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FINALLY! A romance thread. I've been binging the Juliette Cross Stay a Spell series. The first one was pretty funny, with the guy being a werewolf and imbuing him with a curse that makes his wolf a split personality, kinda like Venom. He matched well with the witch trying to break his curse for him. I also read the first two in Ruby Dixon's Ice Planet Barbarians series because a) the new redesigned covers are pretty and b) I just HAD to know how sex would work with a 7foot tall blue alien with a tail and a differently shaped penis. Suffice to say, it's interesting. These three books I talked about are my first foray into indie romances. I'm usually into an illustrated cover, contemporary romance or a nice pulpy historical romance. I thought because they weren't traditionally published the writing would suffer but so far these haven't disappointed.
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Feb 18, 2022 10:45
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 22:19 |
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I still can't stand romance novels where the man or woman treats the other like trash. Bully romances they're called? I know they're some people's delight, but I don't know why.
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Mar 2, 2022 01:53
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I really don't mean to yuck anyone's yum with this post, but what is it with all these romances starting off dark? I know it's a sub-genre that's very popular, but reading about the bad times of your protagonist or couple getting physically, emotionally, or, more popularly, sexually abused and tortured to gain some sense of depth for your character just seems tiring. I have memoirs and the news to cover such gritty topics.
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May 24, 2022 23:50
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Pththya-lyi posted:Dark romance is appealing to some people for the same reason horror is appealing to some people: it lets you explore scary and uncomfortable things through the safety of fiction. It's easier to handle a scary or upsetting situation if you know 1) it's not real and 2) things are going to turn out okay for the people in it. That doesn't mean it's for everybody. That's why responsible authors will make it clear that there's Dark Stuff In This Work and won't expect people who aren't in their audience to shower it with praise. That makes sense! Thank you. For some reason, I never thought of horror novels as a comparison.
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May 25, 2022 01:26
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This past month I've been on a Tessa Bailey binge. I'd already read her Christmas novella, Window Shopping, this past December and -loved- the stuffing out of it, with a grumpy/sunshine trope of the grump being the female and the sunshine being a Ted Lasso-alike male. It was adorable. Well, I had to see if lightning could strike twice for me and this author. And BOY, did it keep striking! First I read "It Happened One Summer." It comes highly recommended from booktube and booktok and even though I've never seen Schitt's Creek, I heard the lead in this novel, Piper, is based on Alexis. So I gave it a shot. It's about this socialite, Instagram-famous girl who pulls off one heck of a party where she isn't supposed to and in turn gets punished by her stepdad to live in an apartment above a rundown bar her birth-father used to own before he passed. There she meets a grumpy sea captain named Brendan and they don't hit it off at ALL, each getting bad impressions of the other. Still, they continue meeting and he falls in love with her, trying his best to convince her they're right for each other. The sex scenes? ACES I tell you, aces, and certainly not expected from a regularly published, illustrated cover novel. 5 outta 5 stars for sure. So I continued to "Hook, Line, and Sinker," the next novel in that series with Piper's little sister, Hannah, becoming best friends with Brendan's co-captain and shipmate/best friend, Fox. I didn't like this one as much, but the music choices made me run for a Spotify playlist of the novel and the LONG dragged out wait to Fox finally giving in to temptation and being with Hannah didn't seem as bad anymore. A solid 3.5 out of 5 stars. I thought I'd test out the earlier series Tessa Bailey did with the Hot and Hammered series. I found a trend of REALLY great sex scenes in all of the novels and really great chemistry built up between the characters. The writing is funny and on point. But I did tend to disagree with Booktube, which gave the first book, "Fix Her Up" the highest praise. I found the trope of best friend's little sister not used to its fullest potential and kinda found the overuse of the term, "baby girl" to be kinda weird. It wasn't the best, but again, 3 outta 5 is nothing to sneeze at. The other two in the series got 5 outta 5 stars from me. "Love Her or Lose Her," the second in the series, I devoured in a day and loved how well she captured Latinx angst at being the emotionless, male provider for your significant other. It's a marriage in trouble, second chance romance with the best steam of the three books in the series and I loved it. "Tools of Engagement," the third and final book in the Hot and Hammered series was also SO good, with banter you just HAD to laugh with or go, "Ooooooh, girl, you got him there!" It was enemies to lovers and though I don't usually jive with that trope, I loved it here and thought it added to their chemistry. The last and latest book I read was her latest debut, "My Killer Vacation," which combined a murder mystery at a BnB with a hot as hell romance between a second grade private school teacher and her beau, the grumpy, tatted to high heaven and riding a motorcycle bounty hunter. It had be laughing up a storm and loving the scenes between the two. I'm lucky I wasn't listening to it on audiobook, because though it is rare for me to react IRL to sex scenes, one in this novel had be side-eyeing people and blushing in a waiting room office. SO good. 5 stars. If y'all look past the cutesy illustrated covers, you'll really find some gems in Tessa Bailey's repertoire.
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Jun 23, 2022 03:53
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StrixNebulosa posted:Cut to a three page epilogue where she's been back at her teaching job in France, doing alright with herself, when he shows up at her school, apologizes and explains how he found out that oh. she isn't a prostitute. and he apologizes and she just goes "okay" and expects him to leave. So he goes "no I love you and I want to take you home to Hawaii to marry you" Good Lord, that sounds terrible! I would've given that 1 star. I mean, to pull all that dick-ish behavior and only give a 3-page epilogue of grovelling to a happy ending? WTF. I know it's a novella and you don't get much from that, but still! Also, you always know these romance novels end in a HEA. The scant ones that don't have to have heavy warnings and even then, people still rate them lowly because "It's not a romance novel if it doesn't end in a HEA." Personally, I think we all know some romance novel couples that didn't deserve each other and probably ended in breaking up at best, divorce and restraining orders at worst, if they stayed together at a HEA at the end of the novel.
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Jun 23, 2022 04:08
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Hel posted:I've been frustrated by how romance is treated in a lot of other genres and media, where it's very often full of wheel spinning "Will they, Won't they" stuff until the story ends at the point where they get together. And then even if it gets a sequel they broken up, so they we can have the whole thing again. So I figured I'd go directly to the source and see if anyone here have any good recommendations for where to start with romance stories that are mostly about people being in relationships. Rocky relationships and even breaks ups are ok, as long as there actually was a relationship and it's not used just to have the same story over and over again. I have a couple of recommendations for marriage in trouble books that I've read recently that are drat good. The most recent being Q.B. Tyler's Forget Me Not. It's a M/F story of a married couple going through a divorce and being 6 months away from finalizing it before the husband gets in a car accident leading to head trauma leading to amnesia. He's forgotten the last 2 years of the marriage and, in his head, they're still happily in love. He doesn't understand how he could've cheated on his wife. While working through as much of that issue as possible, considering the cheating perpetrator can't remember his faults, they live with each other and learn to cope. It's drat good. Heartwrenching too. I said I'd never be into a cheating romance, but this broke my brain and my heart with how much I loved it. Another book, which I recommended before, is Tessa Bailey's Love Her or Lose Her. That one's a marriage in trouble where the couple just isn't communicating as a couple anymore, except to have sex once a week, and finally the wife has enough and asks for a divorce. Instead, the husband, who on some level knew things were lovely, but loves her too much to consider letting her go, demands couple's therapy. They go to the hippiest, new-age therapist and learn their love languages to learn how to communicate again and better this time. This book is really good too. The last book I have to recommend is The Bromance Book Club. It's about a couple who've had two daughters and love one another, but the wife confesses to her husband one day that most of the time, she fakes her orgasms with him. It humiliates him and he doesn't react well, leading to her asking for a separation. Desperate to get her back, he joins his friends in a book club where they read romance novels to learn how to interact better with women. In his case, throughout the book they comb through a historical romance novel of a marriage in trouble while he learns what his wife really needs. It's the cheesiest of the lot I'm recommending, but it has a cute charm.
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Jul 13, 2022 15:40
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Any recommendations for M/F paranormal books? I've read Juliette Cross' Stay A Spell series and love it and kind of want a hot, sweet vampire or werewolf novel. Please, no dark romances and no Black Dagger Brotherhood.
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Jul 16, 2022 02:03
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I finished Juliette Cross' Stay a Spell series and dear lord, was it a hoot n' a half! Each book was great, focusing on a different couple for each sister in this six-sister family. It's a paranormal romance, so the sisters come from a witch family and are all different types of witches. Their significant others run the gamut of being werewolves, vampires, or Grims, each with their own power subset. The laughs and sadness in each tale are amazing. There are 6.5 books in total (the 0.5 comes from book 3.5, which is a short story collection focusing on friends of the family, JJ and Charlie, humans in the supernatural sphere). I loved each and every one of them, each sister feeling and being read as a different personality, so even if it's written by the same author, everyone feels unique. But the last novel... holy poo poo. It's about Clara and Henry. Clara is an Aura, a witch who can influence emotion, making you happy/sad or influencing the weather with their moods. Henry is a Grim and his power subset I'll leave a mystery, as it takes ages in the series to hint at what he can do. To read about a historical romance novel loving heroine who loves taking care of her family and baking... then experience her trying to convince a guy who doesn't feel like he's worthy of her to give in to the inevitable and accept their love? It. Was. EPIC. I was loving every second of it, taking breaks in between smiling like a goof or chuckling to quote lines to my husband. When it got close to the end and something truly awful happens, I was crying literal tears, pausing to remind myself that romance usually gives a happy ending and even if there were few pages left, the sun would come out tomorrow, so to speak. I was not disappointed at all; it was the best book of the series and they were ALL good. I really encourage y'all, if you like the thought of a supernatural series set in New Orleans to give the series a shot.
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May 17, 2023 06:19
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You ever read a romance book so good, you feel like you have some variation of heartburn, that's how much your chest throbs and the warmth spreads from the joy you got from it? That's how I felt about my latest journey into sports romances, a hockey romance called Mile High by Liz Tomforde. I started it thinking, "Well, I've never watched hockey games and already this guy is a total unrepentant manwhore who's messing around with the main character, a plus-size flight attendant on his flights to away games because she calls him on his poo poo. But gradually, you get to see both have insecurities and flaws about themselves, about family, and about being in love. They both grow from their experiences bit by bit and even the third-act break-up, as bitter and aggravating as it was, felt like it created stronger characters in the end that deserved one another. I left it about 5 minutes ago and now totally have a book hangover. Nothing will compete with it, so I have to let the freshness of its assault on my heart die down a little. Please read it, even if you could give less of a poo poo about the sport in question and don't like cocky rear end in a top hat male characters. I promise, not all is as it seems and there are hidden depths to the characters.
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Jun 20, 2023 02:22
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Holy poo poo, this is on the third page in the Book Barn. Romance -really- isn't made for goons, I guess. On a more germane topic, I just read the Tessa Bailey series, Broke and Beautiful, consisting of Chase Me, Need Me, and Make Me. Don't be fooled by the old cheesy "couple embracing IRL" cover that makes them look like a cheap Kindle Unlimited book or the conventional cartoon cover that makes them look like a squeaky clean Hallmark movie. NOPE. These books are smoking hot. The writing is great; the only "problem" I could foresee pissing off some people is that it's very much love at first sight for EVERYBODY, but their hang-ups get in the way. I was going to finish the first, Chase Me, because I'd DNF'ed it ages ago because I got caught up in Nonfiction November without finishing it. Really, I was going to read Christmas novels this month, but these books had me by the eyeballs. I finished all three in three days! Devoured, more like. Do yourself a favor: check out these contemporary romances and see why I think Tessa Bailey is queen.
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Dec 15, 2023 23:42
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 22:19 |
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I've read two of Abby Jimenez's books and I gotta say, the woman has talent. The first, The Friend Zone, was wonderful, apart from that ending, where she gave the MFC the ability to have a miracle baby and left the MMC in a job he didn't like . This is all solved though, in her second book in the series, The Happy Ever After Playlist. I assumed a book starting off with a bummer beginning was going to suck, but  was is great. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll just say, the angst is spectacular, the chemistry off the chain, the slow burn a blaze, and the conclusion satisfies what was needed in BOTH books. On to the next Abby Jimenez work, Life's Too Short!
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Apr 26, 2024 22:49
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