Hey all! It’s our last Whatcha Reading for May!
We want to know what you’ve been reading, and if you haven’t been able to focus on reading this month, that’s also okay! If there’s something else you’ve been doing or enjoying, you’re welcome to drop that in the comments too.
Elyse: I’m reading The Last to Vanish by Megan Miranda ( A | BN | K | AB )
Shana: I just finished Ice Planet Barbarians by Ruby Dixon ( A | BN ) and I’m about to start Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee
Sarah: I’m reading A Marvellous Light, and it’s delightful and perfect for staying-inside-because-it’s-so-hot-out.
Tara: Okay, okay, so still not back in the reading groove, but how about a video game with a strong narrative element? Because I gobbled the game Citizen Sleeper two days. It’s kind of like Blade Runner meets Mass Effect, with scarcity driving gameplay, and “fuck capitalism” as the overall message.
Sarah: Oh my gosh that sounds incredible.
Tara: It really is! Neil loved it so much he got me and one of our best friends to play it and all three of us agree that it’s excellent.
Carrie: I am near the end of The Book of Living Secrets by Madeline Roux, in which two teenage girls enter the world of their favorite book, a historical romance, and instead fin themselves in a Lovecraftian horror novel. The concept is better than the writing but it has held my attention.
Sneezy: The webtoon Our Secret Alliance is just starting and I’m already invested in the characters. Fake dating, pining, young angst.
It’s cute, the conflicts feel more chill (though I completely empathize with how big they must feel to the characters), and is a VERY GOOD THING to distract by brain with because I’m also following I Raised a Black Dragon on Manta and the villain is so far proving to be unscrupulous, brutal, and worst of all, very competent. He’s so far one step ahead of the main characters and making excellent use of his magical, social, and political powers much more dynamically AND he has information that the main characters don’t. The art in that webtoon is so fucking cute, why must it stress me out like this???
Lara: I have been reading the Murderbot books by Martha Wells and to say I’m obsessed is an understatement. So much heart! So much adventure! Literally cannot stop reading them.
What have you been reading or enjoying? Tell us below!
I’m reading Marcus by Sawyer Bennett and have several other hockey romances. Just trying to avoid watching or reading news. It’s too much.
@Kit – I feel the same!
It’s a lovely late spring night here and I have the windows open which means that there is June bug trying to bash its way through the window screen into my office. Sometimes nature is a bit freaky. . ..
I’ve read quite a few books since the last WAYR, but many of those books were part of a stress reading binge – and have blurred together in my mind. Here are ones I do remember:
Shadow and Bone (Leigh Bardugo): I haven’t yet watched the TV series, but I thought I should read at least one book, given all the buzz. And since I’m somebody who likes to read series in order, I went with the first book. I didn’t know much at all about this series and so hadn’t realized how apropos this book would be in some ways with its reconfiguring of Russian folklore and Russian historical concerns. I found the world-building far more interesting than the actual plot – which felt a bit bog-standard YA fantasy, complete with a feisty but insecure heroine and a romantic triangle. I’ve put in a request for the second from my library – should show up in about 4 months and that’s just fine.
The League of Gentlewomen Witches (India Holton): This is the second book in Holton’s series set in an alternate universe where Victorian ladies societies of magic workers/kleptomaniacs quarrel genteelly and not-so-genteelly among themselves and with anyone else who gets in their way. The first book in this series, The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels, is about a group of gentlewomen pirates, who loudly and proudly use magic to fly their houses around Britain while they drink tea and steal whatever treasures they can find. This book is about a second ladies society, who pride themselves on their subtle deployment of magic (and thievery), and who disdain the vulgar displays of Wisteria Society’s flying houses. The central plots in both books are about young ladies from each society, who are struggling to break away from the restrictions imposed upon them and to find themselves and true love. Like Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next books (which are set in alternate modern Britain where the boundaries between literature and reality are a bit fluid), Holton’s books are chock-a-block with literary allusions and have convoluted stories that play with and send up various literary genre tropes and conventions – lots of meta going on in these books and not so much characterization or even sensible plots. I enjoyed Fforde’s Thursday Next series at first, but after about 4th or 5th book I lost interest because all the literary tricks began to feel empty – lots of being clever for cleverness’ sake and nothing substantial being said. I’m wondering if that’s direction that Holton is heading – but I will try at least the third book.
The Boyfriend Project (Farrah Rochon): This is the first book in a 3-book series about 3 African-American women who live in Austin and become friends after they find out that this dude had been dating and lying to all 3 of them. The confrontation, where the 3 women dump the scumbag, occurs in a restaurant. It is filmed, uploaded to various social media platform, and goes viral. The 3 new friends decide to meet on a regular basis and spend the next 6 months on specific personal goals rather than dating. After this lengthy set up for the whole series, the actual story begins. Samiah Brooks, the heroine, is a software engineer, working for an innovative tech company. She loves her job, but knows that even in this progressive company, she must still be perfect, because there is always someone out who will see her smallest faults as proof that black women just can’t hack it in the STEM fields. I really liked Samiah, she works hard not just on her projects, but also on pushing the company to be more progressive, to do more in the community (she’s especially passionate about helping other black women and girls gain opportunities to move into STEM fields). Daniel the hero shows up as a new hire to the company, but he is, in reality, an undercover federal agent, working on a money laundering case. The feds have received a tip that someone inside the tech company is involved, and Daniel is there to figure out who. Samiah (who is never a suspect) and Daniel begin to fall for each other, but Samiah has that non-dating pact with her friends and Daniel of course can’t tell Samiah what he is really doing at her company. The first obstacle – the no dating pact — is no obstacle at all – neither of the other women are bothered at all about Samiah breaking the pact. The second obstacle is more serious as Daniel is forced to continually mislead Samiah about his true reasons for being in Austin. That issue is resolved by the end, although not perhaps as gracefully as I would have liked. So this book has a lovely female friendship group, a nice H & h, lots of competency porn — what’s not so great? Well, the title makes no sense at all – there is no “boyfriend project”; in fact the pact between the 3 women is a “no boyfriend project.” But the bigger issue is with the romance itself – it just felt underdeveloped and muted – you could take the romance out of this story and most of the story would hold up just fine and that’s not good for a romance novel. Still I really liked this book and am planning to pick up the next.
While We Were Dating (Jasmine Guillory): Guillory is an author that I want to like more than I do. I really enjoy aspects of the world she has created and many of the characters who inhabit that world, but the storylines do not always work for me. This one started out strongly, both Anna and Ben were likeable characters. She’s an up and coming Hollywood actor and he’s a former backup dancer turned ad agency executive. They meet working on a major ad campaign and begin a light flirtation that turns into a fake dating relationship that turns serious. The problems for me began with the fake dating plot twist – they agree to fake date as a way of raising Anna’s “profile” so that she will be seen as “bankable” star that pulls in filmgoers and therefore will be picked for role that she really wants. Maybe a six-week relationship with a good-looking but not famous dude will raise an actor’s profile, but the book didn’t really provide any convincing evidence of this. But an even bigger problem for me was the ending that Guillory wanted (a requisite breakup and grand reconciliation), required that Anna to make choices that felt out of character from the way she had been portrayed at the beginning of the novel. For me this book went from good to meh by the end.
Thanks, as always for all the recs. Expensive…
May has been a really good month for reading – I have found some real gold:
Duchess by Night by Eloisa James is an absolute treat. Cross-dressing wallflower captures the heart of a disreputable Duke. It has real heart, I was really rooting for the heroine to allow herself to be who she wants to be. Highly recommended.
His at Night by Sherry Thomas. Forced marriage of convenience for two people adept at hiding who they really are: he’s a secret agent masquerading as a buffoon and she is deceiving a wicked uncle with escape in mind. Of course they are perfect for each other. Rich character development for both.
One Night is Never Enough by Anne Mallory. First book by this author for me and it’s just so engaging: heroine’s father loses her in a wager to an underworld reprobate who is secretly in love with her. It’s a slow seduction and I was fully on board.
Went old school and read my first Samantha James: A Perfect Groom, bought mainly for the divine stepback! Delightful.
On my Kindle, I have read the first four of Kathleen Ayers’ The Beautiful Barringtons series. Books five and six are pre-ordered. The characters and stories are very likeable and she knows how to bring the heat. Easy but compelling reading.
Leaving the best ‘til last, probably my favourite of recent reads is A Minor Inconvenience by Sarah Granger. M/M historical. And it’s a dream. It’s the only book I can find by this author which vexes me as this was so, so good and I WANT MORE…
And I have also, finally, read (and enjoyed) all 12 of Elizabeth Hoyt’s Maiden Lane series. Great characters and mostly believable stories but really, it’s such a ride that I just went with it.
@Anne – I loved A Minor Incovenience too! You might like to try One Glimpse and One Indulgence by Lydia Gastrell in that case.
FYI – I think A Minor Inconvenience by Sarah Granger has been revised since the majority of the goodreads reviews were written. The version I’m reading is from 2017 and a lot of the complaints seem to no longer apply.
I just finished Star Mother and was really pleasantly surprised by it. I don’t know that I’ve ever come across a romance, especially fantasy romance, that takes on the challenges of maternal loss of a living child. The main character has a baby but can’t keep her because [fantasy reasons], and it was handled so well.