definitely, possibly, maybe

two guys who seem as opposite as opposite can be share an obsession over a card game and a need to win it all. conventionally yours  is an enjoyable road trip story with a nice dose of fan geekery and some real life issues to make this not just an absolute confection. conrad and alden are both working out what they want to do with their life. and how to get there without drowning all the time. whether it's anxiety or how bills, both of them are floundering and taking their uncertainties out on each other. willfully misunderstanding one another because they're too afraid that the other one will see through them. but when they are forced to drive from pennsylvania to nevada together, and alone with each other after hitting ohio, the barriers between them start to fall away. and when they are more honest with each other, the more they realize that instead of hating this other person who they thought was so different, that maybe they might be a little bit in love. they've...

violet abrams has a lot of history in uncertainty, alabama. most of it bad. but when her life falls apart she decides to take the lifeline her half-sister is offering and try something new to get her life back together. things get off to a rocky start for this always a bridesmaid . while trying to set fire to her wedding binder, she accidentally causes a fire in her sister's bakery. the hot firefighter who comes to her rescue is town superhero ford mcguire, who also moonlights as one of those mcguire boys the town can't help themselves from looking down on. when sparks fly between violet and ford, not literal ones, but those insane let's have sex right now ones,  they both try to run in the other direction. but the pull is too strong. and in spite of their misgivings they find themselves together and everything feels alright. until they don't, and while ford gets a lot of the blame here, i actually blame lexi and addie for being the ones to get in his headspace ri...

so not every return to a small town from the big city book is bad. and actually, i really enjoyed the girl next door  quite a bit. iris and jude find themselves back in their small maine town for different reasons. jude is grieving and iris is struggling to find her way forward in life. now, here is my only nitpick with this story. allegedly iris is twenty-two and jude is three-to-four years older so about twenty-five or six. how either of them have managed to get all the life experience they claim to have before coming back to town makes no sense. at twenty-two iris would have just graduated school, so would she really have had a series of jobs and failed to earn enough money to make rent? possibly, but unlikely, unless she barely gave her time in boston a chance, and honestly that doesn't seem right. likewise, jude seems to be a lot more worldly than her age would imply. they might just be real mature twenty-year-olds, but i wish that the author had given their ages something...

there is a lot i enjoyed about the hideaway inn , but one thing i didn't like, and one that created this super visceral reaction from me, was the fact that no one in the freaking town of new hope called vince by the name he asked to be called. even people who had transitioned and had changed their identities called him vinny, when he expressly asked to be called vince. did no one pick up on the absolute hypocrisy of that?? i have spent most of my life correcting people's pronunciation of my name. and i have never felt smaller when people just refuse to say it right. i understand the occasional mistake or slip. but there are people who i consistently have to correct and who consistently fail to make the correction and what that says about our dynamic to me is that they don't respect me.  no one in this town respects vince. they think that whatever changes he's made in his big city life are wrong and they know better and he is really vinny and should reject vinc...

these days i read more than anything, for job reasons, but also because few things hold my interest on the screen. but when this whole quarantine thing started i was in a reading slump. i couldn't focus my attention on anything. for years i'd been seeing things on twitter and social media about schitts creek  and everything made it seem like this would be something i loved. plus eugene levy is always a delight, especially when paired with catherine o'hara. and then it was like a revelation. literally. it was simply the best. and now i've been like down so many david and patrick youtube rabbit holes. but i also have to say that i pretty much adore the rose family as a whole. every single character is a delight. and then there's stevie whose deadpan vibe just works for me. there's so much humor and heart in this show. and it just makes me happy to spend a little time with these people. so like, yeah i'm like 6 years late to the party. and i...

i'm always excited to see some real latinx rep, and a taste of sage has that in spades. not just with lumi santana, our intrepid heroine who can taste the emotions of the cook when she eats their food. but also in the food and recipes that are a key component to the text of this story. when lumi begins working for julien, they find themselves at odds. he's got a bit of a reputation, and she can taste that there is something more to the man beyond his ferocious temper. this makes for a great set up, the issue is that i'm not 100% sure the book delivered. as much as i wanted to root for julien and lumi's relationship, it felt as if there were perhaps one too many moving pieces to the plot, and not everything connected. the magical realism, in this case, didn't quite work for me. especially since it felt like an extra element added to the plot without really impacting the way the story works out. **a taste of sage will publish on may 19, 2020. i received an adv...

starcrossed is book two in the magic in manhattan series, and should absolutely be read after reading spellbound . as it literally picks up from where book one ended. rory and ace are upstate, trying to stay safe, but relics are on the loose and danger abounds for subordinate supernaturals. and rory, oh grumpy rory, can't help himself and keeps finding it. and ace, oh sweet ace, can't stop himself from worrying. these two souls from completely different worlds are just perfection together. and there's a lot thrown at them during this story, including hot ex-boyfriends and friendly (or unfriendly) former foes. but even as they navigate the chaos, one thing becomes very clear. rory and ace are better together than they are apart. and this is a world i am happy to continue to inhabit as long as allie continues to want to write it. **starcrossed will publish on may 18, 2020. i received an advance reader copy courtesy of netgalley/carina press/allie therin in exchange ...

one thing you can count on nicola davidson for is her kinky historicals. and scandalous passions  fits right in with that. the power dynamics in this renaissance menage romance are especially fun to see in play, because most of the stuff that i've read with characters set in this era tend to be very alpha male/borderline misogynistic. so to have a hero who is both strong and wholly male also be the submissive partner in the bedroom was quite a change-up. as is the case with most erotic romance, this feels a bit light on plot at times, but the chemistry between the leads and the emotional beats the manuscript manages to land make this well worth the read. **scandalous passions will publish on may 11, 2020. i received an advance reader copy courtesy of netgalley/entangled publishing in exchange for my honest review. 

so i loved the hundred oak series, contemporary romance with a side of sports, are totally my thing. i honestly don't know why, because i am the least sporty person ever. i think it's because the stakes with sports are so clear and the conflict really tends to work for me. four days of you and me  is a much different concept from her earlier work. this isn't bad, it's just different. and while miranda is usually an auto-buy for me, i had some hesitation based on the premise because if there is something anyone should know about me is that i am not a big fan of flashbacks. and so we follow alex and lulu's on-again, off-again relationship over the course of four years, set on during an annual field trip. the conceit is great. it's just that this kind of conceit is so not my jam. i am rarely interested in what characters did in the past, i want to know the here and now and what it means for the future. and that's the other thing...where things end...it'...

it's a well-established thing that i love a good opposites-attract type story. and that's exactly what we get in how to quit your crush . mai has plans, or at least she plans to follow the plans her family has laid out for her. nowhere in these plans is anthony. popular and aimless, he has no plans. except every time he tangles with mai he wants more. but her future has never included a boy like him and she doesn't see how it could ever possibly work. so maybe the way to quit each other is to plan the worst possible dates for one another. and maybe that just ends up backfiring. this is a cute, fun story. just the kind of young adult goodness to escape the world with. **how to quit your crush will publish on may 4, 2020. i received an advance reader copy courtesy of netgalley/entangled publishing (entangled: crush) in exchange for my honest review. 

solving serial murder cases takes a special set of skills. first, there is connecting the cases. then there's establishing the pattern. in variable onset ,  the re-emergence of serial killer dr. fear, has forensic genetics expert lincoln monroe hoping to be at least consulted. to his surprise, he's put on the field. and then he learns that his partner is none other than his former student carter warren. and that makes things complicated. carter has his reasons for wanting lincoln there, some of the related to the case, others relating to an inconvenient fascination with his former professor.  but undercover and pretending to be a couple while seeking to find a serial killer doesn't make for the most romantic meet cute, it works for these two. the sparks between them fly, and the way they work together complements them perfectly.  **variable onset will publish on may 4, 2020. i received an advance reader copy courtesy of netgalley/carina press in exchange for...