M/F historical second chance between childhood friends to lovers. This is the second book in a series that has a bit of a mystery threaded in it.
A couple of M/M books I enjoyed:
LOVE PRACTICE by AF Zoelle — a good one if you are looking for no angst, but plenty of heat. She writes great banter and dialogue and this one has that easily between two roommates who have been friends for several years and both secretly in love with the other. Asking one to be the other’s dating tutor moves things along quite nicely.
STARTING FROM THE TOP by Lane Hayes — this one has a rock star element, along with a single dad and an age gap. Some sweet swoony moments that I’ve enjoyed in this series.
Farrah Rochon’s “The Boyfriend Project”: I’ve got mixed feelings about it. Unlike Maya, who reviewed it for SBTB, I am sympathetic to Daniel, the hero. I actually was happy to have a hero who worked for the government, as far too many books/movies/TV shows fall into the easy cliche of “if someone works for the government they are either stupid or the villain”. I liked seeing Samiah at work and knowing how seriously she took her career, and her comments on the difficulties of being a black woman in a STEM field were spot on. I had problems, however, with the description of Samiah’s dream app. I could understand the idea of Just Friends, that sometimes people are looking for friends, not romance, and having a hard time, especially in a new city. What I didn’t get was what was different about her links to businesses, as they seemed just like sponsored links in other websites. This needed to be explained a bit more for a non-tech person like me to understand. An even bigger issue was Samiah’s move to a new job at her firm. She is a gifted programmer, yet she’s going to be moved to a job that, as far as I could tell, didn’t use those skills. Community outreach is wonderful, but it doesn’t get you the patents or bring in the big clients, all those things that make you indispensable to a firm. And, quite frankly, it seemed a bit too much like what often happens in RL to POC, who get moved away from the core business and then the fact that they aren’t rainmakers is used as the excuse for why White Person A got the promotion or partnership over Black Person B.
Kazuo Ishiguro’s “The Buried Giant”: This was a mix of reality and fantasy set in England shortly after the time of King Arthur. It has an older couple on a quest to visit the son they’ve not seen for many years and the others they meet on their way: a knight, a warrior, an orphan, ogres, a dragon, and much else. It is also about love and loss and the role of memory, which can comfort or be the source of ongoing pain — “when it is too late for rescue, it is still early enough for revenge.” I think the word poignant was invented for this book.
Mary Beth Keane’s “Ask Again, Yes” — “Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope, two rookie cops in the NYPD, live next door to each other outside the city. What happens behind closed doors in both houses – the loneliness of Francis’s wife, Lena, and the instability of Brian’s wife, Anne – sets the stage for the explosive events to come. Ask Again, Yes is a deeply affecting exploration of the lifelong friendship and love that blossoms between Francis and Lena’s daughter, Kate, and Brian and Anne’s son, Peter. Luminous, heartbreaking, and redemptive, it reveals the way childhood memories change when viewed from the distance of aduthood — villains lose their menace and those who appeared innocent seem less so. Kate and Peter’s love story, while tested by echoes from the past, is marked by tenderness generosity, and grace.” So nice to read literary fiction that ends with hope and love rather than total death and destruction.
Jennifer Ashley’s Kat Holloway mysteries — so far read the prequel novella and first and enjoyed them. Looking to see what develops, if anything, between Kat and Daniel McAdam.
Sy Montgomery’s “The Soul of an Octopus”. Nonfiction about the author’s study and growing love for octopuses. Also watched “My Octopus Teacher”. Who knew octopuses were smart, lived such short lives, and are having a moment – well, now I do.
So not so many romances lately, but I did get “The Flatmate” and “The Roommate” (a theme here) from the library so will read both soon.
Reading a lot of SFF lately, haven’t been entirely happy with most of it. Best was probably Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix, a clever horror novel set in an IKEA-knockoff store where the horror is underpinned by the architecture’s inbuilt design for mental manipulation and control in the service of sales, and the building is haunted by an earlier example of controlling architecture on the same site… The gloomy, skeptical, perceptive-but-disengaged POV character, Amy, is perfect, and it was really suspenseful to see if she could get out of the store’s trap (and more figuratively, the social and economic trap that was her life) while developing some moral backbone. I read it, actually, because of wanting to compare it with the novella Finna by Nino Cipri, which has been nominated for two 2020 awards, and is also set in a horrid, supernatural IKEA-knockoff. There’s plenty of room in that premise for two, and the books aren’t much alike; Finna is more adventure than horror, carnivorous furniture and hives of corporate clone drones notwithstanding. It has some quite funny moments of retail parody (maybe not as many as I hoped), and its two queer main characters get to comment on how deadeningly hetero-gender-essentialist the store is. The novella’s best feature is that the adventure provides an opportunity for these two co-workers who just broke up the week before to unwillingly go on a mission together, talk through their hurts, and re-form a new amicable (not romantic) relationship — good character-writing there. I found the book more pleasant than truly memorable, though.
I have the same “meh” feeling about another 2020 novella, Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor. It’s very much Okorafor, for good and bad; I’ve read a lot of her work and I felt like I’d seen most of this book before, with its young girl heroine cursed with alien superpowers leaving a trail of disaster through near-future Ghana while stalked by a malevolent American corporation that wants to exploit her powers. Okorafor can write this sort of thing automatically and still do it well. I really didn’t like the fact that this novella felt like the setup for a series, especially as it’s nowhere described as such.
Going back to something from 1996, there was Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon. Delightful main character, an old woman who, after having catered to other people all of her life and being now written off as of diminishing value, decides to stay behind on an alien planet when the rest of her colony leaves, to get a good long break from other people’s demands and expectations and see what she’s like when no one is shaping her but herself. That part of the novel, her self-discovery while keeping the abandoned colony’s tech running and spending lots of time gardening (I LOVED the gardening) was just great. Gotta love the unconventional clothes she comes up with. But in the second half, when unexpected aliens and too-soon-arriving new humans complicate matters, the execution wasn’t perfect; the contrast between how the aliens treat their elderly, and how the stupid, bigoted humans do, presses its moral a little too emphatically, and oversimplifications of plot and characters make the novel fall just short of greatness.
Finally, on the recommendation of so many people here, I dived into the Raksura series and have just finished Book 2. It’s enormously engaging and entertaining, with its hero’s social dilemmas, his forming friendships with so many likable characters, and its almost non-stop action. The world is remarkable (and beautifully described) … it feels like a global thriving ecosystem with many sentient species, all of them rather small populations, thinly dotted around among forests, plains, and wild animals; the species build ambitious cities but these don’t tend to last long so there are lots of ruins. Just like wild animals in a healthy forest (but unlike humans) the inhabitants of the Three Worlds suffer a rather high death rate and a considerable chance of an entire colony failing and dying out, yet they cope with it; the way that impermanence shapes their thinking is most interesting. I have a few (political) reservations though, which I hope I will be more satisfied about in future books. There’s the way that the antagonists in Book 1, a species called the Fell, are Always Chaotic Evil. Then there’s the hero, Moon; he covers his insecurities with aggression and has a restlessly risk-taking nature (Martha Wells really likes writing fight scenes, and if fights don’t come to Moon he’ll go find them), so he has what in American culture qualifies as considerable manliness, more so than other male characters in the book (others of his traits do diverge from the American archetype though). Given how truly likable Moon is, it pains me to recognize the toxic masculinity inherent in this role of badass hero.
@Jeanette – if you liked the Hobart Tasmania setting, check out Livia Day’s cozy mystery Cafe La Femme series starting with A Trifle Dead. The weird wonderful town is like a supporting character in itself. Also there’s delicious baked goodies, fabulous clothes, snark and banter.
Thanks to SB Sarah, I keep reaching for one more Brother Cadfael mystery. I haven’t read these in more than 10 years, but like Sarah I am finding them a wonderful distraction from all that’s going on. Being very suggestible, I may end up re-reading the Raksura books as well (while waiting for the new Murderbot). Thanks to a suggestion from KJ Charles on Goodreads, I also read one of Keigo Higashino’s mysteries, Newcomer, and promptly checked five more out from the library.
I did manage some nonfiction, Olivia Campbell’s Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine. Fascinating and infuriating in equal measure. The spurious reasons male doctors gave for rejecting the women, who were often more qualified than they were! Up next is a history of women doctors in the Great War, one of them the daughter of a pioneer woman doctor.
Sending sympathetic thoughts your way, FashionablyEvil, and hopes that there will be happier days ahead for you and for all.
Thinking of you @FashionablyEvil and hoping the rest of the spring is quiet and boring and that books bring back a smile.
Thanks to you many vocal advocates here at the Bitchery, I’m now in the middle of Lois McMaster Bujold’s THE CURSE OF CHALION and enjoying it very much. And given Kiki’s enthusiasm, I’ve just put STRANGE LOVE into my listening queue.
I’ve started and stopped a few books the last couple weeks, but two that especially demanded my attention were Sandra Brown’s ENVY and Madeleine Henry’s THE LOVE PROOF. As different as night and day, both grabbed my attention and refused to let go. ENVY is both a love story and a skillfully crafted mystery within a mystery, complete with southern charm and southern gothic chills.
THE LOVE PROOF is a unique exploration of the concept of soul mates that moved me in a way I haven’t been moved in a while. The author is young, and her only other published novel (BREATHE IN, CASH OUT) which I also read, is radically different and not nearly as moving.