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Sunshine
Sunshine by Robin McKinley is $1.99! McKinley has been recommended several times at SBTB HQ. Some readers label this as young adult and, for the most part, I’d agree with that sentiment. According to reviews on Goodreads, there were complaints about the balance of narrative to action, but many loved this different take on the vampire story. I know many of you have read this one, so let us know in the comments whether you loved it or hated it!
“Her feet are already bleeding – if you like feet…”
There are places in the world where darkness rules, where it’s unwise to walk. Sunshine knew that. But there hadn’t been any trouble out at the lake for years, and she needed a place to be alone for a while.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t alone. She never heard them coming. Of course you don’t, when they’re vampires.
They took her clothes and sneakers. They dressed her in a long red gown. And they shackled her to the wall of an abandoned mansion – within easy reach of a figure stirring in the moonlight.
She knows that he is a vampire. She knows that she’s to be his dinner, and that when he is finished with her, she will be dead. Yet, as dawn breaks, she finds that he has not attempted to harm her. And now it is he who needs her to help him survive the day…
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To Woo a Wicked Widow
To Woo a Wicked Widow by Jenna Jaxon is 99c and a Kindle Daily Deal! This is the first book in The Widows’ Club and has a heroine who is trying to avoid getting married again. Readers seemed divided on the heroine. Some enjoyed her independence, while others couldn’t really connect with her.
The war years are behind them.
The future is before them.
And one by one, the widows of Lyttlefield Park are getting restless…
Lady Charlotte Cavendish is still the spirited girl who tried to elope in the name of love. That dream was thwarted by her father who trapped her into a loveless, passionless marriage. But now widowed, Charlotte is free to reenter the giddy world of the ton—and pursue her desires. For hardly your typical widow, she remains innocent to the pleasures of the flesh. Yet her life is finally her own, and she intends to keep it that way.Nash, the twelfth Earl of Wrotham, is beguiled by Charlotte at first sight—and the feeling is mutual. When he receives her intriguing invitation to a house party, the marriage-minded lord plans to further their acquaintance. But even he cannot sway her aversion to matrimony, and only with great restraint does he resist her most tempting offer. For unbeknownst to Charlotte, the misadventures of the past are revisiting them both, and bedding her could cost him everything—or give him everything he ever wanted.
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Bitterburn
RECOMMENDED: Bitterburn by Ann Aguirre is $2.99! This might just be the regular price, but I still wanted to include it considering it was Elyse’s favorite read of last year. She says, so far, this is her favorite Beauty & the Beast adaptation. High praise!
Amarrah Brewer is desperate and grief-stricken.
For ages, the town of Bitterburn has sent tribute to the Keep at the End of the World, but a harsh winter leaves them unable to pay the toll that keeps the Beast at bay. Amarrah volunteers to brave what no one has before—to end the threat or die trying.
The Beast of Bitterburn has lost all hope.
One way or another, Njål has been a prisoner for his entire life. Monstrous evil has left him trapped and lonely, and he believes that will never change. There is only darkness in his endless exile, never light. Never warmth. Until she arrives.
It’s a tale as old as time… where Beauty goes to confront the Beast and falls in love instead.
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How to Date Your Dragon
How to Date Your Dragon by Molly Harper is 99c! This is book one in the Mystic Bayou small town paranormal romance. Harper’s paranormals are often over-the-top and a little goofy. Sometimes I’m in the mood for that. Sometimes I’m not.
The first book in Molly Harper’s uproariously funny, sinfully sexy new Mystic Bayou series!
Anthropologist Jillian Ramsay’s career has taken a turn south.
Concerned that technology is about to chase mythological creatures out into the open (how long can Sasquatch stay hidden from Google maps?), the League for Interspecies Cooperation is sending Jillian to Louisiana on a fact-finding mission. While the League hopes to hold on to secrecy for a little bit longer, they’re preparing for the worst in terms of human reactions. They need a plan, so they look to Mystic Bayou, a tiny town hidden in the swamp where humans and supernatural residents have been living in harmony for generations. Mermaids and gator shifters swim in the bayou. Spirit bottles light the front porches after twilight. Dragons light the fires under crayfish pots.
Jillian’s first assignment for the League could be her last. Mystic Bayou is wary of outsiders, and she has difficulty getting locals to talk to her. And she can’t get the gruff town sheriff, Bael Boone, off of her back or out of her mind. Bael is the finest male specimen she’s seen in a long time, even though he might not be human. Soon their flirtation is hotter than a dragon’s breath, which Bael just might turn out to be…
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Earlier this week, Anya Seton’s AVALON was a KDD and there was a nice discussion in the comments (amongst us “matriarchal bitches”) about reading Seton in our teens and the influence that she had on our historical romance reading. I’m pleased to say that one of the books mentioned in our discussion—Seton’s GREEN DARKNESS, first published in the early 1970s—is a KDD today for $2.99. GREEN DARKNESS is a dual timeline story that directly addresses (and accepts) reincarnation: a contemporary couple in a troubled marriage discover that they were in a doomed love affair (she was a serving wench, he was a chaplain) in their previous lives. The wife makes the decision to journey back 400 years to the 1500s to resolve the source of their problems and save their marriage. Recommended.
I looooved Bitterburn!
ACTING UP, the first book in Adele Buck’s very delightful theatre romance series, is on sale at the moment for $1.99. Really enjoyed this one. The third one is on my TBR list for new releases in August.
The first book in one of my favorite series is on sale for $1.99 today.
Murder in Thrall by Anne Cleeland
This is a divisive read as the male lead is something of an anti-hero.
I found Bitterburn entertaining, but instances of modern language and tone from the heroine took me out of the story. Plus, for all the build up the resolution was a little anti-climatic for me. YMMV
@Kareni I read Murder in Thrall without reading any reviews and both loved the writing and felt creepy about the hero. After the second book I decided the anti-hero was not my thing, but the stories are very atmospheric and well written and I can see their appeal.
I don’t know if I would describe myself as “matriarchal,” but I am without doubt a Bitch of a Certain Age. I really love SUNSHINE. I can understand why it wouldn’t be every bitch’s cup of tea, of course (Sunshine never drinks coffee). It’s intensely first-person which I understand some younger bitches don’t care for. It’s so intensely first person that the narrator, Sunshine, chats constantly about all kinds of things — why human/vampire porn is illegal, the kinds of baking she does at her family’s coffee shop, the kinds of characters who come in and out of the shop, why no one wants to be a werechicken, how people lose intelligence when they become thralls to succubi and incubi (although they show up for work every morning looking like the just had the best sex of their lives). If you can’t stand this sort of thing, this is not the book for you. Oh, and a major evil is vanquished by the end of the novel, but in other ways the ending is inconclusive.
And I certainly like Mel, Sunshine’s motorcycle repairing, short-order cook boyfriend. But, oh, Constantine — probably my favorite book boyfriend of all time. Courtly and cryptic and very dead.
McKinley dedicated the book to her husband, “My Mel and my Con.”
I’d like to second both the praise and the reservations for SUNSHINE. I’ve reread it several times, because Sunshine is such a charming heroine who totally makes me want to bake things when stressed. I found both the approach to vampires and the narrative structure unusal and convincing: Vampires are primarily considered monsters, and Sunshines coping with trauma felt very realistic. Re: first person: Not typically my favorite, this time it worked for me – ymmv.
Yeah, I love Sunshine. I don’t consider it a romance at all, and it’s very, very different from McKinley’s other books. I can’t decide if that makes it a good or bad place to start reading her? Laura pointed out many of the features that make it so charming: it’s urban fantasy that feels lived-in, and so you can really immerse yourself in the world and its details. Rae is also a really interesting character, in that she’s totally sympathetic to read, but we would probably not be friends in real life. That’s some good character work.
@ Laura George I enjoyed Sunshine too, but I’m mostly commenting to say how much I enjoyed your phrase “I am without doubt a Bitch of a Certain Age” I’m 37, so I probably don’t qualify yet, but I think I might need a coffee mug that says that one day!
Every so often, I check if McKinley has written a sequel to Sunshine. And sadly she has not.
Bitterburn lost me about 50 pages in. I was so looking forward to the release and I was bored out of my mind when I finally sat down to read it.
@KatiM: I agree! I would SO love a sequel to SUNSHINE. It’s not hard to find someone asking “What happened to Robin McKinley” somewhere on the internet quite regularly. People who seem to know a lot more than I do say things like: she was devastated by her husband’s death (at the end of 2015). McKinley is 10 years older than I am (so almost 70) and — and there’s not much hint that she’s writing at all.
I really love what she wrote about her husband (who was much older) on her blog:
Peter and I had had an unexpectedly life-altering weekend in Maine about a fortnight before; we knew each other slightly through the book world, I’d visited him at home once when Mary Rose was still alive, he was merely returning the favour. But a week after we parted, feeling dazed and saying to each other, ‘it would never work, we are separated by age, culture, background, about 3000 miles and a national boundary,’ my phone rang at 7 am and I knew who it was and what he was going to say: ‘if we don’t give it a try we’ll regret it the rest of our lives.’
@Laura Ge I had no idea her husband had passed. I just figured that she was getting up there in age and had just stopped writing. Sadly as I get older so do my favorite authors.
“ They took her clothes and sneakers. They dressed her in a long red gown.“ underwired nightdresses? (Terry Pratchett joke.)
I haven’t read Sunshine but have read and liked other McKinley books.
@DiscoDollyDeb-I second your recommendation of Green Darkness! I can’t even say how many times I read this book when I was young. I always got it from the library, so thanks for the heads up on the sale!
Annabeth Albert’s Hot Shot series boxset is on sale for $1.99. It’s the first 3 books in her Oregon set firefighters mm romance series. It’s not my favorite Annabeth Albert series (I prefer her geek or hipster heroes) but it’s pretty solid.
I don’t recommend her mm if you’re looking for a realistic or ownvoices portrayal of what it’s like to be queer in the US, but she’s great if you like tropey, emotionally satisfying but not particularly high conflict romance.
I LOVED Sunshine! It is one of my all time favorite vampire stories. And it has one of my favorite scenes…..being chained to the wall of a ballroom in a run down mansion in a long red gown….with a weak and hungry vampire chained almost within reach. And through magic Sunshine manages to unlock her chains, and she helps Con escape, and they form a bond and a friendship that is just so sweet and wistful. I was dying for a sequel….I wanted Sunshine to be with Con…..he was the perfect book boyfriend. (Sigh!)
I love Sunshine. I first read it when I was maybe 13 or 14 (so 12 years ago) and reread it almost every summer since. That said I don’t know that I would call it young adult? And it’s not a romance. Bht it is just one of my favorite books.
I liked ‘Bitterburn’ a lot, but I think my favorite recent Beauty and the Beast retelling was ‘Deven and the Dragon’ by Eliot Grayson.
+1 here on Anya Seton. I read ‘Katherine’ and ‘The Winthrop Woman’ multiple times after stumbling over them around age 14, several of the other titles as well. ‘Green Darkness’ made a huge impression at the time.
@Lucy, thanks for the tip on Acting Up!
Another lover of Sunshine, I have reread it multiple times and would LOVE a sequel. The combination of characters and setting is great. My favorite of Robin McKinley’s books.
I think the romance in Sunshine is just very very subtle, which I appreciate, because Con is described as so otherworldly that a love story with a human just doesn’t seem likely. But it’s implied (more than implied) that they have a physical attraction. It’s so good and I already reread it this year.