BMBR: Seeking Persephone by Sarah M. Eden

 Social media has been flogging a TV series that's available to watch on Angel TV should you want to pay for another streaming service, which I don't, and somewhere along the way it was mentioned that it's based off a book, so I looked up the book, which led to reading the book.

The book was lovely. 

Regency romance with the tropes: no one knows anyone until the day of the wedding, he has to wed to produce an heir so that his useless cousins don't inherit, her family needs money so she agrees, he doesn't like feelings, and Beauty and the Beast.

No sex. Which was fine. It was still lovely.

Lots of crying. Not a how-to-be-strong-as-a-role-model character, but not a weak and useless character, either. 

The writing was a bit clunky at the start, but it got better, enough that I also read the second book in the series. 

BMBR: The Song of the Jade Lily by Kirsty Manning

Oh, My Heart.

This is a beautiful book. 

Set in Shanghai and in Melbourne, and set in 1939-1945 and 2016, it is a beautiful story of love, loss, secrets, and discovery.

I had no idea that Jewish refugees fleeing Europe ended up in Shanghai, that Shanghai was so diverse in 1939, and that even after Germany surrendered in 1945, war still raged there.

Alexandra, after her Opa's death in 2016, travels from Melbourne to Shanghai to try to find her blood family (she was adopted). Interwoven is a beautiful telling of her Oma's life in Shanghai after fleeing Austria, until she travels to Australia, and all the secrets that she carries.

This is not a heavy tome; the prose moves well, is not burdensome, nor is it stuffy with lecture and description. Manning is a master of showing in her writing.

But neither is it a fluffy piece. It punched me right in my soul. And then gave me a hug.

There is love and longing, loss and despair, death and horror, and grace and kindness.

I am left feeling grateful. For everything. Everything that I have, and everything that I do not.

I cried. But I am warmed, and 10/10, recommend this book.

BMBR: Veiled Kingdom and Hunted Heir by Holly Renee

 Random FB recommendation so I went for it (e-book). Decently written, okay romance, nice story, but IT DIDN'T END in book one so I bought book two and IT DIDN'T END and now I'm left in a quandary: do I preorder book three or do I drop the series? 

I preordered it, but I don't feel like my life would be lacking if I hadn't. 

3/5.

The sex scenes have good detail.

BMBR: Deadline by Sandra Brown

Romance artfully disguised as a well written and decently plotted thriller. 

Journalist meets trial witness and loses his objectivity. Etc. A couple events had me rolling my eyes or scoffing at stupidity, but I didn't lose any brain cells over it.

Her books are easy reads, but far from dumb.

Great escapist reading without being too fluffy, and if you don't like reading the romantic bits, they're easy enough to skip over. 

4/5

BMBR: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

 This one was horrific. Not the writing or the book itself, but the subject matter. I remember watching the movie and being horrified at the end, and so when I read the book I knew the ending, but the detail that books will give you always outshine the details and backstories that movies do, so it hits home harder that they are children. And the writing feels like a cross between written for adults, but in a way that is simple enough for younger children to read, which makes the premise of children waging wars more terrible.

I do wish to continue the series.

4/5. 

BMBR: The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Wonderful South Asian fantasy set in modern times. A shopkeeper trained in the Magic of Spices has to choose between her Craft and her Love for an American man.

Beautifully written. Not a fluffy read, but not a difficult read.

5/5

BMBR: Escape by James Patterson and David Ellis

 This book wasn't bad; it was decently written. Took a while to get really into it. It read like a million things were going on, and the stuff that happens in the description on the back of the book is so late in the book it's like a spoiler.

 On a scale of 1-5 where 1 is super easy to put down and 5 is I got no sleep, I'd rate it a 1 in the first half and a 3 in the second half.

Easy read. 

BMBR: In Too Deep by Lee Child and Andrew Child

 It's a Jack Reacher book, so you really can't go wrong. Unless you start reading right before bedtime.

BMBR: Under the Whispering Door by T.J. Klune

 A lovely romance story where even death can't get in the way of personal growth and the love that arises from it. 

As usual, TJ Klune masterfully weaves his tale in such a way that you feel like you are right there in the teashop, and that you know the characters personally.

Wallace, a man no one loves, and whose death brings this story to mind (and a quick verification search lead to this one), dies alone, at work, and finds love after death. 

Not as depressing a story as it sounds, and is in fact quite beautiful.

The moral remains, though: there is more to life than your work, and if not, at least don't be an asshole about it.

BMBR: Timber: The Mountain Man's Babies by Frankie Love

Okay, so this is a quickie because I'm actually working and I read a page when my brain needs a break from the freaking formulas in spreadsheet that I'm working on.

This was free on BookBub today. I was promised (by the Amazon description) that I'd get so hot and bothered that I'd dig out a vibrator, and that if the batteries were dead, well, I have hands.

Not the worst writing, as long as you realize that this is straight up erotica with a bit of a story, and not meant to be an actual romance novel.

1. Dude is redundant. I get it, Jax; your cock is huge, and you like fucking women, and you're hiding in the woods because you fucked the sheriff's daughter and now he's making your life a living hell, and you're not going to fuck the local chicks because you don't need the local hassle, but you're all about fucking women and chopping wood,, and you're really good at both because your cock is huge and you sharpen your axe nightly. You seriously don't need to say that on every. single. page.

2. Jax helps Harper lose her virginity. With his big cock.
     The sex scenes are short, hot vanilla.

3. She gets pregnant. Jax says he did not see that coming. Seriously? You didn't use a condom, and you thought that the pious preacher's daughter who was saving herself for marriage was on birth control? Really?

Idaho needs to up its Sex-Education game.

4. OMG I lied. The writing gets worse. Then better. The sex is so vanilla that I'm skipping it to get to the story. Not quite what I look for in erotica.

BMBR: Penny Reid's "Bearded" Series

Lately I've been trying to read real books instead of e-books, so I started Game of Thrones. Loving it, and I don't feel as guilty taking it in to the tub with me as I do my phone.

One day between Christmas and New Year's, however, I decided to not ignore my daily BookBub email.

I downloaded Truth or Beard. And, then I kept going because the books were awesome. Laughed out loud. A lot. I've read all of the Beards that have been published to date.

(Synopsis of all: Bearded Brothers (7? of them) all get their own romance story. They also have one sister. She doesn't have a beard.)

And then in one of the more recent ones, the heroine's brother and his girlfriend come to visit, and I'm thinking, these people are familiar. And wouldn't you know it, yep, I have their story, which is #1 in the Knitting in the City series by the same author. I LOVED that one! (Neanderthal Seeks Human)

It turns out that the Bearded Brothers' sister's love story is #4 of the Knitting series, and #0.5 of the Bearded series, so I re-read the first of the Knitting, and the 2nd, which I also had.

I don't know why I stopped reading the Knitting. Maybe it had to something to do with the price tag. I have a vague memory of feeling a bit meh about the enjoyment vs. price ratio of book #2 (book #1 was free, so, worth it!).

But after reading all of the Beards, and maybe because a lot of stuff has been going on in life lately (can we say "avoidance"?), and maybe because I got an Amazon gift card in my stocking, I just kept clicking that pesky orange button to buy with 1 single click.

I might be a bit sorry when I look at my credit card later, but not that sorry. I've enjoyed myself. And I've successfully procrastinated on at least three projects. Yay, me!

Bottom line: I found the Beards to be worth their $7.99 tags, but if I hadn't been in avoidance mode, I would have balked at it. $6-7 would feel much better. Knitting, well, like I said, procrastination seemed to be a NY Resolution for me, so I did it, but those ones I'd say would be a good $5-6 book.

Regardless, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

BMBR: A Quest of Heroes by Morgan Rice

I think this was a Kindle freebie.

The youngest of four, and who is considered just a shepherd, wiggles his determined way in to the King's Legion, and is embroiled in royal plots and counter-plots. discovers that he has powers, and proves himself to be a hero.

As I was reading it, I thought that the writing was okay, if not a bit lacking in sophistication, and I think I even super-sped-read a few sections. And then part way through it I picked up a real book - The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski and found some real writing.

Bottom line: The Quest was all right for a quick read, and there are sixteen more books in the series, so Morgan must be doing something right, but I don't think I'd pay more than a couple bucks an e-book, and I don't have a burning desire to read them all, but it didn't make me feel like I'd completely wasted my time, either, which lately is high marks.

BMBR: Whispering Hills of Love by Dorothy Wiley

In honour of the last Monday's Muse, it's a Western. Ish. I think they get as far as Kentucky.

Anyhoo, I've made it to 24%. And I'm stopping there.

It's not horrible. It's not that badly written. (Girl gets raped and attacked, and saved by 2 brothers. She goes with them and falls in love with one of her rescuers, but due to some classic romance-novel-requisite mis-/lack of communication, blah blah blah, she starts to go back to Virginia with her drunk father (who has just found her).) It may even be readable, and as a free e-book, I probably could do it, but I have so much better on my Kindle right now, and no time to read any of it, so I'm going to cull it.

Bottom line: it may just not be what I'm in the mood for, but it's not quite good enough to keep me interested regardless. I'm not sure what it needs, though. While it's not dumb, it could have better conversation.

Bottom bottom line: it was free, and if you just want to chill mindlessly, that's probably an okay read for you.

I sound harsher than I may need to be, but at 10:30 at night I'm not going to analyse myself too much.

WBPHMD: Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters by Alan S Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa

Intro:

I'm camping, and in the interest of not using my phone I'm reading a real book. With real paper pages and everything.

I'm reading WBPHMD (as per the title of this post), a book written by two evolutionary psychologists who explain why we do what we do.

In the interests of BMBR's, I'll most likely give you the important bits. You may have to read the book to get a better explanation.

Warning: this book is not politically correct, and I won't be sugar coating anything.

Here goes.

Introduction.

1.  2 errors in thinking to avoid: the naturalistic and the moralistic fallacies. Naturalistic philosophy says what is, ought to be, IE if people are genetically different than they should be treated differently, whereas moralistic philosophy says what ought to be, is, IE everyone should be treated equally so therefore they are genetically the same.

2. Stereotypes may suck, but they're usually stemmed from true general observations, and shouldn't be biological prescriptions.

BMBR: Love Muffin and Chai Latte by Anya Wylde

It started out a bit slow, and after a bit you figure out how it's obviously going to end (and it does end that way), but I'm glad I stuck with this one. There were good parts where I laughed my ass off, and it turned out to be a great read once it got going.

Bottom Line: it was free via BookBub, but I'd spend 3-5$ on it.

Miss Fortune series by Jana DeLeon

I picked up the 1st 3 books in a box set for free. Or maybe 99cents. Regardless, the box set is now 99 cents and the 1st book is free on Kindle. Go get it.

CIA assassin goes into hiding in Sinful, Louisiana, and  she's completely out of her element. She unwittingly teams up with a couple of cute little old ladies to win the after-church-race-for-the-banana-pudding, and I haven't stopped laughing yet.

In spite of a few spelling and minor grammatical errors sprinkled throughout, and a few awkwardly written sentences, they are more than worth it.

Definitely an improvement over the last box set I tried reading. Each book so far is one week full of so much actionable conflict that I'm tired just thinking about it. Maybe a little  because I can't stop reading it.

Bottom line: I'm on book three, and I don't plan on stopping. I will even get book six at its higher price because I know it will be awesome.

The Worth series by Mara Jacobs

I got a 3-book box set cheaply via Bookbub.

I quit halfway through the second book. They were okay, and the writing isn't bad, but for some reason I found them a bit boring, and after a while I realized that I didn't really care much about the characters so I moved on.

It took forever for anything to happen.  Lots of filler. Not a lot of action or conflict.

Bottom line: it's probably okay if you're in the mood for slow and easy, and it was definitely better than a lot of the fluff I've been reading. If it's still free or cheap, decide for yourself, but if not, then please see what I moved on to:

The Miss Fortune series.

BMBR: Almost in Love by Kylie Gilmore

This was a freebie via Bookbub. I haven't finished it. And I probably won't.

It's a Big Bang Theory-esque plot where the nerdy (but hot and has some money) thinks that the artsy chick with pink hair, and who lives across the hall, is super hot.

What it doesn't have is actual intelligence or hotness.

This version came with a prequel novella (Almost Dating) on how the characters first met, and it ends with them kissing in the building's laundry room. That should have been it, right there. Great short story, maybe not in writing style, but it has all the elements from introduction to denouement. I left there thinking, "great, and they live happily ever after!" Or, at least, imagining that they do.

In Almost in Love, I'm expecting the Guy to get the Girl by being his charming, nerdy self, but the Girl ends up being embarrassed by him, and then the Guy gets the part of the Pirate King in the local theatre, and suddenly the Girl thinks that he's hot and she wants him. Badly. (So does every female and gay man around.) And the whole time (at least as far as I've read) the Guy is thinking back to the other time in high school when he was in a play and his girlfriend thought he was hot until the play ended and then it turned out that, lo and behold, he's just a nerdy Guy, so she dumped him, and the Guy is worried that the current Girl is going to do the same, and the whole time I'm screaming in my head, "Dude! Don't change who you are just to get a Girl who's embarrassed by you! Find the Girl who thinks it's cool that you own a Fro-Yo shop and that you like to dance around in a cow costume for the kids! Because she is going to KEEP being embarrassed by you unless you're the Pirate King!"

I couldn't stop screaming that, so I gave up on the book because if it was a Girl trying to change herself for a Guy, I would hate that story too.

BMBR: Come by Becca Jameson

According to the bio at the end of the novel, which, yes, I reached, but no, I probably shouldn't have, I read that Ms Jameson was an editor for years before writing her own novels. She wasn't a grammar editor. At least, I hope not. Maybe it's different when you write your own--you maybe can't see the errors--but wouldn't you therefore have an editor?

Or is this one of many in a long line of "BDSM is really hot right now, so pump them out, and don't worry about using the wrong "your" (and weirdly enough, in this book it wasn't a case of some one writing something like "your running really fast" (the common error), it was more like, "hey, is that you're pencil?") or their or spell that crinkly stuff under your heroine's dress "tool" on one page, and "toulle" on the next page. No one will notice because no one who reads BDSM romance would know the difference." (The tool/toulle error may be from another book, but I don't think it matters.)

Yeah, I take offence to that. Sure, I'm not expecting all of my sex-laden romance to be Giller-prize material, but for the love of my sex life, comma faults really interrupt my foreplay, and I find that really distracting. I'm correcting errors instead of being turned on.

And sometimes I need to read about hot sex, which gets me all hot and bothered and ready to go for when the kids are finally in bed and we're so tired that there is no way either of us has the energy for an hour of actual physical foreplay.

And I know what you're thinking: if I have time to read, wouldn't I have time for actual physical foreplay?

[Snorts.] No. This is what I do when I'm snuggling with the rugrats while they watch Paw Patrol ad nauseum before bed. You know, instead of doing the dishes or cleaning the bathroom.

But I digress, so back to the book review.

Girl meets guy, guy introduces her to his BDSM lifestyle while protecting her from a stalker. It was a freebie from Book Bub.

It wasn't horrible, and I did read it to the end, but now that I think about it, I don't remember actually ever feeling like I should drag my hubby down the hallway for a good tumble.

Bottom line: this one made me realize that just because you got it for free does not mean that you have to read it.

BMBR: Miss Adventure by Gerald Corcillo

It's free on Amazon.ca right now and even though I'm only 5 pages in, I'm laughing hard enough to say GO GET IT!!