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I'm happy to see Julie Anne Long has probably figured out that discarded Moroccan mistresses who are microaggressed in the text isn't the move, and decided that Jacob Eversea should lose his virginity to an ENGLISH courtesan so that he can make it good for Isolde...

which predictably has more than one reader pissed off with Jacob despite him not being engaged to Isolde at the time.

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ARC Review of Empire of Seduction by Mila Finelli

Rating: 4/5 Heat Level: 4/5 Pub Date: June 25th

Premise:

Maggie finds out the hot stranger she hooked up with is Vito D'Agostino, the new don from Toronto, and he now owns her family winery after her brother lost it in a poker game.

My review:

There's nothing more fun than a biiiig baaad mafioso almost IMMADIATELY down bad, and quick-witted heroine with plenty of fight in her and zero sense of self-preservation. Mila Finelli has perfected this formula and Empire of Seduction ups the stakes from the last book while still being quite cozy as far as mafia romances go.

Vito and Maggie hook-up and unbeknownst to Maggie, her useless brother loses their family winery in a poker game so surprise, Vito is the new owner and will be staying around to oversee his new investment. But Vito is equally surprised by how obsessed with Maggie he is right off the bat, considering he's the *rational* brother of the D'Agostino gang (which is not..... the accomplishment he thinks it is, tbh, and I say that with love). There's a lot of one-sided chasing happening, but Maggie has a good reason for staying away from the mafioso who screwed her family over, no matter how much money he wants to throw at the winery, and her. Does she eventually capitulate? Of course. Are neither of them unable to fuck around without feelings remarkably fast? OBVIOUSLY.

If you're a longtime Finelli fan, you'll eat up the extended D'Agostino clan showing up in this book— cringefail Massimo who quit fine dining because they kept making him chop veg for mirepoix, a fun little Gia and Enzo cameo (he's still in his extended catfight with Fausto, don't worry), and surprise, the secret sister??

The sex:

I loooove an assertive heroine and Maggie DELIVERS on that front! She's the one who made the first move on Vito, actually. Sure, Vito is mostly in charge, and there's a fun little "are you gonna be my angel or my devil" thing going on, but my favorite sex-adjacent moment is when Maggie turns the tables on Vito and makes him strip for her— there's nothing more fun than reading this man's internal monologue in that moment because he's down to do basically anything with her, for her.

Thank you to Mila Finelli for the advanced copy.

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I'm not sure what's less believable, that a younger Bridgerton son is the catch of the season, or a younger Redmond son is the catch of the season.

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OH GOD here we go again

help.

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ARC Review of When Javi Dumped Mari by Mia Sosa

Rating: 4/5 Heat Level: 3.5/5 Pub Date: June 24th

Premise:

A romcom inspired by When Harry Met Sally; Javier met Marisol in college, and the two of them have had a solid, if slightly fragmented friendship for over a decade. Now Mari's getting married to someone everyone around her thinks is wrong for her, and Javi decides he's finally going to make the leap and stop this wedding.

My review:

A friends-to-lovers romance that's been in the works for over a decade— When Javi Dumped Mari has true romcom sensibilities in that there's plenty of shenanigans and neither Javi nor Mari restrain themselves from doing some pretty wacky stuff throughout the book.

But the craziest thing is probably the fact that Mari is getting married in six weeks... and Javi is out to stop it with HER FRIENDS' SUPPORT. It feels like Mia Sosa is playing a game of chicken with you as you get closer and closer to the wedding and Mari is determined to go on with it despite us knowing she and her fiancé are not... endgame. It's an audacious move, and it pays off! I do think the resolution itself felt a bit rushed, but the build-up was excellent, particularly the way we get the entire story of Javi and Mari with some well-place flashbacks.

So. Javi and Mari met in college at the Latin American Student Association (Mari is Brazilian-American, and Javi is Puerto Rican). The attraction is THERE but there's always been one reason or another for them to not pursue anything further and remain friends— other relationships, being in different places life-wise and literally, Mari's father stifling her, Javi's insecurities. Javi puts it best when he says "our chemistry isn't the problem— but everything else is". And that's what makes makes the relationship progression between Javi and Mari believable and electric regardless of them being "just friends" for so long, and the times they skirted the line before were not... well thought out. At all. Ultimately, it's clear Javi and Mari have always known each other better than anyone else, but what they realize is they can make each other better— a friends-to-lovers journey I really came to enjoy.

The sex:

The sex scenes are super solid and not at all tentative even when Javi and Mari in their "fuck around and find out" era because attraction was never an issue between them. Standout scene was a QUITE desperate door bang that no one can shut up about afterwards lol.

Thank you to NetGalley and Putnam Books for the advanced copy.

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also there are lesbians in this 1990 historical romance! I have don't have a very good idea of how common this was, but I doubt many romances written in 1990, historical or contemporary, were writing queer background romances or even acknowledging queerness in a way that wasn't queerphobic.

Reading Seduction by Amanda Quick and there's something powerful and refreshing about a historical romance heroine acknowledging that her late sister, who was pregnant out of wedlock and ultimately ended up overdosing on laudanum, could have sought out the local herbalist, a woman who could safely administer the herbs needed for an abortion— this is a book written in 1990 and is a) explicitly stating the word "abortion" and includes a conversation on it and b) advocating for it as a valid choice by way of the heroine who is also something of a herbalist, and c) telling in the way the hero on the other hand is a BITCH about it and threatens to boot the herbalist off his land if she is, in fact, helping women get abortions.

My point is, there are VERY FEW romances out there that spell out this option, both in historicals and contemporaries even though women generally have always... had their ways of going about contraception and getting abortions, and more tellingly, contemporary romances of late are extraordinarily mum on the issue.

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You read Deep End right?

Yup! I thought it was a quick and breezy read— I liked the snappy dialogue and the competitive college team sport vibes, but the actual romance felt kinda meh. The sex was about as expected though.

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I'd like to take another moment to shame The Gilded Age and The Buccaneers for creating the lamest dukes possible

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Reading Seduction by Amanda Quick and there's something powerful and refreshing about a historical romance heroine acknowledging that her late sister, who was pregnant out of wedlock and ultimately ended up overdosing on laudanum, could have sought out the local herbalist, a woman who could safely administer the herbs needed for an abortion— this is a book written in 1990 and is a) explicitly stating the word "abortion" and includes a conversation on it and b) advocating for it as a valid choice by way of the heroine who is also something of a herbalist, and c) telling in the way the hero on the other hand is a BITCH about it and threatens to boot the herbalist off his land if she is, in fact, helping women get abortions.

My point is, there are VERY FEW romances out there that spell out this option, both in historicals and contemporaries even though women generally have always... had their ways of going about contraception and getting abortions, and more tellingly, contemporary romances of late are extraordinarily mum on the issue.

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happy to see Amanda Quick and I were *basically* on the same wavelength purely by coincidence:

Remember my lesbian!Eloise fanfic from 2022:

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another deeply misused whimsical that still makes me laugh:

—from Seduction by Amanda Quick

rereading It Happened One Autumn while waiting for an auto, and honestly... this might be St. Vincent's version of his son thinking he's So Edgy for using corset strings to tie a gal up:

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a family friend who's pretty high up at goldman told me a c-suite exec was recced The Bear and after watching the ep on Carmy's non-negotiables, felt inspired enough to send a company-wide email laying out HIS non-negotiables for the employees.... after which I was personally recommended The Bear and told to watch it with the eyes of a [company redacted] professional.

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ARC Review of Empire of Seduction by Mila Finelli

Rating: 4/5 Heat Level: 4/5 Pub Date: June 25th

Premise:

Maggie finds out the hot stranger she hooked up with is Vito D'Agostino, the new don from Toronto, and he now owns her family winery after her brother lost it in a poker game.

My review:

There's nothing more fun than a biiiig baaad mafioso almost IMMADIATELY down bad, and quick-witted heroine with plenty of fight in her and zero sense of self-preservation. Mila Finelli has perfected this formula and Empire of Seduction ups the stakes from the last book while still being quite cozy as far as mafia romances go.

Vito and Maggie hook-up and unbeknownst to Maggie, her useless brother loses their family winery in a poker game so surprise, Vito is the new owner and will be staying around to oversee his new investment. But Vito is equally surprised by how obsessed with Maggie he is right off the bat, considering he's the *rational* brother of the D'Agostino gang (which is not..... the accomplishment he thinks it is, tbh, and I say that with love). There's a lot of one-sided chasing happening, but Maggie has a good reason for staying away from the mafioso who screwed her family over, no matter how much money he wants to throw at the winery, and her. Does she eventually capitulate? Of course. Are neither of them unable to fuck around without feelings remarkably fast? OBVIOUSLY.

If you're a longtime Finelli fan, you'll eat up the extended D'Agostino clan showing up in this book— cringefail Massimo who quit fine dining because they kept making him chop veg for mirepoix, a fun little Gia and Enzo cameo (he's still in his extended catfight with Fausto, don't worry), and surprise, the secret sister??

The sex:

I loooove an assertive heroine and Maggie DELIVERS on that front! She's the one who made the first move on Vito, actually. Sure, Vito is mostly in charge, and there's a fun little "are you gonna be my angel or my devil" thing going on, but my favorite sex-adjacent moment is when Maggie turns the tables on Vito and makes him strip for her— there's nothing more fun than reading this man's internal monologue in that moment because he's down to do basically anything with her, for her.

Thank you to Mila Finelli for the advanced copy.

[triviareads]

ARC Review of Love is a War Song by Danica Nava

Thank you to Berkley Romance and NetGalley for the advanced copy.

Rating: 3.75/5 Heat Level: 3/5 Pub Date: July 22nd

Premise:

After Muscogee pop star Avery Fox is canceled for posing on a magazine cover scantily clad and wearing a warbonnet, she is hustled off to her estranged grandma's ranch to learn about her culture, and ends up locking horns with ranch hand Lucas Iron Eyes.

My review:

Love is a War Song is a small-town, cowboy romance— one of the few cowboy romances out there with Native American main characters despite the loooong history of non-white cowboys in the United States, not that you'd know it based on the aggressively white cowboy romances that are so popular these days.

Avery Fox is a sheltered heroine, y'all. So sheltered that she doesn't think dancing around in a slutty approximation of Native American clothing in her music video and posing similarly attired for a Rolling Stones cover PLUS a feathered headdress is *problematic* despite being of Native American descent, because enough people around her fed her the bullshit that this is about "empowering" Native American women.

This was a little hard to find believable, but fine. We've all liked *problematic* people who are varying degrees of problematic, so it feels like Avery is redeeming herself before the reader's eyes as you get deeper into the book, just the way she redeems herself to her fanbase by the end of the story.

The thing about being canceled— I appreciate that the book got the cyclical nature of celebrities being canceled until they aren't, and more realistically, celebrities often don't.... fix their mistakes entirely before they're "un-canceled". Avery does end up understanding the culture and acknowledging her mistakes by the end of the book, but that's just the beginning.

This book read to me like a new adult romance— not because Avery is 23 and Lucas is 27, but their initial enmity feels exaggerated considering they barely know each other before they're at each other's throats. I get the author was going for a grumpy/sunshine and opposites-attract vibe (she did mention the Hannah Montana movie as partial inspo), but their bickering felt quite immature at times. Still, the two of them fall for each other over horse wrangling and farm chores, all while Avery learns about the culture from him and her grandma Lottie, and adjusts to small-town life in the heart of Muscogee Nation— I do think the setting was one of the high points of the book. It was immersive and lovingly described and you really feel this sense of awe, if you're not from the area or the culture, that this too is America.

The sex:

I think the other part of why this felt new adultish to me is the single sex scene— it was on-page but less explicit and more flowery and dialogue-based (Lucas gave TRAGICALLY romantic monologue during) as it went on.

Overall:

I appreciate Danica Nava putting a Native American cowboy romance out there— you barely see romances with NA rep, let alone ones with hot cowboys out there. While the romance wasn't quite my speed, I would still recommend this to anyone looking for a slow-burn, fairly low-heat romance.

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having to wait for the next book in a series to be released is evil wtf. all literature should have already been written 2000 years ago so i don’t have to wait to read it now

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Still the best love confession I've seen to this day