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Any Old Diamonds by K.J. Charles
K.J. Charles is one of my favorite authors, and I love basically every single one of her books– and this one is no exception. It’s very difficult to write a coherent review for a favorite author because all my positive feelings overwhelm my analytical thoughts until my brain is just a big ball of “yay, this book was good!” Well, it IS good and I DID love it, and if you haven’t read K.J. Charles yet, you desperately need to. Any Old Diamonds is about Alec, a son of a duke with a grudge against his father and step-mother. He’s desperately in need of money and revenge, and so he…
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Spectered Isle by K.J. Charles
Let’s speed past the fact that I’ve been on a 1.5 year hiatus from blogging and have fallen out of writing for fun or even reading and let’s get right to the review: This is the first in KJ Charles’ newest series Green Men; it’s a historical horror-fantasy romance set in interwar England, roughly connected to her book Simon Feximal. This first book is about a disgraced archaeologist (+1) and an upper-crust sarcastic fucker (+1), with a mysterious evil entity and malignant government forces providing much of the antagonism. I really like the fantasy setting, particularly as it incorporates the older, scarier British paranormal elements of a similar kind to…
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The Only Option by Megan Derr
What a sweet little book! I wasn’t sure what to expect with this book, partly because the cover and the series name makes it look like a much darker book than it actually is. It looks like it’s full of drama and depressing things and angst, but it’s almost completely the opposite. I mean, there’s still a little angst, but it’s the good kind, the delicious kind that makes the sweet goopy parts that much more fun. It also has many of my favorite story elements: grumpy dudes being pursued by rays of sunshine; dragons!; wizards!; accidental/forced marriage; road trips; and pining. So much pining! I’m a huge sucker for…
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Skip Trace by Kelly Jensen and Jenn Burke
This is the 3rd Chaos Station book! I haven’t reviewed the first two here, but I enjoyed them and obviously kept reading the series. The first book is a second-chance lovers romance, with scifi thriller stuff! There’s super soldiers, a government conspiracy, outer space shenanigans, aliens, secrets, and kissing. And the second book builds off various plot-related repercussions in the first book– thriller and romance both– while expanding on the relationship between the two leads, Zander and Felix. This third book, while continuing on the major plot points from the previous two books, ramps everything up by, like, ten. It does this great plot thing where terrible events happen that…
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Bellingham Mysteries by Nicole Kimberling
This is a mystery-romance series about a newspaper reporter and his artist boyfriend, and the constant shenanigans they get into while trying to solve crimes! The first book is very mystery-centric, which makes sense because the protag’s love interest is also technically a suspect. Sidenote: I super loved having a newspaper journalist as the detective, as it allows him to use his natural nosiness and writing capabilities to solve the mystery! Also, his love interest is an artist. Fun! Anyway, the first book was good, but the SECOND book was even better, despite being shorter and less mystery-y. It’s set in a winter artistic retreat. This time the mystery took…
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Tournament of Losers by Megan Derr
Previous attempts at Megan Derr’s older books have been somewhat hit-or-miss, but the summary for Tournament of Losers sounded like something right up my alley, so I decided to give it a go. And that was an EXCELLENT DECISION, y’all! Tournament of Losers is the BEST Megan Derr book I’ve read yet! I think it’s a combo of increased writing skills + many tropes I adore + completely adorable characters + wonderful worldbuilding. One of my complaints about MD’s earlier books was the treatment/lack of women characters, how everybody’s white, and sometimes-weird chemistry between the leads. With her newer books, many of those things have been addressed. For instance, in…
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Love Lessons by Heidi Cullinan
I think this was my first New Adult book! Right? Or at least the first NA book I’ve recognized as NA since NA became a thing. College-age protagonists falling in love and causing drama and making new friends and moving away from home for the first time and presumably doing homework between making out and music club. Love Lessons! Yes!
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Spectr vol. 1 by Jordan L. Hawk
A novella series is tough to review; each book is just a little too short to write about on its own and trying to do the whole series at once is super tiring. But I really liked these books so I’m gonna give it a shot. Hunter of demons So basically all these books are short, but good. I do prefer full-length novels to almost anything else, but novellas are fun because you can finish reading them super quickly. They’re like bon-bons! Bon-bons filled with demons. SPECTR has a somewhat typical paranormal worldbuilding with demons, psychics, and special agents who solve paranormal crimes. Luckily I love all that stuff! This…