Re-reads. HUH
I'd started to dive back into KJ Charles' A Gentleman's Position cuz something had reminded me of Richard and Foxy Davy. But then I looked at my immediate TBR (totaling 10 books) and returned Richard and Foxy Davy to the library, LOL. Truthfully, I'm not much of a re-reader to begin with, but there we are. 😅
I DNF'd
* An Earl, His Valet & Their Wife by Nicola Davidson (Book 2 of the Regency Menage series, M/M/F historical romance) - After a health scare, Michael's mother asks him to PLEASE get married and produce an heir ASAP. Michael isn't fully convinced, but he does make it clear to his parents that he will have to discuss this with Gerard, his valet, because he respects their relationship.
MEANWHILE, Gerard is thinking abt how much HE misses being intimate with women, but that he wouldn't cheat on Michael, his partner of 5 yrs. He's also, v. coincidentally, wishing they had a baby to raise together. 🙄 SO, once Michael tells Gerard abt his parents' request, Gerard is like LET'S GET YOU MARRIED! And even goes as far as to suggest a woman as a future wife: Lady Katherine.
Unlike the first book in the series, this one was v. heavy in the coincidences. Also Lady Katherine's whole personality seemed to be centered around her love for gothic novels and not much else. Finally, the author decided to write Gerard's dialogue phonetically (he's Scottish). NO, THANK YOU!
* Spellbound by Allie Therin (Book 1 of the Magic in Manhattan series, M/M Historical Urban Fantasy Romance) - Arthur is, despite having no magical powers, focused on getting and securing magical artifacts so that they won't be weaponized by evil folks. He's got a new item, but doesn't know what it's for. Rory is a guy with the power of telemetry, a gift he hides from society save for the woman whose antique shop he works for. Arthur and Rory's pathS cross; they end up teaming up (and starting to fall for each other) in order to prevent an actual weapon from decimating the island of New York . . .
This is a book I'd been wanting to read for at least 5 yrs. Dunno why I waited to do so. On the positive side, the writing and editing are excellent. HOWEVAH, the pacing is agonizingly slow.
FTR, I fully believe that a relationship where there's a pronounced unevenness in a romance novel CAN make for a fascinating dynamic to read. Sadly, the contrast between Arthur being rich, handsome, in his v. late 20s, and wordly while Rory is 19-y.o., poor, and has an innocent/naive personality didn't work for me at all. Mainly cuz Arthur's whole deal (at least for the first 20%--which was where I bounced) was "I know better than Rory, so I will decide for the both of us". This extended to keeping VITAL information that would help them both. I just...NOPE. It was enough for me to stop reading this book and move on. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
* The Labours of Lord Perry Cavendish by Joanna Chambers (Book 4 of the Winterbourne series, M/M Historical Romance) - Wanting some peace in order to sort himself out, Perry accepts Lysander (his BFF)'s open invite to spend a fortnight at Lysander and Adam's huge estate. When he arrives, he meets Jonny, a member of the nobility. Sparkage happens even though both men are v. wary for different reasons . . .
So, both Jonny and Perry get introduced in the second novella of the series. Jonny's intro is a short but pointed scene that shows his sassiness and close bond with both Lysander and Adam.
Meanwhile, Perry is (per Adam and Lysander's POVs in that other novel) a tall and handsome guy who is protective of his younger sister and has a v. serious demeanor . . . except when he's interacting with Lysander. Then, his personality turns warm AF. By the end of the second story, Perry comes out to Lysander and even claims having had a crush on his bestie.
Which meant I was excited abt reading a story in which two folks who are opposites (flamboyant/butch, extroverted/introverted, etc.) get together.
Unlike the image of Perry in the second story, the Perry in THIS book is a guy who spends half of his time on the boxing ring (huh?) and the other half getting drunk AF. It's gotten to the point that, after one too many blackouts, Perry accepts a standing invite to Lysander and Adam's estate.
The Perry 2.0 version in this story felt sudden and disjointed. IIRC, there was no hint of Perry being super into brawling or getting smashed in book 2.
THEN there was the insecurity angle. For Jonny, it was abt how tired he is abt being in relationships with men who either want to keep him a secret or try to push him into getting rid of his femme-y behavior. Meanwhile, Perry's extremely low self-esteem was split between dislike at his physical self (he's brawny) and deep humiliation at his "lack of smarts" (like other readers, I do believe Perry has some kind of undiagnosed learning disability.) I pushed myself almost to the halfway point of the novel before throwing in the towel. *Hands*
* The Girl Who Bit Me by Valerie Hunter (Book 1 of the Girl Who Bit Me series, F/F Vampire Romance) - Aster and Sylvia have been besties for 600 yrs. They've gone thru a lot of ups and many downs across centuries. Unfortch, they're running v. low on capital. So they come up with a plan to con a billionaire. Awesome!
I really wanted to like this. The premise sounded SO fun. Alas!
It needed more developmental editing. There was NO worldbuilding (everything was nondescript to the point of being excessively smoothed out.) Also, the characters behaved AND talked like they were in a generic sitcom. Nothing abt the plot made any sense either.
What really got on my last nerve was how ATROCIOUS the writing was. Think of someone publishing their first draft w/almost NO editing. Like, that's the kind of prose that existed in this book. It wasn't so bad as to make it completely unreadable, but there was a heavy fandom-y voice that grated to no end.
The funny (?) thing is that I couldn't quite figure out WHICH fandom it was from. Later on I did and was like "ah, I see. That's why the author made everyone so quippy for NO FUCKING REASON." >:(
Let me be clear that I was A-OK with this book being a P2P. There have been several P2P books I've read that have been fabulous and some that aren't. Unfortch, this one fell in the second category. There is a sequel (featuring another couple), but I'm steering clear from anything else by this author.
So, rather than push myself into continuing reading this mess, I gave up somewhere in Chapter 5 (out of 36.)
* Rivals In Love: A Queer Victorian Romcom by Will Flynn (M/M Historical Romance) - Nicholas' bestie (Amelia) has a younger sister who is started to get courted by the infamous rake Tristan! Nicholas HATES Tristan, so he tries to figure out a way to break up any and every connection lest Amelia's sister ends up disgraced . . .
Both the writing and the worldbuilding are fine. As a fan of banter, I did enjoyed how much of that was in this story (as a matter of fact, it WAS the banter what kept me reading past the moment I should've dropped this book. 😔)
On the negative side, there were abt 5 different plots going on all at once. Also both MCs annoyed me for different reasons (Nicholas was too naive for his own good while Tristan's prankster persona was OTT.) I DNF'd at the end of Chapter 7 (out of 32, IIRC)
Had an awesome time at first (but it all went downhill from there).
* Getting Away With Murder by Shari LaPena (Crime Thriller) - THIS NEXT THING IS NOT A SPOILER AS IT'S PART OF THE BLURB AND IS SOMETHING THAT OCCURS IN THE PROLOGUE!!!
Ted and Jill's luxe life is on the verge of going over a cliff due to dire financial problems. And then, Ted has the "inspired" idea of inheriting his older brother's fortune. The first thing they gotta do is get rid of him . . .
There's something to say abt wanting comfort via familiarity. Such as in the case of this book. The high readability factor (finished this in a literal afternoon), the 10 POVs, and the promise of a good domestic thriller featuring rich white ppl acting ridic were the reasons why I picked this book up. I've been reading this author's books for years and, despite the WTF-ry of it all, I do get excited abt something new from her.
Let me tell y'all, I was CLOWNED V. HARD from around the 20% mark (of a 320-something page book) onward. 😔
IMO, it was around then that novel started to plateau and continued on that flat line all the way to the end. Things did happened, but the overall storyarc was stuck in the mud. Especially once the repetitiveness went up to 11.
ON TOP OF THAT, a character who was seriously TSTL landed on their feet for reasons that I'm still WTFing abt.
Finally, this author is KNOWN for dropping bonkers-type of reveals and/or OTT twists. There were NONE here. The only 'twist' was something that didn't alter the plot in any way. The ending was the blandest, weakest, driest wrap-up I've seen in a while!
Joke's on me cuz I read this book even though I've given 2 stars to the last three books by this author. Even worse, I finished it when I could've just as easily DNF'd it. Obvs, I kept wishing the story would change course, that the author would throw a wild curveball, etc. only for none of that to happen. Me: 🤡
The one reason why I'm disappointed and not pissed off is that I didn't pay for this book. Yays to libraries for saving one's coins, heheh. Will I pick up her next book? Yeah, but as a kind of 'last chance' type of vibe. If her next book is as much of a 👎🏾 as this one, I might end up moving on from reading her stuff altogether. 😓
I gave this book a 1 out of 5.
It was . . . fine?
Nothing I picked up quite fit this category.
Good vibes all around
* Winging It by Mike Lawson (M/M romance) - Callum is 36 y.o. flight attendant for a grubby airline from Manchester. After getting dumped by his evil (now ex) boyfriend, he decides to fuck around. That is, until he meets Olly, the airline's new engineer. There's attraction and simpatico between them. Will Callum finally get out of his own way?
I LOL'd a ton (as in cackling IRL) during the first half of the book. The humor did pushed into secondhand embarrassment situations, but there wasn't any actual!meanness in the comedy. This book also had excellent worldbuidling. And that's something that can be difficult to do while not bogging down readers with too many details. The world Callum and the rest of the characters move around has a tactile and vivid quality. Finally (for the positives), the writing was good. It had a friendly tone and good pace for the majority of the novel. I hadn't expected to get sucked into the goings on from page one and yet!
Sadly, I did ended up having other issues...
For a book whose full title includes the word "spicy", there was v. little actual!sex included in the book. It is true that Callum has a v. active sex life (he mentions his many hookups, muses abt hook-up culture, and talks abt sex toys). THAT SAID, I did find it odd that a 300+ page book had 2 sex scenes. One of them is a literal paragraph long while the other one is abt a page and half. Hmm
No one would be expecting, IDK, a fuckfest from chapter 1. But, at the same time, adding a "spicy" tag but not really diving into that was A CHOICE.
ANOTHER THING: Olly was smart, flirty, sweet, and was v. attracted to Callum. All great things. But then, when the Inevitable Temporary Third Act Breakup (TM) happened, a lot of what had made Olly a wonderful character got put on pause. Especially his (previously) good communication skills. I also felt that he gave up on the relationship with Callum too fast given everything that had been shown before the ITTA Breakup?
The ending was meh. For me, at least.
A character messed up and was forgiven too fast. To explain,
I gotta go to SPOILERS
Callum's ex-boyfriend is The Worst (TM). Said ex sets Olly up to make it look like he's been unfaithful to Callum. Because of his insecurities, Callum takes the bait and breaks up with Olly in a bombastic way.
Later on, he tries to make up with him but is unsuccessful. After regrouping, he decides to do a Grand Gesture to win Olly back for reals. It goes well and they're a couple again. The thing is that, immediately after reuniting with Olly, Callum tries to apologize TWICE abt having been an ass. And twice Olly shushes him and says "oh, don't worry abt it. Everything is okay. You don't need to apologize." The END.
And, like, that's sweet in theory, but Callum did ZERO GROVELING while Olly basically shrugged everything off and now they got an unearned for HEA.
* She Came for the Pack by Darva Green (Urban Fantasy F/F romance) - A decade after she escaped the evil Alpha who wanted to marry her for her magical Omega power, Sheila needs help if she's going to make it to a safe territory.
Quinn, an Alpha who is also Sheila's Fated Mate, helps her. This is DESPITE the fact that 10 yrs ago, Sheila broke their bond for plotty reasons. . .
I picked this book up cuz of the cover. IDEK.
Thankfully, both the writing and the worldbuilding were 👍🏾. I liked the way the author wove the mutual lore of witches and werewolves in a way that made sense. Sheila and Quinn were v. likable together and apart. Their intimate scenes were HELLA HOT too, heheh.
As for the bad, there were enough small things that aren't addressed in this novel that made me go HMMMM. Also, for all of the build-up, the final confrontation with the Big Bad was a total snoozer, IMO.
In the end, though, I gave this one a 3.2 out of 5.
Current fic tally
Have picked up 135, DNF'd 62. Been reading some lengthy fics (80k+). In a way, it's felt like I haven't finishing a ton of stories. OTOH, I've liked most of what I've started, so I'm feeling good abt how my fic reading is going.
Some thoughts
I KNOW it looks like I DNF'd a lot... but, in actuality, there are 10 other books I bounced from within the first 3-8 pages. LOL. All those were novels that ranged from 260 pages to around 400. Since that wasn't even 1% of the overall novels, I've chosen to not count them as DNF's. Like, I read enough to find out that I was not clicking with the story/writing/set-up, but not so much as to be specific in my criticism of those novels.
One thing I gotta point out is that, with the exception of the LaPena book and one of those ghosted book I'll mention in the next section, everything I read was from Kindle Unlimited. (Had an offer of 3 months for $1 and I said "sure, why not?). Therefore, giving up on all of these felt easier/less burdensome than if I'd paid even $1 for each book.IJS
It's been a weird time readingwise. Yes, I've not finished more novels than usual, but I'm not feeling like I'm a slump either. In any case, I'm trying to do some late Summer and early Fall reading before October (where I want to focus on queer horror novels. I'm a scaredy cat, so 🤞🏾 for me!)
Last time
I've got the (now infamous) F/F Second Chance romance, a contemporary M/M romance, an F/F 'dark romance', another danmei, and a regular cishet secretly magical dude with a magic cat (?). So a bit of everything.
Uhhh, okay, let's see . . . I gave up on the F/F Second Chance romance (for a final time) cuz the writing was NOT it. The contemp M/M was Winging It. The F/F 'dark romance' was the vampire besties one (DNF), the danmei I don't recall (maybe New Year, New Hell?), and the regular cishet mgical dude with a magic cat was a dud (think of the most generic Urban Fantasy written by a cisdude. Yeah, exactly.)
Up next
Have a Nalini Singh mystery (giving her a second try cuz the Psy-Changeling series was a No Go for me), a celeb memoir, and around 10 books from KU (mostly M/M & F/F romances and a mystery novel.) My goal is to finish all of these. Wish me luck!
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