madeline's reviews
776 reviews

 well, the style has definitely improved with a professional editor. the plot and the pacing though? mmmmmm. not so much.

you'll like this as much as you liked TSLD. that's really all i have to say about it. 

Ooof. This was... not good. 

From a plot standpoint, it takes 30% of the book to get any murder mystery - at one point, we get a whole rehash of a previous chapter at the beginning of the next, as though the character whose POV we were in wasn't there for everything happened. That was weird! And the murder is pretty easy to solve, even if the motivation is shoved in there at 97%.

But the writing... good lord the writing. Everyone is either a "handsome older man" or a " cute young boy" - like, the former phrase occurs 26 times in the book. That's too many! If you did a shot every time someone was described as "handsome," you'd be hospitalized after the first chapter. And in three consecutive paragraphs, the latter phrase shows up four times. I had an ARC, but if this made it into the final book, someone needs to have a sit down with the copy editor. 

There are a million weird asides through the book, too, and so very few of them are relevant. How JP's parents died, the name of the place they got their seat cushions from, PJ's dad's commitment to car culture (and PJ's implied superiority for rejecting it), the marital status (confirmed or assumed) of various characters we see once in the whole book, the flavor profile of a Bell's Two-Hearted... what is the point? Why do we need all this? Why couldn't we do more murder mysterying?

And, of course, we can't forget the names of a few side characters, specifically the real estate agent Cheri Maison and local Detective Nick Paczki. Yes, the real estate agent's name is essentially house and the detective is essentially Detective Donut. I almost put the book down for that second reveal.

Anyways, I think this was poorly plotted and even more poorly written, but if neither of those things bother you, it's not NOT a decently fun read.

Thank you Kensington and NetGalley for the ARC.

Literary agent and fantasy writer Miranda Barnes is under a double deadline - she's got to finish her next book AND assist her family with her hometown's annual Shakespeare festival this summer. But she's been uninspired since her last book got some criticism from fans, and she's worried about her mother's health. Like things couldn't be more stressful, her mother... voluntells her for some leadership positions for the festival and all of the sudden, Miranda's working alongside Adam, a childhood friend who broke her heart on prom night. Life's coming at Miranda from all angles, and it's time for her to take inspiration from the people and places in Bard's Rest that gave her her first story idea to finish her book, stay strong for her mother, and maybe fall in love along the way.

I really didn't expect to like this book - I'm not that interested in Shakespeare, trauma from many years of community theatre means I avoid theatre-set romances, and I really dislike a story that has like a Ren Faire element to it, like Bard's Rest. The fact that I'm rating this a 3.5 star even with some major plotting issues is wild to me! But I really did have a great time reading this book. 

Miranda is relatable and funny, and just when she or her sister Portia might drift into caricature-territory, they're humanized really well. There's a full cast of characters in Bard's Rest, which, I admit, does sound like a fun place to visit, and I'm really excited to see who might get a book (I'm shipping Portia and the event planner). 

I think Adam's reasons for breaking Miranda's heart on prom night were dumb, and I don't think I'd have forgiven him. The third act breakup, too, is totally incorrect for the rest of the book and really irritated me. But I still had so much <i>fun</i> reading this book. I think it's going to be a sure winner for people who love books like the Well Met series, and I'm interested to see what Martin writes next.

Thank you Berkley and NetGalley for the ARC!

CW:

Miranda's grandmother died of breast cancer and her mother is diagnosed with cancer (with a good prognosis) during the book but is avoiding dealing with it.

Wow, this was a book I was so interested in reading that I'm not going to recommend to anyone. 

Lily Bane is a fat woman struggling with her body image, especially in comparison to her thin best friend and her fatphobic mother. When a handsome man offers to buy her a drink, she feels totally unworthy of his attention - and then he turns her into a vampire and her whole life goes off the rails.

Right off the bat, I wasn't meshing with this author's writing style. It feels very elder millennial - several sentences start with "FYI" or "Obvi," and it just feels forced.

But the whole thing feels stuck in the fat rep or body positivity of the early 2000s. Lily doesn't ever really learn to love her body for what it is - she really does end up seeing it through the lens of her love interest, a very boring vampire man who is a romance novelist, which I think is meant to be shorthand for the reader to understand he's ~good with women~ and ~in touch with his feelings~, neither of which are true. Even with the author's note at the beginning, I found the way that Lily thought and her mother talked about her body to be incredibly harmful. There's a weird moment where Lily realizes her fatphobia about herself has made her thin friend feel like she can't talk about things with her, because Lily always has a story about someone making her feel shitty about her body and so the friend's story pales in comparison, which really smacks of "tHiN pEoPlE fEeL bAd AbOuT tHeIr BoDiEs ToO!"

And Tristan is so unlikeable as a hero, too. As mentioned above, he's a romance novelist. This is really a way for the author to get you to assume he empathizes with women and gets the struggle of being a woman in the kyriarchy without having to do any work to prove that. It doesn't work! Tristan is stuck in the 1600s (like, literally at one point a former love interest of his tells Lily that he couldn't wrap his mind around her independence as a woman in the 1800s which is! wild!) and simultaneously refuses to tell Lily anything that would keep her safe and then berates her for not recognizing threats.

He changed Lily by accident:

he was like... telepathically asking her if she wanted to be bitten, not knowing she'd already nipped him and had a bit of his blood? And Lily, for reasons that aren't satisfyingly explained, cannot have her brain gone through by a vampire, so when she's saying yes, it's to his offer to see her again and not to be a vampire. I HATE this non-consensual turning! And it's really compounded by his repeated memory-wipings of people they run into, even after Lily's made clear what a violation she thinks that is. He memory wipes her best friend! That's just gross.

Anyways, this was a disappointment from start to finish. I don't recommend it, and I think it's probably actively harmful. YMMV.

Thank you Sourcebooks and NetGalley for the ARC.

After a tough breakup with her fiancée, Nina Blackmore is afraid to break into the Thistle Grove dating scene. Her best friend dares her to go on a date with someone who seems like the least-likely candidate for being Nina’s soulmate - local dive bartender and “normie” Morty Gonzalez. He’s freewheeling to her uptight, a silks aerialist to her marathon runner, and also the owner of a property her family has been trying to buy for months. When their first date blows up in their faces, Nina’s sure that’ll be the last of it. But a weird dream about the lake that feeds Thistle Grove’s magic has them linked, and enhanced Nina’s powers beyond normal. Can Nina figure out her powers, her relationship, and her desires without the interference of her overbearing family?

I love a trip to Thistle Grove, and this certainly hit the spot. But while other books have felt very world-buildy, this one is definitely more of a slice of life novel. It takes a bit for any big non-relationship plot pieces to happen, and the sense of urgency that the first two books have is just not present here. It’s a pretty internal book, and definitely more so for Nina than Morty (who does not get a POV, just as the love interests in other books in this series do not). I had a nice time seeing everyone, but at times I was sitting there asking myself what the point of this book was.

And too - I think if you have a non-binary love interest whose dating profile uses he/they pronouns, it would be nice for that character to use them throughout the book. Nina asks Morty what he prefers on their first date and he says he/him is fine, and he particularly feels a need to perform his assigned gender for his supportive but traditional mother. I get that! But it feels like empty representation. 

Anyways, I definitely enjoyed this book. Neither follow up has hit quite the same for me as Payback’s A Witch did, but I always have a good time. I’m looking forward to see who the love interest is for the character for whom we get a bonus chapter!

Thank you Berkley and NetGalley for the ARC.

Ten years ago, Ben Porter and Dee Williams had an argument that ended their friendship. Ben is infamous on Dee's popular podcast as "Name Redacted," but they haven't spoken since - until he shows up without warning at Dee's front door, asking her to go on the road trip they promised to take together ten years ago. Ben has a secret, and Dee's basically a professional at getting people to tell those to her, but is all of this too much pressure on a friendship that's just been resurrected - and might be headed towards something more?

I didn't expect to love this one as much as I did! It's tender and laugh out loud funny, with top-notch banter and podcast transcript interstitials.  It's such a pleasure to watch Ben and Dee gently work through what drove them apart a decade ago, and what's keeping them apart even now. I think some things, particularly their relationships with their parents, could have been zipped up a little tighter, but the whole thing is such a fun ride (get it? because it's a road trip?) that there's little room for complaint. My first Bridget Morrissey and definitely not my last!

Thank you Berkley and NetGalley for the ARC!

The first book in this series is so good, but it feels like the deeper we get into these books, the worse it gets. If you squint, I think the pieces of the plot mostly come together, but it is... tenuous. It just doesn't make a ton of sense!

Gemma is on the run from her abusive ex-fiance with the daughter he doesn't know they have in tow. Somehow, she's able to step into a friend's job at a university teaching game theory, et cetera, when this friend (who's linked to the Deep Ops team) has to leave town for a bit. How? How does this work? How is she passing background and qualification checks with her string of fake names? Jethro is former MI6 and has a serial killer brother who is also former MI6 and also somehow they're both the children of a duke? This is mentioned once and never brought up again. Who's duke-ing if Jethro and his brother are both in the US? And the brother's reasons for targeting Jethro are just bonkers.

I don't know. I think I had too many questions about what was going on here to really enjoy the book. It's a shame that I've grown less and less interested in this series, because it started off so interestingly.

Thank you Kensington and NetGalley for the ARC!

Grey Brooks and Ethan Atkins don't really like each other, but they need each other. She's a newly-canned former teen drama starlet looking to stay relevant and sell the movie she and her best friend have been working on. He's a mostly-retired former teen drama star who would rather be left alone, but needs to become relevant once again to sell the movie he and his best friend were working on before his untimely death. A brief press relationship it is! But the more time the two spend together, the more they come to like each other - when press, paparazzi, and addiction threaten their relationship, is there enough to keep them together?

This was a 3.5 star read I've rounded up to 4 in other places - it's angst city, baby, and the kind that many people love but gives me heartburn because I'm a softy.

In general, it was so well-written and pretty tightly plotted. I loved Grey and Ethan both, even if I didn't quite agree with their reasons for not wanting to actually date. I think my biggest issue was that I would have liked the dark moment to have occurred a bit earlier.

I think it would have been useful to have one event that they attend together that doesn't necessarily challenge his sobriety but does prove his commitment, but that's just me!

Overall, people who love a celeb romance are going to have a great time with this - I can't wait to see what this author writes next.

Thank you Random House & NetGalley for the ARC!

full review to come, but poston manages to land this high-concept plane well.

Thank you Berkley and NetGalley for the ARC!

golllllLEEEEEE. 🥵🥵🥵