Ascension features a protagonist (named Alana) who is a black woman who is also a lesbian, and who struggles with chronic pain. She also a spaceship engineer who dreams of sailing the stars. I truly could not ask for more from life than a heroine with these specific characteristics. By page 18, I was in love. The rest of the book was something of a disappointment, but boy did I adore Alana. The story involves Alana … Continue reading Ascension by Jacqueline Koyanagi →
A new scifi/urban fantasy series by Kim Harrison?! Well, yes please. When I first read the blurb, it described the book as Minority Report meets The Bourne Identity, but with a woman protagonist. Peri Reed is a drafter for the government. She has the ability to alter time after it’s happened, but the longer she drafts and the more time she attempts to change, the larger the toll it takes on her body. She loses … Continue reading The Drafter by Kim Harrison →
I love any type of book that promises an immersive experience in another place, culture, or world that is different from my own. My desire for travel doesn’t match my travel budget any more than by reading desires are satisfied by my book budget, so books like this one are always tempting to me. Unfortunately, there were two parallel storylines in this book, and I didn’t like one of them. Genevieve is getting a divorce, and … Continue reading The Paris Key by Juliet Blackwell →
I love stories set in the 1920’s, and I loved author Alaya Johnson’s most recent book (Love is the Drug). So I had high hopes for Moonshine, which is a paranormal with romantic elements about a social worker in New York in the 1920s. As it turned out the book was…OK. It was entertaining but it was easy to put down. It’s the first book in a series, so the romance element ends in a … Continue reading Moonshine by Alaya Johnson →
For Darkness Shows the Stars is a science fiction YA romance loosely based on Persuasion by Jane Austen. It’s not a very good version of Persuasion, and it’s not very good as romance, but it’s quite good as science fiction and I felt intense empathy for the heroine even though I frequently felt that her story was not the most interesting story in the book. For Darkness is about Elliot North, a Luddite. Many generations ago, … Continue reading For Darkness Shows the Stars by Diana Peterfreund →
This is a hard review to write. I read this book several weeks ago. It had the misfortune of coming to the top of my TBR list at a time when I was crazy busy at work and could only read in fits and starts. I would get through only a few paragraphs at a time before keeling over in exhaustion. So I felt like I never got any momentum going and the book didn’t … Continue reading Midnight Action by Elle Kennedy →
I really wanted to love this book. I’ve enjoyed other books by Ashe but this one just didn’t work as well for me. By the time I finished it, I felt “meh” about it. I felt so “meh” about it that I considered not writing this review. But here we are! So let’s do this thing. 1. The set-up: While this book features more noble people from the Regency, the set-up is a little different … Continue reading My Lady, My Lord by Katharine Ashe →
Burn for Me opens with Eve, an Intrepid Reporter who has gone undercover to investigate Genesis Labs. The company experiments on paranormals who have supposedly volunteered to help Science, but Eve suspects that Genesis and its research isn’t as ethical as advertised. She meets Cain—our hero and a stock Brooding Alpha Asshole—when he is chained up and about to be experimented on. As soon as they’re in the same room, the only thing they can … Continue reading Burn for Me by Cynthia Eden →
This is the 11th book in Gena Showalter’s Lords of the Underworld series but the first that I’ve read. I’d heard good reviews for her earlier books in this series so I was eager to read one and I’m sad to say that I was underwhelmed. Maybe I got my hopes too high but it didn’t knock me out of the park. The reader is dropped into the middle of the plot. Torin, the hero, … Continue reading The Darkest Touch by Gena Showalter →
Unbreakable was a book that had a lot of unexpected swerves. It was sort of strange tonally, but it won me over. It has a terrible beginning and an ending which is a little too happy (which is saying a lot for a romance novel) but it does a good job of showing character progression, and the romance itself is very strong. Full disclosure – Emma Scott and I are Facebook friends, which was definitely … Continue reading Unbreakable by Emma Scott →
Did you know that there’s a Regency series about a young woman who is chosen to stand-alone against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness, but who just wants to have a normal life and marry well? And this woman’s name is not Buffy? I did not know this either until Smart Bitch Amanda told me, and now I have to read this whole series because Regency Slayer is a brilliant idea, even … Continue reading The Rest Falls Away by Colleen Gleason →
