Horse Talk Reviews

 As all three horses are members of the MM Romance Readers Discord server, we are joining in on the Pride Month reading bingo! The board is based on suggestions from the server members, and notably odd references to various things we and the other members have read in the past. The goal is to black out the board during the month of June, though a simple bingo is also a success! Books must be finished to count (outside of the DNF square of course) Top row:  dark erotica everyone pretends is romance, try a new author, bonus points if they're queer, give an author a second chance and deeply regret your life choices, detailed (or strange) omega biology, why is there a baby on the cover? Second row:  unusual genitalia, you could remake that cover better, probably, lube that definitely shouldn't be used as lube, DNF a book, food porn (literally, or great meals on page) Third row:  a book ezra recommended you, horses, murdery or not, free space, sex positions that require a...

May was not such a good month for books compared to April.   Seven DNFs, most in the first week of May. Captured by Riley Everton My review on Goodreads DNF at 13% When I read the blurb, I was expecting something a little more like PA from the assistant thing. What I actually got is like a manservant/butler/valet thing with lord-servant dynamics. Weird. It read very historical in its attitudes ("lines of propriety" and such out of place ideals) I've been informed that this is an anime trope. Maybe it works there, it doesn't work here. Given that assistant man is like personal servant, how can he still be innocent and uninvolved in mafia business? he's like a huge cotton candy fluff ball. a shrinking violet. you're washing blood out of a shirt get over yourself. Mafia man's POV was very tryhard, so many swearwords in such a short period of time. It actually made it kind of hard to read. The "explanation" for this longstanding love, at least from m...

The Sceptic by Lily Morton My rating: 3 of 5 stars   Expected publication: May 26th, 2022   What a mess of a book. The beginning dragged on forever with unhelpful callbacks to the other series this spun off from, the set up to the ghostly part dragged on ever more forever, and there was a whole heck of a lot of telling and not showing. Much like the titular character I was sceptical these characters were capable of remembering anything because between one paragraph and the next they'd suddenly no longer believe in ghosts, or try to excuse ghostly behavior away as a weird coincidence, or remember they know absolutely nothing about the other person after acting very intimate, or suddenly describe a character trait about the other person that has never come up before in any context. The ghost stuff took up a huge chunk of the book as it too dragged on forever but was neatly tied up at the end with a rather lackluster climax. And then once that m...

Peter Cabot Gets Lost by Cat Sebastian My rating: 5 of 5 stars   If there was a book version of catnip for me it would be this book. It has a road trip, a couple of dingdongs falling in love along the way, it's short, and it's very sweet with a dash of humor. All of my favorite things! I mean, the book has the main characters saying things like this: "All it takes is three days, a couple newspapers, and a handsome face, and I lose my principles." Isn't that cute? This book is just super cute and Cat Sebastian wrote it in a masterful way where no word is wasted. Tightly written historical fluff is something I want more of so I suppose I'll just have to read the other book in the series now.   Peter Cabot Gets Lost on Amazon View all my reviews

Machine Metal Magic by Hanna Dare My rating: 3 of 5 stars Horse rating: 🐴🐴 of five horses “So who’s this?” The captain spread his arms. “Our salvation.” “Our salvation looks like he could use a sandwich,” Mags said. A generally entertaining and easy sci-fi read.  Jaime was a great main character - he felt fully developed and had his own history and motivations that worked well within the scenes. Rylan...less so. I'm not sure what happened here, but he felt very two dimensional to me. I never felt like he was a complete character, he was more of an outline of a character. Noble, a bit of a blockhead, idk. Faintly sketched. Rylan being sort of empty made it hard to buy into any romance/emotional connection between the two. I wasn't quite sure what Jaime saw in Rylan, so their eventual love stuff fell flat for me. Which is unfortunate, because Jaime deserves nice things ok I liked a lot of the secondary characters too! The crew was well done, the captain was especially h...

Love, Hate & Clickbait by Liz Bowery My rating: 3 of 5 stars (spoilers in this review but really this book isn't that hard to figure out) 2.5 stars rounded up All right, look, if you ignore the absolute absurdity of the politics, how "famous" these campaign staffer dudes are, and the weird characterizations, you have a fairly sweet little book. It's a lot to ask I know especially when these staffers who are fake dating each other (?) to benefit a political campaign (??) so the candidate looks pro-LGBTQ+ (???) become so popular people are writing real person fic and drawing fan art of them and these things are being posted on buzzfeed and vulture (????). In no world would this happen. Nobody gives one (1) crap about mid level staffers on a political campaign that hasn't even been announced yet . But if you can manage to roll your eyes and look past it, the one soulless uses everyone for his own personal gain guy becomes soft for the tall u...

A pretty solid week! Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing and Cry Wolf by Charlie Adhara 4/5 both? Books 4 and 5 in the Big Bad Wolf set. I’d paused the series after the third for a while, but the new spinoff series is coming out so I decided to finish it. Very enjoyable! I think the fourth is my favorite. Of Dragons, Feasts, and Murders and Of Charms, Ghosts and Grievances by Aliette de Bodard 4/5 both I haven’t read the original trilogy that this is spun off of, but I enjoyed these anyway. The first I bought, the second was an ARC. mild romance, established (sort of?) relationship (was an arranged marriage I guess?) plus some great intrigue. I didn’t have trouble following this having not read the earlier series. Though I do want to double back!! Redemption of a Slave by Laura Taylor Kindle Unlimited 4/5 A historical sort of dystopian omega verse. I enjoyed this a lot actually, it grew on me over the read. More interpersonal plot line, built into the world dynamics and such. Really ne...