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Showing posts from July, 2025

The Fruit Tree by Sabir Ahmed

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Purchase Rating: 3/5 Spice: 0/5 Plot: 4/5 Primary Genre: Romantic Suspense Blurb: Adam is your typical shy guy in school, with no thoughts towards romance outside of his daydreaming. However, that all changes one day, when he gets saved by an unlikely Eve. Eve is one of the more popular girls in school, but maybe he had misjudged her. Rescued from her boyfriend, Adam can't help but admire Eve. They quickly become good friends and the rest, as they say, is history. Follow them as they grow from teenagers to adults and watch how their relationship evolves with them. As they explore themselves and figure out who they are, their love will change. With the assistance of their parents, who would love for them to be together, will it be enough? Will they end up on the same page? Or will the chapters they write forever be out of sync? This is not the same Biblical tale you're familiar with. She wasn't made from his rib, and he had his own garden. With no god to guide them, nor a...

The Ritual by Shantel Tessier

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Purchase L.O.R.D.S. #1 Rating: 4/5 Spice: 5/5 Plot: 4/5 Primary Genre: Dark Romance Blurb: THE CHOSEN ONE. I vow. You vow. We vow. Barrington University is home of the Lords, a secret society that requires their blood in payment. They are above all—the most powerful men in the world. They devote their lives to violence in exchange for power. And during their senior year, they are offered a chosen one. People think growing up with money is freeing, but I promise you, it’s not. My entire life has been planned out for me. I never got the chance to do what I wanted until Ryat Alexander Archer came along and gave me an option for a better life. He offered me what no one else ever had—freedom. I chose to be his. He made me believe that anyway, but it was just another lie. A way that the Lords manipulate you into doing what they want. After being sucked into the dark, twisted world of the Lords, I embraced my new role and allowed Ryat to parade me around like the trophy I was to him. But...

Caraval by Stephanie Garber

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Purchase Caraval #1 Rating: 5/5 Spice: 0/5 Plot: 5/5 Primary Genre: Young Adult Fantasy Romance Blurb: A legendary competition. A mesmerizing romance. An unbreakable bond between two sisters.Scarlett Dragna has never left the tiny island where she and her sister, Tella, live with their powerful, and cruel, father. Now Scarlett’s father has arranged a marriage for her, and Scarlett thinks her dreams of seeing Caraval—the faraway, once-a-year performance where the audience participates in the show—are over. But this year, Scarlett’s long-dreamt-of invitation finally arrives. With the help of a mysterious sailor, Tella whisks Scarlett away to the show. Only, as soon as they arrive, Tella is kidnapped by Caraval’s mastermind organizer, Legend. It turns out that this season’s Caraval revolves around Tella, and whoever finds her first is the winner. Scarlett has been told that everything that happens during Caraval is only an elaborate performance. Nevertheless she becomes enmeshed in a g...

Friends to Lovers by Sally Blakely

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Purchase Rating: 5/5 Spice: 0 Primary Genre: Contemporary Romance Plot: 5/5 Blurb: Always each other’s plus-ones, but never each other’s real dates, two childhood best friends have one last summer wedding to fall in love in this dual-narrative debut—a grown-up The Summer I Turned Pretty. Best friends Joni and Ren have been inseparable since childhood. So when Joni moves across the country for her job, the two devise a creative way to stay in they’ll be each other’s plus-ones every year for wedding season, no matter what else is happening in their lives. It’s a tradition that works, until a line is crossed and the friendship they once thought was forever is ruined. Now Joni is back at their families’ shared summer home for her sister’s wedding, and she’s determined to make the week perfect, even if it means faking a friendship with Ren—and avoiding the truth of why they have to fake it in the first place. How hard can it be to pretend to be friends with the person who once knew you b...

More Strange Than True C.J. Spataro

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Purchase Rating: 4/5 Spice: 0 Primary Genre: Fantasy Romance Plot: 5/5 Blurb: After an epically shitty day, Jewell Jamieson unknowingly eats a magic-spiked meal and happens also to make a certain wish-and that's why she awakes the next morning to discover her beloved dog Oberon has been transformed into a beautiful naked man in her bed. Conflict ensues when Titania, the impulsive Queen of the Faeries, decides she wants Oberon for herself. Is Oberon simply a man who used to be a dog, or is he somehow something more? When Jewell discovers the answer, she will be faced with a devastating choice. Will she choose to save the man she's grown to love by giving him up, or will she honor his wishes and watch him die? My Thoughts:  This is an incredible well written indie novel. It might be more like “fantasy light” or “magical realism with fairies” in regard to the genre. The plot relies heavily on A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare but you’ll hear no complaints from me there,...

Flight 725 by Kaylynn Hunt and Octavia Grant

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Purchase Book #2 in the 725 Files Rating: 3.5/5 - Rounding up to 4 Spice: 0/5 Plot: 4/5 Primary Genre: Thriller Blurb: On a red-eye from New York to Los Angeles, the passengers of Flight 725 are shaken by a sudden, blinding flash of light. As they try to make sense of what happened, terror strikes—one of them is found dead, and it’s clear the death was no accident. With the plane still in the air and nowhere to run, the passengers realize they are trapped with a killer. Paranoia spreads as everyone becomes a suspect, and trust dissolves in the claustrophobic cabin. As the body count rises, the survivors must identify the murderer before the plane lands—or before they all meet a gruesome end. My Thoughts: I liked this quick little thriller. There were a lot of characters that all had interesting back stories. I would have liked to see them fleshed out a bit more. There were so many characters that this started to get confusing. *SPOILERS* * * * * * * * * * * * * SPOILERS IN THE STRIK...

Butcher & Blackbird by Brynne Weaver

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Purchase The Ruinous Love Trilogy #1 Rating: 5/5 Spice: 2.5/5 Plot: 5/5 Primary Genre: Dark Romance Blurb: The viral TikTok friends-to-lovers dark romantic comedy full of murder, chaos, and spice—unlike anything you’ve read before—now available in all bookstores. When a chance encounter sparks an unlikely bond between rival murderers Sloane and Rowan, the two find something elusive—the friendship of like-minded, pitch-black souls. From small town West Virginia to upscale California, from downtown Boston to rural Texas, the two hunters collide in an annual game of blood and suffering, one that pits them against the most dangerous monsters in the country. But as their friendship develops into something more, the restless ghosts left in their wake are only a few steps behind, ready to claim more than just their newfound love. Can Rowan and Sloane dig themselves out of a game of graves? Or have they finally met their match? My Thoughts: This book was the funniest dark romance I have re...

Lights Out by Navessa Allen

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Purchase Into Darkness #1 Rating: 4/5 Spice: 3/5 Plot: 4/5 Primary Genre: Dark Romance Blurb: MEET BOOKTOK'S LATEST OBSESSION . . . DARK, FUNNY AND SUPER SPICY, CAN YOU HANDLE THE RIDE? I want someone with a soul as black as night. Someone who would burn the world down for me and not lose a single minute of sleep over it. Trauma nurse Aly escapes her hard-working days by thirsting after masked men online. To her, nothing could top the fantasy of her favorite tattooed and masked man hunting her down. But she never could have guessed that one drunken text would turn those dreams into reality . . . I want things most people don't, craving darkness and depravity instead of light and love. Josh has spent his life avoiding the limelight, but his online persona is another story. At night, he posts masked thirst traps for his millions of fans, until one follower catches his Aly. Together, Aly and Josh live out their darkest fantasies, unaware that Aly has captured the attention of ...

The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3

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  The first two episodes are out now! Click here  to stream on Prime Video

The Peculiar Gift of July by Ashley Ream

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Purchase Rating: 4/5 Spice: 0/5 Plot: 5/5 Primary Genre: Magical realism/cozy fantasy Blurb: With a dash of magic and an ensemble cast of oddball, small-town characters, this feel-good novel explores forgiveness, family, and the sense of humor it takes to live with the ones we love the most. Ebey’s End is a small town on an island off the Pacific coast, reachable only by ferry (assuming the gods are with you and it’s not a Tuesday). It’s a comfortable, familiar (but okay, fine, sometimes lonely) life for its resident grocer Anita Odom. That is, until fourteen-year-old July shows up on her doorstep. Taking in the recently orphaned daughter of an estranged cousin had not been on Anita’s to-do list. In fact, it’s a terrible idea. Anita is ill-suited, ill-prepared, and absolutely certain the entire enterprise will end in disaster—for both of them. From the moment she arrives, July seems to “know” what each customer at the Island Grocery needs. They’re small: a housekeeping magazine sli...