This guest review comes from Lisa! A longtime romance aficionado and frequent commenter to SBTB, Lisa is a queer Latine critic with a sharp tongue and lots of opinions. She frequently reviews at All About Romance and Women Write About Comics, where she’s on staff, and you can catch her at @thatbouviergirl on Twitter. There, she shares good reviews, bracing industry opinions and thoughtful commentary when she’s not on her grind looking for the next … Continue reading Look Before You Leap by Virginia Heath →
Would that I, like this book’s heroine, were newly turned sixteen again, for if I were I would have absolutely swooned over The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire. I cannot overstress how madly I would have loved this story. Now I’m old and cranky so I viewed it with a more demanding eye, but anyone interested in Welsh folklore and grumpy heroines will enjoy this road trip through the land of the Tylwyth Teg (fae). … Continue reading The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire by Anna Fiteni →
Jane Austen’s Fashion Bible is a great gift book for a very specific reader. They must be sufficiently interested in Jane Austen’s work to want a book which combines excerpts from Austen with Regency era fashion plates from La Belle Assemblee, a periodical that published its first issue in 1806. But they also have just the right level of interest – too much, and this book will leave them feeling cheated of more information. This … Continue reading Jane Austen’s Fashion Bible by Ros Ballaster →
PamG is a long time fan of Smart Bitches Trashy Books. A former library worker at her alma mater (hs), she is now retired and devoting her time to reading and occasionally commenting on same. She also enjoys memorizing songs and poetry, spontaneously bursting into song, playing with the Merlin app on her phone, and writing the occasional poem. … I can’t even count the number of times I’ve begun a sentence with “I don’t … Continue reading When Javi Dumped Mari by Mia Sosa →
I’ll Have What He’s Having is a sweet m/m romance that is cosy and chill but marred by an excess of mopiness towards the end. The worst thing I can say about this book is that it made me super hungry and that the minute I finished it I forgot all about it. It was pleasant and solidly written (barring too much repetition) but not especially memorable. Farzan is a great cook, a skill he … Continue reading I’ll Have What He’s Having by Adib Khorram →
Swordheart was originally published in 2018. Luckily for me, Tor is republishing it with a gorgeous cover and pretty green edges, so I have an excuse to review it. I was charmed by the characters and the dialogue, but less so by the fact that the book Would. Not. End. for the longest time. The book opens with Halla, our heroine, a 36-year-old, slightly stout widow, being locked in a room by her relatives, who … Continue reading Swordheart by T. Kingfisher →
This book had to work hard to win me over, and darn if it didn’t succeed. I find dishonesty to be deeply triggering. Yet even I was charmed by The Truth According to Ember, a romance in which the main character, Ember, simply cannot seem to tell the truth, creating a cascade of lies, half-truths, and obfuscations ranging from large to small as Ember tries to get ahead in both her personal and professional life. … Continue reading The Truth According to Ember by Danica Nava →
The Resurrectionist is an imperfect but entertaining gothic romantic thriller set in Edinburgh in 1828. A small but avid subset of Smart Bitches may recognize that the term ‘resurrectionist’, when used in Edinburgh in 1828, had a real-life sinister meaning. Yes, my gory gothic Bitches, this was the year that the real-life notorious William Burke and William Hare decided that committing murder and selling the corpses to anatomists was less trouble than digging up bodies. … Continue reading The Resurrectionist by A. Rae Dunlap →
Josephine recommended this during their interview for our end of year podcast episodes, and I immediately borrowed it, and I later mentioned it in my New York Times round up of 2024 holiday books. The cover copy gives an excellent summary, better than I could do: All Cora wants for Yule is a few more shells for her collection, a cozy book by the fire, and t̶o̶ b̶e̶ s̶p̶o̶i̶l̶e̶d̶ b̶y̶ a̶ m̶i̶n̶o̶t̶a̶u̶r̶ to avoid the … Continue reading A Minotaur Tale: In Prose, Being a Monster Romance for Yuletide →
This is a hard book to review because there were a few elements that didn’t work for me, but I don’t think they’d stop other readers from loving Second Night Stand. But before I dig into everything I adored about this book, and how everything I didn’t like is my own fault, let’s describe the plot. Lillian is the aloof dance master of a Very Serious™ ballet company on the brink of disaster. Her backers … Continue reading Second Night Stand by Fay Stetz-Waters and Karelia Stetz-Waters →
I suspect mileage will vary significantly for readers of The Aristocrat. It’s going to depend a lot on how much emotion you want in your reading (this one has quite a bit). I kept raising my eyebrow at the heroine’s implausible perfection and that pulled me out of the story. Felicity lives in Narragansett with her foster mother. She’s enjoying a summer off before going to law school when two handsome Brits move into the … Continue reading The Aristocrat by Penelope Ward →
