charliauthor's Reviews (531)

Personally I'm not sure why this is a higher rating than Dante but we move.
I really enjoyed Joey and Max and adored that this book stayed with the momentum and themes of the previous books without getting too tame on me.
I liked Joey well enough but she did dive into 'im just going to mouth off because i can' territory too many times that i just wanted her to be quiet it. We get it, your closeted but lets be real, what have you done to prove that you're capable enough to not be followed all the time?
Max on the other hand was amazing. I loved his dominant attitude and willingness to bend any which way for Joey. I loved the piercings, i loved the trauma he had at the start.
My only issue is that they are discovered fairly quickly. Like, it makes sense since shes followed all the time but i wanted more of the 'lets hide it from the brothers' portion to up the stakes. Once they found out, they were relatively okay with it, really quickly which i found odd lol
Other than that, I am READY for Lorenzo and poor Anya cause im not sure how thats going to go...

Probably loved this more because the MMC was a bit of me!
Ex rugby player with big arms, big body, beard...Zafir was giving what needed to be given!

I really loved my second Brown sisters outing even though there wasnt nearly enough sexy time for me. Talia Hibbert writes such great spice that i feel cheated when she doesnt go all in! haha
I really loved the neurodivergence rep in this along with the nerdy girl getting the jock while not being american high school about it.

My only issue with this is that it didnt need a third act break up/misunderstanding. The story was actually working well without out but it just has to happen cause thats the formula i guess but Dani just had to self sabotage so whatever but it wasnt needed.

It was nice - if thats the correct word - to see the MMC with the trauma rather than the woman who always seems to have something to fix about herself to find love.
It was refreshing in a wonderful way and something the the author does extremely well.

 I've read a few from Talia Hibbert now and I have come to the conclusion that she is an underrated titan in the romance genre and I cannot commend her enough.
As mentioned on my Threads, Talia - for me - is a perfect blend of cutesie romance with that added filth that makes everything super fun and grown. With the addition of her diverse characters, inclusivity and humour, there is something so wholesome about her books that lets me know that I leave with a smile on my face.
Admittedly, I read one that felt a little draw out, it takes nothing away from the talent she has as a romance writer and frontlining Black women as love interests without any racial trauma on their part.

Chloe Brown and her sisters are in fact wealthy and the white MMC has concerns about whether he's good enough for her. It would be so easy to make this story the other way around and I commend that it isnt which shows how little it takes to be original when writing Black characters.

This book is funny, spicy, heartfelt and an easy read. The spice itself does feel a little disjointed if new to Talia's writing in that its so cute, you dont expect the characters to use certain expletives, but I for one really like it. No matter how cute you want to be, fuckin' is fuckin' and you can use explicit words even while being a himbo or a princess etc.

Its just really fun and everyone should read it 

An easy read with a cute couple that doesnt involve an insufferable FMC, I enjoyed Spin the Dawn.
Its a slow book in that the plot isnt very high stakes and they pretty much go on a little journey for most of the book but it was still enjoyable.
I wasnt a huge fan of the magic scissors simply because I didnt really understand how the magic worked. How can scissors make anything, it didnt really make sense. Even her impossible tasks were in fact, impossible so how were they created. You cant stitch blood let alone of the blood of stars so the magic just felt a little ridiculous.
I liked the physical magic that the enchanter was able to do simply because that made more sense.
However, I wasnt a fan of the foreign princess character simply because its so obvious that shes sending the FMC on a wild goose chase so why are we even pretending that she isnt lol

i enjoyed enough to continue and as its a duology, im already halfway through! haha

I'd been hearing a lot about Immortal Dark and I'm so happy to say that it did not let me down.
While there are definitely some things to be worked on both in the book and the coming series, they werent enough to condemn it and I really look forward to how this series continues.
Vampires seem to be making a come back and this has sent a really good pace for it which I love.

So, a girl named Kidan is the last heir to an ancient family of humans whose blood can be drank by vampires. There are 80 or so other families like this and in order to protect these bloodlines, a university named Uxlay is erected to protect both humans and vampires and allow them to live in harmony.
Kidan's sister goes missing and her search leads her to believe that her sister has been taken by someone at Uxlay and so of she goes to find her sister and answer some sinister questions along the way.

This book was fun to read even when it did get a little confusing at times. Not for the plot or anything but more so the writing style that seemed to skip lines or jump to points that hadnt been previously discussed, in some random way. I found myself having to re read a lot of sentences as I wasnt sure if something had happened or where they were. Descriptions outside of physical ones about the characters were also a little lacking in that I never really had a sense of what where they were looked like. A lot of sentences would literally be, 'some time later I arrived at X's house', okay but how far is the house from where you are? Is a brick house, a maisonetter, what?! It was all very much focused on the action and what was happening rather than taking the time to build the surroundings. Usually I dont mind that as such cause I want to get to the kids, but the fact it was so obvious to me was a bit of an issue.

Aside from that, I really liked this primarily for the AfroCentric vibe of it all. The FMC is Ethiopian, her friends are South African and Somali. This is not just Black in the African American or British Black sense but black from the root, encompasing all strands of Blackness in a way that was wonderful to read and imagine.
Susenyos Sagad is now officially in my Bag of Baes. He's like if Damon Salvatore, Klaus Mikaelson and Lestat had a baby and he looked like Eric Kilmonger. Like i actually cannot with how hot this man is and how many fucks he actually does not give. 
I could have done with a lot more spice in this and dare I say, more explicitly described cause i'm not entirely sure if they had sex or whether they were just dry humping lol there is so much forbidden love potential here that i was foaming at the mouth.

i love the additions she's made to the vampire world especially the idea that drinking from various parts of the body sending different emotions and visions that elicit that emotion to the vampire. Desire at the neck, sin at the inner thigh, violence at the chest etc. it was all very sensual which was great.

Also, while i loved that the author doesnt shy away from darkness, there was a lot of murder in this book that just seemingly went unpunished. It was interesting seeing how easily pushed to killing a lot of the cast were and that was intriguing if not also a little confusing.

Overall i am very excited about finding this book and delving into a new world of vampires as well as Black Fantasy Vampires which have been seriously lacking!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this e arc. All views are my own.