madeline's reviews
776 reviews

Christina Lauren never fails to disappoint! Fizzy is promoted from sparkling sidekick to heartwarming heroine, and Connor is an incredibly swoony hero. It's sure to speak to any romance reader's soul, but never panders and explores what I feel like has to be a common question for the genre's lovers: what if it just the stuff of books? What if it is all so much easier on the page than it ever is in person - and what if that's a good thing?

It's laugh out loud funny, very steamy and the grand gesture at the end

is the kind of thing I normally detest, but it felt so perfect and loving here that I couldn't help but love it

. Another instant CLo classic!

Thank you Griffin and Edelweiss for the ARC!

My favorite Gwenda Bond yet! 

Savvy and Griffin are ready to tie the knot - but neither of them knows they're both agents for warring secret organizations, Savvy as a witch who uses her magic to take down supernatural threats and Griffin as a witch hunter. That is, until the whole ceremony blows up - literally - when their true identities are exposed and the wedding guests begin to do battle. The two of them are hurt, confused, and under attack, and the only way to survive might be to make up and run...

This was such a fun, fast read. It's third person present, which I'm not sure was the best choice here but certainly didn't not work. I would have loved a little more depth on the page between Savvy and Griffin, too, but I'm not sure how I would have wanted to seen that achieved. It's a great time, though, and I'd love to see more in this world.

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

A really promising debut, great for fans of Gossip Girl or Crazy Rich Asians! The pacing was a little inconsistent, and I didn't 100% understand everyone's motivations here, but I would absolutely pick up more by Zhao. Can't wait to see what she does next!

Thank you Berkley and Edelweiss for the ARC!

A fantastic premise, let down by poor writing and pacing. Such a bummer, because Maureen’s a great advocate for the romance community and this is a time period we don’t see a ton of romances in! But this needed a much stronger style and developmental edit - so many dialogue tags, an overreliance on colloquial quips, and a narrative arc that should have been much tighter. I’d love to read more of Lenker’s fiction, but this was a tough loss for me.

Thank you Sourcebooks and Edelweiss for the ARC!

Lucy Score brings us back to Knockemout, Virginia, where our hot sheriff Nash Morgan is recovering from a gunshot wound and his brother’s even hotter ex-girlfriend is in town chasing down a lead on his shooter. Their connection is impossible to deny, but as the stakes of their relationship - and the town’s safety - grow higher, will they be able to trust their hearts and each other? Hijinks, humor, and heat!

This book was fun from start to finish - Mariel is a powerful witch who can't tap into her powers well, and accidentally summons a demon, Ozroth, into her kitchen. Ozroth has accidentally ended up with a soul, and thus inconveniently has a conscience about all of this "soul-reaping" stuff and even more inconveniently is noticing how hot Mariel is and he just wants to make a soul bargain with her so he can go back to the demon plane but he also wouldn't mind if he got to like hold her hand a little bit first?

Absolutely impeccable "touch her and you die" vibes in this book. Ozroth is a gooey cinnamon roll and it's great to watch Mariel grow into her powers and yell at her awful family. I cannot wait for more from Sarah Hawley!

Thank you Berkley and Edelweiss for the ARC!

I had a lot of big hopes for this book, but they were let down - it's very similar to THE ROUGHEST DRAFT, where two people who clearly love each other let their refusal to talk things through get in their way until a third party is like "hey, what if you did... not that." I also think a key element to a second chance/marriage in trouble romance is the characters' ability to clearly identify what drove them apart in the first place and how they'll avoid that in the future, and that didn't fully happen to me here. I also just didn't get the really sparkling prose here that we had in TRD.

I'd love to see something NOT second chance from this duo! I'd give that a try. Thank you Berkley and Edelweiss for the ARC!

Ali Hazelwood is back with another novel full of her signature sparkling prose, witty banter, and unapologetic feminism. Elsie is barely hanging on in the world of adjuncting, desperate for the full-time research position she's applied for at MIT - only to feel like her chances are dashed when the most influential person on the hiring panel turns out to not only be the elder brother of the man she's fak-dating and who seems to detest her, but also the man responsible for fifteen years of derision and mistrust towards her specialty. 

Obviously they are going to fall in love.

And yes, it's more enormous man-tiny woman, and yes he's gone on her from before the book even begins, and yes it's funny and sexy and smart and heart-wrenching, and yes, I ate it up. Ali's novels have become like a hang-out with a friend for me, safe and cozy and sure to leave me in a better mood than when I started.

Thank you Berkley and Edelweiss for the ARC!

 A delightful return to Bard's Rest, full of humor, hijinks, and heart! Martin balances the ridiculousness of living in a Shakespeare-themed town so well, and it's a joy to watch Portia and Ben work through their relationship and the choices they make in it like adults.

Thank you Edelweiss and Berkley for the ARC! 

With a distinctive voice and nothing to hide, Harry details all the intricacies and inner workings of being "the Spare." Most of the big bombshells from this book were leaked, but I think that even ignoring that, the depth and breadth of Harry's family's privilege and willingness to throw one another under the bus for some better publicity is insidious and shocking. They're somehow just as awful as I expected and so much worse.