It’s our second Whatcha Reading of the month, which means that April is nearly over! Let’s talk about some things we’ve been reading (or not!).
Elyse: I scored an advanced copy of It Girl by Ruth Ware ( A | BN | K | AB ) so I started it the moment it hit my Kindle.
Sarah: I am exhausted after Passover (chag sameach, folks, enjoy breaking Passover with all the carbs you can eat!) so I am reading magazines through my library. I’m happily reading back issues of Cross Stitcher, Real Simple, and some overseas magazines, and I’m slowly, slowly savoring my last ever issue of Bitch magazine.
Lara: I’ve been in a bit of a depressive slump and struggling to sleep. So I’ve had many hours to read but no energy to actually invest in a story. Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History by Tori Telfer to the rescue! The short stories of women killers in history held my attention, but I only needed to focus for short stretches. Perfect.
Shana: I just finished Light from Uncommon Stars. It was beautiful and inventive, but darker than I expected…I found the internalized transphobia really hard, and the moments of violence too. But it gets to a lovely place in the end. So now I’m just about to start Duke, Actually by Jenny Holiday. I didn’t get around to reading it over Christmas but it’s never too late for a winter holiday romance. (edited)
Carrie: I just started The Hacienda by Isabel Canas, ( A | BN | K | AB ) and it’s not a slow burn story. Usually in a haunted house story thing build up but the hacienda in question is not messing around!
What are you reading? Tell us in the comments!
@Karin I totally share some of that about nurse romances. Sometimes the medicine is so off! Sometimes I laugh, sometimes I throw books. Often I avoid medical romance altogether. I like these because they fit my mother’s memories of nursing in the early 50s and my memories of my father being a GP in the 50s and 60s.
It also lets me see how much things have changed. Nursing students were not allowed to marry, for instance, and dates had to be chaperoned. My father’s internship year was the first year that interns at the very large Canadian hospital where he interned was the first year interns were allowed to be married. My mother and I moved back in with her parents until he finished. She had to get his permission to start a nursing job in the small town where they lived.
omg: it’s wayr again!! And I haven’t even finished reading the first wayr of the month. oh well.
haven’t read a lot bu: Gentleman Jim by Mimi Matthews. I really enjoyed the melodrama and the tortured, star-crossed lovers and oh the hero having SO MUCH FEELINGS for the heroine.
also, speed-read aka skipped some parts to finish The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics. It was goooood. but like a lot of romances recently, I was more interested in everything else other than the actual romance. [insert a shrug]
a romance I am actually dipping in and out of and enjoying is Red Blossom in Snow.I like Li Chen. Ha, I actually remember the hero’s name. I like how who the character is, is so obviously shaped by the culture he is a part of, and how I still find him appealing. Which is not to say that a character from another culture would not be appealing. Just that it’s interesting how he is so much a . . . an obedient child, obviously of an Asian heritage (I am of Indian heritage, so I get the whole obedient, giving weight to your elders thing) and how . . . all of that forms a part of his appeal. I guess I need to expand my reading?
I am actually finding myself less and less keen to read on phone. I want to go back to physical books. In fact, I actually put hold on the physical copy of Nafisa Azad’s latest. And I am finally feeling like delving into the bounty I received from STBT for one of the lucky draws a while back.
I am also slowly but steadily reading and absolutely LOVING Unwinding Anxiety by Judson Brewer. I have so many, many thoughts about this absolute wonder of a book. It is truly changing my life in subtle but very felt and lived ways. Till I started reading this, I didn’t realize I actually have a general low level anxiety thing going on with me . . . a few pages in, where he talks about his wife, and anxiety being “a low-grade feeling that has no object in itself. It attaches to any particular situation or thought that it can. It’s as though my mind is looking for something to be anxious about. It’s a feeling that I would previously have labeled as nervousness about certain things. It was hard to disconnect from my life experiences, because I thought it was just attached to legitimate life changes and circumstances.” that I went BAM! THAT IS ME! You guys gotta get your hands on this. I have a feeling it will appeal to and make sense to a lot of STBT readership.
Anyhoo! Hope everyone is enjoying their lives as best as they can! off to read all the comments and puff up my TBR pile even more!
@Deborah: I just finished THE NO-SHOW (like, a few minutes ago) and I’m still letting my feelings about it marinate, but I have to ask what the spoiler is on the cover. I keep staring at that cover (which, for the record, I think is the most misleading cover since the illustrated cover on Lexi Blake’s bdsm-heavy TAGGART FAMILY VALUES) thinking it’ll come to me and it just won’t. Could you share what it is in a Spoiler Box please? Thanks!
If this spoiler box fails, I beg the Bitches in charge to fix it as soon as possible.
@DDD – apologies for being coy, I just honestly find it clever.
The…what is the proper publishing term for a bit of teaser text on a front cover? “Timing is everything…”
The descriptive copy and early chapters would lead us to believe that Joseph stood up the three women on the same calendar date, but that isn’t the case. “Timing” saves him from being a three-timing cad and is the solution both to the puzzle of how such a man can be redeemed as a romantic(ish) lead + to the shell game of who-gets-the-“hero.” (FWIW, I preferred Miranda’s story.)
I’ll look forward to your thoughts on the book in a future WAYR. I’m clearly disgruntled because the book simply wasn’t lighthearted enough for me to enjoy the implied riddle. O’Leary is apparently not for me, and the irony of this situation is *I* contribute to the problem (the misleading marketing) by only picking up the two books of hers that play this bait-and-switch. The Flatmate, which is widely loved for its sensitivity, didn’t tempt me. Nor did The Switch (outwardly not romantic enough for me).
Crabapples. In case coming straight after DicoDollyDeb’s question doesn’t make it clear, that spoiler above pertains to Beth O’Leary’s THE NO-SHOW.
Please avoid the spoiler if you haven’t read the book.
Of Octopuses and Men by Misha Bell-laugh out loud funny, and Beaky the Octopus? Love him. Years ago I saw a documentary about an octopus, and I’ll never forget when he was returned to the wild, and how he clung to the man who had helped him. It still makes me cry to think of it.
The Game Changers series by Rachel Reid-I read this again in anticipation of The Long Game. I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited for a book to release, except the Harry Potter books.
New to me author Nora Phoenix-Jilted:Jaren and Hired: Hadley-still reading the second book, but I really like these. Low drama, the m/m characters actually talk to each other. They are cozy in their way, but also hot. It’s a series about 4 foster brothers who bonded as children, and are a found family.
The Heir Apparent’s Rejected Mate-torn about this one. I did read it through, but the age of the characters was a problem for me. The other problem? This is the second in the series, and I was invested in the characters from the first book. Why not follow up with the secondary characters from the first book? Instead switching to teenagers in a different setting? Seems like a strange choice, and honestly-not what I was expecting. Cate C Wells is a really good writer, and her world building is so good. Just not the book I was hoping to read.
Parties by CM Nacosta-this is a new release but I feel like I’ve read it before. Maybe because I’ve read excerpts on her website? Not crazy about this one, and it ended on a cliffhanger which I hate. It also felt very repetitive with the themes. Same thing over and over…
I will read any other books she writes, but this one felt pieced together.
@Deborah: Thank you! “Hiding in plain sight,” as it were.
We were on vacation last week and I *expected* to get a ton of reading done, but unfortunately a 2 hour time difference combined with lots of very active days in the hot sun had me falling asleep way earlier than normal and my reading suffered as a result. Still a fantastic time though! If you have the chance to visit Costa Rica I say go for it–absolutely beautiful place. I also had two DNF’s which did not help. A non-romance DNF was THE MAID by Nita Prose. This book was baffling to me–reviews had me thinking it was going to be a warm, funny mystery set in a hotel. I was expecting a fun caper. Instead it was neither warm nor funny and the narrator’s backstory and treatment by the other characters just made me so sad that I couldn’t make myself continue. It was well-written but life is short, and finishing that book was not going to add anything to mine. Also DNF’ed FALLING FOR MY ENEMY by Claire Kingsley. Very similar setup to THE LOVE HYPOTHESIS so I was hopeful, but realized at about 30% that I didn’t care about either of the main characters and had no interest in finding out what happened to them. After hearing so much about Lorraine Heath for years, I picked up my first by her at the library right before we left, FALLING INTO BED WITH A DUKE. I can see why people love her because the storytelling was wonderful. Will definitely be reading more of her backlist. Currently I’m about halfway through ELECTRIC IDOL by Katee Robert and having a surprisingly good time with it. I say surprising only because the first book in this series did not work for me, despite containing a hefty amount of my catnip as a Hades & Persephone retelling. In ELECTRIC IDOL, Robert seems to have more clearly defined her worldbuilding and the characters feel much more three-dimensional, plus there are little doses of humor throughout that I’m enjoying.
A bit of a slow reading period.
The Home I Find with You by Skye Kilean B/B+
Immersive, compelling queer/bi/poly mm romance. Unexpectedly hopeful despite the post-apocalyptic setting, 12 years after the end of the 2nd American Civil War and the collapse of life as it used to be. I loved the messy protagonists and their emotional journeys. I was completely swept away while I was reading it but when I put down the book I noticed a few holes in the plot and world building.
The Life Revamp (The Love Study #3) by Kris Ripper, mm romance, 4 stars
I enjoyed this bi, poly romance although I was annoyed by the dark moment.
Better Late Than Never? AKA I was sick all weekend
I read The Wedding Crasher and found it to be a mess, imo.
Other books I disliked this month:
The Soulmate Equation
The Love Hypothesis.
But, alas, I am not a total book curmudgeon.
I loved:
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel
A Master of Djinn by P Djèlí Clark: Full of twists and turns and great writing
You Were Made To Be Mine by Julie Anne Long (TW for this particular book but a great plot and a swoon worthy hero (and I am like 70% gay.)
Currently Reading: Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz
Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop
Chef’s Kiss by TJ Alexander
Hopefully May is a better reading month than April.
I forgot to mention the dagger and coin series by Daniel Abrahams. I read the first two maybe a year or two years ago, skipped the third and then read The Widow’s House and The Spider’s War in three straight days. It is an epic fantasy but what we witness isn’t gore but characters internal movement and progress and thinking and ideas that move the story and the plot along. I don’t know if Daniel Abrahams like Laurie J Marks is an underrated fantasy author. He shouldn’t be. His female characters are amazing. In fact two of the main movers of the story, the she-roes are two very unlike each other females. It is so satisfying to see the way their characters grow through the arc of the story. And to see them being the linchpin of the plot in a way that uses their guile and their wiles is sooooooo gooood. I really enjoyed the way both Cithrin Balacour and Clara Kalliam command this story. The villain of the piece is amazing…. We literally see him growing into a villain… and how his insecurities and pettiness slowly evolve into full blown massacres. The other main character, Marcus Wester is decent and upright and comforting to read about. Oh, there are just so many things to love about this series, not the least of which is the way… the coin of the title plays a part in resolving some of the conflict. An epic fantasy which explores a resolution through money and finance? The whole series is worth reading just for that. For all you fantasy fans, you need to try this out.