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Sweet on You
Sweet on You by Carla de Guzman is $1.99! This is the first book in The Laneways series and de Guzman’s books I feel skew more new adult. A few of her titles have also been reviewed favorably on the site and this one in particular was mentioned in a Hide Your Wallet.
All’s fair in love and prank wars
For barista and café owner Sari Tomas, Christmas means parols, family and no-holds-barred karaoke contests. This year, though, a new neighbor is throwing a wrench in all her best-laid plans. The baker next door—“some fancy boy from Manila”—might have cute buns, but when he tries to poach her customers with cheap coffee and cheaper tactics, the competition is officially on.
And Baker Boy better be ready, because Sari never loses.
Foodie extraordinaire Gabriel Capras wants to prove to his dad that his career choice doesn’t make him any less a man. The Laneways might not be Manila, but the close-knit community is the perfect spot to grow his bakery into a thriving business. He wasn’t expecting a gorgeous adversary in the barista next door, but flirting with her makes his heart race, and it’s not just the caffeine.
It’s winner takes all this Christmas. And more than one competitor might just lose their heart for the holidays.
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The Unlikeable Demon Hunter
PODCAST RECOMMENDED: The Unlikeable Demon Hunter by Deborah Wilde is FREE! Thien-Kim Lam recommended this book on a previous podcast episode and said it was really fun. If you’re a fan of Buffy, you might want to check this one out.
Bridesmaids meets Buffy with a dash of the seven deadly sins.
The age-old story of what happens when a foul-mouthed, romance impaired heroine with no edit button and a predilection for hot sex is faced with her worst nightmare–a purpose.
Ari Katz is intelligent, driven, and will make an excellent demon hunter once initiated into the Brotherhood of David. However, this book is about his twin Nava: a smart-ass, self-cultivated hot mess, who is thrilled her brother is stuck with all the chosen one crap.
When Nava half-drunkenly interrupts Ari’s induction ceremony, she expects to be chastised. What she doesn’t expect is to take her brother’s place among the–until now–all-male demon hunters. Even worse? Her infuriating leader is former rock star Rohan Mitra.
Too bad Rohan’s exactly what Nava’s always wanted: the perfect bad boy fling with no strings attached, because he may also be the one to bring down her carefully erected emotional shields. That’s as dangerous as all the evil fiends vying for the bragging rights of killing the only female ever chosen for Demon Club.
Odds of survival: eh.
Odds of having a very good time with Rohan before she bites it: much better.
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The Matzah Ball
The Matzah Ball by Jean Meltzer is $1.99! This is a Kindle Daily Deal, as well. I know there was a lot of buzz for this one because it was a Hanukkah romance. However, reviews seem pretty middling and it also still appears to be rather rooted or influenced by Christmas. I have no read it though.
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Three Dark Crowns
RECOMMENDED: Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake is $1.99! Elyse reviewed this one, giving it an A:
There are a couple of romances in the novel–one a love triangle but not an obnoxious one, and one that made my jaw literally drop. There’s sex too, but it happens off stage. The romances are secondary and serve to drive the plot, and aren’t the main focus of it.
Every generation on the island of Fennbirn, a set of triplets is born: three queens, all equal heirs to the crown and each possessor of a coveted magic. Mirabella is a fierce elemental, able to spark hungry flames or vicious storms at the snap of her fingers. Katharine is a poisoner, one who can ingest the deadliest poisons without so much as a stomachache. Arsinoe, a naturalist, is said to have the ability to bloom the reddest rose and control the fiercest of lions.
But becoming the Queen Crowned isn’t solely a matter of royal birth. Each sister has to fight for it. And it’s not just a game of win or lose…it’s life or death. The night the sisters turn sixteen, the battle begins. The last queen standing gets the crown.
If only it was that simple. Katharine is unable to tolerate the weakest poison, and Arsinoe, no matter how hard she tries, can’t make even a weed grow. The two queens have been shamefully faking their powers, taking care to keep each other, the island, and their powerful sister Mirabella none the wiser. But with alliances being formed, betrayals taking shape, and ruthless revenge haunting the queens’ every move, one thing is certain: the last queen standing might not be the strongest…but she may be the darkest.
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I loooooved Sweet on You – one of my favorite-ever holiday romances!
As a Jew, I was excited to see a Hanukkah romance, but it’s actually a tedious mess filled with Jewish cliches and way too much Christmas for a Hanukkah romance. I DNFed The Matzah Ball around 30 pages in, not wanting to spend more time on the off chance that it would improve.
Sarah/Amanda – The numbers showing the position of comments in the list are gone. It makes it hard to tell where you left off reading. I use the mobile site on an iPhone, if it matters.
@MaryK: Sorry about that! We’re upgrading some of the foundational tech that runs the site and that particular plugin was a problem. I’m going to try to bring it back once the structural work is done.
I enjoyed the Jewish and disability rep in THE MATZAH BALL, but the romance was meh. Read about the first half and skimmed the second half.
Every time I read the title of *that* book I’d get the crazy-ex girlfriend song stuck in my head on repeat.
And I banged your hedge-fund manager fiancé
Back in college over winter holidays
Bathroom stall at the Matzo Ball and honestly, I gotta say
Really not hot at all
Small dick, rotten lay
EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.
I had to read as fast as I could just to exorcize the lyrics from my brain.
I was excited to see The Matzo Ball on this list, and promptly bought it. If you’re thinking about buying it, please don’t. I’m serious. There are so many issues with this book……
Jean Meltzer is a talented writer; she’s evocative and quickly makes you fall in like with her characters. That being said, I had a lot of issues with this novel. They range from logistics to the world she describes.
Logistical issues:
* The main character lives in a doorman building. One of the characters manages to ignore the doorman, and not only gets into the building, they arrive in her apartment. One of the reasons why people live in doorman buildings is that they check people in, announce them, and then let them up to the apartment. IRL, this would never have happened.
*In another scene, the main character uses a buzzer to let someone into her building. Again, if she’s living in a doorman building, this wouldn’t have happened.
*Characters take a subway from the Upper East Side to the Upper West Side and miraculously end up right by Central Park. As someone who lives in the Upper East Side, I would LOVE IT if there was a crosstown subway. There is not.
* A character takes a quick jog from their apartment in the Upper West Side to the Four Seasons Hotel. Nope, not happening. Again, geographically impossible. The Four Seasons (it’s closed) is on the UES, this is not a quick jog, this is a long trek.
Whilst I realize this seems like it’s nit picking, if you’re at all familiar with NYC, coming across stuff like this is jarring, and ends up detracting from the story. Because you find yourself losing enjoyment in the tale, and start mentally re-routing the characters paths or wonder what type of building they live in. You don’t want to have to think about logistics in a book, you want to fall into it and live it with the characters.
The plot’s backstory is slightly annoying to me. I’m going to explain myself, so please hold on…. I’m writing as a Jewish person. As a great-grandchild of a Manhattan Cantor, and as someone who wanted to be a rabbi when I was eight, I found it really disconcerting that the author didn’t bother to explain that she was describing the lifestyle and religious inclinations of a modern Orthodoc Jew.
People who pick up this book not knowing anything about Judaism, will automatically think that this is the life of every Jew. Judaism has many branches; the three main branches are orthodox, conservative and reform. Within each branch are minor branches. For example, Orthodox could be uUtra Orthodox or Modern Orthodox. Reform could be Reform or Reform Reconstrionist, etc., etc., As someone who is frequently the only Jewish person in the room, I have, by default, had to explain the myriad ways etc., of the religion.
Somewhere in the novel, it would have been nice for the author to simply explain the various differences, so that a non-Jew wouldn’t automatically think that, to paraphrase The Mandalorian, “this is the way.”
Another annoying trope is that the main character’s bestie is a gay man. A Jewish man, but a gay man nonetheless.
How quickly the two main characters resolved the issues and fell in love felt really rushed. Almost as if the book’s deadline was approaching.
What also didn’t make sense is that if one of the characters is a novelist whose works are best sellers to the point that TV movies were made from said novels, they wouldn’t be in a perilous financial situation.
With all these inconsistancies, it’s really hard to chuck reality out the window and enjoy the novel. And I really, really, really wanted to do so.