🔖📚 Read A Daughter Becomes a Mother: On Inhabiting Both Roles in Fiction and in Life by Heidi Reimer (Literary Hub).

Finished reading: Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake by Sarah MacLean 📚

My first MacLeaniverse adventure and, of course, I loved it.

Finished reading: The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo 📚

So great. I loved it so much. More later.

🔖📚 Read Tackling Ballet’s History of Anti-Blackness as a White Woman.

The infinitely kinder cousin of ignorance is curiosity.

A great short piece that’s about cultural humility as much as anything.

🔖📚 Read My Son’s Love Life Is None of My Business, Except It Is by Yukiko Tominaga (Electric Literature).

This is a lovely piece about love and dealing with our children growing up.

Finished reading: The (Fake) Dating Game by Timothy Janovsky 📚

Whew! Timothy Janovsky wasn’t kidding when he said this was his steamiest book yet! Grief and heartbreak serve as the flashpoint for this sizzling romance set against a Supermarket Sweep-style game show.

Finished reading: You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian 📚

Full review coming soon but y’all, this is so great. It’s out May 7. Olivia Waite says if you only read one romance this spring, it should be this one, and she’s right.

Finished reading: The Witch Queen of Halloween by Kresley Cole 📚

This is a super fun romance novella, inspired by horror movies. Might become an annual Halloween re-read for me.

Finished reading: The Player by Kresley Cole 📚

A con artist falling in love with her tech billionaire mark? Sign me up.

🔖📚📝 Read Mothering and Writing Are Both Undervalued Labor, so How Do Women Do Both? .

An excellent excerpt from the book The Mother Artist: Portraits of Ambition, Limitation, and Creativity.

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“…publication is not all that it is cracked up to be. But writing is.” Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

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“One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore.” Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Finished reading: The Master by Kresley Cole 📚

Finished reading: The Professional by Kresley Cole 📚

I finished this in just a couple of days. Definitely read the info on the author’s website before picking this one up.

Finished reading: Munro by Kresley Cole 📚

The heroine in this one is a time-traveling Transylvanian knife-throwing carnie so, you know, she’s awesome.

Finished reading: Wicked Abyss by Kresley Cole 📚

This is a banger of a Beauty and the Beast retelling, with an ending I radically prefer to the Disney version. Highly recommend.

Finished reading: Shadow’s Seduction by Kresley Cole 📚

It took me a long time to get into this one and it’s not as strong as a lot of the other Immortals After Dark books, but I still ended up liking it.

Finished reading: Shadow’s Claim by Kresley Cole 📚

I really liked this one, the way the main characters interact with each other is both sweet and hot. I’ve only got 4 books left before I’m caught up on the Immortals After Dark series.

Finished reading: Sweet Ruin by Kresley Cole 📚

“She’d thought there was no greater connection than destiny decreeing them joined. But there was—the choice they’d made to love each other.”

Loved it.

Finished reading: Dark Skye by Kresley Cole 📚

Other people seem to hate this one but I like it pretty well. Lanthe and Thronos’s story is epic, spanning years and continents. Lives ruined. Blood shed. Worth a try if you’re making your way through Immortals After Dark.

📚 When I’m catching up on a long-running series, I sometimes forget that there are people who, for example, couldn’t read 19 Immortals After Dark books in a row and, in fact, had to wait a year or more for the next one to come out, and that I, too, can wait.

Finished reading: Suddenly You by Lisa Kleypas 📚

A lovely historical about an author and a publisher who fall in lust and then love. Her body is described as voluptuous, bountiful, abundant, generous. It’s clear that these are attractive things for her to be. Quite spicy. Content warning: miscarriage.

Finished reading: The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang 📚

A lovely romance novel with an autistic heroine. I highlighted a lot.

Finished reading: Matilda by Roald Dahl 📚

We went to see Matilda the Musical and I loved it. I’d watched the Netflix movie of the musical and years ago the movie with Mara Wilson, but I’d never actually read the book. It’s a lovely book but I think the musical is even better.

Finished reading: MacRieve by Kresley Cole 📚

This one is beautifully done as always. There’s a traumatic backstory of childhood sexual abuse for the hero and the way it impacts his relationship with the protagonist broke my heart. But of course there’s a happy ending because romance. ♥️