Susan’s Book Blog

You guys! A 5 chapter preview of Alexis Hall's Husband Material is AVAILABLE NOW on NetGalley!  Husband Material is his follow-up to his wonderful novel Boyfriend Material and is due to be published in August.  This was perfection. Absolute perfection. I didn’t think I could be more excited for this book than I already was. Alexis Hall has seamlessly fallen back into the BM universe and hit the ground running. This preview was such a treat. Reading it was like throwing a favorite blanket around myself and enjoying that cozy familiar warmth. All the characters we loved from BM are here again in perfect form and I cannot wait for August!! If you loved BM (and of course you did, why wouldn't you) go now to read the preview that's available on NG. (Don't forget to leave a review after!)  Click here to Read Now!

5 🎩🎩🎩🎩🎩 out of 5 Valentine Layton, the Duke of Malvern, has twin problems: literally. It was always his father’s hope that Valentine would marry Miss Arabella Tarleton. But, unfortunately, too many novels at an impressionable age have caused her to grow up…romantic. So romantic that a marriage of convenience will not do and after Valentine’s proposal she flees into the night determined never to set eyes on him again. Arabella’s twin brother, Mr. Bonaventure “Bonny” Tarleton, has also grown up…romantic. And fully expects Valentine to ride out after Arabella and prove to her that he’s not the cold-hearted cad he seems to be. Despite copious misgivings, Valentine finds himself on a pell-mell chase to Dover with Bonny by his side. Bonny is unreasonable, overdramatic, annoying, and…beautiful? And being with him makes Valentine question everything he thought he knew. About himself. About love. Even about which Tarleton he should be pursuing. ☙ ☙ ☙ ☙ ☙ This book is a god damned masterpie...

 I came across indie book box seller, Dark & Shimmer, on Rachel Lynn Solomon’s Instagram a short while back, when they were selling their Weather Girl themed box. I knew I wanted to read it and the box sounded really fun so I gave it a go. It arrived today and here’s some pics of the goodies inside: It came with a signed copy of the book. ⬇️ Gorgeous enamel pin by Azurose Designs ⬇️ Peppermint hot cocoa!! I LOVE this! ⬇️ Cinnamon Roll scented body butter. Too cute 😝  ⬇️ And Weather Girl now gets a place on the Blue & Yellow shelf - because it can! ⬇️ It was such a treat to open and I can’t wait to enjoy all the goodies! You can find the book box seller on Instagram at DarkandShimmer. 

 Something Fabulous is OUT TODAY and is available for FREE on Kindle Unlimited. I started this one as soon as I finished my previous book last night and It Is Amazing! It's so incredibly funny and the characters are brilliant. This is peak Alexis Hall. If you have KU you MUST give this a try. (And if you don't have KU, the kindle version is only $3.99 right now and it's so worth it. Full review to come...)  ☙ ☙ ☙ ☙ ☙ From the acclaimed author of Boyfriend Material comes a delightfully witty romance featuring a reserved duke who’s betrothed to one twin and hopelessly enamoured of the other. Valentine Layton, the Duke of Malvern, has twin problems: literally. It was always his father’s hope that Valentine would marry Miss Arabella Tarleton. But, unfortunately, too many novels at an impressionable age have caused her to grow up…romantic. So romantic that a marriage of convenience will not do and after Valentine’s proposal she flees into the night determined never to set eyes...

  The Suite Spot by Trish Doller Pub Date: Mar 8, 2022 St. Martin's Griffin ✨✨ 4.5 stars out of 5 ✨✨ OMG this gave me allll the feels 🥰🥺 Have you ever felt like an author has taken a look around the inside of your head and been like “I think I know just the thing” and then written a book that feels tailored to your personal tastes and interests? That’s what this book felt like. I’ve never read anything by Trish Doller before (Float Plan is high up on my TBR) but I love the characters she created here, the story she told, and her writing style. I’m definitely looking forward to reading more of her work after this. Rachel Beck is a single mom who finds herself in need of a new job and decides to make a big life change to get it. This is a follow-up to Float Plan (the MCs of both books are sisters) but can absolutely stand on its own. (For Float Plan fans: Anna & Keane make cameos.) There was honestly so much I appreciated and enjoyed about this book. I loved Rachel’s strength a...

  Look for these updates on the blog:  1. Early Review of The Suite Spot , Trish Doller’s amazing follow-up to Float Plan. (Pub date: Mar 8, 2022) 2. Something Fabulous, Alexis   Hall’s new queer HR, drops TOMORROW January 25! Review coming soon. 3. Weather Girl (Jan. 11) Rachel Lynn Solomon’s romcom about a weather reporter and a single dad sports reporter. Review coming soon!

You guys, it's SO prettyyyyyyy 😍 Heartstopper Vol 2 is now available at Fairyloot!  ✨ ✨Limited Edition ✨ ✨ ✨ Foil on dust jacket ✨ ✨ Foil design on hardcover ✨ ✨ Sprayed edges ✨ ✨ Custom endpapers ✨ ✨ Includes the Tara/Darcy story ✨   “If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.” - Ferris Bueller 

Book buying ban? I don’t know her.  🕶  Okay so I know I said I needed to stop buying books. But in my defense I had a few bucks saved up at Pango Books from a few sales I made so I bought a first edition signed copy of   What If It’s Us by Becky Albertalli & Adam Silvera. It was a really good deal, too. So then of course I had to grab the new release sequel Here’s To Us . Can’t have one without the other, amirite? Never read these before but I’ve heard a lot about them. Hopefully they live up to the hype.  Then I spent my Amazon rewards points on Before We Disappear , Love At First Spite (which is excellent! Buy it, read it!), and Float Plan . I had an ulterior motive  another reason for buying the last two, which was to add them to my Blue & Yellow book shelves! (See below 👇🏼) Sanatorium actually worked well for that, too, so that went up there as well. And that one came from Waterstones and has yellow sprayed edges. 🤩   And I had to ad...

How to Hate Love Your Neighbor   by Sophie Sullivan Pub Date Jan 18, 2022 The setting and premise were enough to hook me on this one. I loved seeing two characters with interesting professions working on home renovation and design projects - it was like watching my favorite HGTV home reno show. And I thought the rivals/enemies-to-lovers aspect was done well. (I hate when they are needlessly vicious to one another and that wasn’t the case here.) I would call them more rivals than enemies though. Noah is a real estate developer (sweet but with overprivileged douchebag vibes because of course) who is looking to buy the home next door - the home Grace inherits and moves into. Grace is a soon-to-be design school grad and ends up renovating her new neighbor Noah’s home, and romcom shenanigans ensue. There's plenty to like about the book including Noah’s friend Josh; I thought he was a good side character. I liked, too, that Noah and Grace were in constant close proximity and worked toge...

  5 stars out of 5 So I finally got around to reading Sailor Proof by Annabeth Albert, which I've had on my kindle for ages and have been wanting to get to forever. (Okay, it hasn't been THAT long; it was published in September, but it felt like forever.) Anyway, it was worth the wait. It was amazing! It was the perfect fluffy, smutty follow-up/antidote to the very dark, very stabby, very murdery monster book I finished the other day.  I mean, it was SO FLUFFEH. Derrick is a naval chief on a submarine coming back stateside after a deployment. Derrick's naval buddy bestie, Calder, offered up his younger brother Arthur to come meet Derrick at port for the big homecoming so Derrick could exact a little revenge on his dirty, cheating ex (who has since moved on to one of his shipmates, ouch) by making him jealous with a steamy dockside welcome from an unexpected new (fake) boyfriend.  Derrick and Arthur were so sweet and wonderful. They were always kind and supportive of one...

  Only a Monster by Vanessa Len Pub date Feb 22, 2022 Well, this was a crazy ride. Monsters (literal and figurative), time travel, super powers, a heist, first love. There’s a LOT going on. It’s very much it’s own kind of fairytale, with its morality lessons and the simple language Len uses. She could have started it with “Once upon a time” and it wouldn’t have felt out of place. To me, the moral dilemma Joan finds herself in was the most intriguing part of the book. (Which is saying something, considering the premise and the plot.) It tackles the perennial issue of the nature of right & wrong/good & evil. It turns everything on its head. The good guy is the bad guy? The bad guy is the good guy? Or maybe a little bit of both? Or neither?  Joan has grown up being told that she’s a monster. She didn’t know that it was meant literally. She clearly has a strong moral compass and a conscience and always tries to do the right thing. It’s important to her to be a good person....

Weather Girl is out today! Mine isn’t here just yet but I look forward to getting it and starting it immediately! (And a review will follow shortly.) I’ve been looking forward to this one for months! But for the moment, let’s appreciate how absolutely ADORABLE the cover is. That’s a winner right there.  For more info: http://www.rachelsolomonbooks.com/weather-girl

  Winter's Orbit   by Everina Maxwell Paperback pub date Dec 28, 2021 Outer space empires, alien cultures, political strife and machinations. This has been described as a "space opera" and to me it is equal parts Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Dune, and Red White and Royal Blue. I love how this book starts: with Prince Kiem being informed by the Emperor that he will be participating in an arranged marriage in order to fulfill a treaty promise with another plant of the empire. He's a lesser royal who up until now has been enjoying a carefree lifestyle. Now he must buckle down and do his duty. Which he does, to his credit, with little complaint.  His new partner is a quiet, reticent man named Jainan who has recently been widowed. Jainan is hesitant to cause any disruption in the prince's life, and Kiem feels bad for Jainan for being forced to remarry so soon after his previous partner's death. So they are both walking on eggshells around one another...

 There are a small hand-full of books that have stuck with me ever since I read them several years ago. They're not new, not terribly popular, not anything you'll see on BookTok or Bookstagram. But they made an impression on me and have become some of my all-time feelgood favorites. The first one of this bunch is Time & Again by Jack Finney. It's got time travel and some romance. it was written in 1970 so it's definitely not contemporary to us but I think that's part of the appeal. Here's the official summary: When advertising artist Si Morley is recruited to join a covert government operation exploring the possibility of time travel, he jumps at the chance to leave his mundane 20th-century existence and step into the past. But he also has another motivation for going back in time: a half-burned letter that tells of a mysterious, tragic death and ominously of “fire which will destroy the whole world.” Traveling to New York City in January 1882 to investigate...

 My Book of the Month Club choice for January was Love and Other Disasters by Anita Kelly. It was the Romance genre choice for the month and I’d heard a LOT of good things about it so I decided to give it a go. I hope to get it read sometime this month. 🤞🏼  Have you read this one yet? If so, what did you think?

Okay, you guys, I need you to listen up because this book I’m about to talk about is AMAZING and it deserves attention and I haven’t heard a lot of word of mouth going around about it and it should be getting A LOT more love than it is.  Icebreaker is a wonderful, queer YA hockey romance that deserves all the love. I discovered it via NetGalley, gave it a try based on the premise, and was so glad I did because it was amazing. The romance is wonderful, the hockey is exciting and accurately portrayed, and the writing is fantastic. More importantly, the book delves into several serious topics and themes. This is Graziadei’s first book but it definitely won’t be their last. Check it out and give it some love! (GoodReads review below.) Pub Date: January 18, 2022 Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. I LOVED this!! I was excited to dive into this one and I enjoyed it even more than I expected to. I’ve been itching to read more hockey romances (Taylor Fitzpatrick is the gold standard, imo, and h...

Like a lot of people, I think, I really need to pull back on how many books I buy. I have this massive TBR pile that I desperately want to get through (why can’t I read 47 books at once??? 😭) and seriously need to stop adding to it already.  I still have a dozen or so preorders waiting on their release dates, scattered throughout 2022. My Book of the Month club membership is a potential extra dozen books or so, one sprinkled in every few weeks. And I recently signed up for Illumicrate’s two subscriptions: their regular monthly book box and their quarterly romance-centric sub, Afterlight. So I definitely have those to look forward to, like little Christmas gifts throughout the year. I won’t exactly be hard up for new books, whether they’re just new to me or new to everyone. So I’m going to try to be good and not seek out new books quite so much while I bulldoze my way through my TBR. And I’m going to try to be better about impulse purchases… like the ones below… 😬 I came across...

  Love At First Spite by Anna E. Collins Pub Day: Jan 4, 2022 I loved this! It was cute, light, and fluffy but had a good balance of serious emotional weight. Wyatt was a sweetheart. The secondary characters were great. The romance was well paced. And I really liked the choice of professions for the MCs: interior designer and architect; it made for a nice workplace setting and an interesting dynamic. I really liked both Dani and Wyatt from the start and liked how their relationship evolved as they got to know one another. (Can we talk about the fantastic paintball scene the book opens with?) I thought the obstacles in their relationship were really believable and realistic. I didn’t feel like their conflicts were contrivances. Unfortunately I did feel the resolution with the house and the ex was a little far fetched.  The disability rep in this book was fascinating. I’d heard of Ménière’s disease before but didn’t know anything about it. Wyatt lives with Ménière’s and it plays...

The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes by Cat Sebastian  Pub date: June 7, 2022   Cat Sebastian has such a way with words, her writing never ceases to impress me. The writing is tight, engaging and highly entertaining. And the romance was rather unorthodox but I really liked that about it.   This is the follow-up to Kit Webb which I have not read yet (but is on my TBR)… The book can stand well enough on its own without having read Kit Webb first but I do feel like I missed the meaning of several references and didn’t understand some conversations that I would like to have been clued in on. I think this will be a very rewarding reading experience for Kit Webb fans. It starts out with the most hilarious epistolary (and antagonistic) back-and-forth between highwayman Rob and duchess Marian. They are equals in every way but in social standing. Their banter is so good and Rob is like a feminist Robin Hood. I am here  👏🏼  for  👏🏼  it  👏🏼  (Also… ...