Dr. Lucas Goode doesn’t want to become his father.
Sadie Green wants someone to see her and be proud of what she can accomplish.
In a weird convergencDr. Lucas Goode doesn’t want to become his father.
Sadie Green wants someone to see her and be proud of what she can accomplish.
In a weird convergence of events, Luke has a spare room he’d like to fill because he’s not used to living alone, and after accidentally becoming pregnant after a spontaneous fling Sadie feels that living with her parents and brother isn’t something that will work out for her anymore.
Why not? They’re not strangers: Sadie works with Sage (Luke’s sister-in-law), after all. The only true boundary they’re flirting with is that Sadie is Luke’s student. That’s fine, though, because Luke doesn’t want a relationship or kids and Sadie wants to see if she can get the baby daddy to be less flakier than dandruff. They’re just roommates. Just. Roommates.
I’ve never made a secret of the fact I’m normally not a fan of the pregnancy trope, especially when the FMC is pregnant for the majority of the book and the pregnancy itself is a large part of the plot. (Please don’t ask me why because I can’t figure it out). Leave it to the fabulous Sara Cate to take one of my icks and make it tasty, because I adored this book.
As I was thinking about why I adored this book so much I think it really just boiled down to how much I love how Sara writes her characters: the candor, vulnerability, flaws, strengths, eroticism, and intrinsic essence of them as a human being. Luke and Sadie don’t just have off-the-charts chemistry with one another on the page, but they both have amazing relationships and conversations with the various other cast members in the book that reveal other facets of who they are as people away from each other, and that’s an important part of writing characterizations in an interconnected series like The Goode Brothers that not every author reaches for, understands, or achieves. As Sara has grown as a writer the more her writing skills in areas such as interpersonal relationships have sharpened, giving her books a sense of heart that’s often missing from kinky contemporary romance.
I loved that even though neither Sadie or Luke were necessarily in a Dom/sub or Dom/brat dynamic Sara still managed to find that balance that a lot of couples ride where the lifestyle itself may not be for them but there are aspects of the lifestyle that they can and do use in their lives because it makes sense for and to them. As always, she’s done her due diligence in research and wrote with great sensitivity about this topic. It always shows.
So yeah, it has pregnancy. But it also has professor/student and Sara’s impeccable writing. That’s easily worth the entire read and five stars.
I was provided a copy of this title by the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
Tea Ravine has switched gears for her Eleventh Hour Duet, but there’s no need to worry something has been lost in the change: The Eleventh Hour is an Tea Ravine has switched gears for her Eleventh Hour Duet, but there’s no need to worry something has been lost in the change: The Eleventh Hour is an excellent dark, paranormal, polyamorous romance with a suspenseful edge and a psychological thrill.
Jax Shade is absolutely stuck between a rock and a hard place: The rock is her stalker of six years and her hard place is the court-mandated psychiatrist who enjoys manipulating her and is in charge of deciding if and/or when she goes back to the insane asylum. Both of these figures rule over her entire life like two regents of fear, while the queen of all of her demons is her own mind.
Then two men from out of town show up, looking for answers about the disappearance of a loved one. Jax may be the only one who can help find the answers they need. They just need to work fast and safely, because it’s more than just Jax’s life on the line.
Who can you rely on when your whole world goes to hell?
Jess may have a boyfriend, but he’s not the person she’d turn to in a crisis. That dubious honoWho can you rely on when your whole world goes to hell?
Jess may have a boyfriend, but he’s not the person she’d turn to in a crisis. That dubious honor would go to her three best friends, even though she’s never met them: MourningStar, Quietek, and Minxy. The four of them have been gaming together for a long time and are as thick as thieves. The guys don’t know Jess has wanted them for ages, just like she doesn’t know they’re all in love with her.
But biology is gonna biology and nature always finds a way. When Jess’ boyfriend goes away with his friends and her heat comes, the selfish beta refuses to come back and help her. When her gamer friends sense something is really wrong, they ride to the rescue.
This is author Sabrina Bloom’s debut title, which is set to be the first in a series of omegaverse novellas all set in the same universe. The series doesn’t have a name or a theme yet. I’m excited at the idea of a new series of omegaverse novellas because there aren’t many of them out there, more’s the pity. I also really enjoy getting to see an omegaverse story with gamer representation! Sure, we don’t get to see much of them gaming because there’s other things to get to, but I like that these characters were brought together by gaming.
Have you ever read a book that felt like it blew all its best material in the first half of the book?
Honestly, that’s what reading A Mask of Flies feHave you ever read a book that felt like it blew all its best material in the first half of the book?
Honestly, that’s what reading A Mask of Flies felt like for me. The first half of this book was an amazing thrill ride for me, full of smash, crash, bash, and slash; however, slightly after the halfway mark, the book slowed down so much it felt like the transmission had stalled and it started resemble a game of “Hurry Up and Wait” until the inevitable showdown, which was beyond predictable by the time it happened.
The beginning of this book is incredibly engaging, with a compelling hook and an intriguing protagonist. Anne Heller is an enigma to us, and she’s a badass. Everything’s gone south for her and she needs to lay low until she can regroup and figure a way out of it.
Of course things go south anyway. This is a horror novel.
The first half of this novel has tension, fast pacing, lots of action, great dialogue, a lot of terrific inner narrative, and some great story revelations that help to move the plot along. This is definitely more of a plot-forward book than character-forward. There’s a great amount of violence and even more body horror. Anne is not a nice person. Is she good? That’s a moral subjective. But she’s certainly not nice, and I love how so much of that comes through in her characterization in the first half of the book.
If all of that could’ve been carried through the back half of the book then this book would’ve been fantastic. Sadly, the momentum falters and never comes back, the vast majority of the revelations have already come and gone, and even the body horror seems rather tame by the end. I was ready for it to end well before it actually did. That’s never a good sign.
I was provided a copy of this title by Netgalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. All reviews three stars or under will not appear on my social media. Thank you.
File Under: Body Horror/Cosmic Horror/Cult Horror/Horror/LGBTQ Horror/LGBTQ Fiction/Sapphic Romance ...more
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