books_ergo_sum's Reviews (933)

I liked this way better than I expected?? I almost gave it five stars.. but we’ll get into it.

Going through Shupe’s backlist, I’ve been a bit scared off by this one. The average rating isn’t the best..

And I get it, the premise was a messy one: in love with a man her father disapproved of, Lady Honora was shipped off to Gilded Age New York. Her plan: to act so scandalously that her father brought her back. So obviously, she arranged a fake engagement with an American scoundrel… oh yeah, but that scoundrel was the hero of this book soo… she ended up with him instead 👀

Lots of emotional cheating on the British guy with the American guy. Now, I personally loved the messiness of it 😆 I appreciated how introspective our heroine was, how open these two MCs were with one another… but mostly, I loved how we just let her be a cheating bastard for a bit there.

And there was a moment where I was like: oh shoot, this is five stars. It was a reveal about the British guy that I thought was so ballsy and messy—one that I never see with this kind of Other Man romance plot. But then the ending walked it back a bit 😭 So I had to drop it down.

But all my other Shupe favs were there: the New York setting, complex and morally grey side characters, MCs acting badly and regretting it, and a romance plot that made me sweat a bit.

Plus, the audiobook was read by the incomparable Mary Jane Wells, so loved that.

It is a truth universally acknowledged…that entomologists are the weirdest biologists.

So of course the hero who studied bugs was an unhinged stalker, so obsessed with the heroine he could barely function. 

Who doesn’t love a stalker hero?? And this was a particularly excellent one for two reasons:
💖 it had scenes that were so stalker-y that I personally would have Nope/stranger-dangered myself out of them. Yet the heroine was into it and I loved that for her
💖 there was a mild primal kink vibe to these two characters’ sexuality and even after the HEA was in our sights, they still set up stalker-y scenarios to turn each other on? Good for them!

I devoured this novella and think you should too.

I love an excellently written free-with-the-newsletter novella. And I read this in one sitting with a big dumb smile on my face.

Such an interesting and well-built setting: 1909 Seattle. Just the description of the clothes alone—it was everything. And the characters were so well-drawn, so compatible, and really unique!

We had:
💛 fake engagement: our girl just wanted to catch butterflies and be a bug scientists in peace, but her parents were setting up a betrothal to a weeny. Solution? Fake date someone else.
💛 all the mutual pining: pining heroes who’ve had the hots for her forever? Obviously delicious. Pining heroines who have also had the hots for him forever? Even better!
💛 epistolary: it’s the superior trope, everyone knows this. And this novella not only contained letters between the MCs, it also had letters to the mastermind behind this whole premise, Cecelia; our heroine’s best friend and our hero’s cousin. And it was just lovely 🥰 

This author has shot onto my auto-read list.

On one level, I get it. This was a Beauty and the Beast retelling. And who doesn’t love that?

But… I kinda hated it? Nothing about this retelling felt natural, to me.

The characters:
▪️ This hero wasn’t a person. He had no character traits beyond "beast”—and if you took a drink every time someone called him a beast, you’d be dead. By the 40% mark.
▪️ Why were we told this heroine was a Bluestocking (beyond Belle being bookish in the movie)? Emphasis on “told”—because her character on-page (loyal, a good horsewoman, unreflective, and even impulsive) was nothing like her character off-page (studious feminist and critical thinker who knew something about everything).
▪️ And then I don’t know which side character was the most cartoonish tbh—no, I do know. The aunt who embroidered dicks.

The plot:
▪️ It was more about creating cool scenes than making sense. If it made a cool scene (like the heroine in pants for an event), the plot point was dire. But that same plot could be paused for weeks to make stuff happen at the masquerade ball instead 🙄
▪️ The romance plot’s pacing was all about the MCs living together (à la Belle and Beast) at the romance’s expense. It was so rushed, it was over by the halfway point. And then dragged out with nonsense and halfhearted miscommunication for the last 150+ pages.

And then just a bunch of stuff bugged me:
▪️ I hated how a character said “the Beast of Beswick” (the book’s title) in almost every chapter—no matter how mangled the dialogue had to be to make it happen.
▪️ I’m probably too picky about early feminism, 19th century philosophy, and British romanticism… but the (few) Bluestocking-y references were hurting my heart. From the heroine using 20th century post-structuralist feminist language to nonsense about Shelley, Byron, and Wollstonecraft, it was all getting to me.
▪️ As apologies go: “I bought you a building” < an angsty grovel. 
▪️ Also, don’t have the hero fantasize about spanking a heroine who wouldn’t want to be spanked. What am I supposed to do with that?

Wow, that first chapter escalated quickly.

This alien romance was SUPER NUTTY. And it was extremely funny. Not only was I actually laughing out loud at points (which absolutely never happens), I laughed so hard I had tears in my eyes.

This book was almost too bonkers? Every time these MCs got themselves out of their latest wacky scrape, I’d be nervous about what would happen next. We were definitely putting them through it—in the silliest way possible.

We had:
💖 alien fated mates
💖 a “sucker” 
💖 a heroine who gets put through the wringer and handles it like a champ
💖 a completely besotted hero

That said, it was more of an instalove thing than I wanted, the end of the book dragged a bit, and we had more villainous monologues than I’d like.

But still, a new-to-me alien romance author I can turn to to make me actually lol? I’ll take it!

The premise of this novella was really sweet! Our heiress heroine had been abducted and taken to Scotland so the baddy could marry her and steal her dowry. But then she… yeah, literally the title of the book: got “Rescued by the Scottish Rogue”.

We had:
💛 cute character compatibility (with just a hint of Flynn Rider and Rapunzel vibes?)
💛 Christmas time, serendipity feelings
💛 Lots of pretending to be married, one bed at the inn, and forced proximity 
💛 Highlander hero
💛 VERY ’touch her and die’

This was what, the fifth book by Viola Grey I’ve read in the past few days? She’s definitely my new favourite steamy histrom novella author.

Fs in the chat for me assuming this was a sapphic bodyguard romance 😭

Instead, it was more like necromancy Clue in space. And if someone had told me this was Space Clue (NOT a sapphic bodyguard rom), I never would have read it 😅

But cheers to me for blindly following the recommendations of others (without actually reading synopsis for myself). Because I really loved this!

The worldbuilding was iconic. Gideon was iconic (kinda gave me Murderbot vibes). The audiobook narrator was iconic. And (finally!) a murdery plot where the reveals were so subtle that whodunnit was never pre-spoiled.

It was twisty, brainy, and kind of grisly (necromancers are maybe a bit too chill about dead peeps). Also, the audiobook was a work of art.

This book had some stuff I hated, some stuff that was just fine, and one thing that I absolutely loved… what does that even add up to?

First, what I didn’t like: in this monster + historical romance genre mashup (the mashup of my dreams), the histrom part wasn’t giving. For me, at least. And I think this is really personal, depending on what you look for in your usual historical romances. What I want is that Jane Austen-y feeling of a couple getting to know each other in a world of crushing social etiquette, chaperones, and the way they can’t just… date. And that was very much not present in this book. This couple went from unchaperoned dinner dates to booty calls in a way that felt 0% histrom, 100% contemporary.

Also, there were so many steamy time moments that had me cringing 🙈 He “suckled her like a babe,” she made a “high-pitched wheeze” when she came, his balls were like “two fat aubergines,” and there was a moth + “pussy flower” metaphor that was hurting my eyes—it all started to get to me 😂

What I felt was ‘just fine’ is perhaps the most controversial part of the book: the rake reformation arc. 

Now, I like to imagine there’s three Levels of Rake™️:
Level 1: off-page rakishness before he meets the heroine
Level 2: off-page rakishness after he’s been intimate with the heroine
Level 3: on-page physical intimacy with other women after he’s been intimate with the heroine 

And this was very much a Level 3 Rake situation—which I love. The deeper the hole he digs for himself, the more epic the arc. However, the hero’s growth and apology didn’t pack that Level 3 punch… it was more of a Level 1-2 rake reformation arc, which just didn’t match imo.

But—there was something I loved. For a good chunk of the romance plot, our heroine knew the hero was a rakish player who was just messing around with her… but she let it happen anyways, in the most emotional way possible. It was messy and angsty and I ate it up.

So… three stars?

This book was my ideal mixture of “oh crap, how do we come back from THAT??” and the heartwarming-ness of an alien guy who’s a total simp for this fated mate. Grovel, guaranteed.

The worldbuilding was great, the culture clash was everything, and you know I love a book that comes with a glossary.

The beginning! 😳 The way these two get off on the wrong foot was very Oh No and I was invested.

I really enjoyed this couple’s compatibility and I love the way this author writes emotional scenes. I even got emotional when unnamed side characters got hurt, so if anything happened to these two MCs, my heart stopped—in a good way.

That said, I felt like the alien society was too simple in this one—simpler than the alien societies of other books in the series at least. It was going for a hunter-gatherer snow planet society (Iced Planet Barbarians-style). But I missed the way this author uses human-alien culture clash to explore racism, misogyny, nationalism, religion, etc. in the other books in this series.