The Serpent's Throne by Kathryn Ann Kingsley

The Serpent's Throne 

by Kathryn Ann Kingsley

My Rating: 🟊🟊🟊🟊🟊

Spice Rating: 🌶🌶

Blurb:

I swore I’d kill Raziel Nostrom. Now he owns my heart…

After a shattering betrayal, Nadi and Raziel flee into the Wild—the endless labyrinth of caves that is home to the fae.

Nadi trained for years to infiltrate and kill a ruthless family of vampires. Now she faces an even deadlier challenge—returning to her own family with their most hated enemy by her side.

In a realm of flickering lights and terrifying monsters, the desire that binds her to Raziel only grows stronger. Enemies and allies wish to tear them apart, but she still craves his razor-sharp smile, his touch, his bite…

In the city above, Raziel’s siblings are building a new world, where vampires rule with no restraint and no mercy. Soon their power will be untouchable.

Nadi and Raziel only have each other. Two shattered and broken things, in a world that wants them dead. Two perfect assassins, sharpened to a killing edge and hungry for revenge.

Their love was forged in blood. And it will end in blood…

A thrilling and addictive dark vampire romance, the Bloodlines series is perfect for fans of Carissa Broadbent, Keri Lake, and Kaylie Smith.

My Review:

Some series end and leave you satisfied. This one ended and left me absolutely wrecked in the best way possible.

The Serpent's Throne is the conclusion to the Bloodlines series and let me be clear, it delivered everything and then some. High expectations? Shattered. I went in ready and still was not prepared.

Nadi and Raziel. Together one last time. Fighting for revenge, fighting for power and somewhere in the middle of all that beautiful chaos, fighting for each other. These two are deliciously dark, completely unhinged and perfectly matched. They are morally grey at best and unapologetically monstrous at their core, and that is exactly why you cannot stop reading. They do not pretend to be good. They simply choose each other, again and again, in the most broken and breathtaking way possible.

Watching them grow across this series has been something special. By this final book they are more open, more vulnerable and more electric than ever. Their chemistry is scorching. Their love story is the kind that is impossible and forbidden and yet feels completely inevitable. I cried. I gasped. I fell even harder for Raziel than I thought possible and I did not think that was something I was capable of doing at this point.

The world building continues to expand beautifully here. Seeing more of the Wilds and the fae added such richness to an already fascinating world. The political scheming, the plot twists, the secrets layered throughout kept me completely locked in. I tried to slow down and savor it. The book did not let me.

This series is seriously underrated and if you have been sleeping on it, wake up. If you love dark romantasy with morally complex characters who make questionable choices and zero apologies, this is your series. Start from the beginning and clear your schedule because you will not be putting these books down.

What a marvel. What a ride. I already miss them.

 

I Punched an Alien and Now We're in Couples Therapy by Kimberly Lemming

 I Punched an Alien and Now 

We're in Couples Therapy 

by, Kimberly Lemming

My Rating: 🟊🟊🟊🟊🟊

Spice Rating: 🌶🌶

Blurb:

A zany and sexy romance about a woman who finds herself stranded on a far-off planet and mated to the warlord alien king, from USA Today bestselling author Kimberly Lemming.

It’s not in Blair’s nature to just give up. Not when she’s beamed up to a spaceship and then dropped on an alien planet. Not even when she’s in the middle of a forest fire surrounded by dinosaurs. And definitely not when she’s captured by an arrogant alien king. If King Osid thinks he can break her, he’s in for a shock. Blair lives by one If you stay ready, you never have to get ready.

But absolutely nothing could have prepared her for finding out that she’s that arrogant King Osid’s mate.

Despite recent hiccups, the alien researchers are determined to get their breeding program back on track. With that in mind, Blair and Osid are bundled off to the research center for what they’re told is couples counseling. As they face a series of increasingly dangerous challenges, it soon becomes clear the research aliens may have confused an episode of The Bachelor with Survivor. Bonding over their common enemy, and shall we say...encouraged by love darts, Blair and Osid let down their walls (and take off their clothes). When they discover that there are—somehow—even more secret plans in the works, another hilarious, steamy, over-the-top adventure is in store.

My Review:

I Punched an Alien and Now We're in Couples Therapy by Kimberly Lemming

Let me tell you something. Kimberly Lemming does not just write books. She architects worlds. Every single time, without fail, she pulls you in so deep you forget you're even reading. Her wit is razor sharp, her worlds are jaw-droppingly vivid, and her characters? Absolutely unforgettable. From her unapologetically badass female leads to her commentary that will have you cackling out loud, there is something on every page for every kind of reader. I picked up one of her books once. ONE TIME. And immediately hunted down every other title I could find. No regrets. Zero.

This book? No different. It opens with pure, glorious chaos and that chaos snowballs into more chaos and before you even realize what happened, you are completely and hopelessly hooked.

Our leading lady Blair is not the one. She is strong-minded, sharp as a blade, and does not care who you are or what planet you're from. She is not taking bull from anybody. When Blair gets thrown into an alien world that is as breathtakingly beautiful as it is deadly, she's trying to make sense of it all. Then she's tasked with saving a drowning alien male and let's just say that decision changes everything. I'll say no more. You'll thank me later.

This book has romance that will make your heart race, adventure that keeps you on the edge of your seat, creatures that could only come from a truly brilliant mind and DINOSAURS. Yes. Dinosaurs.

If you are looking for a world you didn't know you needed, this is your sign. Absolute must-read.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

 The Invisible Life of Addie Larue

by V.E. Schwab

My Rating: 🟊🟊🟊🟊🟊

Spice Rating: 🫑

Blurb:

A life no one will remember. A story you will never forget.

France, 1714: In a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever—and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world. But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.

My Review:

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab — This Book Broke Me Open and I am Grateful For Every Second of It!

I never write reviews immediately after finishing a book. I am a person who needs time to sit with a story, to let it settle into my bones and find its proper place inside me before I can even begin to put my feelings into words. But The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue would not let me wait. It grabbed me by the heart the moment I turned the last page and demanded to be talked about RIGHT NOW and so here I am, completely undone and somehow more alive for it.

There are books you read and there are books you FEEL and this one exists on an entirely different plane from anything I have ever experienced. Something about the way this story is written gets underneath your skin and blooms there quietly, like a feeling you cannot name but cannot shake. It is poetic in the truest sense of the word. Not just in its language but in its very soul. It understands something profound about love and loss and the terrifying truth that all feelings are fleeting no matter how desperately we try to hold onto them.

It reminded me that love is a bone deep thing. That you can carry it for someone even when everything around you has changed beyond recognition. That it is entirely possible to love more than one person, to be broken by more than one person, and to keep moving forward anyway because what other choice do any of us have.

Reading this book felt like standing in a cool breeze on a warm summer afternoon. Inviting and fleeting all at once. It felt like reaching for a cherished childhood memory and feeling it dissolve between your fingers before you can fully grasp it. You remember the feeling of that moment even when every other detail fades into nothing. It felt like a first love that blooms so beautifully and so briefly and you both know somewhere deep down that people change and people leave and yet you dive into it anyway because the feeling of being truly seen is worth every ounce of the heartbreak waiting on the other side.

That is what this book did to me. That is the only way I know how to describe it.

I am sitting here genuinely in awe of myself for how deeply I felt for a love that was never mine. For how completely I grieved for characters who only exist within the pages of a book. But that is the breathtaking power of what V.E. Schwab has created here. She made it real. She made Addie real. And the idea of existing for THREE HUNDRED YEARS completely alone, unseen, unremembered by a single soul, and still finding a way to not just survive but to THRIVE is one of the most quietly devastating and inspiring things I have ever encountered in literature.

I cannot tell you much about the plot because this is one of those rare stories where your feelings ARE the story. Where the experience of reading it belongs entirely to you and I would never dream of taking that away. What I can tell you is that I do not remember the last time a book reached this far inside me and touched something this tender.

Please read this book. Read it slowly. Read it like it deserves to be read. And then sit with it afterward and let it change you just a little bit, because it will. I promise you it will.

 

Love and Other Conspiracies by Mallory Marlowe

 Love and Other Conspiracies

by Mallory Marlowe

My Rating: 🟊🟊🟊🟊

Spice Rating: 🌶

Blurb:

The hardest thing for a paranormal conspiracy theorist and a web series producer to believe in is finding love in this swoony debut romantic comedy.

Hallie Barrett's life has imploded after she's dumped by her hotshot ex, who also happens to be her coworker and the star of the online series she was producing. Without a new show to present for the company competition, she’ll be out of a job. But inspiration can come from the strangest places . . . like the most handsome guy she’s ever seen passionately discussing Bigfoot on a late-night docuseries.

Hayden Hargrove made a name for himself as a cryptid expert on his hit podcast, and is intrigued by the plucky, blue-haired producer who offers him the opportunity to lead his own web show. When the production team sees that Hayden’s solo on-screen presence is bad enough to make a ghost blanch, Hallie jumps on camera too, hitting him (and his cryptids) with a healthy dose of skepticism—and enough chemistry to electrify their show to the top of the competition.

As Hayden and Hallie investigate the unknown, they unearth feelings for each other that shake their beliefs to the core. In their search for Mothman, aliens, and the truth, the most elusive discovery might just be learning to love again.

My Review:

Can we just take a moment to appreciate when a book comes along and wraps itself around your heart like the warmest, funniest, most unexpectedly perfect hug you never knew you needed?! Because Love and Other Conspiracies by Mallory Marlowe did exactly that and I am still floating on the cloud it left me on!

Where do I even BEGIN?! A scrappy little TV network. A competition to create the most compelling small reality shows. And at the center of it all, a show dedicated to hunting down Bigfoot and aliens hosted by the most adorable nerdy hottie to ever exist in the pages of a book! I know what you are thinking and YES it is exactly as magical and chaotic and wonderful as it sounds. Actually it is even BETTER than it sounds!

The romance that blooms against this gloriously unhinged backdrop is the kind of slow building, laugh out loud, butterflies in your stomach love story that reminds you exactly why you fell in love with reading romance in the first place. It unfolds so naturally and so perfectly that every single step of their journey had me kicking my feet and grinning like an absolute fool!

And the characters, I loved every single one of them with my whole entire heart. The kind of characters that feel so real and so alive that you genuinely mourn them when the book is over because you just want to keep living in their world forever. The plot was fresh and creative and surprising in all the best ways and the humor had me laughing out loud in a way that very few books actually manage to pull off!

This book is a SEROTONIN DUMP of the highest order. If you are tired, if you are stressed, if you need something that is going to make you smile so hard your face hurts, THIS IS YOUR BOOK. Stop scrolling, stop debating, and just pick it up immediately! You can thank me later! 🛸😂💕

The Wolf King by Lauren Palphreyman

 The Wolf King

by Lauren Palphreyman

My Rating: 🟊🟊🟊🟊🟊

Spice Rating: 🌶🌶

Blurb:

When a princess is kidnapped by an alpha , war rages between the humans and the wolves. But soon, forbidden attraction starts to grow. . .

Princess Aurora longs to escape the castle and the marriage that has been arranged for her.

But on the night before her wedding, at a dog fight where captured werewolves are made to fight for sport, she spares the life of a young wolf. It puts her on the radar of the powerful alpha who was going to kill him. And it changes everything.

That night, when the alpha escapes, he kidnaps her and takes her to the rugged lands north of the border — where the once warring werewolf clans are beginning to unite. He thinks that she is the key to winning the war against the humans.

Only, as they spend time around one another, forbidden attraction starts to grow. And as Aurora learns that not all wolves are bad, the alpha discovers that she is in danger from both his enemies, and those he once considered friends.

With monsters on both sides, a bloodthirsty war between humans and wolves raging, and undeniable passion growing between them — will their story end in love? Or tragedy?

And will Aurora ever get home?

Does she even want to?

My Review:

I have one question and one question only, WHY did I wait so long to read this book?! WHY did I let it sit there calling my name while I read other things?! Because The Wolf King by Lauren Palphreyman is an absolute MASTERPIECE and I am still not fully recovered from the experience!

Let me paint you a picture, imagine Outlander. Now add werewolves. Now turn everything up to the highest possible setting and hold on for dear life. That is The Wolf King and it is every bit as delicious as that sounds. From the very first page I was completely and utterly entranced and I did not come up for air until the very last word!

And can we talk about our FMC for a moment because she is everything! This is not your typical kidnapped heroine situation, well, KIND of. She went willingly. Sort of. Listen, the details are complicated and that is all I am going to say! What I loved so deeply about her story is how it captures the suffocating reality of women being married off like political currency to forge kingdom alliances, and our girl looked that fate dead in the eye and said absolutely NOT. The audacity. The courage. I wanted to stand up and applaud!

The love story is sweeping and fierce and protective in a way that had me pressing my hand to my chest more than once. And listen, I KNEW there was a fated mate situation somewhere in these pages. I could feel it in my bones and when it arrived I was ready and I was NOT ready all at the same time!

But let me tell you what really sent me completely over the edge, Blake. Oh, BLAKE. I am a villain girl through and through and Blake is everything I have ever wanted in a morally gray, touch her and die, walking red flag wrapped in absolute perfection. I did not come here to fall for the hero, I came here for the man who exists in the delicious gray space between right and wrong and makes no apologies for it whatsoever. Blake delivered that in SPADES and I will be thinking about him for a very long time!

And the audiobook, do NOT sleep on the audiobook. It takes an already extraordinary story and elevates it into something that feels like a full cinematic experience. This is the rare book where the audio format adds an entirely new dimension to the magic and I cannot recommend it enough!

If you have not picked up The Wolf King yet I genuinely do not know what you are doing with your time. Drop everything. Clear your weekend. And prepare to fall completely and hopelessly in love with a world you will never want to leave! 🐺🔥👑

A Love Song for Ricki Wilde by Tia Williams

 A Love Song for Ricki Wilde

by Tia Williams

My Rating: 🟊🟊🟊🟊🟊

Spice Rating: 🌶🌶

Blurb:

Leap years are a strange, enchanted time. And for some, even a single February can be life-changing.

Ricki Wilde has many talents, but being a Wilde isn’t one of them. As the impulsive, artistic daughter of a powerful Atlanta dynasty, she’s the opposite of her famous socialite sisters. Where they’re long-stemmed roses, she’s a dandelion: an adorable bloom that’s actually a weed, born to float wherever the wind blows. In her bones, Ricki knows that somewhere, a different, more exciting life awaits her.

When regal nonagenarian, Ms. Della, invites her to rent the bottom floor of her Harlem brownstone, Ricki jumps at the chance for a fresh beginning. She leaves behind her family, wealth, and chaotic romantic decisions to realize her dream of opening a flower shop. And just beneath the surface of her new neighborhood, the music, stories and dazzling drama of the Harlem Renaissance still simmers.

One evening in February as the heady, curiously off-season scent of night-blooming jasmine fills the air, Ricki encounters a handsome, deeply mysterious stranger who knocks her world off balance in the most unexpected way.

Set against the backdrop of modern Harlem and Renaissance glamour, A Love Song for Ricki Wilde is a swoon-worthy love story of two passionate artists drawn to the magic, romance, and opportunity of New York, and whose lives are uniquely and irreversibly linked.

My Review: 

Let me tell you something, when a friend hands you a book and says you need to read this, you listen. And I am SO glad I did because A Love Song for Ricki Wilde by Tia Williams just completely shattered every expectation I walked in with and left me absolutely breathless on the other side!

On the surface this looked like everything I love, a woman chasing her dreams, a family that overlooked her for far too long, and a love story that swoops in and shows her exactly how worthy she has always been. A classic, beautiful, feel good romance. And yes, it is absolutely ALL of that. But then it becomes something so much MORE and that is where this book completely stole my heart and refused to give it back!

Ricki is the kind of character you root for from the very first page. She packs up her life and chases her dream of opening her own floral shop with the kind of quiet courage that makes you want to stand up and cheer for her. She is not waiting for permission to live the life she wants and I LOVED her for it!

And then comes Ezra. Gorgeous. Closed off. Mysterious in a way that crawls under your skin and refuses to let go. Ricki doesn't even like him when they first meet, and yet she cannot stop thinking about him and honestly? Neither could I! But here is where the story shifts into something unexpected and magical, there is something not quite right about Ezra. Memories feel hazy, like Ricki is trying to see them through thick fog, and every time they cross paths something tugs at her that she cannot explain or shake!

I am not going to say another word about what lies underneath this story because you deserve to discover it exactly the way I did, completely unprepared and utterly DEVASTATED in the most beautiful way possible. What I will say is this, the love between Ricki and Ezra is not just a love story. It TRANSCENDS. It reaches across every obstacle, every impossibility, everything that is stacked against them and it holds on with both hands. It is the kind of love that makes you believe in something bigger than yourself and I was not ready for how deeply it would move me!

Tia Williams writes with such breathtaking beauty that every single page feels like it was crafted with intention and care. The push and pull of love and resistance, the journey from strangers to enemies to something so profound it defies explanation, it is all executed so perfectly that I found myself reading slower just to stay inside this world a little longer!

I went in expecting a lovely romance and walked out having experienced something that felt genuinely extraordinary. Pick this book up. Clear your schedule. And prepare to fall completely and helplessly in love just like I did! 🌸🔥📖

Big Girl Panties by Stephanie Evanovich

 Big Girl Panties

by Stephanie Evanovich 

My Rating: 🟊🟊🟊

Spice Rating: 🌶🌶

Blurb:

Big Girl Panties by Stephanie Evanovich is a rollicking and poignant romantic comedy about a young widow who decides to get in shape...and winds up getting her groove back--and a whole lot more! Holly Brennan used food to comfort herself through her husband's illness and death. Now she's alone at age thirty-two. And she weighs more than she ever has. When fate throws her in the path of Logan Montgomery, personal trainer to pro athletes, and he offers to train her, Holly concludes it must be a sign. Much as she dreads the thought of working out, Holly knows she needs to put on her big girl panties and see if she can sweat out some of her grief. Soon, the easy intimacy and playful banter of their training sessions lead Logan and Holly to most intense and steamy workouts. But can Holly and Logan go the distance as a couple now that she's met her goals--and other men are noticing?

My Review:

Big Girl Panties by Stephanie Evanovich, I Wanted to Love This and I Am FRUSTRATED That I Didn't Fully Get There!

Let me tell you how this book ended up in my hands, I was on a mission to actually READ my physical TBR instead of just letting it collect dust and look pretty on my shelves. Big Girl Panties made the cut and I went in with genuine hope and an open heart. The premise pulled me in immediately, a woman navigating grief, learning to trust again, finding herself in the most unexpected places. That is the kind of story that should have had me SOBBING and cheering in equal measure. And parts of it did. But then other parts had me putting the book down to collect myself for entirely different reasons!

Let's start with what worked because there IS good here. Watching the FMC slowly lower her walls and let someone in after losing her husband was genuinely beautiful. The friendship that bloomed between them before anything romantic developed felt real and tender and earned. Grief is heavy and complicated and isolating and this book captured that truth in ways that genuinely moved me. Watching her learn to trust again, to let someone see her and stay, that part of their story was everything!

But then there is the other side of this book and I need to talk about it because it sat in my stomach like a stone the entire time I was reading!

The mansplaining. OH the mansplaining. The absolute audacity of a man deciding he knows better, deciding that the body someone is living in makes them less worthy of basic human decency, genuinely turned my stomach. The idea that you could look at another human being and reduce them entirely to the SIZE of the body they are carrying around BAFFLES me. It enrages me. Because bodies are just bodies. They are the vessels we exist in and not a single one of them determines a person's worth, their lovability, or their right to take up space in this world!

And the fetishization, I cannot let that go without saying something. There is a way to write a plus size FMC with love and care and intention. A way that honors her fullness as a person rather than treating her body as either a problem to be fixed or an exotic thing to be desired DESPITE herself. This book walked a very uncomfortable line and more than once crossed it in ways that made me wince!

Then, THEN, having everyone around her constantly remind her that she isn't his type like she hadn't already looked at him with her own two eyes and figured that out herself?! She KNOWS. She has always known. She did not need a single person to pull her aside and explain that to her like she was missing something obvious. That was not concern, that was cruelty dressed up as caring and it drove me absolutely up the wall!

Did I hate this book? No. There is a story underneath all of that discomfort that genuinely has heart. But it needed so much more decorum, so much more intentionality, and so much more RESPECT for its leading lady than it ultimately delivered. She deserved better from the people around her and honestly,  she deserved better from the book itself.

I am choosing to believe she knew her worth the entire time even when no one else in those pages did. 👏🔥