illstoptheworldandreadwithyou's reviews
736 reviews

 

Let me start this off by saying that I love this book. Truly, I do. We see humor and connection, vulnerability and depictions of how, with some people, things just seem to click. We see what it feels like to be stuck, and there’s representation of how sometimes people just really, truly need to experience change in their lives. 

 

I loved lots about this one, especially the banter and the tender moments. 

 

BUT I feel like the published book description makes this seem like more of a light-hearted read than it is. I’ll drop content/trigger warnings at the bottom of this review. (Feel free to skip them if you’d like to go in blind.) Just know that the FMC starts off in a dark place. 

 

I highly recommend listening to this one on audio for Helen Laser’s superb narration. She’s quickly becoming one of my favorite narrators. 

 

I received an advance copy of the audiobook from Macmillan Audio. All review opinions are my own. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trigger warnings: divorce, suicidal ideation and attempted suicide, infertility, miscarriage, infidelity, depression, death of a pet, death of a parent/spouse/sibling 

If Penny Reid writes it, I’m going to read it. Make that book a second generation romance between the offspring of some beloved Knitting in the City characters, and I knew it was going to be a hit for me.

Childhood friends, Ava and Desmond, haven’t seen each other in ten years. Once inseparable, they haven’t really been in contact since he left Chicago at age 15, but now a chance meeting has brought them together again.

And Ava really doesn’t want him to slip right back out of her life.

Read it for
- The dual POV, so you get both perspectives
- The action (Desmond has a real Robin Hood, rob-from-the-rich thing going on.)
- The humor and Ava’s quirkiness (Honestly, when she randomly pops out with “'Soylent Green is people,’” I was like, “Wow, I can see my mind scrambling for purchase and popping out a random, out-of-context, film quote like that. Heck, my mind would probably even settle on that particular quote on its own.)
- Visits with Knitting in the City favorites and a grin-inducing cameo from Viola Winston
- Film and book references
- The long-term pining
- The 🔥 chemistry and the tenderness between Ava and Desmond
- The honest and real depictions of relations (of the bedroom variety)
- The found family
- Desmond’s earnestness in his love for Ava
- The sense of breaking out of a comfort zone to experience life again
- The mental health rep (Desmond has bipolar 1 and ADHD, and the depiction is raw and vulnerable and handled with care.)
- The belief that everyone deserves a love story
- Penny’s notes in the Content Warnings section at the beginning and her author’s note at the end

I loved it. 💛

Note: This one can be read as a standalone, but the reading experience will be enhanced by having knowledge of the Knitting in the City series.

Thank you to the author for an advance copy of the book! All review opinions are my own.

Great for fans of Ocean’s Eleven, Jewel Me Twice brings the heist aspects and group dynamics of the film series, with a touch of the puzzles and clues aspects of The Inheritance Games, plus a heavy dose of sizzling hot chemistry.

Years after their last job together, Celeste St. Pierre and Magnus Larsson meet again when they both go after the same score. It could have been as simple as encountering each other that one time and then drifting their separate ways, but their late mentor had other plans.

Before her death, she set events in motion to bring the team together again to pull off a major heist in her memory (and to encourage them to all reconnect). 

Read it for 
- The 🔥🔥🔥tension and love scenes 
- The thrill of the heist
- The adventure of criss-crossing Europe
- The found family
- The tenderness and vulnerability between Celeste and Magnus when they open up to each other
- The chance to get things right the second time around
- The push-pull of opposites attract
- The found family aspects of the team
- Two super-smart, extremely hot, successful MCs in their 40s

I received an advance copy of the book from Harlequin Trade Publishing and Canary Street Press. All review opinions are my own.

High school enemies are thrust back into each other’s orbits as adults when they serve as the best man and maid of honor at their best friends’ wedding. After years of radio silence between the two of them, June is pretty confident that she can one-up Ryan, but, much to her dismay, he has aged better than she expected. 

 

There’s just something comforting about a book by Sarah Adams. I read the original version of this one years ago, and it still holds up for me. This version has been revised and includes a bonus epilogue. 

 

Read this one for 

 
This time around I listened to the audiobook. I enjoyed Connie Shabshab’s and Will Damron’s voices for June and Ryan. This audiobook has dual narration.
 

 
I received an advance copy of the audiobook from Dreamscape Media and NetGalley. All review opinions are my own.
 

 

There’s death in the air as the family of a deceased hotel owner convenes for the reading of his will at their family-owned boutique hotel in Coastal Maine. A hurricane poised to hit the area mirrors the tensions running high inside the hotel; each person present seems to harbor their own agenda; and when the first murder victim is discovered, everyone is left wondering who’s responsible and who will be next. 

As a storm rages outside, those at the hotel have to decide whether they will band together or fight each other.

Well, these folks are not in fact one big happy family. With the turbulent weather and the roads washed out, this novel is set up to feel like a locked room mystery. At one point in the novel, I thought we were going to have an And Then There Were None situation on our hands.

It took me a little bit to get into the story, but once I reached the flashback portion, I was hooked.

Overall, I enjoyed the novel, but I wasn’t entirely sold on the ending.

Saskia Maarleveld’s narration is one of the main reasons I picked up this audiobook. She’s a favorite narrator of a couple of my friends, and after listening to this audiobook, I can see why. Her narration kept me hooked; she voices the multiple characters consistently; and her narration is well-paced.

I received an advance copy of the audiobook from Macmillan Audio. All review opinions are my own.

I know I’ve said it before, but I’m going to say it again: Pippa Grant is an auto-buy author for me. If she writes it, I’m going to read it, so imagine my excitement when she penned a book featuring a character working with the Copper Valley Fireballs team falling for a player from the Copper Valley Thrusters. (Those are the professional baseball and hockey teams featured in the Pippaverse, by the way.)

Don’t worry if you haven’t read either of those series. It’s fun to know those characters and their backgrounds, but this one can be read as a standalone. Pippa Grant does plant some fun Easter eggs for her other books along the way, but I consider those to be bonuses, not integral to enjoying this story.

Professional batting coach Addie Bloom and professional hockey player Duncan Lavoie are back in each other’s orbits again. Four years after secretly hooking up—*cough* or maybe something more—Duncan is thrust back into Addie’s sphere when he saves her from a dress. (Truly, that scene is *chef’s kiss*. Talk about a second chance meet-disaster….)

And, well, that encounter leads him to bid on a date with her at a local charity auction.

That very public bidding battle leads the team PR geniuses to scheme up a way to generate publicity for a community outreach program with Addie and Duncan as the public faces promoting the joint initiative. For all intents and purposes, the community thinks they’re dating. They’re being shipped awfully hard.

And all that time together just may remind them why things were so good between them to begin with.

Read it for
- The strong female protagonist
- The lovable, and secure-in-himself, hero
- The Dual POV that gives you insight into what both characters are thinking and feeling
- The mental health rep
- The humor (I snort-laughed, y’all.)
- The emotion
- The character growth
- The chemistry between the FMC & MMC 🔥
- Seeing how beautiful friendships can be when you open yourself up to them
- The cameos from some Pippaverse favorites

5⭐️

I received an advance copy of the book from Give Me Books Promotions. All review opinions are my own.

India Holton’s books make me grin. They’re quirky and fantastical and positively delightful. 

 

In The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love, we find our neurodivergent heroine, Beth Pickering, teaming up with rival ornithologist, Devon Lockley, in a road trip that takes them by boat, carriage, train, and horse across Britain—and part of France—on the hunt for a caladrius, a bird with panacean properties, whose capture will secure the Birder of the Year title for one of them (as well as tenure at a top university). Whew, what a premise! 

 

Along the way, they have to survive attacks from other magical birds and from their competitors, meddling from news reporters, innkeepers, and some other mysterious individuals, and interference from their former partners/employers. The journey is rather eventful, to say the least. 

 

Highlights for me included the language barrier miscommunication with some of the people they encounter along the way, the innuendo and double entendres, and the pulling of the puppet strings behind the scenes. 

 

I grinned and I giggled and had a jolly good time. 

 

If you’re a fan of historical fantasy, I highly recommend reading this one. 

 

I received an advance copy of the book from Berkley Romance. All review opinions are my own. 

Oh my heart, I sure do love heading back to Inglewild. This time around Charlie and Nova have been left off the phone tree. I wonder why that could be. 🤔 

 

Nova Porter is focused on opening her new tattoo studio in her hometown. She needs it to be perfect, but with all that pressure she’s putting on herself, she needs some type of release. 

 

Charlie Milford lives in New York, but he always seems to be in Inglewild. At this point, he’s basically a member of the town; he always seems to be around, helping or flirting or eating Caleb’s abuela’s food. 

 

And Nova feels a spark with him. Maybe he can provide the release she’s looking for. 

 

Charlie and Nova are just going to get it out of their systems. Really. One time. 

 

Okay, maybe more than one time. 

 

Maybe their arrangement should be something casual—something “business casual”. 

 

You know what, friends? I adore them. Plain and simple. I adore Charlie. And I adore Nova. And I adore them together. 

 

She sees “the person he is beneath everything else” and realizes she can be with him without giving up parts of herself. 

 

And Charlie? Well, I just wanted to wrap him in a gigantic hug and tell him that “happiness [doesn’t have to be] distributed in increments”. 

 

Add in some well-depicted, and well-integrated, ADHD rep—I see you hyperfocus, rejection sensitive dysphoria, lists of tasks, necessary organization, etc.—and migraine rep—bonus points for including ocular migraine symptoms and a believable portrayal of what that looks like from the outside—and I was an even happier camper. I think portrayals like that are important for developing empathy and human connection in readers as a takeaway after the end of a story. 

 

(And, frankly, it’s also nice to feel seen.) 

 

Anyway, I love this book; and I love these characters; and I love this series.  This is a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ read for me. 

 

I listened to an advance copy of the audiobook and thoroughly enjoyed Pippa Jayne and Benjamin D. Walker’s dual narration. They capture Nova’s and Charlie’s personalities well. One of my favorite parts—performance-wise—is the text messages later in the book. Since this is dual, not duet, narration, I thought one of the narrators may read all of them. I was pleasantly surprised when each narrator voiced their own character in those text messages. 

 

I received an advance copy of the audiobook from Dreamscape Media. All review opinions are my own. 

Two strangers on a train find an instant connection on a trip from Florence to Paris but never expect to see each other again. 

Fast forward to six months later when Eva reconnects with Jonathan at Versailles, but unbeknownst to him, she’s not there as his lover. He’s her target.

As it turns out, they're both assassins.

From the synopsis and some of the editorial reviews, I was expecting this to be a bit more romance heavy—something like Mr. and Mrs. Smith without the domesticity and duplicity seen at the beginning of the film—and while there is definitely chemistry brewing between Eva and Jonathan, this is not your typical romance.

“Both of us are broken people. That’s the truth, and the truth just feels different.” They both experienced childhood trauma that they have not processed. It directly impacts how they relate to other people and to their chosen profession.

I feel like the way their POVs are portrayed depicts their mental states. His chapters, especially, are full of more simple sentences in what felt, at times, like a staccato-style thought process to me.

I suspect that I would have enjoyed this one more on audio, with narrators bringing these characters to life or as a movie or limited-run television series.

Expect intense physical scenes—both of the intimacy and violence variety—and a developing emotional connection that leads these two main characters to their own version of an HEA.

I received an advance copy of the book from Berkley and NetGalley. All review opinions are my own.

Successful, international pilot Sam Leto returns to Tybee Island, Georgia, to help her grandmother Pearl move out of the beach home they once shared. Returning home forces Sam to confront some painful memories as well as some bittersweet ones and to once again come face-to-face with childhood best friend Damon Rocha, who once upon a time was almost something more. 

 

Just in case spending time with him now isn’t enough to make her wonder what would have happened if she had just kissed him back in high school, the universe decides to send her more signs in the form of a mixtape from Damon in a magical CD player. 

 

Listening to each song gives her a glimpse of what their lives would have been like if they had crossed that line to become more than friends so many years ago. 

 

Despite her being a world traveler and him being a hometown boy, Sam and Damon just fit. They are each other’s sense of home. 

 

But—oof—Erin La Rosa makes their hearts work for that happy ending. 

 

Filled with nostalgia, the Backtrack will make you want to dig out your Discman, put on your Doc Martens, and roll on some glitter for old times’ sake. It will put your heart through the emotional wringer, not only with Sam and Damon’s relationship in the present and their story arc in that alternate reality, but with Sam’s familial relationships as well. 

 

Damon has my heart. 

 

Sam has my support. 

 

And I adored the full cast of characters. 

 

It wouldn’t be an Erin La Rosa novel without some delectable steam, and between the backyard dances and motorcycle rides, the buildup to them finally coming together is delicious. 

 

And it looks like their relationship can now weather the storm. 

 

I received an advance copy of the book from Canary Street Press and HTP Hive. All review opinions are my own.