Susan’s Book Blog

  Glitterland (re-release) Alexis Hall 5 🪩 out of 5  My original review from Dec 2020: This book was so much more than I expected. It’s title and cover do it little justice.  The characters are written with depth and tenderness, the relationships are dynamic and engaging, but the real beauty of this book comes in the passages detailing the main character’s bouts with his mental illness. The author’s descriptions of bipolar depression display an on-the-nose, “been there” authenticity. That said, there were also many moments where I found myself laughing out loud. Alexis Hall is as adept at profound sadness and beauty as he is with lighthearted comedy and romance. He writes stunning prose and the most endearing dialogue. Is there nothing this author can’t do? ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ It was so great revisiting this one again. I had forgotten about so much of what originally made me love it. It’s truly beautiful in both content and writing. I’ve never read such a beautiful character as Da...

  📚  Fave Reads of 2022 Countdown  📚   🥁   🥁   🥁   🥁   🥁 #1   Something Fabulous   &  A Lady For a Duke  by Alexis Hall  I grouped these two together because I don’t know if one deserves to be ranked above the other. For me, these books are Alexis Hall doing the best work of his career. They’re very different books - SF is a hilarious, over-the-top love letter to Regency romances while ALFaD actually IS a Regency romance. (ALFaD is profoundly beautiful. And it has a declaration of love in it that rivals Darcy’s for Elizabeth Bennett.) But both books exhibit everything Hall excels at and in the most entertaining ways.  3️⃣  2️⃣  1️⃣  🎊 What did you think of my Top Ten (or thirteen) choices? Have you read any of them? Will they be on your TBR for 2023? What are some of your favorites this year?

  Cat Sebastian’s newest book,  Daniel Cabot Puts Down Roots, now has a cover! And it is giving the grooviest 70s vibes. 🪩🕺🏻 Daniel Cabot is available Nov. 15! Read my review of it here .

Daniel Cabot Puts Down Roots  by Cat Sebastian  Pub date: November 15,  2022  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 5 stars out of 5 I’ve been looking forward to reading more Cabot stories since I finished the first two over a year ago, and it did not disappoint.  Daniel Cabot is a character study and a story about the gradual building of a relationship, filled with quiet moments that are both realistic and compelling. It always blows me away how Cat Sebastian can fit SO MUCH character development into so few pages. And you can always count on her to write incredibly unique, richly drawn people who you can’t help but fall in love with. There is a foundation of kindness in this story, as there has been in the previous two Cabot novellas (or, really, ALL her books I suppose) that I find so beautiful and hopeful. Daniel and Alex take care of one another and others - friends and strangers both - in so many little ways and without wanting anything in return. It’s a refreshingly uncynical displ...

 Red White and Royal Blue The Collector’s Edition  by Casey McQuiston  Oct 11, 2022, St. Martin’s Griffin 🇺🇸 ❤️ 🇬🇧   I first read Red White and Royal Blue back in December 2020. I became a fervent fan before I had even reached the end. I had never read anything like it before. I LOVED it. I wanted everyone I knew to read it and love it as much as I did. And now… it kind of feels like they do. 😂  “They” may not be people I’ve actually met in person but I do know, now, a whole lot of people who love the book as much as I do, or more.  RWRB is the book that really started me reading again. I absolutely devoured it, and wanted more. I soon discovered “Bookstagram” and the rest is history. I now have many new favorite books and authors and a whole bunch of amazing people I am lucky to call friends - all because of this book.  👑 The special Collector's Edition of Casey McQuiston's beloved  New York Times  bestselling novel, features: • illust...

  You’re a Mean One Matthew Prince by Timothy Janovsky Pub Date 10/4/2022 ⛄️ 3 stars out of 5 ⛄️ This is basically a Schitt’s Creek Christmas AU. The narrator, Matthew, is so clearly written to be a David Rose-style spoiled brat that I could only picture the character as Dan Levy. He was so unlikeable it took me quite a while until I became invested. I actually considered quitting several times before the 25% mark. (Then again, it took me a long time to warm up to Schitt’s Creek as well.)  Matthew learns things about himself during his exile to his grandparents’ home. As he spends more time in the small town and with Hector, he learns that the life he previously knew was not a good one despite all its material rewards. Hector helps bring him down to earth and keep him there. Matthew’s struggles with anxiety also helped humanize him and soften his rough edges. I generally appreciate anxiety/mental health rep but it almost felt like a cheap ploy here to make Matthew likeable. It...

Roommate Arrangement  by Saxon James // 4.5 origami cranes out of 5 // Ahhhhhhh this was so good. Two cinnamon rolls + low angst + lots of yearning, sexy times & romance = right up my alley! (Me throughout most of this book:  🥹🥹🥹 ) Payne is getting divorced and moving back to his hometown. His brother suggests he move in - temporarily of course - with his BFF Beau. Payne and Beau knew each other in high school but haven’t seen much of each other since Payne left and got married. Now he’s back and Beau thinks letting Payne take his spare room will finally cure him of his lifelong crush on Payne. Sure Jan.  😏 The story is good and the characters are wonderful. I loved both Payne and Beau. Payne’s family are pretty adorable as well. Payne’s friend group, aka the Divorced Men’s Club, is super cute. They’re funny and supportive. I enjoyed their group chats and banter.  Watching Payne and Beau’s relationship grow and change over the course of the book was lovely. T...

Paris Daillencourt Is About To Crumble by Alexis Hall Pub Date: Nov 1, 2022 🍰  3.5 stars out of 5 🍰   Despite having been warned that this book wasn’t a romance or a romcom (those are debatable) and that the anxiety rep was intense, I still feel underprepared for what this book was. (Not that I even *know* what it was.) I feel almost unable to assess it properly after just one read-through. My opinion of it changed drastically several times while reading as I adjusted and readjusted my expectations. I’m not sure I can give a coherent or meaningful opinion on it right now. I’m also not sure I want to reread it so…  🤷🏻‍♀️  But I’ll do my best to come up with a review that says more than “…it was okay?”  The TV show characters are all back and even more enjoyable than the first go-round (in Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake), in my opinion. The on-set animosity between host Grace Forsythe and producer Jennifer Hallett is great. Not really sure why but I enjoyed th...

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 ...

 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...