I’m back with the The Storytellers on Tour today with a Book Blitz for Dim Stars by Brian P. Rubin and I’ll be sharing my first impressions of the book so far. Thanks to the author for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review!
Don’t forget to scroll to the end of the post to enter the GIVEAWAY (International) for the chance to win a signed paperback copy of the book!
Goodreads: Dim Stars Publisher: Critical Eye Publishing Publication Date: 20 October 2020 Genre: Young Adult Sci-Fi
Kenzie Washington, fourteen-year-old girl genius, signs up for a two-week tour as a cadet on the spaceship of her idol, Captain Dash Drake. Too bad Dash, who once saved the galaxy from the evil Forgers, is a broke loser and much less than meets the eye. But when an intergalactic evil appears and launches an attack, Dash, Kenzie, and the ship’s crew escape, making them the next target. On the run and low on gas, Dash and Kenzie encounter cannibal space-pirates, catastrophic equipment failure, and a cyborg who’s kind of a jerk. Kenzie is determined to discover the bad guys’ secret plan. But for her to succeed, Dash needs to keep his brilliant, annoying cadet from getting killed …which is a lot harder than it sounds.
When the heart is afire… By his own admission, Lord Ernest Brook is a rake. With sapphire gaze, sinfully handsome looks and a duke for a brother, the pleasures of London have come with ease…apart from one. Ever since the gauntlet of her first wintry dismissal was thrown, the widowed Hebe Lock has stirred his deepest desires, but just what would it take to woo such a woman?
Sparks will fly. Hebe Locke has vowed to never again fall for a scoundrel after her brief marriage to one left her broken and haunted. Now she finds comfort with paintbrush and canvas, but as a female artist in a male world, commissions are as rare as a ballroom without rakes.
A castle of enchantment. As the heat of late summer warms the land, an ancient, moated castle plays host to a widow and a rake, both concealing passions contrary to their reputations. But as Lord Ernest awakens Hebe’s desire and thaws her frozen emotions, can she hold true to her vow? Or can this rake win the one heart he yearns for?
Sensual Regency romance with warmth and wit, this tale also includes a disreputable aunt with a secondary love story, Cotswold country fairs, sinful masquerades and…a goat.
TL;DR: After meeting Ernest in his brother’s story, The Duke of Diamonds, and getting a glimpse of the potential romance between him and Mrs. Locke, I had a feeling that I’d love their story and I wasn’t wrong! Who knew that a rake could be so devastatingly sweet? Honestly, if Ernest had pointedly looked at me over the top of his glasses across the table, I’d probably have swooned into my pudding too! 😂 I found the writaing just as full of wit and warmth in this book and there were some great laugh-out-loud moments as well, especially as Hebe and Ernest playfully antagonise each other at the beginning!
Although their romance isn’t necessarily different to a lot of regency romances, I loved their characters as they were easy to root for and their banter made it so entertaining to read! Hebe and Ernest both put up a front when they are in London in front of the ton but neither of those fronts is entirely true to their hidden characters, and I loved watching both of them shed those facades the longer they spend in the country and get to know each other! My heart broke for Hebe, who was in an abusive marriage until her husband’s death, but the scars run deep and have changed her into a young woman who feels like she doesn’t know herself anymore. Art is what brings her joy and what she finds comfort in so she turns her attention to that as she resolves to never open her heart to a man again, especially not to a rake.
Then enters Ernest, a dashedly handsome and deviously charming man, known by all from London to the country for his rakish ways that are regularly splashed on the gossip pages. Yet little does anyone know how Ernest longs for the wildness of the country and the connection he has to the land, animals and people there. He’s so much more down-to-earth than I expected and I loved his character more for it!
It was so satisfying to watch them come out of their shells and I loved how art played a part in that. It is their love of horses (and animals in general really) that bring them together and as Ernest watched Hebe paint them so full of life, they are able to connect through their understanding and compassion for the animal, and it is also what makes them realise that there’s more than meets the eye to either of them. There were some delightfully swoon-worthy moments as they become more vulnerable with each other, and paired with their banter and sizzling chemistry, it resulted in some great steamy scenes! 🥵
In addition to their story, there was a bonus romance between Hebe’s aunt Beatrice and Ernest’s stable master, Redmond. This sweet second-chance-romance didn’t detract from the main romance between our H/H, and though it was a little bit angsty, their connection after all these years apart was undeniable! I loved aunt Beatrice, who was such a cheerful and supportive presence in the story, so it was great to see her also get a HEA with the love of her life. Other than aunt Bea, there were other great supporting characters in this story who I found endearingly charming, quirky and witty, too. Grampy Tom was a particular favourite and I loved his ‘mysterious’ teachings relating to life and the weather and anecdotes about life.
Overall, I’m really enjoying this regency romance series and I’m looking forward to reading the next story in the series, although I have no idea when that will be (sad panda)!
Have you read The Rake of Hearts or is it on your TBR?
Paranormal romance is not my usual jam but I picked up the first book in a new spin-off series from this one and was intrigued by the history of many of the characters we met, so I decided to check this out. Overall, the Wolf Girl series was pretty engaging and I sped through all four books in just over a day! Despite having major #dramallama I needed to know what happened next, how Wolf City would fare, and how Demi and Sawyer’s relationship would work out. If you’re looking for an entertaining paranormal romance-heavy read that helps you escape reality and is totally binge-able, I would recommend checking this out. Beware the angsty drama though! 😂
*For those who are interested, this series is available on Kindle Unlimited!*
Raingar My horns itch and I hate it. I’m a Lemoran clan chief and I hate that I’m being forced to schmooze with the other Quadrant dignitaries. Looking for a way out, I run into flesh peddlers. Pagh! I hate flesh peddlers and I’m not interested in what they’re selling! Until I see her…
Half human, Essmira’s soft, and I hate that she’s so easy to break. I hate that her beauty makes my horns and heart both ache. And most of all, I hate that she has no idea that she’s my mate.
Essmira A female must always smile. She must always aim to please. She must always obey. A pleasure female, that’s what I’ve spent my whole life training to be. Now that I’ve been purchased by a Lemoran clan chief, I’m more than happy to please him. But his pleasure might be out of my reach. Because he doesn’t want me to be a pleasure female anymore. He wants me to be…me.
Taken to Lemora is a full length (85k word) SciFi alien romance that features one grumpy alien and a hybrid human female just discovering freedom and eager to grab it by the horns. Literally. Lemora is the not-too-distant neighbor of Voraxia and while this book cameos a couple familiar faces, it focuses on a new couple in a new constellation and can easily be read as a standalone.
Have you heard the rumor around campus about the locker room? If you haven’t, let me enlighten you: Legend has it if you bring a girl into the sacred after-game domain of the baseball locker room, it will end with a walk down the aisle. One rowdy and naked encounter against the lockers with the girl of your dreams will make her your wife. Translation: baseball players are stupidly superstitious and believe the locker room has magical powers.
But not all baseball players are superstitious, me included. So when the girl I’ve fallen for brushes me off, I start to question if I need to switch my way of thinking. Maybe it’s time I finally hand out a coveted invitation to the locker room. The only question is, will she accept?
The Beneath Black Sails series is currently unfinished and this is a review of the first two books. There’s a prequel novella that I haven’t read and probably won’t? According to Goodreads, the third and fourth books will be published sometime in 2021!
Sometimes it takes a pirate to catch a pirate. With weather magic on her side, Lady Vice is the bane of the high seas, but she isn’t captain of her own ship. Yet. If she can persuade her captain to give her a command, she’ll be in charge of her own fate. To pay off his family’s debts, Knigh Blackwood hunts pirates for the Royal Navy. And he’s damn good at it. When the bounty on Lady Vice increases, he’s determined to make her face justice, even if that means using unorthodox methods. Forced to work together, neither can deny their mutual attraction. As they face battles at sea and schemes aboard their ship, they discover hints about a long-lost treasure that could be the answer to both their problems. But treasure isn’t the only thing buried. Secrets best forgotten lie in wait that could blast them apart. And the closer Vice and Knigh grow, the greater the threat – to her freedom and to his family. Because for one to succeed, the other must fail.
This was a fast-paced and action-packed high-seas adventure with interesting characters and a good dose of a slow-burning fiery enemies-to-lovers romance. This was probably the most pirate-y romantasy that I have ever read and you know what? I was totally here for it. Major props to Sager because you can tell she has done her research and actually, the way she talks about ships and sailing breathes it to life! Vice and Knigh were polar opposites that oddly complemented each other, and had an interesting enemies-to-lovers romance that progressed naturally, but their sexual chemistry was obvious from day one. Vice took some getting used to and Knigh was also an imperfect hero, but they both experience a lot of growth and I was invested in their arcs. If you’re into nautical fantasy or romantasy then this is definitely one you should check out because it packs an entertaining punch with lots of fun twists and tons of pirate shenanigans!
My biggest frustration with the book was the lack of world-building. Sager sets the scene in a way that expects us to already know about the world and thus scant detail about the setting is provided. The author provides a detailed note at the end of the book where she divulges more information, but I felt like I learned more about the world in her note than I did in the whole book. Overall, a highly entertaining start to the series and after that tumultuous ending, I can’t wait to dive into book two!
Enemies. Lovers. Enemies once more. Now they must work together to survive.
Notorious pirate Lady Vice has lost everything: ship, crew, and friends. Even her body has betrayed her, leaving her magic weak. To make matters worse, she’s stuck at sea with the man who stabbed her in the back.
Knigh Blackwood is no longer a captain, no longer a pirate-hunter, no longer … anything. All he has left is the woman he betrayed, and she’d rather cut out his tongue with his own dagger than forgive him.
There’s just one thing that might make up for what they’ve lost: Drake’s treasure. But they’re not the only ones searching for clues and the elusive X that marks the spot. Between them and the treasure stand a scheming duke, a former lover, and a sea monster thought the stuff of legends – not to mention Vice and Knigh’s complicated feelings for each other.
Can you hear that? It’s the resounding sound of disappointment!!! *womp womp womp…*
So… WOW, Vice made it really really really hard for me to love this book. Like, really hard.She took some getting used to in book one and redeemed herself by the end, but I was up to my eyeballs and drowning in frustration with her naïveté and childish petulance in this book and it really took the enjoyment out of the story for me! With the way book one ends, it’s no surprise that there would be a good dose of angst in book two, I just didn’t expect so much of it, and it took away from the fun of the story. While Vice was just plain bad, I found Knigh frustrating at times too. Their character arcs were just so woefully repetitive and although they do come to realise what they could’ve done better/differently, they really don’t grow.
The only character who saved the book for me was Perry. She’s not only a great trustworthy captain but an amazing friend. We get to see a strong friendship grow between Perry and Knigh and her influence on him was not only soothing, but I thought she also really brought out the best in him. We get a stronger villain in this book and he was truly despicable but I’m very curious about Mercia and how he’s linked to Knigh’s past and what role he’ll play in the future.
Overall, while we get more high-seas adventures and there’s even a treasure hunt and the introduction of The Kraken(!!), I’m sad to say that this was a pretty disappointing sequel. I really wanted less Vice and more Perry, as well as the blossoming friendship between Perry and Knigh. That said, I feel like I want to know what happens next because the end of book two did seem promising. I hope that I’m not disappointed again!
And that’s a wrap, folks! Do you find sequels are more often disappointing than not?Have you read any of the Beneath Black Sails series or is it on your TBR?
Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions. She codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run the neighbourhood hole-in-the-wall from which she orders dinner every evening. Then, disaster! Visa issues. The brothers close up shop, and fast. But they have one last delivery for Lois: their culture, the sourdough starter used to bake their bread. She must keep it alive, they tell her – feed it daily, play it music, and learn to bake with it.
Lois is no baker, but she could use a roommate, even if it is a needy colony of microorganisms. Soon, not only is she eating her own homemade bread, she’s providing loaves daily to the General Dexterity cafeteria. The company chef urges her to take her product to the farmer’s market, and a whole new world opens up. When Lois comes before the jury that decides who sells what at Bay Area markets, she encounters a close-knit club with no appetite for new members. But then, an alternative emerges: a secret market that aims to fuse food and technology. But who are these people, exactly?
If Vietnamese pho’s healing powers, physical and psychic, make traditional chicken noodle soup seem like dishwater—and they do—then this spicy soup, in turn, dishwatered pho. It was an elixir. The sandwich was spicier still, thin-sliced vegetables slathered with a fluorescent red sauce, the burn buffered by thick slabs of bread artfully toasted.
I really enjoyed this book! Sourdough is full of quirky and endearing characters and situations that make you laugh and fill your mind with wonder. It also made me insanely hungry(2020 edit: reading that quote above already has me salivating!) and brought to life a craving for sourdough – although I’m sure the loaf that I dug into is nothing like the legendary Mazg one (unfortunately). What I liked about this book is that you can take it as lightly as you want to, but if you want to give it a bit more thought, there’s also some meat for you to chew on. It doesn’t go into very fine details, which I didn’t mind because in a book like this, you can easily over-describe situations, events and processes until you bore your reader to death. Robin Sloan definitely doesn’t do that!
I have come to believe that food is history of the deepest kind. Everything we eat tells a tale of ingenuity and creation, domination and injustice—and does so more vividly than any other artifact, any other medium.
Lois, the main character, is so full of life and energy. I could really relate to her thoughts in terms of wondering at being a part of something more; something significant and important. I think that’s what we all go through in our 20s, 30s (and well, some even longer), especially as we finish university and start looking for a job and try to find more meaning in our lives. To find that purpose and to chase after what makes us tick – what gives us life. Lois is so passionate and just dives into situations that come at her – which is the complete opposite of me and probably why I find people who can do that so admirable.That energy of hers was palpable and as I read the book, I happily soaked up her enthusiasm for everything that she was doing. It made me think about what I’m currently doing and whether I am just living in my own version of “General Dexterity”? It’s a big Maybe.
Here’s a thing I believe about people my age: we are the children of Hogwarts, and more than anything, we just want to be sorted.
Of course, there’s also some magical realism sprinkled throughout the book, especially as you come towards the end when you’re kind of doused in it all at once. As someone who is very picky when it comes to magical realism, I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy it but I absolutely loved it! It’s another element of Robin Sloan’s writing that I loved because it’s not entirely out of place or unbelievable in stories where the characters and events are so full of quirkyness.
I read someone’s comment about his books that summarised them in a really simple but accurate way – just as Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore was about a secret society for book lovers, Sourdough is about a secret society for food lovers. And who doesn’t love food (and books and secret societies)?! After reading this, it’s pretty safe to say that I thoroughly enjoy the way Robin Sloan writes and he has got a fan in me! Can’t wait to read more from him 🙂
A STANDALONE romantic comedy from author Melissa Williams. A hot cop and a donut baker, what could go wrong?
It was a donut emergency. A dough or die moment. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself. It would explain why, from the moment Baxter DeCavhalo comes crashing into my kitchen, I’ve been acting out of character.
Why I’m sharing secret donut recipes, licking frosting off fingers that aren’t mine, and falling for the off-limits neighbor. I know better, I need to be focusing on my bakery and my next donut creation…but there’s just something about Bax that keeps me coming back for more. It’s not the heat of the kitchen that’s getting to me, it’s Bax. And this slow burn is about to combust.
I was looking for a light and fluffy romantic comedy when I came across this book and it sounded just like what I was looking for. It didn’t hurt that it also has such a colourful and eye-catching cover! I was sold. Unfortunately, this book was not it and it didn’t work out for me.
The plot and character arcs felt very underdeveloped because everything seemed to happen off-page. There were many allusions to “something not being right” with the friendships and sibling relationships, and that’s even before we get into the police drama that stems from Bax’s work as a police detective. It felt like there was a lot happening in the story but at the same time, not much either, if that makes sense. There were no discussions to try to solve those “not right” feelings with her brother and her best friend, although something was clearly up. It all came across as very vague.
I also didn’t connect with our heroine or hero. Cassidy seems to have a history of being hurt and so has built up her walls; however, we never really learn about what made the walls go up in the first place. Again, hints of her history are dropped but we don’t get any details. Of course these walls end up being a barrier to whatever is going on with Bax, but after some not-very-nice hints from her best friend about her inability to trust anyone, Cassidy simply decidesthat she’s going to let Bax in… And she does it. Despite a rough meet-cute for our characters, Bax became very quickly “all-in” with Cassidy. He decides at one point during their second interaction that he wants all or nothing, and he’s going to make Cassidy realise that he’s serious about them. I didn’t get it. Yeah, she’s quirky and makes delicious donuts but… That’s it? Don’t tell me he’s all in, show me why! I felt very little chemistry between them and that made their steamy scenes also fall flat for me.
Overall, a fairly disappointing read. It just never clicked for me and that’s disappointing because I was expecting more… Even the part about the bakery, which I thought would leave me with endless donut cravings, didn’t even really do that… I’m glad that I did give this a try though–I don’t think I could’ve resisted such a cute cover for very long, but I’m also glad it was on Kindle Unlimited!
It started with a lie. A night of blurred lines between a teacher and a student. I wasn’t her student, yet it was the single most defining night of my life.
I’ve never been the man she thinks I am. Most people have no idea about the life I’ve lived or the words that ring true when it comes to me—still waters run deep. But you’d be hard-pressed to find a coed on the TGU campus who knows otherwise…because I’ve never corrected them.
The clock is ticking down, it’s Fourth and Inches with the ball inside the one-yard line and the focus is on me, The Guy on the Left. I’ve never felt like a football god, inside I’m…just Troy.
It’s time to set the record straight. For my son, I‘ll find the strength. In her eyes, I’m determined to gain redemption. I will have them both, even if I have to take my eye off the ball.
YOU GUYS!!! I didn’t think I could love a character in The Underdogs series more than Theo… BUT I WAS WRONG!!! And who would’ve thought it’d be TROY to win me over?! Ugh, mY HEART, Kate Stewart!
Strike One – My mother named me Theodore after her favorite chipmunk. Not cool, Mom. I‘ve spent most of my life answering to Teddy, because I couldn’t make Theo work. Except for here. College. The place where all bets are off, and I’ve managed to redeem myself.
There’s only one problem, my new roommate, Troy, is football royalty and looks like he stepped off the set of an Abercrombie shoot. Doesn’t matter, I cook a mean breakfast for his panty parade, and we get along well. And anyway, this year I got the girl. And she’s perfect. That’s right. Theodore Houseman, former band geek, now marching band rock star has finally landed the girl of his dreams. Everything is perfect.
That is, until Troy takes a good look at her. I’m not going down without a fight. As a matter of fact, I’m not going down at all. As glorious as these days may be for my all-star roommate, Laney is my end game. I may not know much about play strategy, but I’ve been the good guy my whole life. I’ve been listening and I know exactly what women want. Framed in a picture standing next to me, Troy may seem like Mr. Perfect, but he’s underestimating the guy on the right.
Spoiler alert: In this story, the underdog is going to win.
Brace yourselves for another gushing review friends because I LOVED EVERY. SINGLE. MINUTE of this book! The itch to read this has steadily built since last week, so I finally caved and of course I have zero regrets. There were a few moments towards the end that frustrated me and made me angry because wow, talk about being very intense and out of character, but I can’t honestly say that it affected my overall enjoyment of this book. I literally devoured this in the span of a few hours and it was by far the best way to spend a Sunday cozied up under the covers while the rain poured steadily outside!
dinipandareads 