Pooja

Damian Ad Infinitum

Damsel in Distress by Shannon Drake

July 12, 2026 by Pooja Leave a Comment

All that heiress Katherine de Montrain wants is to stay in control of her estates and assist her cousin, who masquerades as the notorious Robin Hood. Though she is forced for wed Lord Damian Montjoy for her own protection, she vows she will never submit to him. This is a pretty entertaining historical romance which was originally published in the 1990s. This is a bit of a weird time in the genre, as plots were shifting from the more violent and dubiously consensual bodice rippers […]

“I’ve started to think of Earth as a wax cylinder; the sun the needle, laid on the land and drawing out the day’s music—the sound of people arguing, cooking, laughing, singing, moaning, crying, flirting. And behind that, a silent sweep of millions of sleeping people, washing across the Earth like static.”

The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck

July 5, 2026 by Pooja Leave a Comment

In a “hook-and-chain” couplet structure, Shattuck meanders back and forth across three centuries in New England with six pairs of stories exploring themes that rhyme. This collection starts off pretty slow and gentle, and for the most part stays that way, telling the stories of ordinary people and mostly ordinary happenings. As such, I found myself quite surprised about halfway through about how thoroughly I had been sucked in, and how much I was enjoying myself. Part of what sets this collection of stories apart […]

When Your In-Laws are Forever

My Big Fat Vampire Wedding by Jessica Gadziala

July 5, 2026 by Pooja Leave a Comment

Pandora needs to get married in three months to secure her family inheritance, and Victor needs money to finish his PhD studies. A fake marriage would solve both their problems, and soon sparks are flying between the pair. The only trouble is that Victor has no idea that Pandora is a vampire. I loved the premise of this book, but the execution let me down a bit. I waffled between a two- and three-star rating for a while, but ended up going with the former […]

The Charms of a Competent Man

Lord Ravenscar's Revenge by Barbara Cartland

June 28, 2026 by Pooja Leave a Comment

After Romara is beaten and thrown out of the house by her sister’s abusive lover, the last thing she expects is to wake up married to Lord Ravenscar, who wed her while extremely drunk. But when he steps in to help her solve Caryl’s problems, she starts to wonder if they will be able to make a real marriage work. I read a lot of historical romance, so of course I am familiar with the insanely prolific Barbara Cartland, though I haven’t read any of […]

Magical Thinking Gone Wrong

The Vampire's Cult: The Untold Story of Obsession, Control, and a Shocking Small-Town Murder by Chet Hardin

June 21, 2026 by Pooja Leave a Comment

When Sydney Loofe goes missing after a date with a woman she met online, people fear that she’s met with foul play, but no one can predict the strange long road that brought her killers to the point of her murder. Despite this case having occurred in the past decade, I didn’t have much of a recollection of it going into this book. As such I was the perfect audience to be jerked around by each strange twist and turn as it happened. This is […]

The Audacity of Princes

The Lady Queen: The Notorious Reign of Joanna I, Queen of Naples, Jerusalem, and Sicily by Nancy Goldstone

June 21, 2026 by Pooja Leave a Comment

Joanna I, Queen of Naples, is best known today for having stood trial for the murder of her husband during the height of the bubonic plague, but she faced many other challenges during her thirty-year-long reign. The whole time I was listening to this audiobook, I kept marveling at the absolute audacity of the royal men of this era, who over the decades launched a number of invasions and plots in an attempt to claim Naples for themselves. A woman on the throne seemed to […]

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