Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary e-ARC. All opinions provided are my own. This blog post features affiliate links.If you’re a fan of Chloe Liese’s books, try Tarah DeWitt’s Savor It, which feels very similar—minus a bit of the overt earnestness that sometimes come across for me in CL’s dialogue. An emotional, character-driven contemporary, Savor It is about a picking up the pieces & turning it up into Thrive Time when life doesn’t go totally to plan. Sage Byrd lives in small-town Oregon where semi-disgraced chef Fisher moves with the orphaned niece he’s guardian of. Neighbors & soon friends, Sage & Fisher are the grumpy & sunshine pair you might be looking for. This book pulls on so many feelings, offering a romance that deals with weighty things—grief, a bad break-up, career success—& also captures the sweetness & thrill of falling in love with someone unexpected. It’s often adorable & on the whole, heartwarming. 4.5⭐️. Out 05/21.Please see a trusted reviewer’s list of CWs.
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Thanks to the publisher, Netgalley, and Edelweiss for the complimentary e-ARC. All opinions provided are my own.Here We Go Again is one of those books that has a great romance & a hopeful story but also comes with a big trigger warning. The estranged best friends to lovers arc doesn’t have too much angst…but then you add in the sub-story of a former teacher/parental figure/best friend figure who is dying of cancer & of course everything gets much heavier & emotionally devastating. ~~ Logan doesn’t believe in commitments. She also doesn’t like her ex best friend and current coworker Rosemary Hale, although she spends a lot of time thinking about her. Despite their discord, they both have strong relationships with their former English teacher, who asks them to drive him across the country so he can die at his Maine home. Their relationship goes on a believable & wonderful path, I think, as they let down their guards, reconnect, & allow themselves to be vulnerable. With great anxiety and ADHD rep, this book is all about acceptance, love, & appreciation. But the impending loss of their teacher is a big storyline, & while some parts are heartwarming, hopeful, & funny, there are also some very sad moments, graphic scenes, etc. that might be difficult for readers, particularly those that have suffered a comparable loss. HWGA is a romance, but it’s also a story about losing a loved one to cancer. I think the book is really great, but it’s also a hard read in moments & even thinking about it now makes me—someone who lost a beloved family member to cancer—feel a bit of everything. 4.5⭐️. Out 04/02.CWs: Former teacher & mentor has cancer and dies during the book. Reference to alcoholism, parental abandonment, homophobia, toxic masculinity.
Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary e-ARC. All opinions provided are my own. Whew, the emotional journey Old Flames & New Fortunes took me on! You never know what you’re gonna get with a Sarah Hogle book & I love it. It’s hard to compare any of her books to any of her others bc they’re all so different—but I’d say the overall vibes of this one are more like Twice Shy, but with magic, second chances, & a strong bond between sisters & friends added in & some other things taken out . Romina Tempest—who makes magical floral arrangements—runs a magic business with her sisters & their friend. Everything is as it should be when an old love, Alex, returns to town just after Romina & her friend have lied & said they are dating. This romance doesn’t rest on its laurels—it produced so many different feelings in me, from laughter to sadness to swoons to nervousness. I was all over the place. That’s something I really love about Sarah Hogle’s books, how they go for it & you basically have to lean into the experience. The aforementioned swoons in this book are real & serious & I will follow a devoted, lay-all-his-cards-on-the-table hero to the ends of the Earth. Though I didn’t love all of the details surrounding their first relationship imploding, I also found much of it relatable. Sometimes people do dumb, hasty things…& if they’re lucky, they get a second chance. So I ultimately really liked this book & love Sarah Hogle’s imagination. I’m truly so excited to see what she writes next! 4.5⭐️. Out 04/02.Please see a trusted reviewer’s list of CWs.
Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary e-ARC. All opinions provided are my own.Get you a fictional hottie who can fix your computer & tow your car. Or a fictional hottie who takes charge of her life, kicking butts & taking names & sometimes getting herself into little awkward dilemmas as she does it. Those are both leads of Danica Nava’s The Truth According to Ember, a sexy workplace contemporary that features these two standout Native MCs, their families (& sometimes the complications that come along with them), and the secondary leads—good, bad, & icky—who populate their Oklahoma City workplace. In moments this book had me swooning hard & in others, getting frustrated with FMC Ember Lee who frequently resorts to lying (see title ) when it comes to her job & love interest Danuwoa. But the book offers motivations behind many of the lies—at least in the beginning, before things start ramping up & Danica’s actions—though still somewhat understandable—had me stressing . Setting aside the lying, this book delivers on the romance front. Though lying can be iffy for me in terms of romance development, there’s a real connection between Ember & Danuwoa, forged on their attraction, their shared culture & experiences as Native Americans, & just what they want out of life. Friends, I thought this book was great. There are some stellar scenes in it & lots of moments where I rooted for both of them, especially as Ember celebrates the milestones she’s making happen. 4.5⭐️. Out 08/06.Please see a trusted reviewer’s list of CWs.
Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary e-ARC. All opinions provided are my own.Lavash at First Sight by Taleen Voskuni made me have such a big heart-smile. I loved so much about it, especially: 🧡 how both Nazeli & Vanya are Armenian-American & this is something really important to them & to their families in general. I love how they are able to bond over that shared history & culture—their mutual respect for each others’ parents really got to me! 🧡FMC Nazeli’s passion & drive to give everything her all. The tension between her demanding 9-5 (more like 24/7, as hard as she works) & the toll she grows to understand it’s taking on her feels relatable! 🧡 so much family love! I know I mentioned this earlier but I just love how the family is represented here. There are some hiccups along the way but also so much love & understanding & acceptance. 🧡 Romeo & Juliet vibes but make it queer & add a food competition 🧡 honesty & transparency & a willingness to admit mistakes. Nazeli doesn’t take the easy insult road earlier in the book but later, when she does make a mistake, she’s very self-aware & takes responsibility. 🧡 humor! For my romance peeps, I wanna let you know this is closed door. But I also want to shout to the world that this book is so sweet & lovely and I loved it! 4.5⭐️. Out 05/07.CWs: Toxic work environment & Nazeli’s boss makes negative & harmful comments about her body. Reference to Armenian Genocide.
Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary e-ARC. All opinions provided are my own. Ahhhh I freaking swoon for epistolary books & A Letter to the Luminous Deep by Sylvie Cathrall serves up sweet fantasy epistolary goodness. The book opens with a correspondence between two unrelated people—Sophy & Vyerin—who are connected via tragedy. Their respective siblings E & Henerey disappeared together & now Sophy & Vyerin are reading the letters they left behind, piecing together E & Henerey’s relationship with increasing commitment as they realize there might be more to what happened than they suspected. So this baby is joint epistolary: the correspondence between the surviving siblings *&* the letters between our disappeared leads E & Henerey, who had been falling in love via correspondence! So it’s a love story with a mysterious ending—romance readers, don’t get too worried about how it all turns out! Although mysteries still abound in the closing pages, I have high hopes. I love fantasy authors & what they do so much. This is a wonderful addition to the fantasy world & I’m so excited about this author’s talent. The various voices of the characters, the queer rep, the freaking OCD rep & mental health rep!! It’s so good & so powerful for someone like me & others too, I’m sure. 4.5⭐️. Out 04/23.Please see a trusted reviewer’s list of CWs.
Hi and welcome to my blog tour stop for Bride by Ali Hazelwood! I adored this one. Pure fun--marriage of convenience in a sexy PNR kinda way. [ID: Jess, a white woman wearing sunglasses & a pizza sweatshirt, holds the ebook & sits in front of a lake.]Summary.A dangerous alliance between a Vampyre bride and an Alpha Werewolf becomes a love deep enough to sink your teeth into in this new paranormal romance. Misery Lark, the only daughter of the most powerful Vampyre councilman of the Southwest, is an outcast—again. Her days of living in anonymity among the Humans are over: she has been called upon to uphold a historic peacekeeping alliance between the Vampyres and their mortal enemies, the Weres, and she sees little choice but to surrender herself in the exchange—again... Weres are ruthless and unpredictable, and their Alpha, Lowe Moreland, is no exception. He rules his pack with absolute authority, but not without justice. And, unlike the Vampyre Council, not without feeling. It’s clear from the way he tracks Misery’s every movement that he doesn’t trust her. If only he knew how right he was…. Because Misery has her own reasons to agree to this marriage of convenience, reasons that have nothing to do with politics or alliances, and everything to do with the only thing she's ever cared about. And she is willing to do whatever it takes to get back what’s hers, even if it means a life alone in Were territory…alone with the wolf. My review.This book is such a delight. IMO it’s not perfect. But the vibes are close to it. If that doesn’t make sense, maybe my review will clarify. In Bride, vampyre Misery agrees to a marriage of convenience with an alpha shifter so that she can find out more info about her missing sister. Vampyres & weres have been long-standing, often violent foes & to make matters more complicated for Misery, she’s never been fully embraced by Vampyres either. Misery & Lowe’s meeting doesn’t go well in her opinion, but the reader can sense something else going on (PNR readers where you at ). This book gets a lot of mileage from undercurrents & from significant moments in shifter / vampyre dynamics: marking, knotting, feeding OH MY. This book is quite hot & really delivered for me in all of those moments (still not quite sure I understand knotting though ). Added to those tensions & heat are some humor & compassion & found family elements. I adored it. Are there some things about the plot that I did not adore? Yes. But I didn’t hate them & in a way, they did some work for the vibes too. So the end, this is just a fun, relatively low angst (despite all of the threats of violence & acts of violence in the story) shifter tale that satisfies on basically all levels. Gimme more. 4.5⭐️. Out tomorrow!Please see a trusted reviewer’s list of CWs.Are you a shifter romance fan? Is this release on your TBR? Let me know and thanks for stopping by!
Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary e-ARC. All opinions provided are my own.Have you seen as many recs for Danielle L. Jensen’s fantasy with romance books as I have? I’ve seen a lot. I finally read this author with A Fate Inked in Blood, Jensen’s upcoming release, & it was quite the experience. With some levity, some banter, some murderous vengeance, some magic, steam, betrayal, & selflessness, this book really took me through the wringer & I enjoyed it so much. Freya is a fishmonger’s wife until she’s manipulated into revealing that she actually has some god magic in her. The Jarl decides she is the fulfiller of a great prophecy & from there the book goes on wild twists & turns, all underpinned with emotional resonance & the building tension between Freya’s wants & what she thinks are her obligations. I stan a heroine who isn’t afraid to express herself & a hero who openly shares his devotion to her. I wish the ending hadn’t been quite so predictable, or so angsty , but this is a really great fantasy with some Sky in the Deep by Adrienne Young vibes, a keen sense of suspense, & the emotional impact I want in my fantasy. 4.5⭐️. Out 02/27.Lots of CWs including murder & violence. Please see a trusted reviewer’s list.
Hi and welcome to my blog tour stop for Sarah Hawley's A Demon's Guide to Wooing a Witch! This was my first book by the author and I enjoyed it so much! Summary.Calladia Cunnington curses the day she met Astaroth the demon, but when he shows up memoryless, why does she find him so helpless . . . and sort of hot? Calladia Cunnington knows she’s rough around the edges, despite being the heir to one of small-town Glimmer Falls’ founding witch families. While her gym obsession is a great outlet for her anxieties and anger, her hot temper still gets the best of her and manifests in bar brawls. When Calladia saves someone from a demon attack one night, though, she’s happy to put her magic and rage to good use . . . until she realizes the man she saved is none other than Astaroth, the ruthless demon who orchestrated a soul bargain on her best friend. Astaroth is a legendary soul bargainer and one of the nine members of the demon high council—except he can’t remember any of this. Suffering from amnesia after being banished to the mortal plane, Astaroth doesn’t know why a demon named Moloch is after him, nor why the muscular, angry, hot-in-a-terrifying-way witch who saved him hates him so much. Unable to leave anyone in such a vulnerable state—even the most despicable demon—Calladia grudgingly decides to help him. (Besides, punching an amnesiac would be in poor taste.) The two set out on an uneasy road trip to find the witch who might be able to restore Astaroth’s memory so they can learn how to defeat Moloch. Calladia vows that once Astaroth is cured, she’ll kick his ass, but the more time she spends with the snarky yet utterly charming demon, the more she realizes she likes this new, improved Astaroth . . . and maybe she doesn’t want him to recover his memories, after all. ID: Jess’s white hand holds the ebook in front of a dark blue brick wall with a set of multicolored flowers on it (yellow, pink, & red). My review.Sarah Hawley’s books have been on my TBR for awhile & A Demon’s Guide to Wooing a Witch is such great fun! As you probably know, I adore a heroine who is capable of kicking her enemy into next week & Calladia definitely delivers on that painful promise. In this book she’s paired with Astraroth, a demon & villain from book 1 (which I haven’t read yet, oops) who’s been ejected from the Demon High Council by his enemy & forcibly kicked out of the Demon Plane. When he arrives on Earth, he’s lost his memories & doesn’t really remember Calladia or what he’s done to piss her off. This is a quite interesting premise as Calladia is still very mad that he tried to wrangle her bestie’s soul from her etc etc. This road trip has fantastic dislike to lovers energy in the vein of that Olivia Rodrigo song, “get him back.” There are some lines in here that really had me internally giggling, & I adore how progressive Astraroth is—even if he needs a nudge to really be public about it—& his possessiveness & how it’s totally fine that Calladia’s not perfect, she has some anger & also some strong body parts & she’s not afraid to jump into the action. With that being said, the growth in this book is really great too. Plus A Demon’s Guide to Wooing a Witch has one of my fave things: when the hero feels an emotion in their chest & assumes it’s related to something physical . This book is right up my alley & I’m so looking forward to more from this series! 4.5⭐️. Out now!CWs: Emotionally abusive / manipulative ex & there’s lingering trauma about that. Toxic mother. Absent father. Violence.Excerpt.Astaroth of the Nine-demonic high council member, legendary soul bargainer, and renowned liar-was having a very bad day. He limped down a firelit stone corridor within the high council's grand temple on the demon plane, leaning heavily on his cane sword and cursing witches and traitor demons under his breath. His former protégé, Ozroth the Ruthless, had just handed him a neat and complete defeat, turning a soul bargain that ought to have been a coup for Astaroth into an embarrassment. And for what? Love. Astaroth scoffed at the absurdity. A demon soul bargainer falling in love with the witch whose soul he was supposed to take? Human-demon pairings were rare, but they did happen-Astaroth knew that all too well-but this was unprecedented. It should have been a simple bargain. After Ozroth had shown signs of decreased performance as a soul bargainer, thanks to accidentally gaining a human soul during a bargain gone awry, Astaroth had been determined to help his protégé recover his edge. When Mariel Spark, a powerhouse of a witch, had accidentally summoned Ozroth for a bargain, it had seemed the perfect opportunity to resurrect Ozroth's ruthlessness and gain a beautiful, bright human soul for the demon plane. Ozroth hadn't claimed the witch's soul though. No, he'd dawdled and brooded and pined for the witch like bloody Lord Byron himself (and Astaroth ought to know, since he'd shagged that dramatic bastard for a few months in the early nineteenth century). Unlike old Georgie, though, Ozroth lacked the charisma and sartorial panache to pull off romantic brooding, so Astaroth had quickly stepped in to make the deal himself and save both of them embarrassment. Then it had all gone wrong. A few impossible spells later, Ozroth and Mariel remained in a disgustingly happy relationship with both partners still in possession of their souls. And Astaroth had bargained away any leverage he might use to punish them. He scowled at a torch sconce shaped like a hellhound's three gaping maws. The other members of the demonic high council would rip into him as viciously as a pack of hounds if they sensed an opportunity to reduce his influence and promote their allies. The scent of his blood was in the air, and there was no shortage of aspirants in the hunt for power. The huge black doors leading to council chambers loomed ahead. Each was banded in silver and held half of the crest of the high council: a nonagon with nine spokes arrowing toward a stylized flame in the center. Dread squeezed his insides with an iron fist. Astaroth rested with his back against the wall for a moment, closing his eyes and breathing through the surge of undemonlike fear. After six centuries, he knew how to force his secret weaknesses under control. His aching leg welcomed the respite. It had been broken during his defeat thanks to one of Mariel's allies, a violent blond witch wearing spandex, of all things. Humiliating enough to be punched in the throat, kneed in the groin, and nearly launched into the stratosphere by the witch; her naff attire had added insult to injury. The same accelerated healing that kept demons immortal allowed him to walk on the damaged leg, but he hadn't had time to change out of his dirt-and-blood-stained white suit before being summoned to council quarters. It's fine, he told himself, tapping his sword cane against one white, stack-heeled dress shoe, as if that could knock off the grime ground into the leather. So you lost this bet. Make another one, then win that. The high council was fond of bets and wagers, which were an excellent way to test rivals, since it was dishonorable to refuse a bet. Frustrated after centuries of deadlock with his main rival on the council, an aggressive demon fundamentalist named Moloch, and with the council muttering about Ozroth's fitness to continue as a soul bargainer, Astaroth had rolled the dice. If Ozroth succeeded in his next bargain within the allotted time, Astaroth would win whatever prize or punishment he wanted from Moloch. If Ozroth failed, Moloch could decide the prize or punishment. A wager with open-ended terms was a risky move, but Ozroth had never failed to complete a bargain, even if he had felt some guilt about it recently. Astaroth had been sure Ozroth would seize the witch's soul and win the bet. Ah, to return to such an innocent time. The door's silver sigil gleamed in the wavering glow of torchlight like a bright, flame-pupiled eye, judging Astaroth with its stare. Bets had been lost in the high council before. The results were never pretty. But Astaroth had centuries of cunning and experience on his side, and he was determined not to go down without a fight. Besides, any legendary schemer had a backup plan. He'd been investigating Moloch for years, looking for a weak spot to target, and he'd finally discovered the evidence he needed to take out his greatest enemy on the council. Moloch might win this bet, but he would soon lose everything else. Astaroth straightened, cracking his neck before shifting his weight onto both legs. Sharp pain shot through the injured leg, but he gritted his teeth and started walking without a limp. The scent of his blood might be in the air, but Astaroth had fangs as sharp as any hellhound's. Time to show them. Excerpted from A Demon's Guide to Wooing a Witch by Sarah Hawley Copyright © 2023 by Sarah Hawley. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved. Doesn't this sound so good?! Is this release on your TBR? Let me know and thanks for stopping by!
Hi and welcome to my blog tour stop for Katee Robert's Hunt on Dark Waters! This book is soo fun! |
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