When Women Were Dragons is unlike any other book I’ve read and I found to be painful, joyous, and liberating. I couldn’t stop reading it even when it made my chest hurt, and I’ve thought of it so many times since, with scenes popping into my head as though I just read them yesterday. This is not a romance, but it will appeal to those who like women’s history with a side of rage and … Continue reading When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill →
The Long Game is the sequel to Heated Rivalry, the rivals-to-lovers hockey romance that pairs Ilya, an infuriating Russian, with his hockey nemesis, sunny Shane. Heated Rivalry has a permanent home on my keeper shelf, but the book ends with a HFN. I was dying to revisit these two and see them have a more permanent HEA. Unfortunately, I had three main issues with this book–Shane is a dick for most of it; the homophobia … Continue reading The Long Game by Rachel Reid →
Take the horror elements from T. Kingfisher’s novel The Hollow Places and combine them with the character dynamics and gentle, slow-burn romance of the Paladin series and you get Nettle and Bone, a fairy tale in which a princess enlists the help of a witch, a warrior, and an evil godmother in her efforts to kill a prince. I ate this book up to the detriment of several other things that I was supposed to … Continue reading Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher →
The Birds of California is a celebrity romance which is totally my jam, but there was a big problem with the book’s ending. Specifically we learn about a trauma the heroine has survived at the very end of the novel, which gave me as a reader no time to process that trauma (even if the heroine already had). There’s no way to review this without being spoilery, so I’ve put more specifics in the spoiler … Continue reading The Birds of California by Katie Cotugno →
While I wouldn’t call Spear a romance novel specifically, it is an amazing, detailed historical novel that includes a f/f romance. This book retells the Percival legend from the King Arthur mythos as a feminist queer fantasy story set in sixth-century Britain with elements of Welsh mythology. Nicola Griffith is known for her meticulous research, as seen in her novel Hild as well as in this story. This research lends Spear a grounded feel that … Continue reading Spear by Nicola Griffith →
CW/TW: This is a horror movie about cannibalism and terrible dates. So be ye warned. We are recapping The Whole Meal Film here so get ready. Maya and I share an interest in horror, and goodness knows the Pink Palace of Bitches is full of people with an interest in Sebastian Stan. Accordingly, we took a break from romance (this movie is NOT A ROMANCE!) and watched a movie that says that dating is Hell, … Continue reading Movie Review: Fresh →
I picked up The No-Show because based on the blurb, I thought this would be some sort of feminist revenge fantasy. Said blurb: Three women who seemingly have nothing in common find that they’re involved with the same man in this smart new rom-com by Beth O’Leary, bestselling author of The Flatshare. Sadly this does not end in a sisterhood pact over this man’s grave. Despite my wrong assumptions, I hoovered up this book in … Continue reading The No-Show by Beth O’Leary →
I started reading Hither, Page, finished it too quickly, immediately hunted down the sequel, The Missing Page, and read that too quickly as well. One tagline I’ve seen reads, “cozy mystery like Agatha Christie but make it gay.” It’s not so cozy that the dead have about as much impact as a dissolving dead NPC in a video game; the cozy has sharp edges. For example, there’s the bucolic setting, but around the borders are … Continue reading Hither, Page by Cat Sebastian →
Fans of the romantic comedy genre will no doubt enjoy the nonfiction book, From Hollywood With Love: The Rise and Fall (And Rise Again) Of The Romantic Comedy. This book is a history of the “modern” rom-com in film starting with When Harry Met Sally (1989) and ending with To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018). Along the way it discusses what a rom-com is and isn’t, why some work and some don’t, the … Continue reading From Hollywood With Love by Scott Meslow →
At the risk of sounding conceited, when you read as many thrillers as I do, at some point it becomes easy to predict the twist. It’s fairly uncommon for me to be completely surprised by the ending of a psychological thriller, but Lucy Foley does it every time. The Paris Apartment is no different. The Paris Apartment is told from multiple points of view, with the heroine being Jess, a barmaid from England. Jess is … Continue reading The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley →
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 →
