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
This is my second "meh" book in a row. I just didn't ever really connect with the characters or the story in a meaningful way.I liked Clementine. She had made some decisions guided by her youthful inexperience when she was younger, but was willing to grow from them. I was will willing to like Donovan, but then he pulled that classic makes-me-eye-squint-with-irritation move. You know, the one where the guy wants to forgo the condom and when the girl protests, he makes it out like she should just trust him more and everything will be fine? Yeah. That move. Luckily our heroine doesn't fall for his nonsense, but from that point on, I just flat out didn't like him.Their story never had enough tension in it to keep me interested in the outcome. The sudden inclusion of rom-suspense elements near the end (which had the most anti-climactic resolution I have ever read, though not necessarily in a bad way since it kind of broke the mold in not involving the heroine being kidnapped, etc.) made me feel like maybe this was something the author had picked up on to, so she had added that side story to create some tension. Unfortunately, I just never felt it. Copy courtesy of Ranae Rose, via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.