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the_rabble's reviews
136 reviews
His Secret Illuminations by Scarlett Gale
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
He's the sweetest dude at the magic healing monastery, she's the affable tall sword girl contracted for the monasteries martial errands.
He's not allowed to talk to any women, especially not her (bc monk.) They mutually crush. She [10% in]buys his indentured servitude contract (which the monastery has for the orphans it adopts and ordains, apparently?) - they go on an adventure.
This book rocks. Road trips. Magical creatures. Fun tall, broad shouldered ladies. Magic being used for good. Religious deconstruction. Heists.
3rd person, single POV (Lucían), present tense, medieval-esque fantasy romance, modern vocab, spicy, light kink dynamic (gentledom), MCs are early 30s and late 20s.
100% walked away with a crush on both MCs.
**Sex Scenes**: These two are very cute together. Legit the best/most real [80% in]"it went well!" first timer scene I've read.
**Audiobook:** Sound design was excellent, there are little 5-10 sec ambience/background sound clips (bird chirps, wagons moving, book pages) at each chapter/during major scene changes that I really liked.
Martin Martinez does a great job. His pacing and tone on Lucían's prose and inner monologue makes the performance sing.
He's not allowed to talk to any women, especially not her (bc monk.) They mutually crush. She [10% in]
This book rocks. Road trips. Magical creatures. Fun tall, broad shouldered ladies. Magic being used for good. Religious deconstruction. Heists.
3rd person, single POV (Lucían), present tense, medieval-esque fantasy romance, modern vocab, spicy, light kink dynamic (gentledom), MCs are early 30s and late 20s.
100% walked away with a crush on both MCs.
**Sex Scenes**: These two are very cute together. Legit the best/most real [80% in]
**Audiobook:** Sound design was excellent, there are little 5-10 sec ambience/background sound clips (bird chirps, wagons moving, book pages) at each chapter/during major scene changes that I really liked.
Martin Martinez does a great job. His pacing and tone on Lucían's prose and inner monologue makes the performance sing.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Emotional abuse
You'll pick up on the emotional abuse from jump (not done by either MC)- [2% in] the abbot of the monastery has been terrorizing all the monks like their entire lives with outrageously rigid rules and it affects Lucían for the rest of the book.
Suddenly You by Lisa Kleypas
emotional
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Loveable characters? Yes
4.0
She's a gentlewoman novelist, he's the ill-reputed publishing magnate she's mistaken for her birthday sex worker.
2 POVs + 1 brief side character POV, historical 1800s UK "will they/wont they" romance, surprisingly spicy, 3rd person, past tense.
Pacing is great. Plot works. The internal conflict that spikes the relationship is consistent, but you don't end up wallowing in it.
Intimacy, both physically and emotionally, is well-paced. Characters make relatable choices.
Bummer: Prose has some ocassional fatphobia (fatness as indicative of unpleasant people), which felt odd bc there seemed to be an attempt to paint the heroine as "curvy" adjacent ("voluptuous")
Kleypas-specific: Only one side character evokes "cat people are sexy" allusions 👍 (Our author leans heavy on that in the Ravenels.)
Narrator: rock solid Beverley Crick performance. One of the protagonists is Irish and her accent work was good.
2 POVs + 1 brief side character POV, historical 1800s UK "will they/wont they" romance, surprisingly spicy, 3rd person, past tense.
Pacing is great. Plot works. The internal conflict that spikes the relationship is consistent, but you don't end up wallowing in it.
Intimacy, both physically and emotionally, is well-paced. Characters make relatable choices.
Bummer: Prose has some ocassional fatphobia (fatness as indicative of unpleasant people), which felt odd bc there seemed to be an attempt to paint the heroine as "curvy" adjacent ("voluptuous")
Kleypas-specific: Only one side character evokes "cat people are sexy" allusions 👍 (Our author leans heavy on that in the Ravenels.)
Narrator: rock solid Beverley Crick performance. One of the protagonists is Irish and her accent work was good.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Miscarriage
Minor: Fatphobia
A Lady Awakened by Cecilia Grant
emotional
funny
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
She's an uptight widowed newlywed out to save her servants, he's the rake exiled to the countryside she hires as a sex worker.
3rd person past tense, early 1800s UK, rural slowburn romance with good pacing, characters are 21 and 26, spicy (sex first, feeling later)
This book is wild and very funny. Grant writes two very different and opinionated characters. She's a humor sniper on every front- prose, POV thoughts, dialogue. It balances the serious issues very well.
Martha is not super likeable, but she is funny and interesting. She's religious and lightly demi-coded. In her charitable planning, we don't hit poverty tourism- she's doing the work, but you get some of that "I'm a rich lady who knows how to make life better"/"non profit employee willing to sacrifice everything" energy.
Her big goal in the book: stop a serial rapist from inheriting her husband's country estate full of servants and tenants she wants to protect. So she makes a sex deal.
Theo is a charming fuckboy who finds himself in a sex deal with a woman not interest in sex- just results. He's very funny and affable. He's also in an environment that has no interest in making things easy on him (nor should it)- he gets frustrated. A lot. And his side commentary is excellent.
The relationship pacing is really good. It's a fast paced slowburn. Everyone is growing as people. Physical intimacy is technically immediate, but Grant is a pro at showing you something that should be intimate as not really- while turning more chaste gestures into big moves. The result gets surprisingly swoony.
Sex Scenes: [15% in]There is a lot of rout, lackluster sex in this book, early and often. Grant's descriptions (very intentionally) turn potentially spicy Lady Chatterly-esque liasons into viscerally boring chores. It is very different than most romances and stylistically interesting on top of being a great setup. Theo's POV/problem solving is fun and thoughtful.
Book has sometop notch cunnilingus - Grant puts it in the place of the Act 3 big (usually PIV) "we're on the same page" scene and it's an excellent choice.
There's also very funny pillow talk and a lot of "seed" talk.
Narrator: This is an older recording/book, so earlySusan Eriksen has a bit of a German accent in the read during this performance and it threw me every now and then. Pacing was perfect. Dialogue voices were great.
3rd person past tense, early 1800s UK, rural slowburn romance with good pacing, characters are 21 and 26, spicy (sex first, feeling later)
This book is wild and very funny. Grant writes two very different and opinionated characters. She's a humor sniper on every front- prose, POV thoughts, dialogue. It balances the serious issues very well.
Martha is not super likeable, but she is funny and interesting. She's religious and lightly demi-coded. In her charitable planning, we don't hit poverty tourism- she's doing the work, but you get some of that "I'm a rich lady who knows how to make life better"/"non profit employee willing to sacrifice everything" energy.
Her big goal in the book: stop a serial rapist from inheriting her husband's country estate full of servants and tenants she wants to protect. So she makes a sex deal.
Theo is a charming fuckboy who finds himself in a sex deal with a woman not interest in sex- just results. He's very funny and affable. He's also in an environment that has no interest in making things easy on him (nor should it)- he gets frustrated. A lot. And his side commentary is excellent.
The relationship pacing is really good. It's a fast paced slowburn. Everyone is growing as people. Physical intimacy is technically immediate, but Grant is a pro at showing you something that should be intimate as not really- while turning more chaste gestures into big moves. The result gets surprisingly swoony.
Sex Scenes: [15% in]
Book has some
There's also very funny pillow talk and a lot of "seed" talk.
Narrator: This is an older recording/book, so earlySusan Eriksen has a bit of a German accent in the read during this performance and it threw me every now and then. Pacing was perfect. Dialogue voices were great.
Someone to Watch Over Me by Lisa Kleypas
challenging
dark
slow-paced
- Strong character development? No
1.5
Rough. It's Kleypas, so it's very readable and charming, but damn. I feel a bit icky having finished it.
Consent issues and slut shaming abound.
This was like a very dark twist on the 80s movie Overboard. Which is already kind of a dark premise.
[Halfway] Bros, don'tbang women who don't remember their entire lives. That just feels like common sense.
All my issues are around how these characters treat someone with memory loss and denigrate sex workers. The consent and poorly thought out vengeance plots also aren't great.
The sex scenes were well written ([Sex scenes]he goes down on her like a champ- it's great. ) even some of the romance is very sweet (though, in addition to being a terrible investigator, this man has zero game. And not like in a cute way. At one point I believe he tells her "I'm the last thing you'll ever see in this life," as like a comforting thing. That's just fully a threat, right? Best case scenario, I think the youths would call it 'yandere.')
Cleanly written, rough internal monologues, brutal plot.
Consent issues and slut shaming abound.
This was like a very dark twist on the 80s movie Overboard. Which is already kind of a dark premise.
[Halfway] Bros, don't
All my issues are around how these characters treat someone with memory loss and denigrate sex workers. The consent and poorly thought out vengeance plots also aren't great.
The sex scenes were well written ([Sex scenes]
Cleanly written, rough internal monologues, brutal plot.
Heiress Gone Wild: Dear Lady Truelove by Laura Lee Guhrke
Did not finish book. Stopped at 2%.
Did not finish book. Stopped at 2%.
I feel weird about the ward/guardian thing and she seemed really, really innocent from jump and he felt very "I'm a british mountain boy, let me tell you about the Old West." Age gap wasn't too bad (late 20s vs early 20s) but the experience divide felt wide.
Picked up the book mostly to check in on Jonathan's sisters and dad and I just wasn't vibing with uncomfortable fiduciary responsibilities to get there.
Picked up the book mostly to check in on Jonathan's sisters and dad and I just wasn't vibing with uncomfortable fiduciary responsibilities to get there.
How to Lose a Duke in Ten Days by Laura Lee Guhrke
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
2.25
Slow burn sexual assault recovery story. It's a bit intense if that's not something you’re expecting or ready to spend 95% of a book on.
The promise of the premise felt like it'd be strangers in forced proximity, which is less the focus. It's definitely a wounded dove situation.
Stuart was interesting but the emotional space is taken up mostly by the other protagonist's- Edie's- untreated trauma responses. Our dude is mauled by lions, loses mobility, is grieving a lifelong friend and those beats get a good intro chapter and then fade to the side.
I don't need a trauma parade (ever) but the narrative balance was a little confusing.
Random: Edie puts french doors everywhere in this coastal adjacent 300 year old house in a temperate climate. Wouldn't that leak all the time? I had a lot of "oh boy- the water damage." moments.
The promise of the premise felt like it'd be strangers in forced proximity, which is less the focus. It's definitely a wounded dove situation.
Stuart was interesting but the emotional space is taken up mostly by the other protagonist's- Edie's- untreated trauma responses. Our dude is mauled by lions, loses mobility, is grieving a lifelong friend and those beats get a good intro chapter and then fade to the side.
I don't need a trauma parade (ever) but the narrative balance was a little confusing.
Random: Edie puts french doors everywhere in this coastal adjacent 300 year old house in a temperate climate. Wouldn't that leak all the time? I had a lot of "oh boy- the water damage." moments.
The Wicked Deeds of Daniel MacKenzie by Jennifer Ashley
adventurous
emotional
lighthearted
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.25
She's a huckster who invents on the side, he's an inventor who scams on the side.
Daniel has been a mainstay favorite in-universe and he finally gets his own book.
I liked this one, but was a bit burned out on the voice acting performance edit/choices. Might be a better eyeball read if I revisit the Mackenzies.
Daniel has been a mainstay favorite in-universe and he finally gets his own book.
I liked this one, but was a bit burned out on the voice acting performance edit/choices. Might be a better eyeball read if I revisit the Mackenzies.
My Inconvenient Duke by Loretta Chase
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
4.0
A Jingle Bell Mingle by Sierra Simone, Julie Murphy
4.75
Jotting notes before I forget -
First person past tense, 2 POVs, book ended with 3rd person past tense Teddy chapters, very spicy, characters in their 30s
Super cute
Deals with mourning, death, change, grief in the most realistic way I've seen in a long time.
Plot ruled. There was no character back tracking and Sunny remained an emotionally intelligent wildcard.
Angel Throuples, ftw - I want that screenplay in the world
Cameos from the other books were cute and felt appropriately full circle
Shout out for realistic adult sibling drama and resolution
Narrators slapped. Joy Reid is reliably fucking awesome. Zachary Webber embodies sad boy Isaac perfectly. His prose reads killed.
First person past tense, 2 POVs, book ended with 3rd person past tense Teddy chapters, very spicy, characters in their 30s
Super cute
Deals with mourning, death, change, grief in the most realistic way I've seen in a long time.
Plot ruled. There was no character back tracking and Sunny remained an emotionally intelligent wildcard.
Cameos from the other books were cute and felt appropriately full circle
Shout out for realistic adult sibling drama and resolution
Narrators slapped. Joy Reid is reliably fucking awesome. Zachary Webber embodies sad boy Isaac perfectly. His prose reads killed.