It’s September! Back to school! The beginning of fall! Lots of great new book releases!
Carrie: I’m reading The Change by Kirsten Miller ( A | BN | K | AB ) about a group of women in their late forties who develop super powers and set out to solve a series of murders. It’s flawed but also, as those young people say these days, LIT!
Shana: I’m listening to The Love Con by Seressia Glass ( A | BN | K ) on audiobook. I’m so invested in the story that I willingly cleaned my kitchen so I would have an excuse to keep listening. It reminds me a bit of Spoiler Alert, because there’s cosplay and a pining hero…but with a more confident heroine.
Elyse: I still have COVID brain so I’ve been looking at cookbooks and knitting patterns.
Sarah: I am about to start The Witches of Moonshyne Manor, which is about a coven of 80 year old witches banding together, and there may also be a heist.
Tara: I’m apparently on a memoir kick. I’m listening to Hannah Gadsby’s Ten Steps to Nanette, ( A | BN | K | AB ) which is like a memoir blended with Australian cultural history (cw: sexual assault and molestation, not sure about others yet). I’m also reading Faux Queen by Monique Jenkinson, ( A | BN | K ) which is a memoir from the first cisgender woman to be crowned as the winner of a major drag queen pageant.
Whatcha reading? Tell us all about it below!
Part 1
[CW/TW: Disordered eating, violence, stalking] I have two pieces of advice for anyone thinking about reading Cate C. Wells’s NICKY THE DRIVER (the second in her Underboss Insurrection series): First, if you are likely to be triggered by on-page descriptions of disordered eating, this might not be the book for you. The heroine spends much of the book restricting her food intake, counting calories (or, conversely, binging on junk food), and obsessively exercising. Be cautious if reading about this behavior would be upsetting for you because it is an ongoing element of the heroine’s life. Secondly, if you are considering reading NICKY THE DRIVER, do not expect a “standard romance”—or even a “standard dark/mafia/forced-marriage romance”—because it definitely is not. All that being said, if you want to read a well-written book about the various ways generational trauma plays out (specifically, in the ideas about women’s bodies, female autonomy or lack of it, domestic violence, and how men who are raised in a culture of violence and gender segregation tend to view women), NICKY THE DRIVER is very good, with a propulsive plot. Much as the hero of the RUN POSY RUN, the first book in the series, was a sociopath, so the hero of NICKY THE DRIVER is an obsessive stalker. Nicky has been fixated on Zita since junior high (although she was hardly aware of him), performing “dirty jobs” for the mafia (and thereby moving up in the mob hierarchy) in exchange for access to information about her. Zita, oblivious to the hero’s decade of machinations and desperate to escape her mafia family, is engaged to marry a medical student with no mafia ties. In his parents’ marriage, she sees something she’s never seen before: a woman treated as an equal, with respect and kindness, by her husband. But her dream of escape is shattered when she is ordered by the local mafia boss to marry Nicky as a way to ensure the good behavior of her mobbed-up older brother and to protect her secretly-transitioning-to-female younger sibling. It is only once Zita moves in with Nicky that she fully comprehends the level of his surveillance of her (“It’s not like it’s a great compliment to be the obsession of a cold-blooded killer, but it sure as shit is mind-blowing”), and how he knows her most “shameful” secret: her disordered relationships with food, exercise, and body image. For his part, Nicky (alternately self-aware and self-excusing) sees his obsession with Zita as being analogous to Zita’s obsessions with food/calories/exercising. And so begins the journey of two people trying to achieve their dreams in a confined world where dreams are discounted and where family histories play a huge role in how the present plays out. The book is full of both Zita’s and Nicky’s recollections of the mostly violent, dysfunctional gender & power dynamics between their parents, their grandparents, and even their great-grandparents, along with the casual daily violence of being part of a mob family. Key quotes: “What do I want? I want to be able to say no.” And, “You can’t blackmail people into happily ever after.” I enjoyed and recommend NICKY THE DRIVER, but I do think it’s best to expect a “romance-adjacent” story and be pleasantly surprised by how crisply Wells pulls it off.
C. M. Nascosta’s MOON BLOODED BREEDING CLINIC is the latest in her Cambric Creek series of human/monster romances; this one features a human heroine and a werewolf hero (the hero is the younger brother of the hero of RUN, RUN RABBIT). The heroine, a divorcee in her early thirties, is desperately hoping to conceive a child using the services of the title institution—which boasts a high success rate because, apparently, werewolf semen, along with the way werewolf males “knot” during sex, significantly increase the likelihood of conception. The hero has recently had to return to Cambric Creek from his job as an international photographer because of the pandemic (in the Cambric Creek universe, non-humans cannot get covid, but because humans can, much of the world is closed down). At loose ends, the hero volunteers to “work” at Moon Blooded Breeding Clinic and is matched with the heroine. When the two meet, however, what had been a transactional situation quickly becomes both romantic and erotic. Much of the non-sexual side of MBBC focuses on the hero’s family dynamics (he’s one of six brothers) and “how quickly he regressed into a frustrated 10-year-old the second he was with any of his family.” Part of the hero’s problems stem from his own inability to be the person he is outside Cambric Creek once he returns to his childhood home, and one of the benefits of his relationship with the heroine is that she sees him as a capable adult and not an overlooked child. While I thought the book’s ending felt a little rushed (and also hand-waved some of the more severe aspects of the pandemic and the shut-down), overall, I enjoyed Moon Blooded Breeding Clinic for both its hot romance and its analysis of family undercurrents. Recommended.
Taylor Fitzpatrick’s AND THEN continues the story of David & Jake, first introduced in COMING IN FIRST PLACE. There are some superficial similarities between David & Jake and Shane & Ilya (from Rachel Reid’s HEATED RIVALY/LONG GAME) in that both couples are professional hockey players—rivals in public, lovers in private—but the stories are completely different in style and tone. Like COMING IN FIRST PLACE, AND THEN is told (in third person) entirely from David’s POV. It’s more obvious here than in the previous book that David is on the spectrum: he struggles with reading facial expressions, verbal tones, social cues, and even the meaning of text messages. We’re always in his mind—and that is not always a comfortable place to be—but Fitzpatrick does a good job of letting us understand what is going on even when David isn’t always able to comprehend it. Aside from a brief stolen moment together early in the story, David & Jake spend the book’s entire time span apart and, for most of it, are essentially no longer a couple. It’s clear that Jake, desperately in love with David but frustrated with David’s inability to acknowledge any aspect of their relationship, is attempting (unsuccessfully) to move on; and it’s just as clear that David has no true grasp of how much Jake loves him and lives in fear of being outed (throughout the story, the circle of people who know that David is gay and has been involved with Jake continues to expand). David channels his anxieties and insecurities into laser-like focus on playing to his optimum ability, winning a major hockey award and helping his team reach the playoffs. David also becomes friends (perhaps, aside from Jake, his first true friend) with Kiro, a player from another team. I kept expecting David & Kiro to become lovers (Kiro appears to be interested, but David fails to read the signs), but that does not happen. However, by the end of the book, David is enjoying having a supportive friend and making more social connections. It’s apparent that David & Jake’s story isn’t over, but if the time lag between COMING IN FIRST PLACE and AND THEN is any indication, we may have to wait another two years before getting it. Recommended, but you have to read COMING IN FIRST PLACE first.
Part 2
One of my favorite sub-tropes of the fake relationship is when one MC is in a fake relationship and starts falling for someone else but can’t let that person know they’re not actually involved with their supposed “partner”. This is the premise of Alessandra Hazard’s JUST A BIT HEARTLESS, the 13th (!) book in her Straight Guys series. Last year I binge-read the first 12 books, which are all sexy, breezy reads featuring m/m couples usually (but not always) with one gay MC and one previously-straight MC who goes through a bi-awakening. In JUST A BIT HEARTLESS, Jordan (who identifies as straight, although when he was married he did participate in some MMF-threesomes) is charged with impersonating the partner of his CEO boss. The boss has distant mafia ties and he’s concerned that he, and by extension his boyfriend, will be targets of assassination attempts on an upcoming trip to Italy. I don’t know if Hazard was making a comment on end-stage capitalism with her premise, but a CEO expecting/demanding an employee to impersonate the CEO’s boyfriend (because the boyfriend’s life might be in danger), with no concern about the danger to the employee or with any expectation that the demand will be turned down, totally epitomizes our current entitled-billionaires-rule-us-all era. So Jordan accompanies his boss to Italy where, pretending to be the boss’s boyfriend, he meets the boss’s cousin, Damiano—and sparks fly. But nothing happens until Jordan & Damiano are abducted and left alone together in a cellar for over a week (cw/tw: violence against Damiano by their captors). The dynamic in this book reminded me of an earlier book in the series, JUST A BIT WRECKED, where two people experience a trauma together and, once they’re released, find they can only turn to each other for understanding and comfort. As usual, Hazard writes in a brisk, hand-wavy way. Laugh out loud (perhaps unintentionally) line: “$180,000 wasn’t small change, even for a billionaire.” Oh, I beg to differ, lol!
I’ve said before that no one would accuse A. E. Via of being a smooth prose stylist. Her writing is rather clunky with quite a bit of tell-not-show. However, she also writes with a lot of earnestness and heart; and I’m willing to overlook many stylistic mistakes in exchange for a story that catches me in the feels. In RAYNE (the third of Via’s True Lover’s Story series of m/m romances), the title character is a recovering sex addict who falls for Mike, an older man who owns a landscaping business. Rayne has a history of using sex to scam his partners, acquire material goods, make himself feel superior, and pursue oblivion. While his sexuality is definitely gay, Rayne has never been in an emotionally healthy relationship and has no idea how that might look. Meanwhile, Mike’s relationship history has been almost exclusively with women and he is baffled by his attraction to a young man close to two decades his junior and part of his own son’s social group. Despite her often unwieldy prose, Via does a nice job describing the various damaging ways a sex addict uses sex and what a bi-awakening looks like for a man approaching 50. Neither man has any real idea of how to make an emotional connection, and their attempts are sometimes more damaging than not. There’s quite a lot going on in RAYNE, not all of it necessary for the plot to move forward (a ruthless edit would have eliminated irrelevant subplots). There are some incidents of violence in the story (Mike still maintains ties to the motorcycle gang he once belonged to), along with some questionable authorial choices on the presentation of women: almost all the women in RAYNE are either endlessly-supportive and nurturing, like Mike’s adoptive mom or Rayne’s best friend, or selfish harpies, like Mike’s son’s long-lost mother. However, there’s also a lot of nice found family elements in the book, and it was good to see Rayne and Mike eventually establish a strong emotional footing in their lives.
I enjoy Sybil Bartel’s interconnected romantic-suspense books full of plucky heroines in trouble through no fault of their own, alpha heroes, massive amounts of fire power, high body counts, and plenty of (mostly D/s) sex. However, she does write to a template and if the template doesn’t appeal to you, her books probably won’t work for you. ZULU, the latest in Bartel’s Alpha Elite series, follows the template to a T (with the exception of the sex, which doesn’t arrive until very late in the book—although the hero thinks frequently about getting with the heroine): the heroine is a rich, young widow being pursued by her stepsons for nefarious reasons; the hero is a former SEAL now working for a private security firm; the hero helps the heroine escape the clutches of her stepsons and get away on her ultra-luxurious yacht. Bad guys proliferate and no one is trustworthy (except the hero and his fellow Alpha Elite employees). Here’s a representative quote (the hero thinking about the heroine): “She was an Ivy League educated, multilingual billionaire cruising the Mediterranean on a super yacht with a crew of former Israeli Special Forces catering to her every need. I was clocking hours in a cockpit with one Sig in a shoulder holster and another strapped to my ankle. I hadn’t been shot at this week or had to use lethal force, but no two weeks in my world were the same….” If you think that sort of tough guy talk, backed up by tough guy action, would appeal, Bartel’s universe may be for you.
NEED YOU NOW by M. O’Keefe – A- – powerful story of a young woman who sacrificed her freedom and cut herself off from the man she loved to protect her unborn child from her criminal, white supremacist family. The first third of the novella (? – it felt that short to me) recounts her bleak backstory and sets up her equally bleak present, with a looming threat from both her trash family and a mysterious benefactor whose “assistance” only causes the parolee heroine more problems. The middle third is nothing but hate sex, and I can’t even…the anger rolling off her baby daddy (aka “the hero”) is incomprehensible to me when he knows the sacrifices the heroine has made while he has led a privileged, comfortable life with the loving support of his moderately wealthy parents. He finally pulls his head out of his a$$ with “Suddenly the sex we’d had seemed dirty. Rotten. I should not have given in to her need to be punished and my need to punish her. She deserved to get what she wanted, but she deserved kindness, too. And I wanted, needed, to be kind to her.” But he couldn’t afford to think that way before the two hate sex scenes because in this book hate sex is hot sex while loving sex is both brief and bland.
SPOILER ALERT by Olivia Dade – B- – Fandom-based romance that take place against the backdrop of a negligibly-veiled Game of Thrones franchise. I’m fascinated by the layering going on here: this is like self-insert RPF fanfic that thematically mirrors the preferred fandom pairing (Brienne/Jaime) across both its fictional doubling (Lavinia/Aeneas from the in-universe series “Gates of the Gods”…which I would have mistaken for a Stargate reference if the series weren’t described in such detail) and the book’s protagonists while simultaneously lambasting GoT’s showrunners for the (apparently disastrous and disappointing) final season of the show. Note: I’ve only seen half an episode of GoT, so I was able to enjoy this from a removed perspective. If I had been a GoT fan, I think the wish-fulfillment (the star shares fandom’s opinions of the show’s direction but is kept silent by the obligations of professional etiquette! the star secretly participates in the fandom! the star falls in love with a fan!) would have left me cringing too hard to finish the book. I mean, despite being well-written, that’s the kind of fanfic I would pass right over on AO3. Also, I think making your emotionally damaged mother break down in tears on her birthday because you chose that occasion to confront her with what a terrible parent she’s been feels more like sadistic revenge than healthy detaching from a dysfunctional, fatphobic family.
Also read ALL THE FEELS – B – in the same series, and this is where my GoT ignorance became an obstacle rather than an aid to enjoying the book because I was constantly wondering if Cupid/Psyche were a corollary for another GoT pairing or if the themes of the Cupid character’s story arc were just more Jaime Lannister. Plus, was pegging and/or unidentified-character-as-natural-bottom a literal fandom in-joke or just a representation of fanon/head canon in general?
NICKY THE DRIVER by Cate C. Wells – C – Trigger warnings: disordered eating, transphobia, misogyny, casual violence, general mafia asshattery, and a woefully unequal romance with Nicky obsessing over Zita while Zita (maternally) obsesses over her younger sibling. Cate C Wells has an incredible gift for crafting characters, but you have to squeeze very hard to eke a romantic relationship from this story.
not a romance, not a happy book: ASKING FOR IT by Louise O’Neill – no rating – TW/CW: rape, slut-shaming, mean girls, injustice. A young adult novel about a beautiful, popular yet unlikable Irish girl who is gang raped while intoxicated at a party. The book is not designed for entertainment value or literary merit. Instead, it exists to provoke discussion of rape culture. The impact comes from positioning a protagonist so unsympathetic — vain, shallow, self-centered, casually cruel, and having discouraged an acquaintance from reporting a date rape in the past by saying “no one likes a girl who makes a fuss” — that “asking for it” refers as much to her character as it does to the way she dresses and behaves on the night of the party against a series of horrific violations of her body, her privacy, and her dignity.
I finished Elena Armas’new book, The American Roommate Experiment, last night and loved it. As the title suggests, there is forced proximity, also, the book features a romance novels writer. Given that this is the author’s second book after the Spanish Love Deception (which would appeal to fans of The Hating Game), and the main character is struggling with writing her second novel, the struggles and insecurities described felt very genuine. It is definitely a slowburn romance which is very much my thing.
My very very long reading list features the new Sally Thorne book but I will probably wait for spookier weather to start it.
I needed a win from a romance author I know I enjoy after some disappointments, so I started a new-to-me KJ Charles, “The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximel.” About 30% of the way through and enjoying it so far.
The disappointments:
“Branded Ann” by Merry Shannon: Branded Ann, a notorious pirate, kills a privateer as part of her quest for a treasure map and takes his much younger wife Violet captive. Violet has a dark past but has become deeply religious and is determined to make the best of her circumstances; Ann is fascinated by her apparent lack of fear. One of my strongest turnoffs in romance is a main character whose unwillingness to get attached is demonstrated by their sleeping with sex workers in a setting where economic coercion is so present that consent is just not meaningful. I hate the whitewashing when all sex workers are perfectly happy with their circumstances but I hated what this book does even more — Violet spent most of her life in a brothel and would have done anything to escape that life, while Ann cheerfully sleeps with and yet has contempt for other prostitutes, thinking about how different Violet is because she held on to her beauty. Really did not expect this from Shannon based on her other book I read and it bummed me out so much. I finished it and found the plot and writing style engaging enough, but man, I wish there was more of a middle ground in f/f romance between “perfect characters who always have healthy communication” and one heroine who acts like the alpha heroes of old-school het romance. Also, CW for many mentions and threats of sexual assault.
“The Gunrunner and Her Hound” by Maria Ying: Weird little novella about a love triangle turned polyamorous relationship between an ice queen gun trader, Viveca, and her two female bodyguards. Also takes place in a near-future Hong Kong in a world where China is an ascendant power and America has collapsed; one MC fought as a child soldier in American border wars. There’s way too much going on here for the length in terms of characterization and relationship development, especially since only two of the three people in this relationship have POV chapters. (Viveca is also another woman who routinely pays for sex with escorts, something that is vanishingly rare in real life but oddly common in lesbian romance. Hate it!)
Non-romance of interest:
“The Westing Game” by Ellen Raskin: A wealthy businessman leaves his fortune to whichever of his sixteen neighbors can solve his posthumous “game” to find the identity of his murderer. A fun, twisty mystery that’s written for middle-grade readers but doesn’t feel like it’s talking down to an audience of kids at all.
“The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side” by Agatha Christie: Film star Marina Gregg moves to Miss Marple’s village of St. Mary Mead looking for peace and quiet, only for a local woman to die mysteriously at her home. Another very fun mystery with a perfect ending twist.
“The Push” by Ashley Audrain: Psychological thriller-ish? The narrator, Blythe, is desperate to be a good mom after being abandoned by her own mother. But when Blythe’s daughter Violet is born, she fails to bond with a child who seems to dislike her, and increasingly suspects as Violet grows up that her daughter is capable of terrible things. The blurb copy compared this to “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” a book I love, and I think that was a mistake on the publisher’s part since this isn’t nearly as good. If you want a book about the psychology of ambivalent motherhood, read “Kevin” instead, and if you want that book to be a dark thriller, try “The Need” by Helen Phillips — skip this one.
“Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead” by Emily Austin: Gilda, a young woman dealing with panic attacks and constant thoughts of death, responds to an ad for “free therapy” that turns out to be at a Catholic church where the priest mistakes her for a job applicant. Despite being a lesbian and a lifelong atheist, she accepts the job, but her obsessive thoughts get worse when she learns the previous receptionist may have been murdered. I read this slowly because the narration is so driven by depression and anxiety, but I really liked it. Very funny and moving story about the ways life can get out of control during a mental health crisis.
Missed the first August WAYR due to being in the middle of a Chonker (see: Non-romance section below) and missed the second one due to the server thing, so I’ve got a few more than usual! That said, on a pretty good streak of picking up romance novels/novellas that I’ve enjoyed.
Romance:
PART OF YOUR WORLD by Abby Jimenez: A little bit too imperfect but I was incredibly charmed by this book! My first time reading Jimenez, and I liked her sense of narrative voice. Some of the magical realism came off a little corny, but ultimately I liked the Disney-ish aspects here—the conflicts between familial obligations feel more believable. Big CW for IPV/DV, which Jimenez handled with great compassion. I got some SEP vibes from this—not sure if it was the charming-small-town thing or the dialogue or what, but I’m not mad about it (like slightly updated contemporary mores SEP).
ALL THE FEELS by Olivia Dade: I’m continuing to enjoy this series quite a bit! Alex and Lauren were a delight together. Lots of good stuff about, well, toxic working conditions, but more on getting out of those/finding healthy ways to do the career one wants.
BEGUILING THE BEAUTY by Sherry Thomas: Mess me UP, Sherry Thomas!!!! Venetia! Christian! Unf, delicious.
THE HOOK-UP PLAN by Farrah Rochon: A satisfying conclusion to this series! I adore London as a character and she is SO competent at her job, I need to read more competence p**n in romance. Drew’s also pretty on top of his job! I was skeptical when his past hedge fund career was referenced (in the sense of not trusting him to be a good person), but the entrepreneurial venture he was doing in the book made sense as a character decision. I also liked the time spent with London’s family members.
THE DEVIL COMES COURTING by Courtney Milan: I laughed, I cried, it moved me. Devastating and beautiful.
IF THE BOOT FITS by Rebekah Weatherspoon: SO charming and great pacing up until everything wrapped up VERY quickly at the end; I appreciated the tweaks to the Cinderella plot to match characterization and also leave Amanda and Sam with agency.
STAR DUST by Emma Barry and Genevieve Turner: HOT on the chemistry and also very lovely to watch prickly Anne-Marie learn to be vulnerable with Kit, whose arc is less interesting to me but that’s because playboy-to-devoted-husband-and-father is pretty common. The space race stuff continues to be a fun setting.
Non-romance:
FULFILLMENT: AMERICA IN THE SHADOW OF AMAZON by Alec MacGillis: Really thorough examination of how Amazon embodies and exacerbates late-stage capitalism
THE WALL OF STORMS by Ken Liu: this is The Chonker that had me slowed down for some of my August reading, largely because it’s 850 pages long and I was only finding brief snippets to chip away at it. I didn’t realize until starting this that the first book, THE GRACE OF KINGS, is really just like a big prologue to the plot stuff that kicks off here. A few more digressions on the nature of governance and on engineering & scientific innovation than the first one, which contribute to the page length. I am intrigued by the direction of the political intrigue as well as some of the character arcs. Not picking up the third one until I will also have time to read the fourth one (so, like, Christmas-ish probably).
WHAT WE DON’T TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT FAT by Aubrey Gordon: Really great contextualization of the research, very moving yet informative, and I know SO many people who really, really need to read this (or even a handful of chapters).
THE ORDER OF THE PURE MOON REFLECTED IN WATER by Zen Cho: Quick novella with a great setting (inspired by the Malay Emergency but also wuxia) and mood; I’m hoping Cho revisits this world and these characters
Up next:
I have some recent-ish preorders to catch up on: Jackie Lau’s HER UNEXPECTED ROOMMATE to close out Cider Bar Sisters, THE RAVEN by Beverly Jenkins to wrap up Women Who Dare, and THE SWEETEST CONNECTION by Denise Williams to finish up her airport-based series. I’m having decision paralysis on where to start and also a little bit because I’ve really enjoyed each of these series and I’m sad to be leaving their little worlds.
I recommended two of the books I’ve read recently in the book club rec league, but I’ll sing their praises again here:
THE STARDUST THIEF by Chelsea Abdullah. Took me a little while to get into it (a first I was thinking it was going to be a CITY OF BRASS re-tread because it also has a plucky young woman heroine with a jinn companion and an evil king/emperor/sultan type), but once I did, it flew by. There are three main POV characters—Loulie, the midnight merchant with her jinn companion, Qadir, Mazen, the younger son of the sultan, and Aisha, one of the forty thieves who serves Mazen’s older brother, Omar—and they all have great character arcs. There’s lots of magic, mythology, and thievery, and I am excited for the next book in the series.
THE BANGALORE DETECTIVES CLUB by Harini Nagendra—a mystery set in Bangalore in 1921. I enjoyed the heroine, Kaveri, and her husband, Ramu. The setting is really what makes the book work—I enjoyed the descriptions of Bangalore, the different characters, the interplay between the British and the Indian characters, and the cultural nuance. I don’t think I’ve read any other books set in 1920s India, so it was nice to visit a new place, so to speak.
I really wanted to love CM Nascosta’s second two Cambric Creek books, SWEET BERRIES and MOON BLOODED BREEDING CLINIC after falling so hard for MORNING GLORY MILKING FARM, but I just didn’t connect with any of the MCs in either book. The sex is still hot as all get out, but while SWEET BERRIES just wasn’t quite my jam (both the hero and heroine are somewhat socially awkward), MBBC, just has some plot/character issues that didn’t get resolved well. Specifically, the hero, Lowell, really has some issues with his family that are played off as “oh, we’re a bit rough and tumble ‘cause we’re werewolves” but I would say are into abusive dynamics territory. Similarly, the heroine is coming off a divorce from a cold and emotionally withholding ex, and while she had a therapist, part of me was like, “kinky sex is not the emotional work of figuring out how to be with someone, especially someone who has so many of his own issues…” I saw on IG recently that Nascosta says she specifically writes non-NT characters and that she doesn’t care if you don’t think her books are linear or flow, but there’s at least two points where a character asks one of the MCs a simple, direct question and then there’s like 5 pages of mental meandering—so much so that I stopped reading to flip ahead and figure out what the answer to the question actually was before I could read the meandering. I think I’m probably not quite the right audience for these two, but I’m still keeping MGMF on my top 10 list for this year.
Currently flying through LORD HOLT TAKES A BRIDE, although I will flag that there’s body-shaming and some abusive behavior directed at the heroine because of her weight. Also, I do want to say that I always appreciate the comments on the books on sale post because they give me a good sense of whether or not a book is likely to be for me—the folks who compared this to A WEEK TO BE WICKED and one of Loretta Chase’s novels were correct and I thank you. 🙂
Pre-caffeine brain fart, that’s TO CATCH A RAVEN by Beverly Jenkins.
The only book book I’ve read recently is DESPERATION IN DEATH, by J.D. Robb. Reasonably solid book for the series, but it’s about child trafficking, so ALL the TW related to that and abuse in general.
Otherwise, I’ve been reading a fairly random assortment of X-men comic collections. Some good, some bad, some wtf. It’s been great for my reading goal.
I started reading Mine Till Midnight, by Lisa Kleypas the other morning.
Five chapters in, and already I want to be a part of this family.
I keep trying to read outside my comfort zone, but only because my comfort zone is apparently now limited to the complete works of KJ Charles. It continues to not work. It’s like the best another book can do now is disappoint me by not being what I want but at least not piss me off tooooo egregiously. I don’t want to be this tightly circumscribed by my own preferences but it I guess it’s just as dangerous to get exactly what I want as I was warned it would be. Who knew?
So, keeping in mind that I am clearly being unreasonably harsh even for me (I also had to spend a lot of time with family recently as if my reading woes aren’t enough to make me sulky) there were only three days I read a non-KJ Charles book I didn’t entirely hate since last time.
Taste of Gold and Iron wasn’t bad, although I preferred the ex to the main couple (although that whole dynamic was as well handled as possible, assuming for some mysterious reason [why????] it can’t be the m/m/m we all want). Also it had a YA vibe, although there is eventually sex. It better be the start of a series, both because the ending was inadequate, and I want more.
I am ok with The Monsters We Defy, although honestly it felt a little educational and plodding for a fun magical heist. I abhor didactic entertainment (it’s an oxymoron!) so it’s very difficult to convey world building/impressive research with a sufficiently light hand for my tastes. No sex, which is always disappointing, but what romance there was, was incredibly appealing in all cases. Again, there better be sequels.
But speaking of being careful what I wish for, I semi almost enjoyed His Secret Illuminations by Scarlett Gale because the gender swapped cloistered innocent/fearsome warrior pairing was entertaining, so I was excited there was already a sequel. But then the sequel just highlighted that it’s an endless D&D campaign but there can’t be adventure if there aren’t any real stakes because everyone is magically healed from their inconsequential life threatening booboos and no one even has to have wet boots when it rains. Everyone instantly excels at everything and is relentlessly cool so there goes my cloistered innocent half of the entertaining pairing, plus there were (obvious but idk possibly a spoiler?) undead enemies in tiresome detail so it wasn’t just soothing fluff to read. Lots of sex at least. If I had stopped with the first one I might have been pleased by it except I would have just been mad there wasn’t the sequel yet so clearly the problem is me.
I can only assume these books would have been excellent or at least good if I weren’t so disgruntled going in.
I have RED WIDOW by Alma Katsu; A SPINDLE SPLINTERED by Alix E. Harrow; and RODEO CHRISTMAS AT EVERGREEN RANCH by Maisey Yates waiting on my TBR pile.
I’m also looking forward to A MERRY LITTLE MEET CUTE by Julie Murphy and Sierra Simone that comes out next week. I am ready for holiday romances and the Fall-oween-thanks-xmas season to start. LOL. 🙂
I’m also watching PARTNER TRACK on Netflix about a lawyer trying to make partner at her firm and juggling relationships, romantic and otherwise. There is the nice guy and then the one-time guy she can’t stop thinking about. I think a lot of romance readers would enjoy it.
@kkw—have you tried T. Kingfisher’s books? Her Paladin series might work well for you—it has some traits in common with KJ Charles (also a highly reliable author for me), including heroes/heroines who have Seen Some Shit but are doing their best to cope and muddle through by loving people as best they can.
KILLERS OF A CERTAIN AGE by Deanna Raybourne was everything I hoped! Check it out!
Can’t say more today, but hope you are all well and looking forward to your recs!
The Stand-In by Lily Chu – about a quarter in, so far it’s more women’s fiction than romance. I like the main character a lot, great friendship and family relationships.
Bingo Love graphic novel, the Jackpot edition with bonus short comics by various creators. I was surfing around hoopla and it caught my eye because one of the bonus comics is written by Alyssa Cole (only one page though.) This has been favorably reviewed on here. The f/f grandmas romance I didn’t know I needed.
Away Laughing on a Fast Camel by Louise Rennison (reread) – number 5 or so in the Georgia Nicolson diaries that start with Angus, Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging. Good silly fun with misbehaving cats, false eyelash emergencies, snarky teenage protagonist.
The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers (reread) – the characters are so good, love this little found family and their spaceship home.
Somebody here mentioned Medieval romance a while back, so I decided to have a go:
First up, Kingdom of Dreams by Judith McNaught – my first ever of hers. The language is a bit flowery in parts but I really enjoyed this. It was first published in 1989, so I was ready for it to be problematic but it really wasn’t. To me, a relative newbie to Romancelandia (and curious to read some of these ‘pioneers’), it was just a proper, old-school, romantic tale; technically enemies to lovers, with two strong characters facing the requisite obstacles to overcome. The hero’s battlefield abilities were a bit far-fetched in parts but I was happy to suspend disbelief and just go with it. I’m probably not selling it very well but it’s worth your time, especially if you are a fan of historicals and particularly those set in Scotland.
My second foray was Midnight Eyes by Sarah Brophy. The FMC is blind and has to submit to an arranged marriage to a warrior, so he can claim his lands. He turns out to be a big softy where she is concerned but because her Evil Brother is behind the arrangement, she fights how she really feels about him. Angst and political machinations ensue. I’m not often picky about modern language creeping into period settings but this author had made no attempt to write the period with any authenticity – some of the dialogue was particularly poor – and it regularly took me out of the moment, so I’m branding this one a disappointment.
Contrast it with Romancing the Duke by Tessa Dare which I happened to be reading at the same time (coincidentally featuring a blind character but this time the H), where she writes in a modern style but somehow manages not to grate on the reader. Having only read my first book by Ms Dare recently, I now find I am using them as a palate cleanser because although you pretty much know what you are getting, the characters and relationships are delightful and I often find myself smiling while reading.
I’ve been experimenting with contemporaries – buying them for Kindle when they’re on offer. Most recently The Roommate by Rosie Danan. I hate to DNF because I am appreciative of the work that has gone in but I found it a real slog. Utterly unbelievable characters and a weak story, plus an unfulfilled promise of plenty of heat which was parcelled out parsimoniously and not with any great chemistry. I shall continue to experiment as I learn what I like and don’t like in modern romance – I have plenty lined up.
As the weather has suddenly become autumnal here in the UK, I have been stocking my Kindle with mistletoe this and Christmas that by some reliable historical writers like Amy Rose Bennett and Erica Ridley. I am being disciplined and saving them until December.
I also one-clicked on Passion by Lisa Valdez after reading a Twitter thread yesterday. It appears that we only got two of a proposed four-book series from the author because of the backlash to the ‘explicit nature’ of the writing. Suspect I will be reading it next…
Finally, on a tangential romance connection, I am three-quarters through The Ink Black Heart by you know who. I have read all of the Strike books and the BBC TV series has given me the fabulous Holliday Grainger and Tom Burke to populate the characters, so I find them fairly easy to get along with. All I will say is I suspect she’s cannibalised a lot of the Internet abuse thrown her way. And she really needs an editor – it’s over 1,000 pages.
So a mixed month, success-wise. Looking forward to reading all your recs.
I’ve been doing a deep dive into all the free books I downloaded to my Kindle in the last few months, to the detriment of the ever-growing pile of library books the GBPL keeps giving me. My own fault. I cancelled my entire reserve last year when I went to take care of my Dad, and it resulted in me putting everything back on reserve in large numbers, then adding anything that caught my eye like a literary magpie. And that was to the detriment of all the books I had actually purchased but set aside because Library Chicken. That Covid has changed the GBPL return policy: they automatically renew any book that doesn’t have another reserve on it the day before it’s due, has not helped. I’ve had books for almost two months! Bad library patron. Bad. And they keep giving me more! I had a hard talk with myself yesterday and so, after I finished THE MURDER OF MR WICKHAM (Claudia Gray), I returned it and all but five books, cancelled any reserve that wasn’t for a new release and put everything on my for later list. Handy tool my library has which I will now pull from with more restraint and add to with more regularity.
THE MURDER OF MR WICKHAM… I know others have read and liked this one, but I think I was underwhelmed. Maybe I really wanted Lizzie to be the murderer. Or Lydia, if she had still been around, because that would have made her a much more likeable character in retrospect. I can see this turning into a series with our second generation Austinites investigating crimes while we catch up with the original characters as they deal with bumps in their HEAs.
Few of the free Kindle reads are worth mentioning except THE LIBRARIAN AND THE ORC (Finley Fenn). It’s not that I’d recommend it, the writing was average at best. I found it a bit repetitive, the heroine was quite the doormat for way too long, and the disturbingly copious amounts and uses for Orc ejaculate less than… appetizing. YMMV. Still, I keep thinking that there’s some sort of allegorical commentary buried in there about choice, women’s health, xenophobia, and the military industrial complex. I’ve said on more than one occasion that I’m not a terribly analytical reader so it’s a little startling to think I’m seeing subtext in a monster romance, but there it is.
And, because I am resolved to read the actual books that I actually own, I FINALLY started Nalini Singh’s ARCHANGEL’S LIGHT. I seriously do not know how I let this go for almost an entire year, because look at that cover.
LOOK. AT. IT.
https://i5.walmartimages.com/asr/e305d82d-d56c-480c-8d00-c4941d022948.5650f0e43b4ce591a3ef65843f5860ac.jpeg?odnWidth=612&odnHeight=612&odnBg=ffffff
Okay, so it was in a box with the numerous other languishing books. But still. Illium and Aodhan at last. The sun is out, summer is waning, I really need to get out of the house but…. Okay, errands now. Book and wine on the patio later.
@Anne, since we must have been posting at the same time, I’m coming back to say if you want to read more medieval romance, I whole-heartedly recommend you pick up Roberta Gellis. The Roselynde Chronicles starting with JOANNA were treasures of my youth. You don’t need to worry about authenticity. Gellis put in the work, and it shows on every page. Yes, they were written in the 70s, but like all good work, they hold up.
@Anne: And, if you haven’t already read it, Anya Seton’s KATHERINE is the sine qua non of historical romance fiction. Katherine was John of Gaunt’s mistress (later, wife) and Geoffrey Chaucer’s sister-in-law. The book completely immerses you in Medieval England. Highly recommended.
I finally got interlibrary loans of the more eyebrow-raising BL manga titles of late…first up were vols. 1 and 2 of Ogeretsu Tanaka’s YARICHIN BITCH CLUB. Transfer student Tono joins his new high school’s photography club, only to find it’s a den of all-male debauchery. Even if the protagonists weren’t so young, the execution would still seem gross and rapey…aside from the hero and the classmate who gallantly fakes a relationship with him so they don’t get gangbanged by the other guys (uh, yeah), the other characters cross the line from “sex-obsessed” into “psycho.” Sigh! In happier news, volume 1 of Reibun Ike’s DICK FIGHT ISLAND turned out to be an unexpected delight! The plot involves an island archipelago that, every four years, determines the next king through a tournament of, uh, swordplay battles (wink, wink!). Youngest competitor Harto has just returned from college abroad with a secret weapon for winning. It can be confusing to keep track of who’s who, but the gorgeous art, surprisingly intriguing world-building, and entertaining smut compensate gloriously. There is a plot twist halfway through that turns things into a more traditional romance (sorta), which will either melt readers’ hearts or make them sad that the wall-to-wall sexytimes got complicated. I *adored* it, and will be seeking out the Volume 2 prequel for my very own…
@Donna Marie and @Anne, I thought the Roselynde Chronicles begin with ROSELYNDE (Alinor and Simon). That being said, I second the recommendation if you want to get a solid sense of 12th century England. I also second the recommendation of KATHERINE.
In preparation for the release of THE RISING TIDE (which came out last Tuesday), I’ve been re-reading the Vera Stanhope mysteries. Not romance, but there you go. One thing that’s been interesting watching the show and reading the books is seeing how the books differ from the episodes based on them. (Off the top of my head, only four episodes of the TV series are based on the books.)
I have over 5k ebooks and yet I keep re-reading things. There are books I have that I know I’ll never read, yet I resist permanently deleting them. Does anyone else go through that. (I’ve had a Nook for nearly 12 years and I buy a lot of things because they look interesting and they’re on sale for less than a latte, so why not try them? This is how I ended up with so many books. Yeesh.)
Over the past two weeks ~
— completed my Touchstone series reread with In Arcadia and Snow Day both by Andrea K Höst.
— reread Paladin of Souls (Chalion Book 2) by Lois McMaster Bujold which I enjoyed revisiting. While I’ve reread The Curse of Chalion many times, this was my first reread of this book.
— read Soul Taken by Patricia Briggs. While I enjoyed it, I still favor the author’s Alpha and Omega books.
— read a number of book samples and abandoned several books.
— the science fiction romance Eclipse the Moon by Jessie Mihalik which I enjoyed. You should definitely start with the first book in the series to best understand this story.
— for my distant book group, I read The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich; this was an intriguing book with a touch of magical realism that is set mostly on a Native American reservation in the 1950s.
— The Call: A Psychic Paranormal Romantic Comedy (Building the Circle Book 1) by Maggie M Lily. I found the book confusing in parts particularly the psychic element which I’d imagined would concern the hero or heroine but did not. That said, I do think I will go on to book two which features one of the brothers of this book’s hero.
@Katy Kingson, you are absolutely correct! It does start with ROSELYNDE. Duh! Not enough coffee when I posted if I thought JOANNA came first…
@TripleD, yes, KATHERINE, but also, my personal favorite, THE GREEN DARKNESS. Not medieval, but where I learned about priest holes. And possibly the gateway to my paranormal romance addiction.
@ the above, thumbs up for pretty much anything by Anya Seton.
Severely disappointed in DEVIL’S WEB by Mary Balough. One of those early novels that just did not age well. I know some of you liked it but for me there was way too insufficient grovel for the multiple rapes, not to mention the verbal and emotional abuse. Going straight to the discard pile.
I bounced off of Sarah Addison Allen’s new book Other Birds, and also another recent (impulse) acquisition, Sara Nisha Adams’ The Reading List, because I wasn’t ready for the intense grieving in the stories. I’ve set both aside for now.
I did very much enjoy Sangu Mandanna’s The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, though I found the romance plot a bit underdone. I haven’t seen if there will be more stories around the witches but if so I will happily read them.
I’m currently reading the latest British Library Crime Classics collection of short stories, Murder by the Book, edited by Martin Edwards (it’s also the name of my favorite local bookstore). It’s a strong collection of, as the subtitle says, mysteries for bibliophiles, and as usual it’s adding to my reading list. The chilling Christianna Brand story, “Dear Mr. Editor…” sent me off in search of more of her work. It’s also the first BL collection I’ve seen to come with trigger warnings, which is appreciated.
I don’t know what I’ll be in the mood for next, but I keep re-reading bits of Victoria Goddard’s books. Like @Katy Kingston, I keep re-reading while ignoring the TBR lists, and @DonnaMarie has me re-thinking my library lists.
@Jess:
For what it’s worth, I haven’t read that book, but that mystery is famously based on a true story about a movie star. Google Gene Tierney and her daughter.
@Jess:
I’m referring to the Agatha Christie mystery. Apparently, I didn’t write that comment clearly. Lol.
@Deborah – “I think making your emotionally damaged mother break down in tears on her birthday because you chose that occasion to confront her with what a terrible parent she’s been feels more like sadistic revenge than healthy detaching from a dysfunctional, fatphobic family.”
Yes! Thank you for articulating this. The way the family relationships were handled in the book made me uncomfortable, but I wasn’t really able to explain why. The revenge feeling was there with how the hero’s parents were handled as well. He’d been playing a part with them for years and suddenly decided to write them off because they didn’t understand him. It just didn’t seem to fit with his overall portrayal.
It would’ve been an A book for me if not for the family parts. I’ve been hesitant to try the second book because of the way the author has characterized it on Twitter.
@Katy Kingston, yes, I can identify. I have over 8,000 books on my Kindle plus a boatload of new and unread books from the library. And yet I choose to reread old favorites; I think it’s because I am guaranteed a good read while the others are an unknown.
Still not a lot of time for reading due to work…
Reread a few things for comfort, BOSSY and UPSIDE DOWN by NR Walker. Both set in Sydney, though two very different stories. Both m/m romances that come with some very funny moments and lots of heart. Upside Down especially is a lot of fun, whilst also dealing with serious things like both MCs being asexual and one of them just coming to terms with that.
MY FAKE BILLIONAIRE by Ana Ashley and Rhys Everly is a short story I picked up because it was free and sounded cute. It’s more fairy tale than realistic story though and went a little differently than what I had imagined when I read the blurb. If you want something short and sexy and don’t care about reality, it’s ok. But I don’t think any luxury resort (or any hotel at that) would look kindly upon an employee hooking up with a guest!
Just started Mary Balogh’s REMEMBER LOVE but I’m not fare enough yet to say anything about it.
In my non-romance reading that I am carrying round to work etc., I’m into Barbara Vinken’s ANGEZOGEN – DAS GEHEIMNIS DER MODE. Very theoretical/philosophical look at fashion and how and why fashions change. Looks at a lot of the well-known theories about fashion that have gone before and works through them to her own theories. Very, very theoretical indeed, not an easy read and I wish she’d reflect more on just how chauvinist some of these theories were. Though the book is about 10 years old and of course the world has moved along since then… I’ve thought about giving up, but somehow I still want to finish it and see if she comes up with something I like. Incidentally I watched a documentary on another theme the other night in which Vinken was interviewed, and I actually liked her and her views in that a lot. So I’m keeping up. I got the book at garage sale, in new and unused condition for a couple of bucks, so it’s not a big loss in thd end.
I did end up loving Beverly Jenkins’ TO CATCH A RAVEN. Well worth reading if you like historicals at all. I enjoy her characterization so much and appreciate the history I learn in her books and the connections (lovers and family) in her work. Her works always feel like classics to me.
Aly Hazelwood’s LOVE ON THE BRAIN is my favourite of hers so far. Something about these two characters really worked for me. I really liked the way she handled the hero who does the I like you so much it turns into treating you badly trope and the heroine who is so badly hurt she’s just not in having relationships trope, two that I often don’t like. This really worked for me, and I loved the competence p0rn and believed how these two characters were geniuses in their field and messed up in their social skills. I especially liked the heroine’s interactions with her sister.
I’m not sure why I started Adriana Herrera’s A CARIBBEAN HEIRESS IN PARIS with such trepidation. Maybe because I’d liked but not loved what I’d read of her contemporary work, but I ended up feeling absorbed in this time and place and these characters. What a great entrepreneurial heroine! I’m looking forward to the rest of this series.
I loved Denise Williams’ earlier work, particularly her first two novels, so I was surprised when at first DO YOU TAKE THIS MAN didn’t catch me up immediately. I think I must have started it in the wrong headspace (I’d just gone back to the dayjob after the summer off) or perhaps it just took me a while to like the difficult heroine and the damaged hero, but I got more and more caught up in this one as it went along and I ended up liking it a lot. Could have used a little more at the end to establish more deeply how the characters were ready to be together and that their changes they had to make to get there were solid (though I did still believe in it from ongoing hints throughout the text, just they protested so much and so hard for so late in the story). Overall, though, Williams has become a writer I count on.
Totally agree with @Pear’s comments about Farrah Rochon’s THE HOOKUP PLAN. Ditto all the way.
I so love the Hell’s Belles of Sarah MacLean’s HEARTBREAKER, and truly enjoyed this combination of romp and serious issues. MacLean does this so well.
Megan Bannen’s THE UNDERTAKING OF HART AND MERCY was a fantasy romance that blended the two so well that I felt like I got the best of both genres. The secondary world is wonderfully well-realized, and so are the two characters. What a delight!
I read other things, too, but these are the ones that strike me as most worth sharing.
@Kareni, I think there’s a lot of truth in the safety of known books. It’s like spending time with old friends you can trust.
Friends, I have read so much great stuff and I don’t quite know how to organize my thoughts. I’ve decided to focus this post on things that I really enjoyed and that I haven’t seen a lot written about in this forum.
That said, I’m going to start by mentioning a book that I wrote about in another part of SBTB, which is Julia Whelan’s THANKS FOR LISTENING. Such a wonderful romance- well crafted, surprising, lovely. It hasn’t gotten the recognition (yet) that it deserves. And the audio book is perfection.
April White’s three related books CODE OF CONDUCT, CODE OF HONOR and CODE OF ETHICS were fast paced and not too violent for the thriller/romance category. Each has a very interesting H and h with unusual backstories. The third one is particularly interesting. The h’s family lives in a compound in Northwest Canada to which the H and h retreat as they’re being pursued by Russian mobsters. The depictions of the wilderness and the rugged conditions were fascinating, and the way that they trapped one of the bad guys using an outhouse will remain in my brain for a long time. Lots of fun. You should read in order.
One of thing that I enjoy is when an author incorporates other authors’ work into their stories, and April White did that several times. One of the characters was listening to an audio book by Kevin Hearne, narrated by Luke Daniels, and was so over the moon about it that I had to go find it. Maybe everyone else knows about Hearne’s books and Daniels’ narrations, but I did not. Wow! I borrowed INK & SIGIL from the library on audiobook, devoured that, and just started the second in that series on audiobook. I am awed by Daniels’ ability to do voices and accents. Granted, I am not skilled in evaluating English, Scottish and Irish accents, but to my ears he did an amazing job. And he’s American! I enjoyed Hearne’s worldbuilding enough that I found a used copy of the first in another series of his, HOUNDED, to read next.
I enjoyed a lighthearted and sexy series that I stumbled upon on KU by Evie Alexander called HIGHLAND GAMES and HOLLWOOD GAMES. Again in Scotland – the first involves a city girl who comes to the highlands to restore a cottage she inherits from a distant relative, the fish out of water antics as she tries to do it herself, her falling for a carpenter who both objects to her being there ‘cuz he wanted the property for himself but can’t help but fall for her, all the fun characters in the village, a missing laird and his crumbling castle etc. etc. There are more coming out in the series. Just easygoing and well written fun and sexy stories.
Moving away from romances, I wanted to mention two other things:
1. Moshin Hamid’s THE LAST WHITE MAN — a Kafkaesque imagining of a world in which white people wake up as black. Well worth reading, and it’s not very long.
2. To recognize banned book week (9/18-9/24) I’m reading some of the books that the American Library Association designated as most often challenged in libraries/school/university collections in 2021 and that I haven’t previously read. If we all start checking those books out of libraries/buying them at bookstores it will be just a small way to push back against the fearmongering and hate that’s behind those challenge. In that vein, I just finished Maia Kobabe’s graphic novel GENDER QUEER. Number one on the ALA’s list of books contested in 2021. I recommend it. I am figuring out my next one — maybe it will be ALL BOYS AREN’T BLUE, since that’s been on my TBR for quite a while. Here’s the link to the ALA information on banned book week: https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/banned
@DDD, @DonnaMarie and @KatyKingston, thanks for the thoughts and recs on Medieval reading. Much appreciated.
I read a lot of Anya Seton back in my schooldays, including Katherine which I remember being very affected by. Obviously my early route into my current (many years later!) romance obsession. And perhaps time for a re-read.
:::comes in to the sounds of George Strait, because I have needed comforting and George is comforting:::
I’m having to borrow my mom’s van, she had the CD in her car, I have been bumping it today.
I can’t say I’ve gotten a lot of reading done over the past 2 weeks. My life imploded big time and to add insult to injury, I got incredibly sick. Managed to get a sinus infection, an ear infection, and strep…at once. Not the vid, though, I tested. Still had a few days where it was rough sledding, and the cough and fatigue are really sticking around, the bastards. I did manage to read To Catch A Raven by Beverly Jenkins, because I will reliably stick a historical romance in my brain whenever I am sick, sad, or stressed, and I was all three. I enjoyed it a great deal. I grooved on the planning and execution of a heist, liked the family dynamics, and there was one scene toward the end where the characters are like “Oh, that one guy got murdered? Well…so what are we having for dessert?”, which made me chortle. Which brings us to now, in which I am reading The Heretic Royal by G.A. Aiken. Aiken’s books tend to be like Stefon’s clubs: they have everything. Dragons, centaurs, weird uncles, battle nuns…the usual. The hero in this one is the “Official Grudge-Holder” for his warrior clan, which has me wondering if that’s a real job and if so, where does one apply. I’m qualified, I promise, have actually been practicing for this most of my life. So until next time, I assure you, sometimes it’s better to just do it yourself.
@FashionablyEvil oh yes indeed, T Kingfisher is fantastic, but no sex. Alexis Hall but he’s too meta. Cat Sebastian, but too earnest.
I mean, I read other genres, and there are other romance novelists I reliably like that have entirely different vibes – Jennifer Crusie, Suzanne Brockmann, Alisha Rai, Courtney Milan – but they’re not churning out books for me. At ~ a book a day, I just need like, another 300 or so authors to start making smart sexy funny queer paranormal historical detective romances now that I know it’s possible to have *exactly* what I like.
Agree completely with @ddd about Anya Seton’s Katherine – I first read it as a teenager and reread it a number of times – fascinating story. Her other books are worth reading as well.
Currently reading A Gilded Cage by Auburn Tempest and Michael Anderle. It’s OK though a little on the young side. Early 20s woman, famliy of cops in Toronto, finds out she is of Druid blood and goes to Ireland to learn from her estranged grandparents, meeting most of the mythical creatures and setting up what is going to a triangle in the upcoming books. My favorite part is that her companion animal turns out to be a huge battle Bear. May read more the series in the next several years.
The Do-Over by TL Swan. Billionaire decides to backpack in Europe with little money and no experience. American farm girl rescues him. Not my cuppa, seems a little silly, but I am sure there are others who love it.
My Wicked Prince by Molly O’Keefe. Step-sibs. He’s the prince who ends up running night clubs in NYC and she ends up running the government.I enjoyed this one.
Little Lies and Bittersweet Heart, both by Helena Hunting. NA, following a family of athletes that has significant trauma in their early childhood that everyone is dealing poorly with. I enjoyed, thought they were well done, a little impatient with the adults. First book, second chance for the traumatized girl and the neighbor boy who was stopped from trying to help her and who are reconnecting in college. Second book, male student, female professor leaving an abusive relationship. She is dealing with abuse, he is dealing with his sister’s trauma. I liked both of the books and expect I will read more in this series.
Finding His Mark by Brittney Sahin. Writer of NCIS type show meets a real Undercover SEAL, getting them both into danger. It was fun. May read the rest of the series.
The Husband Lottery by Sofia Summers. Poor girl dumped by very rich boyfriend keeps in touch with his dying father, wins the lotto, buys dying dad’s share of the family company, marries ex’s much olderbrother to keep it. I liked it. The age difference, the marriage of convenience were nicely done. It tempted me into reading something on my avoid list and it was worth it.
Married to the Alien Doctor by Alma Nilsson. Wow. Weird stull. THe aliens are running out of women but earth women have the right genes. Some sexy stuff some real abusive stuff. Triggers and craziness and I could not look away. But will not read the rest of the series.
Current reads include THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO (this will likely take me some time) and EVENING CLASS by Maeve Binchy. I loved CIRCLE OF FRIENDS but I’m not won over by the latter yet (thus far it’s all people in truly toxic relationships that I don’t think the author thinks are as toxic as I do). However, Dumas’s classic is such a page-turner. I wish I’d attempted it before. I’ve almost completed my goal of reading 100 books this year, so I thought I’d read some longer stuff, since I have room to breathe on my Goodreads goal.
I’ve been reading nothing but sloppy HTML for several eternities. When my eyes uncross and my brain unnumbs, I’m going to apply them to many of these books. Always, thank you all for sharing.