Books
Finished reading: These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean 📚
I will follow Sarah MacLean anywhere, from Whitechapel to Narragansett Bay. If you like family narratives with a strong romantic thread, read this book.
Finished reading: Three Simple Rules by Nikki Sloane 📚🎧
“There was something about trains.” 💬📚 Reading Sarah MacLean’s These Summer Storms while actually on a train.
Finished reading: The Rose & the Dagger by Renée Ahdieh 📚
Another excellent book!
Finished reading: Managed by Kristen Callihan 📚🎧
📚 In Animal, Vegetable, Junk, Mark Bittman writes 19th century farmers wouldn’t let land lie fallow or rotate crops because it made the most sense to force land to yield the most profit. This led to soil exhaustion. I think the same thing happens when we try to extract maximum labor from people.
Finished reading: The Wrath & the Dawn by Renée Ahdieh 📚
So great.
📚 Book Review: Once Upon You & Me by Timothy Janovsky
Once Upon You and Me by Timothy Janovsky is a contemporary romance. On the closed door/open door/in the room/in the bed heat scale, this book puts you in the bed with the main characters. Here’s the publisher’s description of the book:
When Taylor Frost’s boss, Amy, flies him across the country to prep for her daughter’s sweet sixteen at the Storybook Endings Resort in the Catskills, the solo mission is well within his wheelhouse. Taylor is excellent at his job—except, he’s probably not supposed to flirt with the resort’s mountain man of a manager, Ethan Golding. Because the rugged older man is also the birthday girl’s father, aka Amy’s ex-husband. Oops.
For Ethan, his divorce seemed like the bad ending to his romantic story. And now, making his daughter’s sweet sixteen dreams come true is the closest he’ll get to the kind of magic happiness in fairy tales. Until adorable Taylor has him wondering if maybe this is just the beginning of a more erotic kind of bedtime story…
The only problem is Amy. And how very not okay she’d be with the chemistry between her assistant and her ex.
If only forbidden flings ever led to happily-ever-afters…
What I loved
I always love Timothy Janovsky’s characters, and Taylor and Ethan are two more delightful guys I loved watching fall in love. Ethan has ADHD that’s only recently been diagnosed. He’s spent a lot of his life feeling like his challenges with executive function are moral failings, and especially like his ex-wife Amy saw them that way. He’s a dad who lives on the opposite coast from his daughter, which breaks his heart a little all the time. He’s bi which sets him up for frustrations when he tries to date, as the men he meets are always surprised by this and often aren’t comfortable dating someone who is also attracted to women. He is deeply lonely.
Taylor is the second oldest kid in a family with many siblings. His older brother took off young and his parents are inattentive and flakey, which leaves him as the primary caretaker for all his sibs. He’s very good at taking care of people. He’s been working as Amy’s assistant for three years, waiting for a promotion, and quietly making sure she has everything she needs to keep her business running smoothly. But it seems like no one ever takes care of him.
In my favorite romances, the people in the relationship each are able to be exactly what the other person needs. Taylor is able to meet Ethan’s ways of coping with ADHD with compassion. Ethan shows Taylor that he deserves to be cared for as much as he cares for others. I love how these two are like puzzle pieces specifically carved to fit together.
I also love the way fairy tales suffuse the story. The resort where it’s set is inspired by fairy tales. Taylor and Ethan read fairy tales together. Taylor starts out their time together staying in the Snow White Cottage. I’m sure Timothy Janovsky chose this fairy tale to highlight her specifically. I’m choosing to imagine it’s because he is a Disney fan and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first Disney fairy tale feature adaptation.
What I wanted more of
There’s nothing Timothy Janovsky left out. I would just be happy to spend more time with these guys.
What I need to warn you about.
Timothy Janovsky includes warnings at the beginning of the book, so check those out. There is biphobia and some judgmental responses to Ethan’s ADHD. There’s also discussion of Ethan’s father living with MS that has progressed so far as to limit his mobility.
Who should read this book
People looking for a low-conflict, high heat contemporary where two charming men connect and complete each other’s lives.
Book: Once Upon You and Me Author: Timothy Janovsky Publisher: Afterglow Books by Harlequin Publication Date: April 29, 2025 Pages: 288 Age Range: Adult Source of Book: ARC via NetGalley, Library
It’s very Kimberly that I just had a nightmare in which the nightmarish occurrence was that the public library had pushed the YA bookshelves so close together that they were inaccessible. 📚
Finished reading: To Have and to Heist by Sara Desai 📚
Super cute and fun!
📚💬 “When no help comes from outside, a lost crop becomes a famine.” Mark Bittman, Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal
Finished reading: Once Upon You and Me by Timothy Janovsky 📚
Another delight from Timothy Janovsky. Full review coming soon!
Finished reading: Idol by Kristen Callihan 📚🎧
Finished reading: Tangled Up In You by Christina Lauren 📚
A super cute Tangled retelling!
📚 Book Review: A Tropical Rebel Gets the Duke by Adriana Herrera
A Tropical Rebel Gets the Duke by Adriana Herrera is a historical romance set mostly in Paris during the 1889 Exposition Universelle, about a Dominican-Mexican doctor and the duke who falls for her. On the closed door/open door/in the room/in the bed heat scale, this book puts you in the bed with the main characters. Here’s the publisher’s description of the book:
Physician Aurora Montalban Wright takes risks in her career, but never with her heart. Running an underground women’s clinic exposes her to certain dangers, but help arrives in the unexpected form of the infuriating Duke of Annan. Aurora begrudgingly accepts his protection, then promptly finds herself in his bed. New to his role as a duke, Apollo César Sinclair Robles struggles to embrace his position. With half of society waiting for him to misstep and the other half looking to discredit him, Apollo never imagined that his enthralling bedmate would become his most trusted adviser. Soon, he realizes the rebellious doctor could be the perfect duchess. But Aurora won’t give up her independence, and her secrets make her unsuitable for the aristocracy. When a dangerous figure from their past returns to threaten them, Apollo whisks Aurora away to his villa in the French Riviera. Far from the reproachful eye of Parisian society, can Apollo convince Aurora that their bond is stronger than the forces keeping them apart?
What I loved
This is the third book in Adriana Herrera’s Las Léonas trilogy, and I have loved every book in the series. Herrera gives us three best friends, each having her own adventure. By the time it’s Aurora’s turn to be the heroine, her friends Luz Alana and Manuela have found their own partners and the circle of the three friends has expanded to include Luz Alana’s husband, Evan, and Manuela’s partner, Cora. Evan and Cora often serve as a Greek chorus for the hero, Apollo, and it’s delightful.
Apollo himself is an incredibly dreamy hero. Aurora has been running herself ragged tending to patients both night and day. She has neglected her own needs. Apollo notices her taking care of others and not taking care of herself, and takes it upon himself to take care of her.
Aurora is a fierce doctor, the first woman licensed to practice medicine in Mexico, collaborating with colleagues in Paris to establish a network of women’s clinics. She dedicates herself to her work. Her growing attraction to Apollo gets her out of her head and into her body.
Adriana Herrera always gives us a delightful cast of supporting characters and here she gives us Brazilian boxing club owner Gilberto and his Vietnamese partner Minh, whose mother farms lavender in the French countryside. Apollo’s body man, Jean-Louis, is a giant who Apollo appoints to escort Aurora on dangerous night patient visits but whom Aurora quickly wins over to doing what she asks more than what Apollo does.
I feel like I’m not doing the book justice here.
Adriana Herrera writes love scenes that tie the emotional and physical relationships of the main characters to each other in a way that both titillates and tugs at heartstrings. The more Aurora and Apollo get to know each other, the more each of them impresses the other with their commitment to helping the people they serve: patients in Aurora’s case, and tenants in the duchy in Apollo’s case.
Romance readers love a broken character, and I especially love the way Aurora is broken, the way she is constantly fighting to prove her worth while also caring deeply for her patients.
What I wanted more of
I found myself lingering over this text rather than devouring it, I think because I didn’t want Las Léonas to end. There’s nothing I wish Adriana Herrera would have included in this book that she didn’t. I just hope she keeps writing historicals.
What I need to warn you about.
The clinics where Aurora works offer services that were perfectly legal in Paris in 1889, but also those that were not, especially contraceptive services and abortions. Abortions and abortion aftercare are discussed in the book. Herrera has a note about this at the beginning of the book, so definitely look at an ebook preview or the first few pages of a physical copy to read that. Aurora is put in physical danger and there is reference to poor treatment at the hands of a peer in her past as well as reference to the same peer continuing this behavior in the book’s present.
Who should read this book
Lovers of historical romance. People who want a historical romance that isn’t set in England or during the Regency. Readers who want to see fierce Afro-Latina women defying the limitations society tries to put on them and finding love. Readers who love found family.
Book: A Tropical Rebel Gets the Duke Author: Adriana Herrera Publisher: Canary Street Press Publication Date: February 4, 2025 Pages: 432 Age Range: Adult Source of Book: ARC via NetGalley, Purchase
Finished reading: A Tropical Rebel Gets the Duke by Adriana Herrera 📚
I love this book. Full review soon!
Finished reading: Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places by Colin Dickey 📚
A fascinating book about what our ghosts say about us.
📚💬📝 “Tending to your body and mind is a way to tend to your work.” Sarah Fawn Montgomery, Nerve: Unlearning Workshop Ableism to Develop Your Disabled Writing Practice
📚💬📝 “A disabled life is a life interrupted.” Sarah Fawn Montgomery, Nerve: Unlearning Workshop Ableism to Develop Your Disabled Writing Practice
Finished reading: An Island Princess Starts a Scandal by Adriana Herrera 📚
Another re-read. I basically cried through the last two chapters.
📚💬 “In that moment Manuela began counting her blessings to have found friends who not only came to the rescue but who knew there was no problem in life one could not tackle armed with good cheese and champagne.” Adriana Herrera, An Island Princess Starts a Scandal
📚💬 “Ghost stories, for good or ill, are how cities make sense of themselves: how they narrate the tragedies of their last, weave cautionary tales for the future.“Colin Dickey, Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places 👻
Finished reading: A Caribbean Heiress in Paris by Adriana Herrera 📚
This is a re-read. It’s a testament to Adriana Herrera’s work that even though it’s only six months since I originally read it, I found this riveting and didn’t want to skip or skim at all.
Finished reading: Firelight by Sophie Jordan 📚
📚💬 “…surely ghosts will follow wherever there is bad record keeping.” Colin Dickey, Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places 👻