madeline's Reviews (776)

I was really excited for this one -- Emily Henry recommended it wholeheartedly and I love her work so I figured this was a sure win for me.  It wasn't, and that's partially personal preference and partially the book. 

Yinka's Christianity is really central to the plot, which is not at all clear from the description.  I'm pretty uninterested in characters' religious journeys (or religious influences) and that's the personal preference issue at play here.

What is, I think, not personal preference and rather an issue with the writing itself is Yinka's characterization.  She's so incredibly naive, to the point where she's making decisions that I'd expect someone a decade younger than her to make, not a well-educated woman in her early thirties.  I found it difficult to empathize with some of what she does because it was so clearly a poor choice.  It seemed pretty clear to me that everything she was doing was destined to backfire on here and so it was tough for me to root for her. 

Anyways, I think the rom-com comps are probably pretty accurate here, but it's definitely not a romance.  I think it'd be a fun spring break book for someone, though.

CW:

colorism, a lot of body issues, death of a parent (remembered, off-page), unsupportive parents, the horror that is being a straight woman on dating apps

After a decade away, Hugo Turner is ready to return to his small Texas hometown, and all that that entails: his relationship with his mother, the abuse his stepbrother brought upon him, and the crush he had on his best friend's brother.  He'd never forgotten Brand Woods, and Brand had never forgotten him, but Brand isn't sure he's ready to come out as being bisexual yet.  There's no denying the chemistry between the two, though, and when push comes to shove, will they each be brave enough to live as their true selves?

I don't read a lot of cowboy romance, so I was really interested to see how this author was going to reconcile a largely conservative culture with an MM romance.  It was really satisfying to see the heroes both acknowledge the shortcomings of the culture they were raised in, from Confederate flags to bigoted churches to just ingrained homophobia.  

This book had some pretty significant challenges for me, all while being an overall engrossing read.  The plot meanders a lot, particularly into some weird asides - I think there's six or seven instances of someone peeing in this book, which just seems like too much, among other one or two paragraph oddities here and there, including a whole allusion to

Brand having fathered a child with a high school girlfriend that is truly never explored.  Maybe it'll be in a future book but it just seemed so out of place

.  Otherwise, I struggled with Brand and his internalized homophobia/biphobia at points: he was a Real Shit when his older brother came out as gay, and while I think it was dealt with in a fairly realistic way, it still wasn't great.  Additionally, his dad outs him to his mom in a way that is like very benign, but in this house we don't out people.

In the end, I did enjoy this book and the way that Brand and Hugo eased into a relationship with each other.  I'd like to read the earlier series about the ranch Brand's brother owns, and would definitely pick up other books in this series.  Thank you Harlequin and NetGalley for the ARC!

CW:

physical and, like, visual sexual assault by a stepbrother that never involves the narrative character but definitely is seeing Things against the character's will; homophobia/biphobia, animal in danger (the animal is fine); false accusation leading to a brief arrest

When it rains, it pours, and Violet Maxwell must be in a monsoon.  Bound by ancient Supernatural law to find a mate, she's struck a bargain with her least favorite person to fake-date until they can each find a loophole in the rules: Lincoln Thorne, wolf shifter, leader of the North American Pack, and the guy who broke her heart almost fifteen years ago.  Oh, and maybe the magic she's spent the last thirty two years thinking she doesn't have has finally shown up.  Suddenly Violet and Linc aren't just pretending to date: they're also trying to keep her magic a secret until she can control it and sidestep power-hungry shifters desperate to thwart Lincoln's reforms.  If the two of them can't work together and heal old hurts, whatever's sparking between them could zap itself right out of existence.

This was so super fun - the kind of paranormal, second chance, hate to love romance I was looking for last year and didn't get.  It's a really refreshing take on the shifter/paranormal world too; shifter/fated mates books can lean really hard into Alpha energy which can get into some toxic masculinity real fast.  Lincoln is an absolute cinnamon roll, working to make the shifter community more egalitarian and totally willing to throw on some cat ears and eyeliner whiskers to make a group of kids laugh.  His relationship with his second is great, full of support and understanding.  Violet's a great foil, too, not awed by his power and ready to poke fun at him like she did when they were kids.  

The beginning of the book is rocky, with a lot of info-dumping and not a lot of world-building (a tough combo to achieve, but here we are).  I thought for a minute that I'd missed the first book in the series, but it's just weird.  It's a world where the Supernatural and the Norms coexist with full knowledge of each other, and there's some allusions to, like, anti-Supernatural discrimination in the past that never gets fleshed out.  A single paragraph of background information somewhere in the first few pages would have gone a long way.  The writing could also use a little more polishing.

I really loved this book, and the wide paranormal world that Asher is starting to create.  I can't pick which character I'd like to read about next because each of them seems like so much fun, but I'm definitely looking forward to whoever it is!

Thank you to St. Martin's and NetGalley for the ARC!

CW:

abusive parent (remembered with few details on the page), the partner of a non-narrative character seems, to me, at least manipulative and perhaps abusive

This was incredibly delightful.

D'Vaughn and Kris are contestants on <i>Instant I-Do</i>, a dating reality show where couples are paired up by the show and have six weeks to plan a wedding -- and they can't tell anyone they've just met and are doing this for a tv show.  At the end of the six weeks, the couples who have made it to the altar have to decide if they want to give the marriage a go, or walk away with $100,000.  Instant attraction sparked between the two women, and they're both dedicated to giving it their all, but actually falling in love in six weeks is impossible.  Right...?

So many people love a dating show IRL, so I'm glad this trope seems to finally be taking off.  It's so fun and has the potential to be so tropey: forced proximity, fake dating, insta-lust, maybe some enemies-to-lovers.  This book absolutely delivers on several of those, all while threading a really sincere emotional note through the story.  

Kris is ready to settle down, looking for someone to love her for her and not for her Instagram clout.  D'Vaughn is tired of hiding her sexuality from her family but needs that extra push to commit to finally coming out.  They're each other's perfect foil.  D'Vaughn doesn't care about social media, and Kris is comfortable with who she is so she can encourage D'Vaughn to be the same.

The pacing was a bit wonky at points, and I did find this specific iteration on the dating show trope a little tenuous at times, but overall, this was such a fun, funny book, and I want to be invited to the next Zavala family party, please.

CW:

brief instances of homophobia and racism from a parent, D'Vaughn comes out to her mother on the page and while it doesn't go horribly, it doesn't go great.

Thrill-seeking, demon-summoning Isidora Avramov couldn’t be more different than gentle and rule-following Rowan Thorn, which has fueled their animosity for seven years, ever since a certain squirrel hex that Issa still stands by.  So of course, when weird stuff starts happening to witches in thistle grove, it’s Issa and Rowan who are forced to work together to find their cause.  Things in this town are never as simple as they seem, though, even if you’re a witch – and as the two of them dig deeper into their family history to try and save Beltane, there’s no denying that the dislike between them is becoming something definitely closer to… like.  But someone is hiding a secret that threatens what’s growing between them.  Can they overcome not just their own pasts, but generations of anger, or are they doomed from the start?

PAYBACK’S A WITCH PAYBACK’S A WITCH was one of my favorite reads last year, and I was so excited to return to sweet thistle grove.  The second book in a series is often a challenge, particularly when the first had as great a reception as paw did, and harper really delivers in fbtc.  There’s more magic, more lore, and even a touch more spice.  

One of the things that I loved about PAW was its emotional resonance – Emmy was really struggling to find her place and there was a lot of really gorgeous writing about loneliness and trying to understand yourself.  FBTC is a little lighter on this front, and I found myself really missing that.  Harper showed she was capable of some really, really lovely prose in the first book, and I wish we’d seen more of that.  The writing is still impeccable, I just found myself kind of wishing for a few gut-punch sentences here and there.

I’m never going to turn down a visit to thistle grove, and I'm already looking forward to my next trip!  

Thank you to Berkley and netgalley for the ARC! to Berkley and NetGalley for the ARC!

i feel like i might like this better in french -- there are some moments of really lovely translation but also some things that might be some interesting translation choices and i'd like to know if i'm right.  maybe someday i will return to this.

Some people have waited five years for this book -- I've waited three.  But I'd happily wait more for the perfect return to the world of Immortals After Dark.

Munro MacRieve is being tortured by warlocks, forced to meet his mate and watch her die.  But when he's able to overpower them, he knows he must go back in time to save her.  100 years earlier, famed Lore Hunter Kereny Codrina is just trying to get herself married when the ceremony is interrupted by, of all things, a werewolf.  He says he's her mate, and he'll do anything to protect her, including turning her immortal.  The more time they spend together, the more Ren realizes he might be her mate, but in the face of looming danger, can she convince him that the choice to turn immortal must be hers?

The IAD series has always been political -- always about power and who has it, bodily autonomy, and strong women.  Munro is no different, and if anything, Cole's time away has only amped up her desire to do some real work with her writing.  At the core of this story is a woman demanding that she be the one to make choices about her body and her life, not her (however well-meaning) male partner.  Time and time again, Ren has to beg Munro for choice, to trust her to come to the resolution he wants but on her own terms, and Munro is so terrified for his fragile human mate that it's difficult for him to accept this.

An underlying thread throughout the book is also the destructive power of humans: Ren was taken from the 1920s to the modern period through ~romance magic~ (a time portal), and the stark difference between the way humans treat the planet and each other from her time to now is so striking to her.  I think this idea certainly could have been present in a 2018 release of this work, but it's so much more poignant now after nearly two years of a pandemic.  The whole of IAD is people of disparate backgrounds coming together against a larger evil, and I think that message is more relevant now than it has been in a very long time.

There's so much to delight in with this book.  It's like coming home after a very long time away, a bright spot in a dark winter, a warm visit with friends.  Cole never shirks from taking the finger, and there's so much of her trademark sharp wit and humor here -- it’s honestly laugh out loud funny.  I'm so glad this book is finally here.

Thank you to the author for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

What's a girl to do when she walks into her new house to find her fiancé banging the real estate agent?  Well, after destroying her wedding dress in a paintball session and finding a new place to live, Dani decides that she should buy the empty lot next to her cheating ex-fiancé and build the house of his nightmares, designed specifically to make him miserable.  To accomplish this, she'll need an architect, and cold, quiet Wyatt Montego who works down the hall from her shocks her when he offers to help out.  Walls go up at the spite house and walls come down between the two of them, until Dani is forced to admit that revenge is sweet but Wyatt is sweeter -- but has she realized this too late?

I think this is a pretty great office romance - Wyatt and Dani are coworkers but at the same level, so there's no weird power dynamics going on here, just all the fun of the sneaking around.  But the conflict felt very... juvenile?  Underbaked?  They were determined to see the worst in each other's actions and it became grating.  

Wyatt, though is grumpy perfection: he's adjusting to life with Menier's disease, including bouts of vertigo and hearing loss.  He's hiding this at the office (which is his right, but the reasoning isn't well explained) which is why he comes across as standoffish.  It's clear that he's been gone on Dani for a while, which is my favorite combo with a grump, "I am a grump but secretly very devoted to you please don't ask me questions."  I love him so much.  The book would have been strengthened with a few chapters from his POV, but I think that really any single POV book could be so take that how you will.

There's a lot that this book is trying to do, and I don't know that it really wraps everything up neatly, which is why it's not a five star read for me.  The spite house spirals, there's a few dangling plot threads, but honestly, I'm pretty obsessed with Wyatt.  I really liked this, and I'm looking forward to more from this author.

Thank you Harlequin and NetGalley for the ARC!

CW:

infidelity, deceased parent (in the past, briefly remembered on page), arson, blackmail

What a totally delightful debut!

Feeling adrift after a divorce, Dahlia is shocked when she's selected for a competitive cooking reality show.  There she meets London Parker, the show's first non-binary participant and a frosty exterior that Dahlia is dying to crack.  London can't believe how charmed they are by Dahlia, and as quickly as the competition heats up in the kitchen, things between them start cooking too.  There's no recipes in romance, though - can Dahlia and London make what they have work?

My book group bumped this up on my TBR this week, and I am so glad for it.  Dahlia and London are perfect counterbalances to each other, and London is my favorite kind of love interest, someone who's like "feelings? I am certainly not experiencing them and even if I was I would not admit to it, also I want this person around me all the time and everything they do I deeply adore for reasons I will not disclose."  Their chemistry was so wonderful.

I also really appreciated how London's non-binaryness was addressed throughout the book.  There's one instance in which another participant misgenders them to Dahlia, but the dialogue still uses they/them pronouns for them - Kelley so fully respects their characters that no one's going to misgender them.  Later, London's mother talks about how their dad still wants to refer to them and their sisters as he did before they came out without making excuses for him, and I think that was really great as well, that someone who has known London their entire life is the only one who's able to allude to London's past gender expression on the page besides London themself.

My only real negative about the book is that the writing is a little unrefined at times, clunky and repetitive in some places.  This is the kind of thing that only gets better in time, and I have no doubt that Kelly will continue to write some really remarkable things.  I can't wait.

Thank you to Forever and NetGalley for the ARC!

CW:

queerphobia, non-binary/transphobia, allusions to misgendering, relatively amicable divorce, references to experiencing shame for not knowing if someone wants children.