Knitting, Sci-fi and other stuff...

5⭐️2🌶 I finished the ARC of Storied Fate by Aeva Vox a few days ago.  It is book four and the final book in the Bound Across Realms series.  It was a good book and a great conclusion to the series.  It was, however a little bittersweet for me as The Bound Across Realms series is how I found Aeva to begin with.  Sheltered Fate is what started me on her path and thats led to being on her street team and a friendship that's been so fun.  So this book:  it did a great job of telling Cambria and Agni's story while simultaneously wrapping up the series.  Agni is Draconian and has been in the human realm in his human form too long.  This leads to disease that can impact memory.  Agni crash lands in the forest near Cambria's apartment.  She had been tracking what she thought was a Draconian and went into the woods to track whatever it is down.  She finds Agni, bruised, disoriented in his Dragon form and very naked.  He shi...

6⭐️3🌶 I received the ARC of Vow and because pretty much the enture street team was diving into it, I decided to abandon all my other deadlines and dead it immediately as well.  I re-read Starfire's Heir first.  I had intended to just sort of skim through Heir but its such a good read I founf myself just rereading almost the whole thing.  This was so damn good!  Thus the six stars.  It got so much darker and so much more intense.  I was on the edge of my seat spiraling along side Lexa.  So much happens in this book, really none of which I can talk about without spoiling it.  Then ending was absolutely gutting.  I saw it coming and I still wasn't ready for it.  I'm now firmly in a book slump because this was a masterpiece and my heart was shredded.  I had already preordered this one and there are going to be special edition hardcovers and now I'm seriously thinking about getting those as well.  This series is one of ...

4.75⭐️1🌶 I severely fallen behind in my book posts, sorry.  Jinx by Juno Lark was good.  I enjoyed it.  Its book one of an urban fantasy shifter why choose romance series.  The shifters are gryphons, which was a first for me.  There is a pack dynamic with them, which I liked.  Each of the guys have a little bit different relationship with the FMC Cordelia.  Cordelia believes she is cursed.  At a young age her parents abandoned her and she was raised by her aunt.  After her aunt passes from cancer Cordie pickes up and moves to an upstate NY college town in an attempt to have a life.  It was her aunts dying wish for Cordie to live her dreams.  If Cordie touches the bare skin of another person, bad things happen to them, so she isolated herself with just her aunt for years.  She literally bumps into Bellamy, the first guy of this shifter brotherhood one day and a connection instantly formed between them.  There i...

5⭐️.5🌶 So remember I read Starshipped as an ARC and loved it?  As soon as I caught up with ARC reads I jumped back to these and read books one and two in the It's Definitely Not Aliens trilogy.  They were both excellent.  Book one Stardusted sets everything up; introduces Sky, Raven, and Amelia.  It sets up the Enil, which are the robot creatures and the halix, which is the Pladian info cache that Raven accidentally downloads into her brain.  Can you say Jack O'Neill much?  Book one also highlights the pull between Sky and Rae.  Even after she discovers Sky is an alien, there is no denying she's still crushing on him.  There is some very hot steam in the first book, but we don't get past making out (in the stairwell) til book two.  Stardusted was a great first book. 5⭐️2🌶 Starfalling was also phenomenal.  Sky and Raven are on the run from the Enil and License 16, the secret government agency.  (Think Men in...

4⭐️4🌶 This one was trippy, if I'm honest.  But the more I've sat with it the more I'm liking it and I wish I would have given it another half star.  Alot happens in this book and the last third of it went a direction I wasn't expecting to it's taken me a little to wrap my head around everything.  But overall its a great book.  It's probably not going to be for everyone with the amount of spice and the nature of the spice that's in it.  Storm is the FMC in the book.  She is 18 when the book starts and is a lightning farmer.  There are strict class designations and this is mostly a dystopian world.  She and her family sit very low on the totem pole.  She grows up with her mother and older brother telling her stories of the fae realm.  In the fae realm everyone is equal and its a utopia.  Right after she turns 19 she and her brother go into town on market day.  She is flagged for a physical and is told to report to th...

6⭐️2🌶 I've gotten exceedingly behind in my blog posting.  I had to rapid fire read several of these books to make the publication deadline so everything else went by the wayside.  Smoke, Mirrors and Misdemeanors was exceptional though and a cozy joy to read.  The MMC, Ark, is a total green flag.  Reserved, quiet, private but fiercely loyal to the scant few people he's let into his inner circle over the years.  He falls first for the FMC and falls hard.  Cassia is a Kitchen Witch, which in this realm puts her pretty low on the totem pole.  She's also the mixed daughter of two orphans, so she doesn't have a family name with clout either to help her out.  She's the caretaker of an orphanage.  One that cares for mixed blood children.  It is the orphanage her parents called home and where they met.  Cassia is a baker and owns The Witching Flour.  The profits from the bakery are what keeps the orphanage afloat.  A d...

5⭐️2🌶 Starshipped is book 3 in the It's Definitely Not Aliens series.  I didn't have enough time to read books one and two prior but I was able to figure out what was going on well enough and I loved this book.  As soon as I get caught up with ARCs, which will be soon, I'm reading the other books.  This one was alien/human romance and it was great.  Sky is the alien, Raven is the human.  She's an anthropology student and winds up getting an ancient alien map downloaded to her brain.  Evil killer robot aliens are after her for the map.  Sky and his alien partner Bast are Pladians and are stranded on earth.  There's also a secret government agency after all of them.  Rae's best friend Amelia comes into play in this book.  She and Bast are like oil and water and their interactions are hilarious.  Sky and Rae have caught feelings for eachother and they're both trying to deny it because Sky and Bast will be leaving once they...

5⭐️🫑 I've gotten behind on my blog posting.  I had some looming ARC deadlines so I ploughed through three books in only a few days.  So first off, Fount and Fortune by Mickey Schoonover.  I received the ARC of the second book.  I read the prologue and about a page of the first chapter and decided I really needed to read book one to know what was going on.  I'm glad I did.  This duology is amazing.  It's an alternative history dystopian set in a Fascist Dictatorship in Florida.  A governor appointed by the Spanish government during colonization of Florida back in ~1516 stumbled on the fountain of youth.  He declared himself the Conquistador and kept control of the Fount.  He used the healing abilities of the water to become immortal basically.  Florida became the Empire Eternal and the book takes place more or less in present day 565 years later.  The FMC, Evangeline, is a farm worker who lives and works on the Conq...

5⭐️2🌶 I finished my ARC/ALC of Blood of Truth and Traitors by Aria Ashbrook a couple days ago.  They kill off one of my favorite side characters so it's taken me a couple days to wrap my head around the book.  It was phenomenal even though it was soul crushingly sad.  It picked up right where book two left off.  Rose and company discovered an Issen city in the mountains.  I don't want to get into it too much because of spoilers but the entire book takes place in and around this Issen city Isthyr.  Rose "travels" via her Raven sight abilities to check up on Kay, Jonas and William.  She's also able to see some other key pieces of events while in raven form.  She discovers a ton of information about her lineage, all key plot points and the gang find out there is a prophesy to boot, because of course there is and Rose is basically the chosen one.  She has to go through a trial of sorts in this book.  It is meant to teach somethi...

4.5⭐️2🌶 I finished my ARC of The Reaping Rose by Eva Simmons a couple days ago.  It was good.  My original plan was to reread the first book, The Hanging Heart before this one but I just don't have time.  I remembered virtually nothing from the first book, other than I enjoyed it.  This was a solid middle book in a trilogy.  It completed some plot arcs, then blew open a whole new can of worms.  An even badder bad guy, potentially, was revealed at the end of this book.  We got to see a good amount of Wilder and Elorie together, happy and having extremely hot nooky, which is always a treat IMO.  Several side characters got more characterization and two characters started their own love story.  At least I hope it ends up being a love story.  Once my plate isn't overflowing with arc obligations I plan to revisit these books and give them the attention they deserve.  The writing is great and the existential implications that...

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....

5⭐️4🌶 This book was amazing!  I finished my ARC of Sharing Silence by Kayla Kyng early this morning.  I absolutely loved it.  It's part of a series but can be read as a standalone.  I read it as such and had no problem understanding what was going on.  It has,  however, hooked me on this author and I want to read her entire backlog now.  The FMC, Silence is an ER nurse and has a sarcastic sense of humor.  She's married to one of the triplet brothers Zayden.  They got married in Vegas on some kind of whim, but it has worked out for them for the last nine years.  She's best friends with one of the other brothers Yale.  The third brother Xavier and she grate on eachother so they have banter filled exchanges.  Yale and Xavier live right next door and the three brothers have always stayed close to eachother.  Zayden and Silence have discussed becoming more adventurous with their sex lives.  They've talked abou...

5⭐️2🌶 I finished the audio of Not Negotiable by Samantha Cole a couple days ago.  This was a novella and takes place amongst the last bit of Waiting for Him and then goes beyond.  We get a snippet of Devon and Kristen's wedding and that where book four starts.  It was a great quick story of Shelby and Parker.  There is an interaction between Shelby and Parker's brother in Waiting for Him, this novella starts at that event and then jumps ahead a little bit.  It was sweet.  Parker is a very nice guy and Shelby has been around since book one, so it was really nice to see her get a HEA.  This book didn't have the dangerous suspense that the full length books have.  The tension in this one comes from a medical situation with Shelby.  I enjoyed it.  I'm now a little way into book four; Topping the Alpha which is about Jake and Nick.  Nick is Ian and Devon's younger brother who is still active duty on Navy Seal Team 3.  J...

4⭐️.5🌶 I finished my ARC of Umbra by Catalina Matei last evening.  It was okay.  It is being marketed as book one of a new series.  Now that I've read some other reviews, (I like to go in blind and don't read reviews prior to reading books usually.) This is more like book 4 in a series, which is why I felt so lost at first.  We as readers are dumped into the thick of it twelve months after a pivitol event happens.  Nearly the entire book is told in flash backs to catch us up to where we are.  There is a bunch of info dumping and so much internal monolog.  It wasn't difficult to follow necessarily but it was not a style of storytelling I'm used to that's for sure.  It was difficult to connect with the characters as their grief felt more like whining because we weren't given a chance to connect with them emotionally.  We were constantly being buffeted from the past back to the present.  The bulk of the story was depressing as ...

5⭐️4🌶 I finished listening to Waiting for Him by Samantha Cole.  I loved this one!  I thought the spice and thriller plot lines were much more balanced.  They were interwoven in this book and the switch back and forth was seamless and logical to the overall plot.  Kat quite literally comes back from the dead.  She and her family had been involved in a car accident 12 years prior to the beginning of the book.  Ben "Boomer" thought her entire family had died.  What in fact happened is her mother and brother had died in the accident, but she and her father had lived.  That accident was actually a hit by the Russian mob her father had gotten himself involved with.  Her and her father were put in witness protection and they had been living on the west coast under assumed names.  Kat's father had passed away a few months ago.  When her apartment was broken into and she thought she was being followed she turned to the only per...

5⭐️2🌶 I finished the ARC of Taken by the Tide by Invi Wright yesterday evening.  I loved it!  It was a quick read at just over 300 pages.  The FMC, Sadie is snarky and sarcastic and I love that her mind is firmly in the gutter.  The opening line of the book is dialog between Sadie and Kyros.  Its her asking him “Do you think mermen have dicks?"  If you read the blurb for the book, you know that Kyros is a merman so it makes that question even more funny in my opinion.  Kyros is very quiet and grumpy while in human form on the crabbing vessel that Sadie, Sadie's father and the one other deck hand Tipper, utilize.  After Kyros throws Sadie overboard, in an attempt to kill her during a storm, she doesn't drown.  Instead she starts breathing underwater water.  This means she's a hybrid and potentially very valuable to Kyros and his people.  He whisks her away to his pod and the story really commences from here.  Kyros ...

4.5⭐️3🌶 I finished His Angel by Samantha A Cole on my way into work.  The ending was quite sad so I'm a little depressed now.  I should say the very end was nice and sweet, it was the outcome of the spy/thriller subplot portion that was sad.  I enjoyed this audio book overall.  The narration was good.  It was a single male narrator this time and I thought he did a good job with the female voices.  These books have a BDSM romance plot then a spy/thriller subplot.  I thought this book kind of switched to the subplot more abruptly than the first book.  But it ramped up the danger the FMC Angie was in.  I enjoyed Ian's characterization.  He's not a cut and paste of his brother Devon from the first book.  I also liked that we got to know some of the other Tident team members a little more with this book, especially Jake.  I really like the dynamic set up for the series.  There are so many characters and interaction...

5⭐️1🌶 I finished the ARC of Of Bargains and Betrayal by Ashley Bresee last evening.  That ending, wow, I'm still processing it.  I'm hoping some of it is a misunderstanding, because if not, then one of my favorite side characters is a bad-guy.  This was a really fun book and I really really enjoyed it.  I will be getting a shelf trophy of this one; it instantly became a favorite.  Enora Wynn is the bastard daughter of a king.  She has, for the most part, been able to skate through life without the typical expectations of a princess.  She's in her 30s and is able to live her own life and keep her own friends.  But once her father passes away suddenly her crappy half-bother inherits the crown and promptly marries Enora off to the old king of the neighboring kingdom.  Enora and a party of Odessans depart for the long and arduous journey through the Wastes to Grimmoria.  She gets a little too sloshed one evening of the journey a...

4.75⭐️3🌶 I finished the audio of Leather and Lace by Samantha Cole on my way home from work last night.  I liked this one more than I thought I would.  It took a while for me to really get into it.  The subplot hooked me and now I'm tempted to read some more in this series.  This was quite spicy, which I enjoyed and it really dove into the BDSM lifestyle.  I found that part interesting, engaging and very spicy.  This wasn't a full 5 stars for me for two reasons.  Some word choices by the author really pulled me out fo the story.  I didn't think I had ick words, but when they're read aloud to me, apparently I do.  Reason two was that I didn't love the narration on this one.  The FMC Kristen is supposed to be 26 and the female narrator sounded much older, in her 40s maybe.  The male narrator didn't change his voice that much for the other male characters and he pronounced some words a little weirdly for my taste.  Ye...

5⭐️1🌶 I finished my ARC of A Beautifully Crafted Lie by Evelyn Ash early this morning.  It was really good.  It was atmospheric and mysterious.  It follows more traditional Irish folklore concerning seely and unseely fae.  The FMC Bryndis is a witch.  But being a witch will get you reaped by the fae.  She also has a voice in her head.  It takes the entire book to reveal what that voice really is.  The MMC, Odhran, is a bastard fae prince who is very complicated; very dark, brooding shaddow daddy.  Humans and fae shouldn't be together, fae feed off humans, so there is a forbidden element to their attraction.  This is a slow burn that goes off the rails in the last few chapters.  I'm still not sure I've fully grasped everything that happened at the end.  The world building was phenomenal.  There was a found family element and the tension is the slow burn was superb.  I loved the depth of the story and witho...

5⭐️1🌶 I finished City of Lost Kings by Kristen R. Moore a day or two ago.  This one came up in my Instagram feed because the artist who did images for this book also did some character art for LJ Generous.  I was immediately hooked by the vibe description of this and saved it to my kindle library immediately.  Once I finished Sapphire Sailor's Tale I decided there was enough of a time interval before my next ARC deadline that I could read a book of my choosing.  I thought about reading The Wildborn but that book is over 600 pages so I'll save it for a little later.  This book was very good and different.  I really liked it.  The vibe description that hooked me was Atlantis meets The Mummy meets Game of Thrones.  Now that I've read it, I'd throw Treasure Planet in there too.  It's got flying ships and some steam punk elements.  It was different while still being really well written fantasy romance.  Realistically there a...

5⭐️2🌶 Oops, it appears I've been slacking on my book blog posts.  I finished the audio of Long Time Coming by SL Scott a couple days ago.  I got this audio book in a promotion Bookfunnel ran a few months ago.  I just had to sign up for the author's newsletter to get a free audiobook.  There was a selection of 6 or 7 books.  I chose 4 I thought I'd like then kind of forgot about them.  I decided to monopolize my time and listen while commuting.  I had forgotten the premise of all the books so I picked at random.  This turned out to be a super cute book and I loved it!  The narration is duel for this one, which took a little for me to get used to as all two of the audiobooks I've listened to previously have been duet narration.  After a couple chapters though, it was fine,  my brain adapted.  Both the narrators were great.   So this was a small town, brother's best friend, childhood crush, single dad, cowbo...

5⭐️2🌶  I finished my ARC of Red Runs the Blood by Angelina J. Steffort last night.  It was so freaking good.  Better than the first book which I loved, but found to be a tad slow at the beginning.  This one picked up right where 1 left off and did not slow down at any point.  I sadly can't say too much about it because I'd be spoiling so much of it.  We do get a couple chapters from Elina's POV.  Elina is Khayrivven's sister who is being held by King Ulder as leverage over Khayrivven.  Khay let's Lory into his carefully crafted facade just a little bit more.  He reveals several more secrets to her.  Lory continues to hone her powers and gains better control over them.  There is an undertone in thus book, there is something rotten at Ashthorn Ward and people are starting to get a whiff of it.  The found family is as strong as ever in this one.  Some new alliances are formed and new allies brought into the fold....

5⭐️1🌶 I finished an ARC of Waterbound by Aeva Vox.  This was a quick fun read at only 235 pages.  It moved quickly, was well paced and had a good amount of action.  It did not feel rushed and had a good story arc.  I enjoyed it.  This is book two in the Fated Shores series and immediately follows the events of book 1, Wildbound.  This book follows Natalie and Vincent.  Vincent is the actor who was thrown out of Hollywood after a scandal and was working in the theater department at the college.  Natalie is a graduate student studying art history.  They hadn't interacted very much prior to the whale watch nor once they got to the island.  Whatever is in the water hits these two.  This time though Lex, Olivia, Ben and Cody know what's happening to them, just not how, so these two get a bit of an explanation.  Natalie wanders off toward the beach to clear her head.  She has a boyfriend and doesn't want to be drawn...

4⭐️ 1🌶 I finished The Sapphire Sailor's Tale by Julia Lovely last evening.  This was a solid debut novel.  I'm assuming this is a standalone; the story arc was completed.  It was short at just under 400 pages so it was a pretty quick read.  Cordelia the FMC is a junior officer in the Navy.  She is on her first tour aboard a ship.  She is running herself ragged doing her own job and going through all the training a new officer is required to take on as well.  When the ship enters the Bermuda triangle Cordelia starts feeling odd, like she's being pulled toward the ocean floor.  During the swim day Cordelia is pulled by that force down to the bottom of the ocean. She assumes she should be dead, but she wakes up in a completely different world.  She finds herself in a castle built into the walls of a cavern with lava streaming down the walls.  She steps out onto the balcony attached to her room and comes face to face with a fire...

5⭐️1🌶 I finished The Ties That Bind Us by Deidra Duncan at about 4:30 this morning.  It was amazing but if I'm honest, I feel scandalized by that ending.  I knew it was the first in a series; I think it's going to be a duology, so I figured it would end on a cliffhanger but holy Hannah, I was not expecting that.  The book is very heavy with fantasy lore, the magic system is also downright trippy.  It's essentially a portal fantasy.  David and Sean are raised in Viterra, the mortal realm, our realm.  They live in a tiny town in California.  But they are both important.  There is a prophesy, they are both components of this prophesy along with a couple other people.  It gets really complicated, really fast.  I will admit, this first bit of this book dragged a bit for me, but there was so much that needed to be established.  Sean and David get pulled into Luxoria separately but they both wind up there.  Sean is the pu...

5⭐️1🌶 I finished Scream for Me by Rabea Scholz. How do I begin to even describe this book?  It wasn't remotely what I thought it was going to be.  In no way is that a disparaging comment.  This was so much more than I ever could have possibly imagined.  This book dives deep, so incredibly deep, into human connection, vulnerability and true surrender.  I've had books pull at my heart strings; I've felt sympathy for characters.  I've even seen parts of myself in them.  I have never read a book that cracked me open and peered into my soul. Owen, the MMC, is emotionally closed off.  He's completely numb and is just floating through his life mearly existing.  He goes down a bit of an internet rabbit hole and finds The Grey Lady, who specializes in "therapeutic surrender."  Owen is rather intrigued and on an impulse fills out the contact info on the website.  He goes through the lengthy intake process and meets Claire Stirlin...