It’s that time! Time for you to tell us what you’re reading!
EllenM: After a long period of being totally bored by and sick of most historical romance, I’m suddenly finding myself enjoying it again! Just finished A Scandalous Kind of Duke by Mia Vincy ( A | BN | K | AB ) which was delightfully full of pining and longing. I also may have stayed up way too late last night binging the first couple volumes of the manga series My Boss’s Kitten which is fairly fluffy and ridiculous fun if you are not immediately squicked out by the boss/employee thing. The series description calls the male MC “sadistic” which seems misleading as from what I can tell he’s mostly just (consensually) really horny, haha. Its sexy and silly fun but I probably wouldn’t pay money for it if it was not on comixology unlimited.
Susan: I’m taking a leaf out of everyone else’s book and listening to the audiobook of All Systems Red. ( A | BN | K | AB ) Murderbot remains my favourite character; its arc across the series is that it doesn’t want to be more human, it has social anxiety and all of these tv shows to watch, and is thus the most relatable character of all.
Sarah: The narrator is so good too.
Maya: Twinsies, I’m also doing a Murderbot relisten! Along with Murderbot, I recently heard an old interview of Akwaeke Emezi and now I’m kinda obsessed with their writing, so I’m listening to You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty.
Shana: CANNOT wait to hear what you think, Maya.
Kiki: My friend sent me A Lady for a Duke by Alexis Hall for Christmas and I’m so, so, so excited to read it once I finish my other behemoths.
Sneezy: The English translation for season 2 of I Raised a Black Dragon is out on Manta and I’M SO HAPPY!!!
The newest chapter kicked in strong with Noa back in her own body, and Leonard low key loosing his shit at how attractive she is. His 19th century ass cannot with her 21st century shorts and now her running around in a chemise.
Tara: I’m reading The Fixer by Lee Winter, ( A | BN | K ) which is the first part of a duology. I’ve been excited about this one for a while because she’s one of my favourite authors and she’s showing the romance of a villain who deeply fucked over one of my favourite characters ever. I’m VERY curious to see how this character gets redeemed.
Elyse: I stayed up all night reading A Long Time Coming by Meghan Quinn. It’s a super cute, sexy, funny friends to lovers. My only issue is the hero is names Breaker.
Breaker.
I kept thinking Beaker.
What are you reading? Tell us in the comments below!
Belated holidays wishes to everyone! It ended up being a busy couple of months for me, including a couple of last-minute trips to see family over the holidays, so it’s been over 2 months since I’ve commented here. In late November Amazon Canada offered a 3-month subscription deal to Kindle Unlimited, so I finally decided to try it out. I’ve had a pretty decent experience with KU — thanks to all the recommendations I’ve noted from WAYR postings and from reviews here at SBTB and elsewhere. And I’ve a read an incredible number of books, so I’ve gotten my money’s worth from KU. Still I’m not sure that I’ll keep it up past the initial 3 month subscription period. I’m trying to simplify my life a bit and I think have an open subscription like KU complicates things.
Some of the authors and series I’ve enjoyed so far on the KU have been Julie Kriss (I’ve really enjoyed her Road Kings series and if I keep my KU subscription going past the initial date, it will be to read the last book in that series, Reverb, due out in May I believe); A. J. Lancaster’s Stariel Series; Michelle Denier’s Class Five Series; and Juliette Cross’s Stay a Spell Series.
In non-KU reading, I tried my second Ali Hazelwood, Love on the Brain, and I don’t think she is for me. It’s too bad because I like the academic/STEM research settings that Hazelwood uses and the way she draws from real issues and events in STEM as background for her stories. I also enjoy many of the science puns. But her plots and characters need a lot more development and coherence. Too much in both this novel and The Love Hypothesis depends on characters’ miscommunicating on all levels, on quirky random chance happenings and some really over the top behavior by the villain or other characters to drive the plot forward.
Ilona Andrews had two books out in the last month, Sweep of the Heart (Inn Keeper Series) and the novella Magic Tides (Kate Daniels Series). They were both fun reads, but both depend on you already having read the rest of their respective series.
Finally I read Kate Clayborn’s new book Georgie All Along. This was a charming, low-key contemporary romance about two nice people helping each other escape their beliefs about how their pasts have shaped them and finding love with each other. It’s also a returning to your small town and finding yourself book (not my favorite trope), but Clayborn takes this trope and gently shakes and rearranges it, resulting in a more nuanced and complicated homecoming storyline. Clayborn’s control of her story and characters is nearly pitch perfect and her prose is, as usual, elegant. This is book is written in 1st person, alternating between the H/h’s POV and therein lies my complaint about this book – there wasn’t a lot of distinction in Levi’s and Georgie’s voices in their respective sections. Georgie and Levi have very different characters, life experiences, and relationships with their community and families, but Clayborn’s elegant prose style remained the same in both their sections, which meant for me their voices sounded very similar. But overall I thought this book was lovely, hopeful and kind.
@Kathryn: Welcome back!! You mentioned, “I’m trying to simplify my life a bit and I think have an open subscription like KU complicates things.”
I know this feeling, especially with subscription services that I know I’ll forget about and keep paying for. If I could make a suggestion that might help? I set myself a reminder once a quarter that reads “do you want to keep X subscription?” with a link to how or where to cancel. That way, past me is asking present me pretty regularly if future me wants to keep whatever subscription.
@Kris, and anyone else who might be thinking of reading this, can I just provide a quick trigger warning for Ninth House? While saying that Leigh Bardugo’s writing really works for me, and I thought Ninth House was a super well-written step into a more “adult” world after her Grishaverse, I will also say that there are some graphic descriptions of trauma happening to teenage girls. As the mother of 2 daughters, one of whom was just 12 when I read Ninth House, I found one scene so viscerally upsetting that I almost had to DNF.
As for me in January, I have been reading the Edge series by Ilona Andrews and I have no idea why I slept on this series for as long as I did. It’s got all the hallmarks of their writing that I love–a weird but well-described magic system, heroines who are really not here for your bullsh*t, and action that’s full of excitement but not gratuitous. I’m planning a full read-through of this series and then a reread of the Innkeeper series, ending with their new one. I also read A Fire Endless by Rebecca Ross and found it to be a satisfying end to the duology that she started with A River Enchanted. Glad she didn’t try to make it a trilogy because I felt like the story wrapped up nicely in two books. And I reread The Deal and The Score from the Briar U series by Elle Kennedy, because those books are just plain fun and I needed a little of that in January!