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Wednesday with rounding error Reading
Oct. 31st, 2019 07:04 pmRebekah Weatherspoon, Rafe: A Buff Male Nanny. An utterly delightful romance. The heroine is a cardiac surgeon and a single mother of twin girls; the hero is exactly what it says on the cover. They talk to each other! Like adults! They never go into stupid tizzies (or at least nothing lasting more than a few hours) because they talk to each other or to people in their support networks, and they work things out LIKE ADULTS. Did I mention they actually talk to each other? Also, the sex is hot, the supporting characters are fun, and the kids are believable to this parent of a similar-aged child. My only complaint is that it felt more like it stopped than ended, but I enjoyed the book as a whole enough that I could overlook that.
The next book in the series, Xeni, didn't feel like it held together quite as well, and I can't quite suspend my disbelief about the marriage-of-convenience trope (would that will clause even hold up in a court?) but it was still a very fun read. And again, a romance with characters who talk over their problems like adults!
Julie Anne Long, Lady Derring Takes a Lover. A Regency romance, in which a widow (the heroine) discovers that her husband left her nothing but a mountain of debt and a building on the docks of the Thames, meets up with her husband's mistress who's in even more dire straits, and sets up a boardinghouse in the building. Meanwhile, a blockade captain (the hero) is investigating a dangerous smuggling ring that the widow's husband was involved with, leading him to the boardinghouse. Stuff ensues. While I liked the hero fine and bought the relationship, the parts that most interested me was the prickly friendship between the widow and the mistress (I would read the AU fanfic where the widow and mistress become a couple themselves) and the found family they were creating in the boardinghouse.
Jeff Smith, Bone. I read this a few years back when I gave the series to one of my kids; we're now rereading it sort of in tandem. It's a fun fantasy story with lots of interesting characters, and it's been long enough that my memory of the details is fuzzy, so I'm enjoying the reread. Also, Grandma Ben rules.
Currently in progress: Jeff Smith, The Great Cow Race (Bone Vol. 2) and L.A. Hall, Favours Exchanged.
The next book in the series, Xeni, didn't feel like it held together quite as well, and I can't quite suspend my disbelief about the marriage-of-convenience trope (would that will clause even hold up in a court?) but it was still a very fun read. And again, a romance with characters who talk over their problems like adults!
Julie Anne Long, Lady Derring Takes a Lover. A Regency romance, in which a widow (the heroine) discovers that her husband left her nothing but a mountain of debt and a building on the docks of the Thames, meets up with her husband's mistress who's in even more dire straits, and sets up a boardinghouse in the building. Meanwhile, a blockade captain (the hero) is investigating a dangerous smuggling ring that the widow's husband was involved with, leading him to the boardinghouse. Stuff ensues. While I liked the hero fine and bought the relationship, the parts that most interested me was the prickly friendship between the widow and the mistress (I would read the AU fanfic where the widow and mistress become a couple themselves) and the found family they were creating in the boardinghouse.
Jeff Smith, Bone. I read this a few years back when I gave the series to one of my kids; we're now rereading it sort of in tandem. It's a fun fantasy story with lots of interesting characters, and it's been long enough that my memory of the details is fuzzy, so I'm enjoying the reread. Also, Grandma Ben rules.
Currently in progress: Jeff Smith, The Great Cow Race (Bone Vol. 2) and L.A. Hall, Favours Exchanged.