It’s time for my next most recent reads today! This round-up is a bit of an interesting one, so without further ado, we’re going to jump right into it.
A Pack of Blood and Lies (The Boulder Wolves #1) by Olivia Wildenstein
As January was coming to an end, I was looking at my shelves to see what I thought might be a quick read to squeeze in before the end of the month and this was what I decided to go with. I’m so glad I did because it did turn up to be a really quick and fun read. I’m not usually into the whole werewolf thing, but I really enjoyed this. It’s quite dark—there are a lot of intense and potentially triggering things in here, but there’s also a bit of a mystery and, of course, a bit of romance too. It’s filled with great characters—I definitely have a few favourites who I can’t wait to see more of in the rest of the series, particularly some of the pack members. I will say that while the main character, Ness, is still quite young at only 17, a lot of the time she reads as a lot older because of the things she goes through and her reactions to things. Like I said, there are a lot of potential triggers in here so I’d recommend looking into those before picking this up. That being said, I really did enjoy it.
Learn My Lesson (Wicked Villains #2) by Katee Robert
Since we don’t have another Dark Olympus book until June, I thought now was a good time to catch up with the Wicked Villains series since I have all of them waiting for me on my shelves. I read Desperate Measures last October and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it, so it was time to move on to this one. I have to say, after reading Electric Idol, this one really shows how much she’s grown as an author. This wasn’t great—there is technically a plot but it only comes up when it’s convenient in between the smut. That’s completely fine—it’s not like it’s something different from other romance books, but I just wasn’t sold enough on the triad for it to work for me. I just needed a little bit more between the sex to make the supposed emotional connection seem more real. Also, that was one of the most rushed endings I’ve literally read, like wow.
In Deeper Waters by F.T Lukens
I don’t even know where to begin talking about this one. I guess I should start by saying this is nothing like what I was expecting—the cover kind of gives off swashbuckling, gay pirates vibes but that isn’t really what this is. This does have an m/m relationship, but it’s about a prince and a commoner and not so much about pirates. It is a really sweet and wholesome book, for the most part, there are a few intense moments including kidnapping and torture but mostly it’s a story about finding yourself and first love. If you’re looking for that kind of story, I highly recommend this one, but if you’re after pirates, sadly you’ll have to look elsewhere. I have to say, I wasn’t a huge fan of the way Lukens writes but I enjoyed it enough to read the whole book.
The Winter King by C.L Wilson
You will have just seen this one the other day if you checked out my post about the books my bestie, Angel, picked out for me. I mentioned in that post that I’d started the book already and was absolutely loving it, and I was. At that point, I was about 380 pages in and I thought this would easily be a 4.5 star read for me. But those last two hundred pages? Ruined the whole thing for me. I don’t know what it was, but suddenly everything was extremely cringey and in some places, just plain bad. The dialogue suddenly seemed so bad that I was laughing out loud at it and some of the “bad” characters were just extremely lazily written that it was painful to read. It also really didn’t need to be this long, it would’ve been a more solid plot had like 200 pages or unnecessary stuff been cut out of it. I honestly don’t know if this was just a me thing because this book has so many four and five stars on Goodreads that I’m questioning if we all read the same last 200 pages or not. It also reads weirdly like something published in 1982, but I think that one is actually just me.
A Lady’s Formula for Love by Elizabeth Everett
This book has been on my radar ever since it was announced in 2020. Obviously, I’m a big fan of historical romance but I particularly love ones that have something extra to them, whether that be a mystery element or in this case, science. It was only when this was nominated for the Swoon Awards last month that I finally for around to picking this up. Overall, this was a fun read. I loved the idea of Athena’s Retreat and the way it bought all these women together—that’s honestly one of my favourite things to see in books. It also very much gave me League of Extraordinary Women vibes which is one of my all-time favourite historical romance series. It was just lacking something for me—I guess I just didn’t enjoy the actual romance as much as I expected to. I’m very interested in the second book, which comes out soon, as I think I’ll be more interested in those characters. Nevertheless, this was still a fun read!
So a bit of a disappointing few reads for me this round. But what have you been reading recently?
Earl Grey Books 