Open Thread for Readers for September 2022
Got a book you want to talk about? Frustrated with a book or series? In love with a new one? Found a buried treasure? An issue that keeps popping up in the books you are reading? Just want to chat about stuff in general?
I’m in the middle of reading slump. The only one book I’ve really loved recently was K.D. Edwards’ book The Hanged Man. Can anyone suggest something else to read that might break through the slump?
Janine, I was coming to recommend A Deal with the Devil by Elizabeth O’Roark. A GR reviewer I follow gave it a glowing review and since I was in a slump myself, I decided to give it a try. It was a major win for me. It reminded me of one of my favorite though problematic romances, Practice Makes Perfect by Julie James. And this one has no creepy reveals,
@Jenreads: Thank you! I don’t remember the creepy reveal in Practice Makes Perfect but I do remember liking it pretty well. I’ll check out the O’Roark.
It’s The Devil You Know. The third book in the Devil series. I’m going to retry Deal with the Devil. Maybe I’ll like it this time.
Thanks for the correction!
What was the creepy reveal in the Julie James book? I have a feeling I’ve asked this question before and promptly forgot the answer.
@Janine: The hero tells his coworkers he had sex in his office with the heroine.
@Jenreads: Ugh, ugh, ugh.
@Janine, it’s definitely bad and (in my opinion) he does not grovel enough. I’m with @Jenreads, it’s a problematic favourite for me. I’m not so sure the “hero as conservative Republican” bit will hold up in current US politics either.
I read Beverly Jenkins’ Rare Danger recently and it was a nice novella, it is quite short but a good read.
I’ve also enjoyed those O’Roarke books. I knew nothing about her when I first grabbed THE DEVIL AND THE DERP BLUE SEA because of its smoking hot cover (with a cover model wearing a sexy scowl and not much else—yes, I’m very shallow), but found it a well-written book about a woman falling for her ex’s brother. I recommend the whole series (and their covers!).
I’ll also recommend two recent reads, both of them more “romance-adjacent” than standard romance, but both very good (in fact, one of them made my list of favorite reads of 2022):
J. T. Geissinger’s PEN PAL is a great mashup of romance, psychological suspense, and supernatural/gothic horror. It’s narrated (unreliably) by a young woman who has recently lost her husband (she’s very vague about how he died). She lives in a crumbling Victorian house that has leaks, creaks, flickering lights, and things that go bump in the night (and the day). She begins a correspondence with an inmate at the state penitentiary (a man she says she’s never heard of, although he claims to know her), their letters are interspersed through the book. Meanwhile, the heroine gets involved with the hot guy she hires to fix the leaky roof. He’s very much the jacked-up, tatted, dominant guy from dark/bdsm romance. He says all the right things about consent & safe words, but something about him feels off: he’s wildly possessive of the heroine, which raises all sorts of red flags, and has a tendency to go radio silent when confronted with questions or situations he doesn’t want to deal with. As their relationship becomes more intense, more ominous, malevolent things begin to happen in the house. There’s a lot going on in PEN PAL, but I’d advise not to go looking for spoilers: part of the fun of reading a book like this is trying to predict where the twists and turns are going. I thought it was great and put it on my favorites of the year list, but it isn’t a “true” romance, and the HEA, such as it is, is a very qualified one to say the least.
The second book I’ll recommend has to come with CW/TW for disordered eating, stalking, and violence of various types—and, again, it’s more romance-adjacent than romance: NICKY THE DRIVER by Cate C. Wells. I know someone here (I think it was Janine) didn’t care for the Wells books she tried, so keep that in mind, but I thought this book (the second in Wells’s Underboss Insurrection mafia-romance series, after RUN POSY RUN) was an excellent exploration of generational trauma and the long-term effects of being in an enclosed system (in this case, mafia families) of all manner of violence. The heroine, Zita, longs to escape her mafia family and thinks her engagement to a med student who has no mob ties is her ticket out. But then she is forced to marry the title character in order to protect her mobbed-up older brother and her secretly-transitioning-to-female younger sibling. Zita discovers that Nicky has been obsessively stalking her since junior high, doing dirty work for the mafia bosses (and thereby moving up in the mafia hierarchy) in exchange for more access to the heroine’s life—and she had no idea this was going on. Nicky thinks of his obsession with the heroine as being analogous to the heroine’s obsession with counting calories, starving/binging, and exercising to the point of exhaustion. NICKY THE DRIVER is not an easy or comfortable read, and the HEA comes at an enormous cost, but I thought the best element of the book was how well it delineated what happens in a world where generations of violence are the cause of (and perceived as being the solution to) all of life’s problems. Both Nicky & Zita have memories of their parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents that feature how violence and strict gender-segregation impacted everyone. As I said, not an easy read, but a propulsive plot that leaves you with a lot to think about afterwards.
That should be THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA. Sorry!
I thought The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea was the best of O’Roark’s Devil books, largely because of Drew. The Devil You Know was my least favorite.
Janine should probably stay far away from Nicky the Driver; it has a similar storyline to Against A Wall, but much darker. My suggestion is Two Tribes by Fearne Hill, an m/m romance set in 1995 and in the present day.
Thanks for the recommendations, guys. I am not sure where to start with O’Roark now! Usually I start series at the beginning, but in all the conflicting advice, no one recommended the first one!