CBR18 Book 36: "Let's Make a Scene" by Laura Wood

Page count: 352 pages

Rating: 5 stars

Cynthie Taylor needs some positive publicity, fast. Once it was revealed that not only was the film director she recently broke up with married, but his wife is pregnant, former good girl Cynthie is now seen as a manipulative home wrecker (the cheating director is obviously not getting the same negative press, what with being a man and all).

Fired from a high-profile superhero movie, Cynthie may have found a new and unexpected career rescue. The writer and director of Cynthie's first-ever movie, A Lady of Quality, the one who made her a breakout star, wants to make a sequel, as in the thirteen years since it was made, it has become a cult classic on streaming, and now the funding is in place to make a follow-up. Most of the original team will be in place to make it, and filming in the UK will take Cynthie away from the most aggressive press attention. It would also mean working closely with Jack Turner-Jones again, a man Cynthie has a complicated past with. 

Thirteen years ago, Cynthie was a relatively unknown actress selected for her role in A Lady of Quality in a series of auditions. Jack Turner-Jones was the son of two acclaimed and beloved British actors, who had very high career expectations for him. He's worried she's going to ruin the whole movie with her stage fright and inexperience. Cynthie overhears him complaining to one of the directors that he wants her fired, and finds his arrogance infuriating. They start off on the wrong foot and keep getting more antagonistic as the shoot progresses. The studio execs, however, want Cynthie and Jack to pretend to be a couple to drum up publicity for the movie. So while they privately loathe each other, they not only have to pretend to fall in love in the movie they're filming, but off-screen as well. 

Now Cynthie's PR people think it would be very beneficial for her reputation if she rekindled this fake romance with Jack, which will also create advance publicity and excitement for A Lady of Quality 2. Jack Turner-Jones is up for contract negotiations for the next season of Blood/Lust, and wants to make sure his character isn't killed off. Fake dating Cynthie will raise his media profile considerably. Since the world already thinks they used to love each other back in the day, selling the relationship now should be easier. There is the added complication that the streaming service that's funding the movie wants there to be a behind-the-scenes documentary accompanying the release, so Cynthie and Jack would have to pretend to be affectionate a lot more of the time.   

Career-wise, Cynthie is now basically where Jack once hoped he would end up. She's starred in a number of prestigious films, been Oscar-nominated, won several other major acting awards, and until she was unfortunate enough to get romantically involved with a man who chose not to divulge that he was married, she was box office gold. Jack, on the other hand, is a constant disappointment to his exacting parents, being perfectly happy as an ensemble player in a supernatural TV show about vampires. 

As is the case with every fake relationship story in romance, especially because this is ALSO a second-chance romance, there's no way that Cynthie and Jack don't fall madly in love with each other. The book alternates between the present day and thirteen years ago, so the readers first get to see the older actors meeting again (and being instantly smitten with one another), but also get the whole complicated backstory of how the filming of the first movie and their fake relationship back then ended so catastrophically. 

One of my favourite things in Under Your Spell was the supporting cast of characters, like Clem's mothers and sisters, and Theo's micro-managing personal assistant. Here, Cynthie has a wonderful team of people taking care of her, including her best friend Hannah, who has been her personal assistant from the start. While Jack's parents are the absolute worst, he, too, has a lot of supportive friends, and then there's the crew of the movies, who also provide a lot of entertainment.

I literally bought this for my e-reader as soon as I finished Under Your Spell, and ended up liking it even more, possibly because a lot of different scenes in this reminded me of several of Lucy Parker's London Celebrities books, which remain some of my favourite contemporary romances. There were also references throughout to several of my favourite rom-coms, including While You Were Sleeping. Laura Wood is an author I will be eagerly searching for new releases from, based on the two books I read these last few days. If she writes another one as good as these, she may be a new auto-buy author for me.

Judging a book by its cover: This one has a much more traditional romance cover than Under Your Spell, and it gratifies me to see that the little cartoon people are actually wearing outfits as described in the book (that is so often not the case). 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

CBR18 Book 35: "Under Your Spell" by Laura Wood

Page count: 352 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

Monthly Keyword 26: Spell

Buzzword Cover 26: Music

Clementine "Clemmie" Monroe has a lot of trust issues, and they're all because of the men in her life. Clemmie is one of three sisters, born within three months of one another, from three very different women who all got knocked up by her carefree rock star father, Rip Harris. Instead of being jealous or upset about the fact that her husband had been unfaithful, Clemmie's mother divorced her father, bought a large house and invited the two other women to live with her. So while Clemmie has been unlucky in the father department, she's basically had three mothers and two ride or die sisters supporting her while growing up. 

Unfortunately, even when her father proved time and time again that he couldn't really be trusted to remember things like visitations or special events in his daughters' lives, Clemmie kept hoping against hope that he would someday be better. Her trust issues with men did not get better after her first relationship ended with the guy, who had already been emotionally manipulating her for a long time, dumping her to go take a job as a drummer in her father's band. Clemmie has sworn to never have anything to do with musicians ever since.

Going in a vastly different direction with her next long-term relationship, Clemmie chose someone reliable and safe (and extremely boring, according to her sisters), but ended up heartbroken all the same. Her very boring boyfriend of several years not only dumped her to move in with another woman, but even had the audacity to take her cat when he left! Then she is fired, and has no idea how she's going to keep paying for her flat, since she now has to cover all the rent herself.

The first time Clemmie went through a bad breakup, her sisters supported her, and they had a witchy ceremony casting what they named "the Breakup spell", where they cursed the man who wronged her and each made wishes for what the future would bring for her. Now they get her drunk and resurrect the spell. It involves a lot of candles, Fleetwood Mac on a portable speaker, and then the women cast three wishes and a curse. The curse is for Clemmie's disappointing boyfriend to never satisfy anyone sexually ever again (and have a permanent itchy groin rash). Clem's record executive sister wishes her to have hot sex (both her sisters feel that some casual hook-ups would be exactly what the doctor ordered, mainly because Clem has never done casual in her life), Clem herself wishes for a job doing what she loves, while Clem's sensitive indie musician sister Lil wishes for "big love, the unconditional, wholehearted, soul mate kind."

After completing the ritual, the sisters get bad news. Their 'uncle Carl', their father's manager and the man who frequently stepped in when Rip once again completely forgot about important things in his daughters' lives, has passed away. After his funeral, Clem tries to hide away in her childhood bedroom, only to find that an extremely hot man has already hidden in there. After some flirty bantering and quite a bit of tequila, Serena's wish for Clem comes true. She has a one-night stand with the man she thinks is called Edward, and then sneaks away in the morning, leaving him a note.

Of course, this wouldn't be much of a romance novel if things didn't get complicated. Clem's wish was for a job, and her sister Serena has one for her, which will pay extremely well and allow her to hang out in their grandmother's house in Northumberland (which is being renovated for holiday rentals). All she has to do is babysit one of the world's most famous rock stars for six weeks, making sure he actually completes the album for the record company Serena works for. Despite one sister being a cutthroat record company exec and the other a darling on the indie music scene, Clem's dislike of all things music means she needs to be reminded who this Theo James even is. On the other hand, this is why Serena is convinced she will be perfect for the job. Theo James may be world-famous and extremely good-looking, but Clem's aversion to anything to do with the music business will ensure things will stay professional. 

It will surprise no one who has read more than a few books in their life that the man Clem is going to be paid to spend six weeks in a remote location is none other than her one-night-stand (who was never called Edward, but hadn't even realised that Clem got his name wrong until he saw the note she left the next morning).

So Clemmie and Theo, and their sizzling sexual chemistry, are living in forced proximity in a remote area of the north of England, and need to keep things entirely professional. At first, they barely speak, but then they gradually develop a friendship. Even when Clem is starting to reconsider her rule about never getting involved with musicians, Theo keeps things friendly but platonic. Whoever heard of a superstar musician who respects boundaries? 

This book started out slow, but even before the main romance (and its many complications) was introduced, Clemmie and her two sisters had me hooked. I would happily have read a non-romance book about their relationship. Since the majority of contemporary romance novels I read are set in the US, it's also always nice to read something set in the UK, and especially a part of it I'm actually quite familiar with.

Clem and Theo are very sweet together. This book has one of my favourite tropes, where one of the characters has to nurse the other one back to health. There are also some background subplots involving Clem's sisters, who, over the course of the book, get exactly what they wished for when casting the breakup spell, which is nicely done by the author. 

I had never even heard of Laura Wood when I bought this book in an e-book sale several years ago, and if it hadn't been for it fitting into several of my reading challenges, and I felt like reading a romance over some of the other options available, this may have stayed forgotten on my digital bookshelves for years. Instead, I put my entire reading list on hold after completing it, so I could purchase the sequel/companion book, about Theo's best friend and binge-read that too.

Judging a book by its cover: While I complain a lot about modern romance covers and the interchangeable pastel-coloured covers with little cartoon characters on it, I think this may just be a bit too plain and non-descript. One of the reasons I kept forgetting this book exists is that the cover just isn't very exciting. If it hadn't fit into one of my reading challenges, I would possibly never have gotten to it. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR18 Book 35: "Game of Rogues" by Julie Anne Long

Page count: 384 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

Thank you to Avon and NetGalley for this ARC. My opinions are my own. This book is out on June 3rd, 2026. 

Guinevere "Ginny" Woodville travels alone and unchaperoned to London to confront the man known as "The Reaper", Gabriel Marchand, owner of one of the most exclusive gentlemen's clubs/gaming hells in the city. Her newly come of age younger brother, who also recently became the Earl of Highgrove after the death of a cousin, got drunk one evening and gambled away not just the entire newly acquired fortune, but also mired himself in debt. Since some of that money was going to provide dowries for the Woodville women, so they could secure good marriages, it's imperative that Ginny get the money back within the month.

Marchand offers to forgive her brother's debt of several thousand pounds to him if Ginny agrees to spend a whole night in his bed. Naturally, she refuses his offer and hopes to never have to see him again. As fate and the sort of coincidences that usually only happens in romance novels to throw our lovers together would have it, Marchand and Ginny are both staying at the Grand Palace of the Thames, where the rules of the proprietresses require all guests to dine together and socialise in the parlour at least four nights each week. 

Ginny manages to identify the person her brother lost a whopping 15,000 pounds to (in addition to the 4000 he owes Marchand), and he's none other than the Earl of Sydenham, her father used to call friend, but who also seemed to never have forgiven that Ginny's mother married Woodville instead of the Earl. If Ginny manages to locate a rare Ming vase, part of the inheritance her brother would have gotten from the late Earl of Highgrove, Sydenham is willing to forgive the debt. Otherwise, he wants it paid in full in a month.

The Woodville siblings became orphans when Ginny was sixteen, after her father drove his high-flyer too quickly around a corner. Ginny's mother survived her husband by two days, and on her deathbed, Ginny promised to always take care of her younger brother and twin sisters, and make sure they all made good marriages someday. Having single-handedly spent the last eight years raising her siblings, taking care of the family finances, managing their crumbling estate, basically taking on the responsibility of both her deceased parents, Ginny is determined to find the vase so she can restore the fortune that her brother lost. Unexpectedly, Marchand proves to be a valuable help in this search, both helping to locate possible places the vase may be, and providing protection when she insists on going to more unsavoury areas of the city to look for it.

Of course, all this galivanting around unchaperoned with a devastatingly handsome rogue, while also seeing softer sides of him when they spend evenings together in the cosy parlour of their boardinghouse, means that Ginny not only stops hating Marchand, but also realises that she may be ruined for all other men, not least Francis, the carefully respectful third son of a duke she had assumed she would marry until she had to go off to London to save her family. Marchand is equally surprised to find that this stubborn and unusual young woman, who refuses to be afraid of him and constantly challenges him, is making him yearn for a very different future, one that doesn't involve him eternally striving to acquire more wealth and influence. 

Really good historical romance is getting harder to find. Meredith Duran is no longer writing. Sherry Thomas is writing historical mysteries. Tessa Dare's last novel was published in 2019, and fans are still waiting for the promised fourth book in that series. Julia Quinn is busy with the TV adaptations of her work and is now apparently making luxury hardback editions of romance novels for collectors. Loretta Chase and Courtney Milan publish a new book every few years. Julie Anne Long, however, is still reliably publishing a romance a year, and while I thought the first few novels of her Palace of Rogues series were merely good, not great, the last three have been absolute stone-cold classics, and I'm happy to say that this book continues her streak. I was both happy and surprised when I was granted an ARC, and because of my terrible memory and my tendency to fall behind on reviews, I waited to read it until just before the release date.

Some books take a while for me to get into. Not so Ms. Long's books. Within the first few chapters, reading one of her books feels like a soothing escape from reality. Each new book in the Palace of Rogues series introduces us to a new main couple, but also lets us come back to the comfortable found family of regulars to see how they are getting on (we're getting closer and closer to a romance between Pike the footman and Dot the maid with each story). Delilah and Angelique, their handsome husbands, Mr. Delacorte, Mrs. Pariseau - it's like seeing old friends again, while also getting to experience a new and exciting love story each time I pick up one of her books. 

We're rapidly nearing the end of term, and I have a lot of work to do and many grades to finalise, yet once I started this book yesterday morning, I pretty much ignored all of my other responsibilities until I had finished it before lunchtime today. Julie Anne Long writes interesting characters, and frequently her heroines are people who have been shouldering a huge amount by themselves, and have spent their lives fixing things for others, until they finally find the man who wants to ease their burdens and take care of them. Her heroes are often intimidating, powerful men who have troubled backgrounds and finally find the woman who sees their insecurities, refuses to be intimidated by them and makes them soften, without really losing any of the things that make them powerful. 

I don't know how many books Ms. Long has planned for in this series, but her Pennyroyal Green series ended up being twelve books and a novella, so I'm hoping I can keep visiting this comfortable and charming corner of the fictional Regency for many years to come. If you've enjoyed other books by her, this is another keeper, which I can see myself returning to for re-reads, if not as many times as with What I Did for a Duke, in my opinion, her best book, and one of my favourite ever romances. And I only just now realised that both of the heroines have very similar-sounding names. No wonder reading this made me want to reread it, for the umpteenth time. 

Judging a book by the cover: Since these books will no longer be printed in mass market paperback format (a development that makes me very sad), it seems that Avon decided to introduce a new cover design entirely, which means this book won't match its predecessors. Since some of the covers earlier in this series have been, at least in part, really awful (usually the portrayal of one or several of the people on said covers), this isn't necessarily a bad thing. But as someone who hates it when my physical books don't match, this radical difference in cover design also annoys me. That said, the choice to make the cover look like a playing card, with very stylised silhouettes rather than realistic images of the couple, works for me. It feels classier than the traditionally illustrated covers. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR18 Book 34: "Shrunkation" by Janine Amesta

Page count: 235 pages

Rating: 3.5 stars

This was an ARC I received from the author, Janine Amesta. My opinions are my own. 

Catalina and Trey's marriage is in trouble. Catalina is exhausted from her demanding work, nearing burnout, and incapable of forgetting some foolish and hurtful things Trey said to her months ago. She's feeling unappreciated and ignored, not to mention misunderstood. Trey knows that he screwed up, but he thinks all they need is some quality time together. He won a weekend stay at a luxury resort in Cancun, and hopes that in this new and exciting place, he will be able to persuade Catalina to fall in love with him again.

Things take a turn when the arguing couple find themselves shrunk to a quarter-inch size by the whims of an arrogant tech billionaire. Now, as well as trying to figure out a way to reconcile, the couple need to dodge enormous obstacles like crabs, sand fleas, and hungry gulls, as well. They have very little food and water, and have to make their way back to the hotel, hoping they can attract the attention of someone who might be able to help.

As well as Catalina and Trey's POVs, we also get to follow Sasha, a minion of the evil tech billionaire. Even when she's had misgivings about the company, she still stayed in the job to make enough to help pay for her dad's hospital bills. She's the only one who figures out what happened to Catalina and Trey, and she goes against the advice of the company to stay behind at the resort to look for the teeny-tiny missing couple.

This is a fun book, clearly inspired by Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. However, that was not a movie that made much of an impact on me. I know I watched it a very long time ago, when I was little, and while I know many have fond memories about it, it never made much of an impact on me. On the other hand, if there was such a thing as shrinking technology, I find it terrifyingly plausible, in today's political and financial landscape, that some moronic tech bro would callously use it for fun, never bothering to think about the dangers or wider consequences.

When they get to the resort, the rift between Catalina and Trey is getting wider, made worse by their failure to communicate clearly with one another. Catalina is overworked and exhausted, and Trey, for all that he clearly adores his wife, has not been shouldering as much emotional labour as she. Once they end up in an unusual and perilous situation, they are forced to work together to survive, but even that starts out as fraught because of the tensions between them. After being exposed to repeated danger and starting to communicate more honestly with one another, it turns out that a lot of their problems have been made worse by their own unspoken insecurities that they've been projecting onto the other person.

This book was entertaining, and the concept is very novel. I liked it well enough, and Amesta writes engaging characters. I just don't see myself wanting to pick it up for repeated re-reads, which is what characterises my favourite romances. 

Judging a book by its cover: Apparently, when Ms. Amesta tried to post images of this cover on Threads, her posts were flagged as inappropriate, and she was in danger of having her account shut down. I genuinely don't see why. There is no more nudity than you see on a lot of romance covers, and this one is cute and clever and funny as well. Go home, algorithm, you're drunk!

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR18 Book 33: "A Marvellous Light" by Freya Marske

Page count: 384 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

Monthly Keyword 26: Light

Nowhere Book Bingo 26: LGBTQIA+ rep

Buzzwords Challenge 26: Parts of a house

Buzzwords Cover Challenge 26: Featuring a silhouette

Sir Robert "Robin" Blyth ends up in a civil service position he is vastly unprepared for, as it turns out, he is supposed to be a liaison between the secret magical world and the more mundane regular world. Usually, the post is held by an individual from a magical family just unlucky enough not to have any magic of their own (seems like there are quite a few such "duds" in the magic-wielding families of society). Robin, on the other hand, is both shocked and rather intrigued when his co-liasion, Edwin Courcey, has to reveal the existence of magic to him. 

Edwin Courcey is both annoyed and worried at the disappearance of Robin's predecessor, especially when it becomes clear very quickly that something sinister is probably to blame. When Robin is attacked and a curse is placed upon him, a side-effect also appears to be that he can now receive visions of the future. Unfortunately, they are vague and usually seem to involve strangers. The curse is visible as a strange tattoo on one of Robin's arms, and with each new excruciatingly painful attack, the tattoo climbs higher up his arm, and the pain increases. Edwin can't leave an innocent man who didn't even know magic existed, least of all, where some magical artefact that the villains are searching for is located, suffer and potentially die. Unfortunately, most of the reference books he requires are at his family home, and Edwin doesn't exactly love returning to the bosom of his family.

Edwin may have magical powers, but he is seen as a huge disappointment in the Courcey family. He reluctantly goes back home, bringing Robin with him, to try to find a way to lift the curse. Edwin's plan is basically to get rid of Robin's pesky curse and then magically make him forget he ever even heard of magic (which seems to be the standard way magicians deal with regular humans). There is also the mystery of where Robin's predecessor disappeared to, the identity of the shadowy individuals who cursed Robin, and exactly what the artefact they are looking for is. 

This has been on my TBR list for a long time. I was initially waiting for the trilogy, of which this is the first part, to be completed, but by the time that happened, I sort of forgot about the whole series. This year, it fit into several of my reading challenges, however. As so many online friends whose opinions in books I trust have rated it highly on Goodreads, it felt like it was time to pull it off my shelf (I keep all of my unread dead tree books in a bookshelf in my bedroom, in the hopes that it might make me read them faster. Once I finish one, it gets moved up to the living room, where the majority of our fiction books are located.) Since I read this in mid-April and have since completed 22 other books, some of the finer details of the plot are now rather hazy to me. The book starts a bit slow, but once Robin is attacked and cursed, and Edwin realises that he has no choice but to help this handsome golden retriever of a man, I was pretty hooked. 

The book is set in Edwardian times, in an alternate history England where magic obviously exists. Robin and Edwin are pretty much opposites, with Robin being, as I previously mentioned, much like a golden retriever, while Edwin is a skittish black cat. Because Edwin has always been made to feel like a failure in his own family and generally lacking among his magical peers, he's got quite a big chip on his shoulder, and Robin's charming himbo ways are both attractive and frustrating to him. 

This is a slow-burn romance, but once the men actually admit their feelings for one another (and Edwin gets over a lot of his trust issues), the relationship between them is so beautiful. I also very much liked several of the supporting female characters, including Robin's younger sister (who I think is one of the protagonists of the second novel) and Robin's extremely overqualified and underestimated secretary in the civil service. They were both great.

There's clearly an overarching plot to the series, and some sort of mysterious cult of bad guys who will need to be stopped. However, this book also has a self-contained ending, and I didn't feel the need to rearrange my entire TBR list to read the two sequels right away (I will try to get to them before the end of the year, though). 

Judging a book by its cover:

I think the cover of this book is my least favourite thing about it. I have never liked the colour orange, and the orange silhouettes, accompanied by the most hideously busy wallpaper pattern covering the rest of the book, it gives me a headache if I look too closely at it. I would never ever have picked up this book if I hadn't been assured by several people that I trust that it was excellent. I find this cover very ugly. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR18 Book 32: "Bromantasy" by Máire Rocha

Page count: 352 pages

Rating: 3 stars

Thanks to G.B Putnam's Sons and NetGalley for this ARC. My opinions are my own. This book is out on May 26th. 

Juniper O'Reilly shares a house with his totally platonic best friend, Mo Elthorn, and they run a farm together. Juniper has a tendency to get into bar brawls, while Mo holds him back and takes him home afterwards. One memorable evening, however, Juniper gets into a fight with the wrong guy and incapacitates a henchman enough that he is forced to take said henchman's place on an epic quest (opting out means death). Mo is obviously not going to let his extremely platonic BFF go off on a monster-hunting quest by himself. Especially since Juniper has absolutely no idea how to survive in the wild, hates sleeping outside, away from his comfortable bed and cosy house, and wouldn't be able to light a campfire if his life depended on it.

The quest Juniper and Mo have to try to complete (because they'll be killed if they quit) is locating a dragon who has been terrorising the nearby villages. They are not the only ones looking for this wicked creature. Among their rivals are Bill Bronson, whom Juniper hates (I'm not sure it was ever specified why) and also the dashing Prince Edward. Juniper gets quite star-struck by the prince, but Mo is less impressed. 

When Juniper and Mo discover that at least one of the creatures flying about, setting fire to nearby forests and outbuildings, is just a child, things get even more complicated. Mo is not about to let anyone, royalty or not, hunt or hurt an innocent (if rather inadvertently destructive) creature, and he's determined to get the baby dragon to safety. Even if it means breaking the terms of their mandatory quest.

According to the blurb: "Bromantasy is a cozy, queer fantasy about the mortifying ordeal of being known by your totally platonic best friend and the epic quest that might force you to confront the truth."  Juniper and Mo spend most of the book totally pining and lusting for one another, while also very studiously not talking about said attraction, or the misunderstandings that have arisen in their relationship since Mo took off for a couple of months about ten years ago, leaving Juniper absolutely bereft. 

Juniper is truly terrible at trekking and camping, and also seems to have the common sense of a puppy that's been knocked over the head a bit too often. He has his utterly bull-headed dislike of Bill Bronson, but otherwise seems to be taken in by anyone, no matter how scheming they obviously are. He keeps wanting to do the right thing, and more often than not makes things worse instead. 

I didn't find this book particularly cosy, and the fact that Juniper has the POV throughout, a character I found exasperating at best and downright stupid at worst, did not help. I think it's supposed to be a literary romp; I cared very little for the plot, and the stakes never felt all that serious. 

There's a lot of hijinks throughout, and as previously mentioned, if Juniper can blunder in and make a situation worse than it was before, that's what's going to happen. By about 35% in, it became clear that this book was never going to be more than a 3-star read for me, and I debated whether I should DNF it or not. Instead, I skim-read the rest of the story, mainly to check if the plot gets any more engaging later on. 

This is probably a perfectly fun and entertaining book for some readers, but it just didn't work for me. 

Judging a book by its cover: Don't be fooled by the cat in the lower right corner of the cover. While there is a cat in the book, it stays behind on Mo and Juniper's farm when they go off questing. So it's not like it plays a prominent part in the story. The baby dragon needs to be instructed that cats are "friends, not food", though, which was pretty cute. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR18 Book 31: "This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me" by Ilona Andrews

Page count: 480 pages

Audio book length: 21 hrs 34 mins

Rating: 5 stars

Buzzwords Challenge 26: This/that/these/those

Maggie wakes up one day, cold, naked and soaked to the skin in the gutter of Kair Toren, the sprawling capital city of Rellas, where her favourite fantasy novels are set. For the past decade, Maggie has read and re-read the two books in the unfinished series enough times that she knows the setting, prominent characters and the plot intimately. It's what makes it possible for her to lie in wait, trying to rob a shady minor character just so she'll have enough money to get some clothes and shelter. While she's correct about when and where the character will show up, her robbery attempt ends with her being stabbed in the gut, which leads to her next discovery. She's stuck in the world of her favourite books, and while she can be killed, she doesn't stay dead.

Maggie is well-read and knows she's in an isekai fantasy. She knows the rules of such stories, and unfortunately, she's not as lucky as most characters in those kinds of stories. Unfortunately, unlike a lot of characters in such stories, Maggie is penniless, homeless and has no connections to anyone in the story. She does, however, have an encyclopedic knowledge of the plot of the world she's been transported into, so she knows which characters may prove useful allies, and which are best avoided at all costs. She knows how major events will play out and which characters will live, or die. She also discovers that she can read, understand and speak all the various languages of Rellas. In addition, she may be immortal.

She uses her knowledge to gain some useful allies, and in a remarkably short space of time, has acquired not only a safe place to stay, but has also become responsible for two young persons whom she rescued from enslavement. She knows at what point in time she has come into the story, and as a result, knows what is going to happen to the world and several characters she cares deeply about. Maggie decides she cannot, in good conscience, let the events as they are written come to pass. She wants to try to alter the events of the books, and as a result, possibly avoid the deaths of several of her favourite characters, not to mention stop a harrowing civil war and untold bloodshed. She just needs to convince her new friends that she can be trusted, and hope that her plans don't somehow make things worse. 

I read my first Ilona Andrews novel in 2009, early enough that they'd only published three books in the Kate Daniels series. I don't actually remember at what point they became not only auto-buy for me, but pre-order as soon as possible, possibly in more than one format (I have most of their books in e-book, dead tree, Graphic Audio audio dramas and/or audiobooks, even some in fancy signed special editions). I've read everything they've ever written, usually at least two or three times, sometimes five or six. Anyone who has been reading my reviews for a while knows that I am a proud card-carrying member of the BDH (Book Devouring Horde). I only have one tattoo (so far), and one element of it is a quote from one of their books ("If the sky could dream, it would dream of dragons" from Fate's Edge, if you're curious).

So it makes me immensely happy to see them reaching a lot of new readers with this rebrand (as my friend Christian, who works at the Oslo fantasy/sci-fi/comics/nerd shop Outland, calls it). A chonky epic fantasy novel, the first in a trilogy, which was acquired by Tor in a bidding war and has been promoted widely for months before its release. While it's their biggest book to date, both in size and scope, to me, as a loyal long-time reader, it was incredibly fun to see how many of the elements from their other books were clearly found in the pages of this one. It's basically their entire writing career, fine-tuned and distilled into a new series. 

You have the clever heroine, who, in contrast to all of Andrews' other heroines, doesn't have any advanced skills or magical powers. With the exception of Audrey from Fate's Edge, I think all of their female protagonists have both extensive fighting abilities and/or powerful magic at their disposal, while Maggie mostly has her mind. In addition to her near-perfect recall of everything that happens in the books, she also proves herself to be good at planning and strategic thinking.

Family, biological or found, also plays a major part in the Andrews' books. Since Maggie has been transported from our world into a fantasy one, she starts out alone and helpless, but before long, she has a loyal band of people surrounding her, willing to risk their lives to help her when she's in trouble (and she does get into trouble). 

There is also a very slow-burn romantic subplot, but anyone expecting romantasy or high spice will be disappointed (there's literally one kiss in the whole book - but what a kiss). Maggie believes herself to be wholly unremarkable, and the authors actually deliberately avoid describing her in too much detail (although the officially commissioned fan art on their website gives the readers a pretty clear idea of what all the major players look like), but she's clearly very pretty and constantly underestimates her allure to others. By the end of the story, she has multiple men who are smitten with her, and this is just the first book of the trilogy; there may be more to come. 

As I mentioned, there are several potential love interests, but I think it's rather clear from the story who the most likely HEA for Maggie is. Some really very unpleasant villains need to be defeated, or thousands of lives, including those of many of Maggie's favourite characters, are at stake. Because this is a long book, there are multiple mini-quests along the way, and Maggie ends up in mortal peril more than once (at one point, I was saying to my husband, "She may be undying, but can she regrow body parts? She can, by the way). 

As with a lot of epic fantasy, it's clear that Maggie has more thorough knowledge of some characters than others, because she's read their POV chapters in the books. Other characters, however, are much more of a mystery to her, because she's only read ABOUT them and hence doesn't know all their thoughts, wants and motivations. This means even Maggie, with her vast knowledge of Rellas and its inhabitants, can be surprised, and we readers along with her. 

As part of their promotional campaign, Tor had two chapters a week posted on their website in advance of the publication. I resisted the urge to read them until the evening before the book was out, which was good, because the final preview chapter ends on a heck of a cliffhanger. I was lucky enough that the Tuesday the book was released was during my Easter break from school, allowing me to devote the whole day to devouring the book on my e-reader, so I would know how everything turned out. While most of Andrews' stories tend to be mostly self-contained, this has the closest to a cliffhanger ending that I think they've ever had. Then I immediately started my re-read, this time in audio, and was able to savour the story more. Kristen Sieh is an amazing narrator and really captures the voices of the various characters excellently. Re-reading the book also allowed me to see how cleverly the authors had sprinkled hints and clues throughout the story, so that while there were several excellent plot twists along the way (the biggest one, about halfway through, literally made me do whatever the reading equivalent of a double-take is), they are, in fact, honestly foreshadowed along the way. You just don't know what is foreshadowing, and what isn't. 

Because Ilona Andrews are now reaching new readers, I have also been able to fangirl out in person with more than one member of my book club about this book (and I've been able to recommend other books in their back catalogue, which is always a very happy thing for a superfan to do). The authors have assured their readers that they are hard at work writing book 2 (it's at over 180 000 words and counting), and unlike in the fictional series Maggie so adores, there WILL be a book 3. Which brings me to yet another point: this is by far their most complex book project. The authors had to, in effect, write TWO stories while they were working on this. Rellas is a fictional world in Maggie's reality, but Ilona and Gordon had to sit down and plot out all the details and world-building of Maggie's favourite books, as well as the story about Maggie that we get to read. 

From my social media algorithms, it seems like some people have such a book hangover from this book that they just keep re-reading it again and again. I should probably be thankful that I currently have so many ARCs needing my attention that I have to take a break from it. I'm confident that I will re-read it at least once more before the end of the year, though, just to tide me over until Maggie's next book comes along. 

Judging a book by its cover: I have mentioned many times that Ilona Andrews seems cursed with terrible covers. At least Tor gave them an interesting-looking one for their epic fantasy. I promise that the weird bird creature on the cover is actually relevant to the plot, although it takes a while for it to enter the story. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR18 Book 30: "Black Water Sister" by Zen Cho

Page count: 384 pages

Rating: 3.5 stars

Monthly Keyword Challenge 26: Sister

Jessamyn "Jess" Teoh is feeling aimless and adrift. Born and raised in the USA, she has just moved to Malaysia with her parents, and they're staying with one of Jess' aunts while her parents are looking for their own place to stay. Jess is unemployed, broke and hiding the fact that she has a girlfriend in Singapore. Her girlfriend wants her to get a job in Singapore, so they can be together, but Jess keeps lying to her about her job searches. 

So when she starts hearing a strange voice in her head, Jess puts it down to stress. It takes a while for her to realise that the voice belongs to her dead grandmother, who used to be a spirit medium. Being mediums apparently runs in Jess' family, having skipped Jess' mother for some reason. Jess' Ah Ma was the avatar of a mysterious spirit goddess known as the Black Water Sister, and now a local businessman is threatening the park where the Black Water Sister's shrine lies. Ah Ma needs Jess' body to stop this, and settle a personal score against the magnate as well. Soon, Jess discovers that Ah Ma takes over her body at night, so she wakes up exhausted. She needs to figure out how to make a deal with her dead gran's ghost, before she ends up permanently possessed.

Black Water Sister is a rather unusual urban fantasy. Most urban fantasies are set in the USA or the UK, and the protagonists, often supernatural themselves, tend to solve paranormal mysteries involving all manner of creatures, like vampires, werewolves (or other shapeshifters), demons, angels, druids, witches, fae and the like. Our protagonist here is an aimless twenty-something who has no idea what she wants to do with her life, and the supernatural elements are ghosts and various spirit deities. The setting is Malaysia, a place I know very little about, in a culture I am also mostly unfamiliar with. 

While this was an interesting book, I found Jess a difficult protagonist to engage with. She's confused and depressed, and clearly has no idea what she wants with her life. While I understand why she needed to hide her queerness from her family, I also felt Jess was rather mean to her girlfriend, who only seemed to want the best for her. I'm frankly not sure what her girlfriend sees in her.

Obviously, having to share a body with the ghost of your estranged grandmother isn't exactly easy, especially when you're living with relatives you barely know and are struggling to understand the language. One perk of the whole experience is that while her Ah Ma is sharing her head, Jess becomes fluent in Malay very quickly. 

I read this back in March, and by now, I don't remember that much about it. The plot went in unexpected directions more than once, and there were both funny and some really rather gory bits. The only other Zen Cho novel I've ever read is Sorcerer to the Crown, a Regency-set story about magic, so if nothing else, this book proves that the author is able to write in different settings and time periods.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

CBR18 Book 29: "Dolly All the Time" by Annabel Monaghan

Page count: 368 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and G.P. Putnam's Sons for this ARC. My opinions are my own. This book will be out on May 26th. 

Dolly Brick is a problem solver and has spent most of her life taking care of her family. When her mother left Dolly, her father and her siblings when Dolly was far too young to have to deal with it, she nevertheless ended up basically mothering her younger sister and mentally disabled younger brother. Now she's a 39-year-old single mother (the baby daddy gave her money to "take care of it", she took the money and bought a crib) with a teenage son, Gus. They mostly live in Boston, where Dolly is a kindergarten teacher (she also has two other part-time jobs), but return to her home town of Whitfield, Rhode Island, every few months so Dolly can take care of odds and ends around the house for her dad and brother. After the house catches fire (thankfully not too disastrous) one night, Dolly and Gus have to abandon their other summer plans to return to Whitfield and deal with the damage.

Dolly's father is extremely risk-averse, after spending much of his life paying off the debts of a business expansion that went wrong. He's finally more or less debt-free when the fire department informs them that the roof of the house is very close to falling apart, and the house will have to be condemned if the roof isn't replaced in its entirety. Dolly's already working three jobs (and helping out at her father's fish shop over the summer) - she's not going to find 50 000 dollars just lying around. 

Thankfully, a possible solution presents itself to Dolly after having helped Stewart Whitfield, the eldest son of the wealthy family the town is literally named after. She helps him change a flat tyre (because rich guys never know how to do anything practical), while he confesses his fiancée has been photographed canoodling with a baseball player. A few days later, it turns out Dolly and Stewart were photographed together, and the tabloids are speculating about her being his new love interest. Apparently, Stewart's family and the board of directors of the family company, who are looking to appoint a new CEO when Stewart's father is retiring at the end of the summer, all think that Stewart is a boring workaholic who doesn't have any kind of life outside of the company. He needs to seem like he's a well-rounded individual with some actual non-work interests, and having a girlfriend would help with that. So Stewart is willing to pay Dolly to be his girlfriend for the summer. Dolly can get the money to save her family home and establish a bit of a financial cushion, while Stewart gets to pretend he's not a total failure in the romance department because his fiancée cheated on him. 

While they begin with carefully arranged public dates, Dolly and Stewart are soon spending way more time together than their contract requires. While Stewart had trouble taking time out to spend with his former fiancée, he seems to happily take any chance to hang out with Dolly (and occasionally her entire family). Dolly knows that the relationship isn't real, and that it has an expiration date at the end of the summer, but is also shocked to realise how lovely it is to have someone who seems focused on what SHE wants and does his best to take care of her. She tries so very hard not to fall for Stewart, but may have finally found an impossible challenge.

Last summer, I got an ARC of Annabel Monaghan's It's a Love Story, and since it was perfectly fine (if not all that memorable), I requested an ARC for this when I saw it on NetGalley. It's basically a more realistic take on Pretty Woman, except Dolly Brick is a penniless single mother, rather than a leggy L.A call girl. While the start is a bit slow, it didn't take me long to be utterly charmed by Dolly and her family. The book is both romantic and funny, and a lot of the humour is at the expense of the tremendously wealthy, like the Whitfields (who to be fair, seem mostly very nice for super rich people). 

Dolly has had a hard life, while Stewart's has been one of immense privilege. Despite this, Dolly's mental health is a lot better than Stewart's, and her family are a lot more honest with one another about what troubles them. The exception is Dolly's younger sister, who keeps trying to help out but is often pushed away by Dolly. The sister (whose name I don't remember) correctly feels like Dolly carries resentment for having a lot of her adolescence ruined because she needed to step into their mother's role and still feels like she needs to shelter her sister. Stewart is a perfectionist, with occasionally crippling anxiety, and very few members of his family realise that he, every so often, suffers from panic attacks. Stewart is very aware of his family's legacy, and he desperately wants to do a perfect job and continue that legacy for a new generation. While he has a therapist, he hides his difficulties from his family.

While we encounter both Dolly and Stewart's families over the course of the book, Dolly's family are much more present as supporting characters. Dolly seems to form a genuine friendship with Stewart's sister, though, and towards the end of the book, she also forms a very nice bond with Stewart's mother, who is a paediatrician. 

Sadly, it is still the case with most romances that there has to be a third-act complication, and I was rather unhappy with the way Stewart behaved during this part. Thankfully, he comes to his senses and realises what an utter idiot he has been, eventually, and grovels most satisfactorily. 

This book was a funny, light-hearted, very romantic read. It was almost a five-star read (you know what you did, Stewart!). I'm very happy I asked for this ARC, and will absolutely be reading more of Monaghan's books in the future. 

Judging a book by its cover: The cover manages to be fairly specific (Dolly with her snazzy bob on board Stewart's sailboat), while also being rather vague. You can't really see any clear facial features on either person on the cover, but it nevertheless gives you a look into one scene of the book. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR18 Book 28: "The Familiar" by Leigh Bardugo

Page count: 385 pages

Audio book length: 12 hrs 57 mins

Rating: 4 stars

Dark Corner Selection: March 2026

Defeat the Goblin TBR 26: The Bog book - A book you started, but never finished (started it in May 2025, but only made it about 30%)

Buzzword Cover Challenge 26: Metallic element

In a different version of 16th-century Spain, young Luzia Cortado works grudgingly as a scullery maid for the miserable and petty Doña Valentina. Luzia can use what she calls "small magics" to make her life easier. She can mend seams, multiply the groceries, unburn bread or reassemble broken things. She performs these little spells, learned from generations of her Jewish ancestors, by singing quietly. Luzia is a convert; she dutifully goes to Mass and hides any traces of her Jewish lineage to escape the clutches of the Inquisition. 

However, when Doña Valentina discovers Luzia's powers, she sees an opportunity to increase her social standing. She makes Luzia perform for dinner guests, and before long, powerful and ambitious men show interest in Luzia's abilities. To improve her abilities, she is put under the tutelage of the mysterious Santangel, rumoured to be immortal. 

This book, a medieval alternate history, is very different from all of Leigh Bardugo's previous books. As someone with a Master's degree in European medieval history, I was really interested in this book, yet when I first tried reading it, in 2025, I couldn't get very far into it, and eventually decided to put it down until the time was right.

This year, my book club decided to vote for most of our books of the month. When The Familiar became the book of the month for March, I figured it was a sign from the universe that now the time was right. While I made it all the way through this time, I can see why I put it down the first time. It has a very slow start, something that was also remarked on by many of the members of my book club. I did discover that had I just kept going for a few more chapters the first time, I would have finished it. 

I really liked the unusual setting for this book. I liked that it tells the story of three very different women (Luzia, Valentina, and Luzia's aunt), who are all just trying for a better life. The magic used is interesting. I agree with several of the members of my book club that the romantic subplot involving Luzia and Santangel is entirely unnecessary, and that the conclusion of it is frankly quite disturbing, if you think about the power dynamics of the whole thing. There is also a lesbian subplot introduced towards the end that was definitely a bit unexpected, and considering how much is made of the power of the Inquisition and how feared they are, it seemed unlikely that these women would have been able to safely and rather publicly make a life with one another. But that's a minor niggle. 

I hope this remains a standalone book and that Bardugo doesn't decide to write a sequel at some point. 

Judging a book by its cover: Even with the scorpion crawling out of the lacy sleeve, this cover seems more like it belongs on a historical literary fiction book. Except for the name of the author, there is really nothing that marks this out as fantasy. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR18 Book 27: "The Shippers" by Katherine Center

Page count: 320 pages

Rating: 2.5 stars

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for this ARC. My opinions are my own. This book will be out on May 19th.

Josephine "JoJo" Burton runs away from her own wedding, after her childhood best friend, Cooper Watts, shows up unexpectedly from London just as she's about to walk down the aisle, and makes her realise that she really doesn't want to be with her fiancee. The next morning, he's on a plane back to London. JoJo has never been lucky in love. She always chooses the wrong guy, and she always ends up being the dumper. 

Six weeks later, JoJo's sister, Ashley, is getting married on a Caribbean cruise. Her sister's rather vague grasp of pop psychology has made both Ashley and JoJo believe JoJo's terrible relationship is because she's felt abandoned by their father (he works almost non-stop and never seems to be around for anything important) and due to a strange series of events, JoJo must never have found a lasting love because she fixated on her first kiss, and no man has lived up to her expectations since. It just so happens that the man who kissed JoJo when she was ten and he was thirteen is newly divorced and going to be on the cruise as well.

So Ashley orchestrates a truly mental plan where she is going to throw JoJo and her childhood crush together in a ton of matchmaking events, and once JoJo manages to make this man see that she is now a catch, he will fall for her, and all of JoJo's romantic failures will be solved. Along for the ride is poor Connor, who is roped into being JoJo's rather unwilling wingman. He doesn't seem all that enthused about helping JoJo fall in love with another man, but JoJo doesn't really see that her perfect mate might not be this elusive first crush, but rather the BFF she was inseparable from for most of her life. 

This is the second book by Katherine Center that I've read where I'm seriously wondering if all the people praising her are taking crazy pills. I'm starting to think that The Rom-Commers, which I read in 2024, was some sort of fever dream, and I just imagined it was really enjoyable. While this wasn't as bad as The Love Haters (one of my worst reads of last year, which I have now downgraded to 2 stars), it was also mostly a slog to read. I hate romances where I keep wanting one of the protagonists to just run away and escape the other one, and this was very much the case here. 

What I liked (it's not a terribly long list):

- Cooper is really an amazing guy, pretty much in every way. Except for his dreadful taste in love interests. He's not just in another league from JoJo (still hate that nickname), he's pretty much in his own universe from her. I can't even find the words to describe how much too good for her he is. He should have stayed in London, doing cool things and finding someone worth his time and efforts. 

- While being stuck on a cruise ship for a wedding sounds like an utter nightmare to me, it was an interesting way of doing forced proximity. 

- The fact that JoJo's daddy issues pretty much stemmed from a massive misunderstanding, and that she realised he was a really good guy and helped him get back together with her mum. Very nice twist to have the deadbeat dad actually be a secretly really good guy, who was just terrible at advocating for himself, or apparently communicating in ANY way with his family (getting annoyed at the author again now). As it turns out, the one who should have been having daddy issues is Cooper, but saying more would be spoiling. 

- JoJo's family mostly seemed really nice, even though Ashley seemed like a pretty awful friend for putting all her single friends through some sort of matchmaking Olympics on board the ship. 

What I did NOT like:

- Our female protagonist. She is extremely annoying and clueless to the point where I could no longer suspend my disbelief. I can totally see how someone with an advanced degree in mathematics and a supposed genius-level IQ could be clueless enough about personal matters to be utterly AWFUL at reading people. I can even be persuaded that she seemed to think it was a good idea to marry the dude she is about to marry at the start of the book. But once she is on the boat, going through with her utterly moronic plan of "conquering" her childhood crush, even when it becomes painfully obvious that he's dull, not really interested in her and utterly wrong for her, while a gorgeous, thoughtful, caring, funny, musically talented and all-around great guy is doing everything but literally spelling out his feelings. I wanted to throw my e-reader across the room at how self-centred and oblivious she was. 

- JoJo's belief that she was cursed. I repeat, she has an advanced degree in maths, and we are told she has a genius-level IQ, but she would rather believe that she is cursed than the fact that SHE is the common denominator in all of her failed relationships. None of them worked out because you are the WORST, JoJo. 

- JoJo's judgment is seriously bafflingly bad. In any given situation, she will pick the absolute worst option to try to solve things, and end up confused and sulky because yet again she's messed her life up more.

- JoJo appears to have no self-respect or free will whatsoever. She stays in a fairly unsatisfying relationship for three years before emotionally blackmailing her so-called perfect boyfriend into proposing. Then she sits around for another four years before finally getting to her wedding, where she has apparently let the groom's family decide absolutely everything, without any input from her, up to and including the ill-fitting wedding dress she has to wear. Then her sister makes some sort of insane plan for how she's going to become "uncursed". JoJo squeezes herself into too-tight outfits to look sexy and tortures herself with monstrously uncomfortable shoes, and never once does JoJo tell her sister to f*ck off with her idiotic suggestions. She appears to have no actual agency or personal wishes; she just lets other people tell her what to do. 

- While the page count is 320 pages, because of the pacing and the fact that I deeply disliked the heroine, this book felt interminably long. 

When I saw this ARC available for request, I had hoped that The Love Haters was a rare fluke in the bibliography of Ms. Centre. So I asked for this one to give her another chance. Next year, I think I need to tell myself that I have now let myself be fooled twice, and need to try to avoid disappointment by letting it happen a third time. I won't be requesting any more ARCs from this author. 

Judging a book by its cover: I don't know who designed this cover, but at least to my eyes, the red, orange and shock pink all clash with each other, and the sort of turquoise blue of the dude's shirt and the lifebuoy ring are not helping. I am not a fan of this; it's giving me a headache. Although it may warn people away from the book, which I'm starting to think might be a good thing. Having browsed Goodreads, I also see that on the UK cover, the woman (who is clearly supposed to be JoJo) is wearing a dark blue dress and flowy scarf, which while not great (there is still that background) would be SO much better. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR18 Book 26: "The Magician's Daughter" by H.G. Parry

Page count: 372 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Defeat the Goblin TBR 26: The Magic book - A book with a magic system, or magic-related system (this one has both)

Buzzword Reading Challenge 26: Occupations

Buzzword Cover Challenge 26: Wings

Biddy lives on a small, magically isolated island off the coast of Ireland with her guardian/foster father, Rowan, and his familiar, the rabbit Hutchincroft. No one who doesn't know that it's there can find it. While Biddy has no magic of her own, she has grown up with it all around her. Yet magic is fading in the outside world, and far too often, Rowan has to leave Biddy to go to the mainland in bird form to find some small reserves of it. She hates it, but he is always back before dawn.

Then one night, Rowan doesn't come back, and Biddy, desperate to find him, uses a magical ring that allows her to travel through his nightmares to find him. He's been captured by powerful enemies and can only escape with Biddy's help. Once he returns home, shaken and weak, he tells Biddy a lot of things previously kept hidden. Not only that, but after telling Biddy that she cannot leave the island, because it wouldn't be safe, he now needs her to go to London, in disguise, to act as a distraction for his enemies. 

The real world is a big and scary place, and it doesn't take long for Biddy to discover that Rowan may not have been telling the whole truth, or has possibly just badly underestimated the forces against him. Rowan ends up captured once again, while Biddy is in terrible danger. Nevertheless, she needs to be brave and resourceful in order to not only save Rowan's life, but possibly restore magic to the world once more. 

Back in 2020, my book club read The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heap, and while it was fine, it also didn't make me run out and read more from the author. I'm not actually sure I remembered what else I had read by the author when I picked this out in a 3 for 2 sale. I just really liked the pretty cover, and the title sounded interesting. As so often happens, it went on a shelf, and I forgot all about it. Then it turned up on my friend Ashley's Vlog, as one of 11 underrated books more people need to read, and since Ashley and I still like a lot of the same books, a recommendation from her means I need to read it (unless it's horror, of course, I'm most likely not going to want to read those). 

Once a year, five of my friends and I try to take a weekend away from our families, and we go on a cabin trip. While two are childless by choice, the rest of us have children, and just getting a weekend away to relax is a massive luxury. So of course, I was going to get lots of reading done, and this was one of the books I brought along. I think I made it to page 25, because I was busy chatting and catching up with my friends, and was too tired by the time bedtime came around to get anything much read at all.

So it took me a while to properly start this book, but when I finally did, it didn't take long before I didn't want to put it down. Biddy is an engaging heroine. She's curious and spends the first part of the book restless and frustrated that Rowan won't ever let her leave the island to explore. She's inquisitive and lonely, but when it finally becomes time to leave her safe home for the first time, it's with the knowledge that she's basically "bait" and could be in a lot of danger. To help Rowan, she's nevertheless willing to do it. She makes one of her first friends ever at the depressing, poverty-stricken children's home she's sent to live and work at. 

Once the danger ramps up, she is naturally very scared, but doesn't let it stop her from acting. She meets several people from Rowan's past; one very sinister, one deeply terrifying and one who may turn out to be a useful ally. 

My favourite supporting character was Hutchincroft, Rowan's bunny familiar. He can use magic to turn himself human, on occasion, so he and Biddy can speak (he speaks telepathically to Rowan), but a lot of the time, he's just a big, soft rabbit. I wish the reader could have got a bit more insight into his and Rowan's connection, but with the entire POV being from Biddy, I guess we can't have everything.

Parry has a lovely turn of phrase, and this story was unusual and went some unexpected places. While I wasn't too curious about her other writing after the Uriah Heap book, this makes me think I should give her other books another chance. 

Judging a book by its cover: I really like the silhouettes on the cover, all very suitable. Young woman, bird, rabbit. I like the vines and flowers and the swirling patterns on the green background. What I don't like are the weird yellow spikes, like some sort of halo behind the woman's silhouette. Could absolutely have done without that. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR18 Book 25: "Change of Plans" by Sarah Dessen

Page count: 368 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Thank you to Simon and Schuster and Netgalley for this ARC. My opinions are my own. This book is out on May 5th, 2026.

Finley is graduating from high school, and is worried about several weeks away from her charismatic boyfriend, Colin, their friend group and her entire social circle. Most of all, she would have wanted to join Colin and his family on a Disney cruise, but her distant mother, Catherine (her father has custody and she only sees her Mum a few times a year), has declared that they are spending time together in New York City, and that the dates cannot be changed.

So imagine Finley's surprise when she is told on the morning of their departure that New York will have to wait. Instead, they are going to her mother's home town, Lakeview, to sell a house neither Finley nor her father knew existed. Catherine was estranged from her parents until they died, and has kept up the distance to her two sisters, but for reasons she refuses to go into, the old family home needs to be cleared out and sold as soon as possible. 

Once they arrive, Finley discovers that "Cat" has been in communication with her sisters but refused to make any decisions for months, and this sudden change is a surprise to absolutely everyone. 

Her aunts are very happy to see Finley again, though. She hasn't really seen anyone from her mother's family since her grandmother's funeral, and that is long enough ago that she barely remembers anyone, certainly not her cousins, who are all grown up now. 

Cell reception is pretty unreliable in the middle of the woods, and Finley worries that she can't get in touch with Colin. Although when she finally does, it's because he calls her, from the boat, to break up with her via video chat. Since Colin has been the centre of Finley's life for the past two years, and featured in all of her plans for the future (she deferred all her other college choices to go to the same place as him), she is absolutely devastated, and shortly after, throws her phone in the lake in a fit of drunken impulsiveness. 

One of Finley's aunts co-owns a diner, the Egg, where it seems most of the teens she's met during the last few days work. Heartbroken and without real purpose, Finley starts helping out during the breakfast rush, when most of the tourists come in to eat, and soon she's making money and has made new friends. There's Clark, who runs the grill, and whose now deceased father founded the Egg with Finley's aunt. There's Lana, who sneaks into the old house where Finlay and Cat are staying and sleeps on the couch, leaving before anyone else wakes up. She takes it upon herself to become Finley's BFF after Colin dumps her, since she has considerable experience with romantic disappointments in her past. And finally, there is Ben, the shy guitarist who helps Clark in the kitchen and claims that he's super awkward around new people, but seems to warm to Finley immediately. 

I've only read two Sarah Dessen books, The Truth About Forever and Just Listen, but as a many-year follower of Forever Young Adult, I am aware of how highly a lot of people rate her books. While it seems like she writes a lot of YA romances, the central plot of this story was more about family and estrangement, and long-buried truths that needed to come into the light. Catherine left Finley and her father when Finley was about four years old, and while she has seen her daughter a few times a year since, she has never been a stable part of Finley's life, and certainly not anyone she has felt able to properly talk to or confide in.

Rather shy and retiring, Finley was shocked when handsome and popular Colin noticed her on her first day in Junior year. They were teamed up for a school task, after which Finley acquired the nickname "Idaho", and not long after, was swept off her feet by Colin. His friends became her friends. His close-knit family, so very different from her own chaotic home life (distant mother, stressed father and stepmother, six-year-old twins and a toddler), became her safe haven. When he dumps her after a few days of no contact, her entire world implodes. She has no idea who she is without Colin, but thankfully, helping out at the Egg, making new friends in Lakeview and getting to know her mother's family are good distractions. Nevertheless, it takes her most of the summer to realise that Colin dumping her might have opened up opportunities she would otherwise not have had.

I liked this a lot, and having re-read my reviews for the other two Dessen books I read (many years ago now), it's clear that I should make an effort to read some more of the books of hers I have in my e-book collection. The world is a dark and scary place, and wholesome YA contemporaries are a slightly different brand of escapism from all the fantasy I tend to gravitate towards. 

Judging a book by its cover: This cover feels extremely generic, and could be put on pretty much any YA book with a female protagonist. There is nothing to really distinguish it from so many other books out there. It's perfectly fine, but nothing more than that, either

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR18 Book 24: "Platform Decay" by Martha Wells

Page count: 256 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

Monthly Keyword 26: Decay

Thank you to Tor Books and NetGalley for this ARC. My opinions are my own. This book is out on May 5th, 2026.

Murderbot (who has installed a mental health module now, and keeps doing Emotion checks on itself) is on a rescue mission on a large artificial planet controlled mostly by Barish-Estranza. What starts out as needing to find and escort three people from the hostile territory becomes a lot more complicated when Murderbot is forced to agree to locate and rescue an additional group of people, some of whom are juveniles (I love how Murderbot refers to children) as well. As you can imagine, Murderbot, who is deeply uncomfortable with most people, is especially discomforted by children. 

I don't really want to go into further details about the plot of this one, because it's much better if you don't know too many specifics. As is often the case with new instalments of The Murderbot Diaries, this book starts very abruptly, and it takes a few chapters to understand what is really going on. And that's part of the joy of it. I won't reveal who Murderbot has been sent to rescue, and it would be a major plot spoiler to reveal who is in the second group.

It's been years since System Collapse was released, and to say that I was excited when I discovered I had been granted an ARC for this is an understatement. High-pitched squeals of excitement may have been heard by the rest of my family, and there may have been some bouncing up and down on the sofa. However, I also knew that if I read it immediately, I would forget a lot by the time I needed to review it, so I saved it until just before release, so everything would be fresh in my memory. 

Murderbot's voice (which is not for everyone, I have come to realise) is so clear from the very first page, and even when you're not exactly sure what is happening, it's just so comforting to be back in Murderbot's presence and let the story wash over you. I loved Murderbot's new Emotion checks (it has been through some stuff in the past few books) and how it is begrudingly forced to admit to itself (and us, the readers) that it has people it cares about now. That being a rogue and lonely SecUnit isn't exactly the best way to be.

This book is very funny, but also emotional and action-packed and as always, deeply anti-capitalist. I laughed a lot while reading it, and while Murderbot would clearly hate it, it is still my favourite snarky artificial intelligence. 

Judging a book by its cover: For the entire series, the covers have been Murderbot, in its distinctive suit, clearly in the middle of some action. Sometimes, the location is in space; sometimes, it's obviously on a planet. On some, Murderbot has company; on others, it is alone. On this cover, Murderbot appears to be in a shaft of some sort, with a ladder. It gives the reader a hint of what's going on in the story, without spoiling anything. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR18 Book 23: "Margo's Got Money Troubles" by Rufi Thorpe

Page count: 320 pages

Audio book length: 10 hrs 21 min

Rating: 4 stars

Nowhere Book Bingo 26: Adapted into movie or TV show (on Apple+ now)

19-year-old Margo Millet has an ill-advised affair with her English professor at college and gets pregnant. Against the advice of absolutely everyone, including her mother (a former Hooters waitress), she decides to keep it. Unfortunately, being pregnant and then a young single mother isn't especially attractive on the job market, and before she knows it, two of her roommates have also moved out, because they just can't handle the noise and the whole baby being there now of it all. She's at her wits' end, and while she loves her son, Bodie, she's also pretty sure she's made a huge mistake.

Then her estranged father, Jinx, a retired pro-wrestler, shows up on her doorstep and asks her if he can stay at hers, after yet another round in rehab. Since she needs both rent money and help with child care, she agrees to let him stay. She also decides to try making money through OnlyFans, where she uses advice from Jinx to craft her online persona. Soon she's making enough money to keep her head above water, but her English professor is threatening to sue her for sole custody of Bodie and her mother, who is getting married to a Christian pastor, threatens to disown her if she doesn't shut down her OnlyFans account immediately.

This book came highly recommended from many of my online friends, so when I saw it in an audiobook sale, I picked it up, despite being a bit dubious about the pastel-coloured cover and the unusual plot synopsis. Contemporary fiction with serious real-world problems?  Ill-advised affairs with your lecturer? Desperate young single mother? OnlyFans? Was this really a book I was going to enjoy? As so often happens, I then forgot I owned the book for quite a long time, until I read the announcement that the book was being turned into a TV series on Apple+, starring Elle Fanning, who also narrates the audiobook.

Apple+ has proven itself to be very good at adapting books I like in the past (I promise I am not being paid for this; I wish I were so lucky), and since I prefer reading the source material before seeing the adaptation, reading this in March seemed like a good idea. Since I listened to it in audio, it took me about a week to get through it, but I suspect that if I'd been reading it with my eyes, I would have got through it a lot faster. Despite its many serious issues, it is ultimately a very uplifting book. Margo may be young (and discovers fast that having a baby is for life, not just for Christmas), but she's very clever, and because of her unusual family situation (Jinx wasn't exactly a stable feature in her life growing up), she's learned to be independent and resourceful. She does the very best she can for her baby, even if that means coming up with creative ways to make people pay her for nudes on the internet. 

While two of Margo's roommates leave, one of them stays behind and even starts helping Margo in her new "working from home" career. Suzie is into fantasy cosplay and is able to lend Margo outfits and advise her on makeup and video ideas. She gets along well with Jinx, as well, which helps. Margo eventually meets and makes friends with other OnlyFans creators, and starts having actual fun when she comes up with a storyline involving a strange and horny space alien to attract more followers.

I wouldn't say that female empowerment is one of the main themes of the story, but it is absolutely a factor. Margo refuses to be dismissed by her baby daddy and his rich and condescending family just because she is young and does online sex work. She proves herself a fit and capable mother both to the custody lawyers and eventually to the CPS (who have had an anonymous tip that Margo's home life may not be safe for Bodie). 

Since I had seen the trailer for the show before I got around to reading the book, it was pretty difficult to create my own mental images for the characters. With Elle Fanning already voicing Margo in the audio, it would have been harder to picture her as someone else. Michelle Pfeiffer as her mother and Nick Offerman as her father also seem like spot-on casting, so I didn't mind them being my mental images for Shyanne and Jinx, either. Ironically, now that I have finally read the book, I'm too busy with correction work to actually watch the show until later this year. I'm glad I listened to the book when I did, though. 

Judging a book by its cover: Before I read the book, I always thought this was a really strange image to choose for the cover of the book. Now that I have read the book, I see how perfect it is, and how well it captures poor Margo's utter exhaustion.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.