What We’ve Been Reading

The Collection

Explore our full library of honest reviews and literary recommendations.

Just This Once

This book should have been a novella. The premise is fine for 150 pages: a San Francisco marketing executive, burnt out and in need of a break, books a solo…

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Broken Souls and Bones

Broken Souls and Bones, the first book in L.J. Andrews’ Stonegate series, promises magic, mystery, and a slow-burn enemies-to-lovers romance set in a Viking-inspired fantasy world. Unfortunately, the execution is…

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Hardly a Gentleman

Desperate after her season comes to a spectacularly disastrous end, the Honorable Miss Clara Vetry jumps into a carriage hired to take a housekeeper to Scotland. The laird of Castle…

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Never Love a Lawman

Jo Goodman is reissuing her Reidsville (Colorado) series, starting with Never Love a Lawman. It’s about time. These books have been too hard to find for too long. Goodman’s Westerns…

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Promise Me Sunshine

I wasn’t in the mood for a grief novel. Lately, real life has been more than generous on that front. A story about a woman paralyzed by the loss of…

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The Gods Time Forgot

Mythology is a long-time love of mine, especially when it collides with history. Add in a Gilded Age backdrop, and I’m already halfway to devotion. So when I read the…

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Addicted

Charlotte Stein doesn’t write predictable love stories, and Addicted is no exception. It resists easy classification. The book is erotic and introspective, crude in places but surprisingly gentle, and uninterested…

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Count My Lies

Count My Lies is the kind of psychological thriller that reminds you why compulsive books are a gift. There’s nothing quite like tearing through pages, utterly engrossed, as tension builds…

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Broken Country

At first, Broken Country sets the stage for a familiar kind of novel—a love triangle stretched across decades, a quiet life disrupted by the return of an old flame, an…

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Shadow and Tide

Rachel Greenlaw’s Shadow and Tide, the second book in her Compass and Blade trilogy, doesn’t lose its way, but it does drift. It expands the world, raises the stakes, and…

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Famous Last Words

Gillian McAllister’s Famous Last Words doesn’t start with a murder, a car chase, or an anonymous text—it starts with a husband who simply isn’t where he’s supposed to be. That’s…

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You Give Me That Feeling

Readers kept telling me Julie Kriss was worth it. After reading the Riggs Brothers series, I wasn’t convinced. The books were fun, but they skated on charm more than substance….

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