Publisher: Priatkus

Fandom culture, celebrity woes, teen heartthrob shows, and nerd-inspired paranormal romance, Fan Service by Rose Danan is a romance novel that’s both light-heartedly fun and relatably honest. Featuring a great premise and a very likable and wholesome FMC, this book is an easy and enjoyable read that smartly incorporates many popular romance tropes while also striving to do more through great queer representation and light socio-political commentary. Despite some reservations with its less impressive portrayal of its MMC and perhaps failing to do more with its compelling story, Fan Service is an otherwise safe and easy romance read with a nice geeky and quirky spin. I will be the first to admit that I’m quite an inexperienced reader when it comes to paranormal romance, this being one of my few forays into the genre and adjacent stories. That said, Fan Service initially caught my eye thanks to its premise of a former teen heartthrob actor teaming up with a jaded yet hardcore life-long fan set around an original tv-show that’s not so subtly inspired by the CW/MTV shows of the late 90’s and early 2000’s. This book is perfectly pitched for millennial readers who grew up during the community forums,…

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…