dermkat's Reviews (2.11k)

This one was cute! I love friends to lovers but it has to have that balance of mutual pining without so many miscommunication issues where they're just keeping themselves in agony, and this one towed the line well. There were a few moments where I wanted to yell "both of you, get it together!" but I was never annoyed or fed up by it, and it never felt like it was dragging, so it hit the sweet spot. This is book one and I'm glad I went back to read it after I read book two first. In this one, Faye and Bash meet during university in London and she's immediately enamoured by him but he has a girlfriend so they stay friends.  Then we skip to the present, eleven years later still in London, when she runs her own bakery and is getting ready to expand to a second in Manchester, but she hasn't told all of her friends yet, Bash included. He's working with his business partner Bennett at their interior design firm and they have an offer to work in America and he hasn't told anyone, mostly because he's pretty sure he wants to turn it down because he can't imagine living away from Faye, even though they are still just best friends. She's going to be alone for Christmas so he brings her along to his family celebration, they have to share a bed at one point, they both flirt more openly at times while assuming the other is just joking, etc. I won't spoil it with details, but just know that my favorite microtrope of friends to lovers is when one their true feelings come out during a frustrating moment because they just can't hold it in anymore. I also thought Bash's anxiety around food, appearance, social situations, etc. and talks of his therapy and working on it were all well done. Now that I've got a little more background on the friends, I'm looking forward to what I am guessing will be two more stories based on a couple I think will end up together and one on their own who clearly has a lot going on behind the scenes. 

I don't remember how this came across my radar but I'm so glad I read it because it was lovely! The cover certainly caught my eye but the FMC also intrigued me: Maisie is English, almost thirty, plus sized, has Endo, and just moved to a small town in Wales to live with her elderly grandmother. A grandmother who immediately brings her to her senior's hiking club (under duress because she's not a hiker), where she immediately-and literally-falls for the only other person under 40 in the group. Iain is 35, Welsh, moved to town about 18 months ago after an engagement ended and he was broke and alone since he'd left his family farm years earlier and is estranged from his family (mostly due to his overbearing father). The two eventually come up with a fake dating plan when the seniors continually facilitate ways to get them together. But of course, as he discoveres the layers of hurt and life experience beneath her sunshine, and she discovers the gentle soul stuck under his grumpy exterior, they fall for one another. The fat rep and disability rep are so, so well done in this one, and there's just something soft and comforting about this romance set in the Welsh countryside. This is the second in what I assume will be a growing series about her friend group, so I'll likely go back and read the first one about two of her friends who apparently got together shortly before this one started. 

Okay, I loved this! Part of me isn't surprised because I've really enjoyed all of the author's books and expected I'd like their new one, but it's always a nice bonus when I like something as much as I did this. I read it about a month ago but wanted to save my post for Pride month because even though I read and share about queer books all year round, I wanted to highlight some more recent ones I've loved among some other faves. And this book is so delightfully queer.

It's full of a cast of queer folk including a lesbian Non-binary MC, a pan FMC, and many side characters. We get multiple queer-friendly locations (queer friendly resort, drag trivia night, etc.). There's a lot of excellent queer spice, including some things that aren't often represented in romance. But most importantly, at least to me as a later in life queer whose life is sort of isolated in this way, it showed every day life and what may seem like simple occurences to others that felt big and important to see, for me. Elsie reminisces on when she, as an elementary school kid, truthfully told that her crush was another girl without thinking there was any problem with that, and then her supposed friends and others othering and bullying her. Ginny goes to their first drag trivia night and bonds with older queer people. They both experience some firsts with each other, including Elsie's first real sapphic sexual encounter.
Overall, I loved their friend dynamic, that they've been best friends since kids and really in love with each other (or at the very least ignoring feelings), that they go together on what was supposed to be Elsie's honeymoon when she breaks it off with her just fine fiance after he surprises her by planning the entire wedding, and that we see their vacation bubble bliss when they first explore things and also how reality smacks them in the face back home because they both have things they need to figure out on their own. 
Well done, again, to Meryl Wilsner. Your stories are important and I'm so glad I get to read them.

This was pretty good. I didn't recall it was the next in a series after the last one I read by them but caught on pretty quickly. We're in Honeysuckle Harbor this time for the whole thing once Grayson is handed a 7 month baby girl at his New York office and informed she's his, so he moves home to be near family for help while he awaits the paternity test results. His neighbors are James and Cas, who have their own 3 month year old son, and when James's high school girlfriend Caroline comes back to town between international teaching jobs and they hang out, she meets Grayson and agrees to help fill in as a temp nanny until he can hire some. She's still attracted to James and Cas knows his husband feels the same, and they've opened their marriage before to women so she becomes their temp, casual third. Then Grayson ends up joining in once she's no longer his employer cuz there's attraction there too but he refused to do one on one cuz he's panicky about more accidental pregnancies. They become a foursome but it's all supposed to be until Caro leaves town, until feelings develop. The town is cute and I'm assuming we'll get more in this series cuz their friends we met who were sisters of one guy in book one featured more heavily here too. 

I had forgotten about this series since there was only one book out that I'd read, until I read the newest book in the series connected to it. It took me a minute to get back into the characters here but this brother, Noah, was the fun middle child who didn't take much seriously, including dating, but was an adorable uncle. The uncle part was still true but as soon as he met his new neighbor Jade when her giant cat escapes and got into his house, he was never more serious about a woman. They end up fake dating after he assists her with a creepy dude at a benefit where she was the speaker since her company mades adult toys and some men assume that means she down for harrassment. Then they keep up the ruse for her disapproving parents since her dad is in business with the Badden brothers. They spend more time together, hook up, go on a real date, and then she ends up having to stay at his place for a while and things get more serious. I enjoyed this one and look forward to the final brother's book whenever that's released. 

I enjoyed this one! It took me a minute to refamiliarize myself with which why choose hockey romance series I was in but then got there (we see past characters, which remindede that if isn't a hockey series, just this book is). Nora is the new skating skills coach for the Titan's NHL team and early on hooks up with Carter, a friend of a friend very rich photographer, and despite her better judgement, Dominic, one of the players she's butted heads with the most. She ends up pregnant and it's Dom's but his best friend and teammate Miles steps up and offers to fake date her and say the baby is his and that they've been together since before she started because that's less of a scandal and more believable. But she doesn't know he's had a thing for her since they sort of knew each other as teens. Then it turns out all three men have a thing for her and they're all together but eventually their secret gets out. Heads up for people who don't like pregnancy storylines: that's what this whole book is, and she gives birth at the end (it's not traumatic or graphic but does have the labor symptoms on page). This book reminded me that I've read Nora's sister Josie's book as part of a seperate series and discovered the second book is out now so I'm going to read that too. 

This was great! We got a short story for each of the four packs that happen after their own books and they're all happening around the holidays. For Emily and her pack, she and her second two Alphas go to their beach house to finally bond. The other two are supposed to join the next day but she goes into heat early so they drive in the middle of the night and after the heat they celebrate Christmas there. Then it jumps as we get the next Christmas with their first kid. Liv is surprised by her men with a trip to Bora Bora for Christmas. Cami and Smith have been busy and not seeing each other much so she decides to take a last minute break and they go to a cabin for Christmas, where they discover she's pregnant with their first kid. Then there's a bit of a jump to a Christmas where the kid is a toddler and she's expecting their second. And finally Kelsey and her pack host their traditional New Years party where all the packs come together, and this is 15 years after the end of her book. We meet everyone's kids (which was helpful for me to understand more for the second gen series) and then her pack gets a night to themselves while the others all watch the kids. It was my fave story cuz it wrapped up the entire series so well. There were a few things I caught in this collection that were consistent with the author's writing including two phrases that were mixed up and therefore meant something else, but it was moments of annoyance not enough to have me stop reading or not read anything else by her later. 

I'm glad I went back to read this novella that starts off the series. We met Emily and her pack alphas Griffin, Dion, Kenji, and Freddie in the 3rd book of the series and heard their story referenced in another book. Griff is at Heat Haven for orientation when he first joins and Emily is there picking a nest before her heat arrives. They get trapped in an elevator and stuff happens, then they spend the night together at his place after and agree he'll be there for her heat which comes on quickly. Dion is one of the alphas brought in to help and they all get on well. Later they become a pack and eventually grow it by two more, an established couple who get stuck with them in the elevator. I know this is what started off the series and was only meant to be a standalone novella but I could have easily read an entire novel about this group.  

I really enjoyed this next book in the series as well. Here we get to learn what Smith's sister Kelsey (who we met in the last book and was seeing multiple people) is up to and a bit more about the hard time with her ex Meera. She's had a crush on Dom (Alpha, her bro's best friend) forever but he was there when she was at her lowest and assumed he'll never see her the same way, plus he starts seeing another omega named Cameron while she's recovering. She goes out to meet someone and literally runs into beta Emmett and then meets his Alpha, Shyla. She immediately hooks up with them and they all agree it could be more and they're open to growing the pack. Then Cameron meets Kelsey because he knows Dom wants her too and it turns out they want each other. But there's then trouble trying to merge into one pack. There's therapy on page both for Kelsey and the pack together. We find out one of the Alphas is connected to Kelsey's abusive ex. All the while everyone is falling for each other (except the two Alphas who butt heads at first and stay platonic). There was one scene from the last book that I was hoping we'd get their side of and we didnt, do that's my one disappointment. This is the last full book in the series but I didn't read the original novella that introduces the series and then met that pack in this book so I'm going to read that and then the collection of holiday short stories about all the packs that follows this one. 

I enjoyed this one! It's not what I expected as far as Omegaverse because I so rarely (maybe never) hear of a couple vs a pack. Cami is Deja Fox, pop star extraordinaire and Omega, now with new bodyguard Smith. He's an Alpha who doesn't plan to ever be in a pack because of past hurts, and believes he isn't enough for an Omega. Cami has been hurt in recent months by the supposed friends who helped her through her last heat but took pics and sold them. These two spend a lot of time together since he's live in security, and what Smith doesn't know is that she isn't sold on pack life either and would love to have one Alpha to call her own. They eventually give in to temptation and very quickly profess love and bond. Then she's being extorted again and it's someone close to her. Again, this one was a little more high stakes with him even getting into trouble for a bit, but it ends well. I hadn't planned to read more in this series but this one sets up the next one so we'll and it's going to be messy so I need to know.