Knitting, Sci-fi and other stuff...

6⭐️1🌶 I finished Ballad for the Broken last evening and needed a good night's rest to collect my thoughts on this one.  It was amazing, no question about it.  It sent me through an emotional roller coaster.  The MMC and the FMC Draven and Lyra are both complex well thought out characters.  They share similar trauma and worked through it together in book 1.  This book starts out with them separated.  Lyra was taken by *redacted* who on the surface seems like a bad guy.  Well, he is fighting his own demons and after Lyra spends a lot of time with him, she comes to understand him at least a little bit better.  Slight spoiler ahead.  Lyra and Draven are reunited, a group of them from Bethara are actually, and its looking really great at least for a little bit.  I know how these things go and I knew it wouldn't last.  I seriously contemplated stopping at the 85% mark because the band was back together and everyone had time t...

6⭐️.5🌶 I have a headache as I write this because I sobbed through the last 100 pages of this book.  That is a high compliment in my world.  I received the ARC of the sequel to this book.  When I applied for that ARC I didn't know it was book 2 in a series.  I was mildly miffed that the application didn't mention that anywhere especially since book 1 is over 500 pages and book 2 is close to 800.  I take all that back, or at least half of it.  Fallen Stars was absolutely amazing and I loved it.  As long as the next book is this good or close, I'll love that one too.   There is found family, banter for days and days and a slow burn with yearning.  There is also a magic academy and trials which can be hit or miss for me, this one was a hit.  They were done really well.  The background of both the FMC, Lyra, and the MMC, Draven, is dark, deep and sad.  Both the backstories are revealed slowly, methodically over the...

5⭐️3🌶 I finished the ARC of Accidentally in Motion yesterday.  This one was amazing!  I think it's my favorite of Aeva Vox's so far.  The premise was a little outlandish but the execution was excellent.  The FMC, Whitney, is living in a beautiful Victorian house owned by her uncle.  She will inherit this house under certain conditions.  The primary one being she needs to marry.  She's been against marriage for years because her parents went through a very volatile divorce when she was a child.  The book opens with Whitney and her friends in Vegas on a long awaited girls trip.  The MMC Josh is a tennis player.  They stumble upon eachother in the hotel lobby and hit it off right away.  Whitney's friends come up with the crazy plan of Whitney and Josh getting fake married to fulfill Uncle Peter's house contract so Whitney can keep her house.  It is Vegas after all.  Josh has connections because his own father is ...

4⭐️3🌶 I just finished an ARC of Hollow Huntress by Kathryn Breaux.  It was a solid "okayish" book.  I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it.  The writing was fine, the world building was very good, the found family and banter between the characters was very very good.  The spice was good and there was quite a bit of it, thank goodness, because that was the only thing that kept me going toward the end.  This becme a spite read for me.  The two main characters were not my cup of tea.  The FMC, Mara, is a destructive self-sabotaging idiot.  The MMC, Crew, was a winey little bitch-bag.  I was more emotionally invested in the side characters Bronwyn, Damien and Locke.  Maybe I was reading this one at the wrong point in my cycle but I wanted to reach through the pages and throttle both the main characters at several points in the book.  There is so much miscommunication in this one, and I absolutely hate miscommunication so it...

5⭐️2🌶 I decided to participate in Mer-May and picked a book off my TBR.  I'd been planning on reading this one for a while now so this was the perfect excuse to move it to the top.  Oh my goodness, this book was phenomenal, I absolutely loved it.  It's a Hades and Persephone retelling essentially.  It covers some very deep themes that are cut with humor and a sweet MMC.  The FMC, Cindi, escapes her abusive marriage by stabbing her husband in the neck.  She flees the US and makes it to China after stealing proprietary microchip information from her deceased husband.  His powerful rich crime family comes after her.  She keeps moving around and eventually winds up in Indonesia.  The MMC Ordus is a Kraken.  He's a mutant Kraken though who has alot of human features.  When I read the blurb for the book I assumed it was going to be fantasy, but it ended up being contemporary or urban fiction taking place in present day. ...

5⭐️4🌶 Sometimes you just need a spicy fast paced reverse harem book with no annoying tropes and a low stakes plot.  This book was perfect.  I was in the mood for some well written spice with a decently believable reason three men would want to share one woman.  When Summer learns her ex-boyfriend Aiden is back in town three years after they mutually called it quits she asks him to come over.  He does and he floats a very unconventional proposal by her.  They both regret breaking it off.  Aiden and his two business partners are super busy jet setting successful people.  The three of them realized they don't have time to devote to three women individually but they would have enough time for one if they shared her.  It would take finding the right open minded woman who could work remotely so she could travel with them.  Aiden immediately thinks of Summer.  One of Aiden's business partners is Ryker, his best friend, who also alw...