It’s that time of the month! No, not that time. Whatcha Reading time!
Sarah: I’m currently reading Thank you For Listening by Julia Whelan ( A | BN | K | AB ) – and I’m doing an interview with her for the podcast, too!
Shana: I’m reading The Servant and the Gentleman by Annabelle Greene. ( A | BN | K | AB ) It’s a good reminder of why I like to give new-to-me authors a second chance. Because I hated the first book in the series and I love this one.
Claudia: I’m reading The Dawn of Everything, ( A | BN | K | AB ) and it’s sort of an anti “Big History” book that chips away the prevalent, too-linear narrative of how we got to live in our complex societies (early humans became farmers and herders blah blah). It’s very interesting.
Sneezy: I’m going through The Wave in the Mind by Ursula Le Guin. ( A | BN | K | AB ) It’s a collection of her talks and essays. The short pieces and her voice is very kind to my fried brain
A lot of yummy that you don’t need to remember linearly to enjoy more of. Plus if you forget the pieces you read earlier like me, you can enjoy them all over again for the first time
Sarah: Y’all. The Monsters We Defy by Leslye Penelope is So Good so far. I’m about 25% in and it will be hard to stop reading when I have to Do Things.
Creepy slow menace, folk magic, and historical fiction details aplenty. If this were optioned and made into a miniseries it would be sublime.
Tara: My 10-year-old got me hooked on the Witch Hat Atelier manga series. I’m currently making grabby hands at my library, while I wait impatiently for book 9.
Sarah: I LOVE IT.
Tara: She was not impressed when I told her that there’s probably Qifrey/Olly fanfic and then proved myself right when she said it was impossible.
Sarah: No fanfic pairing is ever impossible. The world contains multitudes.
It’s kind of comforting the more I think about it, you know? No matter how out there the pairing is, someone else has shipped it, too.
Elyse: I just got my copies of Are You Sara by SC Lalli ( A | BN | K | AB ) and The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. ( A | BN | K | AB ) Not sure which I will start first
Sarah: “…I don’t wanna work. I just wanna read all my books all day.”
Lara: I’m in the midst of Mimi Matthews’ The Belle of Belgrave Square. So far, I’m charmed! So much better for me than the first book in the series.
So, whatcha reading? Tell us below!
Finished We Are Legion, We Are Bob for book club – it was…a book! Not really bad, just not my cup of tea. It’s something I would refrain from using the yikes emoji on because it seemed pretty goodhearted. In a sentence, it’s an absolute dad-book for H2G2 fans.
Currently reading Alyssa Cole’s Let It Shine, just about a quarter in. I wish this was a movie!! Wouldn’t this be a great movie?? The setting is so important and it’d be so cool to have a Romance overlaid over the seriousness of the Freedom Rider story because they were all still people too and a lot of the meta conversation in modern romance is talking about how people deserve happiness, the costumes would be great and I just really like Sofie and Ivan. They’re so big and so normal at the same time, choosing to participate in the movement, Sofie standing up for herself against her dad, an interracial romance – these are all such big things but also so normal, people make these choices every day. I admire how deliberate and smart the story is.
Excited to start The Merry Spinster by Daniel Lavery. His The Toast writing is so hilarious.
These are all backlist because I’m trying to read down my TBR pile xD Once I’m allowed to get/checkout new books again I’ll try The Wisteria Society for Lady Scoundrels by India Holton. I just love that it’s basically a grab bag of as many and much catnip as possible, it seems very exuberant & tongue in cheek which seems fun 🙂
Interesting re the The Servant and the Gentleman I also really didn’t like the first one. I don’t think I’ve even finished it. Perhaps if I see this one on sale I’ll give the author another go.
Kendare Blake – All These Bodies
Picked this up on a sale because I’ve read & enjoyed Blake before and it was marketed as inspired by the Clutter family murders (In Cold Blood) with vampires. But. This YA was so bizarrely boring. The vampire element remained vague – is it in their head, is it real?- a worse mark, I think, is that the narrator was so bland. A White all-American teenage boy who wants to be a reporter and…well, that’s about all there is to him. I think tightened up and with a different POV this might have made a good, tense novella but it really didn’t hit the mark for me as a novel.
Freya Marske – A Marvellous Light
This one took me a while to get into, but when I was in I was hooked. Quite looking forward to the sequel. And I have to say, part of the reason it took so long for me was that I saw magic Edwardian house party with queer people and thought ‘oh, I’ve read this before’….and how cool is it that we live in a world where queer magic house parties are starting to become a trope?
Cat Sebastian – The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes
Marian Hayes just killed her husband and in the aftermath she and her blackmailer mutually kidnap one another. I love, love, loved this one. Sebastian’s writing can be very fanfic-y, in ways that I like a lot. This one just screamed comfort fic, despite the whole, you know, murder thing. I did have some trouble with Marian’s characterization, but a lot of that is ways I’ve been conditioned to read female characters, and I had to push myself on that a bit. Hopefully not to get too spoilery: I loved the way the sex scenes were choreographed and that a certain act did not have to be considered the be all end all of “proper” sex between male and female bodies.
Charles M. Blow – Fire Shut Up in My Bones
Third and final read for queer book club. This is a memoir from a Black bisexual journalist about his childhood, including sexual abuse. It was definitely not my thing, not a pleasant read. I don’t need everything in life to be sunshine and roses, but I struggled a lot with the subject matter. On top of which memoirs aren’t really a genre I seek out. I also, not to get too deep into it, had a lot of trouble with what he considered the “cause” of his queerness and his reckoning with that…of course every single person in this world has their own experiences and deserves to articulate their own identity in the way that best fits them, but I really struggled with what he said. Which I guess is a discussion for the book club!
(I also, oops, joined two new book clubs, so my next few reads will be on decolonializing Latin American history…and I joined the romance club this time! Excited about that!)
Happy reading 😀
Long list since I have been at the beach this week and what’s better than enjoying the sound of the waves and a good book?
THE LADY TEMPTS AN HEIR by Harper St. George—I had liked the first book in this series (this is #3), but this one really didn’t work for me. The hero and heroine spend a lot of time talking around/at each other instead of WITH each other and Helena is just such a martyr about both her work with unmarried mothers and her own infertility. Max is just kind of blah? He had potential, but the bit about how he’s a Good Industrialist fell a bit flat for me.
DONUT FALL IN LOVE by Jackie Lau—I think others have said this, but this book would work better a a novel with romantic elements. The best parts are Ryan’s relationship with his dad and his sister and Lindsay’s relationships with her mom, brother, and friends. Ryan and Lindsay’s relationship still works, but it’s not as richly rendered as the others. Still, definitely enjoyable and where can I get all the donuts?
BRING ME THEIR HEARTS and FIND ME THEIR BONES by Sara Wolf. Bought the first as a book on sale and bit for the sequel which is not as good. (There’s a third book which completes the trilogy.) Book one is great—creative, briskly plotted, and with snappy dialogue (all my catnip.) Book two is definitely a middle book where the heroine, Zera, more or less succeeds in spite of herself. There’s also a new villain who I really didn’t like. Will probably come back for book three, but am going to see if my library has it in hard copy because it wasn’t worth the $7.99 to me.
THE STAND-IN by Lily Chu—have mentioned this elsewhere, but thought this one was great. Richly rendered, fun plot, great characters, and a range of relationships. Highly recommend.
ONE TRUE OUTCOME by KD Casey—a new-to-me author who writes a lot of m/m sports romances. This one is an older baseball player and an up and coming pitcher. Recommend to fans of Rachel Reid’s Game Changer series.
IDAHO! by Dana Fuller Ross—I devoured this series (Wagons West! With exclamation points!!!) in middle school and my sister sent me this one since she just finished a stint working in Idaho. I can see why I liked it as a relatively unenlightened middle schooler (the plot is FAST), but OMG, the unrelenting racism towards Native Americans is appalling. (I was just grateful there were no Black characters because I shudder to think what would have happened there.) In general, the men are Manly and the women are Tempestuous Temptresses who might seduce a man at any moment! (How will he hold on to his pants!? Oh wait, she’s not hot! It will be fine!) I was also disappointed to learn that the author’s name is a pen name for a dude, which kind of explains some stuff about the male characters being barely able to control their dicks, but tarnishes the memory of the series a bit. (Oh wait, the racism and sexism does all that.)
Also read CRYING IN H MART, Michelle Zauner’s memoir about her mother’s life, cancer, and death. Not a romance, but really enjoyed the meditation on what love is and how it looks. Definitely keep the tissues handy.
Up next: THE EX TALK by Rachel Solomon.
@Shana, @Shemmelle I have The Vicar and the Rake (Annabelle Green) from KU and I’m struggling to get through it. I should be my cat nip, but I just can’t. Maybe its time to give up and just try the Servant and the Gentleman
I haven’t posted on this in a long time so I’m going to go with the books that I’ve read recently! Also @Claudia, I’m an anthropology grad student so The Dawn of Everything has been getting a lot of hype in my field, because Graeber was a super famous anthropologist who tragically died unexpectedly and this is his very last book. Enjoy!
FUNNY FEELINGS by Tara Dewitt: This is a contemporary m/f friends to lovers fake dating story about a stand up comedian and her manager, a single dad. I loved it, it was so sweet and tender, but the only downside was the Big Mis at the end which seemed tacked on. Still recommend.
HUSBAND MATERIAL by Alexis Hall: WHY ALEXIS! I loved BM but HM just made Luc and Oliver be at constant odds with one another followed by a rushed resolution that would have worked if it didn’t show up in the last ten pages, leaving me feel very robbed. Still hilarious, but the constant bickering just made me tense and sad. Hall is always hit or miss for me but I’m now noticing a consistent tendency to rush the ending in his books. Hmm. Unpopular opinion?
CAPTIVE PRINCE series, CS Pacat: Well, I finally get the hype. I avoided this m/m fantasy for ages because I know there’s a problematic scene in the first book (it is indeed very problematic) but dammit the writing was excellent, the scene is an anomaly because the books otherwise do an amazing job of exploring the ongoing traumas and consequences of sexual violence, and the spying and plotting is EXCELLENT (as is the romance, when it shows up eventually)! book 1 is the weakest but I glommed the trilogy in four days. And the writing. Phew. Brilliant. All the trigger warnings though.
THE SCOTTISH BOY by Alex De Campi: Medieval m/m, very very good first 80 percent, I think it falters towards the end because one of the heroes sort of becomes a sad sack but again, suspenseful plot, and a romance where the stakes and conflict make complete sense.
WHERE THE DEVIL SAYS GOODNIGHT by KA Merikan: Absolutely bonkers, kind of dark and at times even creepy m/m romance which takes its inspiration from Polish folklore. I loved it. Very atmospheric, there is a mystery to be solved, and there’s a priest who has to come to accept who he is in more ways than one!
Looking forward to my TBR once I’ve read everyone else’s comments 🙂
Part 1
I loved BOLD FORTUNE by M. M. Crane (aka, Megan Crane/Caitlin Crews), a wonderful grumpy-sunshine romance that is the first book in Crane’s new series, The Fortunes of Lost Lake, set in an isolated, sparsely populated community in the Alaskan wilderness. In BOLD FORTUNE, the heroine, an academic working for an environmental think-tank comes to Lost Lake to persuade the hero, the area’s unofficial “mayor”, to not permit an old gold mine to be reopened. The hero initially assumes the heroine is not tough enough to outlast a few days in sub-zero conditions (despite her overwhelmingly pink artic weather wardrobe) and challenges her to try to make it through an Alaskan winter. The optimistic heroine (who has previously been the victim of a gaslighting boyfriend) accepts the challenge and surprises the hero with her resilience (she confounds his expectations at every turn). As time goes on, both MCs reveal hidden depths that perhaps only the other can see—and each seems to understand how the other has adopted a specific persona to cover up deep hurts. Then, of course, we have the inevitable (and very hot!) scene of enforced proximity in a cabin during a blizzard! Along with beautiful descriptions of the Alaskan wilderness, BOLD FORTUNE also features a well-rounded cast of characters, especially the hero’s assertive but loving family members (a number of whom will certainly appear in their own future books). BOLD FORTUNE would not be a Crane/Crews book without a generous helping of angsty heartache, but a loving reunion finally sets all to rights. A fabulous read—one of my favorite books of 2022 so far. Highly recommended.
Another favorite read of the year is Fearne Hill’s m/m TWO TRIBES, an alternately funny, sexy, heartbreaking, and uplifting romance which covers 25 years in the lives of upper-middle class Alex and working-class Matt. The first half of the book is set in the English Midlands in1995 where, due to the vagaries of the local school system, Alex and Matt (two 17-year-olds from completely different classes and worlds) attend the same school. This entire section is written from Matt’s POV: he’s smart & snarky, and his inner voice, pop-culture savvy and razor-sharp, reminds me of Alexis Hall’s Arden St. Ives. (Plus, anyone who enjoys 1980s New Wave or 1990s Grunge will appreciate the chapter titles and the way music from that era informs the entire book.) After a shared detention, Matt and Alex grow closer (Matt knows he’s gay, although has never admitted it to anyone; Alex is discovering his bisexuality), and eventually become secret lovers for a few short months until a tragedy tears them apart. We then get a brief glimpse of the two men a decade later, their lives have taken different trajectories and, although they haven’t seen each other in the intervening decade, they still think of each other frequently. Then we move forward to 2020. Matt and Alex, through a complete coincidence, are reunited. Strong feelings are still apparent, but there are many roadblocks: divorced Alex has a teenage son, Matt has a history of (CW/TW) severe depressive episodes and suicide attempts. Their HEA is hard-won and will require ongoing maintenance. If I have one quibble with the book, it’s that the ending feels a little abrupt—I wanted more time with the older Matt and Alex (including Alex helping Matt through a major depression rather than just having Matt refer to it in retrospect), but that is a small concern for a brilliantly written book that can both break and uplift your heart. Highly recommended.
Trish Doller’s THE SUITE SPOT is the follow-up to her very good FLOAT PLAN (the heroines of the two books are sisters). I didn’t find THE SUITE SPOT quite as affecting as FLOAT PLAN (which was one of my favorite books of 2021), but it is still very good especially for fans of slow-burns and what might best be described as fixer-upper/rebuilding/construction romances. Thanks to a lecherous (and, unfortunately, rich and influential) guest, Rachel loses her job as night manager of one of Miami’s most upscale hotels. She eventually accepts a job to manage a brew pub/boutique hotel in rural Ohio, but when Rachel (her young daughter in tow) arrives, she discovers that construction is still on-going with owner/brewer Mason at loose ends. With Mason’s permission, Rachel supervises the construction and decoration of the tap room & cabins. Weeks, then months, pass. The brewery & hotel begin to take shape, Rachel is absorbed into the small town, and Rachel & Mason begin to fall in love. One of the things that made FLOAT PLAN so good is the slow process by which the heroine deals with the grief of losing her fiancé. In THE SUITE SPOT, it is the hero who has experienced a traumatic loss (CW/TW: death of a child in the past), but because we never see events from his POV, it’s hard to gauge how he gradually works through his grief, which, to me, makes THE SUITE SPOT the lesser of the two book; and a last-minute legal maneuver that threatens Rachel’s place in Ohio feels both unnecessary and out-of-tone with the rest of the book. But, nonetheless, THE SUITE SPOT is still a worthwhile read. Key quote, Mason to Rachel: “…any man who doesn’t appreciate all of you doesn’t deserve any of you.” Oh yes! Recommended.
C. M. Nascosta’s RUN, RUN RABBIT is the first book in a new series called Cambric Creek After Darkverse. It is set in the same universe as her other Cambric Creek books (that feature human/monster/mythological-creature romances), but it is decidedly darker than books like MORNING GLORY MILKING FARM or GIRLS WEEKEND. The MCs of RUN, RUN RABBIT (both werewolves) are attorneys who work at the same firm where he’s a partner and she isn’t. They begin an office romance—which is every bit as damaging to the heroine’s reputation as you can imagine (unsurprisingly, the hero emerges relatively unscathed). RUN, RUN RABBIT is in no way a gentle romance, but Nascosta’s world-building and her analysis of what happens in a relationship with a lopsided power balance are both excellent. In addition to the unequal power dynamic, there’s hate-fucking (really hot, but hateful nonetheless), non-monogamy (both h&h have other partners during their several-years-long relationship), a number incidents that require content warnings (all listed at the beginning of the book), and an almost unbearably smug and entitled hero (key quote: “Vanessa understood why he was such an asshole; that privilege lead to the expectation of more privilege”). I enjoyed RUN, RUN RABBIT, but it’s not a “traditional” romance—both MCs are in their own ways selfish and unlikable, and the ending is far more a qualified HFN than a joyous HEA. All that being said, RUN, RUN RABBIT is a sexy, bracing read with difficult MCs and very problematic elements (in that way, it reminded me of one of my all-time favorite romances, TIME SERVED by Julianna Keyes). Recommended, with all the caveats noted.
Karla Sorensen’s THE CRUSH finishes her multi-generational Ward Family series (time is really accelerated from book to book: the hero of THE CRUSH is the adult son of the couple from THE MARRIAGE EFFECT, which was only published three years ago). In THE CRUSH, a professional football player tries to woo the woman he let slip away five years before. The heroine hasn’t spent the intervening years pining for the hero (in fact, she’s not long out of a long-term relationship), but, naturally, she is suspicious of the hero’s new-found interest in her. Even after the couple give in to their mutual attraction, there are roadblocks to a more regularized relationship: the heroine lives in the Pacific Northwest and does not want to move because of family connections and work obligations; meanwhile, the hero (although raised in the same area as the heroine) is socked into a long-term contract with a Florida football team. The couple have a lot of soul-searching and negotiation to do. Key quote: “It was impossible to force someone to make you a priority. It was impossible to make someone feel the same way you did. And it was impossible to force the stars to align when the timing wasn’t right.” I enjoyed THE CRUSH, it has all of Sorensen’s trademark heat and emotion, but I do think it suffered just a little from the h&h being out-of-contact and on different sides of the country for a good portion of the book. Also, the speeded-up timeframe of the book gave me whiplash. For example, one of the hero’s sisters was the heroine of Sorensen’s FORBIDDEN, in that book (published last year), she was in her mid-twenties; in THE CRUSH, a reference is made to celebrating her 40th birthday! Recommended—but just go with the flow regarding how rapidly characters have aged in the span of three years.
Part 2
Amelia Wilde’s BLACKMAIL is the first book in her new Controlling Interest trilogy. Wilde writes propulsive books in a very dark/very transgressive vein, and BLACKMAIL is no different. The heroine (an innocent woman trying to raise her young siblings and keep her con-man father on the straight-and-narrow) is working as a temp for the company owned by the hero (a man as colossally rich as he is emotionally damaged). Needing money to keep loan sharks from hurting her father, the heroine embezzles a relatively small sum from the company’s account (there’s a pulse-pounding description of the heroine rationalizing the misappropriation, submitting the fraudulent purchase order, and realizing the moment the money enters her bank account that she can’t turn back). When the hero discovers the heroine’s malfeasance, he offers not to go the authorities if she agrees to enter a sexual relationship with him. The heroine agrees, but theirs is no hearts-and-flowers affair, there’s violence, cruelty, and mind games. I enjoyed BLACKMAIL, but it is a dark romance featuring lots of triggers (particularly flashbacks to the hero’s abusive childhood along with scenes involving the hero’s unhealthy coping mechanism of participating in underground fight clubs), plus it ends on the de rigueur dark-romance cliffhanger. I know dark romance isn’t everyone’s cuppa, so proceed accordingly.
[CW/TW: violence, child neglect] For a slow-burn romance set in an isolated town in the Australian outback, Lisa Henry’s excellent m/m romance, TWO MAN STATION, features a significant amount of violence of various types (domestic abuse, drug- or alcohol-related fights, criminal use of firearms, levels of child neglect), but the violence develops organically from the story and never feels gratuitous. Gio is a policeman, newly arrived from a metropolitan police force to a position in a two-man outpost in the outback. The reasons for Gio’s transfer are slowly teased out over the first half of the book. Widower and single-father Jason is the senior police officer at the station. He’s been at loose ends since losing his wife five years ago and has to regularly cobble together an ad-hoc childcare schedule for his ten-year-old son. As Gio acclimates to the heat, dust, and vastness of the outback—and grows accustomed to the different ways law enforcement functions in a small, close-knit community—he and Jason also grow closer, although neither man feels ready to make an emotional declaration (“…every step had been something of a misstep, a stumble, a mistake—not because they’d taken those steps, but because they hadn’t figured out how to move without tripping one another up”). The story also follows two domestic abuse cases in the area: a woman trying to leave her husband after a 40-year marriage, another woman caught up in a damaging drugs & alcohol-fueled co-dependent relationship with her husband; she periodically tries to separate from him for the benefit of their neglected children. That neglect is obvious, but what about Jason’s son who is sometimes left alone when his father has to respond to calls in the middle of the night? Doesn’t that also qualify as neglect? (Henry does an excellent job of showing how a loving, committed single parent fails to see the slow creep of neglect in the care of his son.) In various ways, the demands of their jobs begin to eat away at the men’s undeclared feelings for each other. Key quote: “They’d tried so hard to draw a line between work and off duty, but in the end that wasn’t the line that had tripped [them] up. It was this one here. The one between friendship and something else.” Henry’s descriptions of the outback—its beauty and its overwhelming immensity—are brilliantly done, the harsh, limitless landscape becoming a character itself in the story. Despite the violence, the book has a “quiet” feel to it as the men experience violence and trauma but also begin to stabilize and regularize their relationship. Highly recommended.
[CW/TW: trauma, mental health issues, death in various forms] I liked TWO MAN STATION so much, I grabbed LIGHTS AND SIRENS, the next book in Henry’s Emergency Services series. This takes place in a larger city on the Queensland coast and concerns the relationship between policeman Matt and EMT Hayden. I enjoyed LIGHTS AND SIRENS, but I didn’t find it was quite as atmospheric as TWO MAN STATION. The book begins with some initial antagonism when Matt pulls Hayden over for speeding and Hayden is unable to flirt his way out of a ticket. But as the two men frequently respond to the same emergencies, a grudging respect grows between them and, eventually, they become lovers. This happens fairly early in the book and the story is less about the couple’s road to getting together and more about the stresses of both their jobs and their lives that might destroy the burgeoning feeling between them before it has a chance to blossom. Henry shows how disorienting shift work can be and how, without appropriate physical and emotional outlets, the constant processing of traumatic incidents can lead to breakdowns in mental health. After a week in which Hayden is one of the responding EMTs at a number of fatalities [CW/TW: vehicle accident, drowning, suicide], he experiences a dissociative episode and walks off the job. Some of his response is tied up in his own experiences of growing up in foster care, some of it is the result of his lack of healthy stress-relief options, and some is because his identity is so enmeshed in being a first-responder, he doesn’t know who he is outside that role. I like that at the book’s ending, things still feel a little fragile. Hayden is attending regular therapy sessions and is back at work. He and Matt (who has experienced his own worries taking care of his 80-something grandfather) are living together, but their relationship is a work in progress. A realistic look at the stresses of being a first-responder and trying to make a relationship work within that context. Recommended.
@DDD—thanks for the details on the Nacosta. I LOVED MGMF (if you can get over the premise that there’s a woman having sex with a Minotaur, it’s the hottest thing I’ve read in ages. I’ve even re-read it twice and I am not a re-reader), but RUN, RABBIT, RUN sounds like it might not be for me. (I’m still kind of traumatized by the hate-fucking scene from KJ Charles’s JACKDAW and I love me some KJ Charles.)
I listened to and enjoyed “From Hollywood With Love”. It’s a non-fiction book that studies the romcom genre over the last thirty years.
I DNFed “For Butter or Worse”. Author’s voice is strong but I really hated the guy. Each time a redeeming moment came up, he proved to be a troll. I may try this one again later but I made myself go a few extra chapters already before dropping it.
Also DNFed “The Accidental Pin Up”. I think I was just in a ragey mood this month and had no patience.
I’m listening to the Ice Home series by Ruby Dixon. I don’t find this spin-off as interesting as the Ice Planet Barbarian series. I don’t know if it’s the narrators or the writing, but these characters seem younger, less individual, and more Alpha than the ones in IPB. Still pleasant enough to listen to during a commute.
I did a re-read of The Chocolate Touch by Laura Florand and am trying to catch up on the last three Mercy Thompson books. I’ve borrowed the Alpa and Omega audio books, so those may be my next set of commuter books.
@FashionablyEvil: I found RUN, RUN RABBIT a real departure from the previous Cambric Creek books I’ve read by Nascosta. Perhaps that’s why she started this new “After Darkverse” series—to explore some of the less-positive elements of relationships (although I do think Tate, one of the heroes in the Girls Weekend books, features some of the same selfishness and entitlement as the hero of RUN, RUN RABBIT—but to a much lesser degree). One of the things I found amusing (and rather atypical in a romance these days) in RUN, RUN RABBIT is that the heroine doesn’t like giving blowjobs, isn’t very good at it, and is rather unapologetic about the fact. So refreshing after reading so many romances where the heroine is enthusiastically sucking down the D like it’s an immense candy cane. Lol
Regarding IDAHO! and its male writer—back in the bodice-ripper days, we had a rule of thumb: if a book featured a scene where a woman stood nude in front of a mirror and catalogued her body in very objectifying ways, we knew that writer was a man using a female pseudonym. “Jennifer Wilde” was probably the worst offender in that regard, but it was a pretty crowded field.
It’s been a rather lackluster month so far. Between school starting and the ongoing heat, I’m just tired all the time.
I did manage to start both The Bridge Kingdom by Danielle Jensen and Poison Princess by Kresley Cole. Both are really great reads so far and I’m hoping to finish them both this weekend.
Currently listening to Dark and Shallow Lies by Ginny Myers Sain. The setting deep in the Louisiana bayou is really vivid and the story is compelling. A girl is missing in a town full of psychics, but no one can pinpoint exactly what happened to her.
I’ve been neck-deep in a project but I did find time to check The Annotated Arabian Nights out of the library. Wow! Not only is it beautifully printed, on nice paper, with hundreds of old and new, European and Middle Eastern illustrations (the pics could have been printed larger, only criticism); but the translation of the Arabic stories by Yasmine Seale is simply amazing. Of course I’ve read several other translations and retellings; none was as lively and immediate, as full of colorful details and careful attention to the sound of the language. Plus Seale thought carefully about avoiding racist and sexist language. The annotations are not bad, and the book contains a lot of fairly interesting miscellanea too — I just wanted more translations (thick as this book is, it could only contain half-a-dozen stories and longer story cycles including the “Voyages of Sindbad”). I hear that Seale is working on more though; hopefully they’ll appear along with the ones in this volume in an ordinary edition.
So I am following that up with The Arabian Nightmare by Robert Irwin, a literary fantasy novel which is the trials of a naïve English traveler in 15th-century Cairo (a time and place that contributed a lot of material to the Arabian Nights collection in its current form). The protagonist finds himself trapped in a cycle of phantasmagoric and horrible stories that don’t end. This novel knocked my socks off when I read it 30 years ago; curious to see what it sounds like with everything I’ve learned since.
Lastly, I started the latest T. Kingfisher, What Moves the Dead, but I can only get it in audio at the moment and I don’t love the narrator, so that’ll have to wait.
“The Missing Page” by Cat Sebastian: M/M mystery romance, sequel to “Hither Page.” The mystery element isn’t the strongest element of Sebastian’s writing, but I really enjoyed the romance and the Agatha Christie style setups for intrigue in these two books. They’re also relatively light on murder, especially of sympathetic characters.
“A Walrus & A Gentleman” by Emmaline Strange: Okay, this was on sale on Amazon for the low price of free and I couldn’t resist the premise. Kel is a grad student in fine art who gets a fellowship that involves staying in an Irish lighthouse for several months. (Is this a realistic depiction of an MFA fellowship? Probably not, but who knows.) He doesn’t realize he’ll be staying with the withdrawn lighthouse keeper, Ragnar, and he also doesn’t realize Ragnar is the town’s local cryptid, the Selkie King — because Ragnar is a walrus shifter. Kel and Ragnar butt heads at first, but start to get closer as Kel also becomes more interested in the Selkie King after a mysterious animal saves him from drowning.
The book is self-aware about what an unsexy thing a walrus is to shapeshift into, and has a good sense of humor about it. In fact, it’s kind of good PR for walruses; I was thinking “yeah, they are majestic creatures in their own way!” I’ll go ahead and say there’s no sex in walrus form (whether that’s a relief or disappointment is up to you). Ragnar does have a possessive “alpha” side, which in this book is understood to be a common trait of all shifters, since I’m pretty sure there’s no such thing as an alpha walrus. As hard as the absurdity of the premise was to get past for someone who doesn’t normally read shifter books at all, this was decently well-written and the romance was fairly cute. (TW for mentions of a past abusive relationship, which I thought was handled fine although the book is short enough that it’s not a super nuanced portrayal of this or anything, lol.)
“Jane” by Aline Brosh McKenna, illustrated by Ramon Perez: I was curious about what a modern-day, graphic novel reimagining of Jane Eyre written by the screenwriter of “The Devil Wears Prada” would be like. Turns out the answer is “pretty boring.” Obviously this doesn’t preserve any of the language of the original, but it also doesn’t have any of the wit of McKenna’s film writing and the illustrations felt lifeless and flat.
Non-romance
“A Different Light” by Elizabeth Lynn: I picked this up because it was on a list of older sci fi novels with LGBT characters and was noted for having a bisexual protagonist without making a big deal out of it, despite being published in the 70s. In a world where most people never get seriously ill and can live for hundreds of years, successful artist Jimson Alleca needs constant treatment to prevent his cancer from becoming severe and killing him. He’s obsessed with traveling through space, which is also common but which he can’t do without it being likely that his treatment would stop working. Eventually, he decides to risk it anyway and reunites with his first love, who left their planet years ago and became a space pirate. This isn’t a romance (though I would read a romance with this premise!), but a pretty melancholy story that combines elements of sci fi adventure (creepy telepaths! a space heist!) with contemplation of art and mortality. I ended up really liking it.
“Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of the Dead” by Olga Tokarczuk: No surprises that this was great, since it won the Nobel Prize for literature. I absolutely loved it — perfect narrative voice and sense of atmosphere.
Just got back from vacation, so I have a bunch of recommendations for you all! I am also trying to dig through my (mountainous) TBR pile, so I’ve come upon some nice surprises and a bunch of “meh.”
Went on an Eliot Grayson kick. M/M, paranormal, sometimes regency, sometimes contemporary. Best to weakest – THE WRONG RAKE, FIRST BLOOD, CAPTIVE MATE, LOST AND BOUND, and THE ALPHA CONTRACT. Overall, EG does a great job of making you believe the two main characters are not only attracted to each other, but have also fallen in love (albeit, sometimes pretty quickly). Good, short books to satisfy your need for something sweet, but also include some action to keep things moving. Enjoy!
I know the bitches are big Cate C. Wells fans. I find her stuff hit or miss – loved Run Posie, Run, but did not like Hitting the Wall. However, I loved AGAINST A WALL. M/F contemporary. Loved the grumpy/sunshine, social person/introvert pairing, and the common ground they shared. Also loved redemption/awareness growth arc of the MCs. Just really hit the spot for me!
A BRUSH OF DARKNESS by Allison Pang – Meh. M/F paranormal contemporary. Not terrible, but muddled and unsatisfying. Not reading the next one in the series.
FINDING NOUF by Zoe Ferraris. Very conflicted about this mystery. On the one hand, the mystery was solid, and it was a very interesting look at life for upper class Saudi Arabians. Descriptions of how they dealt with the intense heat were especially interesting (and terrifying, given what we are doing to our climate). I also felt like I was learning a lot about Saudi culture and how men and women view the subjugation/control of women there. It was not monolithic – it was shifting and complex and really interesting. However, I checked the author out after the fact, and she is not from SA, though she did live there for a time. Now I feel like I read a westerner’s take on what must be going on in people’s minds in SA, which makes me much less interested in reading the next book. I also feel so angry about women’s rights in my own country right now, that I am not in the right headspace to visit a more oppressive country, even in a book. Should I read the next book? Please let me know if you have thoughts.
Enjoy the rest of August, peeps! Hope you have all gotten a chance to unplug and chill out with some good books!
Since half the things I am sure I will adore don’t work for me, I have no idea why I persist in trying things I never like (I mean, I guess the stakes are low?). I have hated so many sci-fi and YA books these past few weeks it’s absurd I keep trying. But if I could just learn to like more things there would be so many more things to like!
Only thing I can recommend is Husband Material, which I liked even more than Boyfriend Material. I was nervous because I was greatly anticipating it and I don’t do well with anticipation, it makes me anxious and then everything is worse. I figured up to the very end that it was going to be a schmeh compromise ending but it was worth it for the characters, who I just love spending time with, and the banter – and then I loved the ending too.
Possibly worth mentioning I hated The Bodyguard by Center, because I usually my hating things is personal to me but I *think* a lot of people may share my disappointment on this. I was so excited for the female bodyguard romance I forgot how sexist romcoms tend to be. It’s like the opposite of competence porn. In order to make her “relatable” I guess? she keeps making inexplicably dumb decisions.
The GBPL came through once again and dropped Nalini Singh’s ALLEGIANCE OF HONOR into my pick up list Tuesday morning. Ah, the pleasure of being the first to crack open a brand new book from the library. Well, to read it anyway, as some wonderful librarian had to open it to put on the cover and the labels and the security tag, but after her it was me. And of course, I dove right in regardless of the fact that I have already have a half dozen books checked out. I try not to hang onto books that I know have a huge reserve list. This is probably a good place for anyone who hasn’t read the previous two dozen books to jump on. You get to spend time with the major players of the previous books, touches on the issues & crisis dealt with so you can go into the new cycle with a good idea of what’s gone before and where they’re headed. There’s birth (yes, the pupcubs), death, a couple lose threads are tied up, a lost love found, the new Alliance members working together to rescue a lost changling. We STILL don’t know what Malachai is and there were no bears. Boo. So, no new romance, but a good story full of well-loved characters. And returned to the library in three days so the next person on the triple digit hold list can have thier turn.
THE DEEPEST OF SECRETS is the last Rockton book from Kelley Armstrong, but not the last we’ll see of Casey and Eric. It’s become clear that the powers behind the hidden town have decided to shut it down, but first they’ve dropped an adversary into the mix to speed its demise. In a town built on secrets, what better way than to start letting those secrets out sewing distrust and paranoia. Love this series. the mysteries are tight and suspenseful. The relationships are honest while being built on the edge of trust and suspicion and can’t wait for Casey and Eric and Rockton 2.0.
Kindle bedtime read is Sarina Bowen’s BITTERSWEET. I had read the second book in the series and enjoyed it immensely for its recovering addict MC, but I am not enamored of the female lead in this one. She went to culinary school, took a job with a large food service corporation to hopefully get to the point where they’ll back her in her own restaurant, but she keeps screwing up her assignments. If only they’d just let her cook instead of working the front of the house, or order stock. Of course, every good chef will tell you that, if you want your own place, you need to know stock ordering, ingredient sourcing and how the front house works. She is such a spoiled whiner, I don’t see how she can redeem herself. It’s the grumpy hero who’s keeping me in it.
Happily, I finally found my copy of Adriana Anders’ UNCHARTED. Where was it when it was 95 with 90% humidity and I needed a story about people battling for survival in a cold, cold place? Under the bed. Don’t ask; I haven’t figured out how it got from my suitcase to there myself. Anyway, it’s my patio read. It’s been great for an after work wind down with a glass of wine, even though the weather is vastly improved here. Two people struggling to survive the freezing Alaska wilderness pursued by nefarious corporate agents. Elias, formally FBI’s most wanted, thought long dead, holds the secret location of one of the only remaining samples of a deadly virus. Leo and her team are following a lead to a rogue scientist’s location when the corporate goons show up and take control the small town. Of course, most of the pursuers are not suited to the wilderness, except for the one clever one who respects his quarry. Of course, the old lady is more than she seems and sets about rescuing her town. She’s a delight by the way. If you’re looking for romantic suspense, this is your series.
I’m still reading Victoria Goddard, and loving Messrs Greenwing and Dart! The only problem is I have finished book six, and have no idea when book seven is coming 🙁 They say patience is a virtue …
I am currently reading her The Return of Fitzroy Angursell, and though I’m enjoying it, it’s just not the same as the Greenwing and Dart series. This book follows The Hands of the Emperor and fills in some of the information I have been curious about, but much like Hands is a more meandering kind of story. I’m probably one third through the book, and it’s setting up “getting the gang back together” in, I hope, preparation for an adventure. I will definitely finish this book, but probably won’t read the next one in this series. Come on Greenwing and Dart!
Up next is Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson, which I’m looking forward to!
I am currently reading two books but I am only going to talk about one:
ROBERT E LEE AND ME: A SOUTHERN’S RECKONING WITH THE MYTH OF THE LOST CAUSE by TY SEIDULE (Professor Emeritus of History at West Point) is about a historian, and a man, confronting his own racism and the pervasiveness of the Lost Cause Myth. It is easily digestible even for those who aren’t historians and passionately argued. You will not fall asleep reading this book.
Each chapter goes through his life and his thinking at the time, alternating between past and present with ease. His writing is smooth, his arguments are compelling, and the book is very, very quotable.
It is, so far and assuming he sticks the landing, the best book I have read all year. 6/5 stars. I wish I had a romance novel to also talk about but this book is consuming all my reading time. It’s fantastic, wonderful, excellent, [insert superlative here].
Thanks for making it to the end of this review even if you skimmed a bit. 🙂
It seems as if I have been marinating in billionaire romances these past couple weeks and many of them, while enjoyed at the time, are starting to simmer down into and unmemorable mush. So not reviewing most of those.
Against a Wall by Cate C Wells. She is hit or miss for me and this was a hit. The H bullied the h in middle and high school. It seemed like a hard sell to me but she pulled it off. Showing us both points of view helped and, also, he was willing to grovel. Would recommend with some CW. No billionaires, btw.
I have also done a bit of a dive into married couples trying to fix a marriage (or not). Resisting Her Husband by Elizabeth Lennox – she left after a year of marriage and now wants a divorce; he wants her back. They have to deal with issues, including family. Liked it. A Wicked Kind of Husband by Mia Vincy, historical, he wants her to stay in the country and out of his way, she wants to come to London. 3.5 stars and fun. A Baby to Bind His Bride by Caitlin Crews – he has amnesia and she runs his business for four years before finding him. He wants to take everything over again and has to stand up to him. Liked it. Reclaiming Her Army Doc Husband by Sue MacKay. He comes home after being injured and finds she wants out because he has not learned to share feelings or plans. Then they have to survive a flood together. 3.5 stars and I did like how they learned to communicate. I am starting to look for more of these. I am enjoying the rekindling and negotiating.
I, Gracie by Sharon Sala was different to what I have been reading. She has cared for her mother with dementia for a number of years with no help from her siblings. The story starts as her mother dies and she confronts her family and also moves on. For some reason, this story grabbed me and dragged me along. I would recommend with CW for violence and dementia.
@Big K: I love all of those Ferraris books set in Saudi Arabia; I would vote for your continuing. I hear what you are saying, here is my counter argument:
Ferraris paints a nuanced portrait of life in that country. The books helped me to think about various ways that culture shapes gender roles while showing how people try to reconcile their religion and customs with the modern world and the women who want change. As the books continue, Katya continues to advocate for what she wants in her work at the forensics lab and in her relationships. (Also, IIRC, fewer super rich people and more social justice.)
I read a short piece Ferraris wrote as a book extra that was a view into her life in Saudi Arabia. She married a Saudi- Bedouin man and then lived with the women of his family. She learned Arabic and worked, ate, and lived communally with these women. I feel like since it is so hard to get the perspective of Saudi women in fiction, this is the next best I am going to get. Sadly we can’t only read perfect books! I’d rather think and talk about what I experienced with these books the way they are than just not read them.
I feel like I could start to see a cultural appropriation argument if she was using the setting as fun window-dressing, as a soapbox, or belittling or demeaning the culture, or showing it as less-than. (Honestly, it can be hard for people who believe in the equality of women NOT to look down on a culture like Saudi Arabia’s.) However, she never does this. Honestly I think Ferraris’ dual perpective really enriches the books in a special way and enables her to make a bridge into the mind of non-Saudis.
(Celestial Bodies, a novel by Omani woman Jokha Alharthi, won the Man Booker a few years ago if you want a different perspective. I want more of these stories written, published, and translated!!)
Since last time ~
— One of my library’s summer reading challenges is to read a book in the Dewey decimal 700s, so I decided to read Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture by Annelise Heinz. I read the first fifty pages and then skimmed the rest; this is a dense, very well researched academic study…but not quite what I’d hoped for!
— A more successful outcome was to reread A Beginner’s Guide to American Mah Jongg: How to Play the Game & Win by Elaine Sandberg which I read a few years ago when I was a novice. This time I was able to nod with familiarity at most things though I did still learn a thing or two.
— reread The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold which I enjoyed once more. This really is an excellent fantasy.
— enjoyed Mapping Winter (Riders Guild Book 1) by Marta Randall which is a fantasy with a female lead.
— read American Mah Jongg for Everyone: The Complete Beginner’s Guide by Gregg Swain and Toby Salk and learned a couple of new things. I would recommend this book to new players.
— My distant book group did not meet last month, so I decided to reread The Necessary Beggar by Susan Palwick prior to the meeting. It was my recommendation, so I wanted the story to be fresh in my mind as I led the discussion. I enjoyed it once again.
— I was sick and decided to reread a favorite book. One thing led to another, and I reread the entire Claimings series by Lyn Gala.
* Claimings, Tails and Other Alien Artifacts
* Assimilation, Love, and Other Human Oddities
* Affiliations, Aliens & Other Profitable Pursuits
* Expedition, Estimation, and Other Dangerous Pastimes
* Ends, Means, Laws and an Angry Ship
* Kensho (This is a collection of stories in the Claimings world.)
— finished A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (Monk & Robot 2) by Becky Chambers; it was a charming story. Do start though with the first book in the series, A Psalm for the Wild-Built.
— quite enjoyed the contemporary Every Summer After by Carley Fortune; I think of this as a romance, but it might be categorized as women’s fiction.
— enjoyed rereading Alliance (A Linesman Novel Book 2) by S. K. Dunstall once more.
— worked through Winning American Mah Jongg Strategies: A Guide for the Novice Player by Elaine Sandberg. This was a useful read.
— finished the newest book set in the world of the Goblin Emperor, The Grief of Stones (The Cemeteries of Amalo Book 2) by Katherine Addison; I quite enjoyed it.
— read the collection Heroic Hearts by Jim Butcher and Kerrie L. Hughes. I liked the most recent blind date story featuring Asil by Patricia Briggs titled “Dating Terrors.” I also enjoyed reading Anne Bishop’s story “The Dark Ship” which featured the Others.
— Spells and Sensibility by K.L. Noone and K.S. Murphy; this was a pleasant m/m historical fantasy, the first of a trilogy.
Reading the Orc Sworn books after the Librarian and the Orc was featured in a sales post for free. They aren’t great but I can put up with a lot of nonsense in books that are set in interesting worlds.
Read the last Cider Bar Sisters book by Jackie Lau. This was a very satisfying conclusion to the series.
Didn’t love Husband Material. My thoughts were very similar to GradStudentEscapist’s.
Put down Accidental Pinup at 25% and haven’t picked it back up. It’s taking a long time to get the story moving along. While I don’t know what it is to be a photographer for a living, I get the sense that neither does the author. All the job talk is both boring and not quite believable. Maybe I’m wrong, but either way still boring.
Thanks @VirtualLight – you are right – we can only read what is available. And I did really like the character development. Good to hear next book is worth reading – Will give it a shot.
The only book I can think of written by a Saudi Arabian woman is Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Al-Sanea.
It’s more fitting of the New adult genre though. It’s been a while since I have read it.
IF THE SHOE FITS by Julie Murphy: Cute, Cinderella inspired romance with a reality TV show backdrop. Bonus points for the Mom and step-sisters being supportive family members.
NEON GODS and ELECTRIC IDOL by Katee Roberts: Greek mythology meets mafia romance. I enjoyed the first enough to buy the second without waiting for it to go on sale. Popcorn in book form.
CODE OF CONDUCT (Cipher Security Series #1) by April White was so enjoyable. MCs are a PI and a former UN Peacekeeper/security expert who are very attracted to each other, but have to navigate all kinds of baggage. That may sound formulaic, but it really isn’t. The dialog is snappy, dual POV, and the emotional work was well done.
I’m a big fan of Caimh McDonnell’s Dublin Trilogy, which is now up to six books (makes perfect sense with this author). He’s written a paranormal series as C. K. McDonnel, starting with THE STRANGER TIMES. A wealthy young woman has left her regimented life and applies to The Stranger Times’ staff in Manchester as an assistant editor. The entire crew has major issues, but they see themselves as the people who report what could be true. Funny and funnily enough, they’re right, and something wants to kill them.
Listening to MY LIFE AS A WHITE TRASH ZOMBIE by Diana Rowland (narrated by Allison McLemore) and I’m loving every minute. Angel Crawford wakes up in the hospital with no memory of getting there, suspected by police of being involved in a murder. An unseen benefactor arranges for her to get a job as a medical examiner’s pickup driver, while also helping her to make the transition to a zombie via well-timed notes. That may be the part I like most, that Angel has help, that her teenage delinquent days are behind her, that consuming brains (post-autopsy) keeps her alive and well.
Currently reading Andrew Cotter’s DOG DAYS, A Year With Olive and Mabel. If you aren’t watching the hilarious short videos about his now-famous dogs, you’re missing out. Cotter is a well-known sports announcer, and then Covid hit. Locked down with Olive, Mabel and his partner, the book tries to make sense of this weird new world.
PRAYER FOR THE CROWN-SHY by Becky Chambers is waiting in the wings. I want to be in an uninterrupted, quiet space in order to savor every word.
@VirtualLight: I agree whole-heartedly with your assessment of Zoe Ferraris’ books and experience. They are outstanding.
Just finished A Lady’s Guide to Fortune-Hunting by Sophie Irwin, which I really enjoyed. It’s a kisses-only romance, btw.
As for books about the lives of Arab women, must it be fiction? Lila Abu Lughod wrote a book of ethnography, women’s lives in their own words,Writing Women’s Worlds. There are a number of memoirs and ethnographies, you just often have to go to academic or small publishers, since memoirs that hit the bestseller list tend toward sensationalism.
Been reading a lot. Stress in real life leads to escaping into fiction, the more fantastic the better.
T Kingfisher – Paladin’s Hope. After rereading Paladin’s Strength again, finally took the plunge with book 3 in spite of getting dark vibes from the sample. A+ worldbuilding, gnoles, adorable romance, satisfying ending. Sadly lacking in kickass nuns, though we are reassured they are doing well since the last book. Dark themes did show up as hinted by the sample and cover art, so if you’re feeling fragile proceed with caution.
Lois McMaster Bujold – Paladin of Souls (reread) – a very different kind of paladin, probably should be read in order starting with Curse of Chalion. Romance between grown adults, finding yourself at mid-life, saving the world from evil, found family, top notch immersive medieval-ish worldbuilding, interesting magic system, dry humor and snark.
Rachel Aaron – One Good Dragon Deserves Another, book 2 of Heartstrikers, in KU. Inhaled this and started the next one.
Victoria Goddard – Stargazy Pie – kept seeing her recommended, took me a while to get into it, ultimately a fun offbeat adventure. Planning to continue with the series after a few more palate cleansers.
Ben Philippe – Charming As a Verb and The Field Guide to the North American Teenager. I’ll be following this author. You don’t have to be a teenager to appreciate the character growth, humor, meaningful relationships with friends and family, and the outsider perspective on the American dream.
Becky Chambers – A Psalm for the Wild-Built. So much kindness, y’all. Starts off a little weird but by the end I adored both the monk and the robot, wanted a cup of soothing tea and was left with much food for thought.
A few months ago I read A.S. Byatt’s 1994 novella, “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye”. It’s about Gillian Perholt, an independent and sensible scholar, no longer young (she’s about 50), who is given a bottle of beautiful “nightingale’s eye” glass by a Turkish friend. A huge (and very male) djinn is trapped inside, a magical genie who must grant her 3 wishes in return for his release. Gillian’s use of her wishes – she is an expert in fairy and folk tales and in what can go wrong with wishes – is careful and surprising. The story takes the professor and djinn from Istanbul to Toronto and Madison Avenue. While not a standard romance, there is something quite romantic about the attraction between these two, and I enjoyed the story. To my surprise (it’s not a new book and a rather unusual subject and characters) I recently found out this has been made into a movie, “Three Thousand Years of Longing” with Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba. I like both actors and I’m interested to see what they’ve done with this.
I’m trying to do the Ripped Bodice challenge but the most fun/good I’ve read recently were Cinderella is Dead (queer YA fantasy!), Four aunties and a wedding, and If the Shoe fits.
Meanwhile I hated The Ghost and Mr. Moore (the ghost f***ing details were very weird & characters very shallow), and The Unhoneymooners (the H could not grovel enough for me tbh).
In the meantime I also read On Her Knees (“a prayerful Jezebel,” felt deeply relatable), and Fear Park (classic Stine).
Currently reading Lights Out (more Stine), Dracula (doing Dracula Daily!), and am about to start Midsummer Moon (i love her books!).
A lot of people have been coming and going in my house, so I haven’t gotten as much “reading” (i.e. listening to audiobooks) done as I usually do. I finished THE SUITE SPOT by Trish Doller this morning. It wasn’t great, but it certainly wasn’t terrible. I enjoyed her earlier romance, The Float Plan, tolerably well so was willing to give this one the benefit of the doubt. I thought it started a little slow and some of the decisions, minor plot points, etc., raised my eyebrows in a “really?” manner, but it was a decent enough way to pass the time while doing dishes, pulling weeds, etc. I felt a similar low-level of excitement for Lauren Layne’s latest, YOU, AGAIN. Her female protagonist took longer to warm to than I’m used to from Layne, but a lot of the story took place in Vermont, in the autumn, so it was a nice escape from the godawful temps so many of us have been enduring.
I’ve been in a terrible mood, which resulted in my reading being very…moody, honestly. I started the month with Ship Wrecked by Olivia Dade, and I loved it. I found Peter and Maria so utterly perfect for each other, although I would fight Maria for Peter (let me love you, Peter) and I would read 900 pages of Gods of the Gates cast chats. I didn’t love the bleak moment toward the end, simply because I was like “NOOOO YOU’RE BOTH PERFECT FOR EACH OTHER STOPPPP” but I did enjoy seeing them both work through it and realize it that they both had compromises to make. People out here acting like adults and doing the work. And then some stuff went down within my familial unit, and ya girl was grabbing at all the horror, because for whatever reason that’s what my brain does. So I pulled out Revival by Stephen King. By his standards, it’s a reasonably lean tome, but I still felt like there was some fat that could have been trimmed off. But the characters were interesting and the creeping dread was top-notch. It was definitely in conversation with Mary Shelley and H.P. Lovecraft and the ending was both bleak and creepy. Then I yoinked out Hide by Kiersten White, which I thought was YA horror and was instead more straightforward horror-fantasy, but did turn out to be her adult debut. It’s a contemporary retelling of the Minotaur myth, but with the tributes being placed in a labyrinthine amusement park that has been abandoned and told that if they win a hide and seek game, they’ll win $50,000. The “contestants” (read: walking snacks) think they’re in a reality show or some such and don’t actually know what they’re hiding from. This was another book with some great creeping dread to it, and the author took the Jaws approach, where what you don’t see is as scary as what you do. It also had some interesting commentary on who we, as a society, are willing to sacrifice to maintain a way of life. After that, I was still in a mood, but had done enough horror to my brain, so I read Nightwork by Nora Roberts. It had some nice throwbacks to some of her earlier work, both with the thief MC and the New Orleans setting, but that was another one that I felt like could have been a tad more tight in terms of pacing. Also, I was not super-impressed by the villain. He just wasn’t that interesting. Which brings us to now, in which I am again tasting the fruits of the Netgalley by reading The Kiss Curse by Erin Sterling. Thus far, it’s delightful, Gwyn and Wells are very hot together, the humor and Halloweenyness is top-notch (you don’t have to get spooky if you stay spooky), and I love me a talking cat. So until next time, folks, may you slay your personal Demogorgons.
Cat Sebastian has been my catnip (sorry!) this month: The Queer Principles of Kit Webb and The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes. Technically, companion books, to be read in that order. She has a way of endearing her characters to the reader – they’re flawed but eminently likeable and I really found myself rooting for them all. I was disappointed when I came to the end of the whole story. I want more please.
And carrying on the M/M theme with KJ Charles. I have powered through The Will Darling Adventures – three books, starting with Slippery People. Excellent stories – she is such a gifted writer. I love the two MCs with the fire of a thousand suns – complicated, flawed people who really have to work for it.
Also fully on board with Alexis Hall. I keep finding more to read (thank Dog for prolific authors and back catalogues!). Boyfriend Material is gorgeous and now I am drumming my fingers waiting for Husband Material to drop a bit in price. I bought a paperback of Glitterland because I wanted the original (it’s about to be republished) and I’m pretty sure I will buy the updated version too. Such a nerd.
And another Tessa Dare: The Duchess Deal (a loose Beauty and the Beast retelling) Again, she writes very likeable characters – historicals that are modern in their presentation – with plenty of amusing banter between all characters but some serious undertones. I like this whole series so far and stacked up some more of her books on my Kindle while they were on offer.
I very much enjoyed Seven Minutes in Heaven by Eloisa James. Just a lovely story with strong characters – essentially all about found family. I realised that I had read an earlier, linked book (Duchess by Night) which I also liked and this added some depth to the supporting characters.
Amazon keeps pushing Merry Farmer at me so I caved and downloaded December Heart – an age gap story. I found her writing very simplistic and a bit dull, so won’t be going back for more. Score one against the algorithm. And like some others, I too am seeing Ivy Smoak on nearly every page…definitely not falling for that one.
My TBRs (real and virtual) are about to topple over, so please don’t make me buy any more with your insightful recs this month…
I read and loved Thank You For Listening by Julia Whelan. I’m one of those rare readers that doesn’t particularly enjoy audio books, so I’d never heard of the author before, but I was fascinating by all of the details on recording audio books, and loved the plot and the occasional text/email epistolary elements. The book nicely straddled the line between women’s fiction and romance, although part of the plot is that the female lead is quite cynical towards romance novels due to her own disbelief in love, so she initially takes some slightly mean-spirited swipes at the genre, although she does acknowledge how popular it is and appreciates that many people find it empowering.
I also enjoyed The Bodyguard by Katherine Center. I went into it hoping for competence pron by the heroine, a highly regarded “protection agent” who is assigned to guard a reclusive actor, but was a bit disappointed initially as the heroine has just lost her mother, got dumped by her selfish ex, and is reeling in her personal and professional life. However, by the end of the book, she’s regaining top form better than ever, and ready to move on to the next chapter in her life. It also doesn’t hurt that the hero is adorable and basically the perfect book boyfriend.
I’m currently reading and loving Bend Toward the Sun by Jen Devon. The heroine is a botanist and the author focuses lovingly and in detail on the rundown Pennsylvania vineyard that the hero’s parents are trying to resuscitate. It’s all so lush and beautiful that I just want to bury my hands in the soil and commune with my own plants.
I’m basically bingeing the Sasaki and Miyano BL manga series by Shou Harusono right now. I’d read book one ages ago, thought it was sweet, but didn’t really think much about it. Then I watched the anime adaptation and just went BONKERS with love for it, so I knew I had to go back and read the books. It’s a very sweet story, one that really resonated with me as a demisexual (Miyano’s feelings definitely skew demi to me instead of merely slow burn, and I’ve seen other comments along those lines). Both versions are worth checking out…the show is more stylized in its romanticism, with dreamy touches (I wish flowers would float around my crushes when they walk by!), while the books are (gently and sympathetically) humorous about the situation. Both have really supportive and enjoyable side characters (two of whom will be the title couple in the spinoff HIRANO AND KAGIURA this fall). I swooned over patient, thoughtful Sasaki (as I’m sure many acespec people will), and occasionally shed a tear or two at how real life should be this way more often…sigh!
Read lots of books over the past few weeks – and once again the overall quality was decent, if not always memorable. Also watched the new Netflix Persuasion. It’s not an adaptation of Persuasion that takes itself very seriously – which is signaled by the opening scenes where Anne, depressed because she was persuaded to give up Wentworth, becomes an emo-girl, drowning her sorrows by drinking wine straight from the bottle and then sobbing in her bathtub at the prospect of spending the rest of her life with her narcissistic father and sister. Poor Wentworth is not nearly as interesting the villain, William Elliot (who has overall much better lines) and I’m not convinced that the writer or the director really had a vision for this movie. Nonetheless I enjoyed this as the lighthearted fluff that it was, as did the three people who were watching it with me.
Onward to books: I really enjoyed Julie Murphy’s If the Shoe Fits, a Cinderella-story about Cindy, a plus-sized shoe designer, who ends up on a reality dating show with her two thin Influencers stepsisters. This is a kinder and more respectful Cinderella tale — Cindy’s stepmother and stepsisters may not always understand Cindy, but they clearly like and respect her. Most of the characters in fact like and respect each and as a result the conflicts are not driven for the most part by people being mean to each other – but because the characters’ very understandable and perfectly decent goals come into conflict with one another. The plot falls apart a bit at the end and a couple of large plot holes are waived away, but I didn’t really care all that much because I liked the characters. There is some fat-phobia/shaming, but it is very minor.
My streak of reading about small-town witches from Illinois continues with Lana Harper’s From Bad to Cursed, (#2 in her Witches of Thistle Grove Series). Isidora (Issa) Avramov, and Rowan Thorn are both appointed by their respective witch families to solve the mystery of who is using dangerous dark magic to sabotage the town’s Beltane festivities. This is an enemy to lovers romance; the dislike is partially driven by a hand-wavey personal misunderstanding and partially by the fact that their families practise very different kinds of magic and therefore each finds the other’s family suspicious. You probably could read this book without reading the first one in the series (Payback’s a Witch), but I think it’s more enjoyable if the first has been read. One of things I really liked about this book is that bringing back the couple from the first book makes sense for the plot – they aren’t just there to let the reader know that they are still together.
I read both Trish Doller’s Float Plan and The Suite Spot. I agree with @DDD that Float Plan is the stronger of the two books; however, Float Plan was a good, but not great read for me (as was The Suite Spot). Partially this is because of my own personal history. I grew up in Michigan and people drowning because they were drunk or hung over and then decided to go for a sail or to operate a motorboat was and is a very real thing. So all the island-hopping drinking (à la Hemingway) was disquieting for me. I also wished that Doller had actually expanded the final section a bit more – showcasing even more how competent/confident Anna has become as a sailor and in her life. As for The Suite Spot – I agree with @DDD’s review, especially about the last-minute legal manoeuvre. (Content Warnings: off-page suicide; depression in Float Plan; anxiety/panic attacks in The Suite Spot)
Jackie Lau’s newest book, Her Unexpected Room, opens with an author note where Lau discusses her own personal history and warns the reader that this book depicts the heroine battling depression and still working through her complicated feelings about her mother whom she lost to suicide years before. It’s a lovely and moving note. The story itself is one of Lau’s quieter ones – and although the book alternates between Cal and Rose’s povs; I think the focus is clearly on Rose learning to put aside her fears that her struggles with depression mean that she shouldn’t be with someone. There’s not a sense that love conquers all – Rose’s depression will not disappear (nor will Cal’s problems), but there is a definite sense that being together is better for both of them because they get each other and are willing to support each other.
Did a re-read of Ilona Andrews’ Innkeeper Chronicles. Right now they are putting out a section each week of the next Innkeeper book: Sweep of the Heart. It’s now gone on for about 8 months and I’d partially forgotten what had happen in those early chapters. So I went and re-read every chapter that’s been posted in Sweep of the Heart and then decided to re-read all the other Innkeeper books as well.
Other books that were good, but I’m not going to make this comment any longer: Love Lessons and The Year We Fell Down (Sarina Bowen); The Love Connection (Denise Williams); A Little Too Familiar (Lish McBridge)
Books don’t regret reading, but can’t really remember them: Dear Sexy Ex-Boyfriend Lauren Blakely; Kate In Waiting Becky Albertalli; A Season for Second Chances, The Twelve Dates of Christmas (Jenny Bayliss); The Major Meets His Match (Annie Burrows)
Oops – the Jackie Lau book is Her Unexpected Roommate.
@Kit: I read “Girls of Riyadh” 11-12 years ago, too.
The thing I’ve found about books featuring Saudi culture (fictional or not) is that most of them draw from experiences that are now 20+ years old and, as you say, are by outsiders. Having read some more recent articles and books, it seems that there’s been a societal shift and that entities like the religious police no longer have the power (or intimidation factor) they once did. So when you read books like “In the Land of Invisible Women” by Qanta Ahmed (published in 2008, but based on her experiences roughly a decade earlier), you have to take it with a grain of salt.
I do wish we had more available in translation from Saudi citizens, especially women. I did try reading “Celestial Bodies” but I didn’t like the way it was formatted.