So you may have noticed I missed this month’s What I’m Working On blog post. I have no good excuse, save that my writing life did not seem terribly thrilling to me this month. I’m debating moving that section to a bi-monthly or as-needed post, mostly because I tend to be a very scheduled individual in terms of work, so a lot of times in my head my schedule is: Write 30k on X novel this month. So, when I go to talk about what I’m doing, it feels a little like I’m just parroting my very boring schedule at you. The last thing I want to do is bore anyone to tears, and if I’m bored writing a post, I’m pretty sure you’ll be bored reading it.
Ahem, okay, so on with the Reading Roundup! I have been trying so, so hard to find new authors, and I am failing miserably. I started probably ten books this month that I just had to put down and couldn’t finish. I wasted three-quarters of the month on books I couldn’t finish. I am in an undeniable reading slump. SEND ME YOUR RECOMMENDATIONS. I can’t promise I’ll read them, but I will definitely go check them out.
Okay, so as always happens when I’m in a reading slump, I fall back on authors I know I love, whom I’ve been stockpiling books from for just such an occasion. Ergo, the selection is thin this month. As in, two authors, four books thin. But as my boss would say, “It is what it is.”
Crossing the Line/Breaking the Rules by Lucy Score
Okay, so if you missed my initial reading roundup where I discovered Lucy Score, let me take this moment to say I LOVE LUCY SCORE. Like, I’ve never fallen so hardcore in love with a contemporary romance author before. Her books are snort-inducing hilarious, transport me completely out of my ordinary life, and I am incapable of taking longer than 24 hours to read one of them.
THE DISCLAIMER: All Lucy Score books are steamy as fuck. If you’re going to dive into one, make sure that explicit sex and lots of it are things you like in a novel.
Okay, so Crossing the Line and Breaking the Rules are a duet, so I’m just reviewing them here together. If you like the falls-for-her-bodyguard trope done with typical Lucy freshness, this one’s for you!
In the first installment, Waverly Sinner is a movie star with a stalker problem, and Xavier Saint is her assigned bodyguard, who is absolutely immune to the starlets he protects. . .until he meets Waverly, of course. 🙂 Chock full of hilarity, rivalry, and smoking-hot attraction, Score once again crafts two great characters I’m rooting for the entire book.
I don’t want to do anything spoiler-y, so I won’t say much about the second book except to say that you will want to start it immediately upon finishing book one, and you’ll be happy you did.
Undercover Love by Lucy Score
Undercover Love was apparently Score’s debut novel! I guessed that it might be while reading it, but I wasn’t one-hundred percent certain, which is surprising in and of itself. I can usually spot a debut a mile away, but Score is just such a natural storyteller, and her characters always have the most amazing chemistry, that there were only a couple minor things that made me think it might have been the debut.
It’s a little shorter than her later novels, so if you’re looking for a faster read, this is a great option. Technically falls into the billionaire romance category, I suppose, though it’s not super in your face about the money thing. It’s there enough that if you like billionaire romance, it’ll scratch the itch, but also not so there that if you’re not super into billionaire romance (like me) it’s not going to put you off.
Queen of Shadows by Sarah J. Maas
Queen of Shadows is the fourth installment in Maas’s Throne of Glass series. I read her A Court of Thorns and Roses series first, which I absolutely love, all though this series was her debut.
In full transparency, the first book in this series is one I might not have taken a chance on if I hadn’t read her other series first, but I’m glad I did. You really get to see Maas develop her writing as an author as the series progresses, and by the time you get to this book it’s all just flat-out amazing.
It’s a great series for anyone who likes traditional fantasy with a touch of fae. If you haven’t read the series and are interested, you’ll want to start with Throne of Glass.
Amazon | Kobo | Apple | Barnes & Noble | GooglePlay | IndieBound
Number of books I read this month I wouldn’t recommend: Zero, technically, but I started a veritable mountain of them I couldn’t finish.