definitely, possibly, maybe

though billed as a new adult romance the main character of when in rome...find yourself is so emotionally and socially stunted she seems like an insecure 16 year old. allegedly she's 21. she does suffer from severe anxiety, but then you spend a whole chapter in her head with her stream of consciousness insecurity and you kind of just want it to end. rory is sweet but so, so insecure. she's had a bad relationship, bad break up, bad high school experience. her family is overprotective, especially since her older brother passed away when she was younger. she travels to rome with her classmates and every overture they make, rory somehow misinterprets to assume they are put upon or making fun of her. with her house mother, theresa, and housemate, ned, she assumes the same thing. and instead of really exploring rome, we get a lot of anxiety about her every step. this is also billed as a romance, and i guess it is, but it doesn't actually feel all that romantic. there's a h...

the other day i made mention of the sweet dreams series in a review , and then i came across this title on my bookshelves and realized that i conflated two of the scenes in this book with wrong-way romance another old favorite sweet dreams title. too good to be true  is a super short, quick read. young adult romances in the 80s were way shorter and sweeter than they are now. this actually feels more like middle-grade to me now, it's that sweet, but the characters are sixteen so this is still definitely a young adult novel. the characters were actually so sweet and nice i wondered if this was meant to be set in canada for a while. but i think the author actually grew up on maple sugar farms outside of chicago, so i'm assuming that this is where this story is set. for some reason the whole maple sugar farm stuck with me long after i had read this story. the book is really short, so to go into any depth regarding the plot seems mean. but basically marty meets hank who she is at...

i know you're not supposed to judge a book by it's cover, but i think the cover for burning bright  is absolutely gorgeous, so i was totally predisposed to like the story within. luckily for me it's a really good story, so i can just love the whole package unabashedly. burning bright  tells the story of elinor pembroke, who woke up one day to discover that she had an extraordinary talent for fire. as a scorcher she can make things burn, but as an extraordinary scorcher she can also extinguish. this makes her valuable. to her father she becomes a trading chip, a way of bettering their family's lot in life by marriage. to potential suitors she is no more than a brood mare useful for improving their family's power. and for the royal navy she is a powerful weapon. it's the height of the napoleonic wars and the caribbean is overrun by pirates. her kind of firepower hasn't been seen in over one hundred years in england, and she's barely had a chance to exp...

i've thought a lot about what makes a home, what makes a place feel like home this weekend. we went up to visit boston for the weekend, and even though we haven't lived there for 5 years, it's still home in ways that endwell will never be. i feel comfortable in my own skin there, in a way that i never do in new york. a lot of that has to do with the people around me. i've known for a long time that me and the people of endwell are not of the same kind. but being back among my own people really made it crystal clear. this is a realization that is somewhat unfortunate, since endwell will remain my home for the long term. but it's also nice to know that it doesn't matter how much time goes by, my people are out there, ready to pick up right where we left off. sometimes i think maybe we leave little pieces of our heart wherever we go, because this weekend the maine-endwell little league team from endwell, new york won the little league world series. these boys gre...

i needed a break from europe and the world wars, which has been the backdrop of almost all the historical fiction i've read this past year. the last days of night  was a nice change of pace. set against the so called "war of the currents," we follow paul cravath as he is dragged into the middle of a battle of wills between thomas edison, nikola tesla, and george westinghouse. i'll be honest, i had no idea that the current wars were a thing. what i knew of thomas edison was the whitewashed "he was a genius" story you're given in grade school. and since i went to grade school in new jersey where edison is also somewhat of a state hero, i didn't know that actually he was kind of an ass. the novel at one point takes pains to note that what thomas edison did so brilliantly was not invent, but rather find a way to industrialize ideas and invention. that is certainly a rather unique contribution to science and history, but he was also egotistical and pett...

oh, my old fave, enemies-to-lovers trope. i think it's my fave because all that animosity is so combustible. bad judgment is a new adult standalone that follows justine and ryker, and their tempestuous relationship during their third year of law school. like so many enemies-to-lovers justine and ryker come from opposite sides of the track. ryker was born with a silver spoon, the son of a state supreme court justice and high profile attorney who comes from money. justine is the daughter of two con artists who destroyed her credit by stealing her identity while she was still in diapers. her grandfather raised her, and what little income she has from his estate was depleted by the time it came to pay for law school. when the school decides to cut their merit scholarship program, justine is desperate. and when ryker's father offers to pay her tuition in exchange for her help in getting ryker to refocus on his studies, she has no choice but accept his offer. the relationship ...

so i've been doing this on a weekly schedule. this way it will take me years to get through all of my roswell archives. that seems so crazy to me. i swear i had some buffy/spike fan fic too, but maybe it was only stuff i read? i don't think i ever posted it. anyway part 2 follows the jump. catch up with part 1 here.

the second book in the romancing the clarksons series, too wild to tame  picks up the siblings' road trip just after they've left rita behind in hurley, new mexico. their next stop is iowa, where aaron plans to somehow get his political career back on track. it took me a while to get through too hot to handle , but i did end up breezing through too wild to tame. i think it's probably because i liked the leads just a little bit more. aaron is kind of a jerk, but he's got this soft gooey core and you can't help but feel for him because he's the guy who everyone else shut out. so of course he has his guard up. of course he keeps people at arm's length. and then he meets grace pendelton. the daughter of the man who's acceptance is key for aaron's plans. meeting grace in the unlikeliest of circumstances--her air of fragility draws aaron's attention, but her strength of spirit captivates him. once they meet, they can't keep away from each other...

tessa bailey's romancing the clarksons series follows 4 estranged siblings as they cope with the aftermath of their mother's death and struggle to honor her last wishes. belmont, rita, aaron and peggy clarkson are all emotional wrecks, with abandonment issues, imposter syndrome, commitment issues galore. the series kicks off with too hot to handle , and follows the siblings' decision to take a road trip to new york from san diego in order to fulfill one of their mysterious mother's crazy last requests and jump into the atlantic from a pier on coney island at midnight on new year's eve. rita starts the entire chain of events when she accidentally burns down her mother's restaurant. at loose ends, her culinary career in question she guilts her siblings into driving across the country with her. when they end up stranded in the town of hurley, new mexico not too long after their disastrous road trip starts rita finds herself attracted to one of the locals, jasper ...

the title for   claiming the enemy   is a bit misleading, since i'm not sure that doctors piper dawson and alexander "ace" lennox can be described as enemies. she's a resident at hampton bay hospital and he is her attending physician, her boss. after a childhood spent bouncing around foster homes, piper can't help being a people pleaser. she likes to be liked. she actually kind of needs it, craves it, because that's what a childhood filled with rejection does to you. and ace has put up walls around himself to avoid getting involved with anyone since his wife died, and doesn't appreciate piper's attempts to break down those walls even if all she is doing is fostering a friendly work environment. it's too bad that the short length of the novel doesn't really delve more into piper's psyche. ace notes her sapphire-streaked hair and tattoos, and he also notices that at times she doesn't feel comfortable in her own skin, but instead of de...