This guest review comes to us from Heather Morris! Heather Morris is a cyborg librarian living in North Carolina. She’s a Cool Aunt, a True Crime junkie, an ARMY, and an anxiety-riddled Gemini. You can find her on Twitter @NotThatHeatherM. … I’ve recently fallen deep down the rabbit hole of K-dramas available on Netflix. I enjoy them for many of the same reasons I love romance novels. For one thing, you know from the beginning, … Continue reading Guest Review: Rookie Historian Goo Hae-ryung →
I keep reading books that are very hard for me to grade, because I have conflicting reactions to them. The Bridge Kingdom started out incredibly strong, but things that happened in the last 15% or so of the book soured the reading experience for me. The fact that I enjoyed the book quite a lot until that point made my disappointment even more intense. I’ve been a fan of Danielle L. Jensen since her debut … Continue reading The Bridge Kingdom by Danielle L. Jensen →
I’ve just discovered my new catnip. Old soldiers protecting their adopted granddaughters as they move through the forests of southern England seeking justice. Dare I say it, they are on a QUEST! Yes, please! Welcome to the Kingdom of Wessex in Britain in the year 838. Here, we meet Dunston, a former warrior, who now lives in the woods with his one-eyed dog, Odin. He is willfully self-sufficient and months will pass before he travels … Continue reading Wolf of Wessex by Matthew Harffy →
This intrepid comics correspondent has been trying to fill the void left by Midnight Secretary (which I read thanks to this very site!) for lo these many years. I am sorry to report that Bride of the Water God does not fill that void. How hard is it to find a romance comic with beautiful art, a winning heroine, both humor and high-stakes over-the-top soap-style drama, and a surly supernatural hero with a heart of … Continue reading Bride of the Water God by Mi-Kyung Yun →
Generally speaking, I do not cry while reading. Oh, I’ll want to cry. I’m the opposite of stoic, but I’ve become skilled at holding back tears for one reason and one reason only: glasses. Once I start weeping, my frames turn foggy and any attempt to wipe them with my shirt generally makes it worse. Then, I’ll have to make a decision: do I continue reading without glasses and squint at my tablet, or do … Continue reading Open House by Ruby Lang →
We’re so glad to welcome this guest squee by HeatherT, especially as some of us are Schitt’s Creek fans. We hope this squee gets you to watch it, if you haven’t yet! HeatherT is a lawyer in Minneapolis who lives by a lake (really) with two cats. She loves cooking, reading, watching great shows and writing about them. She would like to enjoy gardening, but that’s more aspirational than real. … If you are like … Continue reading Guest Squee: Schitt’s Creek →
The Woman’s Hour is an electrifying nonfiction book about women’s suffrage. It’s a big old brick of a thing so I thought it would take a long time to read, but I tore through it in three very busy days. This is a must-read for anyone interested in American politics and history. The Woman’s Hour describes the fight to get Tennessee to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. This amendment “gave” women … Continue reading The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote by Elaine Weiss →
Poppy Redfern and the Midnight Murders is a mystery set in a small English town named Little Buffendon in 1942, just after the US joined WWII. Poppy, who lives with her grandparents, is the local Air Raid Warden. Her job is to walk through the village late at night and remind folks to put their blackout shades in place lest there be an actual aerial attack. The community has been dealing with war rationing, food … Continue reading Poppy Redfern and the Midnight Murders by Tessa Arlen →
There is nothing I adore more than a grovel in a romance novel. Flirting, sexual tension, meet-cutes, meet-disasters, declarations of love… you name it, I love it. But none of those things are better than an epic groveling scene, especially when it has an alpha protagonist brought down to their knees and desperate beyond measure. It’s when you can really feel how much one protagonist (usually the one who has screwed up royally) loves the … Continue reading The Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams →
Is Erin Morgenstern’s The Starless Sea the most anticipated sophomore novel of 2019? Based on the exhilarated book noises on my Twitter feed, the answer is yes. I was a high school freshman when The Night Circus came out and picked it up because it was on my library’s “new and exciting” shelf (thank you, awesome school librarians). I adored it — it was magical storytelling from start to finish. At the time, I made … Continue reading The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern →
I knew I wanted to review this book pretty much the moment I became a Smart Bitches reviewer. Which means I’ve been looking forward to it for a little more than a hot second, my excitement building as I waited until closer to the release date to read it, letting it gather metaphorical dust on my Kindle app because I didn’t want to read it too early. That’s a lot of expectations for a book … Continue reading Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert →
