justinlife's Reviews (916)

I love Daryl Banner's Spruce Texas series. This latest addition brings back some characters that have been missing from his books or not given the time other side characters have received. 

Here, one of Cody's (book two's lead) friend comes to visit and brings a friend. This friend sparks an enemies to lovers romance with the self proclaimed town reject. He's a hot mess and wayward while the military guy, Bridge (yes, that name!) provides a sense of calm and peace. 

This was a fun read. It was cute and I always enjoy a return to Banner's world. 

6/3/2025

This book surprised me. I kept seeing it in the bookstore and decided to check it out in the library. I think it perfectly joins two genres in m/m romance- sports and small town. 

It's second chance. It's middle aged men understanding their past actions, the consequences, and a path to healing and romance. I was honestly impressed with how it handled grief, forgiveness, resentment, and the feeling that things could have been different. 

My one issue with this book and it's a minor one, is that Ried will sometimes introduce a character at the beginning of the novel and never have that character interact with the leads again. You see this with the ex-wife of Adam. We see her interact with him at the beginning of the novel but again. It was a bit annoying. 

Overall though, this collides two fun genres in romance successfully and I would definitely re-read. It was sweet and lovely. 

I really like this book. I will say the audiobook really helped with it. In Park's book, we get glimpses of what being queer is like in South Korea. We get these snippets of a life and it's beautiful. The characters are fully realized regardless of how irritating they are and it was fun to read this facsimile of his experiences. 

This book is delightful and gorgeous. This is a great take on sci fi and what a future can look like that's both full of hope while also showing some struggles we need to work through. The art is gorgeous and the story is lovely. Highly recommend for queer children. Love seeing books like this.

I liked this book. This was a cute "I have a crush on my older brother's best friend". Alex is a college soccer player and has had a crush on Theo since he was young. Now that Alex is 21, Theo starts noticing that he might be attracted to him. He feels anxiety over this and doesn't want to affect his friendship with Alex's brother who has been there for him since he was a kid. 

Alex also has ADHD and is not enjoying his life so we have two people who feel strongly towards each other but get in their own way. 

I'll give Hart credit in b/c she lays this out in her warning section. 

Overall, this was a fun read and I appreciated the care she put in the characters' mental health.

I might not have fully understood everything. A lot of philosophy goes right over my head. Like it’s even flying low and I’m out here dodging it. I don’t tend to think in this way, so when I dive into this realm, it’s a bit harder for me to understand all the pieces. 

That being said, I really enjoyed this. It’s a solid look at far right philosophers/writers over the past century. It’s kind of like a cliff notes version of each. We’re so much exposed to their writings, but more so their lives, their ideas, and their impact. Rose chose these guys and there seems to be a through line on where the ideas are going. By the time we get to Samuel Francis, we see where the right is going and how accurate he was. It’s an odd book that I’ll need to sit with to digest. 

It’s weird to think how some of not all of these guys found themselves or rather considered themselves to be elite and part of the superior class and it doesn’t seem like they’ve questioned why. They just were. 

It’s worth reading to get an idea of where the far right gets their ideas from.

Uggggh. This book was just ok. I would rate it lower, but the last three chapters made up for the rest. 

I’m glad that people love it, but it wasn’t for me. Look, I can believe in vampires, werewolves, and witches all living in Vancouver. What I can’t believe is that a 23 year old was smart enough to run a successful bakery yet clueless enough about every other aspect of her life. Sure, a 23 year old clueless person I’ll believe. Don’t make her a successful business owner. If she’s a successful business owner, don’t make her clueless and 23. Age her up. Surprisingly, this ruined the fantasy for me. I was onboard with all the other ridiculousness. 

There’s a lot of interesting things that could’ve been fun, but it felt like this was a rough draft, not the start to a 9 book series

Book three continues to grow the characters and we get some insight into the fall of the Sun throne. Rune has claimed his old throne and now has to establish his court. He’s called to help with an investigation which leads to discovering some unrest in Atlantis and the lost Hour Glass throne. 

We get more found family and humor and we see how protective Rune is over his family, particularly his bonded friend Brand. 

This one almost pushes a romance into a platonic polyamorous relationship. Rune has wards that he’s responsible for too so he’s growing as his matures into his power. 

I enjoyed this one. It went a bit hard on Runes past trauma but overall it was fun. It’s also nice to see a series where they recognize COVID is a thing. 

A solid follow up. Edward’s extents his world and characters with this one. Rune is coming into his own as his found family grows. A former family from his old court needs help and with that he gets entangled with the Hanged Man. 

This one has a bit more suspense and tension than the first one. It sleep had more memorable moments. We get introduced to more members of the Arcanum and overall this was a little of fun. 

I was really surprised I enjoyed this book as much as I did. I’ve had mixed results with urban fantasy and this came at the right time with the right energy that I needed to appreciate the genre. 

In this world, Atlantis is real and was shrouded in mystery and magic until space travel. After humans figured out what was there and what was going on a war happened and Atlantis fell but moved to an island off of CT. Odd choice, but I’m here for it. The Atlantean culture is ruled by families that were the inspiration for the Major Arcana in Tarot. 

This series follows Rune Sun, the last of the Sun family and he’s now a mercenary for hire and known to be good at what he does. He’s barely getting by and doesn’t have a lot of answers to the tragedies of his past. 

Edwards does a really great job with world building here. My one complaint would be there’s too many characters to keep up with. Other than that, he manages well building the lore, the characters, and the world. 

I enjoyed the lead and the story that was being told and immediately picked up the second one.