Knitting, Sci-fi and other stuff...

5⭐️1🌶 I finished my ARC of The Last Fury by Talina Arden.  It was phenomenal.  It's a little hard to describe as its a dark dystopian urban fantasy romance.  It had traditional fantasy creature elements like Fae, Vampires, Warewolves, Witches and Demons.  It was also set in a near future dystopian city with modern technology and terminology.  It seems as though the magical world pushed its way into "ours" at some point and although humans are aware of the magic most of them try to avoid it.  Magic weilding folk also keep to their own parts of the city as do the humans.  The FMC is an EMT who works graveyard shift and has done so for the last eight years.  Sera has been feeling a power growing for the last few months.  When the book opens she has just utilized her power for the first time.  She has no idea what it nor how she's done it.  Her and her shad partner take another call.  In this alleyway while attending a...

5⭐️1🌶 Ooof and wow, this ARC of An Ember in the Dawn of Night by Emery Fynn broke me.  It was so good.  This post is going to have some mild spoilers because there's no other way to talk about just how clever Fynn's writing is.  This book tosses the reader right into the action unapologetically, there's no prologue, just bang, chapter one.  And right within those first couple of chapters the FMC is following a tip to a home where a family resides.  She proceeds to slaughter said family, then goes gets cleaned up, stops at her best friends house where they bone, so she can get out of her head.  Then she travels back to her own place.  There is very little world building or exposition, we're just along for the ride.  She mentions names of towns, districts, canal ways with no explanation you just have to guess or look at the map at the beginning.  I loved this.  It was refreshing and its disorienting.  I think its a plot d...

5⭐️2🌶 I finished my ARC of Twisted Roots and Soil by AJ Charley a couple days ago.  This one was so good.  I don't even know if I can describe it.  In this society women, especially women like the FMC Alyxia, are expected to marry and continue the sacred bloodline by the time they hit 30.  Aly's parents have a husband picked out for her already and he's a deuche.  Aly is a Foundation.  She is a member of one of the founding families of this realm and she has golden (literally) blood.  When they turn 20 these people go through a ritual to determine which branch of magic they will choose and at what strength it will be.  Aly was pressured by her parents to choose a certain branch, which wasn't the one she truly wanted and thus failed the ritual.  She has no magic and has been hiding that fact from everyone for the last 8 years.  Her sister Bri has fled the realm and wants to meet Aly to give her important information.  Al...

5⭐️1🌶 I quickly read a short monster romance to get bingo on my summer reading bingo board. I've been working on this bingo challenge all summer and needed a criptid romance to finish it up.  Bingo was hosted by Aeva Vox and since I'm on her street team I felt like I really needed to finish this up.  It was fun though and I was surprised I was able to fill in most of it with the ARCs I was reading anyway. Mingling with Mothman by Eden Crowe was adorable.  I love that monster romance has so many cozy cute wholesome romances with great messages.  This was was a perfect quick read with cute spice and some really deep messaging mixed in.  I highly enjoyed the banter and the FMC, Ava's wit and tenacity.  Clay, the MMC was patient, quiet but ingenuitve and extremely caring.  It was just a sweet story.  It was the third set in this small monster haven of Mistwood.  I'm tempted to read the other two.  Ava moved away from...

5⭐️1🌶 I finished my ARC of Facade by Ilissa Busbee yesterday evening.  This was super fun, atmospheric and a twisty turney adventure of deceit.  I'll try to keep the spoilers to a minimum but its hard to describe this one without divulging some info.  The FMC, Evanee has no memories prior to the last three years.  She's a human serving the Fae Queen at the queen's castle Aurelia.  The Fae King is known to be cruel and once the queen produced him an heir she went to live in her own castle away from him.  Evanee is a bit of an outcast, she keeps to herself and tries not to associate much with any of the other human servants.  She's been bound to the grounds of the castle by the Fae Queen's witch Cressida.  One day the Fae King's Captain of the guard shows up.  Evanee is summoned to the inner portion of the castle and is told she'll be going with the captain and his men.  Cressida moves Evanee's bond from the castle grounds to ...

4.75⭐️3🌶 I finished the audio of Topping the Alpha yesterday.  It was good, a little out of my comfort zone, but still good.  Now I know I don't mind MM romances.  The narrator was Sean Crisden for this one and I really liked him.  It looks like this may be the only one he narrates though.  This one took me just a little bit to get into.  It jumps into the spice rather quickly and Jake is characterized a little differently in this book.  I felt he was being overly aggressive and a little pushy toward Nick.  Once I thought about it a little it made sense though.  In the other books we only see Jake's intereaction with female subs of his Dom teammates.  He was being about as aggressive as Ian was with Angie or Devon was with Kristen.  Once I wrapped my head around it a little I got into the book more.  I thought the spice was done well and I thought the suspense plotline was balanced well with the romance plot line....