Heroine
Heat Factor: 🍆🍆🍆
Character Chemistry: Instant attraction → Denial → We can have just one night → Is this…love? → BUT DUTY!!!
Plot: The set-up is bonkers and makes no sense, but who cares?Â
Overall: The back and forth between these two is just *chef’s kiss*
The Ravenels, Book #7
(a.k.a. The Wallflowers, The Next Generation, Book #3)
(a.k.a. The Devil in Winter Epilogues, also Book #3)
Erin’s reviewed the whole Ravenels series: Book #1 | Book #2 | Book #3 | Book #4 | Book #5 | Book #6
Heat Factor: These are some horny Victorians
Character Chemistry: It’s totally insta-love, and it was written lucidly enough that it worked for me
Plot: “We’ll never work because of an unequal match” + “Why is someone trying to murder me?”
Overall: I re-upped my membership in the Bad Decisions Book Club for this one and read it in one sitting. No regrets.
The Graciella Series, Book #3
Heat Factor: It’s kind of an instant, angry, heated clash and then it burns but in a more friendly and less publicly appropriate way
Character Chemistry: This is absolutely a case of matching wounds meeting matching wounds but it actually made sense to me…THIS TIME.Â
Plot: Cass is on the tail end of a deeply traumatic experience—so traumatic she loses her sense of smell, and unfortunately she’s a food writer. She regains it when a really attractive farmer accidentally throws manure all over her, and then they get in a really rude argument, and afterwards they pretty much start matching themselves right up in ways that are understandable and steamy.
Overall: This was a really sweet read and it did surprise me in a lot of lovely ways.
Fallen, Book #3
Heat Factor: Sex first, emotions later.
Character Chemistry: He lifts the weight from her shoulders, and she does the same for him.
Plot: Duke has existential crisis. Runs away. Meets lady farmer. Has sexy rumpus, realizes it’s love. And then works on her dairy farm for a year to prove himself.Â
Overall: I liked it, but I didn’t LOVE it.
Soothsayer’s Path, Book #2
Review of Soothsayer’s Path, Book #1
Heat Factor: It’s more tender and sweeping romance than it is ripped bodices and handsy stuff
Character Chemistry: So, I feel like it was obvious Sabina would like a wholehearted and upstanding person like Lucius after reading about her first marriage. Some people just have their heads on straight.
Plot: Sabina chooses a life of silence after she believes she’s responsible for her husband’s murder. But when she meets Lucius, her vow of solitude and silence is tested on all fronts.
Overall: I was actually riveted by the second Soothsayer book—the plot is really carefully unraveled and I loved the sweetness and maturity of Sabina and Lucius’ love for one another.
The Smut Report 