Horse Talk Reviews

In the Lives of Puppets by T.J. Klune My rating: 5 of 5 stars Anticpated Publication Date: April 25, 2023 5 stars because holy crap, y'all If you go into this expecting a funny little book because it's a Pinocchio re-telling but with robots including a talking Roomba with anxiety you will definitely get that but you will also get an epic, emotional, and wonderful story about humanity, loneliness, forgiveness, and love. Like what the crap I don't know how it happened but it is a real journey. All the characters are fully developed and complex, even the robot vacuum. Or maybe especially the robot vacuum. There were lines which made me laugh and then a few pages later it was deep thoughts and emotions. I appreciated the levity because otherwise it would be Too Much. As it is, I will probably be thinking about these characters for a while. I should have expected a book about robots to do this to me since this is the same author who thought ...

The Gentleman's Book of Vices by Jess Everlee My rating: 2 of 5 stars This unfortunately ended up being a miss for me, on several counts. The salient points are that I felt like the characters were flat, they had no chemistry or emotion, the sex scenes were handled poorly, and the plot was frustrating to nonexistent. I think it had potential , but it was not realized here. Characters: I never felt like I got to know the characters at all. Any of the somewhat numerous cast. Charlie comes off as a self centered man child - this could be a starting point, but he never truly grows from it, jerking his fiancee around a lot with his dithering, so I just ended up not liking him at all. Miles…did we ever get any backstory on him, outside of a brief Ethan thing? I genuinely don’t think so. He’s just kind of there. Cardboard like. He didn’t feel consistent either, more like he was cobbled together of plot-convenient personalities. The smooth sommelier mome...

The King's Delight by Sarah Honey My rating: 4 of 5 stars 4 stars+ The King's Delight had all of my favorite things: 1. It was short and sweet 2. Low angst 3. Funny without being try hard 4. Under negotiated kink with zero daddy 5. Horse I really had a good time reading it. Sometimes you want a lowkey book with horses and some spanking. Not at the same time, um... Anyway, The King's Delight was also erratic's delight to read. Highly recommend! I received an ARC copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own. View all my reviews

King's Ex by E.J. Russell My rating: 1 of 5 stars DNF at 57% My issues: • This book proceeds at a breakneck pace with no pauses until over halfway through, and it is honestly kind of exhausting to read. I need pauses more often than that, otherwise the urgency gets tiring. • The number one present “emotion” still, at almost 60%, is horny. Just horny. • The MCs don’t really know each other outside of said horny, and for some reason, once they’re forced into a room for 24 hours straight, they allegedly have conversations, but we skip right over those. Their connection is not believable. Instead, I have to read about their dithering and horniness again , rather than being shown any of these supposedly amazing conversations that would build a believable romance. • Honestly, maybe this one gets fixed later, but damn, they have hella boring powers. The other royals have like x-men level powers, and this dude just…doesn’t sweat. Sure, I’d love to have...

Wedding Dragon by Liv Rider My rating: 3 of 5 stars A cute fluffy fated mates dragon shifter book, exactly as advertised! A fun twist to the fake boyfriend trope, where the human mate shows up to a wedding with a fake boyfriend, and meets his fated dragon!  Anyway, Chris is the best character by far. I loved him so much. Followed by the internal dragon suggestions of dropping mean people in lakes.

Pretty Policeman by Fifer Rose My rating: 3 of 5 stars How could I resist such a premise!! I couldn’t. Luckily, I did not come to regret this total lack of self control. On the whole, this was entertaining read. With some editing and refocusing, it would have been an easy 4 star for me. • I enjoyed the aggressive caretaking by Damon in the beginning, and the silliness of their initial encounters and miscommunication/situation. • Micah was an amusing character to ride along with in the story, and I liked Tessa as a partner. • Far too many descriptions of things that don’t matter. I don’t need every single detail of every scene, could have shaved off a solid 150 pages and read a lot smoother. Having to skim large parts to get to the scenes actually advancing the story was a bit of a bummer. • Please, please, delete all the parentheses. If it’s relevant, it doesn’t need to be in parentheses. If it does, then just delete the sentence instead. • This felt...

Never Ever Getting Back Together by Sophie Gonzales My rating: 5 of 5 stars I really enjoyed this one! Such great humor, I loved Skye and Maya, and the cast of secondary characters (minus Jordy) were fantastic. All the girls were distinct and played off each other so well. Isaac I enjoyed a lot too. The humor was on point - the kind that’s worked in to conversations and the internal monologue of characters, rather than feeling tacked on and try hard. I especially loved all of the Maya thoughts early on. Honestly, even Jordy was a good character. He was balanced to being fun to hate, without dragging the story down with extreme toxicity. The conversations between him and the girls were hysterical, especially the hot tub one with Maya. Absolutely comical. I liked the personal growth arc for the MCs a lot - both of them really grew as people, in a believable way for their age. A lot of focus on finding themselves, evaluating priorities, and deciding wha...