What I Read This Month: January

Hi! I have a new series I'd like to introduce to the blog; in the same vein as my WIBW posts I wanted to start sharing what I read every month. Since I'm doing a number-based reading challenge rather than specific types of entries this year, I've found it much easier to get back to reading. Well, that and I've put myself back on a schedule (kinda) so I've had a bit more time to read. Anyway, I wanted to start sharing what I read every month, which will also help me stay on track with completing this year's challenge (I've put the number at a pretty modest 50 books). It'll also help me combine a bunch of mini-reviews rather than a bunch of full reviews when some books don't warrant them. I figured each month I'd open a new post and update it as I finish a book, then put it out with WIBW at the end of the month. But I've babbled long enough. What did I read during the month of January?

Rescue (Second Chance #1)--Kemmie Michaels

This was my first book of the year and it was aight. It won't be on my list of favorite books anytime soon, but it was a good book to spend the afternoon with. In this book, Camille leaves a sheltering and controlling relationship with her wealthy, connected boyfriend and starts over with her best friend Marcy. On one of her first outings as a single woman, Marcy takes her to a neighborhood bar where she meets the bar's handsome bartender Ledger. He understands Camille in a way that nobody else seems to, inexplicably recognizing her immediately as a kindred spirit and committing himself to helping her heal. Marcy and Ledger help Camille's sense of self enough to get her back on her feet, but her jilted ex-boyfriend gradually becomes more unhinged as his attempts to lure Camille back remain unsuccessful. The ex, through his friends in high places, causes legal, professional and eventually personal trouble in order to manipulate Camille into coming back, resorting to drastic measures to get her back for good.

Like I said, this wasn't one of my favorite books of the year but it did introduce me to one of my favorite romance heroes in Ledger. Even though I understood the gist of why he recognized Camille as having a kindred spirit to his own, I felt like there was still so much more that could have been explored with him. I loved him though. He was gentle, patient and easygoing the entire book, not arrogant, hot-tempered or quick to run like many of the other romance heroes I get stuck on. lol Camille was okay but per usual with romance heroines, she got on my nerves a little. My major complaint with the book was the manufactured drama towards the end of the book between Camille and Ledger; it seemed a bit random and unnecessary on Camille's part. I know for many books like this it makes sense to have a little conflict between the couple so that the one in the wrong can grow and fully accept their feelings/partner, but ehh. I guess it was the execution of that conflict that I didn't really care for. I also wish we could see their story continue in another book but as is quickly becoming the norm these days, these novels are standalones in a series because a different couple is featured in every book. It would have been nice to see how Camille and Ledger get back to regular life, how they built their relationship following the climax in the first book. As you'll learn is often the case with books I read, there's a bit of diddlin' in the book and its hot but not overdone and actually has a larger purpose in helping Camille overcome her past. That was a new one for me to see and I liked that. This was a good way to spend a chilly afternoon and I enjoyed it.

My rating: 

Sins of the Heart (The Sins Series #1)--Eve Silver

Roxy Tam is saved from certain death one night by a mysterious man who makes her promise not to join a certain organization, then leaves her life, seemingly for good. Fast forward a decade and Roxy has joined that very organization as a foot soldier, which is where she comes into contact with her mystery man from the past again. She assumes Dagan turned her into a monster and feels conflicted over her lingering feelings for him because of what she becomes after meeting him. Dagan has moved on in his life, continuing his job as a soul reaper, but can't get Roxy out of his head. A case that both of them are investigating separately brings them back together, but if it were impossible for them to be together before, it is definitely a no-go now. Or is it? They reluctantly join forces to get to the bottom of questionable events to prevent a war breaking out between Dagan's father and Roxy's organization and realize that the impossible may be possible after all.

I found this book to be infinitely more interesting than I assumed it would be. There is a lot of sexual tension throughout a lot of the book....then some diddlin'. lol I enjoyed the world this book was set in; the mixture of regular and supernatural was done in a way I hadn't read before and I enjoyed it.  I also liked seeing how the other half live; by that I mean the gods of the underworld. The author was somehow able to combine mixture of mythology, the supernatural, modern-day elements and unless I am mistaken, was Roxy a WOC? I loved Roxy; she didn't irritate me quite as much as other romance heroines and I liked that the author didn't use the bad-ass facade with her. A lot of times, the bad-ass facade on the surface immediately melts away once someone asks her what's wrong, and she becomes a ball of tears after that. That bad-ass exterior was the truth with Roxy and I appreciated that. She was sassy, dry, resilient and quick on her feet; wasn't always looking for someone to save her. Also, that bit about the dreams Roxy had been having? Loved the explanation behind them. As for Dagan, he was perfect. He had that whole brooding oldest child thing down pat. I enjoyed reading as he started to realize he'd become more humanized than he'd thought; it was definitely a new twist for me. I loved the author's notes at the end of the book where she mentioned she originally intended to write him as the villain but he revealed himself to be the hero instead, without completely tarnishing the fact that he was still indeed the villain. You can see the exact moment that he becomes both and I think she wrote that out extremely well. He too had personality and it meshed so well with Roxy's. No complaints there at all. If I had a complaint, it would be that I felt the book ended rather abruptly. This is obviously another book in what will be a series, but there were too many cliffhangers in this one for me. I wish the angle with Dagan's brother had been explored just a little more; I felt like it didn't all start to come together until shortly before the book ended. I didn't feel Roxy and Dagan's story was over yet either; in fact I felt like it had just started. I felt like individually and together, there was still so much to explore and the rather abrupt ending to the book didn't really tie everything together just yet. Since the next book in the series doesn't primarily involve them I don't know how much of their story we'll get to read, so I would have liked to see a little more of a resolution on that front. Overall though, I enjoyed the book a lot.

My rating: 

Gia in the City of the Dead--Kristi Belcamino

I think what first drew me to this book was the name Gia. I've always thought it was a beautiful name. Anyway, this book is about a young woman named Gia who lost both of her parents in a house fire a few years prior. Her parental relationships were rather complicated while they were alive; while her father loved her and her brother equally, her mother always seemed to love her sociopathic brother Christopher more so. This adds to the conflicted grief she feels--or tries not to feel--as she blows through her life, intentionally not getting connected or attached to anyone. This all changes after her brother dies and she stumbles upon the possibility that he was murdered, opening a Pandora's box of deceit, murder and drama for her. The possibility that her brother was murdered opens the door for Gia to discover her parents may have also been murdered, potentially by someone with very close ties to the family. After a couple of failed attempts on her own life, Gia goes rogue and tries to lay low, but people connected to her continue to turn up injured or dead. Gia has to fight to stay alive, get to the bottom of what happened to her family, and ends up finding a sense of purpose in the process.

I really enjoyed this book. Surprisingly--for me--there wasn't a bunch of diddlin'. This wasn't in any way a salacious or erotic book; it was simply about a young woman finding herself in the face of having the entire truth of her life thrown back at her as a lie. Having complicated familial relationships myself, I understood the conflict Gia had at reconciling her dislike of her brother with the knowledge that she couldn't help but love him anyway. She discovers that she does still have a heart, it's actually quite large, and that despite her best attempts to disconnect, she found someone she connected with anyway. I loved the mysteries in the book, mixing the American mob in with the Italian mafia, then adding in tangled family ties, property deeds, inheritances and red herrings everywhere. The end of the book was a little 'eh' to me because of how everything unfolded; I found it a little confusing and had to reread it, but I loved what the root of the story was. I also liked how the author wrapped up that root in the different red herrings and made it harder to untangle; I just wish it had unfolded just a little differently so I wouldn't have gotten confused. That's probably my own fault though so no points taken away for that. I was correct in figuring out a couple of plot points that ended up being key to the rest of the story, but it didn't take away from my desire to finish it. I thought this was well-written, had a mountain of growth for Gia to climb, which she did, and it left the door open just enough to give you a peek at what comes next for her. If you wanted to stop reading there, it's a sufficient ending that leaves the reader to make up their own assumptions on how Gia finally gets her HEA.

My rating: 

The Gentleman's Club (Noire #1)--Emmanuelle de Maupassant

I'd originally started reading this book at the end of last year but I think I got bored and stopped reading about a quarter of the way through. I finally went back and finished it at the beginning of this month and overall it was okay. This book was about the downspiral of sorts a man's life takes after visiting a brothel and falling into obsession, then love, with the mistress (literally) of the manor. After his first trip to the brothel, the mistress worms her way into his brain, first by way of his anger at her for exposing inner desires he didn't know he had, then his frustration for not being able to get her to crack despite her repeated success in getting him to do so, and finally his obsession with and love for her. The perspective changes in the book from his to hers, both in and out of the brothel. By day she is a quietly liberated niece to a respected older society woman and by night she is a (by 1800s London standards) promiscuous and wanton harlot, dominated entirely by her limitless sexual desires, giving her a very smug, tongue-in-cheek approach to her interactions with her aunt and others during the day. By day he is a lord and a businessman, very straitlaced and serious, and by night he is a willing prisoner to the mistress' web of seduction and sexual dominance. Pretty soon he becomes the latter during the day as well, but a wall remains between them because of her mysterious nature. The book is gratuitous in sexual content, both traditional and fetish-related (but by the name of the book I don't know how anyone would expect any different) so if you're not trying to read a book that mainly focuses on the sex, don't bother with this one.

For me, it was as much about the sex as it was the power play going on between the characters, the male's path to sexual exploration and discovery, and the female's life of opposites, all of which were set against the background of a society that would openly shun all of the above. Because of her nighttime activities, her activities during the day become all the more ironic, exposing the ridiculousness and hypocrisy of the public's attitude toward sex at the time. I love historical novels, especially those set in 1800s London, so I know quite well that describing the time period as stuffy would be a severe understatement. Because of that, books that show what goes on behind the velvet curtains--the clandestine meetings and forbidden pleasures many people took despite their outward appearances--are all the more delicious and enticing for me to read. I told you I was disgusting. lol Anyway, I liked the female lead of the book even though I felt like I couldn't get a good read on her. Maybe that was the point, to keep that bit of mystery with even the reader since the male lead couldn't get a good read on her either. While she consumed his thoughts day and night, the only time he was even a footnote in her mind was when they were having sex. I did enjoy reading the male's train of thought as he gradually descended into this cloud of confusion, obsession and unrequited infatuation. For a man of those times, such a shift in thinking was extremely jarring and I enjoyed reading as he tried to reconcile everything he'd learned about himself with his existing desires and morals. I was reading the book expecting some kind of climax (😏 no pun intended) but there wasn't really one so I was kind of 'meh' when I reached the end. I guess there's kind of a HEA at the end but it's partially a lead-in to the next book in the series. I don't know that I'm interested enough to purchase it, but this first installment was an okay read.

My rating:

 (My Amazon rating says 3 but that's because I couldn't do a half-star on my tablet. lol)

Wedding Wipeout (Rabbi Keppelmacher Accepts a Challenge)--Jacob Appel

*Mandy's Note: I received this book a couple of months ago from LibraryThing's Members Giveaway program in exchange for an unbiased review. This isn't a sponsored post or anything like that--I wasn't sure if I was going to review this book in full or include it here at the end of the month--I just wanted to be clear about where I received this book since it wasn't a random download from Amazon.*

In this whodunnit, the death of a spinster sister puts an entire family's business out into the open as a massive inheritance becomes up for grabs. Lorraine and Florence Eisenstein are bound to permanent singlehood in order to hold onto an inheritance from their father. If one marries, the inheritance immediately goes to the other sister. Florence decides to break free and marry despite her father's wishes but mysteriously dies on her wedding night, leaving Lorraine without her sister but in control of the entire inheritance. This brings a splintered family back together, where stories get tangled and it comes out that almost everyone has some motive for knocking off their aunt. One of the family's attorneys used to be an assistant rabbi, and his suspicions about his client's family lead him back to his former rabbi and his new assistant for some advice. The rabbi sees a challenge that can only be explained rationally and accepts said challenge, turning into an amateur detective and dragging his exasperated assistant along for the ride.

I'm a little conflicted on my opinion of this book. On one hand, I can see bits of Agatha Christie setups in the book and I appreciate the throwback to an era of mystery past. I liked that the suspect could have been any of the Eisenstein relatives and it was hard to determine exactly who had the right amount of motive to pull off a murder. However, I did think the plot was a bit clumsy in its execution and the way things progressed kind of took the punch out of any big reveals. Everything felt anti-climactic in a way and it started to get confusing with all of the nonessential information that was included. The end of the story had a Poirot-worthy monologue and reveal, which I also appreciated, but the clues that were given that led to said reveal were so obscure in some cases that I missed them entirely. Maybe it's not the book at all and I'm just a bad reader, lol. I spent most of the book feeling as confused as Steinmetz was, which may or may not have been the point. I'm not sure. I did see a bit of growth from Steinmetz throughout the book, but it was slow in coming. I think the rabbi's point was to get him to actually use his powers of deduction and reasoning with a healthy dose of skepticism so that his viewpoint didn't remain as narrow as it was. Sound advice, I think. I didn't start to notice any change in him until somewhere around the middle of the book, when he finally accepted that they were in over their heads and he'd have to ride out the entire case with the rabbi whether he liked it or not. This didn't change how many times he continued to get things wrong lol, but I did appreciate that he finally started to expand his mind a bit. I also didn't think we got a fleshed-out view of either rabbi; other than their immediate thoughts and instincts I didn't walk away knowing a lot about either of them. The bits about them that I did learn seemed to be sprinkled in with the bits we were learning about each suspect. If this is part of a series with the rabbis, I'd like to see more of who they are. Overall the book was okay, but I didn't love it.

My rating: 

So that's what I read this month. I would have read more, but the second half of the month was pretty busy with Black History Spotlight prep and finishing today's two posts ahead of time so I could work on BHS stuff. That's starting tomorrow, by the way, so keep an eye on my Instagram if you want to follow along; I do a preview of each day's entrant on there and a full post on ATV. I was able to do most of this year's series ahead of time, so I may have time to put out a couple of things over here. Not sure yet but keep your other eye on the blog anyway. lol Anyway, I'm hoping to get back to reading next month; I have a few books I was requested to read and review back in December and I need to get those out. What'd you read this month?