24.08.26
Holly Black is a good writer but this was a bit of a mess. The incidental worldbuilding was refreshing - the details (oh, so it's the '90s, oh, so these are the features of faeries) meant there wasn't the usual tedious exposition. But that also made it confusing to work out what was going on - was there even a central plot driving towards a specific goal or really any reason for the characters doing what they were doing?
41%
20.08.26An engaging concept with strong (if overcomplicated) worldbuilding and much darker and more political than the cover suggests. But it had the whiff of AI about it that became stronger towards the (entirely unresolved) ending. If this author did write it all herself, she needs to humanise - and generally improve - her style, sci fi theme or not.
57%
18.07.26I'm reviewing these two books together because the whole series might as well have been a single, continuous story, and there's not much to tell them apart anyway. Because it's fun, fairly feminist, vivid (if with slightly stereotyped characters) and has a not-entirely-predictable storyline, I'll overlook the lack of editing in places, and how some parts didn't really make sense.
58%
12.07.26This was slightly messier than the previous book in the series and could have done with a slightly more thorough edit at times but was still good violent fun with some deeper messages in amongst the craziness.
60%
09.07.26Since I have free Kindle Unlimited again, I couldn't resist returning to Lauretta Hignett's urban (well, smalltown) fantasy world. I was right about the first in the series just acting as a springboard as this was much better. The humour is balanced with a fair helping of violence, darkness and angst, along with strong character development.
47%
06.07.26Passable Heyer / Austen / Quinn fanfic that would have worked better if it hadn't tried so hard to shove in irrelevant historical events and 21st-century sensibilities.
12.05.26
I liked the refreshingly fun, irreverent tone and vivid worldbuilding. I didn't like the inevitable power-imbalanced, male-possessive romance, the narrative inconsistencies or the main couple being the only characters with character, and not particularly likable ones at that. But a refreshingly fun, irreverent tone and vivid worldbuilding counts for a lot.
18.04.26
Many people say this is the best Heyer novel but it was pretty indistinguishable from the others - spirited heroine, noble hero, comedy supporting characters, unlikely coincidences. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
07.04.26
Hazelwood is a very engaging writer on a sentence level but 'a couple clear up a misunderstanding and then have lots of sex' is not a plot. With no conflict nor any character development, it just wasn't all that interesting.
47%
03.04.26I like TJR's vivid stories from the world of Evelyn, Carrie and Daisy but her contemporary relationship novels (see also this and this) might as well be by a different author. Everyone was just a cipher and, despite each person presenting a different aspect of long-term relationships versus independence, the ending was deeply conservative, with everyone ending up (spoiler) traditionally coupled up.
It also made America seem very foreign, highlighting their strange food (sweet potato at Christmas? Pigs in blankets with pastry at a baby shower?) and traditions and approaches to life.
51%
01.03.26This read like a first attempt at writing a novel by someone who'd had some guidance but not enough editing. The best thing about it was the almost-accidental fantasy elements - they just happened to be there, in that world. But otherwise it was all a bit awkward, and the drawn-out romantic difficulties could have been resolved after a quick chat (and a development edit).
57%
06.02.26You can tell from the title that this is ridiculous in almost every way but Hazelwood is good at what she does and somehow it's still cute and engaging and relatively unpredictable (and quite educational about chess) if you don't think too carefully about the Cinderella fantasy of it all or the disappointingly flat ending.
09.01.26
Heyer is a dependable comfort read when I'm under the weather (I've been winged but not by a pistol) and this, as usual, featured vivid characters and gentle humour, but it's also a little dull (despite the smuggling subplot). Much of it hasn't aged well since the 1950s - marrying one's cousin and bullying a queer relation lands rather differently these days.
23.11.25
You know the phrase 'So bad it's good?' Yeah, well, that doesn't apply here. This is so bad in so many ways that it's like a first-time author's first draft that nobody's bothered to read or revise or comment on or edit or proofread before it was published.
19.11.25
You know what I said about Lacey's Stars Collide? That. Except this had some minor manufactured angst that got boring fast.
25.09.25
Fun, and sneakily clever, short story/novella, in which much symbolic use is made of penetration by stakes and steel.
07.09.25
An unexceptional queer romance with rather annoying protagonists who need to get over themselves. Never leaving town and/or taking 40 years to notice your privilege don't gain my empathy. I did like how they were a bit older than typical romantic leads, and that nearly everyone was LGBTQ+.
52%
11.07.25Considering the author tells us in her afterword how much research she did, you'd think she'd have attempted to make the characters sound and act period appropriately, rather than being 21st-century Americans inexplicably stranded in Victorian London. Even if this was a deliberate choice, the constant Americanisms - as well as some stereotypes about mid-19th century British society that I doubt were quite true - kept taking me out of the otherwise fairly sweet and fun story.
57%
05.07.25This was prettily written and started out well but was ultimately disappointing. It didn't seem to know what it was about - a competition? An expedition? A romance? A fantasy adventure? All of those things but never settling on one, with an irritatingly open ending for the next book.
17.06.25
The only memorable thing about this middling Heyer was its excellent use of The Tiffany Effect (even if it is a nickname for Theophania).
