Destiny (howling libraries)

This was adorable. I love a good, cute, gay rom-com and this definitely delivered! The holiday fantasy elements were a great backdrop to this sweet 'star-crossed lovers' romance, but what really stole the show for me was Hex's character. I mean, anyone who knows me at all would NOT be surprised to hear that I adored the Prince of Halloween, but that's beside the point. 🤣 He was SO funny and precious and soft, and I just loved him to bits! I can't wait to continue the series and I really hope we get cameos of Coal and Hex in future installments.

✨ Representation: bi MC, queer love interest, queer side characters, Mexican love interest, Black side character

✨ Content warnings for: loss of a sibling, loss of a parent, abandonment from a parent, grief, insecurity, emotional and verbal abuse from a parent, mentions of physical abuse, mentions of toxic relationships, alcohol, vomit, blackmail

I loved this. I'm suffering, but I loved this. 😭

I have to say I enjoyed this more than Iron Flame. I'm genuinely at a bit of a loss as to why so many people hated this installment or chose this moment to DNF the series. I respect opposing opinions, don't get me wrong... 😅 I just thought it was a really fun, likeable continuation of the series. It wasn't the best writing I've ever read or anything, but that's not really what I love this series for. I'm here for the characters and dragons I love and the fun battle scenes, and this one provided all of that in droves!

Buddy read with Misty! ♥️

This was mostly a pretty cute read, though it definitely wasn't perfect. I picked up this one out of the middle of the series, so there were a lot of characters that I didn't know but I assume I would have; that said, it functioned well as a standalone and I didn't feel like I was missing anything important by not starting at the beginning of the series.

Farrah was a likable enough FMC, though she suffered from the same problem all of the other characters did: she felt flat and one-dimensional at times. I enjoyed her most of all when interacting with her kids, because I felt like Hoss' writing shone in the motherly love depicted there. Gage felt pretty flat at times, too, but like Farrah and her kids, I enjoyed him most when spending time with his family.

I had a handful of minor problems throughout the book, like stilted bits of dialogue, but my biggest problem definitely boiled down to the third act breakup. It absolutely enraged me and I had a hard time forgiving Gage for his actions, even though the story tried to force in this ideal that he was doing it "for the greater good". It was so aggravating and ultimately led to my being unable to care much at all about the end of the book, even though the breakup was such a short portion of it overall.

I hate being negative about indie romance books, especially ones that don't have a ton of ratings, but I didn't enjoy the writing in this at all. It was a classic case of an author attempting to cram a full novel's worth of back story, angst, and personal traumas into a 50-page short story and it did not work.

update: february 8th, 2019:

That was just as magical and beautiful and sweet the second time. I have to say that Luca and Imre are one of my favorite OTPs of all time, and I just don't think I'm ever going to stop gushing about this incredible story. ♥

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first read: june 16th, 2018:

When I first heard about this book, the author was accepting ARC requests, and I immediately had to send one in. Feel free to judge my long love of this “taboo”, but I have loved age gap romances ever since I was a preteen. My favorite theme in age gap pairings is when the older individual is this sort of mature, caring, stoic type, while the younger is still wild and angsty and trying to find their place in the world… which basically sums up Imre and Luca, but there’s so much more to it than that, too.

Some people were born with a thick skin; some developed it over time. Luca had been born with skin like paper, and a crystal heart.

Luca, the younger man, is a gay 19-going-on-20-year-old, and is an utter wreck inside. He’s got a turbulent home life, and he’s desperate for love and attention, especially from Imre, who he swears he’s been in love with practically his entire life. I know, there’s a lot of potential for the relationship to come across as “grooming”, but let me go ahead and put your mind at ease: nothing in this coupling felt inappropriate or pedophilic to me whatsoever, and Imre is honestly as innocent as they come.

He’d had massive hands, hands that could crush granite to dust, this great dark earthen god with the strength of stone, but he’d handled everything—from his tiny, bleating goat kids to the smallest clover flower to Luca himself—with a gentleness that flowed from his hands like water, imbued with a living warmth. And Luca had been in love with him, the way only little boys could be.

For every place that Luca warms my heart with his fragility and tenderness, Imre turns me into a damn puddle with how kind and gentle and honest he is. He’s a goat farmer, but he loves and cherishes all of his animals so much, and he’s just the most ridiculously precious “gentle giant” sort of character that I’m a complete sucker for. He constantly deals with this internal warring over his growing feelings for Luca, and sometimes, his perspectives are so hard to read because you can just feel the agonizing guilt in his chest.

That was the problem with Imre; he was so honest, so rawly and quietly true, that his honesty seemed to ask for the same from everyone.

Beyond the romance and Luca’s coming-of-age story, there are a few underlying currents that I loved: 1) Imre’s demisexuality, which Luca speaks frequently about how much he respects and how terrified he is of violating; and 2) Imre’s Romani heritage. There’s a scene where he mentions feeling like his culture has been watered down and erased due to the forced displacement of his ancestors, and it is absolutely heartbreaking and so incredibly necessary. Romani rep is something that I feel like we see so rarely, and I loved Cole for adding those pieces in to Imre’s fabric.

He would destroy himself for this kiss.

It’s a long book, clocking in at just under 600 pages, but it’s such a fast read, and so addicting; I literally read this in one day, and could not focus on anything else until I finished it. It is a sloooooow burn in the best way, and the payoff is passionate, sweet, and worth every moment of building up. AND there are baby goats, sooo…

Luca and Imre are my new favorite adult contemporary OTP, and I strongly encourage every single fan of contemporary romance to pick this book up ASAP! ♥

I love Darcy Coates' ghost stories so much that sometimes I forget how great she is at writing suspenseful mysteries, too! I LOVE murder mysteries like this, with a group of strangers trapped together in the middle of nowhere, and I was honestly on the edge of my seat for quite a lot of the story. The ending did feel a bit rushed to me, but not enough to dull my enjoyment!

Eventually, I'll write reviews for these books, but the short of it is that I loved this so much more the second time around.

I think Jon Athan's books and I probably don't get along, and I need to accept that and stop trying them out. The plots always intrigue me, but the writing is less than ideal (and riddled with a heavy overuse of metaphor and simile), the characters are flat and self-contradicting, and the suspension of disbelief required to buy into literally ANYTHING that happened in this story was too much for me to handle. I like over-the-top gore and violence, but it has to be at least a tiny bit believable. Don't even get me started on how stupid literally every single character in this book was, either. 💀

Lucas is happy. This is a very provoking thing to the world. Because people aren’t supposed to be happy, they’re only supposed to want to be happy, because how otherwise are you supposed to be able to sell things to them?

I absolutely adored this. It was my first time reading anything from Fredrik Backman after years of having his books on my TBR and hearing people rave about him, and now, I can understand why. This story made me laugh, and then it made me cry, because it so succinctly nailed down several elements of loneliness, grief, personal growth, letting your walls down, and just... the human existence in general. I never expected this funny, odd little story with its incredibly bizarre premise to leave me weeping into my pillow near the end (in a good way, somehow?), but here we are.

Lucas is happy. It’s not as hard as one might think to become, the hard part is just to keep being it. It’s hard because it’s so easy to get in your head that if you are to be happy, you have to be happy exactly all of the time. And who in the world has the energy for that? Happiness can be exhausting. Honestly, it’s most often enough to just not be the opposite. So, Lucas isn’t unhappy. That’s the secret.

I love Pigeon Gazette and this was absolutely adorable. Very relatable, very cute, 10/10 do recommend.

This was a good time! I listened to the audiobook and the narrator's bubbly charm was really unique and fun for a horror novella. I'll be honest upfront and say that Ro aggravated me a bit, even though I could empathize with her - she wasn't a badly written character, just a little TOO real in some of her red-flag-ignoring nonsense. 😅 I guessed the ending ahead of time, but thought it was such a fun (and messed up) way to wrap things up.

I read a final copy borrowed from the library, but for the sake of disclosure, I was also gifted an early review copy. All thoughts are honest and my own.

✨ Representation: queer (bi/pan/sapphic) MC and love interest, sapphic romance

✨ Content warnings for: violence, death, animal death (not Ro's cat), murder, kidnapping, imprisonment, mutilation, cannibalism, mentions of childhood abuse (verbal, emotional, physical, and sexual), mentions of infidelity

I had high hopes this would be really cute, but most of the comics fell short, reminding me of those bland one-liners I read in newspapers as a kid.