yourbookishbff's Reviews (650)

This is a short, linear memoir, recounting the author's teenage years and the onset and progression of her OCD during this time. I have been diligently looking for books about OCD that center compulsions other than/beyond hygiene compulsions, and I was so grateful for Bailey's focus on "invisible" mental compulsions. This covers a lot of really helpful territory for OCD nonfiction - giving insight into mental compulsions, "just right" obsessions, and magical thinking, in particular. I appreciated the window Bailey gives into the workings of her mind and how visceral her thoughts feel. It's an incredibly vulnerable approach to her own story and emphasizes the ways in which OCD can be invisible to others until its severity impacts a person's day-to-day life. Her experiences in various inpatient and outpatient treatment programs also underscore just how misunderstood OCD often is, how challenging it can be for people to get an appropriate diagnosis and CBT, and how often people with OCD end up lumped into talk therapy treatments for generalized anxiety (which is not typically recommended for OCD treatment, for reasons Bailey explicitly evidences in her own account). This is written while she's still fairly young, so it isn't far-reaching, but it's a first-person account I'm grateful for (and wish I had had when I was younger, frankly). 

I held off reading this for months - renewing my Libby loan over... and over... and over... because The Rakess was SO STRESSY and I wasn't sure when I would be in the right headspace for another installment in this series. And then this was... sweet? And actually pretty low angst? With a golden retriever MMC who is just an absolute goner for the FMC from page one? This wasn't at all what I expected after the asylum break-outs, protests, kidnappings, etc. etc. in book one, and I was grateful for the reprieve. 

Peckham tries to pack a lot into a single book, and to be honest, I really felt like the Duke-undoing-the-dukedom storyline was a little too on the nose and over-simplified to be very memorable. I wish that Rafe's secret identity was actually a point of tension, or perhaps that his double life was less an info-dump at the start and more a gradual discovery? It was underwhelming. I did, however, really enjoy the dual timeline on the romance and felt the push-and-pull between these characters was well-balanced. This is a decent age gap (16 years, and she's 18 in the initial timeline - 38 in the current timeline), but the FMC's clear desire, agency and experience makes it feel far less ick than it may have otherwise. These two are both polyamorous and explicitly discuss their desires for an open relationship, and the HEA ultimately felt really true to how they love and what they want from the relationships in their lives. I enjoyed this (and I LOVE seeing a bi MMC in a historical romance!).

Salt Houses is one of my all-time favorite reads and somehow I struggled to really get into this one at all. I think it's partially the structure that makes the emotional arcs feel more broken for me? The family dynamic has just not felt as compelling and the pace feels too slow. Setting this aside for now.

How to even review this. I absolutely love the premise - gay MMC and bi/pan and aromantic FMC mutually abduct each other into marriage of convenience that becomes more. It is a stunning reminder of how many shapes a happily-ever-after can take, and it is the only romance I've ever read with an aromantic lead. The queer platonic partnership is honestly breathtaking! And the satire! I would argue that this is more regency satire than regency romance, and I'm a-ok with that, because it feels like both a love letter to historical romance and a middle finger to cis and heteronormative stories. 

But will anyone aside from the Hall superfans and ARC readers make it to the 50% mark?! This is 400+ pages and felt (to me) like it could have been 200 pages shorter. The inner monologue detours, the dialogue detours, the freaking DETOURS, I was pulling my hair out. I love Hall's humor but when it's overdone and repetitive it becomes tedious to read. I almost DNF'd multiple times in the first half, despite beautiful prose and moments of really compelling emotional insight because the story arc felt buried under zany asides. The second half had more emotional heft (and felt more linear?), but ultimately it still took several detours to revisit characters from previous books that I wasn't invested in (I read this as a stand-alone, and if the other two in this series feel as disjointed as this one, I will probably call it one and done on this series).

I'm so grateful characters like this have on-page HEAs, and I just wish this had felt more intentional all the way through.

Thank you to the publisher (Montlake) and Netgalley for a complimentary ARC. 

Stunning writing and emotional insight - and a heck of a dark premise. This won't be for everyone, but fortunately, Kuang isn't using trauma as a flashy third act reveal and lays out exactly what we'll be facing for these characters in the prologue, so readers can determine pretty quickly if they're in or out on this set-up. I appreciated the darkly comedic reflections on grief and the depictions of PTSD, depression and panic attacks as a very human part of the fall-out from tragedy (I particularly appreciate how emphasized therapy is for both characters in a story where codependence is the biggest risk to their HEA). There was a beat in the third act that had me wary for a bit, but Kuang made it work in the end. I would recommend Kuang to historical romance readers (you can just TELL from her prose that she's one of us) with a heavy emphasis on the content warnings. 

Rake meets starchy FMC while literally [redacted] another woman (ope) and by the end he's weeping during sex and explicitly pledging his lifelong love and fidelity. You could say I loved him.

Half star removed for Thomas and all the stress he caused me during POV changes. You could say I loathed him.

Hoyt is funny and over-the-top (but so self-aware that it hits just right) and I am now fully invested in this series.

This is so wildly different from the vast majority of England-set HR that it's hard to describe! Gritty and dark, set largely in London's poorest districts, with a large cast of beer brewers, gin sellers, brothel owners, orphans and aristocratic outcasts. It has a compelling (and grisly) murder mystery paced alongside a class-difference romance, and while the romance was ultimately *fine* for me (just not overly emotional/memorable for some reason), I loved seeing this world introduced and look forward to continuing the series. 

Holy character development. Richard is the starchiest starch to starch on page for me in a LONG while, and I was set up in books 1 and 2 to really loathe the man (so, naturally, I was rabid for his book and an opportunity to see him fully leveled). This accomplished everything I needed to root for him, and once again, KJC exemplified how class difference is done and done well. Richard and his valet, David Cyprian, face internal and external obstacles in their steep power imbalance and class divide, and I loved seeing how they fumble through it together, tripping over really common and necessary conflicts. This is a HARD power gap to navigate and by the end, I felt confident in their happily ever after. This installment leaned less on the engagement with conservative vs radical politics, but it DID bring our broader series-long conflict to a stressy and satisfying conclusion. This is just such a well-rounded series - my new favorite by KJC.

This series is quickly becoming my favorite by KJC. Each book is engaging in a political dialogue often avoided entirely in HR. Typically when we have a Tory MMC, like Dominic, the grand gesture *is* that person's political conversion, or the underlying assumption is that they aren't *actually* politically conservative, but bound by family expectation/the crown/etc. That is not what KJC is doing here. She's setting up an honest-to-goodness Tory (Dominic) with a democratic radical and seditionist (Silas), and she's making them actually talk politics with each other for a large portion of the book. It's fascinating, empathic, compelling, and, at times, deeply uncomfortable. She's also using intimacy, kink and intentional power imbalance as an aid to character development, and her execution of consensual non-consent (CNC) and D/s is so well done. I don't seek out CNC but it felt *right* for these characters and what they were navigating, and I appreciated how clearly they were role-playing at all times, how well Silas took care of Dominic and how attuned each was to the other's consent and pleasure. Their interactions always felt safe and sex positive, and the way their intimacy helps each build self confidence is honestly beautiful. 

My loudest cheers, though, were for Silas's absolutely spot-on social critiques and insights. His commentary on charity, in particular, made me whoop:

"The Tory wanted to help, Silas could tell. Dominic was poised on the edge of offering money. He'd probably hand over enough to keep half of Ludgate warm, but Silas couldn't and wouldn't because it shouldn't be fucking charity that kept children from starving and the old folk from freezing, as if the country belong to the right by right and everyone else lived at their sufferance and by their whim."

"Everybody's cold out there, Tory. Everybody. And if you think it's enough for me that you make one man warm, you've not listened to a fucking word I've said."

An absolutely underrated and underhyped historical romance by KJC. Silas forever.

I am so glad I finally picked up this series. KJC writes class difference so well, and the nuance in power imbalances here are perfectly executed. Julius is a wealthy aristocrat and a Tory and Harry a down-on-his-luck seditionist who just desperately wants to not be hungry and scared anymore, and somehow, they work beautifully. Where Julius could have been the more experienced of the two in all ways, his grief, loneliness and discomfort with affection give him more equal footing with Harry, who despite his history of abandonment and fear, has a soft, hopeful heart and a willingness to be vulnerable and generous in his love and loyalty. The introduction of our primary cast is delightfully complicated (I love mess!) and I cannot wait to see Dominic and Richard absolutely leveled. A perfect series start.