Love & Romance

Audiobook: Lady’s Knight

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by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner
Read by Helen Keeley & Barbara Rosenblat
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Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is some violence – jousting and dragon-killing and the like; and two f-bombs. It’s in the YA Fantasy section of the bookstore.

Gwen has dreams. She is the blacksmith’s daughter, and is running the forge herself pretty much these days, but she has designed her own armor, and wants to try her hand at jousting. And one day, she earns enough money and enters the qualifying rounds of the tournament… and wins. She thinks it’s a one-off, but then Lady Isobelle finds her and convinces her to continue. It seems that Lady Isobelle is the prize for winning the tournament, and she doesn’t really want to marry any of the other knights. She convinces Gwen to be her champion in the tournament.

Gwen reluctantly agrees, follows Isobelle to the castle, where she pretends to be “Sir Gawain’s” sister, and… well, falls in love with Isobelle. There’s more to the plot – including terribly chauvinistic knights and a lady’s maid who might be an assassin – but that’s the basic premise.

Oh, this one was a delight. The back blurb (do audiobooks have a back blurb?) mentioned The Knight’s Tale as a comp, and I think that’s spot on. It’s Knight’s Tale but with lesbian girls, and I couldn’t have enjoyed myself more. It’s laugh-aloud funny at parts (LOVE the narrator who breaks the fourth wall), and yet had me ugly crying and the show of unity among women at the end. It’s fierce, it’s sweet, it’s a joy to read (and to listen to!). I can’t recommend this silly, sweet, fun book enough.

Audiobook: Wild and Wrangled

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by Lyla Sage
Read by Connor Crais, Savannah Peachwood, and Stella Hunter
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Or listen at Libro.fm
Others in the series: Done and Dusted, Swift and Saddled, Lost and Lassoed
Content: There’s a lot of swearing, including multiple f-bombs, and (while it takes a while to get there) a lot of on-page sexytimes. It’s in the Romance section of the bookstore.

All Camille has wanted to do is get married to get her (rich) parents off her back and to secure the future for her daughter. Except things don’t go according to plan: her fiancé never shows up for their wedding, sending a note calling it off. And, to make things worse, as Cam tries to rebuild her life, her first love, her high school boyfriend, Dusty Tucker, shows up back in her life. It didn’t work out – though they tried – the first time around, and Cam’s not sure if she wants to see if it can work out a second time. But Dusty is persistent, and being in a relationship with him feels… right. Can she buck her parents and her expectations and her fears, and make it work with him again?

I liked this one better than I have the past couple Rebel Blue books, though I still think I might be over cowboy romances. That said, I really enjoyed Cam and Dusty together, and I liked the hopefulness of two people who fell in love young, finding their way back to each other. Sage does know how to write characters, and maybe I liked this one more because they were just adoptive members of the Rider family, which meant no overbearing brothers to get in the way. This one had a weight to it – with the class issues and the tension of lost loves – that I think the others missed.

I still like Done and Dusted best (the first time is always the best, no?) but this one is a solid read.

Audiobook: The Knight and the Moth

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by Rachel Gillig
Read by Samantha Hydeson
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Content: There’s violence, including violence towards women; swearing, including multiple f-bombs; and some on-page sex scenes. It’s in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Six is a diviner for the Abbess of Ashling in the country of Traum. Which means, people come to her, paying her in blood and the Abbess in money, and she drowns in the spring water and divines their futures for them. It’s all she’s ever known, and while she doesn’t love doing it (um, I would wonder if she did), she is very good. What she and her sister diviners (creatively: one through five) really want is for their ten year term to be up and for them to move on with their lives.

Except, over the course of a few nights, Six’s sister diviners go missing. Thankfully, the king and his knights are passing through, and Six escapes with them (well, with the one devilishly handsome, and yet not very nice – the use of the word “ignoble” happened more than once) to go visit each of the omens and to find out what happened to the only things (okay, they’re not “things”) she cared about.

I wanted to like this one much more than I actually did. I had issues with the world (why would you get six diviners at once, and have them all leave at the same time? Why would you NOT stagger their times of service?) and eventually, with the romance. Sure, the knight was all considerate and whatever, but when I finally got to the first sex scene, it was kind of… silly. There was absolutely no chemistry there, and I kept rolling my eyes at it all. And then the twist at the end? I’m not sure it made me mad because it was out of left field (there were clues, but not great ones), or because it was just stupid.

I finished the book (it was a book group book), but I didn’t love it, and I have no intention of reading the sequel.

Sounds Like Love

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by Ashley Poston
First sentence: “Most summer nights in the small beach town of Vienna Shores, North Carolina, there was music at the Revelry.”
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Content: There is swearing, including multiple f-bombs, and some off-page sex. It’s in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Joni grew up surrounded by two things: the ocean and music. Her parents owned the Revelry, a music hall in a town in the Outer Banks. She was happy, but she had big dreams: she wanted to be a songwriter, so after college (and a heartbreak), she headed west. She worked, and finally hit it (relatively) big, but over the past year, she’s had writer’s block. Mostly because her mother has been diagnosed with early-onset dementia, and Joni is afraid she’s going to miss, well, everything.

Then, as she heads back to Vienna Shores for a month-long break, she starts hearing voices in her head. It turns out that it’s Sebastian Fellows, a former boyband member, and who is trying to resurrect his career. Can the two of them work together long enough to get out of each other’s heads? (And do they even want to?)

After the mediocre reaction of Novel Love story (I think I’m one of the few who liked it), I didn’t know what to expect with Poston’s next one. But, she’s back on her game. This was fun, full of music and heart, with enough conflict and tension to keep the book interesting. I liked all the characters and the setting of a beach town in the summer. I liked the relationship between Joni and her parents, and the heartache of her mother’s memory fading. It not as good as Seven Year Slip, but it’s up there.

And it’s a perfect summer novel.

Overdue

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by Stephanie Perkins
First sentence: “I had already made one catastrophic decision earlier that week.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: October 7, 2025
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There is a lot of swearing, including multiple f-bombs, and some fade-to-black sex. It will be in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Ingrid has been in a long-term relationship with Cory since she was 18. Eleven years later, they’ve not made any moves toward marriage, and when Ingrid’s younger sister announces her engagement, they have a panic attack. And decide to “take a break” for a month to date other people. Ingrid’s first choice: her co-worker from the library, Macon. Except that doesn’t go well. And as one month turns into two, into three, Ingrid realizes that maybe more than just her relationship needs an overhaul. Over the next year, she does just that, finding out more about herself, her wants and desires, and making her life into one she wants to live.

This one had a rough start. It’s divided up by months, and January was painful. Ingrid isn’t likable, the whole situation with Cory is awkward, and it’s just, well, hard to read. But, I pushed through it because I adored Stephanie Perkins back in the day, and I was rewarded: the book got immensely better. It’s a slow-burn romance, which I don’t usually care for, but I did like the way Macon and Ingrid’s romance developed. I liked that the book was as much about Ingrid finding herself as it was about falling in love. I liked the town that Perkins invented, and the people she surrounded Ingrid with. It was all very homey and sweet and, in the end, quite enjoyable. If it had a less rough start, I’d probably like it more, but it’s a worthy adult debut for a YA author I really like.

A Harvest of Hearts

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by Andrea Eames
First sentence: “They said that magic, real magic, not the shite that hedgewitches peddled with all their little bags of powders and herbs, could only be performed in exchange for a human heart.”
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Content: There is some swearing (including one or two f-bombs), pretty gruesome deaths, and an off-page sex scene. It’s in the Romance section but it’s more of a fantasy.

The kingdom that Foss has grown up in has had no war, no disease, the plants and animals are always healthy. The cost: the king and his 12 sorcerers — 11 women and one man — harvest hearts from the citizens to keep the magic going. Foss wants nothing to do with it – she is just an awkward butcher’s daughter – but one time, her heart got snagged by the male. He didn’t actually take her, but it was painful to be away from him, so she followed him to the city and to his house, where she volunteered to be his housekeeper. She resented herself for this, even though she knew it was magic. But once there, she set about looking for her heart to make it whole again and discovered the rotten underbelly of the kingdom and the magic.

I didn’t know what to expect going in, but I was pleasantly charmed by this one. I adored Foss, she was very pragmatic, often funny, and headstrong enough to make me want to root for her. Eams has created a very unique magic system, something dark and grisly – I mean, cruelly taking people’s hearts to fuel magic! – but the book isn’t dark or creepy. It gave off strong Kingfisher vibes – a bit of humor and heart underneath something terrible and daunting. I thoroughly enjoyed this one.

The Enchanted Greenhouse

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by Sarah Beth Durst
First sentence: “The plant was innocent.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Release date: July 15, 2025
Others in the series: The Spellshop
Content: There are some tense moments, and talk of death and loss. It will be in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Terlu was the librarian who made Caz in The Spellshop, and was punished for it, spending six years as a wooden statue. When she finds herself awakened, on a snowy island, she has no idea how long she’s been gone, or why she’s finally back to herself. What she discovers is Yarrow, a lone, grumpy gardener keeping care of dying enchanted greenhouses, and he wants and expects her to fix him. It’s not that simple: Terlu is a librarian, not a sorcerer, but she finds herself charmed (especially when she wakes up Lotti, a sentient rose plant) and is determined to help. She’s afraid of being punished again, but she figures that maybe it’s worth it, especially if she can get Yarrow to smile.

Much like The Spellshop this one is all about the cozy vibes. There isn’t much conflict – Terlu is afraid of working magic against the law, which is understandable given that she was punished once already, and there is an increasing need to fix the magic with the greenhouses, as they are failing faster and faster. There’s a small falling out in the third act, but nothing drastic. This is all about sweetness and coziness and just being charming and lovely. Which means, of course, that I adored it.

It’s not for the people who want spice or tension, but it will definitely appeal to those who loved The Spellshop, and who want to just feel, well, smiley.

Audiobook: Great Big Beautiful Life

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by Emily Henry
Read by Julia Whelan
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Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is some swearing, including multiple f-bombs, and some fade-to-black sex. It’s in the Romance section of the bookstore.

Alice desperately wants the job writing the biography of one of the last, and most reclusive, members of the influential Ives family, Margaret. She’s taken the time to find her, hunt her down, and desperately wants to tell her story. The problem: Margaret has also invited Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hayden Anderson, and is making them compete for the job.

It’s all fine and good when Alice thinks Hayden is stuck up and mean, but the more she gets to know him, the more she is attracted to him, and this job – this competition – is standing between them. How can she get the job of her dreams if the man of her dreams is standing in the way?

First: I’ve known Whelan is an incredible narrator for a while, but every time I listen to a book she reads, it hits me fresh. She’s one of the best in the business, and she made this book POP. I’m sure I would have liked it had I read it, but I loved listening to the way Whelan interpreted the text. She is so good at not just voices but also capturing the nuances of each character.

As for the book, it’s not my favorite Henry – that’s still Book Lovers, though I should reread it and see if it holds up – but it’s a solid book. There’s a romance in there, though I think (much like Funny Story), it’s taking a back seat to Margaret’s story. That one, of regret and bad choices, and lost loves, is really the heart of the book. The rest is just filler and fluff. And you know what, I didn’t mind one bit. Henry writes less good books, but never an outright bad one. And I’m here for everything she writes.

Though maybe I need to start listening to them, instead?

DNF: Say You’ll Remember Me

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by Abby Jimenz
Read by: Christine Lakin & Matt Lanter
Content: There is some swearing, including a few f-bombs, and some fade-to-black sex. It’s in the Romance Section of the bookstore.

I do not have a good track record with Abby Jimenez. Of the three I’ve started, I’ve only finished one, and I did like that one. But, the other two, not so much.

My problems with this one were the plot: Samantha and Xavier had a first date that was to-die-for (instalove anyone?) but it turns out that Samantha is moving out of Minnesota and back to California to help with her mom who is fading due to early-onset dimensia. “Forget me” she tells him. Of course he doesn’t. And they spend the rest of the book pushing and pulling: wanting to be together, but it’s “impossible”. *eye roll* So, have a long-distance relationship? But no, Samantha only wants in-person relationships. They can’t afford to keep flying back and forth. They want to be together and just can’t. Round and round we go. After about 40% of this (I was listening to audio), I jacked it up to 1.4x speed, hoping it would help with the boring round and round, but after another 40%, I got sick of it and just stopped. I don’t even care how it ends. I don’t care that Samantha’s grandmother dies, that Xavier’s parents are complete assholes… I just don’t care.

I’m a little miffed that I made it through 80% before bailing (I should have bailed at 40%), but the narrators were good enough to keep me somewhat interested. Though – and this must be the director’s decision – whenever one of them was narrating (say she was), the other narrator would read the dialogue that their character said (so every time Xavier spoke, Latner would say his words). It was weird, and I’m not sure I liked it. It may have contributed to my dislike of this one overall.

I’m sure there’s going to be some Jimenez stans out there who love it, but I am not one of them.

Audiobook: That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon

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by Kimberly Lemming
Read by Hazel Addison
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Content: This is a spicy book! Lots of on-page sex, lots of swearing. It’s in the Romance section of the bookstore.

All Cinnamon wants to do is grow her spice (guess which one) and live a quiet life with her family and friends. But then, she accidentally saves the demon Fallon, and gets caught in his quest to defeat the evil witch that is enslaving demons. Cin goes along reluctantly at first, but as they spend more time together, sparks start to fly (among other things).

This was so so silly. Incredibly silly. Like I felt myself getting less intelligent reading this silly. That said, Addison was a good narrator, and I had a grand time listening to it. I’m sure there are internal inconsistencies and that the world-building wasn’t that great, but honestly, I didn’t care. I was here for a good time, and Lemming gave me one.

I’m not sure I care enough to read the rest of the series, but this one was a lot of silly fun.