Book Review: Shattered Dreams

Overall: 2/5

Plots and Themes: 3/5

Characters: 2/5

Writing Style: 3/5

Attention Grabbing: 2/5 

Lady Elyssa Prescott has consigned herself to a life of spinsterhood. It could be worse, she has a loving family who she knows will always support anything she does. And she has her horses that give her a sense of mobility and autonomy that she could never manage in her every day life. But when she meets Brentan Montgomery, she begins to wonder if there could be more to that life. 

Everything felt a lot more forced than I would have preferred. We have this inorganic romance forming where they're never really on the same page about anything. Then they're just sort of together automatically and we as readers are supposed to view it as a dramatic come-together but just feels icky in light of the secrets being kept and the lack of previous conversation. Plus, the random flips to the brother and best friend's side romance that is just a boring case of miscommunication stifled the drama. 

I like drama to an extent, but I don't like it when it has no build up and no motivation. Like of course, we knew from the second he told her to hide that she would somehow find herself perilously threaded into the narrative of the chase. I was just sick of it at that point. So while it had some good points, I had pretty much lost it by the end. 

Book Review: How to Romance a Rake (Ugly Duckling #2)

Overall: 2/5

Plots and Themes: 2/5

Characters: 2/5

Writing Style: 3/5

Attention Grabbing: 2/5 

Juliet has been a wallflower (at best) ever since an accident gave her a limp several years ago. Any attention she receives is typically derogative and she's sick of it all together. When she meets Lord Deveril, she's surprised at his attention and the assistance he provides in the quest to find her missing friend. 

The best I can say about this one is that it had the unique inclusion of how a certain disability would have been dealt with in this time period. The author obviously did the research she could in seeking out the description. But beyond that, I found the plot sort of basic and boring. One of my biggest pet peeves in romances with characters with disabilities is when the able-bodied protagonist sort of falls in love with them based only on their disability? I don't know how else to phrase that, but it seemed like the most critical bonding that the two experienced centered around her uniqueness on that front. 

I don't know, very non-memorable. I wouldn't want to trash it too much cause it was definitely good enough to finish I just wanted more from either the mystery or the romance. Ideally both, but even one would've livened things up considerably. 

Book Review: Undercover Bromance (Bromance Book Club #2)

Overall: 2/5

Plots and Themes: 3/5

Characters: 2/5

Writing Style: 2/5

Attention Grabbing: 2/5 

Undercover Bromance is the second book in the Bromance Book Club which I did not read the first book in. Liv is a pastry chef, she works at a fancy restaurant for a jerk of a boss. When she spills the dessert on the night of Mack's very important dinner date and sees her boss making moves on a young server, she quickly loses her job and finds herself blacklisted. Now, she's enlisted Mack and his friends in taking her jerk of a boss down. 

The real chemistry between these two came from the fact that they are totally unlikeable and thus deserve each other. Liv is just annoying all the time and whiney and purposefully unhelpful, Mack thinks he's the best for the fact that he reads his little romance novels. It was way too much pandering in an attempt to cater to what one might think romance readers want from a man. Getting the jerky boss in trouble was great, but the way Liv tried to brutally bully the victims into coming forward was disgusting and even more unlikeable. 

I won't be continuing in the series. It's a cute premise it just didn't need to be forced down our throats the whole time. 

Book Review: Love on the Brain

Overall: 2.5/5

Plots and Themes: 3/5

Characters: 2/5

Writing Style: 3/5

Attention Grabbing: 3/5 

Love on the Brain is Ali Hazelwood's second book and pretty much just as quirky and ridiculous as her first but in the most addicting sort of way. Addicting as in it's like a car crash, you just can't look away. Bee gets her dream job heading a program that could be her saving grace, the only catch? She has to do it with her academic nemesis Levi. 

The biggest problem with the plot is that there was absolutely no mystery and suspense. We as readers knew that Levi was just in love with her the whole time, even more than we would usually know in a contemporary grumpy sunshine book of this variety. And if anyone read this and had any doubts about the identity of the anonymous and somehow equally viral identity of her saving grace blogging friend, you probably don't get out too much. Don't even get me started on the convenient placement of the fainting fits- I feel like a neuroscientist should be a bit more concerned about the effects of repeating black outs on your brain function but maybe that's just me. 

I can say it's pretty much what I expected. It's by no means poorly written, just with some questionable decisions by the characters and a tad too much forced drama. I can't say that I wouldn't ever read her books again, they're just addicting like that. But I wish she would give some more depth to them without making them all so needlessly quirky. 

Book Review: The Right Move

Overall: 2/5

Plots and Themes: 3/5

Characters: 2/5

Writing Style: 3/5

Attention Grabbing: 2/5 

The Right Move follows Indy and Ryan, roommates of convenience. Indy found her boyfriend cheating eight months ago, now she wants her life back but can't afford to have that in Chicago. Her best friend offers her a place, but she just moved in with her boyfriend and Indy doesn't want to bother her- so she moves in with her brother instead. Ryan is a pro NBA player, he doesn't do distractions and that's exactly what Indy is. But it's all just temporary. Until he needs a fake girlfriend to convince his coach of his stability. 

I liked it for the first 100-200 pages, but I could not believe that this book went on for as long as it did. I thought everything was resolved and then we would just delve into another completely random topic. I didn't think the author held out on the confession of secrets long enough, because it made the whole miscommunication based faux pas feel much more insensitive at the end. And then it kept going. By the epilogue, I had lost interest in their lives completely. The actual issues weren't really issues at all, it felt sort of random after we got past that first roadbump. 

So the first two 30-40% was a typical fun sports romance, but it really lost me. I don't think I'll be reading the next about their friend because I don't care to be dragged along anymore. 

Book Review: Dating Dracula (Dating Monsters #1)

Overall: 2/5

Plots and Themes: 2/5

Characters: 2/5

Writing Style: 2/5

Attention Grabbing: 2/5

Dating Dracula follows the story of Anna, a vlogger looking to expose the nefarious activities of the vampires who just went public last week. Unfortunately, her snooping gets her killed. Or undeaded at least, now she's a vampire and somehow this dude wants to kill her for a second time. Oh yeah, she was also changed into a vampire by Dracula himself, a man she's never met but can't seem to stay away from. 

I got this book for free from a list of free Kindle romances last week. I think the concept is fun, but the execution was a little all over the place. Anna was too much and Vlad was too little. It was enough to read through to the end, but I didn't feel invested in their story lines because it all felt a little obvious. Again, it was a fun premise, I just didn't connect with it. 

Book Review: The Texan's Reward (The Wife Lottery #4)

Overall: 2/5

Plots and Themes: 2/5

Characters: 2/5

Writing Style: 2/5

Attention Grabbing: 3/5

This book is the fourth book in The Wife Lottery series but can be read as a standalone. It follows Nell, who was a young and crazy orphan in the first book but is now a young woman who was injured saving her friends (featured in the previous novels). She sees the land she has inherited from her guardian and knows that it would be best to have someone to help her manage it all and so she puts out an advertisement for a husband.

Enter Jacob Dalton, who decides that if anyone is going to marry her to protect her it's going to be him. This just got progressively weirder and ickier as the plotline went on, but I chose to ignore the age difference for the resolution. But I was sort of expecting a resolution that cinched all the plotlines and the whole Zeb thing forever, since that's how her injury arc started out. But really, it was a weird combination of different smaller conflicts till the ultimate danger that was over as fast as it started. 

I don't like it in books when a character has something to overcome and the author sort of speeds through the entire journey to getting to the point that it's been overcome. Like, I recognize that we don't want to see someone complaining about an injury for 300 pages. But the ending was lackluster to me because it cut scene right and skipped a couple months and didn't explain it all to us. Other than that, the book was a pretty standard western romance. Definitely not my favorite or my favorite in this series, but it was okay.

Book Review: A New Shade of Summer

Overall: 2/5

Plots and Themes: 2/5

Characters: 1/5

Writing Style: 2/5

Attention Grabbing: 2/5

A New Shade of Summer is a contemporary romance, set as third in a series but can be read as a standalone as I didn't even know it was third in the series. It follows Callie Quinn, an artist who loves to travel and is against setting any sort of roots. Visiting her sister and her niece and nephew in Lenox every summer is about as sedentary as she gets. Until she meets Davis and begins to wonder if maybe there's a better way.

I'd like to start off by saying there's a big difference to me between a clean romance and Christian fiction. This book wasn't marketed to me as Christian fiction, maybe I didn't read into it enough but it was frustrating to bring all the talk of religion in so far into the book and trying to make it into a facet of morality and integrity. Now maybe I'm just not the target audience, but it didn't seem like Callie was either so it felt very out of character for her to just jump on the religious bandwagon. Maybe that's just me being judgmental though. 

A big issue was character arcs for me. I didn't see growth that was realistic to who they were at the starting point. No spoilers, but I felt Callie just ditched everything that made her unique in favor of a more conventional life. I don't feel like her hangups or her personality should have allowed for it and it felt very forced. That wasn't a problem till like the last fifth of the book, but it really took away from the conclusion. So I liked it at first, but the whole resolution just wasn't good for me.

Book Review: In the Heir (Westerly Billionaire #1)

Overall: 2/5

Plots and Themes: 1/5

Characters: 2/5

Writing Style: 2/5

Attention Grabbing: 2/5

When their grandmother installs a new condition on their inheritance - be married or have it donated - one of the Westerly siblings decides to fake an engagement to gain the money. Alisha has been a friend of the family for forever, so when Spencer asks her if she'll lie for him she's completely on board. Things only start to get complicated when she starts having feelings for his brother. 

Honestly, my bad for downloading this book hoping for a simple and straightforward conflict-solution romance. The book lacked any real problems and felt shallow. They argued back and forth for 100 pages then said you know what, maybe we should actually try to fix it, and then you can guess what happened next. That's the spoiler-free run through, it just felt like there wasn't any point to any actual problems between them. I don't like books that argue a point into the ground then just decide to ignore all of the aforementioned previous arguments. 

My least favorite part was at the end leading into a sequel. The dialogue felt pretty consistently stilted, that little piece at the end being the worst of all. I won't be reading the next book in this series and I probably should have DNFed this one. 

Book Review: Most Valuable Playboy

Overall: 2/5

Plots and Themes: 2/5

Characters: 3/5

Writing Style: 3/5

Attention Grabbing: 2/5

It's the annual charity auction - FOR THE CHILDREN - and football superstar Cooper is being threatened by a radio personality who could destroy his reputation. He doesn't want to upset her but he definitely doesn't want her to win a date with him. Thankfully, his good friend Violet was able to use his money to win the date for herself. But it looks like their little hometown romance is benefitting them both, so they decide to play it up for a bit. 

This book was original as far as these books go as it was entirely narrated by the man. I don't know if I've ever seen a book in this genre do that. That also might have been why everything felt so quick, women are written with so much more self-doubt than he was. I don't even know if he hesitated a second, it was all about his wants rather than hers. Kind of rubbed me the wrong way. 

There was no real conflict, no drama, everything just sort of fell into place. It was also like the starting point kept shifting and I found myself wondering why they had never discussed being together in the first place. It was strange and weird pacing. I didn't hate it, it was entertaining enough, but I would have liked to see more depth. 

Book Review: A Dawn of Onyx

Overall: 2/5

Plots and Themes: 2/5

Characters: 3/5

Writing Style: 3/5

Attention Grabbing: 2/5

This book follows Arwen, a village healer who has been waiting for word from her brother at war for over a year. Her family has accepted the fact that he's probably dead but she's not giving up. When he does show up, it's with stolen money and a poorly planned desire to get out of the country. Her family escapes, but she's captured by the ones he stole from. 

The whole captured plotline is boring. The stakes don't seem as high as the synopsis makes it seem. Her powers had the potential to be developed into something interesting but I feel like they kind of just existed without any real fanfare. They made it seem like it was unique and rare but they never even really showcased it. 

The romance was predictable. I didn't hate it, but it was definitely not something I'll remember. It was just so cliche and at times felt like we were being forcefed their chemistry cause I really just did not feel it. Like a lot of the plot points in the book, they made sense sure they just all felt too easy. 

I probably won't read the sequel because I won't remember enough from this one to go on. Too much was happening in the last fifty pages to even follow where the next will go. I didn't hate it, I just had expected more from the synopsis. 

Book Review: Bad Kitty (A Cat McKenzie Book #5)

 

Bad Kitty

Lauren Dawes

Overall: 2/5

Plots and Themes: 2/5

Characters: 3/5

Writing Style: 2/5

Attention Grabbing: 2/5

This is the fifth book in the Cat McKenzie series, we're well into her universe and her arcs and we're just going from mystery to mystery at this point. Cat and Sawyer are closer to ever and trying to figure out the extent and limitations of their bond. We have the added confusion of a random interloper who has somehow bound himself to Cat's service and a crazy serial killer taking out billionaires. 

I think this is the last one I'll be finishing in this series. I've just kind of been overloaded at this point with the way that the author depicts Cat, I don't know if it's a complication of balancing a hard detective with a softer feminine personality or that the author actually wants us to see the protagonist as babyish. Either way, it was hard to read and combined with a kind of lackluster mystery I feel like the book has run its course. 

I've enjoyed the books to this point pretty well, but I think I'm going to need something more exciting to keep it going. There was no cliffhanger or anything that would motivate me to keep it going and I've kind of lost motivation.

 

Book Review: The Masked Fae (The Royal Fae of Rose Briar Woods #1)

 

The Masked Fae

Shari L. Tapscott

Overall: 2/5

Plots and Themes: 2/5

Characters: 2/5

Writing Style: 2/5

Attention Grabbing: 2/5

The Masked Fae starts with a girl attempting to win her brother back from debtors prison after he gambled their whole fortune away. She's willing to brave the terrors of the fae world in order to restore some aspect of her family. When she meets the man who is his supposed captor, she can't really understand how someone so nice could have such a horrible reputation.

It's boring and lengthy really. Every time I thought it was over I looked down at the percentage and had huge portions of the book to go. I don't know why the progression of it all was so hard to get behind, but it really dragged. I think it's because we got resolution to what felt like the main plot line like 40 percent in, then the boss battle at the end just totally lacked the suspense which was necessary. The I love yous came way too soon and I wasn't all that supportive of the main relationship, it just felt like they were both super lonely and immediately fell in love. 

It wasn't all that entertaining for me, though I did manage to finish it so it definitely could have been worse. I don't think it speaks anything about the author cause the writing was alright, it just dragged so much. 

Book Review: The Dinner

 

The Dinner

Herman Koch

Overall: 2/5

Plots and Themes: 2/5

Characters: 1/5

Writing Style: 2/5

Attention Grabbing: 1/5

The Dinner is one of those books that's supposed to keep you guessing from start to finish. The only problem was that I wasn't like trying to figure things out cause it was a great mystery, I was trying to figure out how a plot could have so few concrete facts and still get away with calling itself realistic. Everything that could have potentially been a real-world scenario was deliberately obscure which seemed like an easy way to get out of explaining basically anything. 

The whole point of the book is that these two couples are at dinner trying to have a difficult conversation about how best to handle a tricky situation. That idea quickly derails itself through convoluted asides designed to provide exposition on how totally unhinged some of the people are. It also took away all my confidence in the Dutch criminal justice system, or that was just another part which was poorly explained and thus hard to truly understand. There were multiple diseases referenced as key pieces of the narratives but we got the author dodging having to do actual research by vaguely mentioning symptoms or having the characters claim that they didn't want to divulge personal information.  

The mystery was random and I really didn't care about it either way. I'll give it two stars based almost purely on the shock factor. Some of the stuff that happened was just confusing and graphic enough to be disturbing. But if you're looking for plot or anything with depth I'm going to have to recommend you look elsewhere.

Book Review: Sinful Touch (Demons After Dark: Temptation #1)

 

Sinful Touch

Jenna Wolfhart

Overall: 2/5

Plot and themes: 3/5

Characters: 3/5

Writing style: 2/5

Attention-grabbing: 2/5

Sinful Touch is the first book in another series installment of the Demons After Dark. There's no additional reading required to be able to understand this one though. Eva wants to be a reporter but she's been stuck for six years on desk jobs. When she meets a demon one night, her boss sees it as the perfect opportunity for her promotion. Caim sees it as a great chance for some insider information on a cult designed to release some less savory demons into the world. They're both lying to one another, but can't seem to help seeing the best in each other. 

My main problem was that there was nothing truly special about any of the plot lines. It's like, if I have to pick between cool powers and a good romance I should at least get one of them. Instead, I got kind of an insta-love combined with a demon whose powers were poorly defined. I didn't hate it, while reading it's interesting enough to get to the end. But it also doesn't feel like a book that could be continued to a more exciting series. 

I don't know, on the spectrum of demon romances this is probably mid-tier but not special enough to be truly amazing. I would say it's not really anything that inspires frustration, just sort of ambivalence.

 

Book Review: Darkest Moon (Shadow Guild #1)

 

Darkest Moon

Linsey Hall

Overall: 2/5

Plot and themes: 3/5

Characters: 3/5

Writing style: 2/5

Attention-grabbing: 2/5

Darkest Moon is a complicated book to place, it's the first book in its series but its incredibly interwoven into a broader universe that gets referenced literally every five minutes. I haven't read all the other books, but I could feel the direction of the hints and everything. That could be a positive, but I feel like it could also be a negative if you really only care for the contents of this book. 

I had the same problem with this one as I have with some of the other books I've read, they're just too instant. At points it feels like I'm reading the diatribe of a toddler, or a bad fanfiction writer, where it goes "well maybe it's like this because it's like that and yes that makes sense it's like this". It just feels way too connected and not natural in the flow of events. 

I don't know how I feel about the romance, ambivalent? All in all I was really only invested in the explanation of her parenthood or magic and I don't even know if I would get that in the sequel. It's a quick and easy read but it's also not very gratifying.

 

Book Review: Touched by Fire (Demons of New Chicago #1)

 

Touched by Fire

Kel Carpenter

Overall: 2/5

Plot and themes: 2/5

Characters: 2/5

Writing style: 3/5

Attention-grabbing: 2/5

Touched by Fire is your typical magical bounty hunter who has a secret past type story. Piper has been hunting for her boss for years, mainly to try to find some information to help her comatose sister out of the state she has been locked in for the past decade. When she is tasked with killing an entire coven, she fumbles and instead lets a demon into our world. Now, her boss is after her with a huge bounty on her head and she has to figure out how to keep her nature hidden. 

This book was a little too boring for my taste. We're not getting the interactions that I feel justify the emotion behind the relationships that are forming. Piper has spent a decade trusting no one but now she has a bestie, a potential demon boyfriend, and a rival love interest in the span of a week? I hate when authors use filler numbers like ten years of hiding when you can tell the protagonist shouldn't have been able to hide for a week because her skills in application are weak. 

So definitely not my favorite, but it wasn't so bad that it deserved a DNF. I don't think I'm very interested in continuing in the series, but it could get better if we saw Piper doing more of what the narrator describes her as being able to do.

 

Book Review: Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse #1)

 

Dead Until Dark

Charlaine Harris

Overall: 2/5

Plot and themes: 2/5

Characters: 1/5

Writing style: 1/5

Attention-grabbing: 2/5

I feel like the Sookie Stackhouse series is pretty popular and well-received, but it could just be that it has a lot of books and a TV show. Cause I don't know what this book was but it was not well-received by me, one might even call it bad. Sookie is your run-of-the-mill small-town waitress except also she's not at all because she reads minds. Half the town thinks she's psychotic while the other half thinks she's sweet but... not all there. Things start getting crazy for her when she meets a man who she can finally be around without knowing his every thought, the only catch being that he's a vampire. Oh, and women of the exact same demographic profile as her are also getting systematically murdered. 

This book is so weird. There are just a bunch of really random off-topic thought trains by the protagonist, she has a super strange perspective on herself and everyone around her that's rather off-putting. The romance just does not hit, the dude's name is Bill so I don't know how I would ever get on board with that. It's just overwhelmingly complicated and random for a very basic resolution that has no textual backing. 

I didn't like it. It was funny enough at times and wasn't horrible enough to DNF. But it was pretty bad. I wouldn't recommend it to vampire lovers, though it's old stuff so everyone else has probably already formed an opinion.

 

Book Review: Tender is the Flesh

 

Tender is the Flesh

Agustina Bazterrica

Overall: 2/5

Plot and themes: 2/5

Characters: 2/5

Writing style: 3/5

Attention-grabbing: 2/5

Tender is the Flesh is a horror novella that illustrates a world where all animals aside from humans are poisonous for human consumption. To fulfill the very obvious and necessary desire for meat, humans now farm other humans. But not human-humans, they give them all the value of cattle and consider them completely other from themselves. The novella specifically follows a man who has recently had his life turned upside down and is now reflecting on the present societal values. 

The most fundamental problem with this book is that absolutely nothing is justified. It's like, I understand that there is a certain degree of suspension of disbelief and I read a ton of paranormal books where crazy stuff happens constantly. But this book just says it and wants us to believe there was such a limited rejection of that kind of thing. I could understand if it had begun 50 or 100 years in the past and we were told that it was a revolution where the dissenters were quickly wiped out but it's not. It happened within the recent lifespan of the main character. 

I get the "depth" of it and what we're supposed to reflect on. I just don't think it was constructed in a way that was shocking or even deep. It just felt like it was constantly going for a shock factor that I didn't really care much about.

 

Book Review: The Portrait of a Scarred Duke

 

The Portrait of a Scarred Duke

Patricia Haverton 

Overall: 2/5

Plot and themes: 2/5

Characters: 1/5

Writing style: 2/5

Attention-grabbing: 2/5

I was in the serious mood for a regency romance and this book really just did not deliver what I was looking for. The Duke of Worthwood needs a portrait painted, a complicated endeavor for a man with a face like his. When his primary artist gets sick, he endorses the artist's daughter as the proper replacement. But the more time he spends with her, the more he comes to see her goodness and think that she maybe could be more than just his artist. 

It's bland, and that's on me for not recognizing it and reading it straight through. I wanted to give it a proper chance but it was dull all the way through. I think it had a decent starting premise but that there wasn't enough real conflict to give the book any substance. We didn't even really get the conflict of heart as the duke had to make the decision to marry for love rather than position. I don't really think a commoner could marry a duke with as little fuss as what was created through their match. So it wasn't authentic to the period and it was just disappointing. 

It wasn't the worst regency romance I've ever read and maybe I'm being too harsh on it, I just didn't find it super entertaining or enjoyable.