After reading and five-starring THROUGH THE SMOKE by this author, I knew I had to give her other books a try. As before, this was a buddy-read with my friend Sarah.
THROUGH THE SMOKE was a traditional gothic romance told in the mode of Jane Eyre (in fact the author lists it as an inspiration in her foreword). By contrast, HONOR BOUND feels like one of those 90s bodice-rippers. The author's style actually kind of reminded me of a cross between Danelle Harmon and Meredith Duran in this, so I think if you enjoy either of those authors, you'll like this a lot.
The story starts out with a wedding, as Jeanette is to be wedded to an older member of British aristocracy to provide money for her titled but land poor family after fleeing the Revolution. However, as she waits for her wedding night, Jeanette learns that her husband is an impotent creep who plans to have his friends gang-r*pe her on the wedding night. And as if that weren't awful enough, they plan to place bets on who will successfully impregnate her! UGH.
She runs away, which is how she meets the hero, Treynor, who is a lieutenant aboard a ship. He and his men are at port and preparing to sail away. They have their meet-cute in an inn where he at first mistakes her for a prostitute when she accidentally ends up in his room, which I thought was a great homage to the bodice-rippers where this was a surprisingly common trope (SWEET SAVAGE LOVE definitely had this!). Unlike the bodice-rippers, he doesn't succeed: she knees him in the balls.
The bulk of this story takes place aboard the ship with Jeanette in drag. This part of the story seems to have bored a lot of readers but it reminded me of one of my favorite books, THE TRUE CONFESSIONS OF CHARLOTTE DOYLE. I can't imagine how much research the author poured into this book to make the nautical setting so vivid and larger than life. She did the same thing with her coal mining community in THROUGH THE SMOKE and I am just amazed. It made me an instant fan and I'm happy to report that this second effort from her did not disappoint.
Only nitpicky things I can nitpick about are that the pacing wasn't quite as good as THROUGH THE SMOKE, especially towards the end, where it dragged a little, only to end up kind of abruptly. I really wish there was an epilogue even though I don't think the ending dissuited the story. I loved Jeanette and Treynor was a great hero, but I also wanted more from him. He sometimes felt like a somewhat stereotypical tortured bastard hero who hates the rich/titled folk for being what he's not, etc., although I will say that I liked how the book ended with him making amends with his estranged mom.
This was a buddy-read with my friend Corvina. WALK OF THE SPIRITS has been on my TBR for a while because Richie Tankersley Cusick is one of my favorite horror/thriller books of all time. Most of her books are YA but she has two adult titles. Her adult titles are among her best work, I think because she had to dial stuff way down for her YA publishers. Even so, her older stuff tends to be wilder than her newer books. WALK OF THE SPIRITS is so mild that it could probably be on the Disney channel.
There's a lot about this book I did like, though. Nobody does atmosphere like this author. I also thought the heroine was bland but fine (surprised by how many people were calling her obnoxious in the reviews; she's almost ridiculously inoffensive). Also, one of the other girls talks about how she's had casual sex and the heroine is super unjudgemental about it, which is a rarity for the 00s. I also liked the Louisiana ghost culture elements and the fact that one of the love interests was a hot, dangerous Cajun guy.
Where this book fell apart was that it foreshadowed creepy stuff but then it didn't pay off. I had an idea of how this book would end and when I wasn't even close, I was mad, because I liked my idea better. The ending was ridiculous. Apparently, there's a sequel, so some of the open-endedness made sense, but my issues with the main storyline remain.
I still love this author but I won't be recommending WALK OF THE SPIRITS to anyone.
THE HUNGRY DEEP was such a pleasant surprise. It has the same vibes as a retro work of gothic horror, like something by Ira Levin, but the themes are more similar to the classic canon of gothic novel: rigid societal structures that breed harmful traditions, toxic masculinity, a bleak and accepting terror of the unknown, and female rage.
Told in multiple POVS, THE HUNGRY DEEP starts out like any other Rebecca or Jane Eyre retelling: a woman comes to a worn-down estate deep in the country with her new husband, only to find out that all of the people in town are wary of him and-- surprise-- he's been married before.The folksy twist is that the husband seems to think some kind of eldritch horrors lurk in the wood... and the townsfolk are either enabling him out of fear, in on it out of necessity, or something else far more horrifying. What really lurks in those chattering woods?
Obviously I liked this book a lot. I like atmospheric horror more than I like blood and guts, and it's really hard for me to read books that linger on suffering. THE HUNGRY DEEP has its share of gore, but I felt like it was tastefully done, and the other definitely spent more time building up her lore and the personalities of the narrators than she did trying to shock the reader.
On that note, I am very impressed about how each POV was so distinct. Tom, Eleanor, Rachel, Gus, etc. all felt very different. They had different motives and thought about what was going on in different ways. Rachel and Eleanor were particularly good characters because both of them are flawed but likable and neither of them are what they initially appear. I LOVE that-- especially in horror, which has a tendency to fridge women who are too unlikable or too sexual. This is a very feminist work, and could be taught in a comparative lit class alongside authors like Angela Carter and Shirley Jackson.
If you heard an outraged pterodactyl-sounding screech of rage, that was me when I got to the cliffhanger at the end of this book. I probably shouldn't be surprised, though. Having read other series by this author, I can definitely confirm that this is 100% her thing.
I'll try not to be mad.
Keyword: try.
I'm actually really impressed with how polished this book is compared to some of this author's other works. In PRIVATE PROPERTY, she has really honed her writing style into something dark and richly atmospheric, with slow-burn sexual attraction and, of course, lots of smut. I think going into this book expecting it to be a carbon copy of JANE EYRE is a mistake, since that's obviously not what the author is trying to do. This is one of those books that feels more like an homage than a straightforward retelling-- even if there's a wicked cliffhanger.
Jane Mendoza is a biracial nanny who is moving from Texas to Maine to take care of a girl named Paige, the niece of the tortured and very imposing Beau Rochester. I think the author did a good job capturing what a manipulative dick Rochester was, and how he basically did it for his own amusement, and because he knew he could get away with it. Some of the stand-offs between Jane and Beau felt very much in keeping with the source material and more than a couple of them made me smile.
Even though this is smut, it is Smut with Plot(TM) which makes a world of difference because it allows for an emotional connection between the two leads that fuels all their scenes together. I liked how Jane talked about how when her Latinx father died, she felt as if her connection to her culture was severed. The way that grief was approached in this book was also really well done. The author shows, rather than tells, us how disillusioned Beau has become with the wealthy set he used to party with, and Jane's abusive and grief-stricken past allow her to forge a connection with his defiant and grieving niece, who is about to flunk out of the first grade because she is refusing to do her school work.
I will say that the second half is a bit weaker than the first half, just because it felt like the author stopped caring as much about the atmosphere and tension once Jane and Beau started hooking up, but I devoured this so eagerly that I really can't give it less than five stars. It's one of my favorite Jane Eyre retellings that I've read, and now I'm feeling the urge to binge-read some more, all thanks to this book.
I'm on a quest to read all the JANE EYRE retellings because that is one of my favorite books! I got to buddy read this one with my friend Allison, which was exciting! Unfortunately that was the most exciting thing about this book. This is a YA book but the teens in this book feel very inauthentic. Fake swearing, stilted dialogue, and too much internal narration clutter up a premise that had the potential to be really interesting. Some of this is on me as a reader so definitely take my opinion with a grain of salt. I do wish I'd listened to my friends and checked out some of the other reviews before buying a copy. Read the sample and see if you like the writing style before buying.
This was a BR with my friend, Heather, one of my favorite people on BR. Millie Adams is one of my favorite Harlequin authors. She has an ability to instill a lot of characterization and backstory into her heroes and heroines in a very short amount of time, and I love that she isn't afraid to inject a little bit of kink into her romances. Sometimes she gets panned for it but I honestly love seeing anything that isn't just pure vanilla repped by Harlequin. It used to be quite bland.
There's some wonderful things about MARRIAGE DEAL WITH THE DEVILISH DUKE. I liked that the hero and his son were both neurodivergent (I think they're autistic). I liked that there is some D/s and S/M stuff. I liked that the heroine was utterly enthusiastic despite her inexperience. And in the beginning, I felt their backstories went a long way towards explaining why they were into what they were.
The problem with this book is that the bar of my expectations was ALLLLL the way up here and the author decided to lie on the ground. The S/M was mostly just biting and pinching and Briggs spent soooo much time mansplaining sex to Beatrice that I was getting flashbacks to FIFTY SHADES OF GREY and its pseudo-kinky ilk. Beatrice also was a little bit problematic in how she was willing to force men into marriage to escape her fate (and was never really called out for this by anyone but her brother, the quasi-villain of this book) and headbutted her way into being co-parent for an autistic child she really didn't know anything about. She's just like "Routines? Who dat?"
Millie Adams is still an auto-buy author for me and I love what she brings to the Harlequin collection as a whole, but this ended up being a miss for me. First book was okay and third book was AMAZING, but this one might have just gotten disinvited from my birthday party.
Okay, first of all, I don't know why this is being compared to TO ALL THE BOYS I'VE LOVED BEFORE because literally all they had in common is a slight voyeuristic component and the fact that they are both written by Asian authors, so I'm not sure that comparison holds water. Second of all, thanks to my BBFF (best book friend forever), Heather, for reading this with me. Lately I've been so bad at finishing books that, without her help, my TBR would be a lot longer.
I don't want to spoil too much about this book but basically, CREEP is the story of a teen girl named Rafi who is OBSESSED with her school's senior golden couple, Nico and Laney. And I'm not just talking about your ordinary "oh my god what are they doing on social media?" nosiness, no. She finagles a job as Nico's kid sister's baby-sitter, threatens to beat up one of the kid sister's bullies (who's in grade school, BTW), oh, and YEAH. Watches them have sex. CREEP.
Reading this is like watching a car crash in slow motion. You know it isn't going to end prettily, but how isn't it? What is going to happen that finally causes the gasket to blow? I read this book to the end wanting to know exactly that, and when I found out, I was like... huh. The ending almost felt like the author wasn't sure how to end it and just pulled something random out of her pocket. I wasn't mad at it, but I also feel like it raised more questions than it actually answered. Especially since I was already pretty sure I had figured out the twist and was wrong (mine was good).
CREEP really is a lot like a gender-swapped teen version of YOU, except, you know, PG-13, obviously. So if that appeals to you, I think you'd probably like the book. It really captures the fishbowl vibes of high school and because social media isn't mentioned all that much, it also kind of feels old-fashioned and timeless. In some ways, CREEP actually feels like an edgy throwback to the YA of the aughts, when it felt like everyone was trying to out-grit everyone else writing something real and raw, and I kind of liked that. This felt like the YA of my childhood so reading it was almost nostalgic. And the book certainly lived up to its title (even though it wasn't the way I thought).
It's honestly surprising how few ratings this author has. She's an underrated gem, for sure.
HIS SECRETLY PREGNANT CINDERELLA is the type of romance book where even if you generally feel comfortable telling someone that you like reading romance novels, if they ask you what you're actually reading right now, you experience a moment of true panic. Or at least, I do, because there's no way I'm telling my boss, my mother, or my casual Instagram moot that I'm reading a book with "secretly pregnant Cinderella" in the title. If you're that bold, I'm jealous of you.
This was a BR with my friend, Heather, who is the person who got me into Millie Adams' books in the first place. I often find the more recent Harlequins to be bland (the old ones were so much more dramatic and fun), but Adams does a good job with somewhat in-depth characterization and I like how she gives all of her characters these (mild) sexual kinks that complement their personalities and even serve to further the storyline and emotional connections between the characters in some way. I even felt like the heroine in this one was sort of implied to have a sort of humiliation kink, but it was buried deep. Maybe they decided that was too racy, I don't know.
This book starts out with the heroine, Morgan, hiding from her long-term boyfriend in lingerie. This is because on the night she finally planned to sleep with him (she's a virgin) after six months of no sex, she finds him cheating on her with another woman. She escapes off the balcony and ends up in the room of the boyfriend's stern and uptight brother, Constantine, who she has always secretly had a crush on. Faster than you can say, "She chose the wrong brother," they're doing it, and X number of weeks later, she's pregnant... with twins!
Normally I hate pregnancy romances, but I feel like this one was done better than most. The heroine doesn't set up a doctor appointment in her ignorance and kind of hates it when it does happen (girl, same). She's VERY nervous about motherhood because her own mother's pregnancy was unplanned, and she spent most of her childhood and adulthood feeling like a burden her mother never wanted. Even though Constantine proposes marriage immediately-- because his family has been hit with tragedy after tragedy and is currently out two children, they are very much Team Baby-- she has real concerns that being in fatherhood for duty's sake alone will cause her kids to feel that same kind of resentment.
I also liked the dialogues about gold-digging wives, and how money does make things comfortable for people, especially if they grew up with less or none, so the shame and the hatred for those types of women doesn't really make sense, because it's dumb to expect people to go into a relationship with money and pretend it doesn't exist or it doesn't make their lives easier. The conversations about filial expectations and responsibility were also surprisingly deep for a romance that had the hero kissing the heroine' stomach and saying "MINE" while comparing her to a fertility goddess, so you know, wow, real emotional stakes and development in a Harley pregnancy romance. I never would have thunk it.
Obviously, since I'm not usually keen on these types of romances, I have thoughts. I've only read Adams's historicals prior to this and I wondered if she was working on this one in between them, because the language she chose was very odd. I kept having to remind myself I wasn't reading a historical with words like "scoundrel" and "delectable" being used, and I think at one point the hero's dad says something like "he should taste of the heroine's beauty." Lol, okay. The heroine also kept trailing off into random elipses and there were multiple stilted phrases in the canned dialogue that just had me rolling my eyes, which is a shame because apart from that, the writing wasn't bad.
If you're not into pregnancy romances, I wouldn't recommend this because it is very much a theme. But if you need to do it for a category challenge or something, this is definitely a lesser evil. I mean, she took a trope that normally wants to make me pour ice on my head and made it almost likable. I'm curious to check out some of her other contemporaries and see if she has the same writing tics or if this was a one-off, but so far I think I like her historicals better. I'll def read more from this author, though.
I was so excited to buddy-read this book with s.penkevich. I've admired their literary-fiction reviews for a while and thought the idea of checking out this surreal work of Japanese literature with such a book friend was really fun. Especially since the listlessness and ennui of the heroine can be overwhelming at times.
Our heroine is a thirty-six-year-old woman with burnout who repeatedly goes to the same employment agency over the course of the novel to request more jobs. She wants something close to home with no reading or writing involved and, ideally, very little thinking.
Her jobs get progressively weirder and weirder. Her first job is in video surveillance, watching a man who may be in unknowing league with a contrabander. Her second job is working for an advertising agency for a bus company. Her third job is writing trivia that go on the packets of fried rice snacks. Her fourth job is putting up environmental awareness posters in a small community. And her fifth job is manning the cabin in the middle of a man-made park filled with fruit trees.
THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS AN EASY JOB is such a strange book. It's so strange that several times, I would set the book down and think, "Do I really like this book?" I considered DNF-ing even, but was unable to stop reading. There's an almost supernatural bent to some of her jobs, which can sometimes make them feel creepy (especially in the case of the bus advertisements and poster jobs), but it's never outright scary or anything, just in a way that makes the reader feel uneasy.
For once, I think the comparisons in the blurb of this book are on the mark. This really is like a cross between MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION and CONVENIENCE STORE WOMAN. The comparisons are rarely that apt, so I'm actually impressed, because that's how I probably would have described this book, too. It's a book about how our jobs shape us and vice-versa, a criticism (I think?) about hustle/gig culture, and just a really interesting story about a disaffected woman trying to live her life as best she can. For people who enjoy character-driven stories, this will be quite the treat.
I was so excited when Heather suggested we BR this book because she was the person who pointed me towards a later book in this series, THE DUKE'S FORBIDDEN WARD, which I adored. The heroine of this book, Penelope, was the original fiancee of the aforementioned duke of the third book, but she "jilted" him (although we find out in this book that this was not quite the case). Word of warning: I still recommend reading book three first because Hugh, the hero, does not come across as very likable at all in this book and I'm not sure I'd have wanted to continue the series if I had started with this one.
Penny, the heroine, has a jerk father who has gotten himself into debt. She is engaged to be married to Lachlan, who used to work for her father but was never paid for his efforts. Now, her marriage to him will be part of his weird revenge plan against the English before he returns to Scotland and collects the estate and the lands that are part of his due.
At first I really liked this book, but then I started to get really frustrated by it. Penny is too precious for my liking and I didn't like her very much by the end of the book, especially since she does one of my least favorite romance tropes of all time: forcing the hero, who does not want a baby, to have a baby. I'm sorry, but I had my fill of that in Bridgerton and seeing it happen makes me see red. Her reasons for wanting children are purely selfish, too; the idea of a baby makes her feel as if she is loved by her dead mother.
They also have this bird connecting them: apparently the hero helped her save a wounded bird when she was a child. The bird is brought up about 31 times (I did a search in my Kindle for "bird"). So I suppose you could turn that into a drinking game if you're feeling like succumbing to alcohol poisoning on your evening in. The heroine also throws a fit over not being able to eat toast in Scotland, which, of course, ends up being the set-up for an emotional moment later when the hero makes her toast in bed.
The book wasn't all bad. I liked Isla, the servant who Penny ends up befriending, and it was interesting to see how cold Hugh looked to anyone who wasn't already heads-over-heels in love with him. The sex scenes were also spicy here, as they were in FORBIDDEN WARD, although this book lacked the kinky factor that made that book so much fun. Lachlan was also a decent hero. I just really disliked Penny by the end of the book. Her quirkiness needed to be dialed down by a factor of ten and I thought the author made her just a little too childish to be fun to read about as a romance heroine.
So overall, this was a miss for me. Too bad. I'll still read more from this author, though.
Thanks to the lovely Ro for buddy-reading this with me. Unfortunately, neither of us really got into it. I was excited to read THE DARK KING because it seemed to be being pitched as NEON GODS meets A COURT OF THORNS AND ROSES meets FIFTY SHADES OF GREY, which, if you were a cynical reader, might make you feel even more cynical. But I'm not a cynical person and convinced myself that this was going to be awesome: fated mates, marriage of inconvenience, kinky fun times? I was totally on board. Plus, I've kind of been on a faerie kick lately thanks to Zodiac Academy.
I liked the beginning of the book where Caiden is kicking this corrupt manager's butt for demeaning sex workers and disrespecting him. There's a lot of tell-and-not-show when it comes to how big and bad the big and bad is, so it was nice to actually see an on-page demo. I even politely looked the other way when Caiden kept winking at the audience (aka, me) to tell me how hardcore he was. Boy, I know. You just whaled on this dude, literal claws out. Go at it, already.
Things started to get shaky when Bryn, the heroine, walks on stage. She was kind of aggressively bland, in the same way that Anastasia Steel and Bella Swan were. Her only personality trait is sassing Caiden and lusting after him. The descriptions of the Vegas Strip were interesting, I guess, and to be honest, I kind of liked the idea of a bunch of excommunicated fae jadedly starting their own clubbing empire. It felt very True Blood, but, like, in a good way. The problem is that the heroine doesn't really have any personality or hobbies, and the author forges an instant connection with them that has no emotional basis, which makes it really hard to care about or even root for them as a couple.
Also, my boy Caiden, aka side-of-the-road-Rhysand, clearly sees himself as a feminist, but every time Bryn misbehaves, he threatens her with a spanking. What is this, the 1950s? Okay, actually maybe it is for this dude since he's immortal and the 1950s probably feel modern to him, but STILL. I didn't like that. I'm okay with kinky stuff but the way it was broached in this book was super weird and kind of uncomfy for me. I'm okay with good guy love interests and bad guy love interests, but don't try to sell me on a guy as a good guy love interest but then make him act like one of those pick-up artists from the 2000s who dressed like a leather daddy wizard and called himself "Enigma."
I think for people who like quick, smutty reads, this will be a fun escapist read-- and there's nothing wrong with that. But if you're going into this expecting world-building and emotional connections and strong characters, you'll be disappointed. Props to the author for actually trying to inject some real faerie lore into this book-- I liked that a lot and wish she'd done it more-- but everything else about this was a sort of miss for me.
ARCHER'S VOICE is a romance I'd been hearing a lot about and it topped so many best romance lists that I was curious to see what all the hype is about. Thanks to Lover of Romance for buddy-reading this with me. Lately, I've been feeling so unmotivated to read at times that I feel like I need other people around to hold me accountable. Now that I've read the book, I have some very mixed feelings, because while there were some things it did really well, there were some other things that left me with kind of a sour taste in my mouth.
Bree is a college graduate who has come to the small town of Pelion to find peace. It's a small town that she visited with her dad and she has good memories there, and she hopes to make more as she embarks on a path of healing. In Pelion, she meets Archer, a mute twenty-three year old man who lives as a hermit in his isolated cabin. It's basically lust for both of them at first sight, and his silence and trauma intrigues Bree, as she alternately treats him like a sexual object and a puzzle that she must figure out.
Here's the thing. I do see why this book is popular and it's an entertaining story. But I think it mostly will appeal to people for the same reasons that they like Colleen Hoover: it doesn't really challenge the status quo and it plays upon the readers' emotions to get you to care about the characters. I really wish there had been more depth to Archer as a human being. This book doesn't quite feel like savior porn but it certainly feels like it maybe shares the same zip code at times. Would Bree still feel the same attraction to Archer if he didn't look like a Greek god? Is he a project for her to fix? Does his silence just allow her to think of him as a tabula rasa, where she can project her own needs and interpretations on him? At one point, she says that the world would be a better place if more people were quiet like Archer, because of the focus on needing to hear THEIR voices, but in all of their interactions, Bree is the dominant voice, so this sort of sentiment ends up feeling a little hypocritical and problematic.
Bree has trauma as well and her backstory is very sad. I thought that it was interesting that her father was deaf and that because of this, she is able to sign with Archer. Some people didn't like this coincidence but I think it sort of worked and I guess it provided the author an out from having to come up with other ways for them to communicate. One thing I didn't like, however, is that her PTSD is immediately "cured" the first time she and Archer have sex. She used to associate storms with her father's murder and her own near-rape but after having sex with Archer in a storm, she's just like, "Wow, now I'll only think of you during storms." That felt way too easy and I didn't like that. I also felt like it was reprehensibly irresponsible of Bree to tell Archer, "Oh, I'm on the pill so we don't need condoms," because yeah, that protects against pregnancy but not STDs. She thinks she won't get anything from Archer because he's a virgin but SHE could give HIM something. So irresponsible. Ugh.
Now that I've gotten all of my dislikes out of the way, I will say that the small town setting was really well done. It gave me a fix for an itch that started for me by reading books like AIN'T SHE SWEET? and BAD DECISIONS. I think it adds a lot of tension, having people embark on a relationship in a place where everyone wants to be in your business-- especially if one of the people has a bad reputation. I also thought that Archer's back story was super sad and interesting. I would be willing to read a prequel book that showed the battle over Alyssa, even if it tore my heart out. And Tori was SUCH a great villain. I hated her so much. Travis was awful too, although the author sort of tried to redeem him at the end. Supposedly there's another book about him? Maybe that's why.
Overall, ARCHER'S VOICE was not a bad book. If you like CoHo and weepy new adult stories, I think you'll like this. It's certainly one of the better books I've read in this genre, which is not a genre I usually enjoy, so the fact that I liked it speaks highly in its favor. Could it have been better? Yes. Did it have its problems? Yes. But it passed the time and it tried to deliver some good messages about giving people second chances and looking beneath the (admittedly beautiful) surface, so I mean, it tried. I'm not going to kick it while it's down for that. Not a bad book at all but not entirely worth the hype for me, either.
COLD LIGHT came to my attention because of my friend, Heather, who did a BR of this with me. Originally she had given it a five and I was intrigued because I think she has really good taste in books. I was interested in reading this book because it's a really dark coming of age story, and also because it has some truly abysmal ratings on GR (2.95 average, whaaaat?). I was dead curious to find out why this book seemed to be so despised.
If you're familiar with "bad girls with bad secrets" coming of age stories, like WE RUN THE TIDES or WHITE OLEANDER, and enjoy those types of books, I think you'll really like COLD LIGHT. Set in a small UK town called Cuerden, it's about three girls, Lauren/Lola, Emma, and Chloe, and their involvement with an older man. It's dual timeline, sort of, but the bulk of the story is told in the past when the girls are just thirteen.
I am 95% sure that a big part of the reason that this book is so disliked is because all three of the heroines are unlikable. The girls bully each other in a very "mean girls" way, although more often than not, Lauren/Lola ends up being the odd one out. I thought these passages were really well done, and I think it shows how vulnerable teen girls are, because they think they're grown up but they can still have the naivete and poor logic of children, which can sometimes lead to terrible things happening. If anything, this is sort of a cautionary story of what happens when a child is forced to navigate and make sense of the dark world of adults too young.
There's a lot of references to UK-exclusive things and UK slang, and it's told in that rambly, almost stream-of-conscious style that a lot of UK lit had-- or used to have before the books started to become a bit more, idk, Americanized, for lack of a better word. The story made me think of, like, a really dark episode of Midsomer Murders. It has that cheesy, dramatized murder mystery vibe which I really liked. Especially with the pairing of being in a small, insular British town filled with prejudices and biases.
So here's where the book fell a little short for me. The author was mostly pretty good at foreshadowing, but sometimes it felt like she didn't know what she was trying to foreshadow or she had used her clues poorly. I kept expecting certain things to happen, for example, but then they never did. I was disappointed with the narrative end games for Wilson, Carl, and Lauren's dad. The author also felt like she was skimming over important scenes and lingering over not-so-important ones. She could set scenery amazingly, but then she'd get stuck on it and I'd start to skim. The ending felt like a bit of a mess. Until about 45% of the way through the book I thought this would be a 4-5 star read but when I finished it, the narrative had sort of dissolved into a tangle of an unsatisfactory ending.
Overall, I thought this was much better than what most of the critics were saying about it, but it was also painfully easy to put down as a thriller and I wish there had been more emotional stakes. Maybe if Lola/Lauren had a sort of love interest that was parallel to her awareness of her friends' tragedies, kind of like in ROANOKE GIRLS, the angst could have been put to a better target? I also wish things had concluded a little differently between Emma and Chloe. I feel like finishing this book left me with even more questions than I had when I first started. That said, I'd definitely read more from this author. I think she has a really unique writing style and she is so good at conveying certain moods with her words.
I impulsively bought WE RUN THE TIDES without really knowing what it was about when it went on sale because it's set in San Francisco (which ended up being a huge treat for me, because I've been to about 90% of the places mentioned in this book). It was just languishing on my Kindle until my friend, Heather, told me that she was just about to read it, and then we decided to do an impromptu buddy read.
WE RUN THE TIDES is a coming of age work of literary fiction. Some people are shelving it as YA because the heroine and her friends are 13-14, but even though I'm sure this would be accessible for teens, it's really a book for adults. Eulabee is the daughter of an American father and a Swedish mother. She has three friends: Faith, Julia, and Maria Fabiola, her beautiful best friend.
The four of them attend a private school for girls, and in an era before TikTok or internet, there isn't much to do but to roam the streets of San Francisco and get into shenanigans. But as with any horror novel involving children, everyone knows that when kids get bored, they can become quite cruel. And these girls are no exceptions. As they discover themselves and their sexuality, they start to become incredibly dangerous-- but the world also becomes dangerous for them. And the book ends up tackling some pretty heavy subjects, like toxic friendships, predatory behavior, and lies.
I don't want to say too much about this book because less is definitely more, but it's pretty dark. Also, I think there's a rule in literary fiction that all sex scenes have to be gross, and there has to be at least one gnarly scene involving private parts that makes you cringe (this one had at least two). The heroine is a sort of unreliable narrator; she's cold and self-serving, and you can tell that she's definitely spinning the narrative. And since her friends are as manipulative as she is, sometimes the heroine is left in the dark, too. I think people who enjoy Megan Abbott's work will really enjoy this because she really captures the intense mean girl friendship dynamics that occur between teen girls, and how quickly it can turn toxic.
Unfortunately, since all the kids are such jerks, it means that there isn't really someone to root for. This is largely a character-driven novel, and it's as much about the city of San Francisco in its "heydey" before all the tech people moved in and gentrified it, as it is about these girls who get into things way over their heads. It's also probably going to be triggering for some people, because the author examines how creepy dudes (apparently most dudes) could be in the era before #MeToo. Literally every boy and man in this book says or does something skeevy. So there isn't really much of a plot beyond exploring that, and the girls interacting with their environment.
Despite that, I liked the book. It did some daring things and the ending was great. I could see this becoming an indie movie or a Netflix movie. It has that kind of retro cinematic vibe.
One totally valid criticism about both dark romance and erotic horror is that they tend to be heteronormative, and finding a sapphic variant of either can be a chore. Therefore, I was super excited to find out that THE WICKED AND THE WILLING is a sapphic work of erotic vampire horror set in Singapore during the roaring twenties.
Our cast of characters are Gean Choo, a young and desperate girl who needs employment to pay off her father's debts; Mrs. Edevane, a British colonialist reaping the benefits of her beauty and privilege while feasting upon the locals; and Po Lam, Mrs. Edevane's gender queer estate manager, who she bought as a slave when she was a child. There are other players but these are the three main ones, who revolve around each other's orbits like toxic little doomed stars.
I really appreciated how vampirism was an allegory for colonialism (and I confirmed this with the author-- it IS canon). Mrs. Edevane literally consumes the locals, and she is blind to their plight or their culture, exotifying her Asian lovers, indulging in casual racism when it suits her, and devouring the people whenever it suits her. She is a destructive force, using a foreign country as her refuge and playground. But, as a woman, she is also a victim to a man who hunts her footsteps. Which shows how someone can be an oppressor but still a victim of infrastructural prejudice, even within a colonial structure. The complexity and nuances were brilliantly done.
This is a very violent book-- sexually, emotionally, and physically-- and I had a hard time reading some of the graphic rapes and torture scenes. It starts out so slow and unsettlingly, but by the end of the book, it's a blood bath. None of the characters are particularly likable and I don't think they're supposed to be, although I loved Po Lam's character and I really empathized with Gean Choo's desperation as the motivator for so many of her actions. Even some of the almost humorous scenes, like Gean Choo fleeing a nest of East Asian folkloric monsters when her period comes during a party, are couched in dread and horror. This is like intellectual grindhouse, which I feel is probably the vibe the author was going for, and I think extreme horror fans will probably like it, especially if they have been hungering for queer and diverse entries in the canon that aren't Eric Larocca.
Interestingly, this story has a "choose your own ending" ending. There are three endings: two are in this book and apparently there's a third ending you can get by signing up for their mailing list. I'm not sure how I feel about this-- I read both endings and I think the author made both work, and suit the characters, but it also felt like a lack of commitment to the story. THE WICKED AND THE WILLING has a very strong beginning and I loved the portrayal of vampires and the gays-behaving-badly themes of the work, as well as the anti-colonialist narrative, but the ending petered out a bit and became far too violent for my own personal tastes, and even though I appreciated the uniqueness of this ending, I didn't really like it. I did ultimately like the book, though, and would definitely read more from this author.
Lately I've been reading a lot of books on Goodreads that have low ratings that I've been finding AMAZING, so I wasn't at all put off by the rather low 3.33 average this book has. Quite the opposite actually. And I was even more excited when my friend Heather agreed to BR this with me, since she's one of my favorite people to read books with.
THE WILD ONES is a dual timeline book that follows a pretty common recipe: girl did something bad as a youth, past comes back to bite her as an adult. That's like my favorite plotline in a nutshell and I LOVE dual timelines but it didn't work for me here, which is a shame, because I actually went to summer camp like the heroine so I was expecting this to really resonate on a deep and personal level.
I think part of the problem is the narrative. The author kind of over-explains a little and doesn't really let the reader just, you know, IMMERSE. I also really didn't like the heroine. Usually I'm down with an unlikable heroine, but she has to be unlikable and interesting. This heroine was just kind of a mean little bully who chased after more popular girls for approval. I think the author could have made that work if we had a better idea of the heroine's internal world, and what drove her, and what her passions were, but she was just boring and mean. Maybe that's a more realistic portrayal of a teen girl but I didn't like reading about it here (I'm sorry!).
If I had taken the time to do an ounce more research and realized that the author of this book also wrote the Once Upon a Con series, I would not have bought this book. Because I really didn't like that series and it ended up having a lot of the same flaws that turned me off of this book. Contrary to what some might think, I don't actually enjoy writing negative reviews. I used to be a little more cavalier about it but now I really try to only buy books I'm sure about. And on paper, THE DEAD ROMANTICS sounded wonderful-- a ghost love story, a venture into the publishing world, lots of ANGST.
To be fair, THE DEAD ROMANTICS wasn't a bad book. It just pandered. A lot. I think Christina Lauren was mentioned like three times before the 24% mark. The main character tries just a little too hard to assure you, the reader, that she loves books. She doesn't have time to read them but she loves them and she'll be sure to tell you that constantly. She's also grossly incompetent and really twee. I try to be sympathetic towards heroines because I feel like SO MANY OF THEM get criticized for things that heroes would get a free pass for, but this one was genuinely unlikable. She's the "tiny" brand of heroine where she's made that her personality and complains constantly about people finding her cute. She's also really immature, to the point where she feels like she's in high school. And she's supposed to be good at her job? Uhh...
The plot is a little similar to Emily Henry's BEACH READ, in that it's about a heroine who writes romance novels who has given up on writing romance novels because she's given up on love, but BEACH READ was able to sell me on that a little better than this one did (even if it was also, dare I say it, a little too "I wear rompers and eat cake for breakfast and Zooey Deschanel is my patronus" twee).
But I'm a grumpy person who is very picky about chick-lit and contemporary rom-coms, so if you're super into that and you loooooooved BEACH READ and want more, more, MORE, you might love this. Thanks to Anniek for trying to BR this with me (I'm sorry you called it quitsies, too).
I was so excited to buddy read this with my friend, Heather, because we both really enjoy thrillers that feature messy women confronting their messy pasts. It is literally the best kind of book when done well, and that is LAW. (Although, you know, don't try to enforce it or anything.) After reading and enjoying this author's other female-fronted thriller, THE GIRLS WEEKEND, I was dying to read this one.
The heroine, Tansy, is a guidance counselor at a college. She lives an unassuming life renting an apartment from her ex-husband, whom she used to be in a rock band with. She seems like any other thirty-year-old lady living her best life and coming to terms with mediocrity, but she harbors a very-much-NOT-mediocre secret. And that secret comes in the form of Selene, a woman who she was friends with when she was young until tragedy and a dark secret separated them for good. Selene leverages that secret to force Tansy to spy on her daughter, Jupiter, who she suspects is being abused by her boyfriend.
It's difficult to say more without spoilers, because most of the "mystery" elements are reveals. I would say that the bulk of the story is about the tensions between various characters, and their questionable mental states. It feels like one of those dramatic Netflix mini-series, where you watch the characters fight and fight and fight, until something finally gives. Books like these are hard to write because none of that really matters if you don't feel personally invested in the characters and it took me until about 33% of the book to feel invested before I cared about these people. Because of the title and the premise, I was expecting more twists and surprises, you know, something really dark. Like ROANOKE GIRLS. I ended up feeling kind of disappointed during most of the "twists" because I'd already predicted them and assumed they were distractions from an even grander reveal.
I liked the sort-of romance between Tansy and Zack and it features a smutty scene in a planetarium that was surprisingly romantic... until it was fade to black. While we were talking about this book, Heather mentioned that a lot of the important or interesting scenes happened "off page," and I think that was another failing. Having the author merely alluding to dark and or sensual scenes only made me wish that they'd been left in instead because of how much better the book would have been with them. THE SUMMER WE BURIED wasn't a bad book but it left me wanting a lot more than I got.