ashley_mrose530's reviews
446 reviews

This was a sweet low-stakes romance.
I really enjoyed this cute hockey romance story. Summer and Aiden were so dynamic right off the bat and I was invested in their love story.
I was also really impressed by the actual hockey that was put in this book. The author either did her research well or actually knew the sport. As someone who used to play, it was nice to see someone who actually seemed to know what they were talking about when writing about it. 
This book did have some pacing issues for me though. I remember thinking it felt like it was almost the end when I had only read the first like third of the book and they hadn't even actually gotten together yet. And I kept feeling like the pacing was off throughout the book.
Also, I really didn't like the ending. It felt like it tied up too nicely and I really didn't like that it was kind of white-knight-ish.

Aiden literally saves Summer from a stupid decision she made. And I feel like it would have been better if she had actually felt consequences for that decision. It would have contributed more to her character growth and even added depth to the novel itself.

I know that this was supposed to just be a little lighthearted romance, but it really could have used more character depth and growth like other lighthearted romances have. As it is, it just felt like everything was solved too easily at the end.
I still enjoyed it and I look forward to reading the other books in the series too. 

Klune has written another beautiful achillean novel. This one is about Gordo and Mark as they navigate their way back to each other including forgiving each other and getting over their egos (mostly Gordo's ego).
There wasn't much for actual plot here except for towards the end, it was more based on the characters and their arcs. Which I didn't mind because Gordo had a lot of shit he needed to go through and get over, including his abandonment issues, his general lack of being open emotionally, and his trust issues.
I think Klune did a fantastic job working with this character arc and watching Gordo slowly change and get over his issues was handled very well. I liked the pacing of it, how it was so gradual but not too slow at the same time. It was definitely what his character needed before he could ever be with Mark again and I'm glad that he got the chance to do that.
The plot in this book, as I said before, was not a very big part of the book until the last like third of it. But when it did start up, it was really good and definitely set up the next book for what's to come. I also really enjoy that plot twist reveal right at the end, in the epilogue even. It was something that I definitely didn't see coming and I have questions about that will hopefully get answered in the next one.
That all being said, I do think this book had points where it was too slow or just too much. I think all of the overlap with the first book was largely unneeded. We already knew a majority of it and I don't think any of those scenes really added anything to the understanding of Gordo's character that we didn't get from the previous book. They almost just felt like filler pages and I definitely think they could have been cut.
I also don't really understand why the plot didn't happen sooner, timeline-wise. I think it said there were three years in between this plot starting and the events of the previous book? Why did it take so long for the interim alpha to decide to test the new Bennett alpha? Wouldn't make have tried earlier if she was always planning on keeping the position? It just doesn't really make sense to me.
Other than that, this was a wonderful book and I do still recommend this series to anyone who is looking for more mlm fantasy in their reading lives. 

Yarros relies heavily on pulling the emotional reactions from her readers and unfortunately falls short on good writing especially on the technical side of it.
She knows how to put her characters in situations that will make the reader want to cry or laugh, but when it comes to the more technical aspects of writing - imagery, exposition, world building - she gives it next to no thought. I barely know what anyone in these books looks like unless their physical description was part of the plot and the settings are even worse.
The world building is pretty convoluted. I had no idea that there were other countries outside of this main continent let alone that they don't have magic or some of them do I guess? (That was also never explained as to why some do and other don't) I would think this would be at least mentioned in one of the first two books in this series but no. And the exposition is always given to us in weird ways. The first book it was all Violet reciting it out loud and then this one I noticed everything important was actually put in those little parts in between the chapters? For example,

I had no idea that parents would dedicate their children to a specific god or that it was outlawed until I read it in that little excerpt thing. And then it was clear that's what Violet's parents tried to do to her.

But that really shouldn't have been put in a tiny excerpt in between two chapters. It should have at least been in the prose. (Now I didn't reread the first two books before this so it very well could have been mentioned before I land I just don't remember, but I somehow doubt it)
This book also just didn't have much going on in the way of plot. A majority of it was traveling around or waiting for things to happen. In this book they were mostly looking for Andarna's kin so I was prepared for a little bit of a slower moving plot because of that but I would have expected a higher payout after that wait but instead it was very lackluster.

I would have been satisfied with the payout if Andarna had left and not been back by the end of the book! It would have been so much better if she had stayed away until close to the end of the series, hell, I would have even taken the end of the next book based on Yarros's penchant for cliffhangers, but the end of this one? That was just stupid and felt like what was even the point?

Anyway, I did still like the ending and the set up for everything. I did predict a lot of it and probably know how the whole series is going to go, but I did enjoy it still so I'll probably continue reading it, but this one was not the best in the series at all.

This one was cute. I can see why everyone likes Lukens now.
This was my second book by Lukens. I really didn't like the first one I tried because I felt like the plot, if there was one, was all over the place, but this one was much more cohesive and easier to follow.
At its heart, this is a story about a boy who is just trying to find where he fits in. Rook is someone who has always been around magic but has never been able to use it himself and in this world, if you can't access magic, you aren't supposed to know anything about its inner workings. But Rook lived as the exception until his grandma died and he lost that connection to something he loved. So he ventures out to get a job with a very powerful sorcerer who turns out to love breaking rules so she decides to take him on as her apprentice and teach him magic.
This story has a lot of found family goodness as Rook navigates this world that he's not supposed to be a part of and finds people who may or may not be happy with that fact. I always love me a good found family trope and I ate this one up.
I also loved watching Rook and Sun grow closer. Sun is the grumpy to Rook's sunshine and is very antisocial and anti-touch. They also have anxiety and claustrophobia and it was wonderful to watch Rook comfort them in those moments and learn what Sun's boundaries were. He was always making space for Sun to feel comfortable and welcomed and it was so heartwarming to see.
The main issue I have with this book is the pacing, I think. It was really slow in the beginning. I was almost bored with it at first and then it started picking up about half way through and everything was go, go, go from there. It just felt a little off-balance for me.
I also wish there was a little more depth to the characters and even the plot. The characters had small conflicts but there wasn't really many flaws shown, especially for Rook, and that meant there wasn't room for his growth. And the plot seemed very surface-level even though it tried to go deeper with just

hints of corruption within the Consortium and how they run things. I feel like the book, since it was obvious that the author wanted to keep it lighthearted, could have gone without those hints and it wouldn't have had me wanting them to overthrow the whole government at the end.

Overall, this was a cute book and I think I'll continue to give Lukens a chance. 

Honestly, this book has me at the edge of my seat the entire time and I loved every minute of it. 
Right off the bat, it set the creepy vibes perfectly with that scene of her mirror reflection. That caught my attention immediately and I wanted to know what that was all about. And this creepy vibe was maintained wonderfully throughout the book.
It also has this really intriguing magic system of persuasion that can also become telekinesis. It was really fascinating and something that I haven't really seen before. And that set off a bunch of questions about morality and really set our characters into the morally grey trope which I loved. I constantly questioned if what these characters were doing was actually right or not. I honestly think morally grey characters is one of my favorite tropes if it's done right.
I fully loved this book and its commentary on racist dynamics like appropriation and white people trying to use black people for their own gain were subtle but definitely still present and necessary within the context. It was truly a very thrilling read. 

Yeah this was just as bad as the first one except it didn't hold my attention nearly as much.
The writing is still cliche and not good, the mystery was actually kind of obvious in this one.

I had guessed that she was Toby's daughter in the first book actually and knew it could still be a possibility in this one. It turns out that I was only kind of right. She wasn't his daughter by blood but rather just in spirit which is close enough in my opinion.

I wasn't invested in the mystery of trying to find Toby, like at all.

And then in the end HE finds HER which was really dumb and felt like a cheap payout for the MC honestly.

I don't know why this mystery didn't work for me, but I think I just didn't feel the stake enough. 
I also wasn't invested in the supposed romance and the love triangle either. I didn't feel chemistry between any of them and

she spent most of the book possibly being their cousin, even if it wasn't by blood. But yet this was never acknowledged?

That would kind of weird me out honestly. I don't know why it wouldn't have even been mentioned at all.
I know I rated this book as fast-paced and I guess it must be because it must have gone so fast that I don't know anything that actually happened. Like I can't really pinpoint anything that actually happened in this book. I know they went to Colorado and found out a few of the boys' fathers but that's really all there was here. I don't know how it became a 10-hour audiobook at all.
Finally, I realized that I actually just hate Avery. She is so self-centered and doesn't think about her best friend or her sister at all. If this sounds familiar, it's because I said the same thing about her in my review for the first book. She has had no growth or change at all. IN TWO BOOKS. It's kind of unfathomable actually. No character work at all through two books is literally insane and kind of sad.
I don't know what the next three books could even cover since I feel like most of the mysteries have been solved already. My best guess is they try to find the other fathers that weren't found in this one. But that sounds just as boring as this was. Definitely shouldn't have even tried to pick this one up and will not be continuing the series. 

This one is a little hard to review honestly. It was hard for me to read, harder than I thought it would be.
I didn't think that the toxic mother situation would get to me as much as it did since I don't have a toxic relationship with my own mom. But my best friend did and I saw the same traits in Amber as I did in her mom and it made me so angry the whole book. I was just so mad on behalf of Emma but also my best friend. And every time Emma made excuses for her mom hurt my heart so much.
Anyway, that made this book very personal for me, but yet I didn't enjoy it as much as I have with Jimenez's other romances. I didn't really feel the chemistry between the two main characters. They had some cute moments together, but I didn't feel their love grow as much as I usually do with Jimenez's characters. And I know that has something to do with Emma's characterization and it was necessary for her arc, but it was still a bit of a let-down.
At the same time, Emma's character arc was really phenomenal. Jimenez has a great way of pushing her characters as far as they can go and then watching them break in order to watch them pull themselves back together as something new and better and I think she did that very well here too.
I do feel like Justin's personal issues took a back seat in this novel. He was going through a lot with his mom going to prison and him taking over the guardianship of his brother and sisters. That's a lot to deal with and I feel like it should have been a bigger deal and more of a focus in this book than it was. I think the book just didn't quite have the time to do that. I also think it would have been a lot if it had tried to go more into it. Therefore, I don't know if it was a good idea to have that element at all. I feel like it could have worked just as well if Justin didn't have quite as much to deal with so that the reader would expect his story to be more on the back burner like it was.
Finally, I LOVED that plot twist. I did not see it coming at all.

I did read Part of Your World, but I don't have a good memory and I forgot most of the characters' names and what happened to them so I was very surprised when I finally connected everything together. The only perk of having a terrible memory!

So yeah, there are conflicting feelings about this one. I didn't enjoy it as much as the other two, but I understand why that is and I do appreciate the artistic ability it took to write this so well. 

Let it be known that Jimenez found a way to make this man-hating lesbian actually like a man, even if he is fictional. She literally did the impossible, but Jacob is so cute and sweet and his social anxiety was so fitting for his character and he loved Bri so much. That man was down bad for her the whole time. And he was funny. I was laughing so much during their interactions together. 
I thought they were such a cute couple too. I loved the letters they sent to each other. It felt so old-timey and adorable and I loved when

it came full circle at the end with him giving her his journal to read and that final letter. It was perfect.

It was a little insta-lovey especially on his side, but I didn't mind that much. 
I thought the deeper aspects of this book were done really well too. Jacob's social anxiety was handled so well with Bri being so caring and accommodating and just proving how much she knew him. She made it so he felt safe and not a burden and I thought that was a great representation of what people with that disorder need.
I also really liked the way Bri's trauma was handled. She had a lot of stuff that she needed to deal with mentally and I appreciated that it was simply pushed to the side and kind of forgotten about for the sake of a HEA. Instead Jimenez pushed Bri's character and forced her to recognize her trauma and actually realize she needs to deal with it.

I usually hate a surprise pregnancy trope, but I think this one was actually necessary in order to facilitate that growth and push Bri to acknowledge her generational trauma and her responses to it. It wouldn't have worked as well if she had only seen her ex and his new pregnant wife. She had to go through the realizations herself and I think it was done really well even though I still dislike the trope.

In all this was a fantastic romcom. I think Jimenez is on her way to becoming one of my favorite romance authors just based on her wit alone.

I was so disappointed in this book. Everything I saw in the premise of it made me think I was going to love it. Be gay, solve crimes, take naps? A murder mystery? Disability representation? Literally sign me up for all of that. But the result? Just so boring.
I was so upset when I realized that I kept zoning out while listening to this book because it was so boring because I really wanted to love it for all of the reasons above. But the characters were flat, the mystery was predictable (the main one that didn't even end up being the first one we encountered which was kind of upsetting too not gonna lie), and the prose was fairly rudimentary.
Before I get too far into my gripes with this one, I want to say that I did enjoy some parts of the book. I think Theo, the ghost, was probably my favorite character. He had arguably the most personality out of all four of them and managed to make me laugh a few times.
I also really liked the disability rep with the main character having fibromyalgia. Her consistent mention of her pain and fatigue felt believable and realistic from what I've heard about the disease. I also think it was good to keep that reminder on the page rather than trusting the reader to just remember it all the time because I'm sure I would have forgotten since it's not something that I struggle with myself.
But unfortunately, that's where the good ends. I really couldn't be bothered to keep up with the plot of this one once I figured out the killer almost immediately. No one else really made sense at all, but it did confuse me why

he would pretend to hire them when he could have easily went on with his plans probably without getting caught at all without them. I liked that he explained his crazy mind at the end though it still didn't really make any sense.

I was also kind of upset when it skipped ahead by like six years or something after the initial chapter because I wanted to see them find Theo's murderer. They got me kind of invested in that one and then that wasn't even the main murder of the book? I think that was a bad decision because I checked out after that and wasn't very interested in the new murders.
Finally, the three female characters bothered me so much because I could barely tell any of them apart. Specifically their voices, their dialogue, all sounded the same so it was very difficult to tell which one was talking, but also, their personalities seemed to be very interchangeable as well. And since it was written in third person, I couldn't even tell the POV character from the other two half the time. One liked bugs, one had fibromyalgia, and the third.... I don't even know.... dated a lot? I think those were their only defining characteristics but if they weren't talking about those things, then they were the same person to me. It was really frustrating and made my boredom with the book even worse because I didn't care about the characters at all.
In all, a very disappointing read and I don't think I'm even going to try to read the next one to see what happened to Theo. 

This was a cute little romance book.
I enjoyed the plot a lot. It's about a woman who is pretending to be a medium. She is hired for a job that involves going to a farm to try and exorcise a ghost so they can sell it until she gets there and finds out she can actually see the ghost and the farm is cursed so that if the owner sells, he will die and be stuck there eternally. 
It kept me interested right away just based on that plot. It was so interesting and different than anything I've seen before. I liked watching Gretchen struggle to try to convince Charlie that this ghost was real and there really was a curse. Also Everett, the ghost, was pretty funny in his interactions. He was fairly misogynistic, but I liked that he learned and grew from it and actually listened to Gretchen when she set boundaries.
I did like the main couple together and how they encouraged open and honest communication between them. I knew Gretchen had a lot of growing up to do right at the beginning and I'm glad that she got the chance to do that in this book and that Charlie allowed her the space for it.
The main issue I had with this book is that it told us a lot of things that really should have been shown, specifically Gretchen's emotions. She had an inner monologue that seemed to go on forever when she got going and made me zone out so often because it was things about her feelings that we could have picked up on already or would have been more impactful if they were shown to us in scene. Because of this it felt repetitive and boring at times.