bojangles's reviews
235 reviews
Reforged by Seth Haddon
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
3.5
It took me a while to get all the character names and world building concepts figured out. But I loved the dynamic between the two MMCs. I love me a snarky-witty-one/brutish-strong-one-humouring-them
dynamic and this was PERFECT.
I also really appreciated that Zavrius is unapologetically femme, and Balen loved that about him, and desires him on those terms. Fucking gorgeous.
dynamic and this was PERFECT.
I also really appreciated that Zavrius is unapologetically femme, and Balen loved that about him, and desires him on those terms. Fucking gorgeous.
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
challenging
dark
emotional
lighthearted
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
2.5
What an unbelievably weird book. Definitely atmospheric. Good study of an unreliable narrator. Did not enjoy it. What the heck was it even saying about the world? Was there a “point” to this story? The whole world was really well fleshed out though, I’ll give it that. Excellent and vivid prose for the worldbuildibg
Fortuna Sworn by K.J. Sutton
3.5
I liked it, I think…I am confused by the character of Fortuna but I am very intrigued by the supporting characters around her. I will read the second book because I very badly want to know what happens to them. But I’ve heard the third book is an overwritten slog so I am dreading that.
Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff
4.0
The show improved on this in so many ways. That said, the ambition of this collection is impressive and it works more often than it doesn’t. A well thought out anthology series that is very clearly written by a white man grappling with America’s racial history. Highly recommend, but only if you liked the show. The way Black women are positioned in the narrative is, again, very obviously a white liberal guy’s imagination of Black women’s strength.
The Lawrence Browne Affair by Cat Sebastian
emotional
hopeful
fast-paced
3.5
A sweet, easy little fluffy grumpy sunshine, found family story. Read it in one lazy Sunday spent in bed eating chocolate and drinking tea, and it was perfect for that purpose.
The Andalite's Gift by K.A. Applegate
adventurous
challenging
emotional
4.0
This one hit me in the feels lol. I love Cassie so much. Not just cause she’s our resident Black girl, but because of the deep compassion and love she shows to all living beings, the creativity that allows her. This is really Cassie’s book to shine.
Not All Himbos Wear Capes by C. Rochelle
emotional
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
2.5
I sat on this review for a really long time.
Deep inner sigh.
This book does that think I hate, typical of inexperienced fanfiction writers, where every event in the narrative is punctuated by italicized internal dialogue of the POV character.
As if experienced fanfic writers don’t do it too though, right?
Although the narrative is fast paced, and the sex scenes well written, the persistent interruption of the internal dialogue in italics breaks up the pace of the story in an exhausting way.
It’s also aesthetically a tedious and unpleasant way to add depth to a character.
Further, the villains in this story are weirdly under developed, which means that the stakes of any challenges faced outside of the challenges of the main relationship have basically no stakes. The anti-hero’s father is a clear MCU Thanos stand in. But it’s also very obvious from the get go that, in order to keep the story light hearted, this super powered super villain is never going to use his powers in a way that could threaten the romance. So for all the time the narrative spends building up the tension around what all the different superheroes and villains are capable of, the central commitment of romance (the happily ever after) makes this conceptually hard to pull off. Superhero narrative of course usually have the hero win, or end up in a bitter sweet place of having earned valor even if they lost “everything”. There is of course the anti hero MMC, which I think is the author’s attempt at making narrative and conceptual space for there to be real stakes to what the villains do, by allowing moral grey area in a genre that typically only allows the “good guy” to get their dream partner.
But at the end of the day, the reason this gets 2.5 stars is because the overall story, although sexy and fun, and at times laugh out loud funny, is bogged down by the truly awful italic inner dialogue after every single paragraph. (Or every sugle scentence in some parts of the book!!!) Writing good sex scenes of hard, so I commend the author for pulling them off. And the world building around how super powered humans have shaped modern geopolitics was genuinely interesting and compelling. So much so that I was tempted to read the second book, just to learn more about the world and how supers function as state agents. But in the end, I decided against it. I can’t overlook that little “verbal quirk” of bad writing when the main characters aren’t have sex.
Deep inner sigh.
This book does that think I hate, typical of inexperienced fanfiction writers, where every event in the narrative is punctuated by italicized internal dialogue of the POV character.
As if experienced fanfic writers don’t do it too though, right?
Although the narrative is fast paced, and the sex scenes well written, the persistent interruption of the internal dialogue in italics breaks up the pace of the story in an exhausting way.
It’s also aesthetically a tedious and unpleasant way to add depth to a character.
Further, the villains in this story are weirdly under developed, which means that the stakes of any challenges faced outside of the challenges of the main relationship have basically no stakes. The anti-hero’s father is a clear MCU Thanos stand in. But it’s also very obvious from the get go that, in order to keep the story light hearted, this super powered super villain is never going to use his powers in a way that could threaten the romance. So for all the time the narrative spends building up the tension around what all the different superheroes and villains are capable of, the central commitment of romance (the happily ever after) makes this conceptually hard to pull off. Superhero narrative of course usually have the hero win, or end up in a bitter sweet place of having earned valor even if they lost “everything”. There is of course the anti hero MMC, which I think is the author’s attempt at making narrative and conceptual space for there to be real stakes to what the villains do, by allowing moral grey area in a genre that typically only allows the “good guy” to get their dream partner.
But at the end of the day, the reason this gets 2.5 stars is because the overall story, although sexy and fun, and at times laugh out loud funny, is bogged down by the truly awful italic inner dialogue after every single paragraph. (Or every sugle scentence in some parts of the book!!!) Writing good sex scenes of hard, so I commend the author for pulling them off. And the world building around how super powered humans have shaped modern geopolitics was genuinely interesting and compelling. So much so that I was tempted to read the second book, just to learn more about the world and how supers function as state agents. But in the end, I decided against it. I can’t overlook that little “verbal quirk” of bad writing when the main characters aren’t have sex.
The Gargoyle's Captive by Katee Robert
3.5
This was a cute lil read! Stayed up all night to finish it. Would definitely recommend!
His Reluctant Omega by L.C. Davis
2.5
This was…not good. There were scenes where the prose was clunky, punctuation marks were missing, and sudden changes in plot, pacing, and world building that all could’ve been easily fixed. The main characters go from traumatized and afraid, and grappling with genuinely troubling power dynamics in the wake of trauma, to madly in love and expecting a baby, in just a few weeks. The motivations of the omega, who is also a survivor is sex trafficking, were also extremely underdeveloped. The reasons he went from not enjoying anyone’s touch to craving his alpha’s touch in constant longing horniness was left largely unexplored, and hand waved away as “well, they’re true love mates!” I hate that! You can have true love and trauma, but they don’t cancel each other out like feelings PEDMAS!!!
There is truly fascinating lore and magical elements that are not explained well, so they become lazy plot devices to move the story along and gesture at world building that didn’t actually happen. What is the omega cannibalism feeding ritual that keeps being referenced but never discussed?? Why is there a sanctioned and unsanctioned way to feed on wolf flesh?? What powers does it supposedly give and why does no one seem unaffected by not feeding??? Why is there a magic prescient crow?? Why is this one specific wolf pack so geographically and demographically massive compared to literally every other one in the world???? Why doesn’t the omega know what KNOTTING is!?!!?!?!?
The most interesting and realistic relationships were the friendships between characters, and the efforts of the survivors to support other omegas in their gender subjugation. But all the important moments of healing happened largely off the page and were just summarized by a character in a line or two. Getting to actually see the survivors engaging in the process of their own healing, and community engagement with their peers in solidarity, and witnessing them actively being agents in the world would’ve really strengthened this whole story.
Honestly, I think it needed one or two more rounds of development and proofreading edits. It felt like the narrative ran right to the edge of having something truly thoughtful to say about sexual pleasure in the wake of sexual violence, and navigating intimacy while healing from trauma, and then stopped short of taking the necessary leaps to actually tell that story, rather than gesture at it in between sex scenes.
What saved this for me was that the aftermath of the abuse suffered by the omegas seemed to try to take the survivors’ understanding of Justice seriously, and the fact that the characters seemed to genuinely be trying to think about sexual violence as a manifestation of structural oppression. This is a thoughtful way of handling this topic, and not one I usually see in any kind of romance or erotica. So I gotta commend it for that.
Buuuutttt that ends up ruined when
One thing this book did have going for it, and the reason it did not merit a lower score is that I think the larger philosophical and social Justice themes it’s clearly trying to depict are really difficult to do in the erotic genre, given the need to balance depicting the awfulness of the thing being survived, with the genuine and complicated forms of joy and erotic pleasure that survivors crave and deserve. And because the narrative didn’t totally fail at that, I think it’s worth 2.5 stars. I wouldn’t ever reread this though, nor would I recommend it to anyone except the most hungry for trans representqtion in ABO narratives. And even then, I would only recommend it with significant amounts of salt.
The prose of the sex scenes is so awkward too that I just have to highlight it:
- “When he got a taste of the sweet nectar leaking from the tip, care went out the window and he found himself sucking Angel's cock like he had spent a week starving in the desert and all he had on him was a fucking lollipop.” (a lollipop in the desert!?!?)
- “Angel rode his dick like he was planning on taking it up as a sport” (what does this metaphor actually entail?? Obviously I get the spirit of it, but what does one do when planning to take up a sport that is the analogy here??)
- “If he had thought the omega consumed his thoughts before, his mind had become the twenty-four hour Angel Broadcasting Network ever since they had tied.” (this reads like corny wattpad prose)
There is truly fascinating lore and magical elements that are not explained well, so they become lazy plot devices to move the story along and gesture at world building that didn’t actually happen. What is the omega cannibalism feeding ritual that keeps being referenced but never discussed?? Why is there a sanctioned and unsanctioned way to feed on wolf flesh?? What powers does it supposedly give and why does no one seem unaffected by not feeding??? Why is there a magic prescient crow?? Why is this one specific wolf pack so geographically and demographically massive compared to literally every other one in the world???? Why doesn’t the omega know what KNOTTING is!?!!?!?!?
The most interesting and realistic relationships were the friendships between characters, and the efforts of the survivors to support other omegas in their gender subjugation. But all the important moments of healing happened largely off the page and were just summarized by a character in a line or two. Getting to actually see the survivors engaging in the process of their own healing, and community engagement with their peers in solidarity, and witnessing them actively being agents in the world would’ve really strengthened this whole story.
Honestly, I think it needed one or two more rounds of development and proofreading edits. It felt like the narrative ran right to the edge of having something truly thoughtful to say about sexual pleasure in the wake of sexual violence, and navigating intimacy while healing from trauma, and then stopped short of taking the necessary leaps to actually tell that story, rather than gesture at it in between sex scenes.
What saved this for me was that the aftermath of the abuse suffered by the omegas seemed to try to take the survivors’ understanding of Justice seriously, and the fact that the characters seemed to genuinely be trying to think about sexual violence as a manifestation of structural oppression. This is a thoughtful way of handling this topic, and not one I usually see in any kind of romance or erotica. So I gotta commend it for that.
Buuuutttt that ends up ruined when
Spoiler
Collin attempts to make the trial all about his grief over Mitchell killing his older brother several de axes prior to the start of the narrative. The trial was then dismissed on the basis of a council member’s actions, rather than the testimony of the survivors. So I’m the end, the survivors got what they wanted, but not because they received due process of the laws of their people. Which seems to really betray all the effort the narrative did to centre the needs of survivors.One thing this book did have going for it, and the reason it did not merit a lower score is that I think the larger philosophical and social Justice themes it’s clearly trying to depict are really difficult to do in the erotic genre, given the need to balance depicting the awfulness of the thing being survived, with the genuine and complicated forms of joy and erotic pleasure that survivors crave and deserve. And because the narrative didn’t totally fail at that, I think it’s worth 2.5 stars. I wouldn’t ever reread this though, nor would I recommend it to anyone except the most hungry for trans representqtion in ABO narratives. And even then, I would only recommend it with significant amounts of salt.
The prose of the sex scenes is so awkward too that I just have to highlight it:
- “When he got a taste of the sweet nectar leaking from the tip, care went out the window and he found himself sucking Angel's cock like he had spent a week starving in the desert and all he had on him was a fucking lollipop.” (a lollipop in the desert!?!?)
- “Angel rode his dick like he was planning on taking it up as a sport” (what does this metaphor actually entail?? Obviously I get the spirit of it, but what does one do when planning to take up a sport that is the analogy here??)
- “If he had thought the omega consumed his thoughts before, his mind had become the twenty-four hour Angel Broadcasting Network ever since they had tied.” (this reads like corny wattpad prose)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual violence and Sexual assault
Enlightened by Joanna Chambers
3.0
This was the HEA I wanted for the two main characters, but I hated that the abuse and rescue of a woman became a plot device for two gay men to liberate themselves from the shackles of heteronormative society. Now, that said, like I predicted in my review for book #2, this HEA did feel earned. So it has that going for it!