 Q: what’s a much hyped book that’s been on your TBR for a long time?
I’ve seen so many people describe TJ Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea as a warm hug (or an equivalent) & tell me I should read it. Well I finished it yesterday & YOU WERE RIGHT, this book is so special & it made me feel HAPPY & HOPEFUL. It’s a gentle fantasy with a light, slow burn (kissing only!) that also manages to tackle weighty topics like discrimination & how it’s codified & perpetuated in bureaucratic Rules & Regulations. THitCS is also about the power of “soft” people who get things done & it was so funny that I giggled out loud at least twice. Linus Baker is a caseworker for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. He’s sent to investigate living conditions at the Marsyas Orphanage for magical youth—a case designated at level 4, the highest—& to assess the leadership of Arthur Parnassus, who runs it. The children there form an intimidating, vicious-sounding group & they include amongst their numbers Lucifer “Lucy,” the Antichrist. But they’re hilarious & loyal & sometimes kind & sometimes mischievous & Linus finds himself starting to ignore his department dictates & fall under their spell. & Arthur isn’t what Linus expects either: he’s a splendid man who makes Linus feel things & who guides his charges wisely & w/ a sense of humor. But Linus is supposed to return home, back to the day to day work of achieving his Department’s objectives...which don’t happen to be entirely compatible with Arthur’s views. This book is luminous & sparkling & irreverent & bold & it’s no exaggeration to say that I loved every chapter. Both leads won me over & I adore the idea that anyone has the potential to do the right thing, to, as the book says, help re-make the world into a place that’s safe for everyone. To find a home & keep it. 5 ⭐️ from me. What a read!
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 ️Q: what’s the most unusual shifter romance you’ve read? Mine is this series--it has centaurs! G. A. Aiken/aka Shelly Laurenston is all too willing to go there. The books I’ve read of hers are bananas, w/ ferocious “unlikable” likable heroines, crass language, & bold storylines, & it’s an altogether entertaining free for all. The Princess Knight is the second book in The Scarred Earth Saga, this one focusing on Gemma Smythe, a necromancer war monk & sister of the blacksmith queen Keeley. Gemma’s a brave & sometimes reckless warrior who frequently gets into shouting (& physical) matches with her sister/queen & kinda hates Amachi warrior Quinn, a centaur whom everyone else is alternately charmed & irritated by. I did want more physical chemistry between Gemma & Quinn *throughout* the novel but this is another thrilling/fun to read/visceral explosion of a fantasy with romantic elements that I recommend to anyone wanting something unforgettable. 4 ⭐️. If this enemies to lovers sounds good to you definitely start with the first in the series: The Blacksmith Queen. The Princess Knight is out 11/24. Thanks to Kensington Press & Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own. Q: what’s been one of your fave non-house places to read? I love reading in cars, planes, & trains. Book 1 in the Tales of the Blackbone Witches, A Curse of Ash & Embers is the story of a young woman’s entree into a world far away from her former constrictive family life & into one of magic & monsters. 16 year old Elodie “Dee” is unexpectedly sent away from her home to be a servant for someone she’s never met. Her mother offers no explanation & before she reaches her new home Dee learns how poorly the villagers regard her new employer, a witch named Aleida Blackbone. Aleida has replaced Gyssha, a very cruel witch who was her “mother” & teacher, & whose legacy continues to haunt the landscape through the monsters she fashioned. & then a warlock comes to their door, & Dee & Aleida must do what they can to get rid of the threat. If they can. A Curse of Ash & Embers feels very much like a coming of age story, as Dee travels to the cottage on her own & must decide who she trusts & if she can trust in herself. The world is inventive & the magic descriptions are visceral (sometimes disturbing) & engrossing. Add to this a writing style that feels personable & ACoA&E offers a story that I think many fantasy-lovers could enjoy. There’s promise in this series but I did miss some depth, both emotionally & in characterization. I want to know more about the characters & this, coupled with the fact that the action takes place only over a matter of a few days, gives the book a slight superficial air. But I really enjoyed what Jo Spurrier does here, & she’s a writer that I’d like to read more from. 3.5 ⭐️. A Curse of Ash & Embers is available now. Thanks to Harper Voyager for the complimentary finished copy. All opinions provided are my own. A feminist sorceress fantasy with romantic elements, C. L. Polk’s The Midnight Bargain offers a compelling, timely tale of women who are forced to choose between their ability & family/social obligations, & two young women who forge a friendship & resolve to beat the aforementioned system that seeks to imprison them. In the world of TMB, sorceresses go through a Bargaining Season wherein they are courted. On their wedding day, these women are adorned with a warding collar that suppresses their magic until after they’re done bearing children. If women aren’t given the collar, male mages argue, spirits will be able to take over any babies they carry in the womb & be born into the material world they crave so much. Beatrice Clayborn, a merchant’s daughter, wants to keep her magic more than anything. She learns that she isn’t alone with this hope when she meets Ysbeta, a wealthy woman visiting Chasland with her handsome brother, Ianthe Lavan, a nearly inconceivable catch. Ianthe comes to want Beatrice for his wife & there’s part of her that wants him too. But both of them know that accepting him, accepting him as her husband, would mean losing her magic & having it under someone else’s control. While the romance is a nice touch & is even inspiring in some big ways, it also feels superficial in others. It’s not really the highlight of this book for me. Instead, it’s the world-building & the premise, which feels both creative & original *&* also based on some real-world gender dynamics. After all, the tension set up for women in this book—that of pursuing self or family—doesn’t feel entirely imaginary for most women IRL, & neither does the patriarchal notion that men are entitled to have control over women’s bodies. (Haven’t we seen & heard that before?? ). Overall, while I didn’t get entirely lost in this story, I did love its trenchant critique of patriarchy & how Polk crafts two young women—& a young man—who are willing to do what it takes to bring it all down. 4 ⭐️. The Midnight Bargain is out today. Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own. I didn’t know what to expect pretty much throughout my reading of Rachel Givney’s Jane in Love. Unpredictable, fun, funny, & yet sad at moments too, Jane in Love offers compelling observations about our time & the social conditions Jane Austen might have faced as a woman who wanted to write in her own time—but in terms of execution it doesn’t always work for me. In 1803 Jane Austen is a spinster who loves to write but can’t share her efforts with her embarrassed family. After she’s rejected by a promising suitor, she seeks help from a witch & tells her she wants love. As a result she’s sent to the 21st century. Straight to a film set where they’re adapting one of her novels. Jane immediately meets spoiled & yet likable actress Sophia & soon after, Sophia’s brother Fred Wentworth, who irritates Jane immensely. Initially believing that Jane is an actress in a candid camera situation, Sophia is eventually won over to believe Jane's time travel tale—with some funny scenes along the way. Sophia's going to assist Jane in her efforts to return to her own time, but of course complicating everything are Jane’s growing feelings for Fred & her awareness that her lingering time in the 21st century is slowly making her published books disappear. Givney clearly sketches out the dilemma facing Jane: what she stands to lose & gain no matter what decision she makes. A standout for me in this book is the sense of voice. Givney writes voice in such a way that I felt as if I knew the characters; they're unique & memorable. Filled with dry humor, the scenes in which Jane encounters the world of the 21st century & nearly every scene with Sophia are particularly fine. Though it’s not a humorous scene, the pep talk moment between the two women—when Jane coaches Sophia how to act—is written with sensitivity & quite lovely. But the love story between Jane & Fred lacks subtlety at moments & feels rushed. I want to warn my romance-loving friends that this is not a romance. Setting aside that for a moment, the ending overall also feels hurried to me. There are moments of Jane in Love that shine, & those moments focus on Jane as a writer & how that relates to social expectations for women, her sense of personhood, & her relationship with Sophia. I was less convinced & enamored with the “in love” part. 3⭐️. Jane in Love is out on 10/27. Thanks to HarperCollins Publishers and Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own. I don’t even quite know what to make of Samantha Cohoe’s A Golden Fury. I think I started with certain plot & character expectations & the book kept blowing them up. This made for a reading experience that was both captivating & somewhat disorienting & I didn’t feel like I had quite found my footing until the end. Beginning in Normandy in 1792, A Golden Fury tells a story centered around alchemy. Thea has long worked for & with her famous alchemist-mother Marguerite. They’re very close to creating the White Elixir & then hopefully the Philosopher’s Stone when her mother cuts her out of the process & kicks her out of their lab. Thea has never looked to her mom for kindness but this last betrayal is huge. On the same night that Thea discovers that her mother has figured out how to create the Elixir & the Stone, her mother seems to have gone mad & tries to murder her. Out of other options Thea travels to meet the father she’s never met before but not before grabbing some of the White Elixir. She will make the Stone on her & cement her reputation as the foremost alchemist. But things never go as one hopes... Inventively plotted & featuring complex characters, A Golden Fury is intriguing. I love the focus on female alchemists, how Thea constantly rises above the narrow expectations men have for her & forges her own way again & again. This critique likely reveals my own biases, but while I loved that Thea is often unlikeable, there are times that I find her unadmirable & hard to connect to as well. Ditto for most of the other characters, who rarely do “good” things & who live in a world that mostly feels dark & unsettling until the end--which feels a little too hopeful to be entirely believable to me. (Just to be clear: I don’t have to like and/or admire characters to love a book but in this one the individual characters seem portrayed unevenly & I had a difficult time emotionally connecting to them & to the book itself.) On balance, I appreciated how unpredictable this book is, how it took me for a thrilling ride that wasn’t afraid to venture into dark territory, but I also didn’t feel overly invested in any of the characters or their fates, & that's a bit of a disappointment to me. 3⭐️. A Golden Fury is available on 10/13. Thanks to Wednesday Books and Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own. 5⭐️. Q: what’s some of your fave YA fantasy lit.? Drop them below and help a woman out! Wow. I’m going to start with some of the typical words I see in fantasy reviews but honestly, Adrienne Young’s Fable *is immersive. I did feel transported. And a little awed, tbh. Like the other books of Young’s I’ve read, Fable features a strong young woman (major understatement) who has to fight for herself. Her food. Her shelter. Her life. Years before, after her mother died, the man that no one knows is Fable’s father dropped her off on a thieves’s island & never came back. Now she’s a dredger, someone who dives underwater & finds pyre that she can sell to traders. Every block she brings back to the surface is working toward her ticket off the island & back to her father. When things go pear-shaped Fable makes an earlier exit than she planned—on the ship of West, a helmsman who regularly purchased her pyre & the closest thing she has to someone she can trust (but that’s still a long way off). He & his crew want nothing to do with Fable. But they’re all drawn together in ways they probably don’t want to be. Some fantasy books have the worldbuilding down beautifully but they lack the emotional component that makes a book really stick for me. But Fable has both & her story grabbed at my heart. I love love love that Fable is a female character who makes her own way, even as my heartstrings were pulled at what she’s gone through & how visceral those images are. Her life’s been all about strategy & survival since her father left her but she’s still soft in some ways. Still able to be shocked. Still able to care. The only aspect of this book that feels a little thin to me is her relationship with West. I watched it develop rapaciously & gobbled up every little sign but I’d love to see more emotional intimacy between them. Hopefully that will come in the second book! Fable is far from a lighthearted read. It’s sometimes violent & sad & scary, but it also made my heart happy. Fable is out on 09/01. Thanks to St. Martin's Press and Netgalley for my complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own. Review!Q: how do you feel when you hear a favorite author is stepping outside of his/her comfort zone in a big way?Tessa Bailey is one of my favorite contemporary romance authors and when she announced she was writing a paranormal rom com I was excited...& a little nervous. But I’m going to shout it from my rooftops (remember, social distancing): Reborn Yesterday was a divine way to spend my time. Mortician Ginny is more than a little freaked out when the handsome dead man she’s about to embalm wakes up. Turns out he’s a vampire named Jonas and he’s supposed to get rid of all of Ginny’s memories that feature him. Only he doesn’t, because (1) he’s irresistibly drawn to Ginny and (2) she’s in danger. Funny and a little kooky and a lot sexy, Reborn Yesterday has maybe one of my favorite sexytimes Tessa’s written. There’s dirty talk and vampire happenings and furniture moving and it’s lusciously sweet too?!?! The heroine is adorable & dare I say a little adorkable, the hero is romantic, devoted, & wildly protective, & I cannot *repeat, CANNOT* wait for the second book because every scene with two particular secondary characters had me internally panting for more. Before you open this book up, maybe prepare yourself for Drama (that’s different from lowercase “d” drama) because the plot and characterization are kinda no-holds barred with that trademark Tessa intensity. There’s one scene that felt a bit much to me, but most of it gave me those heart eyes because she knows how to write Good Chemistry. Reborn Yesterday is such a great book that made me happy, which I extra appreciate right now. I can’t wait to see what Tessa writes next. I mean, I think (by this mean, I’m definitely sure) she can do anything. 4.33⭐️. Reborn Yesterday is out now. Thanks to Social Butterfly PR for my complimentary ARC and the promotional materials; all opinions provided are my own. Download your copy today!Amazon: https://amzn.to/2OwrKfV Apple Books: https://apple.co/2tzVd1b Amazon Worldwide: http://mybook.to/rebornyesterday Nook: https://bit.ly/39aMwJK Kobo: http://bit.ly/2Su51lD Add to Goodreads: http://bit.ly/2Sbr29P About Tessa Tessa Bailey is originally from Carlsbad, California. The day after high school
graduation, she packed her yearbook, ripped jeans and laptop, driving cross-country to New York City in under four days. Her most valuable life experiences were learned thereafter while waitressing at K-Dees, a Manhattan pub owned by her uncle. Inside those four walls, she met her husband, best friend and discovered the magic of classic rock, managing to put herself through Kingsborough Community College and the English program at Pace University at the same time. Several stunted attempts to enter the workforce as a journalist followed, but romance writing continued to demand her attention. She now lives in Long Island, New York with her husband of eleven years and seven- year-old daughter. Although she is severely sleep-deprived, she is incredibly happy to be living her dream of writing about people falling in love. Contact Tessa Website: https://www.tessabailey.com Facebook: http://bit.ly/2sScu5g Instagram: http://bit.ly/36pRws6 Amazon Author Page: https://amzn.to/2NSjQgA Goodreads: http://bit.ly/37nMrSB Join her Reader Group: http://bit.ly/2uoDGZP Stay up to date with Tessa Bailey by joining her mailing list: http://bit.ly/36j2TCl  Q: How do you keep track of books you want to read that haven’t been published and released into the world yet? I’m only asking because *she says very casually* I think you’re gonna wanna read Tessa Bailey’s first paranormal romance REBORN YESTERDAY and I’m *she starts to lose her cool* sharing the cover reveal today! Isn’t it beautiful?! Tessa is one of my favorite contemporary romance authors and I’m so so excited about this one. REBORN YESTERDAY releases on March 16th. Read on for the blurb and more deets! BlurbA timeless love story with bite. It was a night like any other for funeral home director Ginny Lynn, until the exceptionally handsome—and unfortunately deceased—young man on her embalming table sat up, opened his emerald eyes and changed the course of her life forever, making her feel quite fluttery while he was at it. Humans aren’t supposed to know Jonas Cantrell, or any vampire, exists. It’s kind of a major rule. Despite his instantaneous bond with perfectly peculiar Ginny, he has no choice but to erase her memories of their one and only meeting. That was the plan. Before a reluctant Jonas can wipe Ginny’s mind clean, she reveals a secret that brings their worlds crashing together. Human and vampire. Past and present. Darkness and light. And while their love is strictly forbidden, it might be the only thing that can save them… Pre-order Your Copy TodayAmazon: https://amzn.to/2OwrKfV Apple Books: https://apple.co/2tzVd1b Amazon Worldwide: http://mybook.to/rebornyesterday Nook: https://bit.ly/39aMwJK Kobo: http://bit.ly/2Su51lD Add to Goodreads: http://bit.ly/2Sbr29P Cover Design: Hang Le About TessaTessa Bailey is originally from Carlsbad, California. The day after high school graduation, she packed her yearbook, ripped jeans and laptop, driving cross-country to New York City in under four days. Her most valuable life experiences were learned thereafter while waitressing at K-Dees, a Manhattan pub owned by her uncle. Inside those four walls, she met her husband, best friend and discovered the magic of classic rock, managing to put herself through Kingsborough Community College and the English program at Pace University at the same time. Several stunted attempts to enter the workforce as a journalist followed, but romance writing continued to demand her attention. She now lives in Long Island, New York with her husband of eleven years and seven- year-old daughter. Although she is severely sleep-deprived, she is incredibly happy to be living her dream of writing about people falling in love. Contact TessaWebsite: https://www.tessabailey.com
Facebook: http://bit.ly/2sScu5g Instagram: http://bit.ly/36pRws6 Amazon Author Page: https://amzn.to/2NSjQgA Goodreads: http://bit.ly/37nMrSB Join her Reader Group: http://bit.ly/2uoDGZP Stay up to date with Tessa Bailey by joining her mailing list: http://bit.ly/36j2TCl Thanks to Social Butterfly PR for the promotional materials. All opinions provided are my own.  I received a complimentary copy of this book from Netgalley but all opinions provided are my own.
Life update: a haunted house company moved in basically across the road from us, and sometimes I think I can hear people screaming from there at night. This is the stuff that Halloween dreams are made of. Also Lecia Cornwall’s book The Lady and the Highlander, a dark, seductive fairy tale with spooky, shivery imagery and a heroine who puts all the letters into “intrepid.” When the book opens, Laire MacLeod’s beloved and fierce father is marrying a beautiful and mysterious woman named Bibiana. Soon after, her father, sisters, and clan-members are swept away in a bacchanal that shows no sign of ending, and the only people who seem unaffected are Laire—who doesn’t drink spirits—and Bibiana and her unsettling entourage, including her Sealgair, or hunter. The hunter’s actually Iain Lindsay, a leader of his own clan who’s under self-imposed exile after a tragedy involving his late wife. For the last several years he’s been under obligation to serve Bibiana, a woman whose beauty helps disguise how deadly she is, and every day is a struggle between his lingering vestiges of honor and the guilt that’s poisoning him. But when Laire starts to learn the deadly truth about Bibana and her entourage, she and Iain are forced to decide which parts of themselves they’ll listen to. Will Laire be brave and canny enough to save her family? And will Iain follow his better nature and aid Laire in her quest, or his worst? The Lady and the Highlander’s a rich treat. It’s passionate and vivid, with provocative imagery that made me lost in the story even as I had a very visceral response to what the author describes. The Snow White vibes give the story a timeless feel to savor, but even more impressive is how much agency Laire has and how determined she is to save her family though she’s been sheltered her entire life. And though Iain’s initial lack of sympathy toward Bibiana’s victims made it hard for me to connect with him, his subsequent musings and actions make his good heart and overall integrity apparent. That undeniable pull between Laire and Iain is delectable, especially once Bibiana pits them as enemies of the other. It’s pretty delicious seeing how much they want the other (and how much Iain respects Laire) even as he’s sent to kill her and she must defend herself against him. Ultimately, there’s a thrilling pay-off that gives me all the romance feels. While I was all-in for most of Laire’s quest, the ending of this novel leaves me a bit disappointed. The reservations that both characters had maintained are summarily dismissed, and it lacks the more substantive emotional response that I had anticipated. But for most of the book, from that first critical meeting of Laire and Bibiana throughout Laire’s bruised, stumbling quest from the only home she’s ever known, I was entranced, appreciating Lecia Cornwall’s distinctive voice and story. 4.25 stars |
About me.Give me that HEA, please.
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