In my review of Beautiful Oblivion, I compared Jamie McGuire’s Maddox Brothers series to Twinkies® – they taste great but they’re really very bad for you. After reading book three, Beautiful Sacrifice: A Novel (after all, there are always two Twinkies in a pack), my comparison proves spot on. These books are assembly-line manufactured sweets,…
Back in 2011, I was one of the many readers who had a love/hate relationship with Jamie McGuire’s runaway New Adult hit, Beautiful Disaster. I loved hero Travis’s intensity but hated his anger management issues, swooned over his devotion to heroine Abby but despised his obsessiveness, prayed they’d stay together but loathed their co-dependent relationship,…
It is a truth universally acknowledged that I will read just about any Pride and Prejudice redux that comes my way. It is also a truth that very, very few of them are worth my time, so imagine my delight when A Higher Education resoundingly was. The small changes made to the original only served…
Reasons I picked up Mary Frame’s Imperfect Chemistry: I liked the cover It’s a New Adult romance and I haven’t read many of those The heroine was described as a genius with a PhD in microbiology And I have a master’s in microbiology, so I guessed going in that there would be no lab work…
I rarely read new adult romances, because – to be honest – they make me feel old. I can rarely relate to the issues facing a twenty-year old any more, because it feels like I have been there and done that and I have no wish to go back and do it again! But I…
I love drumlines. LOVE them! So when I read the blurb about Drumline by Stacy Kestwick, I snatched it up. The prospect of getting a behind-the-scenes look at the makings of a college drumline, plus the bonus of a love story between two drummers teased that I’d found a keeper. While this book wasn’t bad,…
The first book I ever read by Kelly Jamieson, Shut Out, didn’t sit very well with me. I’m happy to say that the second book in the series, Cross Check: A Bayard Hockey Novel, is an improvement, but there are still some aspects that simply grated on me. Ella Verran has made some bad choices…
Written from a beautiful and intimate ‘own voice’ perspective, Liz Jacob’s Abroad is a delight. Accurate and nuanced writing is becoming the norm with Brain Mill Press, and Abroad continues this trend, and raises the bar higher. Although the novel subtly changes points of view throughout, the strongest voice is that of Nick Melnikov. When…
I know a lot of romance readers steer clear of NA books. I get it, I do. It’s difficult to achieve the right balance writing about college kids maturing into adulthood – and not a lot of writers are able to do it well. One writer who does successfully navigate this transitional time period is…
The first book in Chelsea Fine’s Finding Fate trilogy, Best Kind of Broken, was nearly a DIK. So when I finally found the time to jump into the second installment, Perfect Kind of Trouble, I had very high expectations. To be sure, I thoroughly enjoyed Daren and Kayla’s story and can easily recommend this book…