Like the Comet

Happy Leap Year!

How the heck was your February and what’d you do with your extra day?

This month was kind of a blur to me until the last two weeks. I turned 30 on the 27th, and had a delightful time celebrating with friends, family, and my partner.

My friends really nailed my birthday celebration with Thai food, carrot cake, make-your-own-bookmark crafting, AND I was home by 9pm. Like come on. Tell me you know me incredibly well without telling me you know me incredibly well lol.

Not to mention, I now know what it’d be like to have a summer birthday because it hit 70 on mine this year. If I ignore the nagging worry about global warming in the back of my mind, then I really enjoyed the change in climate to ring in three decades lol.

My bf also did a swell job with birthday activities. I’ve been wanting to visit the John King Used and Rare Books store in Detroit ever since I learned it’s the largest used and rare bookstore in Michigan. So he took me to downtown Detroit and we explored the organized chaos that is John King for about an hour and a half. It was insanely fun and if you ever go, I highly recommend paying attention to all of the signs and labels - they are truly the stars of the show lol.

Not to be confused with the category two shelves up labeled “Oversize horses.”

So anyway, cheers to 30 years for me and let’s get into everything I read in February!

**All summaries are taken or paraphrased from Goodreads.

HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS AND UNFAIRLY CUTE by Talia Hibbert

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

Summary: Bradley Graeme is pretty much perfect. He's a star football player, manages his OCD well (enough), and comes out on top in all his classes . . . except the ones he shares with his ex-best friend, Celine. Celine Bangura is conspiracy-theory-obsessed. Social media followers eat up her takes on everything from UFOs to holiday overconsumption--yet, she's still not cool enough for the popular kids' table. Which is why Brad abandoned her for the in-crowd years ago. (At least, that's how Celine sees it.) These days, there's nothing between them other than petty insults and academic rivalry. So when Celine signs up for a survival course in the woods, she's surprised to find Brad right beside her. Forced to work as a team for the chance to win a grand prize, these two teens must trudge through not just mud and dirt but their messy past. And as this adventure brings them closer together, they begin to remember the good bits of their history. But has too much time passed . . . or just enough to spark a whole new kind of relationship?

My Thoughts: This was a super cute audiobook! I haven’t read a Talia Hibbert novel in a while, and it was so refreshing to fall back into her witty writing style. Celine and Bradley are such fun characters to follow. They used to be best friends until Bradley became popular and left Celine behind talking about her conspiracy theories. The betrayal cut deep for Celine and she now sees Bradley as her arch nemesis. That is until they both end up signing up for a survival course that could end with a full-ride scholarship to college. The format of the experience forces them to work together, which in return, forces them to work on their lost friendship. Their banter was top notch. It was kind of chaotic at some points, but truly entertaining. I loved how the author incorporated more sensitive topics like what it’s like living with OCD and how people cope with family dysfunction. I thought she handled both with the utmost care. I really liked this book and enjoyed my time with it. However, it didn't necessarily blow my socks off. I also thought it lasted much longer than I was expecting it to, which made getting through the last 15% of it a little tough. Otherwise, if you’ve had this on your radar, I think it’s definitely worth the read!

HOUSE OF FLAME AND SHADOW by Sarah J Maas (CRESCENT CITY #3)

Rating: 3/5 stars

Summary: Bryce Quinlan never expected to see a world other than Midgard, but now that she has, all she wants is to get back. Everything she loves is in Midgard: her family, her friends, her mate. Stranded in a strange new world, she's going to need all her wits about her to get home again. And that's no easy feat when she has no idea who to trust. Hunt Athalar has found himself in some deep holes in his life, but this one might be the deepest of all. After a few brief months with everything he ever wanted, he's in the Asteri's dungeons again, stripped of his freedom and without a clue as to Bryce's fate. He's desperate to help her, but until he can escape the Asteri's leash, his hands are quite literally tied. In this sexy, breathtaking sequel to the #1 bestsellers House of Earth and Blood and House of Sky and Breath, Sarah J. Maas's Crescent City series reaches new heights as Bryce and Hunt's world is brought to the brink of collapse-with its future resting on their shoulders.

My Thoughts: *MILD SPOILERS AHEAD, BUT I DIDN’T GIVE DETAILS* Listen. I was ITCHING to dive into this thicc gal as soon as she came out on January 30th. Though I definitely got sucked ALL the way into this adventure, it just kind of felt like it fell short of my expectations. It didn’t have the ol’ Sarah J Maas ~rAzZLe dAZzlE~ if you know what I mean. Starting with the good, she incorporated the world and characters of ACOTAR (A Court of Thorns and Roses) into this storyline just the perfect amount. I didn’t think she overdid it, nor did she leave us wanting more. I also loved that there seemed to be a bit of a red herring as to what’s coming next for some of the ACOTAR characters. Moving on, I was absolutely OBSESSED with Ruhn’s and Lidia’s storyline. There were so many elements that felt fresh and kept me curious as to what was coming next for them. In contrast, Hunt and Bryce started to bore me. Like cool cool, you’re mates and obsessed with each other, but you’re also bickering this entire book and it’s getting old. On that note, a few other things I wished were much better: first off, Ithan’s character arc was a fucking JOKE. He was soooooo annoying and none of the progress he made towards the end was intentional. Like yeah, he made the choice to go in that direction but only because his hand was forced. So I felt like he didn’t really improve all that much due to his own initiatives. Secondly, and let me say again, I was fully invested in everyone’s adventures, however, this was a book of convenience. Everything these characters needed to fight the Asteri or get out of a current sticky situation just oh so conveniently appeared in their paths. The band needs to get back together but they’re scattered all over Midgard? Oh well now Ithan needs to go to Avallen to retrieve a body which conveniently also happens to be where Bryce and everyone else is currently located. Like where is the struggle? Where are the cunning plans from the lowkey strategic main characters that we love to see in the SJM Universe?? ALSO (and lol I’m really reconsidering my rating at this point), the ending seemed TOTALLY wrapped up to me. Don’t get me wrong, I know they had to sort out some things soon, but nothing life-threatening or detrimental or fourth-book worthy. So I was like wait, why have four houses if you’re only going to write three books?? (A refresh if you need it: House of Earth and Blood (book 1), House of Sky and Breath (book 2), House of Flame and Shadow (this book) and House of Many Waters.) So then I got to Googling and apparently there is a fourth book coming out, but not for a long while…? I don’t know. I just don’t see what else could happen in a fourth book that could really be THAT interesting and warrant another 800-page-baddie. You know? Anyways. Apologies that this review turned into a rant lol. I still think it’s worth reading if you’ve started down the Crescent City road, but this was my least favorite book in the series so far.

TIES THAT TETHER by Jane Igharo

Rating: 3/5 stars

Summary: When a Nigerian woman falls for a man she knows will break her mother’s heart, she must choose between love and her family. At twelve years old, Azere promised her dying father she would marry a Nigerian man and preserve her culture even after emigrating to Canada. Her mother has been vigilant about helping--forcing--her to stay well within the Nigerian dating pool ever since. But when another match-made-by-mom goes wrong, Azere ends up at a bar, enjoying the company and later sharing the bed of Rafael Castellano, a man who is tall, handsome, and white. When their one-night stand unexpectedly evolves into something serious, Azere is caught between her growing feelings for Rafael and the compulsive need to please her mother who will never accept a relationship that threatens to dilute Azere's Nigerian heritage. Azere can't help wondering if loving Rafael makes her any less of a Nigerian. Can she be with him without compromising her identity? The answer will either cause Azere to be audacious and fight for her happiness or continue as the compliant daughter.

My Thoughts: Okay let me just say, the content of this book was good. The execution just fell a little flat for me. It was interesting watching Azere, who emigrated to Canada when she was younger, grappling between maintaining her Nigerian culture while still forging her own path. I also enjoyed learning more about Nigerian traditions and the family dynamics in that culture. The main issue I had with this book, though, is that things felt unfinished. We only got to see Azere’s character as her mother’s daughter. We didn’t get to know what truly made her come alive as a person. What are her aspirations? Does she like her job? What are her dreams? Etc. There was just a lot of depth missing to Azere as the main character. Similarly, Rafael didn’t really do much for me as the main love interest. Besides being instantly obsessed with Azere, the only things we learn about him are that he’s originally from Spain and is hiding a huge secret. So I don’t know if I ever fully bought into the relationship between them. The interactions we got to see unfold were all pretty surface level. Nothing significant happened that convinced me these two are truly connected in a deeper way - not enough for Azere to give up a part of herself anyway. The plot really skipped ahead during the pregnancy too. All of a sudden, the story had fast forwarded a few months and we missed any pivotal moments that may have occurred in their relationship. This book was a good mix of serious topics and feel-good content, but I don’t think I’ll ever read it again. *NOTE: I listened to this on audiobook.

CAUGHT UP by Liz Tomforde (WINDY CITY #3)

Rating: 5/5 stars

Summary: Kai - I’m a single dad and starting pitcher for Chicago’s MLB team. I’m stretched too thin, but I don’t want help raising my son. Each of his previous nannies only lasted a few weeks before I let them go. Now, my coach is putting his foot down by hiring the one person I can’t fire—his daughter. Miller Montgomery is the last woman I should fall for. Too wild, too young, and too unattached. Chicago is just a quick stop for her. I thought I’d be counting down the days until she left, but summer feels too short when I start thinking about forever. | Miller - As a high-end pastry chef who recently won the most prestigious award in my industry, I’m desperate to prove I deserve it. But with a new title comes new pressure, and I can’t create a fresh and inspiring dessert to save my life. With only two months to get back on track, I should be focusing in the kitchen, but instead, I let my dad talk me into using my time off to nanny for his star player’s kid. Kai Rhodes forgot how to have fun, and I’m eager to jog his memory. But when he and his son start to feel like home, I have to remind us both that my time in Chicago ends with the summer. Besides, I’ve always been a runner, and the last thing I want is to get caught.

My Thoughts: Y’ALL. This book had me sobbing as much as I was swooning. I didn’t know what to expect because I liked the first book in this Windy City series (Mile High) and really liked the second book (The Right Move), but this third book?? It had my heart in an absolute chokehold the entire time, and I could not put it down. I’ve never been one for the single-dad and nanny trope, but Kai and Miller did it for me. Their banter was absolutely unmatched. The quick quips and sexual innuendos added the perfect amount of snark to their flirty dynamics. Miller’s character was so entertaining to me. She had zero filter and a badass vibe that gave me an instant friend crush on her. Kai was the most thoughtful guy, always trying to take care of everyone in his life. I loved how Miller was able to breathe some life back into him, so that he saw himself as so much more than just a dad. Also, the way they both loved Kai’s son with their entire beings had me in a puddle of emotion throughout the entire book. Seriously, I don’t know what else to say to convince you to read this. It has hot baseball players, a ton of professionally crafted pastries, the perfect amount of salacious scenes, and a WHOLE lotta emotions that will take you high and low. This is probably one of my favorite sports romances of all time. There. I said it. So now you definitely have to pick it up!

HEARTLESS HUNTER by Kristen Ciccarelli

Rating: 5/5 stars

Summary: On the night Rune’s life changed forever, blood ran in the streets. Now, in the aftermath of a devastating revolution, witches have been diminished from powerful rulers to outcasts ruthlessly hunted due to their waning magic, and Rune must hide what she is. Spending her days pretending to be nothing more than a vapid young socialite, Rune spends her nights as the Crimson Moth, a witch vigilante who rescues her kind from being purged. When a rescue goes wrong, she decides to throw the witch hunters off her scent and gain the intel she desperately needs by courting the handsome Gideon Sharpe - a notorious and unforgiving witch hunter loyal to the revolution - who she can't help but find herself falling for. Gideon loathes the decadence and superficiality Rune represents, but when he learns the Crimson Moth has been using Rune’s merchant ships to smuggle renegade witches out of the republic, he inserts himself into her social circles by pretending to court her right back. He soon realizes that beneath her beauty and shallow façade is someone fiercely intelligent and tender who feels like his perfect match. Except, what if she’s the very villain he’s been hunting?

My Thoughts: This gem really saved me from a fantasy funk this month. After the disappointment that was Crescent City, I wasn’t sure I wanted to dive into another fantasy right away. However, the cover art on this is absolutely stunning and I haven’t read many books involving witches and witch hunters. So I decided to give this one a go. Y’ALL. This is a bold statement, but I think this is probably going to be one of my favorite fantasies for 2024. I WAS ABSOLUTELY BEWITCHED. I don’t even know where to begin. The pacing was fantastic. As soon as you step into this regency world of ball gowns, spell books, horses, and more, you are swept away into a quickly paced storyline that provides the perfect amount of slow moments to catch your breath. Rune was a kick ass main character. She’s a vigilante known as the Crimson Moth who helps smuggle witches out of The New Republic to prevent their death by the Red Guard. She’s brilliant, cunning, and so freaking badass. Gideon is the perfect counterpart in this enemies-to-lovers romantasy. He’s a broody boy who leads the Red Guard in the hunt for witches in hiding. His current focus? Capturing the Crimson Moth. Cue Rune and Gideon courting each other with alternative motives involving rescuing a recently captured, highly powerful witch and unmasking the Crimson Moth. Don’t get me started on the chemistry between these two characters. The tension was THICC. I was wholeheartedly invested in their relationship and swooned at every interaction. There’s a plot twist at the end that I didn’t see coming, but feel like I should have lol. The very ending is incredibly unexpected and the cliffhanger it left me on was just RUDE. Needless to say, I’ll be on the lookout to pre-order the sequel in this duology ASAP.

SEVEN DAYS IN JUNE by Tia Williams

Rating: 5/5 stars

Summary: Brooklynite Eva Mercy is a single mom and bestselling erotica writer who is feeling pressed from all sides. Shane Hall is a reclusive, enigmatic, award-winning literary author who, to everyone's surprise, shows up in New York. When Shane and Eva meet unexpectedly at a literary event, sparks fly, raising not only their past buried traumas, but the eyebrows of New York's Black literati. What no one knows is that twenty years earlier, teenage Eva and Shane spent one crazy, torrid week madly in love. They may be pretending that everything is fine now, but they can't deny their chemistry - or the fact that they've been secretly writing to each other in their books ever since. Over the next seven days in the middle of a steamy Brooklyn summer, Eva and Shane reconnect, but Eva's not sure how she can trust the man who broke her heart, and she needs to get him out of New York so that her life can return to normal. But before Shane disappears again, there are a few questions she needs answered...

My Thoughts: Oh my gosh I don’t know why it took me so long to pick up this book, but I’m so glad I finally did! It was so freaking good! Shane and Eva originally met in high school where they had a whirlwind weeklong romance. Their chemistry was undeniable from the first interaction, and they just continued to click from there. Fast forward 20 years, and they’re both incredibly successful fiction writers who have been using their books as letters to the other. I loved how complex Eva’s character was and her resiliency after facing so much adversity growing up. Not to mention, the relationship with her daughter was so freaking heartwarming. They were truly best friends and understood each other at the core. Shane’s character was also perfectly imperfect. After years of binge drinking and drug use, he has finally maintained his sobriety for two years and is ready to right some wrongs in his life. When these two unexpectedly reconnect at an author’s panel in New York the sparks fly immediately like no time has passed. Their relationship, though complicated, was so full of love, my cup runneth over. I was obsessed with their dynamics and how they slowly explored this ~thing~ that’s still between them even as adults. The writing was brilliant, the banter was phenomenal, and I cannot recommend this romance novel enough.

THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD by Colson Whitehead

Rating: 4/5 stars

Summary: Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora: an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood--where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned--Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted. In Whitehead's ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor--engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar's first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city's placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom. Like the protagonist of Gulliver's Travels, Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey--hers is an odyssey through time as well as space. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre-Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman's ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share.

My Thoughts: This is my second Colson Whitehead book and it’s definitely worth the read. His writing style is so unique and has a way of highlighting absolute atrocities that you cannot look away from. For that, this was sometimes an uncomfortable read, but a necessary one. It was really interesting how every new state Cora went to, the attitude towards the underground railroad, slavery, etc. was so different. I recently read an article about this book in which Whitehead said he based Cora’s experiences on those written in autobiographies by slaves, such as hiding in an attic crawl space for multiple years in fear of getting caught, which gave so much more insight into what slaves, free people, and people on the run had to endure in the 1800s. The format was easy to follow even as we learned more of Cora’s back story throughout the book, including what happened to her mother after she tried running away from the plantation in Georgia and essentially disappeared when Cora was only 11. As I said, this isn’t an easy read, but it’s an incredibly necessary one and I highly recommend you pick it up if you haven’t already. *NOTE: I listened to this on audiobook.

A LADY FOR A DUKE by Alexis Hall

Rating: 4/5 stars

Summary: When Viola Carroll was presumed dead at Waterloo she took the opportunity to live, at last, as herself. But freedom does not come without a price, and Viola paid for hers with the loss of her wealth, her title, and her closest companion, Justin de Vere, the Duke of Gracewood. Only when their families reconnect, years after the war, does Viola learn how deep that loss truly was. Shattered without her, Gracewood has retreated so far into grief that Viola barely recognises her old friend in the lonely, brooding man he has become. As Viola strives to bring Gracewood back to himself, fresh desires give new names to old feelings. Feelings that would have been impossible once and may be impossible still, but which Viola cannot deny. Even if they cost her everything, all over again.

My Thoughts: Let me just say, this book was just a touch longer than I needed it to be, but otherwise, I really enjoyed it. It put me through a variety of emotions. Viola is a transwoman who found the freedom to be the woman she always wanted to be when she was presumed dead after the war at Waterloo. Her best friend growing up, Gracewood, left the war severely injured and drowning in grief at the loss of his closest companion. Years later, their families reconnect and Viola sees just how far Gracewood has gotten away from himself. As she tries to bring him back to the man she used to know, deeper feelings start to stir between the two and the secret about her identity is revealed. It was really sweet how much Gracewood accepted Viola right away instead of trying to see his old comrade in her. Their connection was so natural and though it seemed their dynamics would never work, they fought to find a way. There are a lot of entertaining side characters that bring this story to life, but the conflict towards the end felt a little dRamAtiC and drawn out to me. Other than that, I really enjoyed this queer regency romance and recommend giving it a try!

Okie that’s it for February!

What seems to be my trend this year is flying through books at the beginning of a new month and then slowing down substantially towards the end. So we shall see how March goes lol.

2024 Book Count: 20

Add me on Goodreads if you haven’t already.

YOUR TURN! What was your favorite book of February?