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Honey Girl
RECOMMENDED: Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers is $2.99! Tara read this and gave it an A-. She obviously loved it, but did say this:
First thing first: Honey Girl is not a romance. That said, it has a very strong, swoonworthy romantic element to it.
A refreshingly timely and relatable debut novel about a young woman whose life plans fall apart when she meets her wife.
With her newly completed PhD in astronomy in hand, twenty-eight-year-old Grace Porter goes on a girls’ trip to Vegas to celebrate. She’s a straight A, work-through-the-summer certified high achiever. She is not the kind of person who goes to Vegas and gets drunkenly married to a woman whose name she doesn’t know…until she does exactly that.
This one moment of departure from her stern ex-military father’s plans for her life has Grace wondering why she doesn’t feel more fulfilled from completing her degree. Staggering under the weight of her father’s expectations, a struggling job market and feelings of burnout, Grace flees her home in Portland for a summer in New York with the wife she barely knows.
In New York, she’s able to ignore all the annoying questions about her future plans and falls hard for her creative and beautiful wife, Yuki Yamamoto. But when reality comes crashing in, Grace must face what she’s been running from all along—the fears that make us human, the family scars that need to heal and the longing for connection, especially when navigating the messiness of adulthood.
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Radiance
Radiance by Grace Draven is $1.99! This was a previous book club pick on the site and a fantasy romance. I remember really liking this one, especially the beginning dynamics between the hero and heroine. Have you read it?
THE PRINCE OF NO VALUE
Brishen Khaskem, prince of the Kai, has lived content as the nonessential spare heir to a throne secured many times over. A trade and political alliance between the human kingdom of Gaur and the Kai kingdom of Bast-Haradis requires that he marry a Gauri woman to seal the treaty. Always a dutiful son, Brishen agrees to the marriage and discovers his bride is as ugly as he expected and more beautiful than he could have imagined.
THE NOBLEWOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE
Ildiko, niece of the Gauri king, has always known her only worth to the royal family lay in a strategic marriage. Resigned to her fate, she is horrified to learn that her intended groom isn’t just a foreign aristocrat but the younger prince of a people neither familiar nor human. Bound to her new husband, Ildiko will leave behind all she’s known to embrace a man shrouded in darkness but with a soul forged by light.
Two people brought together by the trappings of duty and politics will discover they are destined for each other, even as the powers of a hostile kingdom scheme to tear them apart.
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The Princess Diarist
The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher is $1.99! I had mixed feelings on this one. I loved listening to it on audio, though I did tear up at times since I listened to it following Carrie’s death. However, the book exclusively deals with Carrie’s experiences on the set of Star Wars and I wanted more of a broader scope.
The Princess Diarist is Carrie Fisher’s intimate, hilarious and revealing recollection of what happened behind the scenes on one of the most famous film sets of all time, the first Star Warsmovie.
When Carrie Fisher recently discovered the journals she kept during the filming of the first Star Wars movie, she was astonished to see what they had preserved—plaintive love poems, unbridled musings with youthful naiveté, and a vulnerability that she barely recognized. Today, her fame as an author, actress, and pop-culture icon is indisputable, but in 1977, Carrie Fisher was just a (sort-of) regular teenager.
With these excerpts from her handwritten notebooks, The Princess Diarist is Fisher’s intimate and revealing recollection of what happened on one of the most famous film sets of all time—and what developed behind the scenes. And today, as she reprises her most iconic role for the latest Star Wars trilogy, Fisher also ponders the joys and insanity of celebrity, and the absurdity of a life spawned by Hollywood royalty, only to be surpassed by her own outer-space royalty. Laugh-out-loud hilarious and endlessly quotable, The Princess Diarist brims with the candor and introspection of a diary while offering shrewd insight into the type of stardom that few will ever experience.
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Ravishing the Heiress
Ravishing the Heiress by Sherry Thomas is $1.99! This is book two in the Fitzhugh Trilogy, though I think it’ll be fine as a standalone. The hero and heroine are good friends and married in name only. Lots of catnip here!
Millicent understands the terms of her arranged marriage all too well. She gets to be a Countess by marrying an impoverished Earl. And in return, the Earl Fitzhugh receives the benefit of her vast wealth, saving his family from bankruptcy. Because of her youth, they have agreed to wait eight years before consummating the marriage–and then, only to beget an heir. After which, they will lead separate lives.
It is a most sensible arrangement. Except for one little thing. Somehow Millie has fallen head over heels in love with her husband. Her husband, who has become her very best friend, but nothing more…Her husband, who plans to reunite with his childhood sweetheart, the beautiful and newly widowed Isabella, as soon as he has honored the pact with his wife…
As the hour they truly become husband-and-wife draws near, both Millie and Fitzhugh must face the truth in their hearts. Has their pact bred only a great friendship–or has it, without either of them quite noticing, given rise to a great love?
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I highly recommend Radiance. It is a political marriage between two entities that aren’t even of species close enough to have offspring, but how approach marriage with honesty, respect for each other, humor and willingness to compromise. No childish vows to resist; no tantrums, just two parties who come to love each other deeply and work together to overcome serious issues.
Radiance is a comfort re-read for me. I love that they use their words, agree to be friends, and then go ahead and become friends! No fake drama, no temper tantrums, no keeping secrets from the other person “for their own good,” makes the eventual love story feel very real. Love it!
Yes! I love Radiance, too.
Annabeth Albert’s The Geek Who Saved Christmas is on sale for 99 cents. Grumpy/sunshine, neighbors to lovers, m/m holiday romance.
I also enjoyed Radiance. Although I do prefer more plot in my reads, and less perfect main characters, the romance was truly romantic.
Radiance-like books would be a good rec league. Books where characters who are marrying out of duty fall in love. The standard romance plot is to avoid duty marriage at all costs, and I do like those when “duty” is some arbitrary definition or injustice. But I also like plots where the characters make the best of a situation they’d rather not be in.
I can think of a few m/m books that qualify, but when it comes to m/f, there tends to be a lot of flouncing when duty is involved. I’m very interested in books with the characteristics listed by PatriciaM and Wait, what?.
Ooh I’ve been meaning to read Ravishing the Heiress for a while. I’d been hesitating because it is the second book in a series and the first didn’t particularly call to me due to the deception at the center of the plot blurb (although it is Sherry Thomas and somehow she made me sympathize with the Slytherin/Slytherin pairing in the Luckiest Lady in London, so who knows).
Our (lesbian) book club read Honey Girl, and there were mixed reviews for it. I personally couldn’t get into the story, so it was a DNF. It’s a shame, the premise sounded so interesting.
I loved Radiance as well, and thank whoever recommended it on SBTB when I noticed that recommendation and bought it. I think it’s one of the best fantasy romances I’ve ever come across.
About Sherry Thomas, a reminder from my comment yesterday that audiobooks for 4 of her early historic romances are currently $2.99-$3.99 at chirpbooks.com for those who consume books that way. I’ve become an audiobook convert in recent years.
I know so many of you have already said this but Radiance is so good!
If you have Amazon First Reads, FREE monthly ebooks included with Prime, the November selections include The Vibrant Years by Sonali Dev. It’s part of Mindy Kaling’s book club and sounds like it might be women’s fiction. I’ve only read one book by Sonali Dev and found it to be a bit crazysauce, but I know she has a lot of fans here and thought I’d pass this along.
Yet another recommendation for Radiance (Wraith Kings Book 1) by Grace Draven! It really is a lovely story.
Sherry Thomas wrote a story for Isabella, the Earl Fitzhugh’s first love: Dancing at Midnight. Isabella finds love in typical romance fashion, but what made it stand out to me are her poignant memories of her late husband. She’d married him solely to escape England after the Earl married an heiress, but she later came to realize what a good man her husband was, and it’s sad that she will never be able to tell him so.
P.S. Meant to add that it’s too bad that the reviews of Honey Girl are mixed, as otherwise shallow me would be tempted to buy it for the cover alone, which is gorgeous.
@Susan/DC: a small correction, the Sherry Thomas story is titled “A Dance in Moonlight,” for those of you like me who immediately ran to our kindle library to try to find it.
Love the title of the series page on Amazon for that Sherry Thomas series: “The Fitzhugh Trilogy (4 book series)”.
I kind of understand. It’s three novels and what appears to be an add-on novella, Still….
I gave Honey Girl 4 out of 5 stars. I thought it was beautifully written but it was much heavier than I was expecting. The main character suffers from pretty severe burnout and depression and I found it hard to be in her head. I did like that she gets help and eventually finds a good therapist to work with. I think Tara’s review gives a good sense of the book, even though I didn’t like it as much as she did. Definitely read Tara’s trigger warnings.