Knitting, Sci-fi and other stuff...

March was an excellent month for me.  All six of my completed reads were 5 stars.  A Flickering Remnant is such a beautiful story.  It's a fantasy romance that has a Gothic feeling to it.  It's got maternal mental health representation, a curse, an elemental magic system, witches, some amazing found family, a ton of mystery and it's absolutely beautifully written as well.  I loved it so much I bought myself a signed copy.  Sheltered Fate was just plain fun.  It was book three in a series of interconnected stand alones.  It's what all monster romance should be, in my opinion.  The Troll MMC was a kind and gentle cinnamon roll.  I enjoyed this one so much I abandoned all other responsibility and read the first book in the series too.  Fresh-Brewed Fate was also just plain fun.  It was more adventurous and the world was a little bigger but again the Orc MMC was another cinnamon roll.  I rounded out my month by sta...

  I'm currently participating in the Readathon taking place in the Wicked Darlings Facebook group.  The Wicked Darlings group is the LJ Andrews fan club.  Those who have decided to participate are reading all nine books of The Broken Kingdom series and then the three books that are released from The Ever Seas series in preparation/celebration of the October release of The Stolen Crown.  There is a timeline for the reads but its really just a loose guideline.  I'm hosting buddy reads on StoryGraph for the books.  I finished Curse of Shadows and Thorns last evening and I'm already nearly halfway through book two, Court of Ice and Ash now.     Anyone who knows me knows I love LJ Andrews and these two series.  I first read these first 6 books about three years ago.  It's been great fun to revisit this world and pick out details I missed the first time around.  I know these characters and events so I can see the foreshadowing, see the li...

5⭐️ 2🌶 I finished Fresh-Brewed Fate by Aeva Vox last evening.  I really enjoying this book as well.  I started reading immediately after finishing the ARC of Sheltered Fate.  Fresh-Brewed Fate is the fist book in the Bound Across Realms series.  This book follows Essa, a human living in Thyra.  Thyra is the realm that connects all the other Realms and creatures together so its a melting pot of culture and experience.  Essa's dream of opening a coffee shop and bakery are about to be realized.  She is putting the finishing touches on her shop as the book opens.  Henker is an Orc.  He has just retired.  He's the first and only Orc who has done so.  His plan was to check into a luxurious Elf hotel and do nothing for a while.  But when he arrived at the hotel and the elves realized Henker was an Orc they canceled his reservation.  The Orcs started a war a few decades back and there is a stigma that follows them whe...

  5 ⭐ 2🌶 I finished an ARC of Sheltered Fate by Aeva Vox late last night.  I read it in less than 24 hours.  It is only a 250 page book, but it was excellent.  It was a cozy funny monster smut book.  Creag the troll MMC is older and resigned to a life of bachelorhood.  He travels back to his home troll realm in search of answers about a metal shard one of his human friends found.  Instead of finding answers he stumbles into the human realm, our modern day one and finds Shelby the FMC.  Shelby has taken over her parent's inn up in the mountains of California.  There is a blizzard and Shelby encounters Creag when she stumbles down a ravine during said storm.  Her eyes are damaged by the ice of the blizzard so she can't see that Creag is a troll.  He finds them shelter in a cave and nurses her back to health.  It was a fast paced story which was just what I needed.  I've been struggling with the other eARC I'm reading right ...

5⭐️ 2🌶 I finished my eARC of A Flickering Remnant by LJ Generous last night.  I stayed up too late reading it, but it was worth it.  I know I say this about a lot of the ARCs I read but I really really loved this one.  It was so different from everything else I read.  The world building is amazing.  The author creates a huge complex world with two realms and multiple regions effortlessly.  The contrast between, Oriana, the living realm above and Iswyn, the undead world below, is really unique.  Oriana is, by all accounts, modern with cell phones, cars and city scapes.  Iswyn is Gothic feeling because the curse has prevented technology from developing.  I talked a little about this book in my last post.  Eleni wakes from a traumatic birth experience with years of her memory just gone.  She has only her best friend as a support structure.  Eleni struggles raising her daughter alone.  She's desperate to find answ...

       February was a good reading month for me.  I enjoyed the majority of what I read.  Only one book wasn't a 5 star for me.  The last two "books" listed in the graphic above were prequel novellas.  Veil of Web and Ruin was 99 pages, Gold Glows the Spark was only 25 pages so it was more of a bonus chapter or teaser for the book.  Both were good introductions to their respective worlds.  Veil actually had some substance and set the stage for what it had been like for Rose in the slums.  It also pulled more insight into why Rose is so protective of her sister.  I wish I would have read both of these before the books they pertain to.        I ended up reading Bright Burns the Flame and listening to Web of Vows and Vengeance concurrently.  WoVaV was my first audio book and it was absolutely fire.  I'm looking into apps so I can listen to more.  I had a knitting project commissioned so I was abl...