What are you reading?
I’ve been on a rereading binge. After the AAR Good Time Book Club read the surprisingly unsatisfying Fool Me Twice by the usually great Meredith Duran, I was inspired to read several others of hers that are far better. I’ve blasted through Bound By Your Touch, Written On Your Skin, and Luck Be A Lady all of which I, again, adored. Then, in need of more comfort, I moved onto to early Sherry Thomas–thus far I’ve reread Delicious, Private Arrangements, and Ravishing The Heiress. It’s been lovely.
Next up for me is Thomas’ upcoming Charlotte Holmes book, Miss Moriarty, I Presume? and Harper St. George’s The Lady Tempts An Heir. How about you? What have you been reading? What’s on the top of your TBR?
August was a big reading month for me. Lucy Parker’s Battle Royal was as good as I hoped. I stopped reading another romantic comedy, Annika Martin’s Just Not That Into Millionaires, because the humour didn’t work for me. Humour is such a personal thing, I think.
Someone recommended Sarah Title’s Librarians in Love series, and they held my attention to the end – which too many books fail to do. The heroines were strong, interesting characters, but not particularly likeable.
I’ve read a few M.L. Buchman books… Secret Service romantic suspense with Robyn Carr-esque character interactions. The protagonists are less two-dimensional than many secret service/ romantic suspense characters.
I finished listening to the many Alistair Stone audiobooks by R. L. King. There was quite a variety of story-lines, some of which appealed to me more than others. But the narration held my attention even through the zombie storylines. I don’t usually follow narrators, but I must look for other books read by Will. M. Watt.
I think my comments on the Alistair Stone series were too lacklustre. If you like intricate, evolving stories and well-developed characters, this series is well worth checking out. They’re not romance, however, so don’t hold your breath for the HEA.
Like Maggie, it’s been mostly review books for me – I’m on holiday and we’ve been out and about a lot so I haven’t read as much as I usually do, but I really enjoyed Lee Welch’s upcoming Seducing the Sorcerer and Beautiful Mistakes by Felice Stevens. I just finished Annabeth Albert’s Sailor Proof, which was cute. I just listened to the new audiobook version of Rachel Grant’s Concrete Evidence (the original had pretty poor narration; the new version is excellent), to Rachel Reid’s Role Model, which is terrific in audio, and I’m doing a relisten of Z.A. Maxfield’s The Long Way Home before I start on A Friend in the Fire by Gregory Ashe & C.S. Poe. I relisten way more than I reread these days!
I’m looking forward to Beautiful Mistakes but I haven’t read Footsteps of the Past yet!
Finally have power back in our neighborhood (we’re on the Northshore of Lake Pontchartrain, about five miles from the Louisiana-Mississippi state line), but while I was unable to connect to the internet and download the new Harlequin Presents from Caitlin Crews & Jackie Ashenden, I read some older books that had been sitting on my kindle for a while: I started with Amelia Wilde’s six-book Bliss Brothers series (published in 2019) about six brothers who run a resort in upstate New York. All of the books are m/f romances. Wilde’s recent work is uber-dark (such as her Beauty & the Beast trilogy), so it’s interesting to see that as recently as two years ago she was writing much lighter & fluffier romances. I did have to deduct points for scarcely a mention of condoms, health status, or birth control before the sexy-times began. Ironically, the only book that so much as mentioned a condom was the one with an unplanned pregnancy plot-line! Then I read Allyson Linda’s MMF-ménage romance, THEIR MATCHMAKER. The most interesting thing about the book was how realistically flawed each of the MCs are. There’s addiction, enabling, co-dependency, talking without a filter, jealousy, etc. I hadn’t read anything by Lindt before, but she’s a good writer with an emphasis less on the sexual connection and more on a healthy emotional one.
I did a reread of Dreaming of You by Lisa Kleypas and oh boy ,it didn’t stand the test of time. From Sarah saying NO to Derek not listening and the portrayal of the villainess, I won’t be reading it again. And I don’t understand why I loved it so much in the first place.
I’ve finally started the Lady Sherlock series by Sherry Thomas and it’s an absolute delight.
I recently enjoyed:
Dearest Milton James by N.R. Walker (M/M romance) – it’s about a young man who goes to work at the Dead Letter Office of the postal service in Sydney, Australia. The office is in charge of getting lost letters/packages to the rightful recipients. He starts falling for his boss and together they work on a set of lost letters from the 1970s that tell the story of a forbidden romance between 2 young men. The letters are poetic and beautiful. It’s not a long book but I really enjoyed it.
Not For Sale by Crystal Lacy (M/M romance) – my first book by this author. The story of a teacher who has a one night stand with a rich guy and later realizes that the rich guy thought he was an escort. Then it turns out that the rich guy’s nephew is in the teacher’s class. And the rich guy is in the closet (for good reason) so lot’s of conflict. There is a set up for a sequel which looks like a teacher-principal romance, which I will read for sure.
The Stopover by T.L. Swan (M/F romance) – woman has a one night stand then a year later gets her dream journalism job for a media conglomerate based in New York and finds out her one night stand is the billionaire CEO. The CEO has 3 brothers who get their own stories. The second is The Takeover and the third is The Casanova and just came out. I thought the woman’s character in The Stopover was a little too dramatic but I liked the book well enough to read the sequels.
I’m also working my way through the rest of the Vino and Veritas series (the M/M romances set in Sarina Bowen’s World of True North). I’m on Limelight by E. Davies.
After that, the books higher on my overflowing TBR pile are:
Pieces of You trilogy by N.R. Walker – I just started reading N.R. Walker and have liked many of the books I have read so far (Bossy, Switched, The Spencer Cohen series)
Bidding for the Bachelor by Jackie Lau – the next in her Fong brothers series which started with Pregnant by the Playboy. This is a M/M romance and I think maybe her first.
Waylaid by Sarina Bowen – story of the last Shipley sibling Daphne.
I loved N.R. Walker’s Thomas Elkins series! It’s an age gap romance, but if you don’t mind that they are very good. Dearest Milton James sounds cute.I’ll have to give that a try.
Hi Carrie! I am actually not that fond of a big age gap but I saw you recommend the Thomas Elkins trilogy and N.R. Walker is becoming one of those authors where I like everything she writes so I went ahead and got the Thomas Elkin books too!
I am re-reading KJ Charles’ Will Darling Adventures. I made the mistake of reading the third and final book without revisiting the first two, and I am now remedying my error in judgement. I adore Will and Kim and am enjoying Charles’ empathy and attention to detail in developing these complex characters.
I just finished All the Feels by Olivia Dade which was great! (It’s out in October). I also liked Battle Royal by Lucy Parker. But I have 6 books on my currently reading list on Goodreads and I just don’t seem to be in the mood to finish any of them. Hoping to find a better one soon.
Mostly review books :-) But I did re-read the Harry Potter’s recently.
I have been listening to them all–am at the beginning of the last book. To listen to all seven books takes 118 hours–it’s been a lot of fun!
Last weekend I read the “Blood of Stars” fantasy duology by Elizabeth Lim: “Spin the Dawn” and “Unravel the Dusk”. It is partly a Mulan derivation, and in other ways it reminded me of the feeling I got years ago when I first read Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart. That book really felt like a Chinese myth or folktale. The Lim duology gives much the same feeling, but it is set in a magical fantasy world analog of China.
I would recommend the duology for the really great creation of a myth, except for the darkness of the story. I really liked most of the first book, but it ended with the action very unfinished. (I won’t call it a cliffhanger because there was no IMMEDIATE peril.) Most of the second book was spent fighting against a seemingly inevitable nasty fate, and also covering a deadly civil war. It did reach a satisfactory conclusion, but the dark path really leaves me unsure whether to recommend the duology or not. It probably depends on each reader’s tolerance for dark stories.
I have started to reread the old Paratime stories by H. Beam Piper, to prepare to read a bunch of sequels written by other authors.
Add me to the “rereading” cohort this August. Reread Stephanie Gayle “Idyll” trilogy – I so wish she’d write more about these characters/town! – and immediately moved on to Cordelia Kingsbridge’s “Seven of Spades” series and Alexis Hall’s “Arden St. Ives” trilogy.
My favorite newish to me author this year is Mhairi McFarlane. Slowly but surely making my way through her backlist. Currently enjoying Don’t You Forget About Me. And anxiously waiting for Helen Hoang’s latest – The Heart Principle – to arrive.
I’m finishing an audio book edition of “Lady Audley’s Secret” by Mary Elizabeth Braddon.
Also, I’m trying to get into reading books in the “dark academia” category. It’s more a category than a genre, and the definitions seem fuzzy at times. And silly me, I ended up starting a couple of the long ones. This includes books in multiple genres, from The Secret History (litfic) to If We Were Villains (psychological thriller) to Ace of Spades (YA) to A Deadly Education (fantasy).
Dark academia? That’s hilarious it’s a thing.
Dark Academia is an everything right now, including fashion. It’s all over Instagram, Tik Tok and YouTube.
One thing I think that really divides the different generations is how Millennials and particularly Gen Z break everything down into groups and labels.
In my day there was New Wave and Punk, then later Grunge but those were pretty general terms with a lot of variety and no set “uniform”. Now the minute someone does something it’s categorized, defined and copied.
Everything is a “something” now.
Apparently, it’s another thing we can blame on COVID-19. The books, clothing, etc. existed long before, but the aesthetic was popularized because of all the students staying home.
There are so many aesthetics I’m only just learning about. Dark academia, light academia, cottagecore, dragoncore, goblincore… :)
So true, and you don’t have a style or particular taste anymore, you have an “aesthetic”.
I was looking something up tangentially related to a book I had finished and according to Pinterest “Autumn Faerie Court” is an aesthetic so I think I will adopt that one next. ;0)
I’ve also been doing a fair bit of rereading (or relistening,as the case may be). After feeling meh about several recent reads, I decided to go back and listen to the first few In Death books on audio. I was wondering how they held up, and I already own the first 9. I’ve relistened to the first three recently and enjoyed it very much. It felt like watching a good police procedural on TV. Nothing groundbreaking, but solidly entertaining with good primary and secondary characters. I also relistened to the Thomas Elkins Triology of novellas by N.R. Walker which I dearly love.
I also revisited several of the Game Changer series by Rachel Reid leading up to the release of Role Model, which I also enjoyed.
A new series I listened to and loved was Cat Sebastian’s Turner Series. Each one is delightful.
I’m currently reading a rare nonfiction book, Living Beautifully: with Uncertainty and Change by Pema Chodron. Based on the Buddhist’s Three Vows or Three Commitments, it’s goal is to help the reader see how reality means constant change, and the fear of groundlessness and the fight against it (trying to always be secure; fighting change) is the cause of suffering. We suffer when what we want and expect in life isn’t what we get,so if we can find a way to accept the feeling of groundlessness,we can awaken energy to move in more positive ways to help ourselves and others.
Since life lobbed a grenade into our lives over a decade ago I’ve been fighting the feeling of “it’s not fair” and “this isn’t what I’d planned.” Now I’m trying to find ways to accept my fundamental inability to truly control my life and still live with joy. This book meshes well with my Dialectic Behavior Therapy counseling.
Fed up with pretty average/below romances recently, I am back to non-fiction embracing my love for social history. I have just started Scoff by Pen Vogler. It’s too early for me to comment on it as I’ve only just finished the introduction but here are a couple of review blurbs. I am licking my metaphorical lips over this one!!
Taste in food, as Pen Vogler shows in this erudite yet lively compendium, is not just about preferred flavour, but what items in your shopping basket say about who you are or, more precisely, who you aspire to be… Scoff is full of such fascinating, intelligent dissections of familiar foods and culinary practices… Superb. ― ‘Book of the Week’, The Times
So utterly fascinating that I read it in great greedy gulps, like a novel. Vogler is incredibly good company as she dismantles pretty much every assumption we make about how we, and other people, eat. — India Knight ― Sunday Times
Pen Vogler is a smart, waspish guide to our national cuisine and what it tells us about ourselves. In short, sharp essays, she looks at, among other things, the class status of avocados and the revolutionary status of vegetarianism. Her chapter on the social history of tea drinking is a particular delight. ― The Herald