Susan’s Book Blog

The Godparent Trap by Rachel Van Dyken Pub Date: July 19, 2022 Forever/Grand Central // 4 🦋 out of 5 //  I loved this so much! It was hilarious, adorable, romantic, heart breaking, and heart-warming. Rip and Colby have both lost their best friends (Rip’s sister Monica and her husband Brooks) in a tragic accident and they are committed to raising the two small children that were left behind. Rip and Colby do their best to become replacement parents for their friends’ kids and it’s both heart-rending and heart-warming to watch them give their all to these sweet children who are barely old enough to understand what’s going on. But they aren’t a couple, can barely stand each other, and worse, they deal with their grief in very different ways. They have opposite emotional reactions and there is growing resentment on both sides because of it.  Van Dyken writes with humor but doesn’t skimp on the emotional core. The way she simultaneously blends heartbreak and laugh-out-loud funny i...

 American Royalty  by Tracey Livesay Pub date: June 28, 2022 🚫 DNF @ 50% 🚫 Because I did not finish this book, I don't want to call this a review, but I do have a lot of thoughts which I have constructed as coherently as possible below. If you read this book, I'd love to know your thoughts on it! 👑👑👑 So if The Royal We  gave us Will & Kate fanfic, this one is giving us Harry & Meghan - or trying to. In fact, the blurb on the back of the book makes a direct comparison to Harry & Meghan's royal romance. I just have to say that right from the very first page, there is little similarity between the book's FMC "Duchess" and Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex. The book is about a British prince who marries a Black American woman and that's pretty much the only similarity as far as I could tell. Dani "Duchess" Nelson is a rapper and hip-hop star who is more akin to Cardi B. Her lyrics are raunchy, her videos are lewd. But she's ti...

🚨  This post contains book box subscription spoilers. 🚨   Illumicrate’s May Afterlight box is here! 🌸 I was so excited to find out that they were doing Akwaeke Emezi’s You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty for their May box! I was sent an ARC of it a few months ago and I LOVED it. (Definitely one of the best books I’ll read all year, I highly recommend checking it out. You can find my review of it  here .) Although I prefer the massively different US cover to the UK cover, this edition is pretty special. The pages are sprayed purple and the book comes with a pink ribbon bookmark. 💖👌 Love that! And the paper bookmark they included (can never have too many bookmarks, amirite) matches the pattern on the spine/cover art. 🌺🌿 They also included an insulated lunch bag covered in exotic hibiscus flowers and a nice nail file. So overall a very thoughtful box. But the book choice was so unexpected and rather exciting!  Excellent job, Illumicrate. 👍🏼 

The Sizzle Paradox  by Lily Menon Pub Date June 28, 2022 👩🏼‍🏫 3.5 stars out of 5 👨🏾‍🏫 Cute, fairly standard, run-of-the-mill contemporary romcom. The writing is a little cheesy and so is the basic premise but it’s also charming and the love story is sweet. I was definitely rooting for Lyric and Kian.  Lyric and Kian are a couple of Columbia University grad students, roommates, and long-time friends. Lyric wants to figure out why none of her romantic relationships (in all her many, many 24 years of life) have worked out. She evaluates her dates like Sheldon Cooper ranks Star Trek characters: logically, ruthlessly, and methodically using a scale she made up herself. It’s called The Sizzle Paradox Scale. It’s also what she is working on for her doctorate: analyzing data collected from happy couples to determine what makes their relationships work.  She decides to enlist the help of her never-without-a-partner BFF Kian. A fake dating/tutoring scheme is initiated. Shenan...

  This book was released yesterday (5/24/22) so it is officially AVAILABLE NOW and I cannot recommend it highly enough. It is powerful, thoughtful, and beautifully written. Accompany Feyi on a luxury Caribbean getaway in this stunning story set in a cool exotic island locale. This will make a great beach read or a "Wish I Was There" read.  See my review in its entirety here .

 It's pub day for one of the best books you will read ALL YEAR.  A Lady for a Duke   by Alexis Hall 💙 5 stars out of 5 💛 Viola is a trans woman who has given up her old life simply so she can live as her true self. She is extremely hesitant to revisit old places and faces for fear of rejection. She believes she is consigned to a life without love and friendship. However, we see such radical empathy, compassion, and acceptance among the characters. It’s truly beautiful. The message “love is love” echoes loudly throughout these pages. So much of this book is profoundly beautiful. The writing is exquisite, and the topics are given the weight and sensitivity they deserve. And frankly, it’s a damn good story. There is yearning and angst and drama and more yearning. So much yearning. 😂 And there is a declaration of love in this book that rivals Darcy’s for Elizabeth Bennett. It is SO beautiful. Available for purchase or borrowing today!  Read my review in its entirety h...

 Happy Pub Day to this sweet YA/college time loop romance by Rachel Lynn Solomon (with the prettiest cover ever)! Click here  to read my original review! 

So I recently read Rachel Reid’s gay hockey romance duo Heated Rivalry and it’s newly published sequel The Long Game. If you read my review(s) a couple posts down, you’ll know that I ABSOLUTELY LOVED THEM. And I ADORED the characters. So…  In Heated Rivalry, Shane plays for the Montreal Voyageurs and Ilya for the Boston Bears. I googled those teams to see what I could find in the way of logos and uniforms. Neither of them are actual NHL teams. The Voyageurs were an AHL team for a while but no longer exist. The Boston Bears, as far as I can tell, have never existed in any form. There is an AHL team in Hershey Pennsylvania called the Bears and of course there are the NHL’s Boston Bruins. And the Bruins, of course, are bears so that’s the team I decided to go with for Ilya’s uniform. Below are the logos I went with. I altered the Voyageurs logo slightly to remove some stylistic points on the letter M. To the Bruins logo, I merely added a bear’s head where the B usually is to make it ...

Every Word You Never Said by Jordon Greene Release Date: April 26, 2022 Genres: Young Adult, LGBT/Gay, Romance // 3.75 stars out of 5 // HEARTSTOPPER meets FOOTLOOSE in this cute young adult romance about first love, embracing what makes you different, and standing up for what you believe. — — — — Skylar Gray is adopted, nonverbal, and he feels most comfortable wearing skirts. Life has never been easy, but with a fresh start at a brand-new school, with new parents and in a new state, he just might finally make some friends.  But it′s hard for Skylar to trust anyone when people have always been quick to ditch him at the first inconvenience; they always seem more than ready to judge him as defective. And the bullies love to confirm it. Skylar has only ever had himself, so why would anything be different this time?  Jacob doesn′t give a damn, especially not since he came out over the summer. He expected the hate he got from his father, who mostly acts as if it never happened, but...

 So I've been hearing about this hockey romance series, Game Changers, by Rachel Reid for ages. And this spring Reid came out with a follow-up to one of the books and it's been getting a lot of buzz so I thought I would take this opportunity to finally give it a try. And I honestly think that these two books are two of my new faves of all time!  The main characters, Shane and Ilya, are two of the sweetest, funniest, most entertaining and well written characters I've had the pleasure to read in a long time. I adore them! Heated Rivalry and The Long Game are very different books, however. The differences were interesting and worked perfectly. The first book was about how Shane and Ilya became "Shane and Ilya". You get to see their relationship develop and evolve. It is a VERY SPICY book. Loads of sex scenes but because they are essentially used here as a constantly traveling professional athlete's version of dating, they are never gratuitous. Each one shows us s...

 It’s Pub Day for this lovely, warm-hearted book about the value of friendships and found family. See my full review here   and definitely check it out if you get the chance!!  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️