Well this was just delightful. Wooing the Witch Queen revolves around one of my least favorite tropes: The Big Misunderstanding. And yet, it is a delight from beginning to end, with a minimum amount of stupidity and wonderful characters. Here’s the publisher’s description of the plot: Queen Saskia is the wicked sorceress everyone fears. After successfully wrestling the throne from her evil uncle, she only wants one thing: to keep her people safe from the … Continue reading Wooing the Witch Queen by Stephanie Burgis →
First and of most importance: if you decide to read this book, please take the listed Content and Trigger Warnings seriously, because some were big unhappy surprises to me and to other readers. This book started out so strong and then collapsed at the end. After about 65%, I was rage reading. And I can’t discuss any of what went wrong for me without spoilers, so be ye warned – spoilers ahoy. The cover copy … Continue reading Bane Witch by Ava Morgyn →
I am typing this review in bits and pieces, one-handed at times, because I’m on maternity leave with my infant. Through sleepless nights, tummy time and cleaning up various poop-apocalypses, I have devoured this book. That I am making time to write this review now speaks of how desperately I want people to read this book. I know usually I include a bit of a plot summary, but this blurb is so perfectly written, I’m … Continue reading Fan Service by Rosie Danan →
I love action movies with female leads. Turns out, women doing the killing and saving really works for me and this series scratches that itch. I know the Bitchery are probably sick of me climbing onto my high horse about blurbs, but I found this one misleading. I don’t think the person that wrote that blurb read the book carefully enough. The broad strokes are there, but the details aren’t right. Billie, Helen, Natalie and … Continue reading Kills Well With Others by Deanna Raybourn →
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 Best Hex Ever by Nadia El-Fassi →
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 →
Variation is a tough book to review. On one hand, I found myself putting aside things that I needed to get done in order to keep reading it, but on the other, I found the frequent “surprise” reveals in the plot to be so frequent that sometimes they felt silly. This book starts off as a forbidden summer romance. The four Rousseau sisters vacation at their family summer house in Haven Cove every year, but … Continue reading Variation by Rebecca Yarros →
Maybe the best way to summarize how much I loved Honeysuckle and Bone is to say that once I finished it, I immediately started searching for more books by the author and was immensely disappointed there weren’t any. This is a classic Gothic thriller, but it does so much more with the tropes and themes of that genre that it stands out and makes for a truly memorable reading experience. Carina Marshall has never been … Continue reading Honeysuckle and Bone by Trisha Tobias →
I’m an absolute sucker for historical romance and this one did not disappoint. Lady Alice Ancaster needs a husband quite urgently because her reckless brother is likely to end up dead due to his fast living.The dukedom would then fall to an odious cousin who would make Alice’s life a misery. So off she goes to London, ready to find herself a suitable man. And she does. But she doesn’t close the deal: her brother … Continue reading My Inconvenient Duke by Loretta Chase →
The Lodge is a wintery romance, but it only works if you don’t think about it too much. I enjoyed the book but found the plot too unlikely. I couldn’t buy that the story could unfold the way it did. Alix Morgan is an entertainment journalist who just landed the job that is sure to launch her career–she’s going to ghost-write the memoir for former boy band turned solo artist Sebastian Green. Sebastian belonged to … Continue reading The Lodge by Kayla Olson →
Ed. note: We’ve been asked to increase our coverage of and discussion of Dark Romance a few times by some of you, so to start, we have a guest review from Kimberly. If you’re a reader of Dark Romance and would like to talk about some of your favorites, please get in touch! This guest review is from Kimberly! Kimberly works as a student support specialist at a small university where she endeavors to instill … Continue reading Guest Review: Haunting Adeline by H.D. Carlton →
