If you are a fan of slow burn, rock-and-roll romances in stand alone contemporary books, and also happen to be a big music aficionado, I cannot recommend “The Girl with Stars in Her Eyes” enough. We follow our FMC as she navigates the recording world, having finally left her middle of nowhere town and gotten away from her less than stellar home life, all after being abandoned by the boy who swore they’d escape together and make a name for themselves together. Toni is an incredible guitarist, but in a world that’s still very much sexist (and racist though the author focuses more on the sexist aspects) Toni, who prefers to work behind the scenes, is constantly passed up for her less talented, male counterparts. It’s after one such encounter where the boy who broke her teenage heart comes back unexpectedly into her life. What follows after that meeting is a sweet, sort of second chance romance that really dives deep into the characters, their emotions, and growth from who they were as teenagers, to who they are when the book starts, and beyond. It’s a well written character driven romance, even if the book does feel its length at times.

If you’ve been missing “Bridgerton”, as in the Shonda Rhymes show, then this book is 100% for you. I haven’t read the Julia Quinn books, so I can’t say on that front how closely “Aphrodite and the Duke” line up there, but the parallels to the Netflix show are easy to see. You have a tightly knit family traversing the “ton” as one daughter begins her season, the balls are colorful and over the top, the queen feels taken straight from the show with her attitude and massive wigs, even the title of this book is closely tied to that of Quinn’s. Plus, you have our main character who is so attractive she’s intimidating and thus has a hard time getting suitors, though the one she does want has broken her heart before and, due to his family trauma, doesn’t really want a wife though he is obsessed with Aphrodite. I could go on, but trust me when I say that if you want a fluffy romance steeped in the regency vibes of Julia Quinn and Shonda Rhymes, give this historical fiction romance a try!

“Whisper of the Lotus” is a little deceiving, but not in a bad way! The synopsis focuses heavily on this idea of the main character, Charlotte, needing excitement, fleeing a dead-end job to impulsively visit her childhood best friend (Roxy) who has been living and thriving in Cambodia for the past 3 years after leaving London. In reality, the book is much deeper than that. Charlotte is less fleeing a boring existence, as she is getting away from a narcissistic parent who has emotionally taken advantage of her and guilt tripped her into never leaving. We watch Charlotte do things for herself for the first time in nearly a decade and through the experience of traveling so far away and meeting so many kind people, discover a voice that her mother almost completely took away. I don’t know if this book necessarily needed to take place in Cambodia in order for it to have the same emotional impact as we learn more and more of the secrets hidden from Charlotte, but here we are.

This is my first Colleen Hoover book, and with all the hype surrounding this author, I will admit I was expecting a lot. I wanted to read “Verity” mostly because it’s a romantic thriller and I wanted to read something that was meant to be a bit unsettling. And the premise of “Verity” is definitely that! This book very much has “Gone Girl” and “Jane Eyre” vibes where you have a relatively unknown author coming in to finish a very successful author’s series. Verity cannot finish her series being confined to a near vegetative state in her home, so never one to let a good series go to waste, her publishers bring in Lowen to finish out the series. Lowen is a thriller writer herself, so that’s kind of the justification for her being qualified to take over Verity’s work, who writes her books from the villains POV. As Lowen tries to figure out how to write this series, she stumbles across Verity’s autobiography and uncovers not just the depth of this family’s tragedy, but how deranged this successful author is, all while falling in love with Verity’s husband. There are definitely some creepy elements but ultimately, the longer I sat with this book and thought about it, the more I disliked both the story and the way it was written.

I am not an “experienced” horror reader. I read a lot of true crime and violent thrillers, but when it comes to books that are traditionally classified as “horror”, well, then I believe “The Only Good Indians” is my first foray into that. And the jury is still out on if I like this genre, but I don’t think that’s the book’s fault? “The Only Good Indians” follows four young men after an upsetting event of their childhood comes back to haunt them (literally) on the ten-year anniversary of the event. Mixed in with the horror of being hunted by a force you don’t see coming, the author weaves in a seamless social commentary on what it’s like for American Indians both on and off the reservation. I really enjoyed those aspects, even though I can’t speak to the cultural representation. I thought they added a unique level to an already disturbing story. But I did have a hard time getting through this book, and not because I was too upset to read it, either.