One of my favorite movies as a kid was The Creature from the Black Lagoon and I always felt bad for The Creature. Sea Creatures Prefer Redheads played into that nostalgia wonderfully. Opal Prince is a costume designer and make-up artist for Neptune pictures in 1947. She’s the genius behind Kel, the monster in The Kelp-Dweller from Fathoms Below. Kel is a mishmash of her own forbidden monstrous fantasy and her secret crush on the … Continue reading Sea Creatures Prefer Redheads by Brianne Gillen →
You know, I love a series that’s connected enough to be rewarding, but separate enough to be dipped into at any point. I did not enjoy the first book in Mimi Matthews’ Belles of London series, but I decided to give book 2 a try and I’m so glad that I did. As with so many of my reading kinks, they are so different from my real life preferences in human companionship. And as it … Continue reading The Belle of Belgrave Square by Mimi Matthews →
CW: emotional abuse by parents The first thing you need to know about Sophie Go’s Lonely Hearts Club is that it will make you hungry. Sophie is a matchmaker in Toronto, and she loves food even more than romance. Sophie and her clients eat their way across the city, evocatively describing curry buns, guava candies, duck egg congee, nasi goreng, fruity pavlovas, and Krispy Kreme donuts. The second thing you should know is that while … Continue reading Sophie Go’s Lonely Hearts Club by Roselle Lim →
Crystal Anne With An E comes to us from a sunny clime, though she is an indoor cat that prefers to remain pale. She is an autism consultant by day, and recently completed a degree in information science, mostly because she could and it was fun. She likes to read (obviously), watch TV while cross-stitching something geeky, play video games, beg her plants not to die in the hell heat of summer, and walk while … Continue reading In Every Generation by Kendare Blake →
I have a weakness for both Scottish and Caribbean characters, so when I saw that A Caribbean Heiress in Paris paired a business savvy Dominican heroine with a progressive Scottish earl, I knew I wanted to try it. And since Claudia loves historical romances, I begged her to read it with me. (Claudia here: Shana had me at hello!) Luz arrives at the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris on a mission. She’s the recently orphaned … Continue reading A Caribbean Heiress in Paris by Adriana Herrera →
Machi has been going along with what other people want for as long as she can remember, but she’s so sick of her parents nagging her to find a husband that she’s ready to marry someone they’d hate to spite them. She wasn’t expecting her best friend Hana to volunteer for the role though! Yep, we’re skipping the fake dating and going straight to marriage. That’s how we roll here. I Married My Best … Continue reading I Married My Best Friend to Shut My Parents Up by Kodama Naoko →
Wild Tongues Can’t Be Tamed by Saraciea J. Fennell (ed.) is tough for me to grade. As many of the other reviewers have mentioned in the past, anthologies can be a struggle to evaluate because invariably some stories are going to resonate more than others. But also I struggled because, despite being Latina, I did not feel like the target audience for this book. The primary aim of this anthology of essays is breaking down … Continue reading Wild Tongues Can’t Be Tamed edited by Saraciea J. Fennell →
Bluebird is science fiction that includes the following: a female protagonist, two love stories of which one is f/f and one f/m, a spaceship, smuggling, a bar fight, political intrigue, badass librarians, secret identities, found and biological family, rebellion, a heist, major angst, chase scenes, and jewelry. I could not one-click this thing fast enough, and presumably most of you will not actually read this review because you have also one-clicked and are already reading … Continue reading Bluebird by Ciel Pierlot →
Editor’s note: Catherine passed away suddenly last week, and we will miss her very, very much. This is her last review for us. May her memory be a blessing. … Meet Me In the Margins is a sweet, funny, epistolary novel about writing and publishing and getting out of your own head. Savannah is an editor at a very highbrow literary publishing house, and she is also secretly working on the manuscript of her romance … Continue reading Meet Me in the Margins by Melissa Ferguson →
Ramón and Julieta is a romance novel about Ramón, a billionaire, and Julieta, a chef. It’s also a novel about identity, culture, ethics, gentrification, music, family (toxic and healthy), and food. I wasn’t sure how this couple could possibly find a happy ending, but I sure wanted them to. However, given the weight and nuance of the topics addressed, especially gentrification, I wasn’t completely satisfied with how the story resolved. Ramón is the son of … Continue reading Ramón and Julieta by Alana Quintana Albertson →
The Donut Trap is a New Adult romance with strong coming of age themes. Jasmine’s parents sacrificed and suffered so that their children would have better lives, but at times, Jasmine feels like she and her brother are the sacrifices. They feel bowed down under a weight of expectation and obligation, and the result is that they both resort to hiding important parts of their lives from their parents. A year or so after finishing … Continue reading The Donut Trap by Julie Tieu →
