Earl Grey Books

Hello, everyone! Today we’ve got some mini-reviews of a couple of my Indie Accords reads so far. If you’re not aware of the Indie Accords readathon, I’ll link Lana’s original announcement here so that she can explain it to you in much better detail than I can!

Lana is one of my best friends in the book community so you may have noticed that I’m really trying to make as much content around the readathon as possible. She put a ridiculous amount of work into this and so I want to support her in every possible way.

Today I just have three mini-reviews for you. I could’ve probably finished another book off to include but I didn’t want to push myself and end up ruining the reading experience for myself. I’ll definitely be sharing some more throughout the month but for now, let’s get into it.

The Sugared Game by KJ Charles

This was 1000% the book I was most excited to get to for Indie Accords. I read book one in the series, Slippery Creatures last month (and reviewed it here as well!) and I’ve been very patiently waiting to get to this one for this readathon. Of course, it’s really hard to talk about sequels, but for a general kind of overview of this series—it follows Will Darling, a soldier turned bookseller as he gets caught up in this mystery and with this dashing lord, Kim. This one then follows on from that adventure. On one hand, I don’t think this was as strong as book one, but on the other hand, I think the characters have some really important growth in this one. I think they were all fantastic characters in the first one, but here we get to see them really change in response to the things that happen. I do wish this was a little longer and that we got to see a little more of that build up as well as fall-out for certain events. This is probably just a me thing but I would’ve liked to see more of Will’s emotions and thoughts as I feel like he’s gone through a lot of trauma with being on the Western Front and then everything from book one and this book—I think it would’ve been interesting to see him juggle that a little more. All up, this was a great sequel and I’m excited to be getting to book three in the next few weeks!

The Goal by Elle Kennedy

Well, I didn’t see this one coming but I decided to DNF The Goal. If you’re not aware, this is the fourth and final book in Elle Kennedy’s Off-Campus series. I really loved the first three, but I also read them quite a few years ago. Here’s the thing; I just don’t think Elle Kennedy is for me anymore. I read her book with Sarina Bowen a few months back, Him, and also struggled there. I just don’t know that the way she writes her male characters is for me—there’s just something about them that rubs me the wrong way. I should mention that this is often a problem I have with contemporary romance. Most of the time I end up not really enjoying them and often it’s because I don’t like the men or the smut. I think my happy place, my comfort zone, in terms of romance is firmly in Regency romances these days and there are very few authors I’d take a chance on outside of that. And it looks like Elle Kennedy just isn’t one of them anymore!

Never Die by Rob J. Hayes

I picked this one out on Kindle Unlimited because it came up as a recommendation with The Sword of Kaigen, which is one I’ve been hearing a lot about, namely from Lana. But I saw this cover and I was instantly intrigued. That being said, I really went in with no expectations—I’d never heard of this before or the author so I was taking a real gamble. I’m glad that I did because from the very start I was sucked into the story. I love the way that we get to meet each of the characters as the story progresses and then how we get to see them develop. I think my favourite character was Itami—I thought she had a really interesting story and as the female character in the group, she was naturally the one I felt the most connection to. I really liked that it was a standalone as well, as I felt like it worked best as a self-contained story rather than something that was spread across a few books—it made everything seem more urgent and final. That being said, this is a series in the sense that there are a couple of independent stories that all take place in the same world. If you like books with an interesting world and ensemble class, then I highly recommend this one. I’ve already started the next book so look out for a review of that one coming soon too.

So that’s it for today but I’ll of course be back tomorrow with another post!