The Golden Darter
My Life Through Books
Middle School was a weird mix of classics and Star Wars. I was obsessed with The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux to the point of the book falling apart. I also discovered that while I love Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters can go hang. As for Star Wars... I've read almost every meta-verse book that was published up until the New Order cannon. I can still go into detail and recite storylines of a few beloved books. Hence, my nerd life began.
High school was very paranormal, vampire, scifi, etc. I would literally go online and search for book series that concerned vampires and read everything on the list. We are talking Anita Blake, Charline Harris, Anne Rice, Amelia Atwater-Rhodes, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Tanya Huff, Steven King, etc. This was before they sparkled, ya'll. Early college was philosophical and political theory for school, and mainstream fiction in my personal time. Wicked, Life of Pi, Memoirs of a Geisha. These are the 3 books that pushed me into my next phase, mostly because of how ambiguous I felt about them, and their questionable endings.
Late-mid college I was introduced to LaVyrle Spencer by way of Hummingbird courtesy of a gripe session with my Mom about how depressing the books I had been reading lately were. I've never looked back and have been hooked on the romance genre ever since. I've read and loved a ton of LaVyrle Spencer (who is a little hit and miss), Judith McNaught (of the rapetastic 80s era of romance), and Georgette Heyer (who writes in the vein of Austen). More recently I've discovered the joys of contemporary authors like Susan Elizabeth Phillips.
Lately I've been trying to read more non-fiction. I really do enjoy learning about subjects that interest me, but non-fiction can feel like work sometimes. So I fall back to romance. You just can't go wrong with knowing that there will almost always be a happy ending.
Currently reading
Sweet Dreams (Colorado Mountain, #2)
Favorite quote:Seemed Tate had bonded with his cat even more than it appeared he'd bonded with his cat and it was pretty clear he'd seriously bonded.That kind of nonsense is what kept pulling me out of the story. Same as the first book with the massive amount of interjections and bad grammar. Another annoying tenancy Ms Ashley has:He had a point. "You have a point," I told him.Do we really need to write all that out? Only happens about 5 times, but it made me fume at every occurrence.One more thing about the interjections... At least this heroine had the guts to tell him to shut it... Once..."Tate..." He opened his mouth to speak and my hand clamped over it. "Let me talk." One recurring theme I noticed was how all the major events in people's lives had happened ten years previously. Krys had been with Bubba teen years. Heroine had been with husband ten years. Tate and Neet had Jonas ten years ago. There might have even been others that I missed...I'll also admit that I was rather disappointed that the story was so similar to the first book of this series. Most of the major elements and plot points were the same and after a while I was able to guess what was coming up next. Not crazy about the random crime story that was thrown into both books. They could have both done without them as it did nothing for either story and just seemed thrown in to have something going on besides the romance. I also wasn't crazy about Tate. Where Max seemed to realize he was being an ass and try to compromise, Tate also knew how ridiculous he was being but told the heroine to deal with it cause it wasn't changing. His alpha-hole basically had no redeeming qualities... He was just an ass. Overall, I just didn't like this book nearly has much as I did the last one. I feel like I would love Kristen Ashley's stories more if she sought the help of an editor or two.