#TBRChallenge 2023: The Night Before Christmas

The Book: The Night Before Christmas by Brenda Novak, Day Leclaire, and Molly O'Keefe

The Particulars: Contemporary romance anthology, Harlequin, 2009, Out of print, not available in digital (but at one point it was so check your digital pile and/or local libraries).

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: Molly O'Keefe is an autobuy. Her story won the RITA for Best Novella in 2010 and it's a Harlequin Christmas anthology. I am but a mere mortal.

The Review: Once again I waited until the 11th hour to pick out my TBR Challenge book, let alone actually start to read it - so I did what I always seem to do - I went diving into my cupboard of Harlequins and hit upon this anthology.  And like most anthologies, it was a wildly uneven affair.

"On a Snowy Christmas" by Brenda Novak is distasteful and insulting, especially when you account for the fact this story was published in 2009 (I realize that was 14 years ago - but hear me out...).  Spoilers Abound!

Adelaide and Maxim are political rivals, facing off in the primary. Maxim took over the Senate seat after Adelaide's husband died in a car accident.  Maxim has since strayed from her husband on matters of politics and also implied not nice things about him - which makes Adelaide mad enough to take a run at the Senate seat. She's already garnered support from several wealthy donors which has knocked Maxim back on his heels, but he's not out yet. They're both on the same charter flight down to Los Angeles for a political engagement with the governor when they crash in the Sierra Nevadas. In the middle of a snow storm. One thing, naturally, leads to another.

There's probably a decent story here somewhere but the whole politics thing already had me turning up my nose.  Add to that Adelaide behaves a bit like a dumb bunny, and the Big Secret about her dead husband that Maxim has uncovered, but chosen not to use in the campaign against her?  Well, there's corruption - which would frankly be enough - but no, Dead Hubby was also having an affair with an 18-year-old intern.  A male intern. To be fair, the fact that he was having an affair with a teenager is portrayed as distasteful.  Unfortunately just as much distaste is spent on the fact that it was a gay affair. And folks, I'm just too tired and too old to read this bullshit in 2023 and know it was published in 2009.  This isn't a Harlequin Presents from 1985 (not that it wouldn't have been annoying back then either - but you catch my drift).  Oh, and did I mention Dead Hubby was infertile but bumping uglies with Maxim two times results in Adelaide getting knocked up?  And the first time they have sex she pretends it's her dead husband and Maxim knows she's pretending he's her dead husband? Ugh. I wanted to light this on fire.

Final Grade = D-

"The Christmas Baby" by Day Leclaire starts out distasteful but the author pulls it off in the end by leaning in on the farce. Carrie is having the worst Christmas Eve ever. She woke up late for work, got caught in terrible weather on her commute, showed up to work only to be laid off, and came home to her crummy apartment to receive an eviction notice. Then, her ex, Chaz, has the nerve to show up. She ended things with him when it became apparent that he was a workaholic who would continue to push off making any sort of serious commitment to her because it was never going to be "the right time."  Well, Chaz may want her back, but she's not convinced he's changed. She kicks him out only to have the next knock on her door be an elderly lady leaving a Christmas gift a Chaz. A large box with, wait for it, a baby inside. 

So yes, distasteful. Instead what ensues is a bit of comedy of errors between Chaz, Carrie, Chaz's brother, the brother's former girlfriend and Chaz's estranged parents.  Misunderstandings and shenanigans ensue. The whole thing feels very cinematic and would make a decent Hallmark-style rom-com. Naturally, in the end, all the couples are back together - although I'm nowhere near convinced that any of the male leopards have truly changed their spots because....novella length.  Not my thing, but I can recognize this was well-executed.

Final Grade = C

"The Christmas Eve Promise" by Molly O'Keefe is the gem of the bunch and worth tracking this anthology down at a library or used bookstore.  Merrieta "Merri" Monroe is back home helping out at the family diner and she feels like an utter failure. No job, no more fiancé, and she's 3 months pregnant. A teeny little fact that nobody but her and her rat-fink ex know about. Also back in town?  Gavin McDonnell, the boy she made herself a fool over and the boy she done wrong back in high school.  He and his brother now run a shop repairing and building motorcycles. Gavin is divorced and his teenage son has just come to live with him.  Lucas has become a regular at the diner, him and Merri get roped into helping with the town's annual Christmas celebration, and they both end up spilling their secrets to each other. They agree - she has to tell her parents about the baby and he has to be honest with his Dad by Christmas Eve. 

This was a cozy, small town read with just enough angst to keep the plot humming along. O'Keefe typically does well writing younger characters, and Lucas is a gem. A scared 14-year-old boy at a crossroads, already turned out by his mother and afraid his dad will do the same. Merri is the woman who had big ideas on how her life would turn out and naturally it's been one curveball after another. She needs to learn to be open, honest and to stop running away from happiness as it's smacking her in the face. 

I'll be honest, the romance is a little light here. The author leans hard into the fact that the couple has a past history to help carry us to the finish line, but I could have used a couple more chapters, a few more pages, to beef up this aspect of the story.  But it's a heartwarming story that, frankly, washes away most of the distaste left in my mouth over the Novak entry.  This was fairly early on in O'Keefe's career with Harlequin and you can see all the groundwork here for the superior Harlequin SuperRomances she published while writing for them.

Final Grade = B+

So yes, a fairly typical anthology reading experience. A story I wanted to light on fire, a well-executed story that just wasn't for me, and a superior story that made the experience worthwhile. Added bonus that the best story was also the last in the bunch - meaning I ended the 2023 TBR Challenge on an upbeat note.

#TBRChallenge 2023: The Sheikh's Virgin Princess

The Book: The Sheikh's Virgin Princess by Sarah Morgan

The Particulars: Contemporary romance, Harlequin Presents Extra #37, Book 3 in Trope-Based, Multi-Author Series (His Virgin Mistress), 2009, Out of print, available digitally

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: When I discovered Sarah Morgan (through her Presents), I went on a glom to snag the rest of her backlist.  This was one of them, picked up at a used bookstore.

The Review: For this month's Once Upon a Time... theme I hit the trifecta: 1) Royalty, 2) Princess in the Tower theme and 3) an arranged marriage. Me also pointing out that the heroine is a virgin would just be showing off at this point.

Here's the thing about Morgan, she could flat-out write Presents. She knew the beats, she respected the tropes, and was smart enough throw in the occasional curveball to liven up the proceedings. Which means even when I'm not in love with one of her Presents, I still tend to inhale them, which is what happened here.  The heroine was a nice surprise, but the hero was such a paternalistic jackass it was hard to get swept up in the romance.

Karim, Sultan of Zangrar, is just getting to the point where he's cleaned up the mess left behind by his father and Evil Stepmother - so when he finds out Dear Old Dad arranged a marriage between his only son and a woman known as "The Rebel Princess," he's decidedly unthrilled. He understands he has to marry, but he needs an obedient, compliant wife. One who won't make waves. One who is nothing like his Evil Stepmother.  He decides his only option is to go to Rovina and convince Princess Alexandra to call the whole thing off.  By nature of the arrangement, she can call it off - but he cannot.

Except Alexa has no intention of calling off the marriage - she's more than ready to marry the Sultan. Why? Because with her parents killed in a terrible accident when she was eight, her Evil Uncle became Regent. Said Evil Uncle has spent years working to discredit her and she firmly believes (with cause) that her life is in danger. Marrying the Sultan, trading one locked tower for another, is her only chance at survival.  She's about to turn 24. She needs to make it to 25, which is when (by law) she takes over the throne of Rovina.

What follows is subterfuge. Karim shows up posing as a bodyguard to take Alexa back to Zangrar - thinking that over the course of the trip he'll scare her off from wanting to marry the Sultan. Naturally he assumes the worst, and when she tells him she's in danger - well, she's just another overly dramatic female (seriously, this guy is the worst!). In his defense, Alexa isn't forthcoming with a lot of details -  mainly because she's learned the very hard lesson that she cannot trust anybody. She's been betrayed, and badly. When she's looked for help, there's been no one showing up on a white horse to slay her dragons. 

I liked Alexa quite a bit. She's this interesting combination of desperation, vulnerability and feistiness. And boy howdy, when she finds out who Karim really is? Her hurt practically bleeds off the page.  And ultimately? That's the problem. Because Karim doesn't think he did one damn thing wrong. He doesn't get it. He's a guy who will never get it. Oh sure, Morgan gives us the requisite rescue scene at the end where she wants you to think he now "gets it" - but no, he doesn't. Alexa deserves a true partner in every sense of the word and this guy will be "give me all your trust and honesty" while not giving nearly the same level in return. In short, he's not good enough for her and she deserves all the flowers after what she's been through.

Sigh.

In the end it's a mixed bag. I can forgive a lot in a Presents hero if I get a good crawl-over-broken-glass grovel, but Karim doesn't really grovel. Morgan wants the reader to think he's seen the error of his ways, but I wanted him bloody and contrite at the end and...nope, that really doesn't happen. What I did get was a Presents with a heavy dose of fairy tale, which is honestly how this line works best for me. Royalty, a princess in danger, an arranged marriage and a dastardly uncle. It's like a Disney fantasy come to life, but with sex.

Final Grade = C-

#TBRChallenge 2023: Wilderness Sabotage

The Book: Wilderness Sabotage by Heather Woodhaven

The Particulars: Inspirational romantic suspense, Love Inspired Suspense #852, 2020, out of print, available digitally

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: This was an impulse purchase, most likely from a library used book sale.

The Review: Once again I waited until the last possible minute to pick out, let alone read, my TBR Challenge book - which meant I went diving into my category romance stash.  I also knew I wasn't in the mood to tolerate Danger Banging (Oh noes! The Evil Drug Cartel is chasing us through the rain forest but lets hide behind this tree so you can give me a screaming orgasm!). Folks, that's why I read inspirational romantic suspense. No danger banging.  Anyway, this one also comes with a hefty dose of survival skills, man vs. the elements stuff and I'm a sucker for that in a romance novel. Will the couple fall in love before they freeze to death? Time will tell.

Jackie Dutton is a journalist and has come to a construction site on federal land to investigate reports of sabotage. She's wrapping things up, needing to get back to civilization before an impending blizzard hits, when she witnesses a murder. She manages to get away, but not before, quite literally, falling off a cliff.  The only reason she survives is thanks to an ex-boyfriend she never thought she'd see again.

Shawn Burkett is a law enforcement ranger with the Bureau of Land Management. He was driving out to check on an archeologist working in the area when he spotted a snowmobile driving recklessly near the cliff. He decides to investigate and that's when he finds Jackie, precariously hanging off the cliff's edge. It's in the process of rescuing her that the bad guys come back, and the fun begins. Jackie and Shawn are now on the run, in the middle of nowhere, with an impending blizzard barreling down on them, with limited resources.  Who are these bad guys and what the heck is going on?

This is, first and foremost, an action-adventure story. Once Jackie witnesses the murder, the story and the bad guys do not let up.  Our couple is on the run throughout the story, losing supplies, finding supplies, encountering a pack of wolves feeding, falling through an icy lake - you name it, it happens to them. Part of the emotional baggage is that Jackie happens to be the daughter of a famous survivalist / TV presenter (think Bear Grylls) and naturally there are some Daddy Issues.  Shawn grew up with Jackie and her twin brother, was constantly around the Dutton household, and credits Jackie's father for his love of the outdoors.

So what tore these two crazy kids apart?  Well as teenagers Jackie and Shawn dated in secret because Shawn's BFF (Jackie's twin brother) basically told Shawn to stay away from his precious sister. Then there's an accident, Jackie's brother is severely hurt, her dad says some words in anger and blames Shawn for the accident.  Shawn, being a romance hero, takes off and severs all ties, effectively breaking Jackie's heart.  Now they're thrown together in the middle of nowhere with bad guys trying to murder them and all this unresolved emotional stuff between them.  I'm not sure what's scarier.

It's a solid read, plenty of action, and the pages turn easily.  Being this is an inspirational, the God Stuff mainly comes into play while praying for survival, being in immediate danger etc.  Sometimes it was a light touch, sometimes it felt shoe-horned in.  I've read more ham-fisted inspirationals, but I didn't always feel these elements were incorporated seamlessly.  Also things get a bit too precious for me at the end once the couple is rescued. There's a big family reunion scene, mushy declarations of love, and (naturally) a marriage proposal that all felt a little too twee for me. But I'm old, cranky and a champion eye-roller.

I liked the survivalist stuff and I thought the mystery behind what the bad guys were up to was refreshingly different - not your typical serial killer and/or drug cartel plot thread. It just happened to lose steam for me once our couple gets rescued and rides off into the sunset.

Final Grade = C+

#TBRChallenge 2023: Violet Grenade

The Book: Violet Grenade by Victoria Scott

The Particulars: Young Adult, 2017, Entangled Teen, Out of Print, Available in Digital

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: My former Teen Fiction Selector at work was talking about this book so I grabbed the ARC copy we received - where it sat in my print TBR for the past 6 years 🙄

The Review: This is a book that is shooting for gritty and realistic but it never quite hits the mark - mainly because the author kept it firmly in Young Adult. For any semblance of realism about teen prostitution this book needed to be a whole lot uglier and marketed as adult. Does that make this a "bad" read? No. It's compulsively readable and it kept me up late at night turning the pages.

Domino Ray is a runaway, squatting in a derelict house in Detroit with "her person," Dizzy. They steal, they forage, they get by. Then one day Dizzy is nabbed by the police and thrown into lock-up.  Domino needs to bail him out but for that she needs money she doesn't have.  Then the answer to her prayers arrives in the form of Ms. Karina. You're talented, artistic, come work in my home for "burgeoning entertainers."  You'll earn money. You'll have a life.  Domino needs Dizzy out so she agrees - soon finding herself in a rambling farm house in west Texas with a slew of other girls.

We're all adults here - we know from the jump who and what Ms. Karina is and that Domino finds herself living in a brothel. Sort of. Most of the girls start out as companions or entertainers. Customers show up, the girls dazzle and sparkle, chat and perform. But there's no sex acts just yet. The higher up the ranks you work within the house means the more money you make and that's when the sex comes into play. This set-up strained for me - the girls aren't pushed into full-blown prostitution from the jump? Like really?  Also Domino, a teen runaway with a jacked up past was entirely too naïve for me in the beginning. There's part of her that suspects what she's getting into but she's a little too dense for a little too long for believability. Especially for someone who has been living on the streets of Detroit (of all places!) for well over a year.

Anyway, once at the house there's back-biting and bullying as Violet works her way up the ranks - wanting and needing to make money and in a twisted way, wanting to please Ms. Karina. She becomes friends and teams up with another girl, aiding in her goal and falling for Cain, a brooding young man who works for Ms. Karina and lives in the basement.  Soon Violet begins discovering that the house and Ms. Karina have secrets, as does Cain, and escape seems the only option.  One small problem though - Ms. Karina does not like to lose inventory.  Good thing Violet has secrets of her own and a bag of tricks to draw from.

There's a smattering of romance and suspense to keep the story humming along. Violet soon learns the hard lesson that Dizzy may not care about her as much she does him, but the attraction with Cain unfolds in a slow burn and is quite compelling given both of their completely screwed up pasts.  It's those respective pasts plus the mystery of a missing girl that Violet replaced in the house that kept me up late reading, and Violet's past (the entire reason she ran away) does not disappoint. It's a doozy and readers should expect some violence (I personally didn't find it overly graphic, but if you avoid suspense novels as a rule, then avoid this one).

Are any of these characters "good" people? Ehhhh.... Is this story a gritty and realistic portrayal of sex trafficking and teen prostitution? Ehhhh...  Does that make it any less compelling to read? No. If nothing else this was interesting and it kept me engaged, which given how my reading has gone this year is essentially a ringing endorsement.

Final Grade = B-

#TBRChallenge 2023: His Secretary's Nine-Month Notice

The Book: His Secretary's Nine-Month Notice by Cathy Williams

The Particulars: Harlequin Presents #3811, 2020, Out of Print, Available in eBook

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: I am trash for boss/secretary romances. Yes, I'm well aware I'm the problem.  Look, I can't explain it. I know how problematic they are, it's an HR nightmare in real life with really icky power dynamics, but something about this trope flips my escapist fantasy switch. 

The Review: This book lands in the Hall of Shame for having an egregiously inaccurate back cover blurb. It makes the reader think they're getting one thing when they're getting something else entirely. To add insult to injury, the something else isn't very good.  But first, let's look at the blurb Harlequin slapped on this book:

There’s a billionaire on her doorstep…ready to secure his legacy! 

As commanding tycoon Matt’s secretary, it’s Violet’s job to be prepared for anything. Though absolutely nothing could have prepared her for today. Handing in her notice was not part of dedicated Violet’s plan…and definitely not because she’s carrying her boss’s baby! 

Still, nothing is quite as unexpected as Matt’s reaction. He wants his child—and Violet! It’s a negotiation he’s determined to win…but he’ll need to offer more than just passion for Violet to sign on the dotted line of a marriage contract!

Here's the problem: our heroine, Violet, resigns at the start of the book, but not because she's pregnant with the boss's baby.  Nope. She's in lurve with him (because, of course) and she can't keep working with him.  Plus her Dad needs her and he lives in Australia and blah, blah, blah.  

Matt immediately shows up on her doorstep all butt-hurt, acting like a big ol' man baby.  Then he's even more butt-hurt and man-babyish because he finds out her father is a famous rock star and how dare she never share any details of her personal life with HER BOSS!  HOW DARE SHE KEEP HER PERSONAL LIFE STRICTLY PRIVATE!  

Then it's back to the office where he treats her like something he stepped in, she ends up leaving early and moves to Australia. Matt, of course, can't stop thinking about her but doesn't admit that to himself so goes to Australia under the pretense of business and sees the heroine performing on stage with her dad wearing a sexy outfit (so unlike her prim office wear! 🙄) - he ends up hanging around in Australia longer than expected, they have sex - she's a virgin with a magic who-ha because of course she is - and that's when we get our unexpected pregnancy.  Right around the 50% mark.

Besides the hero being a whiny man-baby, the story isn't helped by it's boring first half and the fact that all the relationship building happens off page. There could have been some dynamite stuff included in the Australia portions of this story - we're told Matt and Violet spend time together prior to bumping uglies, but it's a couple of sentences dashed off in a perfunctory manner.  How these two fall in love outside of thinking the other is hot was lost on me.  

Then there's the family stuff.  Matt's all butt-hurt about Violet not sharing any of the personal details of her life with him when their relationship was strictly professional, and yet he never shares anything with her about his cold fish parents or his lonely childhood spent in boarding school. I did understand Violet going the completely opposite direction of her old man - he's the hard-partying rock star, she was a child acting as the responsible parent to her own parent - but she's on the road with him a lot, her childhood was amazingly unconventional - the virgin thing strained folks.  Sorry, it did.  Also, there's no meaningful scenes in the book featuring Violet's father and it really could have added some depth to both Violet's character, as well as Matt's once he's knocked up Violet. 

And speaking of - Matt doesn't want kids, he doesn't believe in love, and yet he doesn't use a condom his first time with Violet.  Of course she's using "something" but it inevitably fails because....Harlequin Presents.  Oh, and did I mention that Violet starts working as a PA at 20, has two previous jobs prior to working for Matt and she's all of 26 at the start of this story?  Only in Presents Land!

It's readable. It was a quick airplane read while traveling, but it's a mess. Not only is it a mess, it's a boring mess.  Which honestly, boring is the kiss of death for a Presents. 

Final Grade = D

#TBRChallenge 2023: Atomic Beauty

The Book: Atomic Beauty by Barb Han

The Particulars: Harlequin Intrigue Noir, 2015, Digital-Only, Novella

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: Late 2014/Early 2015 Harlequin published seven novellas under the series title "Noir" within the Harlequin Intrigue line. The novellas aren't a traditional series, more like an imprint.  Kind of like how Blaze started out as an imprint of Harlequin Temptation before Harlequin spun it out into it's own line.  Anyway, the concept intrigued (ha!) me and after reading one by a local author, I ended up snapping up the rest.  

The Review: So, I'm in a slump and said slump is of the variety where I just don't have the spoons to do any reading. But I'm the dang hostess of this here Challenge and missing a month grates against my hardworkin' Midwestern work ethic.  So I did what every panicky TBR Challenger does when starring down the barrel of the "deadline" - I dove into my Kindle looking for a novella.

This month's theme is Opposites Attract and honestly you have to squint really hard to find any semblance of that here, but...desperate.  I was in for a penny, in for a pound and was able to knock this one out on a Sunday afternoon.

Erika Nile is an agent working for an organization run by her father's BFF and ties to the CIA are bandied about.  Anywho, she's been tasked by Daddy's BFF to get close to a rogue agent, Jace Mitchell, who apparently has some sensitive information.  Erika's orders are to get that information, transmit it, and oh yeah - don't actually read it or worry your pretty little head over it.  One slight problem however - Erika has recently developed debilitating migraines.  I'm talking light sensitivity, aura, passing out, incapacitated for long stretches of time migraines - and she hasn't told anyone.  She's going to get this job done and then get checked out. 

She finds Jace, she gets close to him, and naturally feelings start developing.  The chemistry is off the charts electric for both of them, and there's nothing for it.  They have the kind of sex that you'd find in a hot vanilla erotic romance.  There's lots of guilt for both of them - Jace because he's keeping secrets, Erika because she's keeping secrets.  In post-coital bliss Erika is able to grab the intel, transmit it to her boss, and then - you guessed it - he orders her to kill Jace.  Um, uh-oh.

Now that I've read a second novella in this series, and refreshed my memory about the first one I read back in 2017 (!), a pattern is starting to develop - we're talking style over substance here.  This novella is very slick and sexy.  You've got a spy vs spy vibe going on with a little bit of Jason Bourne tossed in.  There's secrets and lies and what nefarious plot did Jace uncover that his former boss (Erika's current boss) wants to exterminate him over?  I get what Harlequin was aiming for here, the two Noir novellas I've read so far have been very stylish and a lot sexier than your average Intrigue. I think this could have worked as an on-going mini-series if not for one pressing issue....

A novella just isn't long enough.  It's just not.  There's the bones of a good plot and story here but at 101 pages (according to Amazon) the author has to take shortcuts, and in a story about spies and espionage?  I found myself going from point A to point C with no layover at point B to tie it all together.  And when I got to the ending?  It just didn't make much sense to me. Insert confused Britney gif... 

Oh, and the heroine's migraines?  We never truly get a reason or "resolution" to those.  I mean, I was leaning towards drugs or an implant for a long time but then a repressed memory is tossed into the mix and I guess that was the reason?  Look, the human brain is a mysterious and complicated thing, but I wasn't buying it.  Erika's migraines are described as violently depilating - I need more than a throwaway mention of repressed memories.

Is this a good story?  Eh?  Look, it's stylish and slick and I wasn't mad while reading it.  But that's really all it is - stylish and slick.  The Intrigue line is one of the shorter and trickier ones to pull off in the category romance universe (they average at 250 pages) and I think this story would have been better served at that page count.  But as is there were just too many leaps, the world-building not fleshed out enough, too little meat on the bone. However, it wasn't a total failure - I'm glad I have the other Noir novellas in my TBR because they are quick, sexy and slick reads, but that might be all they are.  Fun brain candy for an afternoon but not a meal that'll leave me sated.

Final Grade = C

#TBRChallenge 2023: The Little Library

The Book: The Little Library by Kim Fielding

The Particulars: Contemporary romance, 2018, self-published, in print, stand alone

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: I mean, c'mon.

The Review: I usually try to tackle something out of the print pile for the TBR Challenge but had decided on something LGBTQ+ for this month's Love Is Love theme, which meant taking a Kindle deep dive since, as a general rule, my digital TBR runs more diverse. This one was buried in the depths of my "Contemporary" folder and I was off to the races.

Elliott Thompson is a historian who was teaching and on the tenure track at his last university gig. He was also in a closeted affair with the department head (who was his dissertation advisor - oof!) and when that goes spectacularly sideways, Elliott is out of a job. Frankly he barely gets out of town with his good name cleared of any wrongdoing.  So Elliott does what stung people have done since the dawn of time, he finds a soft place to land.  He heads home to Modesto, California, is teaching online community college courses, and has basically closed himself off from relationships other than his brother and sister-in-law and seeing people on his daily runs.  Besides running, his other coping mechanism is books (oh man, did I FEEL this hard!). Elliott spends an inordinate amount of time on a certain online retailer browsing books at random and dropping them into his cart.  His brother is worried about him and, to a lesser extent, the book habit - which is how Elliott lands on the idea to build his own Free Little Library. He'll clean out some of his books and it's a chance to maybe meet people. There, that should get Ladd off his back!

One of the people that Elliott meets on his daily run and thanks to his library is Simon Odisho, a sexy bear of a man who walks with a cane. Simon is a cop, shot in the line of duty, now out on disability and going through the grueling process of physical therapy. He's also in the closet. Simon is Assyrian, and it's nearly impossible to not run into a member of his large, conservative family in Modesto. He also, rather conveniently, lives in Simon's neighborhood. These two spark together almost immediately but it's very complicated.  Elliott's past furtive relationship with his closeted mentor, Simon not being out to his family, and Elliott routinely applying for jobs at universities trying to get back into that game.  And wouldn't you know it? As soon as he and Simon start to develop real feelings for each other a university comes calling. 

This is a very quiet, low-angst book and the first third of it is rather slow. It predominantly focusses on Elliott starting to dip his toe back into life, and while it's all good groundwork being laid, it's not until he and Simon start dating (yes, actual dating! In a romance novel!) that things picked up for me. 

I was anxious to finally get more of Simon in the story, but early on he read a little young for me - which strained a bit, but is somewhat understandable. To some extent he is a bit in a suspended state of adolescence. Oh, he's had sex with men. Has accepted he's attracted to men. But he's not out to anyone in his life and he hasn't "dated" a man before. So it's all very new.  What I liked about this aspect of the story is that Elliott tells Simon about his ex and Simon knows he cannot ask Elliott to date in the closet indefinitely.  However they agree that until they know where this "thing" between them is going, they'll keep it all nice, casual and on the down-low.

Like I said, quiet and low-angst - but we also have two characters who talk to each other and when the feelings get big is when things start to cook. I also liked that into this mix the author essentially crafts a community around Elliott's Little Library and provides a small dollop of conflict with an asshole neighbor who lives across the street.

These are two characters, both at a crossroads, who fall in love and then must wrestle with the hard choice of what they truly want. Does Elliott really want to get back on that tenure-track hamster wheel? Is Simon satisfied with continuing to hide all of himself to his family? I mean, c'mon. We all know how this is going to turn out, and for the most part it goes exactly where I wanted it to. I was less enamored with the epilogue, but it's telegraphed early on so I saw it coming, and it's not like I haven't read countless variations in romance novels featuring hetero-couples over the years.  But I was able to let it slide mainly because the big emotional stuff at that end is so well done.

This was a nice read that scratched a small-town romance itch for me. All around pleasant.

Final Grade = B

#TBRChallenge 2023: Historical Romance Novella Round-Up

I got a spring head cold a few weeks back that turned out to be a bit of a vampire. It was my first cold since before COVID (I know!) and it wiped me out. Lucky me, I got better just in time for My Man to come down with it! So, yeah. My reading mojo got derailed for a bit and this month's TBR Challenge snuck up on me.  My answer to this? Find some novellas, and quick! Which worked out well for this month's Freebie theme. I like to read short, I like novellas, so when authors offer them up as promotional free downloads, I tend to snap up them up.  I ended up devouring three of them late one night and like all things novellas - it was a decidedly mixed bag.

First up was A Sweet Surrender by Lena Hart, which I downloaded back in 2017 and was originally published in the For Love & Liberty anthology that also featured Be Not Afraid by Alyssa Cole.  Set during the American Revolution, this one features a half-Native, half-Black heroine and a British officer dude she nurses back to health after he's wounded in an ambush.  

Here's the problem, it features all the problematic "stuff" readers have come to expect in romances featuring indigenous people and colonizers - and a novella is just too little room to adequately explore that. On top of that there's a heaping dose of dubious consent (she says "no," he convinces her otherwise...) and these two decide they're madly in love with each other at a lightning pace.  It's wildly uneven. In order for a story like this to have a chance of working, it needs to be a doorstopper saga. Multigenerational wouldn't hurt either.  As a novella?  Nope.  Also, the story itself is around 80 pages, but the Kindle edition clocks in at 152, which means you get a rather large excerpt for the second story in the series after this one ends. Not a big deal for me since I downloaded this for free, but I know that kind of thing really irritates some readers.  

Final Grade = D

I don't have a record of downloading The French Maid by Sabrina Jeffries from Big Brother Amazon, which means I'm pretty sure I got this as a free download at (most likely) an RWA conference.  This is a short story that clocks in around 30 pages. The writing is smooth, and I liked the story - but it's also the kind of story that if you look at it for too long it starts to irritate you.  

Our heroine is no raving beauty, but she's smart and well-connected, making her the perfect wife for our hero with ambitions to one day be Prime Minister.  They've been married a year and she's feeling neglected. He's the type of guy who schedules intimacy with his wife (Wednesday nights) and the rest of the time he pays about as much attention to her as a potted plant.  When her lady's maid leaves their employment to marry, he does have the presence of mind to hire his wife a new one (a French one!) but of course doesn't consult her on this matter in the least. 

The moral of this story is that marriage takes work and if you neglect it, it will die on the vine. I liked that Babette basically tells the heroine, "Yeah, he's neglecting you but what exactly have you done about it? (The answer is nothing, the heroine is suffering in silence) You're both being lazy." Of course how do these two start to come together? A makeover of course. It takes the hero seeing the heroine all prettied up to start the process of getting his head out of his ass, and if I think about that too long I'm just annoyed.  Look pretty girls or be doomed to a life of neglect from your husband.

Final Grade = C

Harlequin has about as much luck with novella lines (see: Harlequin Historical Undone, Spice Briefs and Carina Press's Dirty Bits) as they do romantic comedy category romance lines, but I liked Undone. They were quick, short, and typically ran sexier than regular Harlequin Historicals. I thought I had read all the ones I owned, but then I found An Imprudent Lady by Elaine Golden buried on my Kindle, having downloaded it as a freebie back in 2011!

The heroine (a Lady) is in her 30s and officially a dried up old spinster. When she was younger she fell passionately in love with a doctor's son - a mere mister. This was a scandal of epic proportions for her parents, so they pull all the strings and bingo-bango, the hero's exiled to India.  Well, guess what? He's back. Her father may be dead, but her mother has a dang fit of apoplexy.  With the youngest daughter having her first Season and Evil Mama determined to make an excellent match, the scandal reigniting is the last thing they need!  Of course the heroine and hero are still hung up on each other, and as the story moves forward we learn the lengths the heroine's family went to to keep the two star-crossed lovers apart.

If you're a fan of the star-crossed trope, this one really worked for me. There's secrets, there's lies, and it's all in a short enough package (80 pages) that it never wears out it's welcome.  There's also passion and sizzle between the couple, with some well done sexy-times to spice up the proceedings.  It's the first book in a trilogy of novellas, with the youngest daughter and the heroine's older brother getting their own stories.  I can't believe I missed this one the first go around (I read SO many of these Undones back in the day!) but I was glad to find it now.

Final Grade = B

#TBRChallenge 2023: The Prisoner

The Book: The Prisoner by Cheryl Reavis

The Particulars: Historical Romance, Harlequin Historical #126, 1992, out of print, available digitally (self-published reprint with additional material added), first book in series

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: Reavis is a favorite and has both historical and contemporary romances in my keeper stash

The Review: I have had a used copy of the original Harlequin Historical edition in my print TBR stash for a very long time - where it languished, as books tend to do in my TBR, until finally here I am many years older with really crappy eyesight.  So when I decided that this was the book I was going to read for this month's Unusual Historical prompt, I downloaded the self-published edition available via Kindle Unlimited with the extra "lost chapters."  This is definitely an instance where 1) I would have liked this book better as a baby, less jaded, less cantankerous reader and 2) where the lost chapters should have truly stayed lost. More on that in a moment...

The book opens in 1865, during the final gasping days of the Civil War.  Union Captain John Howe has been in a hellhole prisoner of war camp in Salisbury, North Carolina, where conditions not great to begin with have rapidly deteriorated.  He's near starvation, sick, desperate and makes a run for it via a tunnel the prisoners have dug - his best friend getting left behind and presumed dead when said tunnel collapses. He has to make it to a house in town where there's a local war profiteer that will provide him with passes and a disguise to get north - except John picks the wrong house and gets saddled with a pretty young captive as a grand prize.

Amanda Douglas lives with her emotionally abusive minister father and loving stepmother.  Long story short, Amanda is paying for the sins of her mother.  She's home alone when John Howe breaks in and Daddy Dearest walks in on a situation that looks compromising enough that he jumps right to the conclusion that she's a whore no better than her mother.  Stuff happens, they eventually land at the profiteer's house, and now John and Amanda are on the run despite not liking or trusting one another even a tiny bit. Basically it's get me north to my family and I'll make sure you're not hung out to dry - and really, other than her stepmother, there's nothing for Amanda in North Carolina. She reluctantly chooses John.

First, let's start off with the good. Reavis has a way of painting pictures with words and creating a world that as a reader I can fall right into.  It's richly drawn without spending too much time in the weeds.  Her characters are also, generally, very interesting.  There's a number of secondary characters I really liked in this story, an army doctor and Amanda's stepmother being the most interesting to me.  Also, having read the second book, The Bride Fair, many years ago (and I loved it back then) - it was great to finally read about the guilt and baggage that the hero in this book has in regards to the hero of that second book.

So what's the problem?  Well, Amanda and John are what I call hot-and-cold-running characters - which means mood swings.  A lot of them.  Which yes, makes some sense given the circumstances of how they meet - but that doesn't make it any less exhausting.  Also, for a book with "lost chapters" included, the timeline of when John is delirious from sickness and fever and Amanda has to prop him up, lug him around through their travels, jumps ahead in time and leaves quite a few blank spaces. I was disappointed that none of the lost chapters addressed the gaps in that timeline.

There's also the small matter that this is a Civil War book and it's strangely apolitical. John refers to Amanda as "Reb" but Amanda is about as political as a potted fern - which honestly, I could almost buy into given she had lived her entire life up to that point in a home with an emotionally abusive father.  When that is your life, are you really going to think of much else outside of that bubble?

Eventually John gets home, Amanda finds out his family is kind of a big deal, there's a misunderstanding perpetrated by his overbearing mother (that John, even though he KNOWS what kind of woman his mother is, doesn't suspect she just might be behind the third act separation when Amanda runs off? Like really John?! Like, really?!?!??!).  Then there's a reunion, more drama, and then what is quite obviously the original final chapter.

Original cover

The "lost chapters" in the self-published version are all tacked on at the end of the original final chapter - and some of them are interesting because it does give the reader a bit more time to spend with the secondary characters.  Unfortunately it also gives the reader more time to spend with John and Amanda, which means another misunderstanding, which means another instance where she runs off, which means I now think that these two are one more misunderstanding away from imploding entirely.  This is also when the author includes some politics and honestly, staying apolitical would have been better. John is still in the Army and leading the occupying forces in Salisbury.  The idea being that he's now married to a local and things will go more smoothly (never mind most of the locals now consider Amanda a Yankee whore) and there's nonsense in there with Amanda telling John that the Southerners are conquered but should still be allowed to have their pride.

Look, do you know what Southern pride got us in this country?  Jim Crow among other things.  Apolitical was better, thanks.

So where does that leave us?  Well, I'd probably give the original version of this book somewhere around a C+ maybe?  John and Amanda just didn't really work for me as a romantic couple, but Reavis' world-building and secondary characters were on-point.  The lost chapters section?  Ugh, probably a D. They should have stayed on the cutting room floor, because if anything they made me believe less in Amanda and John as a viable couple.  Plus the politics in this section annoyed me.

Final Grade = Oh, who the hell knows, let's say C

#TBRChallenge 2023: A Night of Scandal

The Book: A Night of Scandal by Sarah Morgan

The Particulars: Contemporary romance, Harlequin Presents #3000, 2011, available digitally, first book in The Notorious Wolfes continuity series.

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: Once I discovered Sarah Morgan I glommed nearly, if not all, of her category romance backlist - which mainly reside in the Presents and Medical lines.

The Review: This month's optional TBR Challenge theme is Baggage, and you will never want for baggage in a Presents.  If anything you might be crushed under the weight of said baggage. Yes, sometimes less is more, but nobody ever says that about Presents.  More is usually more - with varying degrees of success.

Nathaniel Wolfe (of course his surname is Wolfe - that's how you know he's the hero in a Harlequin Presents novel...) is a big time, dreamboat, Hollywood movie star.  The kind of guy that men want to be and women want to be with. Devastatingly handsome, notorious playboy, but also (shockingly enough) a damn good actor. Unfortunately he's a book often judged by his cover, so he's back in England to star in a play, a contemporary retelling of Richard III.  It's the hottest ticket in town, it's opening night, and it all comes to a screeching halt when the curtain lifts and Nathaniel catches his past sitting right there in the front row.  He completely shuts down, tells the audience to get a refund at the box office on their way out, and takes off running - right smack dab into Katie Field.

Katie is the costume designer for the show and, quite frankly, she's counting on it to be her big break.  She needs the break, and the money that would come with potentially more costume design gigs.  When Dear Old Dad died, his mountain of gambling debts were uncovered. An addiction her mother was aware of, but that Katie and her sister were blindsided by.  Sis, a breathtakingly beautiful supermodel, got angry and essentially cut ties with her family.  Katie, ever the dutiful, "frumpier" sister works her fingers to the bone to keep Mom in the family home.  She cannot afford to get distracted, which means she's largely avoided Nathaniel as much as humanly possible outside of costume fittings.  Besides, he doesn't even know her name - he calls her "wardrobe."  So it's all a bit shocking to realize he 1) does know her name 2) convinces her to help him getaway from the theater and avoid the paparazzi and 3) convince her to let him hole up in her tiny, depressing apartment.  I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

I'm not immune to Hollywood stud falling for nobody stories (I'm not a monster!) but this is pretty flat. Sorry folks, what we have here for a long time is a dreaded Meh, It's OK book.  Both Nathaniel and Katie read pretty much like "types" for the first half of this story.  He's the hunky Hollywood star with a Big Secret! She's the pretty girl who thinks she's frumpy because she's living in her glamorous sister's shadow!  For a long time they never quite felt real to me - more like tropes on the page.

But they weren't unlikeable and certainly I was intrigued by Nathaniel's Big Secret. Who was sitting in the front row and why did it have him running scared?  So even though the characters read a bit flat to me, I kept me flipping the pages - which worked out because things get better at about 50%.  That's when pieces of the real Nathaniel start to peak though.  That's when Katie gets a little feisty and slings a few choice words his way.  And once the Big Secret comes out?  Whoa doggie - it's Grade A Soap Opera Drama Llama.  I immediately looked up the next seven titles in this series.

Also, as far as Presents go, this one avoids some of the nastier pitfalls - although some pitfalls still exist.  There is some vague "not like other girls" nonsense but it's nowhere near as egregious as any romance reader has read elsewhere.  Katie is, of course she is, a virgin - because of course.  But Nathaniel really isn't an Alphahole.  Oh make no mistake, he can lay on the lothario playboy shtick, but he's not in that class of Presents hero that you would happily dropkick into the sun if given the opportunity.  

Would I recommend it?  If you're a Morgan completist or wanting to get sucked into a continuity soap opera?  Sure.  For everyone else?  Morgan has written stronger Presents.  Might I recommend A Night of No Return and An Invitation to Sin?

Final Grade = C+

#TBRChallenge 2023: Appalachian Abduction

The Book: Appalachian Abduction by Debbie Herbert

The Particulars: Romantic suspense, Harlequin Intrigue #1772, Book 2 in Lavender Mountain trilogy, Out of print, Available digitally

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: Back in that long ago time of 2018, I read the first book in this trilogy and was intrigued (see what I did there?) by enough on the page to be curious about book two. Yes, I'm well aware it's now five years later. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Spoilers Ahoy!

The Review: I'm currently in the middle of a slump which (I'm fairly certain) is being caused by my all-of-the-place-I-don't-know-what-I-want-to-read mood. I'd read two chapters of a historical western I thought I was in the mood for only to DNF it in a fit of "it's me, not you" pique. With my own Challenge deadline barreling down on me I knew I had to find something to read and fast and figured a Harlequin Intrigue was my best bet. When this line is good I inhale the books. They can be fast-paced, exciting, and I rarely come up for air once I start them.  When the line isn't so good?  Well, you get the opposite. Plus I was feeling a little nostalgic for a backwoods shenanigans fix and this book was nearly front and center in my Harlequin storage cupboard.  So, how was it?  

Charlotte Helms is squatting in a backwoods cabin on Lavender Mountain and casing a swanky house in an exclusive gated community.  Why?  Currently an undercover cop on leave from the Atlanta PD, she's convinced the house is at the center of a child-trafficking ring, and the case is personal. She's convinced her BFF's missing teenage daughter, Jenny, is in that house.

The fly in the ointment? She didn't realize she was squatting in a cabin owned by a local cop. Officer James Tedder is former military and been on the job for six months. His sister is now happily married to his boss (now the local sheriff) and while she's pestering James about finding someone and settling down, he's fine. I mean, he doesn't sleep much and has a touch of the PTSD, but really he's fine.  So what if he keeps inexplicably driving by the family cabin with all it's good and bad memories when he's doing his local patrol.  Naturally that's when he finds Charlotte squatting in the old cabin, injured from a run-in with the local baddies, and feeding him a line of BS he doesn't buy for a minute.

We all know what happens next - Charlotte eventually spills the truth of why she was squatting on his land, and after a debrief with his brother-in-law, these two are now partners working to find evidence to bust the child-trafficking ring.

Intrigue books are short (around 250 pages) which can make them very fast-paced, but brain-bending whodunits are harder to pull off.  That's why so many of them lean more on the thriller end of the mystery genre.  There's not a lot of mystery here - the reader knows there's a child-trafficking ring and we know that Charlotte knows that the couple who owns the house are likely the masterminds. It's the finding and rescuing of the victims that keeps the story humming along.

The problem here is that it's not terribly exciting when the bad guys are so amazingly inept.  I mean, bare minimum all they had to do was lay low and not cause a fuss.  Instead the hired goons are doing things like openly firing on police officers in patrol cars, running them off the road, and sending threatening messages.  And here's the thing - Charlotte has nothing. I mean, less than nothing. All she's got is witness testimony from a girl who escaped but has since vanished into the wind. Like, she's gone.  Then of course you have our masterminds who decide to hold a fundraiser for the Lavender Mountain Sheriff's department very close to their home (the gated community clubhouse!) when they know Charlotte and James are poking around and will be at said fundraiser. And conveniently these geniuses decide to not move the girls. It's all pretty thin.

The romance here is fine. Charlotte did get on my nerves a fair amount - one of those I'm Tough and Strong and Can Take Care of Myself types.  A little of her went a long way for me, but she never crossed a line for me where I would have happily throttled her, so that's something I guess.  James was OK.  A decent guy just trying to do right by his community yada yada yada.

I continued to enjoy the northern Georgia Appalachian setting, although I felt like this was better drawn and utilized in the first book.  Also, the Tedder family is viewed through a white-trash hillbilly lens by most everyone in town - and it makes sense that now sister Lilah is married to the respected town sheriff that this would be toned down somewhat, but I gotta be honest and say I missed that aspect in this story.  But then I'm a sucker for "wrong side of the tracks" type characters.

Was this a complete failure for me? Absolutely not.  Was it a resounding success?  Meh.  But hey, I read it in two sittings and given that prior to this book I read 2 chapters in about two weeks? That's nothing to sneeze at. 

Final Grade = C

#TBRChallenge Review: Meant-To-Be Family

The Book: Meant-To-Be Family by Marion Lennox

The Particulars: Harlequin Medical Romance #734, Book 2 in Midwives On-Call continuity series, 2015, out of print, available in digital

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: After discovering Marion Lennox a few years back I started glomming her backlist. My records indicate this was a used bookstore find back in 2019.

🧨 Warning: All The Spoilers! 🧨

The Review: One might think that the hostess of this challenge would be ahead of the curve and not procrastinate. You would be wrong. It was Saturday afternoon before I went looking for a book that fit this month's Second Chance theme, and I figured my cupboard full of Harlequins was a good place to start. This was the second book I pulled off the shelf, it fit the theme perfectly, and I knew with Lennox writing I was going to get some angst - and boy howdy, did I get the angst.  The spoiler warning? Yeah, that's because this book has some heavy trigger warnings. This review is basically a public service.

Emily Evans is having a day. Her foster daughter isn't doing well and she's distraught. Gretta has Down's Syndrome and an inoperable heart condition. The little girl is dying.  Emily knew going into this that Gretta would die. There's nothing anybody can do. Her mother, who helps Emily with Gretta (age 4) and her foster son Toby (age 2) practically pushes Emily out the door to work, which she's running late for. She's a midwife at Melbourne's Victoria Hospital, a job she loves and while her ice queen boss is in a better mood these days thanks to her recent engagement, there's still gonna be hell to pay for being late.  Naturally it all goes from bad to worse when she swings her sturdy family sedan into her parking place only to side-swipe a flashy vintage Morgan. Could this day get any worse?  The answer is yes, yes it could.  Because the man sitting behind the wheel of the Morgan is none other than her estranged husband, Dr. Oliver Evans.

Of all the hospitals in all the world, he had to walk into hers. Oliver and Emily were married ten years ago, five of which were spent on heartbreaking, grueling IVF treatments.  Finally they get pregnant, only to have their son, Josh, be delivered as a premature stillborn. Emily puts her foot down after that. She's done with IVF. She cannot do it anymore. But she desperately wants children (as does Oliver) and she tells him, let's look into adoption.  Oliver snaps.  This man, yes THIS MAN, tells her "Em, I can't. I know adoption's the only way, but I can't do it. I can't guarantee to love a child who's not our own." Shortly thereafter they separate. That was five years ago.

Medicals are one of Harlequin's slimmer lines (about the length of a Presents or Desire) and there is A TON to unpack here. The reader learns about what split up Oliver and Emily in Chapter 2, so pretty early on you're going to hate this guy. Of course there's a backstory to why Oliver feels the way  he does about adoption - he was adopted. His parents ended up getting pregnant some years after he was adopted and once they had "their own son" they literally start comparing Oliver to a cuckoo. Oliver grows up, becomes a doctor, marries a wonderful woman - none of that matters. He's not their "real" son. So while I wanted to throat-punch Oliver, one would see how he would have hang-ups about adoption.

Emily is the exact opposite.  This is a woman brimming with love. The kind of woman who gives freely of herself, even though she knows it will open her up to heartache. Her and Oliver never divorced. They're still married at the start of this story, and she finds that telling. She moved on. She became a foster mother. Oliver did go to the States, continued his training, but there's been no one else. No new girlfriends, no children (even though he too wants children), nothing. 

This entire book is an emotional gut-punch. Oliver is emotionally broken, and what Emily realizes over the course of this story is that he was that way before they even met and got married. Oliver was damaged goods when they said "I do" - but it took the heartbreak of their journey towards starting a family to unravel their relationship.  I also really appreciated that it was the dude hung up on "we can't have 'our own' children" BS that runs amok in the genre.  So often it's the heroine flailing herself against those rocks.  This is also a romance where the ethical issues of the couples' jobs aren't hand-waved away for the sake of getting the couple a happy ending.  These two have to work for it, and it comes in the form of Oliver learning that found family can be the sweetest family of all.

That said, there's a lot of landmines in this story.  Remember Gretta?  This is a book with no miracle cure. The four-year-old girl dies over the course of the story folks, don't say you weren't warned.  Also, while I'm glad Oliver realizes what an ass he is, that he learns to open himself up to love and all the good and bad that goes along with that, this is a dude who needs therapy.  Like, no joke. Emily actually mentions it to him once, that the hospital has some very qualified folks he could talk to, but it doesn't happen over the course of the story.  Sure, sure, he and Emily reunite and live happily-ever-after but true love does not unravel the years of emotional abuse that Oliver experienced with his adoptive parents (thank the sweet Lord they stay off page). Couple this with Gretta's death, and that Toby also has health issues, when stress meets Oliver's baggage - I'd like to believe he'll have the tools in place to not backslide - and I'm not entirely convinced he does by the end of the story.

The secondary characters are welcome additions (Emily's mother, her neighbors who were FANASTIC!) and while this is part of a continuity series, it stands alone well.  It's not a book for everybody.  It's very emotional, dealing with the very heavy and painful topic of infertility and the death of a child. I didn't read this so much as inhale it but I recognize it's a lot. It's the sort of book I recommend but with a lot of caveats thrown in, because I can completely understand some folks reading this review and automatically nope'ing right out.  I think it's a triumph for Lennox, but oh man, is it ever complicated.

Final Grade = B+

All Aboard! Sign-Up for the 2023 #TBRChallenge!

Thank you everyone who recently took the time to fill out my Google Form soliciting theme suggestions for the 2023 TBR Challenge.  Outside of the traditional December theme (y'all just need to learn to live with that one!), these were all suggestions taken from the poll with a few minor tweaks in some instances for brevity and/or making the theme more expansive. Opening up a poll for theme suggestions has seriously been one of the smarter things I've done since I took over hosting this challenge and seriously - thank you all who helped out with ideas for 2023!

But we're getting ahead of ourselves.  What is the #TBRChallenge?

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: once a month pull a dormant book out of your TBR pile and read it.  On the 3rd Wednesday of the month, talk about that book.

Participation is as easy as being on social media!

• If you're on social media all you need to do is use the #TBRChallenge hashtag - there's no need to sign-up and your participation can vary throughout the year.
• You can use this hashtag on any day, at any time - but we're still going to concentrate on the 3rd Wednesday of every month to kick our commentary into high gear.  
• The idea is to have at least one day a month where we can always count on there being book chatter.

Want to let your blogging freak flag fly?  If you have a blog and want to post TBR commentary there, drop me a comment on this post with a link to your blog or hit me up on Twitter or Mastodon.  I like to post links to the various blogs on my TBR Challenge page so those who follow along can start following you.

Sound good?  Of course it does!  So what are the themes for 2023?  So glad you asked!

January 18 - Starting Over
February 15 - Getaway
March 15 - Baggage
April 19 - Unusual Historical
May 17 - Freebie
June 21 - Love is Love
July 19 - Opposites Attract
August 16 - Tropetastic!
September 20 - New Author
October 18 - Danger Zone
November 15 - Once Upon a Time...
December 20 - Festive

I know some of these are going to require a bit of planning on my part, but remember - if it all seems like too much bother - the themes are always optional. The goal of this challenge isn't so much what you read, so long as you're reading something (anything!) out of your TBR.

My hope is always for this Challenge to be low-key, stress-free and fun!  So I hope you'll consider joining this year. Be like me - use this Challenge to delude yourself into thinking you're actually making some progress on your book hording 😉.