Author: booknutgirls

booknutgirls http://thebooknutdotcom.wordpress.com I read. I blog. I sell books. I chauffeur my kids. What more do you need to know?

Heated Rivalry

Leave a comment

by Rachel Reid
First sentence: “Shane Holland was as close to losing it as he ever allowed himself to get.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: Oh. So much sex. So. Much. Every chapter, on page, lots and lots of sex. All the spice. It’s in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Shane Hollander is one of the best hockey players in the NHL. The only player who even comes close is Ilya Rozanov, who has been Shane’s nemesis since their rookie year. He has also, for better or worse, been Shane’s obsession. And his secret lover. What happens when their secret threatens to get out? Will it ruin their careers? Can they move their relationship into something more? (Do we care?)

Okay, yes, I picked this up because of the TV show and everyone is talking about it and I got curious. I am not proud of this decision. It is, objectively, by many measures (one being the couple of times they repeated entire paragraphs on the same page…) not a good book. This writing will not win awards. The chapters (for more than half of the book!) went hockey, sex, shame. We’re playing hockey against each other; we’re so angry and aroused. We have sex. But it’s bad to have sex with another man, we feel ashamed. For more than 100 pages. And yet, I kept reading.

Why? No idea. Except that I was still curious, and it wasn’t bad enough (or maybe it was the right kind of bad?) for me to put down. And the character development did happen somewhat in the second half of the book. Shane got a clue about his sexuality. Ilya stopped being Tough Russian Guy all the time. It’s never going to make my best-of list, and I do feel less intelligent for having read it, but I have to admit: my curiosity about the gay hockey thing is satiated.

Thistlemarsh

Leave a comment

by Moorea Corrigan
First sentence: “The war did not bring the Faeries back to England.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: April 21, 2026
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There is talk of war, some mild swearing, exactly one (well-placed) f-bomb. It will be in the Science Fiction/Fantasy section of the bookstore.

It’s after World War I, and Mouse is returning home to England because her uncle – Lord Dewhurst – has died and reluctantly left his Faerie-blessed house, Thistlemarsh Manor, to her. Only because his son was killed in the war, and her brother, the next-logical heir, is incapacitated with PTSD, and doesn’t recognize his surroundings. Mouse is reluctant to take on the taste of being Lady of the manor, especially after she hears her uncle’s conditions: restore the house and grounds to their former glory in one month (or get married), or the house goes to a distant (and despicable) cousin. It is an impossible task, except that Mouse is offered help by the faerie Thornwood. It’s tricky to bargain with a faerie, but Mouse is desperate. The question is: what will she uncover?

On the one hand: I haven’t read a sweeping faerie story like this in a long time. It reminded me of books I’d read 15-20 years ago (was that just the early 2000s?), where the fae were cruel, but not unreasonable. Where deals could be made between the fae and humans, and kindness would win out in the end. It has a luxury to it – it only takes place over a month, and yet the pace is slow enough to allow the reader to luxuriate in the setting. I liked Mouse as a character (even though I have quibbles with the ending; but I suppose a human woman couldn’t take on the fae all alone, no matter how smart she is). I just didn’t love the writing. It was basic. Pedantic. Maybe it’s because I just finished A River Has Roots (also a faerie story), where the writing was so lovely, that I felt its lack. That said, while I didn’t utterly love it, I liked it enough to finish, and if you’re looking for a decent faerie story, this is a good one to read.

My Best of 2025

Leave a comment

By the numbers:

Middle Grade: 17
Young Adult: 16
Graphic Novels: 11
Adult Fiction: 68
Non-Fiction: 18
Total: 130

Let’s have fun with Storygraph! Like always, I read more fiction than nonfiction:

The top five I turned in for work didn’t quite reflect that…

The authors I read most:

I took to calling it my Maggie Stiefvater Year! (I’m currently reading Shiver…). I also reread a LOT, more than I usually do!

I branched out and read two books digitally!

The 12 books I read for the 2025 #ReadICT Challenge

My top genres:

I read a lot some months, not so much others:

All in all, it was a good year:

And my personal top 10 (in no particular order)

I need to read more BIPOC books next year, and I need to up my YA/MG books again, since I’m doing the children’s buying again for the store. But, that said, I’m happy with my list and with the reading year I’ve had.

Monthly Round-Up: December 2025

Leave a comment

And we come to the end of another month, another year. It’s a good thing I don’t make goals; I don’t want to feel like I didn’t do them. I did have a favorite this month, coming in as the last book I read this year:

The River Has Roots

Such an excellent book.

As for the rest:

Non-Fiction:

One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (audiobook)
Bread of Angels (audiobook)

Adult Fiction:

We Burned So Bright
Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter
This Book Made Me Think of You
Christmas Fling (audiobook)
American Fantasy
The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Volume 6 (unreviewed)
On a Night Like This (audiobook)

Middle Grade:

Queso, Just in Time

YA:

All the Crooked Saints (audiobook)

Stay tuned tomorrow for my year in review!

Audiobook: The River Has Roots

1 Comment

by Amal El-Mohtar
Read by Gem Carmella
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is a murder, and some suggested abuse. It’s in the Science Fiction/Fantasy section of the bookstore.

Esther and Isabella are sisters, and as Hawthornes, their job is to sing to the willows, to enhance their magic. They are happy, except Esther is more interested in Faeire, and has picked up a lover – Ren – from there. That is all fine and good, except a local man has his sights on Esther, and when she chooses Ren over him, there is consequences.

One of my co-workers mentioned in passing, when this one came out, that it was a delightful experience on audio, and I remember picking it up after she mentioned that. I needed something short to read on our way home from Wisconsin, and downloaded this just to see.

Oh, it was delightful. Not just the story – I love a feminist fairy tale with queer undertones! – but the performance of it was stellar. The use of sound and music enhances the story and makes the story that much better. And the short story that follows was just as engaging. I’m definitely a fan of El-Mohtar’s work now, and I know I need to pick up This is How You Lose the Time War now.

Highly recommended.

Audiobook: Bread of Angels

Leave a comment

By Patti Smith
Read by the author:
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is talk of drugs and death. It’s in both the Biography and Music sections of the bookstore.

I have no connection to Patti Smith at all – never listened to her music, and only knew who she was because my previous boss adored her. But when we were looking at road trip audiobooks, Russell decided that this sounded interesting, so I was game.

It’s basically her life story – from a childhood in poverty to being in the right places and meeting the right people in New York in the 1970s, to a marriage and early widowhood in the 1980s, through until today. There were some interesting parts, and she’s not a bad writer, though she is a poet and tends to take Meaning in things where others might not.

She’s not a great audiobook narrator, though. She pauses at odd times, and she has weird inflections. I suppose that could give it character, but in the end, it was just mildly annoying.

I suppose if I had a connection to her somehow, I might have liked this one more, but as it is, it was just kind of meh.

Audiobook: On a Night Like This

Leave a comment

by Lindsey Kelk
Read by Carrie Hope Fletcher
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There isn’t any on-page sex, and there’s only kissing. There is talk of an affair, and swearing, including multiple f-bombs. It’s in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Fran has been down on her luck the past few years, after moving back with her fiance to his hometown. However, on a whim, she decides to call her old temp agent, who just happens to have a job for her as an assistant to a celebrity. For a short five days. Except those five days changes the direction of Fran’s life.

It’s a sweet little Cinderella story – circumstances line up that Fran can actually attend the Crystal Ball – an exclusive party for the wealthiest of the wealthy – where she meets Evan, and is swept away. Is she going to have the guts to change the trajectory of her life, or will she go back to the same-old-same-old.

I thoroughly enjoyed this one. It was silly, it was sweet, and Fran’s journey to an empowered woman was one to cheer. And Fletcher did a fabulous job with all the accents!

Recommneded, especially on audio.

American Fantasy

Leave a comment

by Emma Straub
First sentence: “The pool deck of the American Fantasy never smelled worse than it did first thing in the morning on turnaround days.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Release date: April 7, 2026
Content: There is swearing, including multiple f-bombs, an almost on-screen sex scene, and talk of sex. It will be in the Fiction section of the bookstore.

This follows three people on the cruise ship American Fantasy during the BoyTalk (think NSYNC or Boys to Men) weekend. Sarah, who is the band handler, is coming off a bad breakup with her girlfriend, and trying to manage the huge egos of the band and the insanity of the fans without losing her mind. Annie, who is on the cruise after a bad divorce only because her sister is a huge fan, but her sister couldn’t come due to an injury. She’s navigating her first BoyTalk cruise on her own, dealing with the excesses as well as an abrupt change at work – her boss promoted the intern over her. And Keith, one of the BoyTalk band members, unhappy in his marriage, only showing up to do these sorts of things because his older brother, Shawn, demands it. He hates the weekend, he hates being in the band, he hates everything and is just trying to make it through the weekend.

This is a very internal book; everyone is dealing with something and everyone is trying their utmost to manage it without it getting messy. And it wasn’t bad. Straub is a good writer, and I always appreciate an older main character who is dealing with changes. And yet. I think genre fiction has warped my expectations because I was disappointed in the ending. I was disappointed that nothing was really resolved, that nothing really changed, that the story just stopped. It very much was a portrait of a middle, and I wanted something… more.

That said, I’m not sorry I read it.

Audiobook: Christmas Fling

Leave a comment

by Lindsey Kelk
Read by Heather Long
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is swearing, including multiple f-bombs, and some fade to black sex. It’s in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Laura is in her medical residency to be a neurosurgeon and she has one rule: no relationships. But when she accidentally sees her new landlord, Callum, naked (she didn’t know he was home, let alone getting out of the shower) and then is ambushed by his parents who assume she’s his (nonexistent) girlfriend, she’s pulled into a fake dating scheme: go to Scotland, pretend to be Callum’s girlfriend for Christmas, don’t catch feelings, and get a free month’s rent. Of course, things don’t go smoothly – there is an ex-fiance, and an angry sister to deal with after all – but maybe it was all for the best in the end.

On the one hand, this was so chock-full of secondhand embarrassment, it was hard to listen to. Laura kept getting into some terrible embarrassing situations, and it was just super awkward. And Callum’s family was just the Worst! I wanted to throttle his sister and his dad for being stubborn and not listening, and completely understood why Callum acted the way he did. The third-act breakup was a bit sudden, but resolved quickly (which was nice) and I appreciated the way the ending was a compromise between Laura and Callum and not one sacrificing their dreams for the other.

In short, I enjoyed this enough to hunt down another Kelk book and put it immediately on hold at the library. A fun Christmas romp.

Audiobook: One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

Leave a comment

by Omar El Akkad
Read with the author.
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is talk of the genocide in Gaza and abuse by immigration officers. It’s in the Current Events section of the bookstore.

In this short memoir/accounting of the genocide in Gaz, El Akkad talks about how it is to be Muslim in the west, and how the ideas of justice and freedom are so far from what Americans, at least, believe them to be, that it’s laughable. There is heartbreak, despair, and pain and a lack of hope that anything will ever change. Except, in the writing of this, El Akkad bears a witness to the pain and maybe by reading this, there is a small amount of hope that things will become more just and truly free.

I don’t usually say books are important; I don’t really believe that there are books that everyone should read. And yet, as I was listening to this, feeling El Akkad’s pain – feeling the pain of the Palestinians who have been obliterated, feeling the pain of the people who have been unjustly detained – I realized that this is a book that, in order to change, everyone must read. If you read this and come out unchanged, you have a heart of stone.

There is pain out there; pain that must be stopped. And, the very least we can do is be a witness for the people who can’t speak.