I manage two TBRs in my life, my everyday reading TBR (which seems to be getting taller every day) and my knitting TBR. My knitting TBR is a little different. I buy knitting books when I intend to make projects from them, but I’ve also found that sometimes just flipping through a pattern book and admiring the photos of finished projects can be incredibly soothing. This month I wanted to share the books at the … Continue reading My Knitting TBR
I love a good heist story: Ocean’s Eleven, Ocean’s 8, (we’re pretending the other Oceans in between don’t exist), The Italian Job, the TV show The Catch, all of them are my catnip. It’s no wonder I absolutely loved To Catch an Earl since it’s a love story about a thief and the man charged with catching her. It’s a heist story, and a game of cat and mouse all in one. It’s just wonderfully, … Continue reading To Catch an Earl by Kate Bateman
TW: Miscarriage, infertility The Heir Affair is the follow up to 2015’s debut The Royal We, a book I enjoyed immensely. Unfortunately, while the humor and the narrator’s voice still worked for me, there was no character growth at all in The Heir Affair. A lot of things happen in the book, but the three main characters, Bex, Nick and Freddie all end up at pretty much the same place they started at. First of … Continue reading The Heir Affair by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan
I always felt a little sorry for Mary Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. It seemed to me that Mary was isolated in a way her other sisters were not; Lizzie and Jane had each other as confidants, and Lydia and Kitty were partners in crime. Mary’s biggest flaw seemed to be a lack of self-awareness that led to awkward social situations, which lacked the malice or selfishness of other character’s actions, especially Lydia’s. In The … Continue reading The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow
CW: Self-harm, suicidal ideation, abortion It’s difficult to review a book that is so, so good, but you don’t want to reveal too much for fear of ruining it for others. The Guest List is one of those books; it’s a thriller that is so superbly plotted that I’m afraid to say anything about it because I want other readers to enjoy every reveal as much as I did. I just want to shove it … Continue reading The Guest List by Lucy Foley
I’m a huge fan of Gothic and of creepy shit in general, so I was super excited to read The Companion. While this book has Gothic elements, it doesn’t follow the Gothic convention of having the heroine vindicated, and frankly it turned out to be a depressing read in general. Part of the book takes place in 1855 as Lucy Blunt awaits the verdict of her murder trial. While she is imprisoned, Lucy reflects back … Continue reading The Companion by Kim Taylor Blakemore
CW: The death of a child, sexual assault, suicidal ideation The Lost Ones by Anita Frank lured me in with the promise of a Gothic set in WWI, but the pacing was massively slow and the characters largely unlikeable. As a result, I only finished the book because I needed resolution on the ghostly portion. This book actually made me grind my teeth, and at one point my cat, Dewey, shut the book on me … Continue reading The Lost Ones by Anita Frank
A Duke by Any Other Name was exactly the book my anxiety brain needed right now. I’ll be honest, I found previous books in the series to be a bit slow, but right now I will take all the details of Regency living. Give me pages about when is the best time to separate the irises in the walled garden. Descriptions of the famous cheese-with-dill the heroine’s estate produces? Yes, please. Aside from being incredibly … Continue reading A Duke by Any Other Name by Grace Burrowes
First of all, this is not a post about stuff you should be doing during quarantine. Unlike any jackwagons advocating we completely transform ourselves mentally or intellectually during quarantine, I personally see this as a traumatic time and it’s really important to be gentle with ourselves. This post is just about what helped settle my anxiety brain right now, in hopes that maybe it would help someone else, too. As I’ve mentioned many times, knitting … Continue reading Elyse’s Knitting: Stash Busting
Unsurprisingly my anxiety is trending moderate to high right now, so I’ve been turning more and more to romance novels to quiet my mind. At any other time, I think I would have been a little more critical or at least skeptical of the depiction of wealth and class in Kylie Scott’s The Rich Boy, but today the idea of a Cinderella story is immensely appealing to me. Being with a super rich dude who … Continue reading The Rich Boy by Kylie Scott
I’ll be honest, I probably wouldn’t have picked up An Heiress to Remember had I not liked the other books in the series (and Maya Rodale’s writing in general). It’s got that “dude seeks revenge on the woman who didn’t choose him” plotline, something I find tiresome and rarely resolved to my satisfaction. I’m so glad I gave it a chance though because this book, while not perfect, was absolutely a ton of fun to … Continue reading An Heiress to Remember by Maya Rodale
