Wildblood by Lauren Blackwood
Victoria has been forced to work as a guide with the Exotic Lands Touring Company since she was six years old, and things are worse than ever now that her ex Dean has been promoted over her. Her last hope is to successfully guide Thorn, a high-profile client, safely to the depths of the jungle – but as she grows closer to him, she begins to wonder if there’s a life out there for in the broader world. I wanted to like this book so […]
The Phoenix Keeper by S.A. MacLean
A socially anxious zookeeper working in phoenix conservation gets the chance of a lifetime to breed phoenixes and falls in love with her rival/frenemy from the griffin show in the process. Sounds nice, right? Books like this one almost frustrate me more than the real stinkers that deserve one or two stars. It’s ALMOST there for me. The premise=great. The themes=great. A convergence of genres that I love, plus magical animals and nerds=great. But none of it came together the way I wanted it to, […]
Husband Material (London Calling #2) by Alexis Hall
In Husband Material (predictably the sequel to Boyfriend Material; number three in the series, Father Material, is still pending), Luc and Oliver are still a happy couple. They are thirty-ish, and anyone who is thirty-ish will remember that that is the age at which one seems to have a matrimonial or matrimonially-adjacent activity seemingly every week. There are four in this book. There is also a funeral. The sequence of events naturally leads Luc to the question whether or not he should propose to Oliver. […]
Fauna by Denise Robins
Fauna is stolen away from her village in Africa and enslaved at twelve – but her mixed blood offers her a greater chance of a happy life in England, even though it comes with its own specific dangers too. This is a bit of a hodgepodge review, because this is the omnibus edition of a trio of books following Fauna and her descendants. Originally published in the 1950s, the books have a for-their-time sympathetic treatment of the mixed-race Fauna and her descendants, even if that […]
Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett
Nowhere Books Bingo 2025: A fantasy book by a female author Buzzword Cover Challenge 2025: Contains books Spoiler warning! This is book 3 in the series and not the best place to start reading. This book will contain spoilers for the previous books in the series. Start at the beginning, with Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries. Intrepid professor of dryadology (faerie scholar) Emily Wilde is facing her most challenging adventure yet – reclaiming the rather terrifying faerie kingdom of Silva Lupi, where her former academic […]
Knot That Simple by Amy Oliveira
Emmalita’s review piqued my interest in Knot That Simple so I popped over and picked it up. It’s a very fast read (126 pages, apparently, although on the online Kindle reader it all melds into a pleasant blur). I got through it in short chunks in an afternoon whenever I needed a break from writing a paper. I was on Livejournal when omegaverse was created and I do like it although I only really ever read it in gay fanfiction, so straight omegaverse was out […]
