Tag Archives: Romance

Review: The Unruly Heart of Miss Darcy by Erin Edwards

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The Unruly Heart of Miss Darcy by Erin Edwards

The Unruly Heart of Miss Darcy
Erin Edwards
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published April 7, 2026

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About The Unruly Heart of Miss Darcy

Mr. Darcy got his happily ever after in Pride and Prejudice, and now it’s his sister’s turn in this swoony queer romance, perfect for fans of Bridgerton.

Georgiana Darcy has only ever kissed one girl before, and the resulting blackmail almost ruined her reputation. Since then, she’s carefully calibrated her life to be as quiet as possible, focusing on books and music. She certainly isn’t planning on falling in love with another girl. But then she meets Kitty Bennet, and everything is thrown off kilter.

After a moonlit kiss shifts their newfound friendship into something more, Georgiana follows Kitty to the Bennets’ home. The visit proves ill-timed when she encounters the one man who knows her secret and threatened her with it before. Terrified of testing the limits of her family’s love and of putting Kitty in danger, Georgiana doesn’t know if there’s any chance of a happy ending.

Every etiquette guide she’s ever read makes it clear that if she wants to protect her family name, Georgiana must pretend her heart follows society’s accepted rhythm. Unless, with a little help from those who understand how it feels, she can compose the future she and Kitty both deserve.

My Review

It’s always interesting to read a spin-off of Pride and Prejudice. It’s the work by Jane Austen that I’m most familiar with (and a go-to audiobook when I’m having trouble sleeping), so I sometimes get picky about how authors reimagine or eliminate certain story elements.

This story takes place after the original timeline and follows the coming-of-age of Georgiana Darcy. It also features Kitty Bennet, the sister most overlooked in the original.

I liked how the book reimagines both Georgiana and Kitty. Both characters felt like they could conceivably be found in the original novel, but our understanding today of neurodivergence and identity gives the characters’ interpretations new space to expand. I especially love that, in this story, Georgiana is a composer as well as a musician. That was a nice touch. Kitty wants to explore the world, which seems very much in line with her impulsive nature in Austen’s novel.

Some minor characters seemed a little oversimplified, but for the most part, I appreciated getting to see this familiar cast on scene in this sweet story. I enjoyed the development of the girls’ romance, and especially loved that Edwards included an older couple to mentor them at a critical moment.

All in all, if you’re looking for a sapphic regency era romance, definitely try this one.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
Vague references to homophobia or fears of homophobic reactions to coming out. References to a blackmail situation before the story began.

Drug Content
None.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

Review: The Heiress of Nowhere by Stacey Lee

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The Heiress of Nowhere
Stacey Lee
Sarah Barley Books/Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Published March 17, 2026

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About The Heiress of Nowhere

An orphan races to uncover a killer—who may have come from the sea—when she and her beloved orcas fall under suspicion in this “atmospheric…beguiling” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) historical gothic mystery from the New York Times bestselling author of The Downstairs Girl, Stacey Lee.

1918. Orcas Island, Washington.

Lucy Nowhere has spent her eighteen years working on the vast estate of the eccentric shipbuilder who took her in after she washed ashore in a green canoe as a baby. But she has long wished for a life off the island, and in a matter of days, she is set to leave for college—and, for the first time, choose her own future.

Then she finds her employer’s severed head on the beach. Rumors swirl that a mischievous spirit and its minions, the sea wolves, have struck again. Lucy doesn’t believe in myths. She knows that a human—a human murderer—killed him. And when she is unexpectedly named heiress to the estate, she understands the next target is her.

Her closest friend, the estate’s vigilant young guard, begs her to escape while she can. But Lucy knows the only way she can discover who she is, and free the island of its curse, is to find the real killer—before she becomes the next victim.

My Review

I’m super late to the Stacey Lee fan club, but wow, I loved this book. It’s so different than other books I’ve read. The story has a bit of a spiritual or magical edge, plus all the tension of a murder mystery. I thought those elements, along with the historical setting, made this a very memorable reading experience.

Heiress of Nowhere brings together many plot elements and a fairly large cast of characters, but Lee keeps these components in perfect balance. I felt like I got a sense of the characters and invested in the relationships Lucy formed. One of my favorite characters was the secretary. I didn’t expect her to be such an important part of the story, but I loved the way that Lucy bonded with her and Flossie.

The murder mystery and the mystery surrounding the orcas and their behavior absolutely propelled me through this book. I ate up every breadcrumb that the author dropped and guessed at all the clues. It was a very engaging read.

Something about this book made me think of Angeline Boulley’s books. This story doesn’t center on Indigenous people or beliefs, but it does explore some of the history of Chinese immigrants in Washington state. I really enjoyed it and highly recommend reading Heiress of Nowhere.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 16 up.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Strong profanity used very infrequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing.

Spiritual Content
One character experiences a supernatural connection between themself and an animal. Rumors hold that another person experienced a connection like this, too.

Violent Content
References to the death of animals. A man’s head washes up on the beach after he’s murdered. Reference to a similar murder years before. Someone attacks another person and threatens to torture them to death or end their life quickly if they tell a secret. Two men get into a fistfight several times. References to an argument in which someone shot someone else in the leg. Reference to possible death by suicide (happens off-page).

Drug Content
Characters consume alcohol in a few scenes (legally).

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

Review: Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins

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Sunrise on the Reaping (A Hunger Games Novel)
Suzanne Collins
Scholastic Press
Published March 18, 2025

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About Sunrise on the Reaping

The phenomenal fifth book in the Hunger Games series!

When you’ve been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?

As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.

Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.

When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.

My Review

Where do I begin? In some ways, I think Haymitch’s story may be easier to tell than President Snow’s origin story. Snow becomes the villain. We know how Haymitch’s tale ends, and though it does start at kind of a low point when he enters the scene in The Hunger Games, we sense that he was more than the alcoholic recluse he’s become. This story shows us how much more.

I think Collins did a great job connecting this book to The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which occurs fifteen years before this book, and The Hunger Games, which occurs twenty-four years after it. That couldn’t have been easy.

The story also contains a lot of surprising moments and some really fun cameos. (Wiress and Beetee, for example.) Katniss’s parents are also in the story. We know Haymitch outlasts the other tributes, but the story introduces some other goals and stakes. It sets up how and why Haymitch reacts the way he does to Katniss and Peeta in The Hunger Games, especially when Katniss reacts to the game makers the way she does.

Beneath its surface, the story explores the power of propoganda. Haymitch gives a lot of thought to the difference between how the Capital defines itself and its policies versus his real experience in District 12. Participating in the Hunger Games gives him a unique opportunity to share his own message, if he can find a way to do so that can’t be ignored.

Some of the story’s components are similar to the other stories. The tributes from certain districts have trained their whole lives to compete, while those from others are barely surviving. It was interesting thinking about what motivated the tributes to behave as they have, and to watch Haymitch evaluate those motivations in light of his own values.

All in all, Sunrise on the Reaping is a great addition to the series. You could read it without having read the rest of the series first, but it will spoil some events in the original trilogy. I’d recommend starting with The Hunger Games first, if you haven’t read it yet.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 13 up.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Mild profanity used infrequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing.

Spiritual Content
Lenore believes when people die, they move to another plane of existence, where loved ones might find one another.

Violent Content
Multiple brief graphic descriptions of harm and death. Situations of peril. Gun violence. Fire. Poison. Animals attacking people.

Drug Content
References to drinking alcohol and illegally making alcohol.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. I borrowed a copy of this book from my library. All opinions are my own.

Review: The Scammer by Tiffany D. Jackson

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The Scammer
Tiffany D. Jackson
Quill Tree Books
Published October 7, 2025

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About The Scammer

A ripped-from-the-headlines thriller, following a freshman girl whose college life is turned upside down when her roommate’s ex-convict brother moves into their dorm and starts controlling their every move.

Out from under her overprotective parents, Jordyn is ready to kill it in prelaw at a prestigious, historically Black university in Washington DC. When her new roommate’s brother is released from prison, the last thing Jordyn expects is to come home and find the ex-convict on their dorm room sofa. But Devonte needs a place to stay while he gets back on his feet—and how could she say no to one of her new best friends?

Devonte is older, as charming as he is intelligent, pushing every student he meets to make better choices about their young lives. But Jordyn senses something sinister beneath his friendly advice and growing group of followers. When one of Jordyn’s roommates goes missing, she must enlist the help of the university’s lone white student to uncover the mystery—or become trapped at the center of a web of lies more tangled than she can imagine.

My Review

I’m posting about a lot of books that are my first time reading books by authors this week, and this is no exception. Tiffany D. Jackson has been on my reading list for a LONG time, but I finally managed to read one of her books.

And, wow. You know that feeling on a roller coaster, where you’re being propelled upward, and you know the fall is coming any minute? That’s how it felt reading this book. It’s called The Scammer, and the back cover copy offers some pretty strong clues about what kind of story this is, so I had no reason to be surprised by Devonte’s behavior. But I felt like I wanted to jump between him and those girls, or at least to tell Jordyn to listen to herself so many times.

It was easy to feel Devonte’s magnetism, both in how people responded to him and in the way his character was written. While I wanted Jordyn to escape, I also felt how affected she was by his words and ideas.

I thought it was a really interesting choice to set the story on an HBCU campus. This posed some interesting questions and introduced ideas that a different setting may not have centered as easily.

The story is timely and bold. Jordyn’s hunger for connection with her peers, especially her roommates, was so powerful. Her grief was also easy to sense. The balance between the mystery/suspense elements and the romance was perfect. I felt like both fit well within the story.

I’m a huge fan of this author now, and I want to read everything else she’s written. I think I already own several more of her books, so hopefully I’ll get to those this year.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 16 up.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Strong profanity used pretty frequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing. References to sex. One character tells another that their family abused them, even if they don’t remember it.

Spiritual Content
One character shares some brief information about her Christian faith. Another character directs others to refer to him as a god.

Violent Content
References to death by suicide (happens off-scene). Some scenes show domestic abuse and a group attacking one person at another’s direction. References to gun violence resulting in death.

Drug Content
Some scenes show teens (college students) drinking alcohol. Someone drugs another person’s drink.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

Review: Only This Beautiful Moment by Abdi Nazemian

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Only This Beautiful Moment
Abdi Nazemian
HarperCollins
Published May 9, 2023

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About Only This Beautiful Moment

From the Stonewall Honor–winning author of Like a Love Story comes a sweeping story of three generations of boys in the same Iranian family. Perfect for fans of Last Night at the Telegraph Club and Darius the Great Is Not Okay.

2019. Moud is an out gay teen living in Los Angeles with his distant father, Saeed. When Moud gets the news that his grandfather in Iran is dying, he accompanies his dad to Tehran, where the revelation of family secrets will force Moud into a new understanding of his history, his culture, and himself.

1978. Saeed is an engineering student with a promising future ahead of him in Tehran. But when his parents discover his involvement in the country’s burgeoning revolution, they send him to safety in America, a country Saeed despises. And even worse—he’s forced to live with the American grandmother he never knew existed.

1939. Bobby, the son of a calculating Hollywood stage mother, lands a coveted MGM studio contract. But the fairy-tale world of glamour he’s thrust into has a dark side.

Set against the backdrop of Tehran and Los Angeles, this tale of intergenerational trauma and love is an ode to the fragile bonds of family, the hidden secrets of history, and all the beautiful moments that make us who we are today.

My Review

I read this book as part of a kidlit book club. I’d read Desert Echoes by Abdi Nazemian before and have Like a Love Story on my reading list. As I’m writing this review, his next book, Exquisite Things comes out shortly. I have to say that so far, I’m really loving all the selections we’ve read for our book club.

One of the powerful things about this book is that it follows three generations of young Iranian/Iranian-American men from three different time periods. How often do we really get to know a teen character and then see their parent and grandparent’s experiences up close in this way? I thought that was really cool.

The story opens with Moud in 2019. We meet his dad in this opening chapter, and I know I made some assumptions about him. To then zip back through time to witness Saeed as a teenager in Tehran challenged a few of the preconceptions I’d made about who he was and why he was that way. The extra time periods added a lot of layers to his and Bobby’s characters.

This is a heavily male-dominated story, but I think this is one of the instances in which that’s necessary to make the point the author is making here about generational relationships between men. Each time period shows strong women who defy gender expectations in their own ways, too, though those relationships are not the focus of the book.

All in all, Only This Beautiful Moment is a powerful story that sets a tall goal for itself and delivers on every promise.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 16 up.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Strong profanity used fairly infrequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing. A couple of short scenes show a couple touching each other. One character walks into a bathroom where a stall door gets kicked open, briefly revealing two men having sex. The description is very brief and startling to the character.

Spiritual Content
References to prayer in a life-and-death situation along with an acknowledgement that the person praying isn’t sure they believe in the God they pray to in that moment. A couple of characters repeat religion-based homophobic claims.

Violent Content
Soldiers break up a political protest, shooting into the crowd and hitting people. Bobby encounters homophobic beliefs prevalent in the 1930s. A couple of characters react with anger after discovering that people close to them are gay. One scene shows someone arrested for being gay. Moud learns of friends arrested for being gay.

Drug Content
Saeed reluctantly drinks alcohol at a party. A doctor gives Bobby a prescription medication and tells him it will help with performance nerves. (The doctor also tries to pass the pill off as a decongestant.) Another character warns Bobby about taking the pills or drinking alcohol.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. I purchased a copy of this book and borrowed the audiobook version from my library. All opinions are my own.

Review: Sparking Fire Out of Fate by Brigid Kemmerer

Book Review and Content, Fantasy, Romance, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , ,

Sparking Fire Out of Fate (Forging Silver into Stars #3)
Brigid Kemmerer
Bloomsbury YA
Published January 27, 2026

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About Sparking Fire Out of Fate

Broken loyalties. Uncertain fates. Two kingdoms hanging in the balance. . . The exhilarating finale in bestselling author Brigid Kemmerer’s Forging Silver series will leave readers breathless!

Callyn has grown closer to Queen Lia Mara in Syhl Shallow, bonded by the secret magic they share. But their magic can stay hidden only so long, especially when a dangerous plot on the Queen’s life forces Callyn to work with the man who betrayed her.

In Emberfall, Tycho and Jax are struggling to rebuild their connection after months apart, complicated when they learn of Truthbringers causing trouble at the borders. Sent to investigate together, Jax and Tycho soon discover that the rebellious faction has formed a devil’s bargain with the magical scravers to destroy human magic once and for all.

When their missions bring them together, Tycho, Jax, and Callyn find themselves facing threats from all sides. With one last chance to save their magic and their kingdoms, they must work together, or lose everything.

War has erupted. Love is tested. And without sacrifice, magic could destroy everyone.

My Review

It’s so weird to finally reach the end of this series, which is itself a spinoff of the Cursebreaker series, which started in 2019. (I think the first book in that series is still my favorite of them all, but I’ve enjoyed all the books. It’s hard to beat watching Harper and Rhen fall in love.)

By this point, so many books into this fantasy universe, I felt like I knew Kemmerer’s writing and the rules of the world, so I felt pretty confident that I knew what to expect from the book. And for a story like this, I feel like that’s a pretty great place to start reading. The series had made certain promises, and this book delivered on them all.

I liked the way that all the threads of the story (both stories, really) came together in the end of this one. I liked seeing the evolution of Tycho and Jax’s relationship as well as Callyn and Alec’s. There was a time when I did not think I could give Alec a chance, so it was cool to see how the story softened my feelings toward him and made me start rooting for him and Callyn to truly open up to one another.

I’m glad I stuck this series through to the end. It’s been a fun one to read, and really cool to follow especially the characters who appeared in Cursebreakers across both series to the end.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 16 up.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Strong profanity used somewhat infrequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing. A couple of scenes include explicit sexual contact.

Spiritual Content
Some characters have the ability to perform magic. In certain circumstances, magic can be used to control others, which causes a lot of fear. Scravers are humanlike with wings, sharp claws, and long fangs. They have their own magic.

Violent Content
Situations of peril. Battle scenes in which people sustain serious or fatal injuries. A group of soldiers discovers a courier who was murdered. A mob clearly intends to kill mages.

There are a couple of vague references to sexual assault that happened to one character long before the story began.

Drug Content
Characters drink alcohol. References to one character drinking way too much and sort of absenting herself from her life and responsibilities for a time.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. I borrowed a copy of this book from my library. All opinions are my own.