📖Romance Books: reviews and recommendations📖 - Page 4

Originally posted by: LizzieBennet

@Bold: Not that I know of, but I haven't been following the latest news.

Do you mean Tessa Bailey's series? It's the Bellinger sisters. Fix her up is by Tessa too.

The other series I reviewed on here is Jennifer Dawson's Something New Series.

Which ones the most R rated?😆

Originally posted by: la_Reine

Which ones the most R rated?😆

Idk, Tessa writes some steamy stuff. And not just steamy - they have dirty talk & some kinky stuff too😆. She doesn't hold much back. Except for Hook, Line and Sinker - which is why it surprised me.

You should try Sink or Swim by Tessa Bailey. It has an Indian FMC - Jiya, and its quite angsty - which I know you also love! 😳

Jennifer's sex scenes are also pretty much up there too, though she maybe a level lower in terms of extreme stuff.

What are you reading currently? Please post a review when you finish!

Book Title: Fix her Up (Hot and Hammered # 1)

Author: Tessa Bailey

Year of Publication: 2019

Genre: Contemporary M/F Romance

Trope/s: Unrequited love, First love, Friends-to-lovers?, Best friend's sister, Fake dating, Grumpy/ Sunshine?, Sports Hero, Makeover, Small Town romance, Traumatized Hero ..

There may be more I'm missing out on ... yeah she really read the book on Romance tropes and said I'm gonna pick all of them!

Maturity Rating: Adult for serious smut levels 😈

Personal Rating: 2.5 ? /5

Synopsis:

Georgette Castle's family runs the biggest home reno business in the town of Port Jefferson, but being the youngest she's always been sorta undermined by her well-meaning family. Her profession as a birthday party clown might be responsible in a small way! 😆 She's been in love with her brother's best friend, Travis Ford, since as long as she can remember.

Travis hit the big leagues as a baseball star, but now an arm injury has invalided him from playing the game that he loves more than anything else. He's back in Port Jeff where he grew up - his dilapidated family home a reminder of his sordid childhood. He's drowning his sorrows in booze and self-pity, until Georgie dumps some leftover lo mein noodles on him that finally forces him to wake up. He figures he can moonlight as a construction worker while he's figuring out his shit, and (very conveniently) has a BFF who runs a home reno business who's more than happy to offer him a temp job. So Travis hammers on while 'batting' away eager single women in town who have a - not quite covert - 'who will date Travis Ford' contest ongoing. Yeah he's so hot and popular, his d**k has a nickname! 🤪😆.

Georgie has always been his best friend's little sister to him, until he begins to see her as a possibility for him to change his image from playboy to 'wholesome family guy' so he can land his dream job. Georgie thinks dating Travis will finally get her family to take her seriously.

We all know how that's gonna go! 😆

Review:

I honestly don't know how I feel about this book. I mean, I really don't. I can't say I loved it, but I didn't hate it either. So much depends on how and when you read a book, y'know? I think if this had been my very first Tessa Bailey, I may have enjoyed it more but I have read better stuff from her & better contemporary romances in general. So yeah, that affected my rating for sure.

Plus it reminded me sooo much of another book I read recently - As good as new by Jennifer Dawson. Both MMCs are sports stars who have an injury and drown in self-pity until the FMCs shake them up out of their stupor. That one was Best friend's brother and also had the FMC nursing a long-time crush on the MMC. So I was hit by a major sense of deja-vu. And I didn't love that one either, so yeah.

Tropes: Tessa seems to have employed so many tropes in this one and she had a mix of some I love, some I hate and others I'm meh about. Friends-to-lovers is kinda meh for me but I loooove Fake Dating, and makeover and unrequited love I abhor. So my reading experience ended up like the Dow Jones Index 😆! The grand romantic gesture in the end also fell flat for me - it was sooo like a romcom movie that I couldn't take it seriously. That works in a movie, but a book needs to have more substance.

MCs: I feel the same about the MCs. See, I normally need to be really invested (in at least one of them) to root hard for their HEA. I liked them fine (Georgie a bit more than Travis), but found I really wasn't hung up on them. Travis has some issues - he reminded me a LOT of Fox, Hook, Line and Sinker's MMC, and some of the storyline seems so similar to that one, Travis being objectified and Georgie jumping in to defend him. Now if I hadn't read H, L&S first, I probably would have loved that scene, but now I went: yeah, been there, read that. And I liked Fox a looott more than Travis.

Georgie was cute. She's bubbly and funny and just overall a ray of sunshine. She made me laugh especially the name she comes up with for their females only club. Travis is obviously the Grumpy in this one. And he has a bunch of issues to overcome. In contrast, Georgie's don't seem like much. One little dinner and her issues are dealt with.

I like that they both are the leading soldiers in each others' defense squad though. That was heartwarming.

There's one scene where Travis picks up a baseball bat (urged on by Georgie) that's seriously heart-warming. I felt my eyes welling up, ngl. But that was about it in this book.

So Travis has always been passed around like a bad penny - no one wants him for him. That's his conflict.

And then there's the crisis, that again leans heavily into one MC hiding something big from the other MC. This again did not feel like a big deal to me and it felt like an over-reaction. Things always hinge on miscommunication, don't they? And then one MC has to grovel before the other.

God, I sound so jaded. Perhaps I should take a break from romances for a bit! 😆

Overall reading this book was a labored effort, I put it down a lot and was distracted a lot, but there was some cute and funny stuff that's so Tessa. Oh, & the smut was just about okay. I don't mean the levels - they were up there - but I couldn't get into it.

Also, I did not much care for the secondary characters that are introduced here and on whom the rest of the series will revolve, so I guess that means I'm not reading those! 😳

I will repeat this though - don't go solely by my review because it's definitely clouded by the timing of this read.

Book Title:

Wife

Author:

Penelope Sky

Year published:

Sept 2019

Genre/s:

Dark contemporary romance

Tropes (if applicable):
Anti-hero

Probable Triggers:

Violence, assault, attempted sexual assault, murder

Maturity rating (General audience/ teens/ Adult):

Adult

Your personal rating (out of 5):

3.5 stars - 4 Stars

Synopsis (a short spoiler-free blurb):

I was twenty-one when the gypsy read my future:

As punishment for your crimes, you will only love one woman...but she'll never love you back.

I didn't believe a word of it.

Until I met Sofia Romano almost ten years later.

I fell hard for this woman. Would die for this woman.

But she left me.

Now years have passed and Sofia needs a husband. Her father is gone and her mother is trying to marry her off to a man that can protect their family, protect their company.

She's looking for someone powerful.

Check.

Someone rich.

Check.

Someone handsome.

Double check.

Now it's my chance to have the only woman I've ever loved...and I'll make sure she feels the same way.

I have a lifetime to make that happen.

Review: (copied and pasted most of it from my goodreads account review 😂 )

Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Writing: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Hero: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Heroine: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Cliffhanger ending

I don’t really know where to start with this one. It was a rollercoaster of a ride and I loved it. The writing was different compared to other books of Penelope Sky’s. It was in first point of view, but it was a little impersonal. I don’t know if I’m making sense, but it’s just what I felt when I was reading this book. I didn’t mind it, but it didn’t captivate me as some books do when it’s in first person pov.

Sophia is my sort of female main character I love reading about. She was strong, resilient, intelligent… I loved the fact that she was the one against love and didn’t believe in it whereas Hades wanted the relationship.

Usually in other books, it is the women chasing the guys for a relationship and commitment but here it was the opposite way around.

Hades was great. I liked him. He was different with Sophia and it was nice seeing a gentler side to him when he was with her otherwise he was mysterious and dark dealing with all sorts of people.

Hades was persistent in wanting more from Sophia and tried to make it seem like he was not affected when he’d been pushed the first time but you could tell it did hurt him especially when he starts wondering about what the gypsy had said was his fate. I have to say that I did love the rejections he faced 😂 it’s very rare that happens to male main characters.

Damn the cliffhanger… Looking forward to reading more.

One thing I'd point out is that the title does not match the plot at all. This would've been a good title for the second book rather than the first. This one should've been maybe Lovers or Lovers to enemies? I don't know but the title did not match the plot. It is near the last few pages that the topic of Sophia needing a husband comes up. So that was a little stupid otherwise the book was enjoyable. It was a rather quick read since I managed to finish it within a day. Started it yesterday evening and finished it this morning.

My next read should've been the second book to this, but I am starting the second book of the Tarkhanov Empire by Bree Porter as the first book (Kingpin's foxglove) finished on a cliffhanger and I finally received the paperback of Empress of Poisons which is book 2! So I am starting this one tonight. The book cover is just so amazing ❤️

Originally posted by: LizzieBennet

All of them? 😆

Idk, Tessa writes some steamy stuff. And not just steamy - they have dirty talk & some kinky stuff too😆. She doesn't hold much back. Except for Hook, Line and Sinker - which is why it surprised me.

You should try Sink or Swim by Tessa Bailey. It has an Indian FMC - Jiya, and its quite angsty - which I know you also love! 😳

Jennifer's sex scenes are also pretty much up there too, though she maybe a level lower in terms of extreme stuff.

What are you reading currently? Please post a review when you finish!

I was reading "Write Me A Love Story" because Hotstar is airing a webseries based on that story....but I had no idea it would be so erotic!😆 The erotic scenes are so detailed, which I like.😆 I'm almost done with it.

Title: The Love Hypothesis

Author: Ali Hazelwood

Year Published: 2021

Genre: Contemporary M/F Romance

Trope/s: Fake dating, Professor-student, Forced proximity

Triggers: Warning for molestation

Maturity rating: Adult

Book rating: 3.5/ 5

Synopsis: Olive Smith is a 3rd year Ph.D student at Stanford, researching pancreatic cancer. She's all alone in the world, having emancipated at 16 and made it all by herself. Now, her BFFs Anh and Malcolm are everything to her. So when she has to make Anh believe she's over her ex, Jeremy, so Anh can begin dating him, she has no choice but to provide empirical evidence to a fellow scientist. And what better way to do that than by kissing a random dude? Except random dude is Dr. Adam Carlsen, the hotshot brilliant Assistant Prof in computational biology, but also a hardass and Most likely to be voted most hated adviser by the rest of the PhD students. Olive thinks he's antagonistic and unapproachable and so it comes as a surprise when Adam agrees to keep up the pretense, for self-serving reasons. They begin their fake dating which is having coffee at Starbucks every Wednesday at 10 am for 10 minutes. Because Olive thinks that is the maximum dose she can take of him. But convincing Anh and Adam's funders is gonna take more than that. So they keep going until things come to a head when they are forced to share a hotel room at a bigshot Scientific conference. But things happen at the conference that leads to Olive's dreams of completing her research hanging by a thread more precarious than the explosive reagents in her lab. And her actions can make or break Adam's future plans too. Add to that the complicated feelings she's having for him and you have a radioactive atom headed for fission.

Review: Ok, so when I was about a third of the book through, I was squeeing so much I thought I'd love it. In the end, I didn't hate it but it left me feeling somewhat deflated. Dissatisfied. I'm not sure even now if I can get into the specifics of why, but let me try.

Pros: Women and men in STEM, especially women in STEM or STEMinists as the author refers to them. Absolutely the number one Pro. There is not enough representation and this was soo welcome!

It reminded me so much of the time back when I was a student in academia and all the crap associated with it. Locking up your glassware and stealing pipettes, beakers and conical flasks from your neighbour. Praying your lab partner doesn't break more of them, and just praying you'll be left with enough at the end of the year so you don't have to beg your parents for fine money cos you've been careless. Sweetening the condescending lab assistants so they'd sneak in lab equipment for you. Sucking up to the absolutely abhorrent TAs and taking their derisive smirks in stride hoping they'd help you identify your compound during finals. Praying you don't go colour blind so you can identify the difference between bright red, deep red, cerise and crimson. Shaking in your boots when you have to defend your thesis and present your seminar in a scientific session, the absolute, crippling fear of being thrown a question you cannot answer.

This book brought back all those memories - some cherished but mostly painful yet altogether relatable. Academia is the worst & this book reminds you of why. It also reminds you of why it can be the best. Anyways, the point I'm making is you don't see enough books written where the MCs are geeky scientists and that is so wrong. Scientists are people too and they absolutely deserve HEAs!

I love how each chapter begins with a Hypothesis that is proved either right or wrong in the chapter. So innovative!

I love the science puns, references to crucial lab equipment breaking down just when you need them so you're stuck at a major point in your research & mostly the pain of not having enough funding. A lot of this book hinges on Olive pursuing her pancreatic cancer research and the advanced equipment she needs which her current lab and adviser cannot provide her, and her quest for someone who can which again leads to a major plot point and the eventual climactic moment in the story.

Another pro would be the demisexual representation. Again, you don't see a lot of ACE representation in books and media so this should have been welcome and it was. However, the author ended up stereotyping this a bit and it wasn't explored as much as I'd have liked.

Olive is an admirable FMC, she lost her mom to pancreatic cancer and hence the personal stake in her research. She is a fighter and has fought her way into Stanford and you get a sense of the struggles she faces as an impoverished student. She loves her friends and will do anything for them and later, when she falls for Adam, she will also do anything for him including sacrifice her own sense of well-being. While this may seem like a pro, it actually became a con for me as I'll come to later.

Adam is intelligent and tall (very, very tall as you'll know from the number of times this comes up!) and built and handsome. He's also a nice person but this is only evident from his interactions with Olive. To the rest of his grad students, he's an ogre which actually ends up giving Olive a hard time because she has to deal with the fallout as his (fake) girlfriend. The scene where he stands up for her is adorable. I love how considerate he is of her during their intimacy, asking for permission and never losing sight of consent. I love the way he teases her about her sexually harassing him 😆! And I love how in the end it's revealed how much he cares - and has cared for her unbeknownst to her.

The language is funny and quirky and Olive is the one responsible. Adam spends all the book playing straight guy to Olive's comedienne act. l love their banter, I love how he refers to her as 'smart-ass', I love their Starbucks dates and Adam teasing her about her sugary drinks and Olive teasing him about his health food kink.

Oh and did I mention my favorite (or one of my favorite) tropes - fake dating? I love it. And also forced proximity that ends up with them sharing a hotel room. The absolute best romcom tropes (fight me on this!). This book scores on that for sure.

But but...

Now we come to the cons that are many.

Cons: I thought about this a lot and there were several things that struck me as cons in the book but I can summarize them all with a single problem point. This book is written entirely from Olive's PoV. We don't hear from Adam at all. So whatever you know of Adam ends up being what Olive's impressions of him are. Plus the little tidbits that he reveals in conversations or his friends reveal about him. Thought initially this was captivating and mysterious, but later I found it annoying because I wanted to know what Adam thought about Olive. I realized I did not know Adam at all - except that he was moody and sullen and an ass to his students.

Based on this, one would think Olive would be well-threshed out but no! This book just ends up being a series of events thrown together where Anh forces them into embarrassing PDA situations (*eyeroll*), and Olive floats blissfully from one to another completely unaware. In fact, her self-awareness is so low that she needs Anh to tell her she has fallen for Adam.

Also, they don't communicate. I would expect scientists to follow method and logic above all else, but both MCs seem to lack this. Why they don't tell each other how they feel is a complete mystery to me. It just felt like an illogical plot point meant to serve up the HEA at the end. And add in angst where it wasn't needed.

And because you don't hear from Adam at all, you don't get what it is about Olive that made him fall for her. You only know Olive inasmuch as her narrative tells us. I couldn't even imagine her in my head because of how non-descript she is.

The sex scene: We have one sex scene in the whole book and man... nope, nope, nope. I think she may have put this in a cluster in one chapter so people who do not enjoy these sort of scenes could skip over them. I see a lot of readers on GR complain about excessive R rated scenes and perhaps she wanted to accommodate them. In fact this almost read like a YA novel if it wasn't for that one scene. I don't mind lack of quantity if there's quality but this one? It was so meh. I cannot pinpoint what it was about it that I did not enjoy but Hazelwood cannot write these scenes. Even the kissing scenes fell flat for me. I couldn't feel the chemistry between Adam and Olive. There are lots of cute scenes but the attraction and the heat is missing. The butterflies in the stomach feeling was absent. Yeah, I know this is very subjective so it's entirely my opinion. Others may feel differently. I just think some authors are able to bring this out beautifully and others just cannot.

The conflict and the resolution: Again, there was good build-up to the conflict but the way it was sorted felt all too easy and convenient and you got it right, deflating.

The gay best-friend angle was also a convenient and lazy trope imo. Both MCs have one each and very conveniently, hook-up! Although they are cute. 😳

The professor-student dynamic is also somewhat problematic, though Hazelwood brushes it off as immaterial because Adam is not Olive's direct adviser or involved in her study in any way. Even if it brings in a power imbalance in their relationship - but I shouldn't complain about this because a power imbalance exists in almost all romances - in terms of either age, experience or status.

So bottomline - Hazelwood sets up the romance beautifully, brings in some delicious tropes and banter, and a promising plot but fails to deliver that satisfaction that is so important in Romances. That blissful feeling in the end that these two have their HEA and all's right with the world, the birds are singing, the crops are thriving, world peace is here to stay and all the acne in the world have been banished from the face of the earth? That feeling was missing for me.

Still, Science and Romance is a combination you rarely see so I gave this the rating I did. But from the blurbs of her other works it seems like this formula is a rinse and repeat one with Hazelwood. So idk if I'll read her other books.

Originally posted by: la_Reine

I was reading "Write Me A Love Story" because Hotstar is airing a webseries based on that story....but I had no idea it would be so erotic!😆 The erotic scenes are so detailed, which I like.😆 I'm almost done with it.

Also what series is this?

Originally posted by: LizzieBennet

Who's the author? Tessa somebody?

Also what series is this?

No this isn't a series. It's by some Indian writer called Ravinder Singh I think. I finished it yesterday, but didn't get time to review it. I'll do it now.

And thanks for reviewing TLH...that's also on my TBR, I've heard such good things about it but now your review is puting me off.🤣

Book Title: Write Me A Love Story

Author: Ravinder Singh

Year published: 2021

Genre/s: Romance

Tropes (if applicable): enemies-to-lovers

Probable Triggers: R rated sexual content😆

Maturity rating (General audience/ teens/ Adult): Adult

Your personal rating (out of 5): 4.5

Synopsis (a short spoiler-free blurb): Asmita is an editor at PaperInk. Abhimanyu is a romance writer who comes to PaperInk to get his novel edited, where he meets Asmita and apparently they have some past interaction which caused hatred between them. He is adamant to have his novel edited by Asmita only (male ego), even though she doesn't do that genre, but she is forced to agree due to her mother's illness and she needs money for treatment.

Review (What you enjoyed/disliked about the book. Try to keep it as spoiler-free as possible):

I started this novel only because of the Hotstar series which was being adapted from it, otherwise I probably never would have read it. So credit goes to Hotstar!

When I started reading, it seemed quite boring and took me a while to get into it. I was like why did I even start reading this? Probably because the story seemed too predictable, and the beginning also lacked that "spark" which would captivate me into reading the story.

It took a while for Asmita and Abhimanyu (the main characters) to be introduced, but as soon as they met, I felt the chemistry instantly. That's when I got invested in the story and their journey, especially Asmita's, since she always seemed like the more emotional one which was shown with her mother's illness and her feelings regarding the people around her.

I never imagined the story would be so erotic though, not in a bad way, everything was really detailed but at the same time nothing felt repetitive like it usually does with these types of stories. So it wasn't like 50 Shades Of Grey.

I could emphasize with Asmita's character and feelings throughout the story, I felt this was more of her journey rather than Abhimanyu's. The writer didn't explore Abhimanyu's thoughts as much as Asmita's, that's what I felt anyway.

Even the ending was unexpected and realistic, which I liked. Though I can imagine this story having a totally different and happier ending too, which I would have probably prefered.

I was confused whether I should give this a 4 or a 5, though I really liked it, but I guess I have read better stories. This writer is good and descriptive though, I might look into some of their other stories later.

Originally posted by: la_Reine

No this isn't a series. It's by some Indian writer called Ravinder Singh I think. I finished it yesterday, but didn't get time to review it. I'll do it now.

And thanks for reviewing TLH...that's also on my TBR, I've heard such good things about it but now your review is puting me off.🤣

Huh? Okay. I went over and checked it out on GoodReads but the blurb did not give me any impression of it having any sort of erotic content 😆.

Oh I meant the TV series you said - on Hotstar?

I liked TLH. A lot. Perhaps I was too objective and analytical in my review. 🤔 You should read it and judge for yourself.