Adult Fiction

Audiobook: Apprentice to the Villain

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by Hannah Nicole Maehrer
Read by Em Eldridge
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Others in the series: Assistant to the Villain
Content: There is violence and swearing, including multiple f-bombs. It’s in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Spoilers for Assistant to the Villain, obviously.

Trystan has been taken by King Benedict, and it’s up to Evie to save him. Which she does, but that unleashes a chain of events that have both Trystan and Evie scrambling to fulfill the prophecy and save the magic in Rennedawn.

I enjoyed the first one well enough, and I honestly wanted to like this one. I enjoyed the narrator of the first one and thought that it would be just as much fun. But then, the slow-burn romance that started in the first book never really went anywhere. Sure, they almost kissed, but then he pulled back and they went back and forth with “I love him/her but I can’t” or “he/she doesn’t want me” and I just lost patience with it. Sure, there’s a plot that was supposed to be interesting, but about 80% of the way through the book and the plot wasn’t anywhere near to wrapping up and I just lost patience with it. I don’t want yet another book of will-they-won’t-they and pining and growling and being jealous and not communicating and I just bailed.

Some books are for some people. This one ultimately wasn’t for me.

Swift and Saddled

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by Lyla Sage
First sentence: “I’ve come in contact with a lot of liars, but none quite so big as Google.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Others in the series: Done and Dusted
Content: There is swearing, including many f-bombs, as well as on-page sex. It’s in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Ada Hart is an outsider to Meadowlark, Wyoming, brought there as an interior designer for Wes Ryder’s guest ranch. What she expected: to get the job done well. What she didn’t expect: to fall in love with Wyoming, Rebel Blue, and Wes Ryder.

There’s a lot more than that – Ada is coming off a bad divorce from a controlling husband and is gun-shy about relationships; Wes is trying to find his footing with the new guest ranch he’s in charge of. There’s a lot of push-and-pull, but eventually, they come to figure things out. While I don’t think it’s as spicy as Done and Dusted, there are some good sex scenes and banter between Wes and Ada. I appreciated that there wasn’t much of a third-act fallout, and it was quickly resolved. I also appreciated Wes’s support of Ada, both as she worked through her trauma and of her budding career.

Sage is a good writer, and she knows how to write a good romance. These are a lot of fun.

Roland Rogers Isn’t Dead Yet

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by Samantha Allen
First sentence: “I’ve knocked on a thousand doors before, but this one is different.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: December 3, 2024
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There is swearing, including many f-bombs. There is also talk of sex, and one description of a hate crime against an LGBTQ+ character. It will be in the Fiction section of the bookstore.

Adam is in a writing slump. He had one successful book – his tell-all memoir about leaving the Mormon Church when he came out as gay – but everything in the 15 years since then has fallen flat. He’s not even sure he can be a writer anymore. Then his agent lands him a cushy job: the Hollywood star Roland Rogers needs a ghostwriter right now and he wants Adam. Except Roland isn’t actually there. At least not physically – his body is buried under a mound of snow in Utah. However, his consciousness still exists and can inhabit the kitchen speaker, and so he can still talk to Adam. Once they get past the weirdness of the situation, they settle in to write. But it’s not going to be easy, on either of them. Between the two, there’s a lot of trauma to unpack – both religious and of the toxic masculinity varieites – and as they do, they end up growing closer.

In some ways, this is the straight up (if a little weird) romance the publishers are touting it as. They do develop a relationship. But, it’s so much more than that. In the end, I think the point of this one is to highlight the ways connection and vulnerability are important, how it’s possible to get by without them, but your life is so much richer with them. I didn’t end up cyring at the end, but I was moved by the decisions that Adam and Roland made, and the way their relationship turned out.

I’m not sure I would have ever picked this one up if I hadn’t been asked to read it by a well-meaning publicist, but I’m glad I did. It’s quite a delightful little book.

Audiobook: Assistant to the Villain

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by Hannah Nicole Maehrer
Read by Em Eldridge
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There are descriptions of murder and mayhem, as well as a depiction of sexual assault. There are swear words, including a few f-bombs. It’s in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Evie Sage is on the run after quitting her less-than-desirable job at the town blacksmith when she encounters none other than The Villain. He’s the guy who’s been terrorizing the kingdom for years, the guy whom everyone is supposed to be afraid of. And he offers her a job? As his assistant?

Which she’s actually enjoying? (That’s not even bringing up the fact that her boss is actually hot. And a decent human being.)

So, when it looks like there’s a traitor in their midst, it’s up to Evie and The Villain to figure out what’s going on and stop them before they put too many (more) lives at stake.

I felt about this one much like I felt about Fourth Wing: was it good? Probably not. Was it a lot of fun? Yes.
Yes, it is. I like the magic system that Maehrer created, and it was highly amusing the way she superimposed a modern office space on this fantasy world. (There’s an HR Director!) I liked the push and pull between Evie and The Villain (though awkward power dynamic much there?). I really liked the narrator; I think she’s what made it really fun for me. I did have quibbles with the way the ending twists happened (the fake-out was the one that really bothered me), but in the end (even though it ended on a cliffhanger), I immediately picked up the second one.

You can’t get a higher recommendation than that, can you?

The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year

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by Ally Carter
First sentence: “Ms. Chase: Well, of course I have his blood on my hands.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There is some swearing (I don’t remember f-bombs, but if there were any, there weren’t a lot), kissing, and off-screen sex. It will be in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Maggie Chase and Ethan Wyatt are rival mystery writers. They don’t like each other. And even though Maggie’s successful, Ethan is a different level of success, which is just annoying, since he has only a few books to his name. So, when she ends up in a private plane headed to England for Christmas and Ethan is there, she’s sure it will be a lousy holiday. Except: they end up at Eleanor Ashley’s house with a number of her relatives, and then she goes missing. It’s up to Maggie and Ethan to figure out where Elenaor has gone, and – more importantly – why.

This was a fun, light romance. It leans more heavily into the mystery – or at the very least I was more interested by the mystery – than the romance, though it’s there. More importantly, it’s about Maggie’s journey to trusting herself. She’s been told her whole life that she doesn’t matter and that her opinions don’t count, and she doesn’t really trust herself. Over the course of the book – and with Ethan’s help – she learns how to trust her instincts and her decisions again.

I don’t know if I was expecting something spicier (it’s not spicy at all), but I wasn’t expecting so much of a mystery. And I was pleasantly surprised how enjoyable and fun it was.

Audiobook: The Truth According to Ember

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by Danica Nava
Read by Siena East
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is blatant racism towards Native people, as well as some swearing including a few f-bombs. There is on the page, pretty spicy sex. It’s in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Ember Lee Cardinal hasn’t been able to catch a break. She had to drop out of college because she used her college money to bail out her younger brother from jail, but he skipped bail so she lost the money. She’s working a dead-end job at a bowling alley in a less-than-desirable part of Oklahoma City. And all her applications for better jobs come back as rejected. So she decides to be creative: she exaggerates her qualifications and checks the white box instead of the Native American one. (Her dad is white, so it’s not a super big stretch on that one.) She lands a job as an accounting assistant at a tech firm where she meets Danuwoa Colson, the IT guy and fellow Native. He even seems to be interested in her as well. Things are looking up. But when she gets an unexpected (and unwanted) promotion to the Executive Assistant to the CEO and when a coworker finds Ember and Danuwoa in a bit of a compromising position (they were kissing on an elevator at an offsite conference), her lies begin to build and get out of control. With everything – her job, her life, the relationship with Danuwoa – at stake, will Ember be able to come clean?

This one was a ton of fun. There was a bit of second-hand embarrassment as Ember’s lies kept piling up, but I got why she kept doing it. The motivations were always there. Nava was great at making the spice pop as well as weaving in elements of what Native people have to deal with in the corporate workplace (it was SUPER cringe). I loved Ember’s best friend Joanna (not sure of the spelling of that, since I listened) and the way it was incredibly centered in Oklahoma. Additionally, East did an excellent job narrating, making all the characters come to life.

It ended up being one of those books where I kept driving just so I could keep listening, and there really isn’t any higher praise than that.

Four Weekends and a Funeral

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by Ellie Palmer
First sentence: “When I learn I’m still dating Sam Lewis, I’m at his funeral.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy pilfered from the ARC shelves at the bookstore.
Content: There is some mild swearing, as well as kissing and off-page sex. It’s in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Alison had a brief relationship with Sam. She was coming off a double mastectomy (as a cancer prevention measure), and she wanted a bit of adventure in her life. Sam – who lived life large – was it. It didn’t work out, but he never told his family that they broke up, and Alison found out at Sam’s funeral after a tragic accident. She is compelled to play along with the fiction that she was actually dating-dating Sam, and she and his best friend, Adam, get roped into cleaning out and fixing up Sam’s condo. The project gets off to a rough start: Adam is notoriously recalcitrant towards activities, and even though Alison tries to be cheerful around him, he’s just not warming up.

But, she still feels a pull toward him, and even though she’s still feeling all sorts of ways about her mastectomy, her and Adam’s relationship buds from friendship into something more.

It’s a sweet and light romance, with undercurrents of both grief and survivor’s guilt. While I really liked the relationship between Alison and Adam – there were some genuinely laugh out lout moments in the book – it was the side characters that really kept me reading. I liked Alison’s friends Chelsea and Mara, and the trivia night competitions, and just their friendship. And I feel like that while this is a romance, at its heart, it’s following the trend I’m seeing in romances: the real story is women figuring out how to be their best selves. Alison works through her survivor’s guilt, she embraces her true self, and only then can she and Adam have a deep, real relationship. And while it lacks spice, it is sweet, and there are bonus points for old (well 80s) romcom references.

I found it to be sweet, charming, and quite funny, which is a win in my book.

Audiobook: Done and Dusted

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by Lyla Sage
Read by Aaron Shedlock & Stella Hunter
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is on-page, quite graphic sex. There is also swearing, including several f-bombs. It’s in the Romance section of the bookstore.

All Emmy Rider – the youngest of the three Rider kids – wanted to do was get out of her small Wyoming town and make something of herself. Which she did by going to college and making a name for herself on the barrel racing circuit. But, after a bad accident, she’s aimless back home at Rebel Blue, the family ranch, trying to figure out the next step. Enter in Luke Books, Meadowlark’s most eligible bachelor, and Emmy’s oldest brother’s best friend. He’s always been just annoying, but now – maybe he’s something more. Except for Emmy’s off-limits, because her brother wouldn’t take kindly to their being together.

Will that stop them? (We all know the answer to that question.)

We had Lyla Sage at the store over Bookstore Romance day, and I had the pleasure of working the event. It was a lot of fun, she’s smart and funny, and I found myself wondering if these were any good (especially since all the other romance readers at the store were raving about the books). And yes, yes they are. Well, it depends on what you mean by “good”. Are they high literature? No. Are they entertaining and sexy? Yes. And really, that’s all anyone really wants out of a romance book, after all. I did like the characters, and Sage is good at writing witty banter (almost a must for me in a romance book). It’s got a little bit of push and pull and some sexy scenes and it all came together quite nicely.

It was good on audio as well. Thankfully, the narrators realized that people from Wyoming don’t have an accent (we were worried about that), and they embodied the characters beautifully. It was entertaining and fun, and you really can’t want anything more than that in a romance.

The Bloodless Prince

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by Charlotte Bond
First sentence: “When the universe was young and dark, light existed inside an egg.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: October 29, 2024
Others in the series: The Fireborne Blade
Review copy pilfered from the ARC shelves at work.
Content: There is some violence. It will be in the Science Fiction/Fantasy section of the bookstore.

Spoilers for the first, obviously.

Maddileh and Saralene have won the blade, killed the dragon, cheated death, and have gone on with their lives. Saralene is High Mage with Maddileh as her Champion. Except all is not well: both Maddileh and Saralene keep having disturbing dreams and they are becoming increasingly intrusive. Also: maybe the dragon is not actually dead. And: maybe the Tales of Old are not just stories, but actually true, and they need to travel to the underworld to bargain with the Bloodless Princes for their lives.

Much like the first, this slim novel packs a punch. There is so much world-building in so few words, it’s breathtaking. I love the dragon in the book – it’s different from the first in this duology and it fits with what we already know and expands upon it. Bond is an incredibly talented writer, both with her plotting and characterizations. I liked how the romance was understated until it wasn’t, how Bond never let anything get overdone, and how both Maddileh and Saralene stand on their own and know how to work together. It’s quite a brilliant little book.

All this to say: I’m probably going to read whatever Bond decides to write.

Audiobook: The Seventh Veil of Salome

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by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia
Read by Caitlin Kelly, Atlanta Amado, Victoria Villarreal, Arthur Morey, Andrew Eiden, Kristen DiMercurio, Frankie Corzo, Lauren Fortgang, Javier Prusky, Fred Sanders, Lee Osorio & Cassandra Campbell
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is violence, sexual harassment, racist slurs, and swearing, including a few f-bombs. It’s in the fiction section of the bookstore.

It’s 1955 and Hollywood is all-in on big-budget Biblical films. In this case, the story of Salome, the woman who danced for Herod and asked for John the Baptist’s head on a platter. The problem the director is having, though, is finding the right woman to play the title character. Enter Vera Larios, a newbie from Mexico City. She’s the perfect person, except…. she won’t entertain the advances of the playboy leading man. And she “took the role” from another aspiring actress. (And she also “took” the aspiring actress’s boyfriend.) And, worst of all: she’s Mexican.

One of the things we have said about Moreno-Garcia at the store is that she doesn’t write the same book twice. A big, sweeping historical drama was not really on my bingo card for her, but that’s not to say she didn’t do it well. It’s very character-driven, especially the three female characters: Vera, of course; but also Nancy (the aspiring – and failing – actress); and Salome herself. At first, I thought the Salome chapters were a bit weird, but as the book went on, I saw the parallels between that story and the one playing out around the movie. I ended up thinking about halfway through that this was a book about the ways women use their sexuality to gain power, and maybe that’s so. I’m not entirely sure, though, now that I’m done.

The full cast recording was really well done, however. There are no chapters, just narratives by various people – from other cast members to the director, a screenwriter, and other Hollywood notables – and the full cast helped distinguish that. I did wonder why most of the narratives were in first-person, kind of documentary-style, but the Nancy, Vera, and Salome sections were in third-person. Again, it was a choice, and while I did not mind it, I was a bit put off initially.

I am glad I read it, though, even if it’s not my usual fare.