Guys. GUYS. I’m pretty sure Christina Lauren, like, really listens and responds to feedback. This book would have been written too early to claim a direct line of insight from the epic post on slut shaming in romance, but I feel like the cultural tides that made way for that post influence Christina Lauren very much. 1) Luke, the male hero, out-and-out declares himself a feminist. 2) In direct contrast to almost every other book featuring a recovering rake, this one goes out of its […]
Needs more wine.
Kyle Davis is a powerful CEO, who lost his entire family in the Boxing Day tsunami. He was sleeping off a bender and blames himself for their deaths. Jordan Hastings is a vintner, who recently broke off her engagement, when her fiance stole her credit for an award-winning wine. This particular Christmas, they are forced by circumstance to spend a week together in Kyle’s secluded property in Margaret River (for non-West Australians, “Margs” used to be cheap and populated by hippies and surfers, but is […]
This Review Contains a Mic Drop
A New Adult romance about a professional football player and a woman in her last year of university on a track scholarship, Play was an odd read. As happens sometimes with this genre, it felt like the version of romance conjured up by an awkward teen who has never been kissed other than that one time at a 13th birthday party, “but that was on a dare, so it doesn’t count.” I have some notes, but the first one is the showstopper: Opening with an […]
Deeply dysfunctional people with the coolest job ever!
St. Mary’s is a project funded by a fictional university that sends historians back in time to observe significant events in contemporary time. The work is incredibly dangerous and all-consuming, but for history nerds it is an amazing opportunity. The lead character, Max, is an orphan (convenient!) incredibly tough (useful in the Cretaceous Period) and so emotionally dysfunctional that she’s probably a sociopath. Not that she’s portrayed that way. Instead she is the capable, but accident prone, slightly nerdy, slightly overweight romantic lead. There […]