Finished reading
Finished reading: In the Case of Heartbreak by Courtney Kae 📚
Highest of recommendations here. This book is a cute romance but it’s also healing to read.
Finished reading: Love Requires Chocolate by Ravynn K. Stringfield 📚
Full review coming later, but I loved this confection of a YA romance from Ravynn K. Stringfield, my creative nonfiction for academics teacher. A Francophile Black American girl falling in love with Paris and a cute Parisian. Highly recommend.
Finished reading: The Frame-Up by Gwenda Bond 📚
I thought this was going to be a romance book with a heist, but I was mistaken. It’s a heist book with a romance! It’s beautifully done. Full review coming soon. The Frame-Up releases February 13. Pre-order it now!
Finished reading: Never Been Kissed by Timothy Janovsky 📚
Another delightful romance given to us by Timothy Janovsky, whose little details feel so calculated to please me. This time: The Great Movie Ride (RIP) figures in a key scene.
Finished reading: Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert 📚
I’m late to this party but happy to finally be here. As sweet and hot as the romance here is, it’s the portrayal of fibromyalgia that makes my heart sing.
Finished reading: For Never & Always by Helena Greer 📚
I love it so much. Finished it in under 48 hours. Helena Greer has given us a lovely place in Carrigan’s Christmasland and a host of delightful people to populate it. I keep seeing different bits of myself in each of her characters and it makes me happy. Highly recommend.
Finished reading: How to Excavate a Heart by Jake Maia Arlow 📚
Lovely and sweet. Made me cry when the main character’s mom really shows up for her. Also kinda makes me want to travel to DC.
Finished reading: Kiss Her Once for Me by Alison Cochrun 📚
This one was so lovely it made me cry. I can’t even sum up. Go read the description if it sounds good to you, try it out. Highly recommend.
Finished reading: You’re a Mean One, Matthew Prince by Timothy Janovsky 📚
Oh my goodness I love it. Matthew Prince starts out as a spoiled party boy but Janovsky slowly pulled the onion layers back until I loved him. And his love interest Hector is wonderful. Highly recommend.
Finished reading: In the Event of Love by Courtney Kae 📚
A lovely place-based friends-to-lovers second chance. As often happens, the third act breakup made me want to yell at the main character but the book had me happy-teary by the end.
Finished reading: Eight Kisses by Mindy Klasky 📚
Eight Hanukkah romance stories. I read one each night. My favorites are the one with the Frisky Bean coffee shop and the one with empty nesters reconnecting.
Finished reading: Written in the Stars by Alexandria Bellefleur 📚
The first holiday rom-com of a month where I hope to read many. Elle is an astrologer who dreams of a big love. Darcy is an actuary who’s terrified of having one. This book’s heat level is sensual, a couple explicit scenes. A lovely book but I wish the third act break-up had been resolved more quickly so I could’ve had more joyous reunion time.
Finished reading: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado 📚
A bunch of excellent and chilling stories. Horror and make it literary. Uncertainty that is maddening but then that’s kind of the point.
Finished reading: Future Tense: Why Anxiety Is Good for You (Even Though It Feels Bad) by Tracy Dennis-Tiwary 📚
A helpful framing of normal, baseline anxiety as a source of information that can spur us to creativity and action.
Finished reading: The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish 📚
A 17th Century bit of philosophical fantastical adventure.
Finished reading: The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas 📚
Great all the way through but extra compelling for the last third. Like Mexican Gothic, it uses Gothic tropes of a spooky house and a mysterious husband to interrogate colonialism in Mexico. Highly recommend.
Finished reading: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson 📚
Keeping this Gothic train rolling. This one is excellent, of course.
Finished reading: The Turn of the Screw by Henry James 📚
Another Gothic. Governesses, am I right?
Finished reading: “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe 📚
Making my pivot to Gothic now that it’s October. (I skipped my usual campus novels in September and stuck with romance.)
This one’s a classic, of course. But I like “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Masque of the Red Death” better.
Finished reading: We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian 📚
I loved it so much, finished it in under 48 hours. “Newsies for shippers” is an apt description. I love people being sweet on each other and making happiness when they feared it just wasn’t out there for them.
Finished reading: An Island Princess Starts a Scandal by Adriana Herrera 📚
So good! Manuela is going to marry a wealthy man, for the good of her family. But first, she’s going to spend six weeks in Paris, having Sapphic adventures.
As with all the best romances, this book is about two people who make each other grow as much as it’s about falling in love.
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 Hotter than steamy, very explicit.
Highly recommend.
Finished reading: From Bad to Cursed by Lana Harper 📚
Loved it even more than Payback’s A Witch. Full review coming later this week.
Finished reading: Payback’s a Witch by Lana Harper 📚
It’s a witchy romance between two bi women and it has a punny title. What’s not to love? Moderately steamy.
Finished reading: Chef’s Kiss by TJ Alexander 📚
This book is super queer and super cute. Simone’s a chef. Ray’s a kitchen manager. They take a long time to get together but once they do, it’s 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥. Warning: Transphobia & a relatedly garbage workplace.
Finished reading: Solomon’s Crown by Natasha Siegel 📚
Gorgeous prose in this book that’s like if The Lion in Winter was mostly a romance between Richard and Philip. Recommend!