Anne

Just like the other Tessa Bailey book I read, I like the story and the characters, but they're so focussed on sex and the way they talk about each other('s bodies, mostly the guy) kind of grosses me out. (Doesn't help that the first time the guy meets her, he starts with a paragraph on how great her breasts look.)

I wish the book was less focused on sex and more on developing their relationship. The MMC came on a bit too strong for my taste and I think the book needed more time for the FMC to actually face her past and fears, it felt like everything was going a bit too quickly to feel real.

*more like 3.75

I was a bit unsure about wanting to read this, because it's YA and I was afraid it would feel very young and teenage-y and I was not feeling that, but I actually enjoyed it, I think it helps the characters are not super young (18&20). They're both very likeable, Mallory's relationship with her family was interesting and I liked their dynamic, I also really liked how confident/straightforward Nolan was. I also liked all the side characters, they were all fun and I would not have minded seeing more of them.

I don't know a lot about chess, so not sure how accurate that part is. It's probably a bit unrealistic how good Mallory is, but I didn't mind it personally.

I liked parts of this book, it was captivating while I was reading it, but a bit too stressful for me and the ending does not feel very satisfying, or maybe believable is a better word.

I liked Lara coming to rescue Aren from her father, her gathering all her sisters and the infiltration was great, I'd love to see more of them. Aren's mental space made a lot of sense for the most part, I can understand how he obviously felt betrayed by Lara, but can forgive her eventually because he understands what happened to her and why she did what she did and that she tried to stop it. But the choices he makes regarding her and his country seem dumb tbh.

[spoilers for the ending] So much hurt happened because of her, to so many people in ithicana, it feels unrealistic that other people would accept her back as queen, even with that shark justification. And this is probably on me, but it also doesn't feel satisfying that she will spend the rest of her life surrounded by people who lost family and friends because of her (and Aren, he's not innocent in this, he trusted/misjudged her so easily). I mean there was that whole scene where people kept telling her about everyone they lost because of her. I think I might have preferred an ending where they both leave Ithicana and start a life elsewhere, maybe with her sisters. Also the way she kills her father is pretty unsatisfying, so quick and sudden after so much built up.

I also agree with other people that the sex scene after Lara was badly injured and Aren fixes her up was weirdly placed. Like no way that was fun for her just after getting stabbed in the leg till the bone.

I thought the world and the magic were interesting and there were a lot of good story elements, but there were some elements that made it hard to fully enjoy the book.

I thought a prisoner having to become the poison taster was an interesting concept, that made sense for the story. I liked Yelena and her recourcefulness and determination. I also liked the friendship she developed with some of the commander's soldiers. The plot was engaging and I was entertained by the book as long as I tried to ignore some of the issues I was having.

"warning": I'm going slightly into things happening later in the book in my review, I don't think it's spoiler-y enough to cover, mostly things you can guess if you're familiar with this type of story, but maybe don't read it if you don't want to know anything about the book.

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(At first) I though Valek was an interesting character. Yelena and his growing closeness was interesting to me until I realised how old he must be and that they were supposed to have a romantic relationship. Based on the information we get about him killing the King like 15 years ago, he must be like twice her age! She's 19 I think, and he's like mid 30's? That's just creepy. Not to mention that the way he fell for her and communicated that didn't feel like something a 30-year old adult would do. Couldn't he have just been like a mentor figure? I feel like that could still have been the close relationship she needed and would inspire the loyalty the story needs, but without the romance, this book didn't need it and it made the story worse.

Also, maybe I understood it wrong cause the author was very vague, but I feel like it was implied that they had sex when they were hiding for some hours to escape the prison. This would be after they had been captured and locked up for 2 days, and Yelena had been very sick for like a whole night and was covered in bodily fluids from that at some point. That being the first time they had sex is a weird writing choice.

Another thing is that I am unsure how we are supposed to feel about commander Ambrose. Yelena seems to like him and feel some loyalty to him and he has his kind moments. But he also orders all magicians in the country to be killed, which are usually children, to protect his secret, that's he's actually (born as) a woman, which I'm not sure if the commander is supposed to be a trans man or is just hiding his/her gender to be a more convincing leader? . And while his country's system seems to promote equality, he doesn't seem to actually make sure everyone is treated fair and that the people he appoints to lead are good people. Including the whole 'no murder for any reason even self-defense' rule. Plus the whole carving a letter on Valeks's chest as a reminder of his loyalty is weird.

Speaking of Valek, there's a similar two-facedness there. He seems relatively kind in the book and does some good things, like allowing that kind of wrongly imprisoned man to start a new life and helping Yelena of course, but of-page seems to have done horrible things, like killing innocent children because the commander says so (maybe we'll find out he actually didn't kill them but sent them to the other country or something, but still, Yelena is already "passionately in love" with him despite that). The author just seems to gloss over some of the more horrible things that happened before or during the book in general. Maybe that's just because it's a young adult book and they want to show the bleak history of the main characters without being explicit, but that just makes it feel like it's not being taken that seriously at times.

While writing this review I started to doubt my 3 star rating, but I think it does make sense, the overall story I'd probably rate slightly higher, there were a lot of interesting elements and it read easily. I'm mostly just not sure how much I want to take away from my rating due to the in my opinion problematic elements.. I'll keep it like this for now

Fun romcom, very sweet, I liked how supportive everyone was of each other.

Some bits did make me roll my eyes. Like I just cannot take anyone that uses 'No Ragrets' unironically serieusly... There was also a bit more tell instead of show that I would have liked.

I liked most of the story, fake dating while being childhood rivals is a fun trope. A fun quick holiday romcom.

Things I didn't love:

- the girl was extremely hung up on their childhood rivalry when the guy was not at all, which made her seem very childish and petty.

- the guy had apparently been pining for like 10 years (in which they either didn't or barely saw each other), which honestly is a bit sad.

- the way the sex scenes were worded was uncomfortale for me (like 'milk', 'cunt', immediately thinking about 'putting a baby inside her').

A quick read if you're looking for a light-hearted semi-holiday romcom.

I like the setup of the grumpy restaurant owner being the female lead's dating coach, but the characters fell a bit flat for me and I think the story tried to do a bit much for the short page count.

My main gripe is that the main characters don't really feel like real people. The female lead is very naïve, the male lead I heard someone describe as 'women-writing-men', which I thought was a pretty accurate description, I'm not sure how to describe it better, but he just didn't feel like his own person, just there to be the 'perfect' rough-but-loving romantic interest. The main secondary character is the guy's younger 16 yo brother, who is the main person driving the two main characters together, but he often says things to his brother that would have felt more natural coming from a close (same-age) friend rather than his teenage brother.

Very light spoiler about the guy's background: I didn't like the cancer storyline, I just don't want to think about that while expecting to read a light romcom. I think I at least would have preferred knowing she survived it from the start.

(It's not super Christmas-y btw, most time is spend on dates in the couple months/weeks leading up to Christmas)

DNF at 87%

I tried to finish it, but it got too much. I don't like any of the characters (except maybe Lana? She seems to have brains and a personality at least), none of them have more than one personality trait, Graham is grumpy because the hates tourists, Zoey loves everything about Alaska, Killian and all the other resort people are just rich, and all the townspeople are grumpy but supposedly good people. The main characters seem to only like each other because the think the other is hot and/or cute, they don't have any actual chemistry. And unless there's a big reveal in the last chapter, we don't ever find out why Zoey is so obsessed with Alaska, I don't care about the actual reason, maybe she just wants to escape her small town and thought Alasky would be beautiful or whatever, but give me something. It just seems weird that there's never a moment where someone asks her why she's been saving for literal years and quit her job to come there, since it's clearly so important to her.

The main characters are also so inconsistent, Graham is apparently not looking for a one-night stand but keeps seeking her out because...? She's pretty? She's there but not obnoxiously rich? Zoey is broke and supposedly barely had enough money to eat, but spends a ton on a Brazilian wax at the expensive hotel so she can have sex with Graham?

Also I don't love how violent Graham is, constantly offering to fight people, the weird hitting thing with his friend, hitting the wall when he's upset, beating up some people instead of handing them to the police.

Not the book for me.

Fun romcom book, not the best-written one I've read in terms of plot and character depth, but it was a cute, relaxing read.

This book focusses on characters that are personifications of (boroughs in) New York. I personally didn't really enjoy this book, but I wonder if that is because I'm not super familiar with New York and its boroughs and their characteristics.

The book was paced really quickly in the sense that a lot of action/important things kept happening and there was very little time of downtime. Which brings me to my main issue, which is that I didn't really get attached to the characters because I felt I didn't really get to know them, every time I felt I was getting a feel for a character either we switched to a different one or some action happened.

Just as a note: Manny's sudden obsessive love for the NYC avatar also felt weird and out of place.

It also didn't feel like the characters were making smart decisions, which doesn't have to be a bad thing, but often they talked about what would be a good idea and then would choose not to do that for some reason. Like when they left Long Island to fend for herself when knew they would feel left out and be less likely to work with them (but maybe this makes more sense if you're more familiar with the relations between the boroughs).

The ending also felt a bit contrived, even though some pretty important stuff went wrong, something magically happened to fix it in time to have a positive ending. Long Island didn't want to work with them, so we'll just immediately give up on her, but oh how lucky this other girl that's been helping, just happens to embody this other place that kind of belongs to NYC anyways, so she can just fill that spot and everything's fixed. I like happy endings, but it felt a bit out of nowhere.

I did enjoy the part where they had to heal a city's representative with things that are quintessentially related to their city of origin, I thought that was a fun idea that you could have interesting discussions about.

I'm done, I cannot read another book where the main characters get married after a month of knowing each other. At least she wasn't pregnant this time, but I'm suspicious that that's just because the epilogue was only like a month later than the rest of the book. I like the overall vibes of the books by this author, but I just can't enjoy the endings when they all end up marrying and having babies within a couple months at most of knowing each other. Not for me sorry. I got pulled in by practice makes perfect, which did not have any of that (although now that I think about it they did move in together very quickly I think...).

So fun books if you're looking for a quick feel-good romcom, but if the quickness of the relationships would drive you as crazy as me, be warned ;)

I liked it, but not as much as Ali Hazelwood's other books. I think I was missing some of the relationship developing moments. I do get from the author's note that this was also meant as more of an erotic romance than a romcom, which I didn't mind, but I still would have liked a bit more non-sex focussed interactions in between the sex I think. I did pick it up with the intention of reading a romcom like her other books though, so maybe this is also somewhat on me. Would still recommend it if you like her other books, just be aware of the focus going into it.

The book is nice as a relatively quick cozy read, but it does have some issues that stopped me from really loving it.

The worldbuilding was fine, pretty basic, but it worked well for the story. I liked all the magical creatures, they all had their own personalities and were quite cute. I also liked the side characters, Tanya is such a good (very forgiving) friend and I'm glad she had her partner who seemed very supportive of her (especially since Aila sometimes seemed to forget Tanya had her own stuff going on) and Luciana was great, I'd love to know those two irl. I also really like how supportive Aila's parents were, I kinda wish they were featured a bit more. I would have loved to see a scene where they meet Luciana, both before and after they know about her crush.

My main issue is with the main character. I didn't like how she treated other people. In the beginning I could deal with it, expecting some character development, but after a while, with little to no improvement, it started to really grate on me. I don't think her social anxiety was always an excuse for how she interacted with other people, for example she was quite rude to the unicorn keeper, purely because of some superiority feeling over thinking unicorns are boring. And while I don't think it was an unrealistic portrayal of what social anxiety can look like, it did not make for a relaxing read (I have social anxiety myself, I don't like being in my own head when it's bad, so I don't find reading about social anxiety this bad, without improvement, particularly cozy). I think it would have worked better for me if Aila's improvement started a bit earlier in the book.

I would have like seeing Aila work on herself more (the therapist was shown once, with useful tricks even, and never again) and have some revelations a bit earlier in the book, so we could spend more time on her working through them and her repairing the relationships she'd unknowingly kind of neglected. Including how she saw the zoo guests. While I completely understand the hatred towards the general public in a job like that, some small positive interactions earlier on would have been nice. Maybe a guest asks a really interesting question and actually listens to her explanation, or maybe she sees some people gently interacting with one of the animals that shows they must care about them and she realizes not all people are bad (although the bad interactions were also funny, like that dumb couple with the engagement ring, I'm just saying have both!). Since the crowds were such a big part of her anxiety and one she works on in the story, it would have been nice to see some more of that.

Since it was kinda obvious how everything was going to play out, it was a bit frustrating at some point that they kept Conner around so much even after he was clearly a dick (and a poacher...), instead of clearing the air with Luciana (I get why Aila felt the way she did about Luciana, but it was clearly a misunderstanding, especially since Tanya didn't even seem to mind her even though she's so supportive of Aila). I get that she was anxious to break up with him, but it got a bit frustrating when she went of a bunch more lunchdates even after she basically ghosted him and was ready to ditch him for what seemed like months? (time passing wasn't always clear). I'd rather have seen some more interactions with Luciana, some slow bonding and flirting, and see her make more friends.

I don't dislike these books, but after 4 books I'm also still not super invested, so I think I'm gonna move on to other books I'd like to read, maybe I'll give it another shot in the future.

For me this was less of a romcom and too much angst. I don't mind a nice slow-burn romance, but I was way too stressed throughout the book for the main character and her love interest to talk and make up, because to me as the reader the problem was really obvious (and fixable) and I just wanted them to have an actual conversation. While I definitely get why they didn't at first, they both seemed to realise at some point that they clearly had different views on their breakup, but still ignored it for no reason or because they were more interested in using their brief alone time having sex.

There were too much (realistic) problems and stressors in the book for this to be the relaxing read for me, but if you don't mind that, I'd still definitely recommend it.

I liked it in theory, but it just didn't grip me. I love a good friends-to-lovers story, but I didn't feel the romantic tension between these two, the flashbacks also often took me out of the story and didn't add enough to be interesting.

I liked both the story and the romance, but not the happy romcom I was expecting. Both of the main characters went through some shit (slight spoiler if you want to know before reading: the main characters father died relatively recently and she discovered he cheated on her mom while she had cancer, the love interest was abused as a child) and them dealing with that was a big part of the story.

Not for me, the concept seemed interesting, but the book was a bit all over the place and I didn't feel invested in the characters or their relationships. A lot of things got introduced and were either solved extremely quickly e.g. the father of the main character, who immediately got killed and didn't have any other impact on the story or were simply irrelevant e.g. Eli being a werewolf. I would have preferred it if the book went more into the motivations and emotions of the main character, she is in a lot of difficult and emotionally impactful situations, but I never really felt an emotional reaction, were told she's impacted sometimes, but for me at least it did not hit.

Good balance between the plot and the relationship. I liked the characters and enjoyed seeing them and their relationship develop and the tournament was an interesting backdrop. I also really liked Mische, she's so sweet and fun. I thought the relationship between Oraya and her father was also very interesting, with their conflicting sides/feelings.

This book seemed really cute and fun, but is not for me sadly. I really like the concept, but the writing made it hard for me to enjoy, I'd love to read this book after an editor has gone to town on it. The writing style feels quite juvenile to me for an adult book, everything is spelled out to the extreme. The lack of subtlety by both the writing and the characters themselves is why I stopped reading at this point (22%).

This book has a intriguing story and a great environment. This is one of those books where I am very sad I am incapable of visualizing things in my head, because the environment seemed so cool and interesting, with al the weird plants and different kinds of people and the leviathans of course. I also really like the main characters, Ana and Din, both were very likable and had interesting flaws and strengths and their dynamic was very fun. I really liked the story, I breezed through the book, the mystery was interesting and there were some interesting stakes and I'm very curious about the rest of the world. (small spoiler) I also hope we see Strovi again, I was rooting for him and Din when they seemed into each other at their first meeting, glad they got together at the end, so cute.

I actually thought this book was a standalone, but apparently it's a series and I'm very excited to read more about this world and Ana and Din. (The story does wrap up pretty cleanly, so you probably could read it as a standalone)

I've been hearing about his book for a while and I was a bit disappointed to be honest. I was missing some depth in the book, while the worldbuilding was very interesting, the characters fell flat to me. The concept of Antari was interesting, but the actual magic was not that exciting. I was excited about Kell at first, but then it turned out he's quite the dumbass and not actually as powerful as I expected. I did not particularly care for Lila or their relationship, orphan thief who wants power/to be free is one I've seen often and she did not have a lot of other interesting traits. The relationship that seemed to be blossoming between Kell and Lila felt a bit forced. I did like Rhy, I liked his connection to Kell and struggle with being the crown prince.

Not sure yet if I'll continue with book 2, I've heard it gets better and I'm still somewhat curious, but his book did not draw me in as much as I'd hoped.

Just as cozy and adventurous as the first one! Was hoping for a bit more Wendell, but there were still a lot of cute and funny moments between him and Emily. I love how spoiled he is and insists on making himself as comfortable as possible, while Emily tries so hard to resist and tease him until she begrudgingly admits his cleaning and decorating is actually making their accommodation much more cozy. I thought Ariadne was a fun side character, I did not particularly care for Rose, but he served his purpose well.

Happy to see Poe again, being all helpful and cute He gave her his key!. I thought the foxlike(?) faerie was also kinda cute (when not being a vicious, human-eating being), being so excited to be on a quest. The ending did feel a bit quick, I would have liked a bit more aftermath I think, but it's not a huge problem, I mostly just can't get enough of these vibes and characters!

Looking forward to the next book! Very excited about seeing Wendell in his homeland and more of Orga the "cat"

It was fine. I read this with my book club, to be honest I probably would have DNF'd it otherwise. The main problem was that it just did not really capture my attention. The first part meanders a lot and does not have a clear storyline or compelling characters. The second part gets slightly better both the storylines with Clytaimnestra and the one about the raiders picked up a bit, but still there was not enough there to be really invested. I feel like the story would have been more interesting if we had Penelope's POV instead of Hera. It feels like the writer really wanted an all-knowing narrator, but Hera was just complaining about basically everyone else most of the time, which was at times entertaining, but other times too much and trying a bit too hard to be funny. I don't think there were a lot of storylines we could not have had with Penelope being the main character instead of Hera, possibly with some other character POV's sprinkled throughout. And the presence of the gods could instead be shown by characters catching glimpses of them or feeling their presence or something like that.

For me the interesting part of the story was how Penelope was pretending to be a "weak grieving wife" while secretly working behind the scenes with other women to save the island. I would have liked to have seen more of the sceming of Penelope and the women around her. My favorite bit was (not super spoilery):

"Ah," mutters Penelope. "I see. Medon, forgive me. I find myself overcome with womanly weakness and must retire." -"I have always admired the exquisite timing of your weaknesses my lady"