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goldendarter

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

Playing Dirty
Jennifer Echols
Searching for Someday
Jennifer Probst
Mara TP
Ming Doyle
The Quest
Susan Kearney
Play by Play (Play Makers #1)
Kate Donovan
Mrs Ronnie The Society Hostess Who Collected Kings
Sian Evans

Everything Bared (Six-Alarm Sexy, #2)

Everything Bared (Six-Alarm Sexy, #2) - Kristine Cayne I really should have written this review right after I read the book, but I didn't. And now I am all foggy on my impressions. But I have a few highlights, so we'll see how this goes...

So the setup of this book is interesting and involves one of my favorite tropes. But then we got about 50 pages in and everything just started going downhill. Both the the mains irritated me for one reason or another.

William was fine, until he started getting all confusing on what he actually wanted out of their relationship. He went back and forth between wanting their relationship a secret and wanting it out in the open, between being happy with their sexual relationship and then not, between wanting Dani to change/quit her job/stop being so crazy in bed to none of those things... and then back again. Seriously, he was all over the damn place.

Dani just plain pissed me off. She is made out to be this strong woman in a man's field. She is a K-9 unit for fire rescue, so the lady has balls. But when it comes to William saying that she needs to change herself/her job or they can't have a relationship? Folds. Completely. UGH.

The writing itself was good, but the characters... They just made you want to slap them. And since I didn't like either of these confused souls, I don't think I will be looking for more installments in this series...

Copy courtesy of Aspendawn Books, via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.