Status Update, Annabeth Albert

I really liked this. Noah is a little awkward and shy and definitely in the closet because his family is religious and so is the university he teaches at. Adrian, on the other hand, is his family's screw up, despite being pretty successful. Adrian gets stranded, Noah has to give him a ride to his sister's wedding, and they both make each other happier and better, and it was lovely. I wish there had been a little bit more of the happy ending at the end, but the book was warm and fuzzy and lovely.

Grade: B
#8 in 2017

Unfinished Business, Nora Roberts

This was a DNF for me. The heroine is a world-famous pianist who's come home to her small town to find out why her mother never called or wrote her after she left to tour the world with her father. It's instantly obvious that her father returned all the letters and blocked all the calls, so the heroine being furious that her mother cheated on her dad makes little to no sense. I wasn't interested in the heroine romanticizing small towns (I'm from one. They aren't great.) and the hero kept kissing and touching the heroine after she said not to. Definitely not my thing.

Grade: DNF

The Talented Mr. Rivers, HelenKay Dimon

The first book in this series was totally insane but a lot of fun to read. Unfortunately, this one wasn't. It feels like the characters make the same realizations about each other over and over again, have the same arguments, and never get to any satisfying conclusions about each other. In the first scene Hunter is insists that no one will EVER shoot Will when he's around; he has this discussion maybe twenty times over the course of the book. Sometimes it's in the context of saying he's not in love with Will, sometimes it's wondering if the mission is more important than Will, sometimes it's being mad the CIA wants to shoot Will. But someone always threatens Will, and Hunter always freaks out and slams them into a wall and announces NO ONE SHOOTS WILL, and then he's always surprised to hear himself say it. It's really frustrating. Also, the sexual tension between Hunter and Will has no arc. Hunter is an undercover agent, pretending to be a bodyguard, hoping Will isn't evil like the rest of his family. At the beginning they want desperately to bang but have never discussed it. They they do sleep together, announce loudly that they can't trust each other, sleep together again, realize they can't trust each other, sleep together, feel betrayed by each other, sleep together, wonder if maybe they have feelings for each other... It's weird. This is the kind of romance where the characters insist the sexual tension is so overwhelming that they physically can't stop themselves from fucking over and over, but since it doesn't really ever grow or change it just gets boring. Oh, ALSO also: the first sex scene goes on and on for a while. By which I mean about halfway through a paragraph actually begins: "The sex continued." NEVER IN MY LIFE. NOT EVEN IN FIC. WHAT. Will was pretty sympathetic and enjoyable but he had no real arc; instead of wondering if he might be evil like his family we're told pretty early that he's not, and there's a vague idea that he needs to take responsibility and grow up, but he spends almost the entire book in a safe house just sitting around thinking about how much he hates being cooped up. He agrees to be bait at the end, and it's supposed to be a huge thing, but... he also agreed to that at the beginning, more or less. He doesn't learn anything, he just tells us the same stories about how much his family sucks over and over. This book is so FRUSTRATING. Hunter, on the other hand, was the kind of alpha-male who is boring and angry about everything all the time. I know a lot of people enjoy that, but it's not my thing. Too many scenes of threatening to murder everyone, or slamming people against walls, or simmering with rage. Yeah, he had some backstory, but he was also a jerk. A book about undercover agents banging the guy they're supposed to be keeping safe from his homicidal family shouldn't be boring. Grade: D #7 in 2017

Off Base (Out of Uniform #1), Annabeth Albert

I really enjoyed this book. Zack is a SEAL from a very religious family who doesn't want anyone to guess that he's gay but does a relatively terrible job of pretending not to be. He ends up with a friend of a friend as a roommate -- Pike, who is out and loud about it. Of course they fall in love and start a clandestine relationship, and of course this hurts Pike's feelings terribly, being treated like a dirty secret. But Zack's struggle feels sympathetic, too; if he comes out he's going to lose his family, and there are guys in his SEAL unit who aren't going to be cool about it. (There are, of course, others who will, and who keep sort of hinting Hey Zack, if there's SOMETHING you want to TELL US it would be FINE, but Zack is shy and keeps missing it.)

The happy ending is very satisfying, and Zack's resolution feels pretty realistic and hopeful. (Pike, who is offered a job as a professor straight out of grad school, feels less so to me, but that's maybe because I have lots of friends who have really struggled finding work in academia.)

The beginning is super abrupt and picks up feeling almost like I had missed something. I know it's a spin off from another book, but I've rarely felt so disoriented at the beginning of a book. Once it flashes forward, though, it settles down.

And I have already pre-ordered the next one in this series, which looks amaaaazing.

Grade: B
#6 in 2017

Wanted, A Gentleman, KJ Charles

I loved this book! It's one of my favorite by Charles ever (although nothing will ever knock Think of England out of the top spot, I don't think). It's a romance between Theo Swann, who is a fairly shady guy who runs a newspaper in historical London where people put ads to find romance (or at least someone), and Martin St. Vincent, a former slave who's been freed and has made good as a gentleman. Or at least as good as he can. A young woman who is a friend of Martin's runs off with a jerk she met through Theo's newspaper, and Martin makes Theo help him get her back.

Both Martin and Theo are deeply sympathetic and interesting characters, both are struggling in different ways, and both make each other better. If I had a complaint it would be that the third act twist is telegraphed really obviously, and I would have liked it one percent better if I had been surprised. But overall the whole book is a delight and it's going on my "reread on a bad day" list.

Grade: A
#5 in 2017

His Bloody Project, Graeme Macrae Burnet

I got 1/3 into it and didn't feel compelled to finish. I'm a history teacher, I spend plenty of time with unreliable narrators and real primary sources, and this didn't feel clever enough or original enough to keep me reading. Maybe there is an amazing twist in the back half, but I don't care enough to find out. The narrator felt like the worst kind of cliche, driven to murder by a mother who died and a sister who was raped, and he's so special and smart even though he didn't go on in school. True crime would have been more interesting, or a narrator I hadn't read about before. DNF

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, Natasha Pulley

I liked so much of this book so much. I loved the setting and the writing and Thaniel and Mori, and I loved the vaguely steampunk sci-fi premise (which I won't spoil). Until about 80% in I thought this was going to be one of my favorite books of the year, maybe ever, rivaling my love of Cloud Atlas. (Big portions of this read like a much more accessible Ten Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.) It's wonderful.

But god I hated that the only major female character a) hates other women for not being as smart and scientific as she is and b) mainly exists to try and ruin the men's lives and be wrong about things. It's an old plot trope, the jealous woman trying to destroy the romance, and it really spoiled the book for me. I can't recommend a book where the only woman is a plot device and a monster.

Grade: C
#4 in 2017