yourbookishbff's Reviews (650)

This was my first by Amalie Howard, and though it's the third in her current series, I felt it worked beautifully as a stand-alone. This was a hot (HOT) and genuinely funny historical romance homage to 10 Things I Hate About You, a 90s classic deserving of all the love it gets here. This is a perfect read for historical romance readers who enjoy more modern dialogue (this was reminiscent of Tessa Dare - intentionally modern phrases used as winks to the reader) and sex-positive (and sex educated!) female main characters. Our ice queen and "shrew," Lady Evangeline (Effie to everyone but Gage, bless him), is a force - passionate about animal welfare, determined to shield her (frustratingly immature) younger sister from true harm, openly curious about sexual intimacy and willing to take exactly what she wants. Our down-on-his-luck Duke is essentially blackmailed into a wager that will lure her to London for the season, and from there, we get all the comedy and betrayal and grand gesturing we could possibly hope for. This lost a tiny bit of steam for me in the third act, but honestly, I had such a great time reading this and can't wait to read the first two in the series now. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced reader's copy!

Five perfectly obliterating stars. I loved every second of this. Sherry Thomas is at the absolute top of her game. I finished this and set my head in my hands and took deep breaths for about five minutes. I screamed a lot. All my favorite characters and plot threads came back. I should write something coherent but the way I feel about this book isn't coherent. Holy character development. Kate Reading doing The Most and giving me bi panic every time she narrates Charlotte. Treadles sweating through every interrogation of his GD life. Ash. (Ash!).

I enjoyed most aspects of the mystery in this one! There were a few twists I didn't see coming, and I enjoyed another installment in the will-they-won't-they that is Veronica and Stoker. Veronica can be a bit too over-the-top-I'm-not-like-other-women for me at times, but I DID really appreciate her verbal set-downs in this one and found myself nodding along with most of her character assassinations, so there's that. I was mad at Stoker for about five minutes but I got over it. 

This is a bit too over-the-top for my current mood, and I'm struggling to feel any real connection to the characters because of it.

This was a perfect conclusion to the Wedgeford Trials series and evidenced how intentionally and carefully Milan built the plot arcs across all three books. In the opening chapters, subtle moments and seemingly innocuous side characters from previous books become pivotal to the plot set-up, revealing the mysterious (and now urgent) backstory that was hiding in plain sight all along. 

Andrew and Lily are perfectly paired childhood best friends and once-lovers. Andrew uses humor as distraction, giving the security and safety he's always craved to everyone in his orbit. He is also a passionate farmer devoted to growing heirloom vegetables native to the countries his neighbors have had to leave behind. Lily, a bold political radical, aspiring suffragist, translator and printer of sensational poetry, struggles to decode innuendo or conversational courtesy, complicating her understanding of how others perceive her. Andrew and Lily were each other's safe haven for years, until a pivotal moment in her teens when her grandfather sent her off to her grandmothers in Hong Kong. They're reunited seven years later in a disastrous first encounter where Lily unknowingly threatens to unravel Andrew's carefully constructed fiction, innocuously rerouting his life. 

Milan frequently explores hidden identity and does so with such care and attention to the power imbalance in miscommunication and deception. The pacing of Andrew and Lily's conflict is so well done, and the heart-wringing interpersonal angst we feel in their early encounters appropriately explodes into honesty at exactly the right time. For Milan readers, this hit some of the emotional notes that I loved in Once Upon a Marquess, including reunited childhood friends who had always longed for more, a forest of mutual pining, it-was-always-you, and disastrous aristocratic families. The plot set-up, though, feels reminiscent of The Suffragette Scandal, a radical printer and suffragette and a secret-aristo. Here, though, Milan is exploring universal suffragism outside a white gaze, and it is so powerfully done. 

With a beautiful sub-plot that explores the cultivation and cultural significance of various tea leaves, a hilarious side-quest into Callum's Holy Order of Logbooks (justice for Kenneth!), a COOL exploration of radical feminist literature, several on-page discussions of birth control and abortion care, and a brilliantly executed deception that once-again plays to the ignorance of empire, this is a new favorite Milan for me. 

I'm so delighted Alexandra Vasti is now writing full-length books. I fell in love with her writing through the Halifax Hellions novellas, and seeing her transition into a full-length series set-up is so exciting. This hit all the right notes - a guardianship conflict that feels realistic (and doesn't overly rely on child drama), a newly minted (American) Duke with radical politics, entrepreneurial heroine (running a salacious lending library), near-miss ruination (gasp!), and pining-while-married. This is fairly low angst, with most of the conflict operating outside the couple, and features several absolutely delicious open-door scenes that feel Just Right for these characters. I particularly enjoyed a few of the plot twists that set up future books in the series and can't wait to see these characters get their own happily-ever-afters. 

Come for the spicy regency comedy and stay for the author's note, because as always, Vasti evidences how deeply researched and historically authentic these characters are - a great reminder that there have always been women clawing their way to self-determination with the tools available to them, and feminism is not anachronistic. 

By far my favorite of the series!! I loved this marriage of convenience premise, where our female main character is desperate to escape her abusive parents (and a terrible match to a man nearly four times her age) and is, thankfully, rescued by her reclusive but wildly wealthy neighbor. Oliver is largely reclusive because his attempts at entering society as a young adult were traumatizing and isolating. Having lost his hearing to Scarlet Fever in childhood, Oliver has settled into a comfortable - if lonely- life in a society where Deaf folks are routinely deemed mentally incompetent, socially and legally, and where few people have the skill or, frankly, interest, to communicate with him. I appreciated learning more about Deaf culture, hearing aid technology, sign language adoption and more during the Gilded Age, and loved that by the time we meet Oliver, he's well adjusted to his disability, and ready to tentatively (grudgingly) test new friendships and partnerships again. Our female main character, Christina, has perhaps the longer arc in this story, as she has to rediscover her own passions, confidence and self-image while she's only recently cast off her family, and I was so grateful she had the opportunity to find herself within the safe and secure attachment Oliver provides. Be warned, the third act is stressy and the deeply ableist violence of the era (and bureaucratic systems broadly) is on full display.

The concept for this story-within-a-story honestly feels brilliant to me - a woman who has inspired countless tales of fictional medieval adventures has inherited her very own castle, complete with recalcitrant and reclusive Duke. Izzy Goodnight is all grown up, even if she is eternally a child to the legions of zealous readers who first met her as the charming young protagonist of her father's fairytale-esque adventures, and she's penniless and homeless when she lands on the doorstep of her mysterious inheritance. The Duke, recently blinded by a severe injury to his eyes in a duel, refuses to leave the crumbling property that's become his sole refuge. This is absolutely over-the-top all the way through, with forced proximity, scarred hero, rake x wallflower, and a handful of other beloved tropes all battling for the reader's attention, but it's the narrative structure, and our underlying fairy tale adventures, that make this feel so unique and whimsical and ultimately, deeply moving. I just loved this.

This is exactly the kind of thriller I enjoy reading - character driven, with nuanced social commentary and a slow-boiling tension humming throughout. This is also the first I've seen an author position a main character with dissociative identity disorder (DID) as the protagonist from the start, where DID is not used as a plot twist or reveal and where it is not used to suggest villainy. I listened to this on audio and felt the narration brought each headmate to life with distinct tonal and style differences, so I always felt these characters were distinct, which made transitions between who was fronting and when more seamless. I thoroughly appreciated how we know from the start that one of our headmates knows more than they're disclosing, and we are left feeling the loss of memory and control that Ken, our primary POV, feels upon waking. By giving us only as much information as Ken and a few select headmates have at any one time, Cole ensures we feel the dawning urgency and fear and frustration of this scenario, particularly in the second half of the story. The gothic atmosphere - our haunted island castle appearing inside the mind and outside of it - and its strange historical legacy make this compelling as a thriller and, moreso, as a commentary on class, power, and trauma. The conclusion was satisfying and hit exactly the notes I was hoping for, without straying into wholly gratuitous gore. My only minor quibble would be the slower pacing in the first half, but honestly, as a character study, I still felt it was incre ibly compelling, and it won't stop me from recommending this one.

The sub-plot in this story is truly excellent and will be the sole reason I recommend this book to another reader. A female architect, Lady Eva, attempts to bring her original design to an historic project in Gilded Age New York while saving her family from financial ruin. She battles misogyny in the industry at every turn, coming out on top through sheer force of will, strategic thinking, and killer negotiation skills. She knows what she deserves and fights for equal standing, rejecting what's beneath her even when it's cloaked in "care." I adore her, and I was rooting for her and her project all the way through. 

The romance just missed the mark. And it COULD have worked! A frantic, jealous, and emotionally constipated male main character CAN work for me if he achieves character growth in a reasonable time frame and with a reasonable amount of initiative, but Phillip fell short at every turn. Even when multiple women in his life give him a veritable checklist for Getting the Girl, he can't execute. A grand gesture does not a grovel make. 

In conclusion, Lady Eva: perfect. Phillip: sigh.