.V. L. B o o k R e v i e w s. V. L. B o o k R e v i e w s.
If there's a paranormal romance, YA fantasy, urban fantasy and historical fiction writer who thrills In the creative labour of bringing paranormal frights, delights and supernatural love bonds to life, it's award-winning Indie writer Josie Jaffrey. Writer and creator of not only four distinctive fantasy series' to date that feature the lives of paranormals, apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic settings, paranormal...
Hello reading friends! Two months into a new year and I hope you've been taking the time to rest, renew, be kind to yourselves and of course, stock your kindles and reading devices with your most anticipated reads for a fresh year. Whether you've hit the ground resting, crawling, walking or strolling, may this new year brim with silver linings, golden reads and sterling wellbeing. However and wherever you ...
C O M I N G S O O N !
There were three highly influential reasons I wanted to read The One Month Boyfriend. The first: the very attractive cover design. The second: I have close to a dozen Roxie Noir novels and thought it was about time I read one. And the third (and biggest driver): the dedication to the 'unlikeable' heroine presented an opportunity I didn't want to resist. I couldn't not indulge the unfolding of such ...
A fresh series of sexy sportsmen, lighthearted standalone romantic pairings, fun raillery, the continued thread of 'textual' interrelations, and Puck Shy becomes a continuation of Hunter's familiar favouritism for rom com fiction. I very much enjoyed myself yet again. The series beginner opens up with poor Collin riding a law well written by Murphy. He's agonising over the fallout of his latest hockey...
Dark king (opener to the series) courted a moreish sense of thrill in me. I already had its sequel prepared to launch myself into immediately after. The first book did have its foundational shortcomings but I was delighted enough by the impression that I easily saw myself ready to plow through the remaining books in this trilogy. The plot continued with interest, excitement and mystery, the suspense and ...
Hello reading friends. We're at that darker, deeper and quieter time of year again, that very ambient season that rolls into the reflective, replenishing solstice of winter. It's also that very busy time of year for most, where the bustle reaches a new height. The merry-making is in full swing for most, the frenzy of the wind up before the wind down of the final month to the year nears and yet the somber tug...
I don't know how Sarah J. Maas manages to minimise me to a stunned, gaping, wordless feeling-too-much form of human mystification but she has indeed managed to do just that yet again. Such is the work of a finished Maas novel. A phenomena ostensibly still in great effect. Some say she's redefined the fantasy genre, some disfavour her stylistic energy, but I think she embodies a passionate...
I've read Julie Kriss's Bad Billionaire. I've also read her Spite Club ,
and while they were reasonably good picks that respectively entertained
in different ways, the former better than the latter, I Jingle Bell
Beard plays to a different storyline and theme altogether. Definitely
themed towards December reading. Jingle Bell Beard is a small
town, fake relationship, grumpy/sunshine, second chances cocktail of a...
As a story that had its origins rooted as an audible original audiobook, I feel just a little bit lucky that I got to read it in its later formatted ebook composition. A reading friend of mine inspired this author onto my romance reading wishlist for some very big (and exciting) reasons. This reading friend was so very enthusiastically complimentary of the author's novelistic style that it ...
Hello reading friends! You might have noticed that my updates have been incredibly irregular in recent times, and I regret to say that this has been a year of too few newsletters and wrap up posts to share with you. And too few books in addition. It's an unspoken promise for book blogs to silently pledge covenant to sustain fidelity to book chatter, books and more books to your book-loving ...
Dark King by C.N. Crawford is a story that trails the history (and mystery) of a drowned kingdom, a fearsome demi god In pursuit of a powerful Fae relic, a mysterious arsonist and destroyer of lands, a disgraced heiress of the sea lynched of the roiling power that once had her an empress of those wild waves and a string of Fae supernaturals who all have something to gain. Or destroy? I had a reading...
This well-popularised book and I finally meet, and although I'm still attempting to underpin the suggestive relevance of the title (the juxtaposition between Lou and Reid as comprehensive opposites?), I'm here to share that this NA witchcraft-inspired fantasy is absolutely a merit to its creative mileage, its excellent craftsmanship and its ability to beget brilliance. I say all this and I hadn't even...
I made myself something of a bookish affirmation when the year of 2023 took its turn to circle our sweeping equator - I told myself I'd make time for my quota of procrastination-postponed reads, (which I continued to postpone). So I did, and rebounding from some classic YA to most-anticipated romance writers I land at the gateway of the latest Maas masterpiece - and series starter to the Crescent...
Hello reading friends, my consecutive twice-monthly bundled offerings turn to a Wrap Up quartet of sorts as it's been the sum of four months since I last plugged in with any bookish commentary. I really had my goal sights set to have my March/April post active and readable but I've been so sick that health matters had to take precedence and usurp any desire I had to sustain bloggish routine...
With a premise of unique Intrigue that somewhat-almost complements my last read (one that alternatively spanned a tale of dimensional travel) Rachel Bowdler's The Fate of Us spins one of karmic love and a past life continuum that accomplishes something similarly sublime in theme in its very short length. This romantic novella-writing scriber twirled her fingers...
I travel towards thinking of myself as challenged by completion as much as I've previously taken to chasing it; I pathologically behest an appetite for finishing things but also feel the flood of approaching dread for that bittersweet parting of all said finishings. I'm likely the most stubborn resistor of the tide that tells us all good things must come to an end. I dread fictitious finishings the most. Alas...
A raw-nerved, edgy, pained, tender, dystopic end-of-world anarchic frisson by BB Easton. After only thus far lending but an ear to talk of this bestselling writer and her unique set of romantic lit, what an interesting way to start my Easton experience; with a gritty trilogy opener where April 23rd becomes a looming death promise of mythicalised proportions...
I brokenly recall reading a few age gap romances before now (and becoming slightly infatuated with the dynamic) but a best friend's daughter and a 20+ age gap was uncharted territory for me. Territory most may call an unmentionable, ineffable, unreadable taboo. While the indecorous quality stretches limits for some, opens ...
I've read some wonderfully recommendable Indie published romance, and I confirm that Brit Benson's Love You Better is affirmatively one of them. I eased into this one after reading a brief teaser excerpt of book two (which I immediately decided needed to be on my reading list) but thought I'd start at the source with Ivy and Kelley when I realised ...
The plot thickens in a colossally orbicular bowl I'm going to call a Multiverse soup with Firebird #2 where dimension travel fiction has uprooted me from my ordinary for a second cycle sequence. So much fun, and the concept persists with no less a generous helping of interest. The stakes become steeper, love is used to leverage twofold ...
If you're taken by the mystique-inspiring cover illustration to Kathryn Troy's The Shadow of Theron, planned to be the first book in her Age of Shadows duology, you'll want to know so much more about this very fresh-off-the-press 2023 release that will surely gather a rambling readership. Fantasy Romance feels like a theme of the moment...
Never beyond the belief that there are ever too many romance novels or passionate novelists populating our e-readers, screens and the earth itself I come buttressing Indie-Published Fantasy Romance Wild Bond by debut author Laurie Ford for another offering for your reading, rotating, revolving fictional lives. If this particular division is your...
Back again with my bi-monthly self I am. My very first newsletter of 2023 and I admit that I have little to report bar a few bookish newsy news updates, some possibly-maybe 2023 reading goals, a maybe-possibly regular feature, some film chatter, blog recents and a little weather notice fact that it's still so cold. The season can’t decide if it wants to stay in ...
Not only a writer who has authored her own set of books, both with her Circle of Friends series of YA/NA fiction and her growing In Darkness series that genre-fits within the adventurous paranormal and fantasy romance space, L. Diane Wolfe is also a leading, learning, teaching busy-bee force of one. From professional speaking that limits not ...
A Thousand Pieces of You is precisely the type of book I would have read (should have read) in my Shatter Me days when the YA era raged on into the souls of its audience and the epoch became defined by a set of literary stylistic hallmarks that gushed a fanatic trend. I can't say I remember the concept of the multiverse being thrown about like a...
A goal for this reading year? Make more time for the well-loved fantasy romance division. And first on the list is Sarah M. Cradit's The Raven and the Rush. I have to say that, in a stroke of two paradigmatic opposites, this was both an anticipated read and yet also the opposite of what I had hoped for in a story that promisingly complements an expansive...
I emerge bearing a crescendo of contrary contemplation for The Chase. As an expected four or five star read, I can't say that this reader isn't gutted that It comes to you decorated with three. While those three stars do come flush with great book energy, strong readability and charactered by an effective college setting with fun, age-appropriate ...
As part of my slow-burning blog mission to secure interviews with the authorship of one of my favourite genres, I have a very exciting interview project to share. If anything like myself, romance readers please do rally yourselves because this one's a wish list tick. In mind for a long time, in engagement just late of 2022 and finally here with the spoils ...
We've lasted another year around the sun, the moon and the planets, another lap secured on earth's stomping ground. It's strange to say that this is the last time you'll be hearing from me this year. 2022 Vaishali becomes 2023 Vaishali in a short timeframe. I wonder how different she'll be, but I'm positive she'll still remain a passionate lady of the story...
From what I understand, Meet Me Under the Mistletoe is a crossroads novelette set in the same locale of River Rock, where the author has already paired off and coupled up supporting characters in a preceding series. This little seasonal in-between both overlaps and bridges two of her series' together - one already in the works and one with a new...
I had the most wonderful time with this sweet, slow-burning, gently-moving sailor/sailor romance set at sea and one that spans a quietly moving personal adventure in the South Pacific. I wouldn't expect an overcomplicated storyline with complicated interrelations in The Sailor in Polynesia. Its attraction is softer, sweeter, slower...
Hello autumn reading friends. To pretext this wrap up, feel free to scroll your way to the end of this post as I may have overstretched my content volume (again)! For that, apologies are in order (I include myself in that apology list). I know this line of tautology is overtly articulated by the masses of every day, but the older I get, the shorter the ...
Another Heartstopper volume down the hatch, another unmoving smile on my face and another phase of Nick and Charlie's sweetly moving teen romance. Every time I sit down for a reading session with this series I spontaneously switch to wholesome mode, eager for the overload of their cute courtship and the interrelations of the slowly expanding...
New Orleans Rush swept me up, swept me silly and swept me right off the balls of my feet into sublimity. And I thus found myself being spun around not by the arms of a corporeal suitor, but by the figurative limbs (and sorcery) of this romance made of magic. This book finally gets my attention, undivided, excited and plush for the taking. And it didn't just fall to my liking...
I'm very intimate with the fact that I'm not your typical reader that fits to the standard of customary reading order perfection. The romance reading shock and horror, I know. If it doesn't arrive with required reading instruction, I'll most definitely choose to my reading fancy, sequence be damned. If I have more than one book in an interconnected series...
Poetry thrives at its simplest and most honest, and healing often begins with the uncomfortable-made-comfortable aloneness of the self, unable to hide when we sit with the felt experiences that have been us, become us and born from us this person who hungers to be rescued. That secret, sacred place that streams and surges with...
I kick off this review with easy recognition because who knew prequel novels could complete the trifecta of applied imagination, interesting storytelling components and locational adventure? Or perhaps I should dub this a 'quad-fecta' because it effectively frames a setting for a larger standalone series so well too? If the job of a series beginner...
I can't possibly begin this review without commenting on the exquisitely elegant, the shining showpiece that is the cover art for An Enchantment of Ravens. Colour me (predictably) enchanted, and also fully unsurprised that this Charlie Bowater creation won the adulation of Goodreads' 2017 Best YA Book Cover. It's one of the most beddable ...
To retell a story already told, over and over again, has produced a pooled collaborative of creators drawn to the craft of taking the marrow of an established tale and cooking an inspired story born from the broth. 'The retelling' has become a sweeping subset that has both stolen the hearts of readers and sown curiosity in the minds of writers, because...
Hello reading friends. I'm currently writing to you from the tail end of another heatwave that has only just shifted into what I hope will be a long-lasting, unobstructed Autumn with waves of brisk air and nippy temps. Only semi-permanent cooler temps for the rest of the year from here please. I've surfaced, but let's just say I reached my limit ...
Time to stop my heart for a second time for Heartstopper. The soothing teenage sweetness overload continues with volume two of Nick and Charlie’s romance. How many times did I smile through this? Countless. How many times did my heart swell from all the openness and acceptance? Countless times two. In fact, let's stop counting ...
True to form, fit, fancy and their joint zany authorship profile, the mutual force of Ana Zaires and Dima Zales amounts to one thing; rom-com eccentricity carved by two sets of hands that love to twiddle their fingers to romance of its own upended sensibility. If you loved the flair of Misha Bells’ Hard Code (or any other book in their Hard Stuff series)...
Heartstopper is a series of wonderful firsts for me; my first time reading a graphic novel. My first time reading from an author who writes graphic novels. My first time reading from Alice Oseman. My first time rating and reviewing a graphic novel, my first time actually reading a book where I get to accurately report that I 'sped-read' ...
My unabridged avowal: The Bridge Kingdom has just acquired itself another bridge bastion, a willing visitor to its shores, an eager guest to its gates, an ungrudging lodger to its land, a denizen at its demand, gatecrasher to its guard, a squaddie to its ranks, a tourist to its tribe, a morally supportive benefactor to its fantasy (whatever one wishes to call...
So much like Take a Chance On Me, sixth in succession to Lea Coll’s All I want series, this fifth in her Annapolis Harbour collective, Falling For You is poised with a passionate pull that pushes and challenges the weight of a fallible relationship that's not at all ready to rise and yet wants to thrive in its own way. Isn't that always the way with a searching...
With a recently released Young Adult Fantasy added to the 2022 YA ranks, and from an author who describes himself as 'a big kid in a bigger body' and sees written art as the most profound therapeutical practice that sources a wellspring of creativity, Michael Skyner shares a decidedly different piece of fiction that both younger and older reader...
If fantasy romance is more than just escapism for the moment, Anya Wylde has a standalone series opener to drop into the genre mix. Atypical from her usual trysts with whimsical historical romance, Meara is a fresh writing spin that combines her hallmark flair for whimsy with a mythically-dense fantasy setting. At the heart of most fantastical...
Published in various journals of poetry, some of which have won the hat tip of top nomination for her urban-visualised observational art, Natasha Deonarain continues on a poetic trip that reflects the citified imagery of our familiar environments even as she brazenly noses the fore of our dystopic lives. Meditating upon the traffic of inner life...
Hello reading friends. Things are warming up in my hemisphere of the world, but as is par for the course, the sun never lasts long enough before it's challenged by one of its elemental tribe. Currently, the skyward gods push forth its familiar contender: rain. Climate-wise, we don't have a reliable mutually beneficial contract with she who ...
Next on my short story spree? Adriana Locke's Battle of the Sexes. Two business-oriented protagonists are in the running for the CEO position of their parents' co-founded and co-built company. Carver is too busy dreaming about finally stepping into the role of CEO of Jones and Gallum. Ready to take the role, make it his own and slip it on like a finely ...
To preview this review, I want to spare some space and let loose a large rush of gratitude to authors, writers, creators and storytellers who believe in the power, gravity, importance and influence of compact literature. It's such an inclusive way of bringing cognitively challenged people and those with all manner of learning/reading...
Sometimes a reader just needs a book to make her smile. It's a need. For the fun and feisty feel-good to make her feel good. To be washed over wave upon wave of wit, brass, sass and cheek. To be pulled upon a shore that stations a cramped houseboat owned by a private ocean-loving hunk. To feel that she's in good hands with a book well-chosen...
I've read rockstar romances. I've read a larger sum of billionaire boss romances still. And I've likely enjoyed a slew of themed stories between. From cocky cowboys to blue collar sweethearts to alpha protectors, hateful colleagues to stoics in a stiff suit, I've been around the fictional block. But out of them all? The Hollywood romance sub-genre is where I ...
An emerging writer on the scene of contemporary fiction, Audrey N. Lewis comes bearing the gift of a unique new release that pushes forth the bracket of inclusion. Lewis's The Tapestry is almost fresh off the loom to enjoy, and with an expected publication just less than a few short weeks away, readers will find themselves faced with an individualised...
The opening line that summarises the rundown of PD Alleva's The Rose reads 'A masterful, dystopian science fiction thriller of telepathic evil greys, mysterious rebellion, martial arts, and Alien Vampires.' If that tag line doesn't corral the dystopic intrigue of wild sci-fi fans everywhere I don't know what will. With an experimental hand, a brazenly venturesome...
The title of this book did indeed talk wordy to me. With a punnily christened name that gives off the same vibe as Teagan Hunter's Textual series, I couldn't look at this book and not give it some of my time. Talk Wordy to Me is a quickie drama-less, complication-free, bookish-backsplashed romance designed for an easy, prompt and simple reading ...
Rocky Ride is my second plunge into Vivian Arend territory, and let me tell you, the second standalone novella in the spin off Thomson and Sons series is unafraid of being sex shy. Libidinous from the outset, this story opens with a sexually charged, smutty escapade from page naught. We've got a policewoman heroine who's unfazed by ...
I'm in the pleasant position to say that I've done it. I've finally read a Claire Kingsley romance! Somehow, this managed to sneak its way up my TBR. But I'm also in the pleasant position to say that for the most part, Faking Ms. Right glides right on by with sweet simplicity, an easy writing style and plain adorable grace. There were some...
My second book from Louise Bay and King of Wall Street follows suit with its later written cousin in the Gentleman series, The Wrong Gentleman, apropos to the reading wake of both. This first instalment into the Royals series plated up an offer I couldn't refuse. With a medley of favourable tropes that embrace a single father storyline, a billionaire bossman...
Hello reader friends. I hope you've transitioned into the new year (or rather into the Spring season) with a bounce in your step and fortune as large as the sun. Mother nature turns her moods on a whim where I'm located but we’re finally bare to that which we’re usually unexposed to in my lay of the land: the sun. This is definitely a January-tailored ...
It's a rapid chemistry, fast sort of love for a small-town southern ranch hand when he and his boisterous best friend lean into the freedom of cowboys gone wild on a weekend trip to the sin city. When Riley Bishop wakes up with a furious hangover next to a beautiful woman he had one of the best night of his life with, he hazily recollects the daredevil ...
The Hit is the second full-width debut romance novel I've read in the span of a few months and its reading became a demonstrative prompt that calls forth something worth these words: firstly,
that indie lit continues to abound with dazzling handiwork and written
wares, and secondly, that debut writers are evincing their place,
summoning ...
Frederica Bilson gets flung into the pastime of the super rich for a night tailored towards pleasure- seeking thrills in Think Outside the Boss. After receiving a suggestive invitation addressed to the previous tenant and after a quick online search of the elusive Gilded Room, she realises she's been mistakenly invited to an exclusive sex party... for the ...
Life's most brilliant adventures are half (or wholly in my case) had on page but some of life's best conversational interplays are best had hidden behind fast fingers, phone screens and kept alive by the simplest desire to fire back with swift wit, comical snubs and wonderful one-liners that keep two people delighted to come back to the other ...
If I were a fish, the premise to Shadow Boxer would have been a hook to my scaled skin. Truth be told, it was a hook to the skin. I saw the cover, read through the blurb and I was nothing short of eager to spare some time for this. A female fighter? A hero/heroine MMA face off? A hardcore, corded female MMA brawler and a scene that depicts the ...
I rarely get the time to indulge a book for a second time but during the colder months that accompany the end of the year, I had the biggest, unavoidable hankering to soak in a comfort read. And my friends, there are very few things that are as comforting to me as the A Court of Thorns and Roses series by Sarah J. Maas. My re-read was akin to a ...
First things first, I was floored with the perspective-shifting revelation that Reclaimed Love is (in every traditional sense) a debut novel. I wasn't aware of this precious fact until I finished the book entirely. Wow. A first for me and an apparent first for the author, it's like this story already knew itself without hesitation, found itself as if it belonged and ...
The story establishes Kylie Boone as the people-pleasing go between who refuses to rock the boat. Socially inactive with a partiality for household projects, she has the traditionalist mindset of a girl who knows what she wants, and that's a dream man who'll give her a dream family on the heels of a dreamy meet-cute made of nothing short of the stuff ...
After browsing through the bookish blogosphere trying to pin down this book's online presence and coming up with slim takings, I naturally (but bafflingly) assumed that I'd be the only reader with a review to publish for Liz Lincoln's Kiss Me despite its 2019 publication date. The title is actually the origin of misdirection, which I later found ...
A Self-Published Blog-Off Finalist (SPFBO), L.L. MacRae's The Iron Crown has been making waves and breathing scorch marks into the TBR's of fantasy lovers everywhere. I had the pleasure of receiving an ARC copy of this epic fantasy that opens up an expansive lay of the land; an invading darkness, a group of travelling companions, a collective of lost...
It's the case for us all to never know how a story will unfold until we make the decision to let it, and reading Adriana Locke's Restraint (which also happens to be my first Locke sampler) re-rooted the impression that taken though we might not be when we crack open a book for the first time, lingers does the odd that appreciation can still be ...
An enemies to lovers romance See Me After Class certainly is and a near-accurate description ‘enemies to lovers’ is of my relationship with my first Meghan Quinn romance. Perhaps ‘lovers to enemies to lovers’ is more apt but I’m going to preface this review with an honest assessment, and that’s to relay that I had a swaying, seesawing...
My Beautiful Neighbour is the first instalment of what I'm certain will be a family-angled saga for the Greene's of Sunrise Bay. I'm unfamiliar with Piper Rayne's Bailey series (ostensibly a reader favourite) but it's a pre-written series set in a neighbouring town that was a major inspiration for the big family vibe in The Greene Family ...
Our oversized reading lists are always going to be full to bursting, and that won't ever change despite whatever year we might be edging and easing into. With a monstrous list of books I don't believe I'll ever get to devour in this lifetime, I'm left with the option of both fitfully making as big a dent as i can in my collection while also casting...
Hello lovely reader. Whether you’ve been fully indulging in this calorific time of year, looking forward to a time of relaxed (or chaotic), family-oriented festivity or hoping for a quiet final month to pass before we shift into the coming new year, I hope this has been a time spent in favour of your well-being. It might be hard, messy ...
L.L. MacRae's The Iron Crown, series debut to the Dragon Spirits series cuts across that age old exploit of adventurous misadventure on a scale that can only be characterised as epic and chronicled as expansive. It's big. It's vast. It's talented. And shifted away from a traditional telling, MacRae freshens up this character driven peregrination...
Four years apart from her hometown, without an ounce of regret for choosing to dream, flying high and wide on the fuel of wanderlust and the zest of adventure, Eliza is finally down to earth on the soil that made her for a surprise visit in Vermont before she takes to the wind yet again, hoping to see a family she hasn't seen since she ...
Over the years, I've realised that I can build a greater sense of marvel and connection with something through the prism of context. Whether it be a piece of commissioned art, a cinematic composition, ordinary people and their extraordinary behaviours or of course the written story, everything has a history and hence everything harbours...
The big merry 'C' word is just around the bend, gleefully tossed about in more than just hushed whispers now that we've moved into the penultimate month of 2021. And admittedly, I'm both wondering how ten individual months were snagged from under me so swiftly as much as my very semi-celebratory self feels just as unprepared ...
For the sake of all that is lost that might one day be found, I start this review with a minor anecdotal confection. The Price of Scandal was lost to me by fault of my very own deeply flawed book-marking system. I was reeled in by a book I couldn’t even remember the name of. And as the months passed with me hurriedly trying to ...
Looking past the vein and veil of the customary ordinary is perhaps a feat recognised by a less-than-sumptuous number. Realised by even slimmer margins as we suspend the value of unhurried grace in favour of a flurry of motion, a hastened bustle, a skirmish to outfox. Where the brisk and breakneck culture of the hollow 'mile-a-minute' ...
Hello lovely reader. Autumn has officially garnished us with its radiant plummage and sunset-rich palette. It's also brought with it the plummeting cold, and as per usual, my chronically ill body is acclimating about as well as Bambi in the wild. I've seen many a writer boast a ring of love for the autumnal right to don warm jumpers, reset with...
Playing Dirty is my second book by Mickey Miller, and though it didn’t near the winsome quality of my first, as many a readers love to say, I’m inclined to digress that it won’t be my last. My first foray was Five Day Fiance, which is the third volume in Miller’s Brewer Brothers series - I remember being taken in with unobstructed ease...
There’s nothing less romantic than sussing out through thin walls that your current relationship is a product of a life that had been planned out for you. Or that your boyfriend’s interest in you has been an utterly perfunctory means to an end, all orchestrated by a dominant father with business on the mind. For Samantha, it’s...
Fanny Pack is the quirky heroine of this ripe rom-com of mishap and mischance. If you're doing a double take at that name, what you're privy to is the very quintessence of Misha Bell's style of comic relief with Hard Code. You're in for a slew of epithets courtesy of a heroine with a taste for nicknaming all manner of paraphernalia...
This series has brought with it tormentors and tyrants. Ascendancy and power. Trauma, tribulation, taken freedoms, stolen freedoms and fought-for freedoms. Broken faith, layered sentiments and the age-old clash of adversarial conflict with some twists in the surviving woodwork. It's brought with it violation and viciousness, stolen rights and...
I've experienced neither a drop, a dip nor a collapse in enthusiasm for this series. The love pulls strong, its aim faithful and fires true blue within the tortured hearts of these disaster dwellers. I fondly flit and fluctuate from cordially brandishing the terms ‘disaster cast’ and ‘catastrophe crew’ with the Cuttaverse clan because, their ...
Hello lovely reader! I really can't quite believe that August has surfaced so soon. Or more accurately, that this month is almost over too. Or really that we've made it this far into the year with a toss of a coin. I don't know where time thinks to go, how the year feels like it's nearing its end when yesterday felt like the first day of the new year....
I enjoyed reading from Kitty in A Touch of Death. I relished reading from Nate in A History of Madness. We knew Thom as Kitty's betrothed, her love that she grieved. We knew him as Nate's blood brother, the other half to his soul. While Thom has a short presence in the first book, it’s only then that this threesome are seen to share the ...
I was fully mindful of just how excited I'd be (by benchmark of design) to re-enter the darkly dystopic and grossly imperfect kingdom that centres Rebecca Crunden's Outlands Pentalogy. The book that establishes and launches this series completely took me by surprise, the author affecting such a crystal-clear simplicity and character...
An important reading premise for me? I need to believe in what I'm reading. I don’t need to relate with a character but I do have to believe in them and their story. Or at the very least, to find something within the pages to keep me seated for the long haul. And I think I might have just found my sweet spot with this Solehim romantic suspense...
As the title attributes, Whiskey, Pennsylvania is a town familiar with the history of its name, and within Dare Collins's so called bar and restaurant, the patrons do love their flights of whiskey. We're familiar with the unreadable guy trope which our hero wears dismally, but flip that on its head and we have an unreadable heroine in Kenzie ...
Finnie Dorado chooses moderation. And self-discipline. She's also bullheaded for structure and as bad-tempered as her new neighbour's good humour. A new resident to Auburn Hill, Finnie's hopes include three things: to open her own emergency care practice, salvage her reputation as an unsympathetic physician and leave behind the...
A fresh author on the writing scene, Kaitie Howie materialises within a genre known for its passion, pain, pluck and the strains and gains of audacious love that we greedy romance consumers love to dive into. Romance is a genre that lays an irreversible claim to the best and most of my reading days. I just love it. Sit me under twinkling trees...
It was in the early months of 2020 that I finished up an ARC copy of Hayley Reese Chow's Odriel's Heirs, and it was precisely this action-packed, coming-of-age fantasy with magic and monsters that made me reminisce through the nuanced index of YA adventure. And refreshed a few of my own reasons why I once loved this fantastical
I'm excited to announce debut author Nara Jade's Paranormal Romance 'Burning for the Beast' into the PR romance world. If you thrive for the paranormal romance scene, you can look forward to shifters, demons, dangerous men, magic and a threatening curse in this adult urban fantasy set in Scotland. Coming in at 240 pages, 'Burning for the ...
Hello lovely reader! How have these past two reading months been for you? If, like me, you've received a chunk of book post, then I'm sure you're grinning enough to frighten a cheshire cat. After finishing up with my ARC copy of Rebecca Crunden's sci-fi dystopian, 'A Touch of Death', i jumped on my laptop, then to my email to request...
One Last Chance is a multicultural age-gap workplace romance set in Scotland that speaks to new adult adventure, a commitment to living undaunted, adjustment to settling into pastures new and playing at hopeless distance and senseless attraction with a love-phobic Scotsman. Gina Azzi writes a great roll-up-her-sleeves, kick ...
Sadie Cole is at the shallow end of faith: in people, the system and of ever living for herself. Her name is enough to open up a can of worms and start up the scornful chatter that damns her as the self-serving bad egg that covered up what had quickly become a media blizzard. In their small town, a teenaged Sadie was right at the ...
Author and advocate for female autonomy, Kirby Peterman arrives with an emancipating piece on body sovereignty. From her struggle with anorexia and subsequent recovery, to consent and feminine integrity she bares her affair with ...
In this opposites attract romance by J.H. Croix, strait-laced Daphne Bell is well practiced in the preparation of presenting appearances. It's when a double-barreled backhand strips the poise and polish from her little family unit that she becomes defenseless to the truth: when catastrophe canopies the perfect life, the only person who'll fight
We have 16-year-old Lea Wylder as Dyrwolf's lead, a headstrong huntress with a sharp and practical mind for all things woodland and wilderness, but not at all by choice. Two decades prior, the shape-shifting Dyrwolves slaughtered the only human community stationed in the sparsely populated Northern mountains. After rights stolen, a town...
A thousand years forward, a Kingdom of deference and compliance is encouraged while freedom, temerity and knowledge of the historical past is an expressly outlawed sacrilege. With an impregnable intolerance to disobedience, the new Kingdom is an oppressive regime dressed as a present-day utopia. One with an organisational...
Hello lovely readers! While I usually compile a list of monthly reads on a well...monthly basis, I've made the decision to draft up an end-of-month reading post every two months instead. The main reason for this is to give myself more space to really breath. Those of you who live with chronic illnesses will know that in terms of being a...
A phoenix is a temptation and a trophy worth salivating over to any dragon king. A king is just a king without one. With one, they court over an entire species with a rare myth to establish their seat on the supreme throne. But Kasia Amon is a best secret nobody nobody was to ever know about. After five centuries of being hunted in the shadows
life-hardened Zoe Bloom, known to the rest of the world as ‘Clover’ the nimble-fingered phantom of the dark web, is a cloaked connoisseur of code, a self-appointed vigilante who cleanses the rotten sinners from Boston’s dubious scenery one reprobate at a time. She’s an indivisible part of the city that made her, stole from her, hurt her...
Trish started her whole life over with a remarkable leap of faith, a food truck that has the New York crowd always in line for repeat business and an eleven month old that gave her a lifeline. From the start of this story It’s plain that Trish is clearly in the process of healing from the type of trauma that possibly won’t ever be washed away. But the...
Five long and seemingly strong years together. Five months later and another woman wears a ring that should have been hers. And a promised five days of sun-baked leisure and feelings forgotten is a respite that piles on the burn because unfortunately for Allison Jenkins, holiday horizons and forthcoming nuptials are best enjoyed without...
Chronic illness is the subject of the now as much as it has been the keynote epidemic of former and present exposure, because among ourselves, our visceral lives are teeming with the moving and ever-mounting levels of ruction while are minds are continually...
A propulsive second installment that has me half-starved not for blood, but for a plot that only thickens with evasive and well-maneuvered intrigue. Josie Jaffrey has a way of delivering a story that’s almost utilitarian in style and voice but completely on the ball...
My medley of romantic fiction and urban fantasy awaits! Admittedly, I do have a sloth-like reading pace, but since this year kicked off, that place has only boasted a slower-moving and more leisurely gait. Do you have a slow reading pace? Do you enjoy...
Plucky, irascible Jack Valentine is the barefaced and brazen lead protagonist in Josie Jaffrey’s first-in-series, May Day. An emotionally-driven dissident to the disciplinarian, she charges hastily at provocation, resistance emancipates her fortitude and she’s...
Like myself, fantasy reads have been the shepherding keepsakes for so many readers all over the world. There's a stark reason this genre soars with success. History can be marked by the most popular and best-selling books. We can all remember 2011 for...
Known for his unique flair with quirky, out-of-the-box written adventure, Chris Stevenson, author of many distinctive, award-winning literary reads can be identified as a writer who sets his own path and writes to the textile of his own dreamcatcher...
CONFESSION. Books weren’t my first love, films were. Please suspend your weapons of attack before you pummel me with the weight of your reader scorn. I know what you’re thinking, this is bookish blasphemy! I’ll admit, I wasn’t the traditional ‘I came flying out...
Lucas Bennett is oppressed by fire. It also fuels him. Quick to level flame, he lives to best fire, tame it, hose it from sky to ground. He can bear to lift the load of catastrophe but it has also pigeonholed him to a point of no return. His inward ambivalence has led to ...
Jaxon ‘Jay’ Taylor has lived a two-year fling trekking the globe. Travelling was energising, a peak time and a wake up call to trade change with loss and line up a lifelong dream to see the world. He did. He wanted to live life differently. Soaked with the lessons of tra...
The big 2020 is coming to an end. Really, we're nearly there. It’s close. It’s imminent. We’re sitting, time stretching out as we uncomfortably slide off its sharp edge. We've all felt the weight of it, either through firsthand deficit or distant but uncomfortable...
Photo credits: Leslin_Liu
Edited by Vaishali Title: How the Grinch Stole My Heart. Author: Annabelle Costa. Genre/Themes: Adult Fiction, Contemporary Christmas Romance, Adult Fiction, Disability. Publisher: Rose Bud Press. Year of Publication: 2018. Format: E-book kindle app. Rating: ★ ★ ★ 3.5
Fourth in the ‘Love happens’ series by Jodi Watters, ‘Have a Heart’ is the trembling, terribly tragic story of what happens when love enters a battlefield known as a disabled heart. You’ll get your HEA. You’ll get a lot of pain and emotional upheaval along the ...
Aspiring ad executive, Annie Stewart is assigned to shift duties and work for the biggest dictator in the office, Lorenzo Mancini. He’s a high maintenance lord of the office, and Annie is soon to be pushed right into his professional vicinity when she’s assigned to...
December is upon us! Winter white flakes eager to fall, the frigid cold fusing with festive promise, fretful socially distanced chatter crossing the frosty grapevine, and forthcoming relief for both an anxious year meeting its end and a holiday that rests in...
‘Storm the Castle’ Is book number one in the ‘Wild Scots’ series. Any debut is a crack in frigid ice, a toe-dip in unpredictable temperature, a flight of trepidation for any writer, more so than any reader awaiting that new release, but after scouring the many...
Encouraging topical themes such as Military PTSD, Deaf Culture, Teen Pregnancy, and American Sign Language, ‘Muffle’ takes the opportunity to weave pivotal material among an emotional, heartbreaking narrative, both transformative and thought...
Barely Breathing indeed. This exciting CR romance swiped multiple notes, scuffed many a syllable until I was barely breathing. A fantastic, refreshing reading experience! I caved and tumbled into grateful love when I flipped the first page on my tablet. Lexi was ...
After two years of nomadic business travel across the channels of Europe, Olivia Grayson has been on a fortifying excursion of self-growth, repair and remedy. Alone and unattached, she sought the perfect catharsis. Her history boasted a desire to form...
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THE CHASE
NEW ORLEANS RUSH
A TOUCH OF DEATH
THE HIT
RECLAIMED LOVE
LET'S GET TEXTUAL
THE IRON CROWN
THE CHRISTMAS BLANKET
HARD CODE
THE OFFICE PARTY
MAY DAY
ACOTAR
ACOMAF
THE PRICE OF SCANDAL
DRYWOLF
HEIR OF FIRE
RHAPSODIC
ODRIEL'S HEIRS
my read shelf:
![Vaishali • [Vicarious Living]'s book recommendations, liked quotes, book clubs, book trivia, book lists (read shelf)](https://www.goodreads.com/images/badge/badge1.jpg){kind=icon} 
 Vaishali • [V.L. Book Reviews] 's bookshelf: read-in-2022
 
RATING: 3/3.5 stars to Nanny for the SEALs ★ ★ ★
Coming back to a Cassie Cole RH romance is usually synonymous with comfort zone territory for me. Her titles have since become familiar comforts and I couldn't not call it a satisfactory ...
RATING: 3/3.5 stars to Meet Me Under the Mistletoe ★ ★ ★
From what I understand, Meet Me Under the Mistletoe is a crossroads novelette set in the same locale of River Rock, where the author has already paired off and coupled up supporti...
RATING: 2.5/3 stars to Billionaire Lumberjack ★ ★ ★
Billionaire Lumberjack's cover was a temptation I was unable to withstand, but I can't say the story echoes in quite the same way. It's easy to appreciate the components of the story i...
Stopped reading at 5%
This is definitely a new record for me but I surprised myself with how quickly I decided to push the breaks on this one, which was almost immediately. This makes me sad. I almost feel embarrassed by my inabilit...
RATING: 3.5/4 stars to Heartstopper Vol 3! ★ ★ ★ ★
Another Heartstopper volume down the hatch, another unmoving smile on my face and another phase of Nick and Charlie's sweetly moving teen romance. Every time I sit down for a reading se...
Vaishali • [V.L. Book Reviews] ’s quotes"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."— Albert Einstein Disclaimer
All images of book covers on this site belong to the authors and publishers of the books.
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Vaishali @V.L. Book Reviews
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Hosted by Weebly & edited/created by Vaishali of V.L. Book Reviews
V.L. Book Reviews is neither sponsored by or affiliated with any partners.
Any expressed thoughts, views and observations do not aim to offend or affront.
This site uses stock photography and royalty free stock media by creatives to create featured graphics
Vaishali @V.L. Book Reviews
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