madeline's reviews
776 reviews

Y'all, this one just did not live up to the hype for me. I think it's really weird to write a romance novel where the heroine actively disdains the genre after making a ton of money off of it, for one. And I just didn't find it that well-written: Sewanee is kind of self-centered, she and Brock text like Boomers and not like people in their early thirties, you could have excised the whole sub-plot about her grandmother and lost nothing for it (which is not a great thing for a major sub-plot!), and there's a couple of fat jokes & suicide jokes I definitely could have done without.

I know Julia's a beloved audiobook narrator, and certainly those elements felt true. But I don't think I've ever listened to her narrate a book before, so I didn't already have that emotional tie, and this book certainly doesn't have me tripping over myself to pick up her first. A pass for me.

Thank you Avon and NetGalley for the ARC!

This was a slow start to me - Simone is kind of brusque in a way that she claims men get to be and get called "dedicated" or whatever but I think was actually just rude and elitist (which I guess doesn't necessarily disprove her point), but the whole thing unravels so sweetly that you can't help but overlook it. What a nice read, and a great addition to the growing list of NB-chef love interest romance novels.

Thank you Atria and NetGalley for the ARC!

It takes a skilled writer to take one of category romance's many bonkers premises and make it work in the sub-300 page window they have to work in, and boy does Synithia do it. This book is so tight and so well-crafted: Walker and Cierra are fully fleshed out with tons of motivation and personality traits outside of their romance, Cierra's daughter is more than a plot moppet, and there's GHOSTS! Honestly, I wanted more ghosts, but I almost always want more ghosts. What a great, quick read.

Thank you Harlequin and NetGalley for the ARC!

I think Olivia Dade and I need to part ways, unfortunately. I really disliked ALL THE FEELS, and this one wasn't all that much better.

My biggest issue with ATF was how horrible Alex was about Lauren's body, and while Peter is much cooler about Maria's appearance than Alex was (even if Alex was meant to be joking about his feelings about Lauren), he still has a really gross moment where he reminds Maria that she's fat and could be replaced by a more conventionally hot actress and also is like super rude about her acting abilities? And he does apologize quickly and admit he was a dick, but I am 1000% not into heroes being dicks to heroines, particularly about their bodies.

The middle was fine enough and would have pushed it to three stars if not for the absolute dumbest conflict at the end, and I have a very high tolerance for Romance Reasons Dumb Conflicts. Throughout the book it feels like Dade is implying that the only acceptable way for someone to show love is the way the recipient would like to receive it? And I definitely think that it's important to demonstrate you love someone in a way that they find fulfilling, but I also think it's important to recognize when someone is demonstrating their love in the only way they know how to or feel comfortable doing.

Some other things bothered me about the book - the pacing is kind of weird, Maria and Peter both have issues stemming from exes that are just weirdly used, Maria is

adopted, and I feel like that was used simply for the trauma and then the trauma was hardly explored

, and Alex is once again a horrific human being, sending Maria and Peter real-person fanfics people have written about them which just seems like a monstrous invasion of privacy. There's enough here (and in the last two books) to tell me that Olivia is simply not an author for me. I definitely thought her last book was problematic, and I don't think that's true for this one, but it's time for me to move my energy into other authors.

Thank you Avon and NetGalley for the ARC!

The good things about this book: the audiobook is narrated by the same very talented actor, who does lots of lovely voices and accents.

The bad things about this book: ...all the rest? I found Luc pretty self-centered in BOYFRIEND MATERIAL, and he certainly hasn't changed. It was weird to me that no one had suggested therapy, and that no one has in the interim, and seeing Luc and Oliver back on the page made me realize just how badly Oliver also needs therapy. The way Luc thinks about Oliver's relationship with his body and with food seems honestly quite harmful to me, and I'm not going to get into the weeds on proper expression of or identification with one's sexual identity and the community that comes with it but I really didn't feel comfortable with the way Luc felt about Oliver not loving the rainbows, et cetera.

It makes a lot of sense to me that many people felt let down by this book - if the first one were one I'd held real close to my heart, I would be disappointed, too. I didn't think BOYFRIEND MATERIAL necessitated a sequel, and this book really proved to me that it didn't. If you were satisfied by the first as a stand-alone, don't waste your time here.

Thank you Sourcebooks and NetGalley for the ARC!

A delightful premise that goes nowhere - nothing happens in this book! There's little to no evidence that Kellan is any kind of scoundrel or rogue, minus his association with his father, and Gwen is about as flat a character as you can find. The emotional stakes are zero: all of the sudden they're in love based off a few days working together and no sort of real bonding or anything. I'd pass on this.

Thank you Avon and NetGalley for the ARC!

This was so fun - I love when a romance novel presents a premise that you cannot imagine finding hot and then you're fanning your face at 60%. Who would have thought a romance centered around bingo games would do that?

It was hot (but could have been hotter, somehow), and has some really nice mental illness representation that I would have liked to see more fleshed out, particularly Walker. But it was a great read, real h-word, and I can't wait to see what Jodie writes next. 

Thank you St. Martin's and NetGalley for the ARC!

In the last book, I was all like “so much relationship building!! Where’s the plot??” and now I am forced to ask the reverse - we got so much plot (100% not complaining) but very little relationship building. Honestly, I didn’t really buy the chemistry between Apollo and Cassandra; it went from 0 to 1000 very quickly, even if they both had been pining for each other for years. I think in these mutual pining situations, especially in a context where their relationship is more formal (he’s her boss, they don’t interact outside of the office), it’s really important for the reader to see them falling in love with the real person and not deeper in love with the version of the person they’re most familiar with, and that just didn’t happen for me.

I’m really invested in the way all of this about the politics and stability of Olympus unraveling, but for me, Katee’s been unable to maintain the propulsive balance of plot and relationship that the first two books achieved. I’m in it for the long haul, though - I simply must read about Zeus and Hera.

Thank you Sourcebooks and Edelweis for the ARC!

Mazey Eddings, we must part ways here. I have so many thoughts on this book and none of them are good. Spoilers will abound.

First - it's a tough time to be writing an accidental pregnancy romance, and I feel bad that this is the environment this book is being released into for a variety of reasons. A very tough break for Mazey, and I'm trying to separate out what doesn't work in this book from what just doesn't work for me.

On the pregnancy front: Lizzie is an unemployed baker who decides to have her surprise baby. To each their own! But I would have loved a lot more introspection about being responsible for a whole ass human being when you don't have a job and are struggling with ADHD. The speed with which she decides to keep the baby just seemed irrational to me.

The baby's father is an Australian man Lizzie had a two-night stand with. He happens to have dual citizenship from his Californian father and a possible transfer to the Philadelphia office. This is all just so easy in a way that felt absolutely unreal. And also? If my baby's father lived in a place with universal health insurance, I would be on literally the next plane there. Universal health care, Lizzie! You could have had health care!!!!!!!!

Rake is eager to be involved in the baby's life because a former partner had an abortion - she was cheating on him and didn't know who the father was. He found out she was pregnant because he saw some of the paperwork after the abortion. Even though Rake acknowledges it was her choice and is fairly cool about it, I was absolutely not a fan of this plot point. I'm uninterested in a villain being a villain in part because they had an abortion, and I think we could have accomplished the same emotional investment from Rake if she had just been cheating. This was really disappointing.

On the characters front: I really struggled with the portrayal of mental illness in A BRUSH WITH LOVE, and unfortunately I struggled with the ADHD representation here. To me, these characters feel less like people with ADHD (or anxiety, or whatever), and more like caricatures of people with ADHD, and I really didn't like it. Lizzie is working on finding coping mechanisms but honestly uses her ADHD as a bit of a crutch and if I'd been seeing the same therapist for as long as it seems like she's been seeing her and we still hadn't landed on adequate tools to help me, I don't know, keep a job? Baby it'd be time for a new therapist!!

I didn't feel any real connection between Lizzie and Rake beyond their shared horniness for each other and the resulting child. I would have really liked to see more of what bonded them beyond Rake just being like "Lizzie's ADHD brain is beautiful to me." The black moment of the book occurs waaaaay too late - what I thought WAS the real emotional make or break moment would have been totally sufficient and was properly located in the plot.

The style of the book, too, is intensely Millennial. There's a lot of references to real-life romance authors that just feel like the author being like "see!!! I know them!!!" and Lizzie repeatedly calls her baby "le bébé" in a way I found so cringe-inducing. I wish people would stop relying on stereotypical Millennial jargon to make their books feel accessible and/or cool.

Anyways, it's clear that Mazey and I just are not made for each other. I hope other people enjoy this and her future work more than I do!

Thank you St. Martin's and NetGalley for the ARC.