I bought Broken Country completely on a whim after seeing someone rank it in their top five recent reads and honestly? This may simply be a case of that person and I having fundamentally different emotional support literature.
It’s not a bad book at all. There’s depth here. The characters are well developed. Things definitely happen. Emotions are experienced. Tragedy clocks in for work promptly and stays overtime.
But for whatever reason, I never fully emotionally fused with it.
And believe me, I tried.
I kept waiting for the moment where the book grabbed me by the throat spiritually and instead it mostly just sat beside me politely while we exchanged meaningful glances over tea.
I genuinely can’t tell if my lukewarm reaction comes from the sadness of the story itself, my distaste for some of hte life choices of the FMC, or if there was just some indefinable spark missing for me personally. Either way, this feels less like “this book was bad” and more like “this book and my frontal lobe failed to achieve long-term compatibility.” (May 2026)
I picked up Wicked Beautiful almost entirely because I was intrigued by the challenge of an intentionally difficult female main character and the idea of an author convincing me to eventually love someone I initially wanted to shake gently by the shoulders.
And honestly? I respect the ambition.
One of the concepts discussed in Save the Cat! Writes a Novel is that if you’re going to give readers an unlikeable protagonist, you usually need them to “save a cat” early on—basically do something that creates emotional goodwill before the audience fully turns against them.
For me personally… I don’t think this book got there quickly enough with the FMC.
Meanwhile the MMC?
That man may as well have been wearing an entire suit made of pockets with a tiny emotional support kitten inside every single one.
I was INVESTED in him.
Which created a genuinely strange reading experience where I kept trying to root for the relationship while simultaneously feeling like one half of the couple needed to be put in time-out for spiritual reflection.
That said, I actually kind of enjoyed the weirdness of that dynamic because it made the emotional push-and-pull feel different from a lot of romances where both leads are immediately designed to be lovable.
So while the FMC never fully won me over personally, the book itself absolutely kept me interested from a character-study perspective. (May 2026)
Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody
Yes—a craft book. Because everyone keeps talking about it.
I’m a pantser when I write and a plotter when I edit, so I was curious why this one comes up so often. I didn’t go into it looking to force my writing into a prescribed formula, but rather to understand how to better identify—and fix—issues in my own work. (April 2026)
I knew exactly what I was doing with this one. Romance isn’t usually my default genre, but when you’re writing a novel, you find yourself drawn to books you wouldn’t normally pick up.
There was something refreshing here, though—our MMC is insecure, flawed, and maybe leaning a little too hard into golden retriever energy. But the tension in this book? It burns through the page.
I won’t spoil it for you—but the way that tension is built is masterful. (April 2026)
What have I done?
I never read a book without research—usually an unreasonable amount of it. But Audible autoplayed the preview for this one after I finished another book, and the hook was excellent. So naturally, I made a completely rational decision and bought it immediately… without reading the description, reviews, or having any idea what it was about.
So the shock value? Entirely my fault.
But let me just say—the setup did not prepare me for surprise vampires… sorry… revenants.
And yet, despite my initial resistance—and a fair amount of begrudging enjoyment—I have a feeling I’ll be reading more of Hazelwood in the future. (April 2026)
This series came recommended by my developmental editor-to-be, and since I’m still deeply entrenched in my spicy research (a true labor of love), I was especially interested in seeing examples of less traditional—more neurodivergent—romantic dynamics.
This series definitely delivered on that front, though not all three books landed the same way for me. Two of them I genuinely loved. The third… sent me into a full analytical spiral.
I’ll let you read them and decide for yourself which two I adored—and which one I mentally deconstructed like it was a case study.
As I’ve been writing spicier scenes in my own work, it has become absolutely imperative that I read… more spicy fiction. Truly devastating for me, I know.
This was my first book by Sloane St. James, and honestly, this is a genre I’ve only recently dipped a toe into as part of my own writing journey. Along the way, I’ve discovered some… interesting patterns in what sells when it comes to spice.
And can I just say—on behalf of all of us—I’m very relieved we seem to be moving away from the overuse of the word “member.” (March 2026)
I grabbed this book at the recommendation of a fire investigator and it's sat on my shelf for a year (almost exactly). It's the true story of a serial arsonist in Virginia and as you may have guessed, I'm reading it as research for my podcast but wow is it... wow. Monica's writing is amazing. I'm fully invested in this story. (March 23, 2026)
I read this book when it first came out because I'm a huge fan of Andy Weir (look, he's peak fiction-writing perfection when you're an engineer... and I am). With the movie coming out, I wanted to re-read it. The Martian is still my favorite, but this is a very strong book and I'm loving it as much on the second read-through (March 20, 2026)