firewhiskeyreader

Note: I have decided to migrate my blog from Wix to WordPress, but because I am technically challenged, I’m only transferring posts from May 2019 over here and maybe later I’ll figure out the rest of it, but for now… Here we are.

Eventually I will reach an equilibrium with my job and be able to post more than a couple times a month, probably. Unfortunately, that may not be happening yet. Regardless, let’s get to the books I’ve read so far this month! 

1.   Storm of Locusts   by Rebecca Roanhorse  (Audio)

First of all, I loved this book. Secondly, OH MY GOD, WHY IS BOOK THREE SO FAR AWAY? Seriously though, I really enjoyed this book. It expanded the world a bit, but was still tight and well woven. I think Rebecca Roanhorse should give a masterclass in how to write a short, but amazing fantasy story because so many people write TOMES. This series has so far been short, but utterly delightful and not really missing anything. As a primarily romance reader, I am, of course, always happy for there to be additional romance scenes, but genuinely, I didn’t think this book lacked anything. I loved it so much. And the GIRL GANG. Like, my babes. I loved it. 

2.   The Swedish Prince   by Karina Halle (Kindle)

I got this random urge to read some books by authors I heard about because of YouTube and wanted to see if I liked them as much as the people I watch on YouTube. Well… I’m going to be honest,The Swedish Prince was fine, but like, at least 100 pages too long. It’s about a woman whose parents are murdered so she becomes the legal guardian of her younger siblings and has to drop out of college. She falls for the Crown Prince of Sweden when he randomly appears in her small California town pretending to be someone he’s not while he’s on a trip trying to pull himself back together after his grief from the death of his brother by suicide. In general, the book is good, but I think it suffers from trying to do too much and not managing to totally keep all of the plates afloat. That said, I did really like one of the side characters, Magnus (I think), and do kind of want to read his book. So we’ll see. 

3.   Make Me Bad   by R.S. Gray  (Kindle) 

In contrast to the above, where I was pretty neutral about my reading experience, I absolutely ADORED Make Me Bad. I don’t think it’s perfect, but the romantic comedy had me laughing hysterically and I definitely enjoyed my time reading it. I think it maybe tips over the line a couple times of making fun of the heroine a little, but for the most part I enjoyed it so much. Essentially, Madison just turned 25 (I think) and her life is very boring (same, girl) so when she gets held up at gunpoint and then rescued by a judge’s son whom her dad (the Chief of Police) hates, she thinks this excitement isn’t quite what she wished for. Except Ben has to complete 100 hours of community service for a misdemeanor simple assault charge (which is high key unlikely to happen as a sentence, but whatever) and he serves those hours at her library. I really enjoyed my time reading this book even though it involved suspending like reality for half the book and I didn’t like how overbearing Madison’s brother and dad were, but setting those aside, it definitely had me laughing a lot so I appreciated that. I’ll probably read more from this author in the future so if you have any recommendations, let me know! 

4.  Tangle of Need   by Nalini Singh  (Audio) 

I read this book for the first time last year when I read the series for the first time and had this hilarious idea that I didn’t love this book, but y’all, I LOVED this book. Adria and Riaz really, really don’t like each other because they’re both in a weird place relationship wise and the attraction they feel for one another is unacceptable to them. Specifically, Adria is fresh off her break up that made her question a lot of things and Riaz can’t have his mate because she’s happily married to another human. This book gets criticized for a few different reasons including that we get less page time dedicated to Adria and Riaz that we normally do because there’s a lot of plot stuff happening in this book, but those plot things?? I was all in. And we get like an extended Kiss of Snow epilogue essentially so I was thrilled by absolutely everything happening. I kept squealing and smiling so big. I just love this series so much. 

5.  Heart of Obsidian    by Nalini Singh  (Audio) 

Lol, speaking of books I didn’t think I liked… I really thought I disliked this book. Like, actively. HOW. I still don’t think Kaleb is one of my favorite heroes by any stretch of the imagination, but like… Yeah. I loved this book this go around. I just think Sahara and the world and just… I don’t want to spoil anything, which is a struggle here. But also, Kaleb + his friends?? MY WHOLE HEART, Y’ALL. And The Arrows??? I love them. I was so excited to launch into Shield of Winter after this one. But yeah, the moral of the story is, I’m a liar and this morality chain romance absolutely worked for me. 

  6.  Shield of Winter   by Nalini Singh  (Audio)

I should probably mention that I went to a training last week that was about five hours away, which meant I had plenty of audio time. Plus, traffic in the Triangle is, um, obnoxious so every time I went anywhere, I had more time than I should have. Which is why I managed to read so many Psy-Changeling books. Anyway, Shield of Winter brings us to the Arrows in truth and I love them so much. Vassic and Ivy were a couple I remembered pretty neutrally, but wow, my love for this book is so great! I can’t believe it faded into the background in my memory. Anyway, Vassic is my precious baby and his and Aiden’s friendship is everything and also that once scene with Vassic and Judd? Like, murder me. Omg. So good!  

7.   American Fairytale   by Adriana Herrera 

Herrera is so brilliant at developing characters and a community that makes you want to sink into her books so you can spend time with these characters who feel so real. I loved seeing Nesto and Jude from American Dreamer (and Patrice and JP), but I also loved getting to meet new characters, from Tom’s friends to Milo’s coworkers at the domestic violence agency. The romance in American Fairytale lives us to the title in many ways, but I love how both Tom and Milo have their flaws and those things that hold them back from one another. That said, I did feel like for the most part it was Milo taking issue with something that Tom did, which makes it seem like Milo was perfect. I feel like that’s not normally something I notice, but because the conflict(s) that arose were similar, it was very apparent. I, personally, think I would have preferred the final conflict to have been handled differently, but for the most part, I thought the book was incredible. This book releases on May 20, 2019. 

CW: depression

8.   Managed   by Kristen Callihan

I just love Callihan’s writing, apparently. It’s making me think I really need to give her historical steampunk series another try. Managed is book two in her VIP series about a rock band called Kill John. This particular installment features the manager of the band Gabriel Scott or “Scottie” who sits next to a stranger on the plane from NYC to England who distracts him from his fear of flying. Her name is Sophie and she winds up being the new social media manager for the band and resisting her is not something Gabriel seems capable of, though he does his best. I really, really adored this book, but I really didn’t like the conflict that was thrown in at the end. Aside from that though, I loved this book a whole lot and definitely recommend the series. 

CW: discussion of a friend’s suicide attempt

9.   Shards of Hope   by Nalini Singh 

In case you missed that I’m madly in love with this series… Anyway, this book is about Aiden, the leader of the Arrow squad, and Zaira, my little precious bean who thinks she’s entirely too damaged to be any good to Aiden or the Squad but is actually a perfect human I would die for. My precious children have been kidnapped at the beginning of this book and I absolutely adored how the isolation plot worked. I love the expansion of the world, I love getting to know the Arrows more, I love LITERALLY everything about this book. 

10.   Fall     by Kristen Callihan 

I kept going with the VIP series, which was honestly impressive because I’m not always good at continuing series right away. But I’m trying to turn over a new leaf. So we’ll see how that goes. Anyway, this book features John/Jax, the lead singer of Kill John and also the one who attempted suicide a few years ago and caused the band to take a break. He’s managing his depression now, but he still has good days and bad days. The book opens with the cutest meet cute possibly ever, which I don’t want to spoil, but I really loved Stella also. There are things about this book that weren’t quite perfect, but mostly I really adored it. I thought the mental health rep was really great and I know Callihan did a lot of research on depression/suicide before writing. I also loved that Killian and John had this conversation at the end about how Killian reacted to John’s attempt and how it wasn’t an okay reaction. I think so many people struggle with watching those they love go through depression and especially suicide attempts and it was great to see that. I feel like that’s maybe a YMMV section though about how much it speaks to you. 

I am absolutely adoring my Psy-Changeling re-read and would like to take this time to brag that I got Dani from Dani’s Bookshelf to read these! Excitingly, she loved them and has this great post with a wrap up about her thoughts on the series overall.  I would definitely recommend you check it out! Also, since I finally got around to re-reading Shards of Hope, I’d like to take this moment to plug Aarya’s fantastic post on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books about some of Nalini’s often maligned female characters. My friends are seriously impressive.

Aside from my re-reads, I really loved Storm of Locusts this month and am already so impatient for the next book in the series, which will not be out for AGES from the sounds of it. What’s been your favorite read of the month so far? 

xx