Genre: New Adult

A cute sapphic second chance at love via exes forced to professionally collaborate, Love In Focus by Lyla Lee is an easy and light-hearted read perfectly pitched for cozy romance readers. While the overall story is nothing groundbreaking for the genre, the novel’s plot mechanism of ex’s artistically working together on a personal interest piece involving the meaning of love is an excellent premise. Unfortunately, despite having a great foundation and numerous interesting storylines to work off of, I found Love In Focus to repeatedly disappoint at every opportunity, the overall execution being sub-par and quite dull to read. One of the most intriguing elements of Love In Focus is its focal plot mechanism, the photojournalism project “Modern Love In Focus”, featuring six couples of different ages and backgrounds sharing what love means to them. Some couples being queer, some interracial, spread across young, mid-age and senior couples, quantifying and reflecting on the different meanings and interpretations of love is a great concept. In addition to having a compelling reason to unexpectedly reunite college ex’s Gemma and Celeste, the novel’s other highlight is the story’s setting in the romantic and misty (or not depending who you ask) San Francisco as…

Massively popular and trending online, Silver Elite is the start of a new series marketed as a dystopian romance, a “sizzling” story of distrust and self-preservation for those that possess innate psychic gifts. As is often the case with books that take off on social media, one’s enjoyment of this book likely comes down to one’s expectations and hopes for the book. If you’re looking for the next exciting dystopian action thriller like the Hunger Games or strong social commentary featured in the Giver, Silver Elite is definitely going to be a frustrating disappointment. However, for those looking for a booktok-style romance novel set within a vague dystopian world, Silver Elite is a lot more compelling. Expecting the latter going into it, Silver Elite more or less met my expectations of being a messy, yet decent read if one can overlook its many rough edges. At first glance at its premise and opening, Silver Elite appears to be a cool modern take on the dystopian genre. Despite the addition of various psychic powers, in many ways the story feels like an aged up take on Veronica Roth’s Divergent series, featuring adult characters instead of minors and their frequent wandering lusty…

In recent years, certain book genres or topics have become marketing fodder material that have taken on a considerably different impression and expectation from what they once were. Take for example “dark academia”. Once known for scholastic themed narratives rich in literature or academic theory, the term is now often associated with common romantasy publishing trends of spice, stories that have geeky main characters, magic research, or worse, any fantasy story that has some loose book or library motif. However, when it comes to Ava Reid’s YA debut novel A Study In Drowning, all of the common booktok/influencer associations of dark academia are thrown out the window. Meticulously crafted, nuanced, unhurried, yet beautiful and poetically written, A Study In Drowning is an impressively crafted story that returns to the “academia” part of the genre. The novel blends fantasy elements, scholarly pursuits, and metaphorical socio-political commentary presented through a light historical fiction lens. While not for everyone due to its notably slow pacing and the plot focusing on literary works vs more common, in-your-face fantasy concepts (not to mention it’s uncomfortable material to read though), I thoroughly loved this novel and found it to be brilliant. “I know you think I…

Frances White’s debut novel Voyage of the Damned is an ambitiously plotted story that smoothly crosses over across a variety of different genres outside of its main fantasy classification. While definitively a fantasy novel due to its fantastical scale, magical powers and traditional fantasy-realm setting, the story is just as much a whodunit mystery thriller investigation tale (debatably even more than its fantasy-wrapping) as well as a lightly inspired queer romantasy (with asterisks around the romance). Comments summarizing Voyage of the Damned as an Agatha Christie novel dressed up in fantasy outfit is a decent comparison as it definitely gave me faint Murder on the Orient Express vibes, if the Orient Express was a grand and luxurious sailing vessel ala Death on the Nile. However, Voyage of the Damned’s ill-fated events also have compelling political ramifications to the growing body count and a wild last minute plot twist that can either make or break the reading experience depending on the reader’s suspension of disbelief. For me personally, it worked very well, and its ending managed to course-correct and explain nearly every potential plot hole or point of criticism I had while reading the novel. While White’s flavor of character narration…

Book no.3 in Isabel Murray’s Not That series, Not That Ridiculous delivers more or less the same light-heart and fun blend of comedic romance, spicy scenes, and a nice dose of character development and drama. I don’t know why, but I was not expecting a 3rd entry in the series considering it had been almost two years since Not That Impossible was published which felt like a perfect ending and companion novel to Not That Complicated. Yet Murray is able to somehow work a 3rd romantic couple out of the past books’ already limited side characters and base this novel around one of the most prominent Cotswolds locations previously featured. While I read and reviewed both Not That Complicated and Not That Impossible, each having their own specific strengths and weaknesses, Not That Ridiculous is definitely the most balanced of the three and will certainly satisfy fans of the previous novels (especially those that preferred the first over the second). Featuring an entertaining story and narration courtesy of Chipping Fairford’s resident caffeinated “grouch” Charlie Galloway paired off with Kevin Wallis, the famed general handyman that discovered the original dead bodies in Ray’s house, Not That Ridiculous is funny, silly, spicy…