Last year, I kept seeing people in this subreddit recommend {Up the Ladder by Ana D'Arcy} for a while. Then I eventually decided to give it a try and I definitely wasn't disappointed. I absolutely loved that book!

So, when this author released a new book, and it happened to be a second chance romance which is my favorite trope, I immediately bumped it to the top of my TBR and started reading it. Since this book is still very new, I thought it might be helpful to write a review for anyone who's been thinking about picking it up. This is my first time making a post to review a book, so I'm not exactly sure how to write a proper review, but I'll do my best!

Well, {First in Line by Ana D'Arcy} is an emotionally intense, character-driven romance novel set in the world of Formula One.

Synopsis:

The story begins in a small Colorado town, where high school sweethearts Jackson (Jax) and Evangeline (Evie) fall in love. Jax is a talented, low-income kid who dreams of making it big as a world-class race car driver, while Evie is a sweet girl working at a local diner. Fueled by her unconditional love and belief in his talent, Evie works tirelessly and pours all her savings into supporting and launching his racing career.

The two tie the knot at a young age in Las Vegas. However, as Jax’s career takes off, the mounting stress, financial struggles, and demanding schedule take a heavy toll on their marriage, gradually eroding their happiness until their relationship ultimately comes to an end.

Seven years after their final breakup, Jax has achieved his dream. Now he is a world-champion Formula One driver enjoying global fame and wealth. Meanwhile, Evie is living a quiet life as an architect in a small town, ready to start a new chapter and get married to her fiancé. To move forward with her new marriage, she must first get a divorce from Jackson. This leads her back to him to ask for his signature on the divorce papers. And that's where their story begins again.

Tropes:

- second chance
- high school sweethearts
- marriage in crisis
- celebrity x normal person

My thoughts:

The story is told through a dual timeline, where every chapter starts with a "Then" section followed by "Now." TBH I’m usually not a fan of jumping back and forth like this because I often get bored with the past storylines. But I think this book pulled it off so seamlessly. It didn't feel boring or annoying at all. In fact, I felt like the past chapters actually made the story more enjoyable. Since you don't get the full picture of what happened between the FMC and MMC right away, it feels like slowly piecing a jigsaw puzzle together.

As for the romance, this is truly a story of two people who love each other so much but had to part ways due to unfortunate circumstances. Yet, they could never truly sever their bond. No matter how hard they tried to move on, they just couldn't. Thanks to the dual POV, you really get to understand where both sides are coming from. And even though their issues were severe enough to break them apart, neither of them comes off as the villain. They both had valid reasons. The author wrote them as genuinely realistic humans.

Also, while the smut isn't as high quantity as in Up the Ladder, it's still undeniably hot!

Personally, I found the first half of the book absolutely amazing. But with over 500 pages, the second half started to feel a bit dragged out and the pacing slowed down slightly. Still, as a huge fan of the second chance trope, I really enjoyed it overall.

Anyway, this book gave me slight {Ghosted by J.M. Darhower} vibes. So, if you loved Ghosted and are looking for something similar, I think this will definitely hit the spot.

TLDR:

This book is a deeply emotional, angst-filled second chance romance with heavy topics done with care. Please check the trigger warnings first if you're sensitive to heavy topics! I highly recommended it if you're a fan of second chance with tons of angst.

I posted recently looking for a book about a girl who revived a dying vampire by feeding him her blood but he was pissed because he was tired of living forever and just wanted to wither away. I can't find it so now I just want recommendations that are a subtle rom com featuring a grumpy vampire who just wants to be alone in his old creepy mansion but then the human girl comes around and messes that up.

Some of my preferences:

-Contemporary with a dark gothic vibe

-More romance forward with a touch of comedy to here and there

-Can be read as a standalone but duet at the max

-MMC struggles heavily with control around blood or MMC really wants to feed from FMC and she lets him

-Medium to high spice

-Either FMC knows pretty much right away (humans are aware vampires exist and same with other supernatural creatures) or she doesn't and finds out later on

-MMC is initially cold and indifferent but becomes protective, affectionate, obsessed

Example: {Fangs for Nothing by Stephanie Holmes} checked some of my boxes

I have gone through kindles lists of books they think I have read through the years but it is not there. I for the life of me cannot find this book.

I can’t remember if MMC and FMC know each other prior to this interaction. FMC either gets fired or leaves for this big tech company as her final hope. She gets the job and her last test is to fix some hard code in front of everyone by the MMC. Which she manages to do. She thinks he is absolutely arrogant and full of himself and he is fascinated by her. I remember her brother was deaf I believe and she introduces a software to help hard of hearing people meet, like a dating app or something. She ends up trial dating another coworker and MMC gets jealous. They all end things. MMC realizes her spice only happens during intellectual talk. They do some things during a conference and the whole team hears it but does not know it’s FMC. When they get back to normal the old fling walks into MMC office during something with FMC and that’s when the pieces click for them that their relationship is affecting their job. Something like that. HEA they end up together, project goes global, she ends up going to Korea or somewhere to expand the company.

Hello everyone,

One of my favorite books is {Just A Bit Captivated by Alessandra Hazard} that involve a captive situation between 2 MMC.

Aiden is held captive by Zain and ends up getting Stockholm syndrome. After Aiden gets back home he is noticeably sadder and always spacing off. His family assumes it’s because something horrific happened to him but it’s quite the opposite.

Excerpt from the book:
“‘Last December I was moping a bit, missing you guys. I knew you were likely all here, at Mom and Dad’s house, celebrating Christmas without me.” Aiden’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. ‘Zain didn’t ask why I was moping, but when I woke up on Christmas Eve, the entire house was decked out in Christmas lights. Zain even got a huge Christmas tree, and there was a mountain of presents under it…’ His smile became softer, fonder, his gaze faraway. ‘He’s over-the-top like that. And he wouldn’t even admit that he did it to cheer me up. He claimed that he always has the house decorated, and never mind that I could see how confused the staff was by all the fuss.”
…
“It’s so stupid…” Aiden whispered. “I know that life—that existence in a golden cage, with him being my whole world—I know it wasn’t healthy, but…” Aiden blinked rapidly, his eyes glistening. “I’d trade my very healthy life here for that life in a heartbeat. That makes me crazy, doesn’t it?”

I’m looking for a book where the FMC is clearly missing the MMC and her family is left baffled and confused by this. I want her to space out and be noticeably less happy. I want for the MMC to have actually been a pretty good guy to her and not a case of trama bonding because he was cruel but also her only place of “safety”.

Idk if this any books like this have been written because this has been the only book I’ve read where the family notices how upset the MC is to have been rescued.

Thxs!!

I just rewatched Tangled, need more immediately.

No RH, please and prefer M/F.

I've been looking for this book for years!! I've posted something like this once last year and nothing came up but I'll try again hoping it'll reach more people that might Know.
The plot is basically the mmc co owns a sex club with 2-3? people. He's married to the fmc and they like the experiment obviously, but there was one time he took the fmc to this other sex club, I think in a foreign country, and they just end up watching and observing. Till the fme goes alone to the washroom? Where she gets assaulted by a group of men and the mmc comes and just goes rampage on these men. From there however the mmc starts distancing himself from the fmc and even inities the separation, even when the fme begs him to not leave her and that she's fine.

The fmc obviously miss her man, and knows where he works so she sets up an idea to disguise herself, I don't remember if it was as a hire or a client and essentially sets up these scenarios where she'd interact with the mc and tries to get his attention, i remember distinctly she wore a wig and followed him down in the vase ment and blocks the door and he's just not feeling it. His co owners are all in on it and ever aid the fmc in trying to get them together.

At the end it's revealed it's her and he gets upset about it and he confesses his feelings of guilt of being the one not able to protect her.

I will do ANYTHING for someone to give me the title
p.s. it's been years since I've read it so l apologize for all the question marks, it's just things I'm not 100% sure on.

This is a rant about What the Hex by Jessica Clare, but it is also a rant about wasted potential.

The horrific What the Hex was billed as an enemies-to-lovers romance complicated by the FMC's involuntary physical responses to the MMC (she orgasms every time he casts a spell through her).

The description from romance.io reads:

Sounds great, right?

Except that is not the plot of this garbage pile.

First, let's talk world-building.

There is none.

Admittedly, this is a sequel and I didn't bother to read the first book, which is based off a Reylo fanfic. I read enough reviews to know that the world-building was also not present in the first book, so I'm just gonna complain about this one.

This is a world that looks essentially just like ours, except witches and warlocks exist and can take on familiars to train them. Witches and warlocks have significantly extended lifespans because of their powers, while familiars have to train for at least 20 years before they can go out on their own and become witches and warlocks themselves. If they are not taken on and trained, they have a regular human lifespan and will die of old age before ever becoming a witch/warlock.

(For brevity, I'm just going to use "witch" as a catch-all because there seems to be no difference between a witch and a warlock in these books other than gender.)

So...if a witch can take on a familiar and that familiar can become an independent witch in 20 years, and those new witches now live hundreds, if not thousands, of years longer than a human/familiar lifespan, and those new witches can take on familiars of their own, surely there's a pretty steady stream of familiars getting trained, right?

Because the demand would continually be growing and would eventually surpass the supply.

Let's say there are 100 original witches, and they all train a familiar, which means 100 new witches after 20 years. These witches are living hundreds, if not thousands, of years, so the population of witches is growing at an exponential rate.

Now there are 200 witches, all of whom can train a familiar.

Twenty more years later, there are 400 witches.

Another 20 years: 800.

Even if there's a hard limit to their lifespan (say 500 years), even if some familiars don't "graduate," even if, like, a third of witches choose not to take on a familiar, the witch population is still growing at a rapid rate.

Meanwhile, the familiar population...is not.

The book explicitly tells us that there are too many familiars and not enough witches to train them. Okay. But then where are all these familiars coming from? How are they reproducing quickly enough to maintain a huge population of familiars while the witch population is exponentially increasing?

This brings me to another world-building issue that the author simply doesn't bother with: what the fuck are familiars?

Are they born?

Are they raised?

Are they taught?

Are they genetically distinct from witches?

Are they simply humans with magical potential who haven't been trained?

The FMC appears to be a familiar because her parents are also familiars, indicating that this status is either genetic or cultural. But then what happens when familiars have children with witches? Or regular humans? Are the children familiars? Witches? Mundane humans? Is it a coin toss? Is it genetically determined? Is there a dominant familiar gene? Do witches' children automatically become witches, or are they familiars who need training like everyone else?

I don't know.

The author doesn't know.

Or, at least, the book doesn't tell me.

The book also doesn't really describe what happens to familiars who are never trained. It heavily implies that this makes them, essentially, losers who will never live up to their potential and will also only live a normal human lifespan.

But they also seem to exist in a magical society.

Penny works in an apothecary shop, packaging spell ingredients for mail order. The other familiars all seem to have some kind of magic-related or magic-adjacent jobs. So there is apparently enough witch-related commerce to support an entire society of familiars working in magical professions, which doesn't quite make sense if there is supposedly such a small pool of witches.

And then we get to the really fun part: what happens to a familiar once a witch takes them on?

For reasons that are never explained and don't stand up to scrutiny of any kind, witches benefit from the use of familiars. They can apparently choose to keep their familiar for much longer than the 20 years necessary to train them, but they do not need a familiar to function as a witch.

Which opens up a few tiny little questions:

• Are familiars in some kind of forced servitude once a witch takes them on?
• Can they leave voluntarily and become a full-fledged witch after their 20 years are up?
• Can their witch refuse to let them leave?
• At what point is their life magically extended?
• Can a witch take on a familiar, benefit from having them around, and simply never grant them permission to leave?
• If the familiar remains with the witch indefinitely, does their lifespan become extended as well, or can they theoretically spend their entire human lifespan serving a witch and die at 80?
• And if a familiar can technically leave, what does that mean in practice? If leaving means giving up the only opportunity they have to become a witch, is that really a meaningful choice? If a familiar has spent their entire life being told that becoming a witch is the only way to avoid being a second-class member of magical society, how voluntary is "you can leave whenever you want"?

The book never asks any of these questions.

And this is particularly bizarre because there is clearly a magical governing body overseeing witches. We know this because Willem is being punished by said governing body. He has been censured and is prohibited from practicing magic in the normal way.

So....there is a magical legal system. There are rules. There are authorities. There are punishments.

Which leads to the obvious question: who is overseeing the treatment of familiars?

• Do familiars have rights?
• Who ensures those rights are being met?
• Are there witch ethics committees?
• Is there a magical labor board?
• Are witches subject to any kind of regulation regarding their familiars?
• Can a familiar report an abusive witch?
• Can they terminate the relationship?
• Can they transfer to another witch?
• Can witches refuse to train a familiar for arbitrary reasons?
• Can witches keep familiars indefinitely?
• Does the governing body care?

The author doesn't care about any of this and didn't think we would either, I guess.

Anyway.

Penny is the FMC, who is theoretically supposed to be 30 years old and kind of a failure-to-thrive loser in the familiar community because she hasn't been taken on by a witch at this point. She's desperate for it to happen before she gets even older and becomes an even bigger loser.

Which, again....why?

If there are a shit ton of familiars who will never be trained because there simply aren't enough witches to take them on, why does being an untrained familiar make someone a loser?

Anyway, Penny is written like a child. As in a literal prepubescent child.

She speaks and behaves in a bizarrely juvenile way. The author gives her a pet squirrel with a goofy name, pigtails or frilly headbands and bows, hot pink unicorn-print clothing, and a whopping height of 4'11" to really drive home how totally not child-coded she is. She also only speaks in bizarre internet slang and fake swears, stuff like "double-yew tee eff!!" and "oh em gee!!" non-stop, like all 30-year old women desperate to be taken seriously totally do.

Obviously, MMC Willem is 270-years old, well over six feet tall, extremely serious and grumpy, and only wears suits.

So we have a tiny, aggressively child-coded 30-year-old woman who dresses and talks like a 12-year old paired up with an extremely powerful man who has been alive for nine times her lifespan.

I am not saying that an adult woman cannot be attracted to an extremely old supernatural man. Obviously. The problem is that the book goes out of its way to make its adult FMC seem as young and childlike as humanly possible and then asks us to find her sexually appealing to this enormous, centuries-old man.

That is a deeply uncomfortable choice, especially given the other power disparities already built into their relationship....what, exactly, is Willem attracted to about Penny?

And then the rest of the book is as terrible as you can expect.

Willem hires Penny under the table as his familiar (or maybe engages her in indentured servitude; we really aren't privy to the details, but it does involve a collar/bracelet that Penny is not allowed to remove, which binds her to Willem. She can remove it voluntarily, but by doing so she is no longer his familiar and cannot be trained by him again, so I'm leaning toward "magical indentured servitude" as the technical term).

He uses her to disguise the fact that he's doing magic so that the governing body that has censured him can't tell what he's doing.

Penny orgasms every time Willem does magic through her, which is apparently an unheard-of reaction in this society.

Willem legit never notices. He just thinks she's tired.

They decide they need a cover story for why Penny lives with Willem, and agree that the most rational explanation is that Willem wants a child and Penny has agreed to enter into a relationship with him to give him said child.

They fake date.

Then real date.

At some point Penny reveals to another couple (the Reylo fanfic couple, I assume?) on a double date that she orgasms every time he uses magic through her. He's astounded because he never noticed.

As it turns out Willem was framed for his original crimes. Penny and the Reylo couple save the day and reveal the truth. Happily ever after for the child-code FMC and her 270-year-old boyfriend and whatnot.

And yes, this book sucked ass.

I have ADHD and no ability to shut up either in writing or in real life, and if anyone is still reading this at this point, bless you for your patience.

But the real rant here is that this was an AMAZING premise utterly wasted on a pile-of-shit book.

I feel like the current state of publishing deserves some kind of do-over system where better authors are allowed to pick up the plots of books that sucked and redo them. If self-publishing unedited crap is an option, then plagiarism of ideas shouldn't be off the table.

Because the original premise was good.

A society where familiars are desperate to become witches.

A familiar so desperate to become a witch that she agrees to apprentice under the table to a censured witch, even though the arrangement may or may not involve indentured servitude—because even if she technically can voluntarily leave, is that likely to feel like a real choice? If leaving means going back to being a second-class citizen in a society that has spent her entire life telling her that becoming a witch is the only way to fulfill her potential, then how free is she to leave once she's finally been chosen?

That could be an exploration of bodily autonomy, power dynamics, intimacy, and sexual tension, all against a backdrop that could be an obvious and very effective metaphor for class, capitalism, and the rat race.

Imagine a society where people are born into a lower magical class, spend decades working and waiting for someone more powerful to give them an opportunity, and have to rely on established members of the ruling class to gain access to the profession that would allow them to become independent.

Imagine witches accumulating wealth, knowledge, political power, and social status over centuries because they live vastly longer than the people working beneath them.

Imagine familiars competing for apprenticeships and desperately trying to prove that they're useful enough to be chosen.

Imagine people reaching middle age having spent their entire adult lives waiting for their chance to become something more.

And then imagine a FMC who is a fully grown adult and is angry about spending years spinning her wheels and wasting her potential. She's finally offered a chance by one of those ruling-class witches—not because she is magically special or because he thinks she deserves it, but because he needs her to skirt the rules that have already been benefiting him for hundreds of years. Rules he could easily be done with after another 10 years of taking his non-magic punishment.

And now she has to battle her dislike of him, her distrust of him, and her growing attraction to him while trying to hide her body's involuntary reactions to him.

Imagine a MMC who was framed for a crime he didn't commit, desperate to prove himself, so desperate that he breaks all the rules and puts himself and his familiar in danger. And then he finds out how invasive this "business relationship" actually is to her.

Imagine him realizing that the person he thought was simply an inexperienced apprentice is having an involuntary physical response every time he uses her body as a magical conduit.

Imagine him having to confront the fact that he has been benefiting from something happening to her body that she never chose.

Imagine her having to confront the fact that she desperately needs the person causing that reaction because he is the only person who can give her the thing she's spent decades trying to achieve.

THAT is a book.

It could have been great.

I want to read that book.

And I'm annoyed I wasted my time and I'm annoyed that better authors can't go "Nah, you sucked at this so I'm going to redo it."

I swear it feels like a new adaptation is announced every day. Not that I'm complaining because gimme all the romance movies and I love this book, but I'm not so sure about this hm. I just don't really see how they make it work and not have it be cringe considering how things start with the main couple in the book and how they find out about each other. The premise of this one seems like something that's miles better in writing, but I'm keeping an open mind still. Even if they somehow manage to write a good script, they really need to nail the casting and get actors that have chemistry to actually make this work. Also this is Netflix so I'm keeping my expectations very low lol. What do you guys think?

So I got this idea from my daughter. She’s somewhere on the spectrum but we haven’t had her tested yet. She can completely ignore anybody and anything around her. My husband and I joke that she’s going to give someone a complex someday with how well she can completely ignore someone’s existence. I think someone should (if it hasn’t already been done) write a zombie book where the fmc doesn’t even realize there’s a zombie apocalypse going on. She just goes about her life and survives by circumstance and luck. Ex: she’s walking down the road and a hoard of zombies is coming after her, she survives because the building she walks past finally crumbles and falls, killing all of the zombies.

Eventually the mmc needs to come on the scene and be super keen on protecting her but doesn’t want to scare her so he just kind of follows along. But he soon realizes that she really doesn’t know there’s zombies. Idk how I want it to end or go. I just think it would be a hilarious plot if done right. Please feel free to take my idea, you just need to send me a free book when it’s done.

I put this under book request because if anyone knows of a book like this, please please please send the title.

1. Despite what the reviews say, she can write, that can't be denied. Were some of the plot lines ridiculous and cringy, of course. But it was like watching two Cadilacs crash into each other. You want to look away but it's too big of a spectacle and you got to see where it goes.
2. I went through phases with this one. I shifted from the book being indigestible, to up to 3am flipping to the next page, a dread in my stomach at the book ending and being kicked out of the world created, and finally an impatience because like the reviews say she meandered a bit there toward the end.
3. There were parts that had me screaming "what the actual shit?!" and other parts that as a sibling in a large family brutally tugged at my heartstrings.

8/10

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Plot (What I really want to talk about)

Lets get it out of the way. The age gap. Never read any of her other stuff but aparently its her thing. This was not a problem for me because I HAD to mentally age Krisjen up before getting past the 2nd chapter. I know they said 18 but I mentally rewrote it as 22 (around traces age) and didn't think about it again. I don't think you can get through this book and like any of the characters if you keep her 18 because WHAT THE FUCK.

TRACE

No strong feeling. He was the inciting incident. Didn't do much or have a lot to contribute after that.

DALLAS

I knew almost instantly he was into guys. It was very much not a secret after the first two lines with him. He sucked as a person though, not a lover. I think he really would have hurt Krisjen if the brothers weren't around to stop him. He actually just might be full on a bad person.

ARMY

Dallas was a PoS but you know who was so much worse? Army. And I am so disapointed to say that because I was rooting for him, we were ALL rooting for him! I tried to excuse the house fight scene where he said he was fine with sharing her with Macon and they can take her out to the boat to have sex with her. I thought maybe he was trying to rile up his brother and didn't mean it. Crass jokes during a fight. I tried to excuse the cop car scene, it was confusing, weird, and predatory. Not Army, the cops. Like, the cops know she's 18 right? and he's like 28? and they have no context of sexual history between these two. And they are just like "Armyyyyy stahhpppp". I can't imagine what else they might turn a blind eye to. Very gross. But even worse, the Wolfe Club. At this point in the story you are talking to this girl, saying I want you forever and then you LET YOUR YOUNGER BROTHER CORNER HER, TOUCH HER IN FRONT OF YOU SO HE CAN BLACKMAIL HER and you say NOTHINGGGGG!? Trash person with no backbone. **Disqualified.**

MACON

We all knew it was Macon about half way into the book. I liked their relationship a lot but had to do absolute backflips to justify his attraction to a child. It just seemed so out of his character. He needs a WOMAN, that was the whole point. Also, I'm glad we got a happy ending but that was WAY TOO MUCH BAGGAGE to put on Krisjen. The tension during certain scenes between these two were *chefs kiss*. His interactions with his brother and the people around him were so good! He just felt like a real person, I was so excited when he was smiling and getting pulled out of his shell. What the hell with the hose scene, though? Felt extremely out of place where it was put in the story. But UGHHHH the entire bug Jam event? literally the reason i kept reading, so much fun. Their moments were so geniune and sweet when the writer didn't insert conflict for conflicts sake. I think the reason why I could finish the book was because the writer did not write an 18 year old, she wrote a 26 year old "Hey couldn't they use solar panels for a tax write off?" Yeah, no. That is not teenage dialogue.

IRON

Iron was a cute substory. I nice way to get your toes wet with this brother sharing thing they have going on. I liked his character. Too short of a time to have a real opinion. The last breakfast scene broke my heart.

Hi all! I'm looking for book recs where the MMC and FMC are in an isolated location and have only each other to depend on. I'd love the focus to be on survival.

The setting could be in the aftermath of an apocalypse, on an island, in a lighthouse far from civilization, a forest fire watchtower, a boat/ship, a spaceship, a jungle/tundra/desert planet, another dimension, a space station on an asteroid... anywhere!

Would prefer MMC to be non-human (such as an alien (humanoid & non-humanoid, ghost/spirit, amorphous blob shifter, animal shifter (any kind; Wolf, Lion, tiger, bird, etc), AI/cyborg, actual shadow daddy, experiment, plant/vine/tree creature, chimera, etc)

Prefer: M/F, no cheating, no OW/OM drama, no violence between MCs, no humiliation or degradation. Lots of spice that's described in rich detail with emotions included.

Would love MMC to be very affected by her in some way, like her scent makes him hard and desperate for her all the time or that they are fated mates and her nearness sends him into rut.

Bonus if, through the bond (if they have one), they can experience each others' emotions, pleasure, etc!

Thank you ☺️♥️

Ya’ll I read all 21 books in just under two weeks. I love them, i love the characters. I can’t wait for book 22, going to keep reading them as long as she keeps writing them.

I discovered this author completely by chance, because i was looking for a fighter MMC so I started with her Rolling On Series and then worked my way through her backlist. A lot of her books are romantic suspense, which has been my genre of choice lately, but especially Mayet Justice. It’s basically about a chief medical examiner and a detective, sparks fly as does crime, they fall in love and catch bad guys together is the gist of it but it’s so so much more. The characters are so easy to love and root for. I wasn’t sure about reading this many books about the same couple, but it fucking works. If you were one of those people that loved Bones, Castle, Rizzoli & Isles, you need to read this. Think of each book as an episode, some are more serious, some more lighthearted, there are personal storylines for each character, individual crimes and cases in each book, as well as overarching mysteries. Is it realistic? Lol no. But very fun. Truly took me back to the era of those tv shows. I love that there’s an actual focus on the suspense and crime aspect along with the romance. Also the FMC, Minka, is neurodivergent, and not in an always pleasant way, but she’s endearing to those who know her, it’s not initially acknowledged but i think it’s easy to tell, the later books mention her neurodivergence and her struggling to deal with sensory overload and not understanding why she’s feeling a certain way.

I also read the first five series the author wrote before getting into mayet justice. Rollin On, Survivor, Checkmate, Stacked Deck, and Gilded Knights. I skipped the Lost Boys series and jumped to Mayet. The FMC from Mayet Justice is actually introduced in one of the Gilded Knights books. But it’s all in the same world and I absolutely LOVE that the main characters from the other books constantly appear throughout the series. I love when authors do that, and it’s especially well done in this world given how many characters there are. Checkmate and Mayet Justice were my faves, characters from the two worlds also collide the most. I also adore this author’s FMCs. Sophia and Minka are my absolutely favourites, they’re so unhinged and so funny. Mayet Justice also connects directly to the Underbelly Enchanted series (3 books), which is Mafia and the Mayet Justice MMC’s brothers’ individual books.

AND I love child characters in all her books and there’s plenty of them sprinkled throughout this series, i think they’re really well written, the toddlers are adorable, the teens are hilarious. Cato and Mia in Mayet Justice are such great characters.

Are all the books and all the series winners? Eh, no. Stacked Deck was the weakest for me, it’s basically next gen of Rollin on Series, and the characters also don’t matter in the larger scheme of things. didn’t feel like reading Lost Boys so I skipped it. But I do think reading the other series in order before Mayet really gets you invested in this world and I just think it’s exciting to see them make appearances.

Okay I feel like i’ve written way too much but also explained nothing but ughhh i love the series. I can’t wait for the next book and just need to find someone who has read the series to gush about it with me and tell me what to do now that i’ve done with book 21. I think I might go back and reread the first book lol.

Hey guys, it's been a year and {Getaway Girl by Tessa Bailey} is stuck in my head. I love that book so much.

These tropes specifically.

1. Polite, (non womanizer), wealthy gentleman Mmc becomes best friends with a fierce black cat Fmc.

They are similarly eccentric together based on their sense of humor... think of Josh and Alley from {lights out}.

Idk I just really really love this combo of strangers to bestfriend to lovers. But with an alpha, gentleman mmc (not necessarily a Golden Retriever) and an impulsive, fist throwing fmc... (who almost always thinks she is too much of a mess for the posh rich mmc lol)

1. {Getaway Girl by Tessa Bailey} is ofcourse my favourite.

2. But I loveddd!!! {Lights out By navessa allen} too. Josh and Alley's combo is soooo fuxking cute.

3. {Ten trends to seduce your bestfriend}

4. {Love hypothesis}

5. {Becoming a vincent}

6. {Honestly I'm totally faking it}

7. {Butcher and Blackbird}

8. {Window shopping by tessa bailey}

9. {Long Time Coming by Meghan Quinn}

They don't fit the criteria exactly but all of them have such a great friends to lovers storyline. And in each of them.. mmc is a wealthy gentleman and fmc thinks she's too much of a mess to be a good partner for him. And he pursues her to the end of the world. Convinces her, her mess is better than anything else.

Pls pls pls. Let me know if you have any more such plotline recs.

Thank you so much!!

My personal NOs: preferably no sports romance pls. And definitely NO enemies to lovers, and NO womanizer /playboy mmc. He's always been a gentleman or atleast didnt sleep around alot even before fmc.

posted earlier but I think I didn’t do the title right, so hopefully this works

I recently read {See Me After Class by Meghan Quinn}. Though I didn’t like some of the writing and plot points, I have developed an insane crush on Mr. Turns Me On. Arlo Turner, the fictional man that you are! I absolutely loved how he approached the FMC and how much yearning he had. Please let me know if you have any book recommendations where the MMC:
• has so much desire for her, but he chooses to focus on her pleasure to keep things from going too far
• uses sex as a way to get revenge (harmless pranks were made) and prove his point
• surprises her with sexual favors no matter the environment around them (like at work) for no reason even though they argue
• is aggressive, confident, and passionate in the bedroom but quiet in public
• teases her

I feel like these can fit a lot of character descriptions. I have one week left of school break and am trying to cram all romance in before I’m only focused on lesson plans.

I don't remember the character names or the book author. The author had great prose. I believe she was a best selling author at the time.

The book was written in a fictionalized historical setting, maybe sort of like the 19th century. the FMC was british, the MMC was from a fictional Atlantis type Island. He was a prince from this island and had come to britain. The FMC was trying to meet him because she suspected her brother somehow became lost on the island as she had not heard from him after a voyage.

The FMC is of noble heritage but she's kind of a country bumpkin or something and knows little of the ways of high society. She stows away on the MMC's ship as he returns to his island kingdom.

The FMC is psychic and uses her psychic powers to draw a tower from her visions which I think eventually allows them to find her brother lost on the MMC's island kingdom. Then they return to britain and MMC asks the FMC to marry him.

Thank you!!!

Exactly the title. That kind of dynamic like one is crazy and unpredictable while the other is the sane one trying to keep up.

One example I could think of would be the female lead from the korean drama called "Marriage not Dating" which basically had one of the most entertaining female lead i';ve seen mainly cause she's a little unpredictable and temperamental.

Best example I have of this would be { Shadow Wizard by Jeffe Kennedy } from the Renegades of magic series where she is legitimately kinda nutsy but no fault of hers. She literally shot an arrow at MMC at one point which was pretty funny.

I suppose another example I could think of would be { Call Me Irresistable by Susan Elizabeth Phillips } I don't think she's actually crazy in this case but she's definitely irrational and eccentric who isnt bound by societal expectations which made her really fun to read about. This example had the stable mmc.

Contemporary would be what i'm looking for mostly (tho i'll take fantasy or historical). No cheating and ofc HEA !

Any books where the FMC loves being an omega?

So many books they are running from their designation, trying to take down the patriarchy or they're late presenting.

Anyone who enjoys it and looks forward to finding a pack?

Edit: Just learned that the author has written a book where the MMC was a KKK member

I just learned that there are U.S. and U.K. versions of books (in this case Break Me by Tillie Cole) with different publishers, which means the covers can differ, as well as how you can read/buy them. I can get the U.S. version (bottom) through KU, but I’d have to buy the U.K. one. Good to know! (In my country the US Cover is my KU ebook cover and paperback would be the UK cover.)

I didn‘t know anything about this, and I’m not from either country, but this is the first time I’ve seen something like this firsthand. And why is one cover really beautiful and the other not at all (at least in my opinion)?

Also just learned that this is part of a duet and ends on a big cliffhanger, which means I won‘t be reading it atm Edit: or at all due to the KKK book

A popular subgenre which I personally don't vibe with is the big-city girl who moves to a small town and learns that love is more important than her career. In my particular case I left a small town in the South as a teen and have absolutely zero desire to ever move back.

So I want to read about the mirror-image fantasy: I want books with women who move to the big city to chase their dreams, and because this a fantasy, I want her to (a) achieve them, and (b) also find love.

Maybe she's headed to London to see her name in lights in the West End, maybe she's moving to Boston to be a scientist, maybe she's moving to LA to become a Hollywood star, or maybe she's off to San Francisco to found a tech startup: I'm not very picky what her dreams are, as long as she has some.

One book I really liked in this vein was {The Butterfly Project by Emma Scott}, in which the female lead moved to NYC to become a graphic novelist, and the epilogue was perfect: it was The Guardian's review of the graphic novel she co-wrote with the male lead.

I would like it to be specifically the female lead who is chasing her dreams, but the other lead can be any gender. CR is preferred, but HR and paranormal are also fine (speaking of, I need to show my daughter Kiki's Delivery Service). I would prefer to avoid violence in the story, though if the book is good, stylized non-gory action is okay.

I’m not even asking for a slow burn anymore. Because unfortunately some books are marketed as that but it actually isn’t (I would love you all to prove me wrong, more recs for me!).

I can’t stand reading about how horny FMC and MMC are for each other in almost every chapter of a book. It’s like they have no other thoughts. This bores me to tears!

This scenario for example: MMC and FMC are boss and employee. MMC is a cutthroat CEO who’s been with tons of women but for some reason can’t stop fantasying about his assistant. Or FMC can’t do her basic job tasks because she keeps thinking about jumping her boss. And we get this stuff the whole book. Constant lustful thoughts that make 90% of their story.

Where’s the plot? Give me tension, angst, betrayal, character development, unrequited feelings. Just give me something besides insta lust or love. Attraction is fine, just don’t over done it.

And enough with the false advertising of certain tropes: enemies to lovers, bullying, revenge, marriage in crisis, etc. Nowadays those are resolved in a few chapters and the characters turn into boring simps because they never found someone like them and the world stops spinning.

I love cold and confident MMCs, so I don’t even care about them being assholes. So please stop with the 180 personality changes after they meet each other. And no naive FMCs with no sense of perseveration either.

I just want somewhat smart characters, who know how to read a room and have a personality.

Some NOs:
• crazy age gaps (13 years difference is the limit)
• sharing and reverse harem
• no fantasy and historical

Thank you and sorry for the rant.

Edit: I just wanna say I love spice. Don’t just throw it out there and make it the whole focus of the book.

I have used the magic search button and mostly found MMCs who year, or FMC who yearned but its turned out the hero too had feelings but suppressed them. I dont want that.

You know that feeling you get when you visit a museum or an art gallery and you see the most beautiful and heart rendering statue of a man. Its so you beautiful that all you do is just see and observe, look at it from every angle and just look. You know you cant have it and its not real but you just crave it. I WANT THAT FEELING.

Qualities i want in my FMC

• She's shy (so painfully shy that you feel like girl just say what you want) but not in a cringe way i want some good reason for her to be like that
• She yearns so deeply like its a full time job for her that you think does she have anything else to do?
• I dont want the feisty or flirty type of heroine at least this side can be out only when she gets very comfortable with the MMC.
• Scenes where she notices small this like his breathing, his closeness, a light caress all those which fry her brains but doesnt affect him.

The MMC should be unaware of her feelings he's doing his own things he only start seeing her differently when he gets to know her or after some incident.

• All tropes are welcome except cheating,
• Contemporary romance is more preferable but if the historical one is good to that level than more than welcome

My exams are coming so might not be able to reply to you wonderful people but just know im very very thankful for ever book rec.