If walking back out into the real world this morning had been sensory overload, this trippy detour into fantasy land was full on sensory system crash. Except there was no crash, there was no quit, there was just keep going until you hit a wall and then figure out how to walk up the wall to the ceiling. So that’s what I did, gritting my teeth and pushing through.
― Misha Horne, Snowed in with Benefits
3.5 stars
Austin Ash is wild, uncontrollable, and an attention hog. If he isn’t front-page news, he may as well be dead. Or so he believes. He thinks the only way to remain relevant is to feed the beast. He gives into his worst impulses because the attention is addictive. Once a rising youtube star, now the worn out musician is a joke to everyone but his dad and his best friend/manager, Sienna.
After he is filmed destroying his ex’s car with a baseball bat, Austin goes away to a “spa” for a week. As soon as he gets out, the media follows him, not wanting to miss out on his next seemingly psychotic episode.
Marco is the son of songwriting royalty. He is a successful musician on his own, but his recent foray into television acting has sparked his creativity for the first time in years. New to the celebrity social scene, he ends up with a drunken Austin in his car. The two of them get to know one another when they are snowed in at Marco’s mountainside retreat.
This book surprised me. It was sweet, but it was more about two people trying to reconcile who they are in the public eye, with who they want to be, and all of the shame and fear in between. After Marco sees him at his worst, Austin believes that things can only get better. When his phone dies, he is forced to talk to another human being who has lived both in the spotlight and in the shadow of others.
Tropes
Forced proximity, celebrity crush, misunderstood bad boy, light BDSM
I got this from the romance bookworms Stuff Your Kindle day.
You knew you came from an enormous family when your niece was closer to your age than your first cousins. But sharing a studio apartment with blood was far better than finding a Craigslist rando who would unalive you in your sleep.
― C. Rochelle, The 12 Hunks of Herculeia
“….and speaking of hard fucking,” I brought my attention back to Iola’s thrilling synopsis of ‘How Leia Got Her Groove Back Under the Grecian Sun.’ “There’s a party happening down the street that’ll be full of those really slutty hipster guys who ride fixed-gear bikes.”
― C. Rochelle, The 12 Hunks of Herculeia
2.5 stars
Herculeia (I’m constantly misspelling that) breaks up with her boyfriend and decides to go solo on the Greek cruise they’d planned together. She starts meeting sketchy people immediately, but things take a turn for the worse when the ship sinks and she wakes up in the home of a very hot, very naked man, who believes that her arrival portends his escape from the Greek island to which he has been exiled. He is a mythical creature who had his powers stolen from him. However, Leia’s presence allows him to access his true physical form.
This book is bonkers but it is a lot of fun. Leia is the sassy New York girl with a heart, and she is set on helping all of the sexy, exiled (sexiled?) men she meets along the way.
This is a ridiculous romp of a story, but it is fun, sexy, cute, and never predictable. I could have done with a little less pop culture slang, which the book relied on to keep it sassy, “bish.” However, it was totally inline with Leia and her cousin Iola’s characters.
This book ends on a cliffhanger so I will probably get the sequel sometime in the next couple of months.
I am more interested in C. Rochelle’s villains and heroes books, so I might try those before I return to Herculeia and her posse of man sluts.
Tropes
Reverse harem, monster lovin’, shifters, fish-out-of-water, hardened heart learns to love again.
I got this from the romance bookworms Stuff Your Kindle day.
“There’s magic in it. Making flowers for people. It’s full of stories. Births and deaths and marriage, love and guilt and gratitude, everything we are, good and bad and in-between.” Fen sighed. “She was better at it than me, though. Everyone wanted to talk to her.”
“People’ll get used to you.”
“I’m not sure I care. I gave up wanting acceptance from this place a long time ago.”
“You never know. Things change.”
“Maybe. But I don’t know if I can.”
― Alexis Hall, Pansies
3.5 stars
This is my fifth (or sixth?) Alexis Hall book, and the fourth book in the Spires series after For Real.
Alfie Bell is back in his hometown to attend the wedding of his childhood best friend. He is out, and is still in the process of telling his friends. He escapes the wedding and meets up with a gorgeous man at a local bar. One thing leads to another and they end up going back to Alfie’s hotel room. As Fen is leaving, he drops a truth bomb on Alfie: Alfie was his chief tormenter when they were growing up, and Fen only accepted Alfie’s advances so he could use him for revenge sex.
Alfie is shocked that Fen still sees him as the bully from high school, and vows to show him that he is not the monster Fen remembers. He ends up back in their hometown, facing his own reckoning at the indifference of his own parents, and seeing the grief that weighs on Fen every day as he struggles to keep his family’s flower shop – his mother’s legacy – from going under.
Like Hall’s other books, this one contains messy and unlikeable characters. So basically, it is like catnip to me. I love messiness. Bring on the silly, the illogical, the unearned anger and self-delusional, rationalizing pep talks. Alfie has changed and so has Fen. Despite their history, they are madly attracted to each other. It takes quite a few attempts to communicate what they need and how they have been hurt, but the journey is worth it in the end. Neither one of them is an entirely despicable person, but they do let their fears and anger get the best of them despite starting out with good intentions.
One thing that did bother me was how long it took for Alfie to recognize how his years of bullying affected Fen. His desire to prove to Fen that he had changed infuriated me. Fen owed him nothing. I was glad that Alfie’s friends pointed this out to him. Still, he decided the best way to show he had changed was to force Fen to speak to him in person, and then continue to talk to him after Fen had refused his apologies. Maybe Alfie is a great guy, but the fact that he is a grown man and is still this clueless makes me worry for Fen. However, by the end, Fen seems to have a pretty good idea of what he’s getting in Alfie, even if he knows their relationship comes with a history of hurt and self-denial on both of their parts.
Tropes
Enemies to lovers, small town romance, acceptance and forgiveness
Now that I have read all of the Spires books, I would rank them as such.
4. Waiting for the Flood: This is a low-angst novella. Very good but too brief to get to know much about the characters. Adam is a bit too perfect, but that’s just me being picky.
3. Glitterland: Very funny, great side characters, but the imbalance in the relationship bothered me.
2. Pansies: I loved the world-building and how unpredictable the story and especially Fen’s character were. To me, this was the sweetest story of all of them.
1. For Real: This was by far the sexiest and had the best character: Toby. It is also the first Alexis Hall book I read, so I am pretty biased.
