morganthebee's reviews
475 reviews

I've got some mixed feelings about Fevered Strokes. The writing was good and the editing was clean, but the story felt very convoluted and kept looping back on itself. There were quite a few points where it seemed like it was trying veeeeery hard to be pretentiously artsy given the subject. I found it a bit repetitive and there were some things that were just unclear, to the point where I actually wondered if my ARC copy was missing parts of the story. Perhaps it was, I don't know. Do I regret reading it? No. Would I read it again? Also no. 

I received a free ARC from BookSirens, but my review is unbiased and left voluntarily. 

This was my first time reading Ami Spencer's work. I didn't know anything about them going in, but the blurb caught my eye so when I got the opportunity to read it, I took it. The plot is really lovely, with wonderful characters who it's easy to fall for. 

Debs is funny, caring, and loyal, and she does everything she can to build up the people around her and be the best mom she can for her two children. She's never been with a woman before, but she feels drawn to Sienna Daly from the get go. Sienna is kind and gentle, but she's got a lot of trauma hiding under the surface. She doesn't think her crush on the presumably straight Debs is going to go anywhere, but their connection just gets stronger the longer they know each other. Sienna struggles to reconcile the woman Debs sees with the woman she's afraid she is, her self-worth having been destroyed by an emotionally abusive mother. I have to admit that I identified with Sienna much more than I'd like, and there were quite a few scenes that left me in tears.

The other characters are also great, particularly a couple consisting of Debs' two best friends Grace and Mica (who, I take it, are from an earlier book), and Sienna's best friend Max (who I expect we'll get a story for later), although I found myself wishing for more of Sienna's boss, Liz, and a few of the others.

There was a side conflict that didn't make much sense and just felt like filler to me, and there was a pretty big time jump fairly early in the book that I felt took away from the opportunity to show the relationship develop between Debs and Sienna. I also found the writing to be a bit choppy at times, but overall Secure Attachment was a really good read, and I'd definitely recommend checking it out.

I received a free ARC from the author, but my review is unbiased and left voluntarily. 

I came back to Annie on My Mind as part of a challenge where one of the prompts was to revisit a childhood favorite. I remember reading it when I was in High School, realizing my own sexuality, many years ago (I'm not going to say how many, but...it's a lot). It was one of the first books I read where I could really, truly see myself in it, and felt like I was seen by someone else in a way that very few had up until then. I was a little worried, coming back to it, that my memory had glorified it, that—like some other books I've revisited—what I remembered reading wouldn't have aged well, but no. It really was what I remembered.

It's a gorgeous, heart wrenching and heartwarming story about two girls falling in love at a time when it was still very much not okay to do so. I remember the feelings that this book evokes so well from my own life and coming out, the struggle with societal expectations and judgements, and the fear of rejection from people I loved. Nancy Garden captured all of this in a way that was so real it almost hurt, and yet there's so much joy here. Well worth the read.