Whatcha Reading? June 2024, Part Two (2024)

AnneUK says:

Morning everyone! Early start for me today, so here goes…

Before I get into this post, I want to thank @Kareni and @Wait, what?
for recommending and cheerleading me through the Linesman trilogy and into further exploration of the authors’ books. Also @JB Hunt for the Kate Quinn Rose Code rec – I too visited Bletchley Park recently, so it was particularly timely.

The only book I really want to talk about at the moment, to anyone, not just to The Bitchery, is IN MEMORIAM by ALICE WINN.

It is extraordinary. It broke me several times. Twice I had to put it down for a couple of days and let my emotions settle before picking it up again.
At its heart, it is a love story between two young men – public schoolboys at the time of World War One. (Note that in the UK, rather counterintuitively, ‘public schools’ are actually private educational establishments – think Eton, or Harrow).

Henry Gaunt and Sidney Ellwood are our main characters, surrounded by a ‘band of brothers’ (all so young!), that the reader grows to care about. We first meet them as friends, skirting around their forbidden feelings for each other, in their relatively carefree schooldays. Britain is on the verge of the conflict and feeling pressured, they (separately) enlist and from then we are plunged into their experiences of war. The violence, when it happens, is full on and visceral. Difficult to read. The account of the initial offensive at The Somme is utterly claustrophobic and rage inducing. The author cites a particular German memoir that she used for the deaths and injuries – nothing is fiction, it all really happened to young soldiers.

A clever device throughout, is the use of pages from the school newspaper to list the casualties and deaths. I read them so carefully, looking for the characters I knew, my heart falling when one was listed. A number of times, I exclaimed out loud upon finding a name.

WW1 and its repercussions in the following years is a subject that I have become very acquainted with, often through my romance readings: KJ Charles’ Will Darling trilogy for example, Allie Therin’s Magic in Manhattan series, The Last Kiss by Sally Malcolm and one of my favourites this year, mentioned in a previous WAYR, These Old Lies by Larrie Barton. So I came to In Memoriam with a certain understanding of what I might find. Reader, I was well primed…

It won’t be for everyone but I found this book an emotional and satisfying read, with characters who have stayed with me. Recommended but with all of the above caveats.

Happy reading all.

Morgan says:

Much busier than the start of the month and it makes me worry I’ll have nothing to read by the time my beach weekend comes around next month haha.

MIRRORED HEAVENS by Rebecca Roanhorse was propulsive and compulsively readable and makes me wish The Sixth World series would resume.

I’ve been following Lindsay Ellis since basically the dawn of her internet career and while it’s not a subgenre of sci-fi that’s usually my bag, APOSTLES OF MERCY was a great conclusion to the series, especially after Truth of the Divine broke me.

I needed a palette cleanse after watching so much Little House and reread PRAIRIE FIRES by Caroline Fraser. It’s everything I want in a biography contextualizing its subject, especially now that I’ve read Scott W. Berg’s 38 NOOSES about the Dakota War and THE WORST HARD TIME by Timothy Egan as a reminder that climate disaster has been here for well over a century.

CRITICAL ROLE: THE MIGHTY NEIN ORIGINS: CADUCEUS CLAY by Kendra Wells and Selina Espiritu had the prettiest art of the whole series, like genuinely stunning. Ready for the animated series and Tusk Love antics.

Somehow I’ve only read 1 other Joyce Carol Oates book, but BUTCHER scratched my f*cked-up historical stuff in New Jersey and Massachusetts itch.

Finally, I’m in the middle of THE PERILS OF LADY CATHERINE DE BOURGH by Claudia Gray. It’s such a charming series and I think she does clever work with tying Austen’s characters together, the way any shared universe fanfic series should.

Jill Q. says:

Okay, things are ticking along with the The House of Niccolò series by Dorothy Dunnett. Dense, historical fiction with morally gray characters. Definitely check out content warnings b/c this has a lot of ugly human behavior. It was written 30 + years ago, so maybe not as graphic as a more modern book, but it’s there and it’s a lot. Nicholas is the focus but there’s lots of complex women, not always sympathetic, but interesting. I am almost done with the 2nd book, SPRING OF THE RAM, but I lost momentum when I took a break to binge watch the 2nd half of Bridgerton and now remembering who all the characters are and who is scheming against who is a bit difficult. I have a little over 100 pages to go, so I probably need to just need power through and roll onto the next one.

In audiobook reading I did EARLS TRIP by Jenny Holiday. Cute fluffy historical, but it didn’t grab me as much as her contemporary “Christmas in Eldovia” books do. Three English aristocrats have their yearly “boys trip” crashed by two sisters who are escaping ruin and are family friends of one of the male aristocrats. I liked the main characters and their chemistry, but didn’t care much outside of that. Also, this is another min-rant, but I wish publishers would think more carefully about their comps/blurbs. The blurb was Ted Lasso meets Bridgerton and I kept reading thinking one of the romances would have a grumpy/sunshine Roy/Keeley vibe or something relating directly to Ted Lasso the character (fish out of water, sports focus, heck even leader of a ragtag bunch that was going to be underdogs at something) and after listening to the whole thing, I would guess the comp was b/c the hero was emotionally fluent, cared for his family and had male friends that he was close to and shared his feelings with. Which, I admit is refreshing for a romance hero, but slapping Ted Lasso on it just seemed like a stretch. I also liked the way the hero cared for his mother, but I found the male bonding stuff kind of boring, so it’s not like I felt like I was getting Diamond Dogs 2.0 or anything.

I also listened to ALL HER LITTLE SECRETS by Wanda M. Morris, contemporary thriller. The heroine Elise Littlejohn is a middle aged Black lawyer who is working at a company as one of the very few diversity hires. She’s got lots of secrets, including the fact she’s sleeping with her married white boss and when she comes in early one morning, he’s shot dead in his office. This thriller picks up and goes fast, with a lot of good twists and turns, but it has a problem that I often have with thrillers in that the heroine makes illogical choices to make the story keep moving. It’s not walking into the spooky basem*nt in your nightgown with just a candle, but it’s still there. I think it would actually work really better as a movie or as a Shonda Rhimes type limited series b/c it moves fast and has lots of compelling cinematic intense moments.

SusanS says:

@AnneUK: I agree with every word of your description of IN MEMORIAM. It is a perfect example of the “approach-avoidance conflict” – I wanted to keep reading for the beautiful prose and the Ellwood-Gaunt relationship, but I couldn’t bear to read or hear about another gruesome death of a character I cared about. And that thing-that-could-have-but-didn’t-happen in the last chapter…..!

I was in the mood for a paranormal rom-com, so I started WHAT THE HEX by Jessica Clare.

I also want to check out IN THE WOODS by Tana French. I’ve seen a lot of good reviews for her Dublin Murder Squad series.

Several folks have also recommended Ruth Ware and Lucy Foley to me, although I’m not quite sure which of their books I might read.

But mostly, I’m staying in my hobbit hole, working, and avoiding the heat. #nastyheatwaves

Stay cool out there this weekend! 🙂

DiscoDollyDeb says:

Part 1

I love a good bodyguard-client romance, and Kathryn Nolan’s FREE FALL is a great one—probably the best one I’ve read since CD Reiss’s BODYGUARD. Elijah, a strict, by-the-book security agent, is responsible for the safety of Luke, an adrenaline junkie who has unexpectedly inherited his late father’s fortune. Luke, who would rather surf or bungie-jump than attend a board meeting, initially refuses to take the threatening emails he’s received seriously; but when threats escalate to physical acts, Luke has to rely on Elijah to protect him. I really liked the dynamic between the straight-laced Elijah and the flirty Luke as they dance around their attraction for each other and learn they have far more in common (especially their fraught relationships with their fathers) than would initially be obvious. Elijah (who stands to lose so much more than Luke should they give in to their desire) fights hard to retain professional distance. Because this is a romance, you already know he’s unsuccessful in doing so—but there’s a nice slow-burn leading up to hot sexy times in a Hamptons cottage during a tropical storm. In addition to a good romance, FREE FALL is also an interesting suspense story: uncovering who is threatening Luke, and why, is well-handled and kept me guessing until the reveal. Highly recommended.

Although “best friend’s younger sister/older brother’s best friend” is not one of my favorite tropes, I was willing to give Julia Connors’s FAKE SHOT a try because I’ve enjoyed her books in the past. In FAKE SHOT (the second book in Connors’s Boston Rebels series of hockey romances), professional hockey player Colt needs a place to stay while his condo is being renovated. Jules, younger sister of Colt’s best friend, very reluctantly offers the empty room in her place, and the couple start dancing around each other. Jules is cool, detached, and always in control; this is due to an emotionally traumatic episode in her past which is gradually uncovered during the course of the book. Meanwhile, Colt starts out as a bit of jerk/man-whor*/f*ckboy (take your pick) but then there’s a situation that requires Jules & Colt to pretend to be engaged—and Colt begins to reveal hidden depths. One of the elements I really enjoyed about FAKE SHOT is the focus on Jules’s all-female construction business and her attempts to start a non-profit that helps women pursue trade certifications and construction jobs (I’m fairly certain a future book will feature a female electrician who is a supporting character here). As for Jules & Colt, I thought that FAKE SHOT played too long with the will-they-or-won’t they situation (hey, it’s a romance—you know eventually they will!), but I did like how their relationship was finally resolved. Recommended.

Noelle Adams’s COUNTED is a modernized & gender-swapped retelling of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s THE BLUE CASTLE featuring a couple who marry with the understanding that one of them has a terminal illness and will die shortly. Jude, a rather reclusive author, learns he only has a few months to live, so proposes to family friend Eve, who is currently working on her PhD dissertation. Eve accepts, and the couple begin their marriage knowing that the end point is only a season away. COUNTED is a sweet, slow-burn relationship story, less about the sex (although there are a number of sex scenes) than about how the couple’s feelings toward each other (initially rather detached) become more entangled and how they fall in love despite knowing that pain is ahead. If you’ve read THE BLUE CASTLE, you know how this story plays out, but even if you haven’t read it, you can probably guess what happens because COUNTED is a romance novel. However, COUNTED is far more about the journey rather than the destination. If you’re looking for a quiet, somewhat melancholy read, look no further than COUNTED. Recommended.

DiscoDollyDeb says:

Part 2

I have noted before that Garrett Leigh’s books tend to fall into two broad emotional categories: “Sex is easy; intimacy is hard” or “Intimacy is easy; sex is hard”. Last month I read Leight’s HOUSE OF CARDS which definitely fell into the latter category. This month I read the second book in the Porth Ewan Bay duet, JUNKYARD HEART, which is most definitely in the former category. After discovering that his long-time lover is married (to a woman) and has children, photographer Jas leaves London and relocates to Porth Ewan Bay in Cornwall where his family has lived for generations and is in the process of opening a restaurant. When Jas is hired to take photographs of a local band during one of their gigs, he meets Kim, a carpenter & tattoo artist. The two men have an immediately sexual connection and waste no time getting together. But in JUNKYARD HEART, it’s the emotional side of things that takes a long time for the guys to get through. Jas is not sure his heart can take another betrayal, and Kim (a recovering alcoholic who appears to suffer from a form of depression) worries about staying sober and being a burden to Jas. So while they continue to have hot sexy-times, Jas & Kim still have plenty of emotional growing up to do. I love the community that Leigh evokes in JUNKYARD HEART and HOUSE OF CARDS: a sort of late-stage hippie world with a commune, free-range chickens, lots of home-grown produce, and old stone cottages set along the cliffs of the Cornish coast. Like HOUSE OF CARDS, JUNKYARD HEART is a re-edited version of a book Leigh published in 2016 now revised to loop into the Rebel Kings Motorcycle Club universe. I haven’t read the original, so I don’t know how heavily edited the book is, there are only passing references to the Rebel Kings (far fewer than in HOUSE OF CARDS) in JUNKYARD HEART, and I’m fine with that. Not every books a writer publishes has to connect with every other book. JUNKYARD HEART stands fine on its own. Recommended.

After finishing Nicky James’s Valor & Doyle series (and the books she’s written so far in the Shadowy Solutions series), I was jonesing for more m/m romantic suspense with at least one MC involved in law enforcement, so I grabbed Kaje Harper’s Minneapolis-based Life Lessons series (four books originally published in 2011/12 and republished in 2021/22). I enjoyed and recommend the entire series, but they do have to be read in order and, in each book, the crimes being investigated come very close to the MCs. In the first book, LIFE LESSONS, school teacher Tony witnesses a murder of a fellow teacher; one of the investigating detectives is Jared MacLean (aka, Mac). Mac and Tony are attracted to each other from the start, but while Tony is openly gay, Mac isn’t. Not since Colin in Roan Parrish’s OUT OF NOWHERE have I encountered a hero as deeply closeted as Mac. Mac—a widower with a young daughter—feels as if he has good reason to stay closeted: Harper pulls no punches about hom*ophobia in the law enforcement community and in the religious views of Mac’s cousin (who is helping him raise his daughter). Initially, Tony agrees to keep his relationship with Mac a secret, but as murders continue and the suspect has Tony in their sights, Tony balks at being shoved back in the closet.

In the second book of the series, BREAKING COVER, Mac comes out of the closet, with mixed results. Some of his co-workers shun him or treat him differently, but the freedom he feels in finally being himself and being openly with Tony helps him ignore hom*ophobic comments (for the most part). Meanwhile, Tony takes custody of a late friend’s child—much to the child’s grandparents’ consternation—while Mac investigates a serial killer. I enjoyed the domesticity in this book: lots of scenes of Tony and Mac with the two children, but I also liked the investigative side of the story, with Mac following numerous leads in pursuit of the killer.

In HOME WORK, the third book, Mac and Tony have moved in together with their children. Harper shows how much adjustment, compromise, and understanding it takes to blend families—especially when one partner spends a lot of time investigating serious crimes. This is the book in which Mac & Tony get married, and I must admit to tearing up a little when they exchanged vows (much as I did when Valor & Doyle finally tied the knot). I did, however, find one thing a little odd: when HOME WORK was first published, gay marriage was not legal everywhere in the U.S., so Mac & Tony go to Iowa for their ceremony. By the time the book was republished, gay marriage was legal nationwide, but Harper still gives the rationale of a wedding trip to Iowa as being because the guys “can’t get legally married” in Minnesota. I would have thought if she was going to the trouble of re-editing and republishing her books, she would have updated that part—oh well, as I said, it’s a small thing and didn’t detract from my overall enjoyment of the story.

LEARNING CURVE is the fourth and final book of Life Lessons. Mac is recovering from a serious injury he received in the line of duty, and we witness him struggling with his speech (the injury has left him with a form of aphasia) and being sidelined from the job. Tony, who is ambivalent about his husband being a cop, is not too unhappy that Mac has not been cleared to return to work, but he can see that Mac longs to go back to investigative work. Then Mac is called in as a consultant on a crime that involves one of Tony’s students. As in the other books, Harper provides a good mix of the domestic (the couple’s kids are not perfect, they sometimes bicker, argue, and call each other names—in other words, typical siblings) and the work-related (both at the school where Tony works and at the police precinct). The entire series is well worth checking out. Recommended.

catscatscats says:

I’ve just finished “Wifedom” by Anna Funder, which is really worth reading. It’s a biography of George Orwell’s wife, but it’s about how women’s work – practical and emotional – gets elided. Eileen O’Shaughnessy has been written out of Orwell’s life by his biographers despite supporting him financially and being in Spain with him during the Civil War. Funder makes a good case that Orwell could not have written “Animal Farm” without her. It is bleak though. No HEA.

Just started “The Unlikely Heir” by Jax Calder, which was recommended by flchen1 in the last Books on Sale post – fun and fluffy so far. I do like the wholesale de-royalling of ten members of the House of Windsor.

In the post today, “Millies of the Chalet School” by Sarah Wright – a Chalet School continuation novel about the finishing branch, which I think a lot of people have been looking forward to.

FashionablyEvil says:

Things have been a bit light on the reading front of late, but I really enjoyed DIVINITY 36 by Gail Carriger. Carriger is very reliable on the found family, solid cast of secondary characters, and low angst fronts. There’s drama, but you know you are in safe hands and it’s all going to be okay in the end. This one is (I think, being not super familiar with the genre) a riff on K-Pop. Helpful if you’ve read CRUDRAT, but not totally necessary.

Currently reading SOMETHING WILD AND WONDERFUL by Anita Kelly for my book club. It’s okay so far–two hikers on the Pacific Coast Trail, one of whom has been cast out of his family for being gay and the other of whom is trying to figure out who he is/what he’s doing with his life. I think it will get better as it goes along–has some issues with telling rather than showing in the early chapters, but is starting to pick up momentum.

Also, I keep desperately looking for the Bridgerton open thread! I have many thoughts about this season and am looking forward to discussing them with y’all!

Jill Q. says:

@Jennifer Estep,

for Lucy Foley I liked THE GUEST LIST. Multiple POVs, remote Scottish island hosting a luxurious wedding, and nonlinear timeline, but moves well and paced well. THE HUNTING PARTY has a similar premise (posh college friends on a weekend getaway at remote estate) but I felt like the villain was a little more obvious in that one. I couldn’t really get into THE PARIS APARTMENT, but I did finish it.

Ruth Ware has been a little bit more hit for me, but continuing on the remote location theme (Swiss skiing getaway) ONE BY ONE was good. Another one where I thought the villain was fairly obvious, but the suspense was good.

All of these have a THEN THERE WERE NONE vibe, more or less. I think I’m just a sucker for that.

@FashionablyEvil, if we have a Bridgerton open thread, I will be there. I’m still processing. . .

SaraGale says:

I surprised myself by making it through 2 audiobooks – both by Emily Henry. I started with FUNNY STORY, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It tugged the heartstrings so good. Then followed it up quickly with BOOK LOVERS – also very good in totally different ways. I enjoyed that the leads in both books were fairly self aware folks, though blind to the ways their coping had cut them off from others/pushed others away. I felt like the wrap up was a little too tidy, but not unbelievable.
I sunk myself in two lighter rom-com series – RILEY THORN, by Lucy Score. And TALES FROM THE ALPHA ART GALLERY by Cynthia St Aubin. This was a re-read of both series and I definitely prefer the Lucy Score series and the quirky cast of characters – it’s all ridiculous but charming. For St Aubin’s series – I find myself again getting annoyed with the leads, the FMC stumbles through without taking much agency in her life, the MMC seems uselessly secretive but gets frustrated with the FMC when she stumbles into messes because SHE DOESN’T KNOW
WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!!! SMH!!!
Anyway – I’m looking forward to the next Riley Thorn book. Saving that for vacation at the end of July.
I also needed some comfort reading so I picked up one of my fave reads on 2023/2024 Mariana Zapata’s THE WALL FOR WINNIPEG AND ME. I can to say how much I love this book. It hits my heart every time I read it. I’ve been realizing that I love how much of the book takes place in the every day moments of Vanessa and Aiden’s life – which is so nice in a book with a pro athlete MMC. Their relationship grows from proximity and time together, there’s no insta-love, lots of every day annoyances and realizations. I went back and reread HANDS DOWN, which features the roommate from W OF W as the MMC. Also good and sweet.

Read the latest installment of the Electra McDonnell series’s, LOCKED IN PURSUIT by Ashley Weaver. Good, fast read. Moving the storylines slowly along with a bit more angst and tension between the FMC and MMC. My only complaint was the lead was so focused on that angst through the book – it made her a little more one dimensional.

I’m looking forward to DUE ME A FAVOR by Cathy Yardley. Her ROLE PLAYING was a really cozy, lovely read and I enjoyed the MCs being a little older and further on in life.
And I have MEET ME AT THE LAKE by Carley Fortune in my beach bag (yay Lake Michigan summer). I’ve had it from the library on a recommendation from one of my patients but haven’t opened it yet.

Happy reading!!!

LML says:

At 5:00 a.m. Thursday morning I finished reading Rosalie James’ Shame the Devil, sighed deeply, turned off the kindle, and slept a very few hours until work. Never mind that the book has existed for four years and would continue to exist following evening. I was not going to stop until everyone got their HEA, and the path was not clear to me. The book was so enjoyable and so much more than I expected, in depth (and length!). Later that afternoon I ordered a Bad Decisions Book Club mug for myself, because reading until 5:00 a.m. is a personal record. On Friday, wiser, I started earlier, reading the final book in the series, Devil in Disguise. The “devil” in these books is the name of a football team, and the covers are, in my opinion, dreadful at conveying any sense of the stories. Good people, trying their best, in difficult circ*mstances. The male characters are football players, but game time itself is only a handful of pages. A big thank you to the person who mentioned Shame the Devil here.

DonnaMarie says:

I’ve had a most excellent reading streak. Last time I said that Emily Henry’s FUNNY STORY was going to be the summer read to beat, and while I haven’t changed my mind about that, it has actually become a tie. More on that later.

Finished THE HAZELBOURNE LADIES MOTORCYCLE AND FLYING CLUB. Helen Simonson’s ability to evoke time and place is A-level. The WWI era settings have become a thing for me the last few years (thanks @AnneUK, you’ve made my list a little longer). Constance is about to set adrift is a changed world. The war and the influenza pandemic have ravaged both population and societal expectations. Women who’ve been filling essential roles are being sent back to the hearth and home. Unfortunately for Constance and so many others, hearth and home no longer exist. I keep saying it’s sort of Jane Austin in the 20th century. Lots of ruminationing on the changing roles/expectations of women, the crumbling of class structure. It was a pretty solid A until the end. Obviously, I love a happy ending, and I deeply wanted a happy ending for Constance, but I didn’t exactly love the way her HEA came about. It felt like lucky happenstance rather than a choice. So B+ for not sticking the landing.

I mowed thru Nora Robert’s latest, MIND GAMES. While I’ve had other library reads on the tbr, this one has 36 people on the waiting list, and I like to get those back in circulation as soon as possilbe. On the la Nora sliding scale (where in her books are graded against each other, rather that other writers) it’s a solid C. It hits all those NR notes: lovely family (real and found this time) relationships, hot Beta MMC, good dogs, cute kids, snappy dialogue, however, it does follow her newer format where we spend 1/2 to 1/3 of the book with the FMC while she grows up and then bring in the MMC. I’m not quibbling about that so much as moving her from Romantic suspense to just suspense with romantic elements. Solid C because the MMC has a moment, and WOW, does he go over a cliff reactionwise followed by respectful remorse, but not nearly enough grovel. Yeah, yeah two sides, both to blame, both have reasons, yada yada. MORE GROVEL!

And now the other read of the summer: Kate Claybourn’s THE OTHER SIDE OF DISAPPEARING. Have you ever been reading and realized you have to put the book down and walk away because otherwise you will finish it, and you desperately don’t want to finish it? I put this down twice last weekend. I had no pressing obligations. There was no reason I couldn’t just sit and read except that I didn’t want to finish the book. I loved these characters so much, or at least how they were written if I didn’t love them. I loved how the relationship between Adam and Jess grew, changed. I loved that the thing that broke them apart wasn’t contrived or out of the blue. It was completely true to Jess’s character. The podcast/caster that is the driver of the story turns out to have a a nice little twist. Oh, and there’s that nod to mental health, the driver of Adam’s prospective podcast, and that it’s in part actual therapy that gets Jess her HEA not the magic of love. 373 pages is generally a two day read for me. I managed to stretch it out to five.

Lace says:

Jackie Lau’s The Reluctant Heartthrob has the best and most relatable reason for people to reunite after a one-night stand, ever. Not telling. Just read it. Both it and The Sitcom Star are great fun.

I think I’ll spotlight a short story I read recently, which is not a romance, but a lovely fantasy story of a disabled child and their mother on a healing pilgrimage. Don’t say ugh-out!, the author Marissa Lingen knows what she’s doing, and it’s not “fixing” people.
https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/a-pilgrimage-to-the-god-of-high-places/

@JillQ — Thanks for the recommendations for Foley and Ware. I also love “And Then There Were None Vibes” so I’ll take a look at those. 🙂

EditChief says:

I’ve been reading a lot of new-to-me authors from my Kindle TBR stack, but most enjoyed the two-book series by Ashley Winstead, FOOL ME ONCE and THE BOYFRIEND CANDIDATE. Both plots revolve around political campaigns by progressives who are serving as or running for governor of Texas (and one is a Republican), so maybe these should be categorized as “fantasy”… but they’re actually rom-coms, with character development that I thought was credible and compelling.

The main female character in each book is one of a pair of sisters:
– Lee “Stoner” Stone, the MFC in FOOL ME ONCE, is a lobbyist for a woman-run electric vehicles company. Lee finds herself working with her ex-boyfriend, Ben, a lobbyist for the very liberal GOP governor, with a shared goal of getting the good-old-boys in the Texas legislature to pass a clean energy bill.
– In THE BOYFRIEND CANDIDATE, it’s Lee’s younger sister, Alexis Stone, a librarian, who inadvertently gets involved (as a fake girlfriend and an issues consultant) in the political campaign of Logan– a Democrat running for governor against the GOP governor who was featured in the first book.

Both Lee and Alexis struggle with various trust and/or self-esteem issues that stem from their relationship with their father (and their sibling relationship), and I thought Winstead did a good job meshing politics, family angst, and lighthearted rom-com banter.

They can be read as stand-alones, but I’m glad I read FOOL ME ONCE prior to THE BOYFRIEND CANDIDATE since I think it helped me appreciate what was going on for Alexis at the beginning of her story.

Winstead’s other books are mystery/thriller genre… so maybe I’ll try one of those while waiting for her next romance. Or maybe open some of my other TBRs with favorable mentions today in other posts!

RhodePVD says:

So good I have a hard time finding the words. Just finishing a reread of Whatever You Love The Best, a 70k word completed serial by Superstition _Hockey on AO3. The hero is the feminist rebellious son of a powerful Republican politician, the heroine is a French-Canadian socialist, raised by her two dads and a surfing star mom, who works at the UN. The story includes plenty of heat, global adventure, horses, loving family, humor, thoughtfulness and ethical considerations. The final chapter in particular, as the heroine struggles with her perceptions of what it means to be a wife while remaining true to herself, is deeply meaningful and reassuring to many readers. If you like Courtney Milan’s contemporaries, I think you may enjoy this series. It is a spinoff from a hockey m/m series, which is also a five star fun read, but I think it stands alone pretty well.

Escapeologist says:

LIGHTFALL: THE DARK TIMES by Tim Probert – graphic novel, #3 in the series starting with The Girl and the Galdurian, might be my favorite installment so far. The land has been plunged into eternal Night, baddies are lurking, our misfit heroes are on a quest to bring back daylight that takes them all around a big beautiful world, there’s a cute cat and a pig wizard.

Listening to MY FAMILY AND OTHER ANIMALS by Gerald Durrell, narrated wonderfully by Hugh Bonneville. The TV adaptation THE DURRELLS IN CORFU is great too. Highly recommend if you’re looking for an escape to a sun-soaked Greek isle with fun quirky characters for company, and various animals little Gerry keeps bringing home with mixed results.

Currently reading:
A LETTER TO THE LUMINOUS DEEP by Sylvie Cathrall – really enjoying this so far. The letters are overflowing with kindness, familial love, and budding romances. Beautiful worldbuilding, lives up to the gorgeous cover. Slow paced but the underlying mystery keeps me interested.

M says:

@RhodesPVD – Can you link to Whatever You Love The Best? For some reason it’s not showing up on AO3! And I’d love to read it.

Darlynne says:

@EditChief: ” … so maybe these should be categorized as ‘fantasy’ …” Well played, EC.

I HOPE THIS FINDS YOU WELL by Natalie Sue: A very good book about a hostile/stressful work place. Hey, this could almost be a romance novel because no one is talking to anyone else, certainly not communicating with each other, and assuming the worst about everyone. The FMC is quite funny and also struggling with a years-old tragedy. The new HR director is shaking up the employees and our FMC. I thought a more apt title for the book was I HOPE THIS FINDS YOU because nobody here is well and they’re all lying.

WHEN GRUMPY MET SUNSHINE by Charlotte Stein: A new favorite for me because MMC Alfie cracked me up whenever he opened his mouth. His public persona doesn’t match his real insides; he cares so deeply and the lines between him and FMC ghostwriter snarl almost immediately.

ATTRIBUTION by Linda Moore: A young woman, stagnating in the cutthroat male-dominated art history world of New York, finds what could be a lost masterpiece. She is stonewalled in every way, unintentionally steals the masterpiece, then heads to The Prado to research what she’s found. The story is quite complicated with ulterior motives, backstabbing, a potential romance, family guilt, and an ending that is not spelled out. For me, the end was the best part for reasons I can’t mention, but totally worth it. Highly recommended.

HeatherS says:

I’ve had “In Memoriam” on my TBR for like a month and a half now. I read the sample on Amazon and decided I needed a paperback copy because I didn’t like the cover on the library hardcover. I know. First world problems, right?

I have read 5 volumes of the manga “The Masterful Cat Is Depressed Again Today” this week and it is the cutest, most low-stress manga about a single woman who is an office worker and her giant black cat who spends his time cleaning, grocery shopping, and cooking so that he can continue to send his human out to earn money for cat food. I adore it so much that I’m planning to buy the whole series for keeps, because it is 100% comfort reading.

HeatherS says:

I’m also busy being very sad that C.S. Poe’s fourth book in the Memento Mori series, “Hudson Bay Homicides”, has been yoinked from publication until later this year (supposedly). I preordered it last year after binging the first three books in a very short period of time last summer. Highly detailed murder mysteries with a romance plot element are not usually my bag, but these are really, really good.

I’ve just raced through She Who Became The Sun, which was a really excellent read (though very bleak and/or gory in parts). I’m also in the middle of a Chalet School re-read, and have got up to Exile. Is it the best of them? I think it probably is. And while I’m on school stories, I’ve just discovered the Crater School series, which is tremendous fun. Chalet School, but on Mars. The third one has just come out…

Kareni says:

Over the past week ~

— read the contemporary romance, Owls and Other Assassins by Megan Moores. The author wrote this in two months after her son asked if there was anything she regretted not yet having done; her answer was to have written a book. I thought the male lead was not terribly likeable and the storyline was a little over the top, but overall this was a fun read.
— read Nyxia Uprising by Scott Reintgen which finished the young adult science fiction trilogy I began last week. This was an enjoyable series but not one I’ll quickly reread.
— read and quite enjoyed The Musician and the Monster by Jenya Keefe. This is a contemporary male/male fantasy romance featuring a fae who has come to earth to learn about humankind and their music (a one way trip since while he can send information back, he cannot return to the Otherworld) and a musician who (to save a parent from a jail term) has reluctantly agreed to be his companion for a number of years. I can foresee rereading this and am now interested in seeing what else the author has written.
— read a contemporary romance novella, Avocado Protection by Kaje Harper. This features a scientist and the head of a security company that is hired to protect him after a kidnapping attempt. The scientist has developed a device that enables the user to determine the ripeness of avocados.
— read On Censorship: A Public Librarian Examines Cancel Culture in the US by James LaRue which was a quick but worthwhile read. I have to admit that I chose this book because of its cover. (If you’ve seen my bookmarks, you’ll understand why!)
— quite enjoyed The Sunny Side by Lily Morton which is a contemporary male/male romance between a top fashion model and his agency’s owner. The model has poor self-esteem due to parental abuse/dyslexia but is a generally upbeat person while the owner has a more controlled personality.
— enjoyed rereading the contemporary romance, Lucky by Gigi DeGraham. It featured three teens in their last year of high school who have a polyamorous romance.

— For my local book group, I read Any Other Family by Eleanor Brown which was my suggestion. (I won it in a Goodreads giveaway, so it was on hand.) It’s about three families who are taking a family vacation together; they are bound together by having adopted four biological siblings and are committed to having the children stay connected. The biological mother is invited but cannot attend. During the vacation, the biological mother informs them that she is pregnant again and hopes that the young couple who adopted her newborn a year ago will adopt this newest child. The five adoptive parents (a single woman, a wealthy older couple, and a younger couple) are all very different people; the children range from one through a pre-teen. It took me a while to get caught up in this story, but I ultimately enjoyed it and the subsequent discussion.
— enjoyed Happy Medium by Sarah Adler which is a contemporary romance between a conwoman medium and the man trying to sell the goat farm that one of her clients has hired her to exorcise. They anger each other at their first meeting, and then the conwoman, much to her surprise, encounters a ghost and learns his story.
— read Deefur Dog by RJ Scott, a contemporary romance novella that was a pleasant read about a grieving widow and the male nanny he hires to care for his young daughter and his Great Dane.
— enjoyed yet another reread of Linesman and Alliance by S.K. Dunstall.

Anne Holland says:

@m et al, here’s the link on AO3 to Whatever You Love Best, the f/m five star fun and feminist series I recommended above https://archiveofourown.org/series/1980923

Worth noting, this is free because AO3, but it’s not fanfic. The author Superstition_Hockey wrote the most popular (ranked by kudos given) original character m/m hockey romance on AO3 and this is an f/m spin off.

It’s been a good mix of books lately. I finally read Jeannie Lin’s MY FAIR CONCUBINE. I’ve enjoyed her Pingkang Li mysteries, and I’ve slowly been working my way through her older romances. This Pygmalion story, set in Tang Dynasty China, has Lin’s wonderful details of life, as well as a grumpy-sunshine pairing.

I picked up THE PENGUIN BOOK OF DRAGONS thinking it would be something to dip in and out of, but I ended up reading straight through and loving it. Dragons have always been my favorite mythical creatures. I learned so much about how dragons have been written about and reported on, going back to ancient China, India, Greece, and Rome, all the way up to the current popularity of dragons in books and TV/film.

The non-fiction winner was WOMEN’S DIARIES OF THE WESTWARD JOURNEY by Lillian Schlissel. I am still chewing over so much of what I learned from this, starting with how many women were pregnant when they set out, because pregnancy was no reason to put off packing your entire life into a wagon without springs and riding or walking thousands of miles – while also doing the “women’s work” that started before dawn. And how many women did not want to go, but they didn’t have to power to say no (patriarchy). But something I had never considered before: on the miles of open prairie, there was no privacy for bathroom breaks. Women used their long skirts to shield each other, and depended on each other in so many ways. Oh, and the mortality rate among the emigrants – chronicled in detail by the women on the trail.

I got a sudden craving to re-read N.K. Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy, and I’m currently in the middle of book 2, THE BROKEN KINGDOMS. I had a pretty good memory of the first book, but not much about the second, and the third is a blank. There are some people I am hoping to see get squished like bugs.

I have been waiting for AJ Demas’s new book, The House of the Red Balconies. She sent out an email today saying she had accidentally uploaded it early, so it’s available through her site and Amazon (but not B&N/Kobo). I took the opportunity to order a paper copy from her site – it will be worth waiting for.

Happy reading, everyone!

Maeve says:

I’ve read Suzanne Palmer’s 4th Finder novel, Ghostdrift, twice in the last month and nothing else has beat it in terms of compulsive readability! The series stars a canonically ace main character and there’s no romantic plotline, but there are a lot of excellent platonic relationships.

Here’s a description/love letter to the series from the LadyBusiness folks:
https://ladybusiness.dreamwidth.org/2024/06/06/lets-get-literate-macgyver-in-space.html

Susan/DC says:

I think I’m the only person in the world who didn’t care for IN MEMORIAM. It was recommended by a cousin whose book taste I usually share, but not this time. I cared for many of the characters and my heart broke every time there was an in memoriam piece in the school newspaper, but for whatever reason I didn’t care for the two main protagonists all that much. I know, I know, I’m very much in the minority here, just another sign of how personal taste is.

Two very short books I did like: Claire Keegan’s FOSTER and her SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE. Both take place in Ireland about 40 years ago. The former is about a young girl who spends the long vacation with her mother’s cousins, away from her own family and its too many children, not enough money, f*ckless father and overwhelmed pregnant mother. The book quietly, detail by detail, shows how warmth and love enable her to blossom over the course of the summer. The movie based on it, THE QUIET GIRL, is just as good (not always the case of book-to-film adaptations). The latter novel focuses on coal merchant Bill Furlong and is set against the closed world of a Magdalen laundry in a small Irish town. Bill is happily married with 5 daughters, a seemingly ordinary man who becomes a quiet hero. Keegan is so good at creating 3-dimensional characters who live in real places, and I will happily read anything else she writes.

Ali Hazelwood, THE LOVE HYPOTHESIS. My first book by her, and I enjoyed it. The heroine went from slightly (wearing out of date disposable contacts) to highly ditzy (telling her best friend she was in a relationship when she wasn’t, cue the fake dating trope) – not a good look for someone getting a PhD in a STEM field. But I liked the hero and liked them together. The hero definitely got points when we find out he took his gay best friend to the prom when the friend’s date baled, and I laughed when the heroine’s friends wondered if he had used some of his grant money to get shoulder implants when they see him shirtless at a department picnic.

Bryan Stevenson’s EVERYONE IN MY FAMILY HAS KILLED SOMEONE has one of the better titles of the past few months. Liked but didn’t love it. It’s humorous, not gory; the author is trying a bit too hard at the beginning although it gets better as it goes along. OTOH, it is quite convoluted, and the initial murder baffles me – the reasons for most of the murders stem from that one, but I didn’t understand why that person was killed in the first place.

Oswald Wind, THE GINGER TREE. Begins in 1903 when Mary Mackenzie is on shipboard, traveling to China to join Richard Collingsworth, a military attache with the British Legation. They have met only a few times but got engaged, and Mary looks forward to getting married and starting a new life in Peking (as it is called in the novel). The book is not a romance, although there is a love affair – mostly it is about Mary’s growth over; the years from sheltered Victorian 20 year old to a woman who is resourceful and able to survive despite cataclysms both personal and political. The book alternates between the circ*mspect letters Mary sends to her mother and others and the diary entries she writes for herself. There was a Masterpiece Theater production of this years ago, and I intend to see if I can find it streaming somewhere.

Susan/DC says:

Autocorrect changed the last name of the author of THE GINGER TREE and I didn’t catch it in time: it is Wynd, not Wind.

Pru says:

BIRDING WITH BENEFITS by Sarah T. Dubb- loved it! I really enjoyed these characters who are both older and have great communication, support and care for each other. I loved the descriptions of birding, the unfolding wonder of new discoveries and the beautiful landscape descriptions and the way the author deftly wove these into the building relationship. It’s got some great spicy sex scenes- love a teddy bear H who turns all his quiet, thoughtful intelligence into super hot, take charge bedroom skills and a h unafraid to demand more

Liz says:

@Susan sorry but you’ve left out the excellent subtitle of RAFE: A BUFF MALE NANNY. It’s been a while since I last read it, but I remember our dear Rafe being a pretty archetypical cinnamon roll … cinnamon alpha? Perfect, regardless.

@Claudia I’m excited for THE MISTRESS EXPERIENCE, though I got distracted only a few pages into book 2, oops. (Happens very frequently bc brain is wonky; it’s not a reflection of the book!) Pls report back!

Vicki says:

I was up much of the night with a resuscitation that did not go well and can’t remember if I posted about a couple of these books last time. But based on when I bought or borrowed them, I think we are OK.

SAY YOU WILL by Evangeline Williams is the third in a loosely related series of romances that are very standard in some ways and very original in others. The hero in this one is autistic and knows it, works around it fairly well, but it can cause communication difficulties between the couple. Happily, they learn to use their words. He has been waiting for her much of his life but didn’t mention it to her, believing that she would just understand that logically they should be together. She has autoimmune arthritis with chronic pain and had not really expected to be in a relationship with him so quickly. The opening chapter does portray him as an action hero. And he is protective. She has the family from heck and does need protecting. They both have back trauma. And both virgins with the sweetest first night ever. Would recommend.

NERD IN SHINING ARMOR by Vicki Lewis Thompson. She is a Southern girl relocated to Hawaii, he is the tech nerd at the company where she works. They both find themselves in extreme peril as their boss does something really criminal. They work together to survive as castaways. I think that if you wanted something kind of silly and quirky, you might like this. It did not work for me.Silly and quirky is often annoying for me.

On my trek through the Harlequins in my library, I read REVEALING HER BEST KEPT SECRET by Heidi Rice. Typical billionaire and naive young woman have a one night stand, he casts her off, she was pregnant. I liked this one because I liked the heroine, strong and trying to hang on to her agency while doing what is best for her child. 3.5 stars

Very similar is HIS MAJESTY’S HIDDEN HEIR by Lucy Monroe. In this case, prince and coed at university. Ugly parting, mostly on his part. She has had a rough time but is now over the worst, thinks he should be in his son’s life but does not want him back. Kid is a bit of a plot moppet, a teeny bit demanding, and speaks really well for his age. Will probably re-read, 4 stars.

BUSHFIRE BRIDE by Marion Lennox who can be hit or miss for me. This is two docs,. His town, she gets stuck there due to a wildfire. They end up working together. Fall in love. But she has ties from the past. Not a cheating situation but a troubled situation nicely addressed. Something I have seen struggled with in real life. Enjoyed it, enjoyed the animals and the kiddo. 4 stars

I spent a few minutes of my weekly therapy hour talking about why I love romance. I really think that it is a way to see people overcome trauma and connect with others. Makes me hopeful that I can do that, too. Makes me more aware of everyone else’s back story.

DeborahT says:

I just finished re-reading a couple of Julie Ann Long’s Pennyroyal Green series, and I have to say that I didn’t enjoy them as much as I did the first time I read them. I was going to do an entire series re-read, but I think I’ll pause.

So disappointed to read that the 4th Poe book is going to be delayed!

I’ll second a couple of books mentioned here – Jax Calder’s AN UNLIKELY PAIR wasn’t my favourite of her books, but she’s an autobuy for me and I still liked it a lot. And Garrett Leigh’s JUNKYARD HEARTS was really good. I loved that whole Porthkennack series – Joanna Chambers’ TRIBUTE ACT is one of my top 5 romances, and I discovered JL Merrow whose novels and short stories I adore. Was there something fishy with Riptide and that series?

I also just finished SKATER BOY by Anthony Nerada after seeing it mentioned here. I loved the message, so I charged through even though it didn’t hit 100% with me.

Rereading KJ Charles’s THE GENTLE ART OF FORTUNETELLING in preparation for the next one due in July.

Midge says:

@HeatherS – I am also very bummed about the next installment in the Memento Mori series being pushed bak…

Otherwise, It’s been back to normal not so much reading here…
AS MANY STARS – KL Noone. M/M/M historical novella. This was a quick read. I like Noone’s books for their feels, the warmth between the MCs. This one has all the feels – but is also VERY melodramatic. And yes, it goes very quickly. But if you need a quick read to pile on all the feels, drama and more, this is it.

FOR REAL – Alexis Hall. M/M contemporary. This is the next reissue in the Spires series, with more bonus material. I’m not always getting the reissues if I have to pay again, but Hall (much like KJ Charles) is an author where I’ll do it. Beautifully written story with an unsual pairing – 19 year old dom and 37 year old sub. So yes, age gap and BDSM, this may not be everybody’s cup of tea. BDSM certainly isn’t mine usually, but the way it is written here and the book as a whole are beautiful and I love it. There’s a lot more than just the kink, and both characters have things to work through and to grow. There is the dreaded 70%-mark-breakup, but here it makes sense. This reissue, besides annotations by Hall, also contains a short story for Jasper, In Vino, which I think has been published before but hasn’t been available for some time. That one, to be honest, I cared less for, mostly because of what Jasper does in it. But it’s not the main event here, and who knows, maybe he will one day get a better story too… Hall seems to be in the process of picking up several strands of his Spires stories and finishing them.
I gather there may be an extra epilogue coming for Laurie and Toby, which would be nice. Their ending to me veers somewhat between HFN and HEA. Plus, Dom the Dom’s story is also in the works, which will be a new one in the Spires-verse. And I’m definitely there for it – he’s a nice guy, just the wrong one for Laurie, and hopefully he will get the right man!

Still detoxing from LITTLE, BIG by John Crowley I went back to my gateway drug Georgette Heyer, whom I haven’t read in several years, and picked up SYLVESTER, OR THE WICKED UNCLE looking for a little lightness and humor. I know she is often problematic and I was braced for that. I was NOT braced for the moment when the MMC, knowing the FMC to be an excellent horsewoman, expresses his poor opinion of the horse she is riding in the park and requests “Will you permit me to mount you while you are in town?” Almost spit my cereal across the table.

C says:

Amazon’s Kindle app has these achievements that are completely meaningless, and yet given my personality I must try to get the gold star. This quarter one of the achievements was for reading the first book in a series from a list of recommended books. I picked KING OF WRATH by Ana Huang because it was available through Kindle Unlimited, and it was better than I expected for a tale of alpha-male billionaires, blackmail, and an arranged marriage.

Then the library came through with two books in two days which jumped to the top of the TBR. CANADIAN BOYFRIEND by Jenny Holiday and KISS THE GIRL by Zoraida Cordova. Both were pretty good. Canadian Boyfriend’s 3rd act crisis has been advertised for the whole book, so I don’t think this is a major spoiler. Our FMC “met” the MMC when they were teenagers. She was working at a coffee shop and he was a customer when he was in town for a hockey game. She was going through some things and she made up a boyfriend based on the cute guy at the coffee shop for reasons. And she kept up the story for years, using letters to the guy as a kind of journaling exercise. Fast forward to the present day, he’s now professional hockey player and she’s his daughter’s dance teacher. And they hit it off. And for the most part the romance is very sweet, but when she realizes that she has to tell him about their previous meeting and this collection of letters to her imaginary boyfriend it is a crisis that requires a professional therapist to help sort him out. And I just couldn’t see what the big deal was. I think the author had an interesting idea about “What would happen if…” and then the structure of the standard romance novel requires a crisis to test the relationship in the third act, and the book’s been making such a big deal out of this, so… I enjoyed it overall though.

Kiss the Girl is the 3rd installment of the Disney princess inspired “Meant To Be” novels and is based on the little mermaid. There’s a pop princess in disguise and on the road with a new band with hot lead singer. Falling in love with your coworker when you are living together on the band bus for the next 6 weeks is a terrible idea, but this is romance novel so we can see where this is going. This one skews a bit more to the New Adult side of things.

After that, I decided that I wanted all the escapism and continued with the Ana Huang series (KING OF PRIDE, KING OF GREED, and KING OF SLOTH). The stories are pretty much stand alone, but the same characters keep showing up. Authors do this because they know I will keep reading to get the rest of the story. KING OF PRIDE was more of forbidden romance with our billionaire falling in love with a bartender/novelist. KING OF GREED is a second chance romance. KING OF SLOTH also has forbidden romance elements as she’s his publicist.

I always appreciate seeing what people around here are reading. Thanks for sharing!

flchen1 says:

Thanks for the rec, @Rhodes_PVD, and thanks for the link, @Anne Holland.

Since the last WAYR, I started but didn’t finish SECOND CHANCES IN NEW PORT STEPHEN by TJ ALexander. I generally liked the characterizations but for some reason felt kind of meh about the story and just put it down and didn’t pick it back up. I admit I skimmed the end, which was cute, but I’m not feeling like I need to go back and read it, if that makes any sense at all…

I found Delilah Devlin’s rereleased FIVE WAYS ‘TIL SUNDAY a fun hot read. She always does a great job bringing some real emotion to some very sexy times, even when the premise might make me “yeah, right” in real life, LOL. I’ve got the rest of the Delta Heat series on my e-reader for when I’m in the mood for that.

I liked but didn’t love OFF TRACK by Leslie McAdam. It’s m/m set in a universe inspired by F1 racing, and is about two rival drivers. I guess the premise involved some hand-waving to me to make it make sense that these two guys who supposedly couldn’t stand each other did manage to keep falling into bed with each other without anyone else being the wiser… Anyway, I do plan to read the others in the series (written by other authors) because I like the racing environment…

Enjoyed Amy Lane’s SWIPE LEFT, POWER DOWN, LOOK UP, which I think one of the B*tchery may have mentioned. Was thrilled to be able to immediately pick it up on Hoopla, and found it a warm and sweet, fast-paced read about a soccer coach and barista, and how life-giving friendship and chosen family can be.

Maryann Jordan’s TIME FOR HOME is part of a multiauthor universe about veterans transitioning to civilian life and finding a new sense of belonging and purpose after active service. Ms Jordan’s writing is moving and memorable, and I especially liked how she reinforced the joy and meaning many of us find in familial and other intimate relationships, and loved her portrayal of brotherly love.

Loved Cat Sebastian’s YOU SHOULD BE SO LUCKY, which came in off hold at the library–YAY libraries :). I really enjoyed this story about two lonely men slowly becoming friends and then more. This was one of those reads that like @DonnaMarie described, I put down a few times because I didn’t want the book to be done… It was so good.

Really enjoyed Mari Carr’s RESTRAINT–it’s the first in a new contemporary hockey series set in Baltimore, and is an m/f friends-to-lovers that is fun and funny and heartwarming and hot!

And am rereading Laura Kaye’s FIGHTING THE FIRE, which is one of my favorites for all the smiles and the feels.

Crystal says:

:::pops head up from packing:::

I’m making my first international trip on Tuesday. I am excite. I am also nervous.

Anyhoo, as a result, I have been obviously prioritizing the prep process, and by that I mean my Kindle and Netgalley apps are going to be yoked. At this point, I am apparently currently on a hisfic kick, since I am nose-deep in The Briar Club by Kate Quinn. It involves a group of people that live in a women’s boardinghouse in the early 1950s (I say people because they have boyfriends and children and the son of the woman that runs that boardinghouse in question). They include a Hungarian artist that came to the US as a refugee during WWII, a young woman that works at the National Archives and is in love with a local gangster, a former player for the AAGPL, and several more. We get sections from their individual perspectives, as well as interstitials that tell us the thoughts of the house they live in, as one of them is eventually murdered. It’s extremely clever and fun, and I just always enjoy Quinn’s writing. So until next, by the time we do this next, my passport will have its first stamp.

flchen1 says:

Ooh, just to wish you safe and wonderful travels, @Crystal!! How tremendously exciting!

Kareni says:

@Chrystal: Safe and happy travels to you and to anyone else who will be flying, cruising, or on the road!