Special thanks to Sara at St. Martin’s Press for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Goodreads: When Sparks Fly Publisher: St. Martin’s Press Publish Date: 21 September 2021 Genre: Contemporary Romance
Panda Rating: (2.5 pandas)
Running the Spark House, a hotel/event space that has been in her family for years, has been Avery Spark’s lifelong dream. After years of working hard and making personal sacrifices, Avery and her two younger sisters have turned the Spark House into the premier destination in Colorado Springs. Avery is living her best life—she works with her sisters and loves every minute of it, she has a great group of friends, and she lives in a fantastic condo with her best friend Declan. She might not have any love in her life, but she’s happy.
But everything comes to a screeching halt when Avery is in a car accident, leaving her immobile for weeks. After nearly losing Avery, Declan insists that he will be the one to take care of her while she recovers. However, as Declan becomes Avery’s caretaker, lines begin to blur.
Avery and Declan have been best friends since college and always had an attraction to one another, but when she ended up dating his best friend, Sam, they successfully stamped down any feelings they may have ever had for one another. Now, as Declan and Avery spend more time together, they each begin to wonder what would’ve happened if she’d dated him instead of Sam. What starts as a friend helping out another friend turns into foreplay and, before they realize it, they recognize how deeply they care for one another. But when things get serious their past threatens to destroy everything they have built.
TL;DR:Sadly, sparks didn’t exactly fly for me with this book. There were definitely some cute fluffy moments between Avery and Declan and I enjoyed reading about the Avery and her sisters running Spark House, plus I appreciated that Hunt emphasised the importance of seeking mental health support by seeing a therapist. Ultimately though, the writing felt stilted and repetitive, and I was unable to really connect with the characters or feel invested in their romance. I’m in the minority though but it was still a quick and easy read and would be a good palate cleanser between genres.
Hello, hello and welcome back to another episode of WWW Wednesday, a weekly meme hosted by Sam @ Taking On A World of Words, which means I’ll be answering these questions:
What did you read last?
What are you currently reading?
What will you read next?
Since last week, I’ve managed to finish five books, though sadly only one was an ARC!
Dark and Shallow Lies by Ginny Myers Sain ★★★☆☆ This was another entertaining and fast addition to the Xivery Mates series. Lemora might be my favourite alien planet so far because the city was a giant melting pot of alien races and cultures, and it felt so vibrant and alive! Everyone was extremely friendly, helpful and accepting of others and it just served pleasant and happy vibes that I was totally here for. Raingar and Essmira were great but I especially loved Essmira because Stephens does a great job writing smart and headstrong heroines! Read my full review.
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder #1) by Holly Jackson ★★★★☆ I’m gonna be honest, I read this for the smut and it definitely delivered! This is an age-gap romance, which is not something that I normally ever read but I wasn’t bothered by it in this story. There’s not much in the way of character development or a strong plot, and their relationship to each other is already an established thing, but I liked both the Duke and Victoria. I thought they were both interesting characters and that the author handled the emotional and moral struggle (especially on his part) well! Obviously, I liked the steamy bits and it did get quite steamy pretty quickly. The Duke ticked that dirty-talking hero box and so if that (and historical romance) is your thing, I would recommend checking this out (especially if you have KU)! RTC.
Special thanks to NetGalley and Zealous Quill Press for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Goodreads: Impassioned (The Phoenix Club #2) Publisher: Zealous Quill Press Publish Date: 24 August 2021 Genre: Historical Regency Romance
Panda Rating: (3.5 pandas)
In nearly two years of marriage, Sabrina Westbrook has barely spoken to her husband and shared a bed even less. Both activities would require they actually live together. As it is, the Earl of Aldington attends to his seat in the House of Commons, while she and her crippling social anxiety tend to his country house and gardens.
Their arrangement is quite civilized, and their letters are painfully polite. Their twice-yearly visits are…awkward. But, if Sabrina can muster the necessary courage, all of that is about to change. Starting tonight.
Heir to a dukedom, Constantine Westbrook knows his duty: to country, to family, and to the shy, retiring wife whose beauty stole his breath the moment they met. Whose arousing, enticing body he’s never seen in the light of day. Or any light at all.
However, there’s something different about the woman who shows up in London unannounced. For the first time in their marriage, Sabrina has a request. No, a demand. But wanting and having are two different things. And to give Sabrina her heart’s desire, they’ll both need a few lessons in love…
Note: The quotes below are taken from an advanced/unfinished copy and are subject to change in the final version.
TL;DR: Despite this book relying on tropes I’m not overly fond of in romance (miscommunication and deception), I found myself liking the characters enough that I wanted to get to their HEA. I enjoyed seeing Sabrina and Constantine deal with their insecurities and issues that stemmed from their upbringing and troubled family relationships. I loved seeing them come out of their shells, stand up to their bullies and find confidence to pursue their wants outside of society’s expectations. The sexual tension between these two was also surprisingly steamy and it was built up in a nice slow burn fashion, complete with swoon-worthy courting, too!
It’s been a while since I read a Darcy Burke romance but it was nice to come back to her regency romance world. I enjoy her writing and the era comes alive through her descriptions and the words/phrases from this period. It feels authentic, although I can’t really comment so much on the accuracy of it, just that it feels realistic to me.
This one had a bit of a rough start and our H/H took a while to understand the real problem between them and their arranged marriage (hint: it wasn’t sex). This does lean heavily on the miscommunication trope, plus there’s also a fair bit of deception that lasts until the conflict at the end, so if these are two things you don’t like in romance, this book might not be for you. While I normally also don’t like these tropes, and they did frustrate me when I was reading, I liked both characters enough to want to continue and see them get their HEA.
Sabrina and Constantine each have their own issues to overcome that stem from their upbringing and troubled family relationships. Sabrina suffers from extreme social anxiety and that isn’t helped by her horrible parents who belittle and demean her and treat her anxiety as a joke, which causes her to retreat into herself and become a ‘wallflower‘. Constantine has been raised to be the perfectly rational, unfeeling and coldhearted Duke by his father who is more of a domineering dictator rather than a parent, and who expects his favourite son to be just like him. These personal issues have led to misunderstandings and constant miscommunication between our H/H, but both want desperately to change that and as they break down the walls in their marriage, they also learn to stand up for what they want. I enjoyed seeing them break out of their shells, find their voices and finally stand up to their bullies, though I wish we did get more details specifically about how Sabrina overcame her anxiety. It felt overly simplistic as if she decided to get over it and that was that; however, it wasn’t a “magic cure” whereby the end she didn’t feel anxiety at all because she continued to suffer from her nerves, she just got better at managing it.
There’s also a delicious tension that builds up between these two. What starts out as Sabrina boldly demanding her marital rights to get with a child, turns into a tentative and swoon-worthy courting between husband and wife, and it’s not only very sweet but also delightfully steamy—the sexual tension developed so nicely and it’s well worth the slow(ish) burn when they finally give in to their desires and get together! That said, I wish it didn’t take them so long to realise that lies and miscommunication were what made their relationship so awful in the first place and that the deception they participated in to get to their marriage on more stable ground didn’t aid in that. But you can say the journey to get there was definitely sexy and fun! 😉
Overall, despite the use of tropes I’m not very fond of, I liked our H/H and I’m glad I read this book! I’m definitely excited for the next book in the Phoenix Club series, but I’ll also go back and read the first one, too.
So, we’re back with another Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s prompt is: Books Guaranteed to Put a Smile On Your Face
As an emotional reader it doesn’t take much for a book to make me smile/laugh/cry so there were quite a lot of books to choose from for this prompt! I’m not much of a re-reader but even thinking about my reading experience with these books puts a smile on my face and manages to fill me up with warmth and it’s safe to say that I really enjoyed them! 🥰
Hello, everybody! Today I’m back with a special post for The Magical Readathon 2021. If you didn’t know about this readathon, check out G @ Book Roast’s video below. G has done an incredible job of bringing us this new world full of fantastic characters, magic and so much adventure! I’m honestly blown away by the amount of detail G has put into this readathon and while I’m not the best at actually completing readathons 99% of the time, I couldn’t resist taking part in this because it’s too amazing to pass up!
As a mood reader, I’m not one for fixed TBRs so if I make any kind of reading list, I much prefer calling it a possibility pile as it gives me a bit more freedom to choose what book I read without feeling guilty about not sticking to a TBR. Now without further ado, let’s get right down to it!
In this readathon, we are characters set in the world of Aeldia and we are setting out on The Novice Path to get to our new magical school, the Orilium Academy. On this path we must showcase exceptional skill and wit on at least two occasions, which technically means we only need to complete two prompts to successfully reach the academy but since I’m already being ambitious by joining this readathon, I thought I might as well try going all the way and fulfil all the prompts! *insert determined face*
The Novice Path Entrance: a book with a map
Why did I have a surprisingly difficult time coming up with two books for this prompt? It took a while… But I finally found two possibilities that I wouldn’t mind completing this month! #1 has been on my TBR for way too long as it is (what’s new there though lol)…
ASHTHORN TREE: A BOOK THAT KEEPS TEMPTING YOU (OR TOP OF YOUR TBR)
Contrary to the one above, there’s an endless number of books that would be tempting possibilities for this particularly prompt. These two are the top contenders though because for some reason, no matter what book I read last, these appear on the front page of my Kindle Library each time! Guess it’s a sign?
Again, so many tempting possibilities but these two titles have been on my mind a lot recently. Not sure why but I’m not particularly mad about it cos both look like they’ll break my heart and patch it back up again by the end!
RUIN OF THE SKYE: A BOOK FT. GHOSTS/HAUNTED HOUSE OR OTHER SUPERNATURAL ELEMENTS
As The Ultimate Chicken™️, me and ghosts? No, thank you if I can help it! That said, I do have a MG that has been sitting on my TBR for a very long time (#1) and I think it’s the level of ghost-creepy that I can actually handle. The alternative is to read something supernatural so, naturally, it’s vampires for me!
I’ve actually been in a bit of a thriller mood lately so I think both of these books will probably get read this month (I’m probably jinxing myself saying that though LOL)!
This is a difficult one actually because it’s been a while since I’ve had a 5-star read and I thought a few of the books I’ve read recently would’ve been 5-stars but I was wrong. Hopefully, I’m not wrong about these two though—especially for #2 because I love Mog and want more Nevermoor adventures!
I don’t actually have a lot of books with a school setting on my TBR (at least none that come to mind as I made this list) but I am looking forward to reading these two so either of these possibilities are good for this month!
I read this book as part of The Write Reads blog tour. Special thanks to NetGalley and Aria Fiction for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Goodreads: The Meeting Point Publisher: Aria Fiction Publish Date: 02 September 2021 Genre: Contemporary Romance
Panda Rating: (2.5 pandas)
What if the Lift driver who finds your cheating boyfriend’s phone holds the directions to true love?
‘Who are you and why do you have my boyfriend’s phone?’
‘He left it in my car. You must be the blonde in the red dress? I’m the Lift driver who dropped you two off earlier.’
And with these words, the life of the brunette and t-shirt wearing Maya Maas is turned upside down. Having planned to surprise her boyfriend, she finds herself single and stranded in an unknown city on her birthday.
So when the mystery driver rescues Maya with the suggestion that she cheers herself up at a nearby beach town, she jumps at the chance to get things back on track. She wasn’t expecting a personalised itinerary or the easy companionship that comes from opening up to a stranger via text, let alone the possibility it might grow into something more…
Come on this 5* journey to love, laughter and back again, perfect for fans of Mhairi McFarlane, Josie Silver and Sally Thorne.
TL;DR: I read Olivia Lara’s debut last year and I enjoyed it well enough to want to read more of her books, and I think I had very high expectations, especially after seeing how much everyone has loved this. Sadly, it really didn’t work for me! There was a lot of telling and not enough showing and as a result I couldn’t connect with the characters and I actually found it difficult to like the heroine. I’m definitely in the minority with my unpopular opinion though so I would encourage you to check out other reviews and to try the book for yourself because it does have a cute concept!
The majority of the book is set in Carmel by the Sea, which sounds like a really charming and picturesque little coast town and reading this book made me want to visit it ASAP! I would love to retrace Maya’s steps in the town and of course, to Big Sur and all the other places in between. It wasn’t hard to picture the story and locations come to life! I wouldn’t necessarily say this was a small town romance but it had the vibes and it leant the story some comfort and charm that I think (generally) worked well with the concept.
I don’t think I’ve ever read a romance involving a Lyft driver and I thought that it was quite a romantic and serendipitous sort of idea that, as a hopeless romantic, I was completely sold on! They also played a game of 50 questions, which I love the idea of and it reminded me of the experiment where couples ask 36 questions that can potentially lead to love. I thought there were some really sweet and funny moments in their banter while they played the game and Maya explored Carmel by the Sea for the first time. That said, even though this started well, it only took a few questions for Maya to already start feeling strongly for our mysterious driver and it rapidly became ‘instalove‘— a trope that I’m not fond of. It just never feels realistic to me and sadly, it was no different here. I also thought the romance itself wasn’t helped by the characters or the somewhat plodding storyline.
Despite being almost 400 pages, not a lot happens and the story moves along at a crawl because of the repetitive nature of Maya’s monologue. I often found myself feeling bored and I started skimming pages towards the middle of the book. Having read the author’s debut last year, I found that the same issues I had then were also the same now. There’s a lot of telling and not enough showing and that made it harder to connect to the characters and their emotions, and to feel invested in the romance. Ultimately though, it was the characters themselves that I had the most trouble with, and particularly with our heroine, Maya.
I don’t like to say negative things about heroines in romances because they’re always judged the harshest, and over the years I’ve come to appreciate flawed but realistic characters. However, I really struggled to like Maya! She’s judgmental, entitled and so bitter. She didn’t have the smoothest path over the last few years but I just didn’t understand her thought process and reaction to things. She hated Ethan before even meeting him because he wrote a story that she felt was hers. As he’s a popular romance author this story got published and she’s extremely bitter about it because it was “her story first”. Her reaction to the whole thing was so petty and immature and… W H Y? I also didn’t like how she refused to take responsibility for the decisions she made whether that was in her past and her present. She also becomes a ‘fairy godmother/saviour’ type of character as she pushes people together through various situations and credits herself for giving them a ‘happy ever after’ that she has created in her head. It was a bit much? Suffice to say, her character made it very difficult for me to enjoy the story.
While I wish I could say that our hero was a lot better, we didn’t really get to know him. He’s a famous author, twin to Celine and is divorced but we don’t get much depth from him. I guess he seemed like a nice enough bloke, but what we do learn of him is from Maya’s POV and again it’s a lot of telling and not showing. We’re told “he can be silly and funny” but his expressions are always blank or severe, and Maya can’t even tell what he’s thinking or feeling 90% of the time. It made it difficult to care about him and to understand his motives or what drives him.
Overall, I guess you can say I was pretty disappointed that I didn’t enjoy this as much as I thought I would! The idea sounded really fun and cute, plus, I loved the coastal small town setting, but the writing wasn’t compelling and I cared very little for the characters, and as a result, I wasn’t sold on their romance.
Have you read The Meeting Point or is it on your TBR?
Welcome back to another Top 5 Saturday! Just in case you don’t know Top 5 Saturday is a weekly meme created by Mandy @ Devouring Books and it’s where we list the top five books (they can be books on your TBR, favourite books, books you loved/hated) based on the week’s topic. You can see the upcoming schedule at the end of my post 🙂 This week’s topic is actually: Intimidating Books.
I’m pretty sure I’ve done a similar topic to this quite a few times on the blog already but I always focused on chunky books that intimidated me. So for today’s post I’m going to look at books that I’m intimidated by because of the hype surrounding them. Some of these are classics that I have heard so many good things about and that are often referenced in modern texts, and the others are more recent releases in the fantasy genre that have been so hyped up that I’m a little afraid to pick them up! 😂 Now without further ado, let’s get into it!
A classic that has had several remakes now and that has influenced many art forms, whether it’s movies, books and/or songs. This book intimidates me on various levels but one of the main reasons is because it’s so well-lauded and I’m worried I won’t like it as much?
On a trip to the South of France, the shy heroine of Rebecca falls in love with Maxim de Winter, a handsome widower. Although his proposal comes as a surprise, she happily agrees to marry him. But as they arrive at her husband’s home, Manderley, a change comes over Maxim, and the young bride is filled with dread. Friendless in the isolated mansion, she realises that she barely knows him. In every corner of every room is the phantom of his beautiful first wife, Rebecca, and the new Mrs de Winter walks in her shadow.
Happy Friday book lovers! We’re back with another First Lines Friday, a weekly featurefor book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?Here are the rules:
Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
Finally… reveal the book!
First lines:
“It’s all fun and games until someone shits their pants. And for once, Vlad Konnikov wasn’t the culprit.”
Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?
The last time I wrote a monthly wrap up was all the way back in March so I’m not gonna lie, I’m feeling kinda overwhelmed at the thought of making one now? Plus, although the last time I shared a ‘bigger’ life update was months ago, not a whole lot has really happened since. I guess I can share some highlights:
I went on a mini break (which extended to a several months) at the end of April
I turned a year older in May — 🎵 I don’t know about you but I’m feeling 3233! 😉
I took a short trip to Bali for a funeral and a birthday in June
I got fully vaccinated at the end of July — yay!
We’ve been in semi-lockdown for almost three months as Indonesia’s COVID cases soared to a terrifying 50k+ daily cases towards the end of June. The situation has gotten better now and things are slowly opening up again…
I’ve done a lot of baking and managed to make soft pretzels and cinnamon rolls for the first time!
I’ve been doing quite a few paint-by-numbers kits and I even started doing drill diamond paintings but I still have yet to finish one 😂
Goodreads Reading Challenge: August Update 106 of 150 books
I made “my comeback” to blogging in early August and it has been so good to be back! I don’t think I realised how much I missed blogging until I started again but the long break I took was something I really needed so I don’t regret it—I just missed this community!
This month I ended up reading 18 books and a lot of them were novellas, which is quite surprising as I’ve always struggled to enjoy novellas! I’ve found new novella favourites though, but the top spot goes to Sing Anyway, an adorable queer romance that had my heart singing!
Another surprise is the fact that I don’t have a 5-star read this month! I don’t know if it’s just my mood being a bit wonky but that doesn’t mean I haven’t read some great books! I think my favourite was The Will Darling Adventures and I feel like I’ve gushed a lot about this series already but… just in case you (somehow) missed it: this is a trilogy set in the Golden Era (1920s) and it’s a mystery and MM romance with amazing characters (including the supporting ones), a murderous criminal gang, infuriating aristocracy, and deliciously steamy romance! I would definitely recommend checking it out, plus at roughly 250 pages per book they’re the perfect reading length! The majority of my reads this month fell in the ‘4 pandas’ range so I’m really not too mad about it. I had hoped to read a few more ARCs than I did but towards the end of August I started to stray from that goal (as usual 🥲) but I did tackle more than I thought I would so that at least is good. Hopefully I’ll continue making steady progress on my ARCs as the year progresses.
Today is my stop on the TBR & Beyond Tours for Dark and Shallow Lies by Ginny Myers Sain. Special thanks to Razorbill/Penguin for providing an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Be sure to click on the banner above to check out the rest of the amazing bloggers on tour!
Goodreads:Dark and Shallow Lies Publisher: Razorbill Publication Date: 31 August 2021 Genre: YA Mystery/Thriller, YA Fantasy
Panda Rating: (3 pandas)
A teen girl disappears from her small town deep in the bayou, where magic festers beneath the surface of the swamp like water rot, in this chilling debut supernatural thriller for fans of Natasha Preston, Karen McManus, and Rory Power.
La Cachette, Louisiana, is the worst place to be if you have something to hide.
This tiny town, where seventeen-year-old Grey spends her summers, is the self-proclaimed Psychic Capital of the World—and the place where Elora Pellerin, Grey’s best friend, disappeared six months earlier.
Grey can’t believe that Elora vanished into thin air any more than she can believe that nobody in a town full of psychics knows what happened. But as she digs into the night that Elora went missing, she begins to realize that everybody in town is hiding something—her grandmother Honey; her childhood crush Hart; and even her late mother, whose secrets continue to call to Grey from beyond the grave.
When a mysterious stranger emerges from the bayou—a stormy-eyed boy with links to Elora and the town’s bloody history—Grey realizes that La Cachette’s past is far more present and dangerous than she’d ever understood. Suddenly, she doesn’t know who she can trust. In a town where secrets lurk just below the surface, and where a murderer is on the loose, nobody can be presumed innocent—and La Cachette’s dark and shallow lies may just rip the town apart.
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