Tag Archives: Romance

Book Review: Alex, Approximately

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alex approximatelyAlex, Approximately
by Jenn Bennett
Young Adult Romance
388 pages
Published 2017

This was a super-cute Young Adult Romance. I actually read it for free off RivetedLit – it’s free to read there through the end of July. I really enjoyed the change in formatting for the online conversations between Mink and Alex, and the explanation for why Bailey hadn’t shared any identifying information online at all. That was pretty well done.

The book is a Young Adult take on the enemies-to-lovers trope, but it mostly avoided the “he picks on you because he likes you” line. The initial conflict between our two characters is really just due to misunderstandings, and the boy quickly apologizes. (With cookies!) I really enjoyed both of these characters, and I was definitely cheering for them as they revealed more of their histories and insecurities to each other.

rock fish

The Natural History Museum had a whole display of fish carved out of neat rocks!

I REALLY enjoyed their date to Monterey, California – they visited the Natural History Museum and the aquarium, both of which I have been to personally! I lived in Monterey many years ago, so it was neat to see them in a place I have personal memories of.

Overall, I thought this was an excellent young adult romance. There was some mention of sex, but nothing too graphic. I loved the setting; it brought me back to the Pacific Ocean, even if it was California beaches instead of the cold, rocky Pacific Northwest.

From the cover of Alex, Approximately:

The one guy Bailey Rydell can’t stand is actually the boy of her dreams—she just doesn’t know it yet.

Classic movie fan Bailey “Mink” Rydell has spent months crushing on a witty film geek she only knows online as Alex. Two coasts separate the teens until Bailey moves in with her dad, who lives in the same California surfing town as her online crush.

Faced with doubts (what if he’s a creep in real life—or worse?), Bailey doesn’t tell Alex she’s moved to his hometown. Or that she’s landed a job at the local tourist-trap museum. Or that she’s being heckled daily by the irritatingly hot museum security guard, Porter Roth—a.k.a. her new archnemesis. But life is a whole lot messier than the movies, especially when Bailey discovers that tricky fine line between hate, love, and whatever it is she’s starting to feel for Porter.

And as the summer months go by, Bailey must choose whether to cling to a dreamy online fantasy in Alex or take a risk on an imperfect reality with Porter. The choice is both simpler and more complicated than she realizes, because Porter Roth is hiding a secret of his own: Porter is Alex…Approximately.

Book Review: Autoboyography

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autoboyographyAutoboyography
by Christina Lauren
YA LGBT Romance
416 pages
Published 2017

This book was EXCELLENT. I read this last minute, because the author tweeted that it was free to read on an online platform through the end of the month. It is absolutely adorable.

Autoboyography is the the story of Sebastian and Tanner falling in love, told mostly from Tanner’s point of view. He meets Sebastian in a class at school about writing a book, and the book we’re reading is supposedly the result. Tanner is a half-Jewish, bisexual kid moved from California to Utah, because his mother got a job offer she couldn’t refuse. He is surrounded by Mormons, whose religion doesn’t allow homosexuality. And Sebastian is Mormon.

The book unpacks so much, from stereotypes of bisexuality (and I LOVED the recognition that there are bisexuals who won’t be satisfied with one gender, and bisexuals who will, it’s an individual thing just like sexuality) to religious upbringing and the constraints that brings when someone is different, to unrequited love from a best friend, to how you can inadvertently let your other relationships suffer when falling in love.

The adorably sweet romance was a wonderful escape from current events, even with the hostility aimed at LGBT people by some of the characters. It was wonderfully done; enough to affect the characters and the plot, but not enough to spoil the uplifting, otherwise sweet nature of the novel.

I was slightly disturbed by an incident between Tanner and his best friend, Autumn. While they both seemed to take it in stride and move past it, it was a pretty shitty move on Autumn’s part, and could easily have gone very, VERY badly.

I really, really loved this book, and it’s going on my Favorites of 2018 list. I might need to buy my own copy. This is my last post for Pride Month, though definitely not my last book featuring LGBT characters! You can find all my Pride Month reads here.

From the cover of Autoboyography:

Three years ago, Tanner Scott’s family relocated from California to Utah, a move that nudged the bisexual teen temporarily back into the closet. Now, with one semester of high school to go, and no obstacles between him and out-of-state college freedom, Tanner plans to coast through his remaining classes and clear out of Utah.

But when his best friend Autumn dares him to take Provo High’s prestigious Seminar—where honor roll students diligently toil to draft a book in a semester—Tanner can’t resist going against his better judgment and having a go, if only to prove to Autumn how silly the whole thing is. Writing a book in four months sounds simple. Four months is an eternity.

It turns out, Tanner is only partly right: four months is a long time. After all, it takes only one second for him to notice Sebastian Brother, the Mormon prodigy who sold his own Seminar novel the year before and who now mentors the class. And it takes less than a month for Tanner to fall completely in love with him.

Book Review: Bizarre Romance

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bizarre romanceBizarre Romance
by Audrey Niffenegger and Eddie Campbell
Surreal short stories/comics
155 pages
Published March 2018

This was a wonderfully surreal collection of short stories and comics in various styles. All of the stories revolve around relationships, though not all are of the romantic kind. Audrey Niffenegger is the author of The Time Traveler’s Wife, which I read several years ago and really enjoyed. After reading the descriptions of her other books, and how much I enjoyed this one, I need to read those, too!

Bizarre Romance is hard to review partly because it is so weird. There are thirteen stories here – 7 comics and 6 short prose stories. Even the prose stories have illustrations scattered throughout them, mostly in slightly sketch-like style which lends itself well to the surreal nature of the subjects. I think my favorite is the guy who makes his fiance agree to leave him in the house alone, every Thursday night from 6pm to 8pm, before he’ll marry her. She’s okay with this at first, but eventually hires private investigators to find out what he’s doing on Thursday nights because she can’t stand not knowing. I won’t spoil the surprise, but I loved it. I also enjoyed “The Composite Boyfriend” which is written about a woman’s exes as if they were all the same person.

“I met him at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, where he worked as a guard. I met him in a class I was taking. I met him at a school where we both taught. I met him at a party; we smiled at each other across a crowded room. We were introduced to each other by our mutual friend Paula, an Austrian immigrant who had escaped from the Nazis as a young girl.”

This is a really neat, beautiful little collection that explores different relationships, from father-daughter, to spouses, to exes, to female friendships. It’s a quick read, and I really enjoyed it.

From the cover of Bizarre Romance:

Once upon a time, a writer and an artist got married. “Let’s collaborate,” said the writer. “Ugh, no thanks, darling,” said the artist. But lo and behold, they collaborated and here is the result: thirteen stories about oddballs in love, infestations of angels, nefarious fairies, cats, spies, monsters, more cats, bibliophiles who just want a little extra reading time, magic mirrors, artists’ models who nap on the job, imperfect boyfriends, and daughters who are perhaps a little too dutiful. 

Book Review: When Katie Met Cassidy

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when katie met cassidyWhen Katie Met Cassidy
by Camille Perri
Contemporary Romance
262 pages
Releases June 19, 2018

This was one of my Book of the Month picks this month, so I got it a little early. It’s a very quick read, and a sweet story. Basically, it’s lesbian romance fluff. We need more fluff with non-heterosexual romances, so this is great stuff!

The book touches on gender issues – Cassidy is a woman, and seems happy to be so, but abhors feminine clothing and instead dresses solely in men’s suits. (The scene with her fabulously gay tailor was an absolute delight!) She flashes back a little onto her childhood when she wasn’t allowed to wear the clothing she felt best in. She also has a few conversations with Katie about gender roles. Katie is much more traditionally feminine, wearing dresses and heels and long hair.

I’m a little torn on whether I dislike the use of the trope “straight woman turned gay after breakup” or like the point that Katie isn’t sure she likes women, but she knows she likes Cassidy. Cassidy’s gender is secondary to her personality. And it’s not like Katie decided to go hit on women after her fiance cheated on her; she got practically dragged to the lesbian bar by Cassidy, who saw how much she was hurting and decided to help her.

I enjoyed seeing that Cassidy has casual sex partners, many of them former sex partners, who are still good friends with her. Granted, she has lots of one-night stands who are upset with her since she’s quite the player, but there are several women who she’s been involved with before the book opens, who are close friends of hers and care about her future. I wish we saw more relationships like this in heterosexual romantic fiction instead of only in GLBT fiction! These kinds of relationships do exist in heterosexual groups, but it seems like romantic fiction is always divided between “heterosexual monogamy” and “everything else.” I did read an exception in Next Year, For Sure, but I greatly disliked the ending.

I really loved this book. It was sweet, and light-hearted, and a pleasant breath of fresh air from a lot of what I’ve been reading recently!

You can find a list of all of my Pride Month reads here.

From the cover of When Katie Met Cassidy:

When it comes to Cassidy, Katie can’t think straight.

Katie Daniels, a twenty-eight-year-old Kentucky transplant with a strong set of traditional values, has just been dumped by her fiance when she finds herself seated across a negotiating table from native New Yorker Cassidy Price, a sexy, self-assured woman wearing a man’s suit. While at first Katie doesn’t know what to think, a chance meeting on a West Village street later that night leads them both to the Metropolis, a dimly lit lesbian dive bar that serves as Cassidy’s second home.

The night offers straightlaced Katie a glimpse into a wild yet fiercely tight-knit community, one in which barrooms may as well be bedrooms, and loyal friends fill in the spaces absent families leave behind. And in Katie, Cassidy finds a chance to open her heart in new ways. Soon their undeniable connection will bring into question everything each of them thought they knew about sex and love.

From the acclaimed author of The Assistants comes another gutsy book about the importance of women taking the reins – this time, when it comes to love, sex, and self-acceptance. Written with Camille Perri’s signature wry writ and charm, When Katie Met Cassidy is a fun, fast-paced romantic comedy about gender and sexuality, and the importance of figuring out who we are in order to go after what we truly want.

Book Review: The Kiss Quotient

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kiss quotientThe Kiss Quotient
by Helen Hoang
Contemporary Romance
317 pages
Published June 2018

This was one of three books I got through Book of the Month this month – the other two were The Book of Essie and When Katie Met Cassidy. I’m reviewing this today instead of another Pride Month read because today is Autistic Pride Day! The Kiss Quotient both stars and is written by a woman on the autistic spectrum, so I thought today would be a fitting day to tell you about it!

So The Kiss Quotient is basically a gender-swapped Pretty Woman, as Hoang mentions in the Author’s Note. Our heroine, Stella Lane, books an escort to teach her about sex. Stella is thirty years old, has only had sex a couple of times, never enjoyed it, and is worried about not being good at it and therefore not being able to get or keep a boyfriend. She’s an incredibly successful econometrician, or someone who uses data and statistics to model and predict economic trends, in her case predicting what people will want to buy from clients. (She’s the kind of person responsible for those “Amazon started marketing baby products to me before I even knew I was pregnant!” incidents.) So she has more money than she knows what to do with, and offers Michael, an escort, $50,000 a month to teach her about sex and relationships.

Because this is a romance, we know what’s going to happen here. They fall in love with each other, but are sure that for the other one it’s just a business arrangement.

I was NOT expecting this book to be as explicit as it is! I think because it is a Book of the Month, I wasn’t expecting the standard trope of romance book with hot sex scenes. But that’s what I got! I can’t say I’m unhappy with that – god knows I like my guilty pleasure romance smut – but it was definitely unexpected. I’m not sure why it surprised me. The book’s premise is all about Stella wanting to learn about sex; if that wasn’t conducted on screen we’d lose a third of the book!

A sequel has already been announced, and it’s about the other autistic character in the book, the hero’s best friend’s little brother, Khai, who we only see in one scene. Who I’d also like to know more about is the best friend, Quan! So I’m holding out hope for a third book. (Update: a third book is on Goodreads, but without a title or synopsis. Hopefully it’s Quan! I have read and reviewed Khai’s book, The Bride Test.)

One last thing that I found important – in the Author’s Note, Hoang mentions her daughter was diagnosed with AS, and in reading about Autism, she realized she is also on the spectrum. This is something I’ve seen in three different books now. It’s so common for women, especially, to go undiagnosed. They might be better at modelling allistic (non-autistic) behavior, or their special interests might be more “acceptable” to allistics, or sometimes they just get looked at as introverts when they’re young instead of getting the help they might need. This is starting to change, as researchers and doctors are realizing Autism presents differently in women. But it seems autistic adult women are often discovering they’re autistic through a diagnosis of their children. I found that interesting.

I did really enjoy this book. I think it’s a great debut novel, and a great romance. I really like the recent trend of more diversity in lead characters in romance novels. Bring on the people of color! More disabled main characters! There’s got to be a romance somewhere with a deaf heroine, right? (Update 2: This is Kind of An Epic Love Story has a deaf hero.) More alternative sexualities and relationship structures! Everyone, everywhere, wants to be loved, and I want to read about it. The thing is, I’m sure these books exist, but they don’t get the kind of publicity they need for people to know about them. We have to actually go looking for them. I feel like I’ve been better about that recently, but it’s definitely a place where the publication industry could improve.

You can find my full list of Autism books, most of them by Autistic authors, here.

From the cover of The Kiss Quotient:

Stella Lane comes up with algorithms to predict customer purchases – a job that has given her more money than she knows what to do with, and way less experience in the dating department than the average thirty-year-old.

It doesn’t help that Stella has Asperger’s or that French kissing reminds her of a shark getting its teeth cleaned by pilot fish. Her conclusion: she needs lots of practice – with a professional – which is why she hires escort Michael Phan. With the looks of a K-drama star and the martial arts moves to match, the Vietnamese-Swedish stunner can’t afford to turn down Stella’s offer. And when she comes up with a lesson plan, he proves willing to help her check off all the boxes – from foreplay to more-than-missionary position.

Before long, Stella not only learns to appreciate his kisses, but to crave all of the other things he’s making her feel. Their no-nonsense partnership starts making a strange kind of sense. And the pattern that emerges will convince Stella that love is the best kind of logic…

Book Review: More or Less a Marchioness

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marchionessMore or Less a Marchioness
Anna Bradley
Romance
330 pages
Coming out February 2018

So I didn’t actually realize this was an ARC when I read it – I won it for free through Goodreads giveaways, and it auto-downloaded to my Kindle. The Release Date appears to be February 6th.

I do like my fluff Regency romances once in a while, and this fit the bill perfectly. Ladies of the ton, rakes, respectable bachelors, scandal, beautiful dresses and piano recitals and magnificent horses being ridden in the park – these are the things I enjoy in my romances. And More or Less a Marchioness totally delivered. It appears it’s the first in a series, set in a world she’s already written several books in, so I’ll probably look up the rest of the series next time I want some fluff again. This is the first in the “Somerset Sisters” set, and I am eager to read what happens to some of the side characters. (Also something I love in my romances – branching sub plots that obviously have their own books.)

If you like your Victorian ladies with hidden spines of steel, and reformed rakes, and titles and potential scandals and fortunes teetering on the edge of marriages, this is a great book for you. There was also just a hint of kink in this book, which is unusual and turned out pretty awesomely.

From the cover of More or Less a Marchioness:

The Somerset sisters, three beautiful, headstrong debutantes in Regency London, are discovering that a bit of scandal is a delightful thing . . .
 
For the sake of propriety, and her younger sisters’ reputations, Iris Somerset has kept her rebellious streak locked away. But though she receives a proposal from Phineas Knight, Lord of Huntington, Iris can’t marry a man she knows isn’t truly enamored with her. In fact, Iris no longer wants to be chosen—she wants to choose. Under the clandestine tutelage of “wicked widow” Lady Annabel Tallant, she’ll learn how to steer her own marriage prospects—and discover her secret appetites . . .
 
What kind of debutante refuses a marquess? Finn is surprised, a little chastened—and thoroughly intrigued. This new, independent version of Iris is far more alluring than the polished socialite she used to be. Finn believed he needed a safe, quiet wife to curb his wilder impulses. But the more Iris surprises him, the more impossible it becomes to resist their deepest desires . . .