1. Love at First by Kate Clayborn. I love Ms Clayborn's writing so much and this is my favourite book of hers to date. It's a grief romance (by some chance I read quite a few of those this year) that made me ugly cry through parts of it and gave a most satisfying it-was-all-worth-it end. Highly recommended but check the CWs first. 

Title: Best of Luck (Chance of a Lifetime #3)

Author: Kate Clayborn

Date of publication: 27 Nov 2018

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Author's links:

Website / Twitter / Facebook / Goodreads

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My rating: 5 Stars 

ER: Hi, KJ and welcome! I want to start this interview with some questions on your writing process and then dive in more detail about your upcoming books (and I know you have a few of those up your sleeve) 

So, let’s kick this off with the question how you became a romance writer. Was this your childhood dream?

KJ: I always told stories in my head but it never occurred to me that I’d be a writer; I never really wrote them down at all. And when I did start writing I didn’t actually intend to write romance--I was supposed to be doing fantasy. None of this was planned, basically. I’m just making it up as I go along. 

ER: What is the best and the worst thing about being a writer?

KJ: Best is the reader response. When people say that a book meant something to them, or are inspired to create art or Tumblr jokes or reference your work or just talk about it. Writing is very solitary and then the book comes out and strangers are suddenly talking to you about the people in your head, and sharing in your mental creations. It’s really astonishing. 

Worst is how easy it is to screw up. Especially writing romance, which is a genre people come to in search of something that is in the end going to make them feel better. I don’t ever want to think that someone read a stupid throwaway remark of mine that made them feel attacked or belittled; I don’t want to expose my blind spots and unconscious bigotries, both for my own shame and for the sake of readers who might read something hurtful. Unfortunately, writing is a great way to give people a CAT scan of your psyche, for good or ill. If I’ve learned anything it’s that we all have a lot more blind spots—at best—than we’d like to think.

ER: Which part of the writing process is the easiest and the most difficult for you?

KJ: I love the self edit. When you have the first draft down, you’ve found out what the book is actually about, and you’re just tweaking and refining and oiling the bits to work together. That’s pure fun.

Most difficult: Copy edits. As an editor and an opinionated person who dislikes being wrong, I have difficulty taking them with grace.

ER: Are you a plotter or a pantser?

KJ: I’m now a plotter. It’s been a hard learning curve, though. I had to dump 30K on a book where I’d been winging it and it hadn’t worked; I vowed to plot thoroughly in the future; I then plotted out an entire book in detail, the first of a trilogy, and had to dump 30K of that because I’d forgotten to make the characters interesting or likeable. /side eyes everything/

ER: You write mostly queer historical romance. Is this your favourite subgenre to write? Do you want to try other subgenres?

KJ: I vastly prefer historical. If I do contemporary it would be urban fantasy probably, maybe horror. To be honest I don’t think I have anything to say in realistic queer contemporary that wouldn’t be better said by #ownvoices writers. Which is not to dictate what anyone else should write, but it’s how I feel about me.

ER: You have written only m/m couples so far, if I’m not mistaken. Are you interested in writing other types of relationships - m/f or f/f or poly relationships?

KJ: My December novella features a f/f central relationship and I’m aiming to write more of that. I have a forthcoming nonbinary main character also (Sins of the Cities book 3), and I’d love to write more nonbinary leads. I’ve never had an idea for a poly romance, but if I do I will!

ER: Speaking of writing dreams and future plans - what is the most outrageous/crazy story you want to write (Please, ignore the practical aspects of who would publish and who would want to read it)?

KJ: I don’t really see anything I want to write as outrageous, in that if it makes a coherent story, why not just do it? There is an amazing world of readers out there. (Except for my Twitter-running-joke contemporary Brexit romance, Hard Brexit, which involves a constitutional lawyer and a hot Brexiteer, with wigs-and-robes kink. That’s probably a step too far for anyone, ever.)

ER: Same question but about what kind of story you want to read and haven’t found it yet?

KJ: It’s not remotely outrageous, I just want more diverse historicals--diverse in terms of class and race and gender and sexuality and setting and period. Also I really want queer Restoration romance please. Someone do that or I may have to.

ER: Now, it’s time to focus more on your upcoming books. I believe Wanted, a Gentleman is your next release, right? Can you tell us more about it?

KJ: In fact I have two! Bear with me...

‘The Price of Meat’ is a short story (15K) in the queer horror anthology All in Fear, out now. It’s set in a Victorian AU, inspired by one of my favourite Victorian pulp stories (I won’t spoil it by saying which but Sondheim fans will probably work it out from the title!) and based on a real historical curiosity: the liberty of Alsatia, which was an area of London where laws officially didn’t apply. It’s penny dreadful rather than romance, with a f/f relationship at the centre. 

Wanted, a Gentleman, publishing January, is a shortish novel/long novella set in 1805, a road trip story in which our heroes are on a chase to Gretna Green in pursuit of a runaway heiress. Theo is a Lonely Hearts magazine publisher and jobbing weasel; Martin is a merchant who’s a sort-of friend of the heiress’s family, and the story is about them solving their immediate problem of catching the heiress, tackling the larger problems they both have, and coping with the utter ghastliness of a 14-mile-an-hour high speed chase on miserable roads through nowhere...all the while falling in love. :)

Title: Beard Science (Winston Brothers #3)
Author: Penny Reid
Publication Date: 11 Oct 2016
Genres: Contemporary, Humor, Romance

Author's links: Website • Twitter • Facebook • Goodreads
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My rating: 4.5 Stars

Make a deal with the devil and you might get what you want, but will it be what you need? 

Jennifer Sylvester wants one thing, and that one thing is NOT to be Tennessee’s reigning Banana Cake Queen. Ever the perpetual good girl and obedient daughter, Jennifer is buckling under the weight of her social media celebrity, her mother’s ambitions, and her father’s puritanical mandates. Jennifer is officially desperate. 

And desperate times call for Cletus Winston.

Cletus Winston is a puzzle wrapped in a mystery covered in conundrum sauce, and now he’s in a pickle. Despite being convinced of his own omniscience, extortion by the exalted Banana Cake Queen of Green Valley has taken him completely by surprise. So... what’s a maniacal mastermind to do? 

Likely, the last thing you expect. 

Review

This book is yet another winner for Penny Reid. I've enjoyed the previous two Winston brothers books but this one is my favourite. And to be honest, I didn't expect it to be. Based on what I had seen of Cletus prior this book, I found him too weird, over-the-top scheming and controlling. And he is all that but they way his character changed and evolved in Beard Science, it just blew my mind away.

Seeing this super smart, conniving, self-assured man who appeared unassuming and people generally underestimated, losing all control and coming completely undone by the unlikeliest woman, wow, just wow, it was such a pleasure to read.

I really like all all the Winston brothers (and Drew and Ashley) and their appearances here made for fun and entertaining story. We get the typical nerdy and super smart humour that we have come to expect fro Ms Reid's characters. And Cletus does take the top place of evil genius. He often appears crazy and weird to the eye of the outsider, even to his own siblings but what we see from him here is a caring, loyal brother and friend and the best, most dedicated and romantic boyfriend.

I have to admit that Jenn is not my favourite heroine of Ms Reid's that I have read. People see her as the Banana Cake Queen but under her costume and staged behaviour, she was so much more. She turns out to be an equal to Cletus in ingenuity and smarts. And just like him she was pretty good at hiding them from everybody. It took me a while to warm up to her (she appeared too weak and spineless at the beginning) but she did grow and change a lot in the course of the story and while she did not become an entire new person, she revealed her true colours and they were beautiful.

Overall this is a fun, crazy beautiful love story with some over-the-top quirky characters that you can't help but fall in love with. I feel safe to say that Ms Reid has become the queen of quirky, yet adorable characters, both men and women who stand out from the rest and are not afraid to be themselves.

I strongly believe that everybody deserve love and finding happiness and personal fulfillment is why I love reading romance. Reading a well written clever story of weird and awkward people finding their soulmates is such fun and satisfying experience for me. Now, I really, really need Billy's story but it's Beau that we get next and I can't wait to see how his romance with a certain someone whom we have already met develops. Recommended read!

Purchase links: Amazon / B&N / Kobo / Ibooks

Blurb

Alfie Bell is . . . fine. He’s got a six-figure salary, a penthouse in Canary Wharf, the car he swore he’d buy when he was eighteen, and a bunch of fancy London friends.

It’s rough, though, going back to South Shields now that they all know he’s a fully paid-up pansy. It’s the last place he’s expecting to pull. But Fen’s gorgeous, with his pink-tipped hair and hipster glasses, full of the sort of courage Alfie’s never had. It should be a one-night thing, but Alfie’s never met anyone like Fen before.

Except he has. At school, when Alfie was everything he was supposed to be, and Fen was the stubborn little gay boy who wouldn’t keep his head down. And now it’s a proper mess: Fen might have slept with Alfie, but he’ll probably never forgive him, and Fen’s got all this other stuff going on anyway, with his mam and her flower shop and the life he left down south.

Alfie just wants to make it right. But how can he, when all they’ve got in common is the nowhere town they both ran away from.

It is really difficult for me to review Alexis Hall's books because they bring all the emotions in me and instead of being objective, my reviews become this rambling, incoherent fangirling. Still, I will try to make this review at least a little bit useful for potential reader beyond the simple and very insistent - Go read this book! It's fabulous! You won't regret it!

I really, really like this author's writing style - it's powerful in a quiet way, evocative, often reads like poetry and always speaks to me and moves me to tears both ones of joy and ones of hurt.

I love how multi-layered this story is - it's about grieving and bullying and family and identity, and ultimately about change and growth - your past experiences, both good and bad, become part of you, they shape the present you in one way or another. It's beautiful and sad, heart-breaking and optimistic, it brought tears to my eyes every couple of pages or so. It's not melodramatic, but it's even more powerful with its ordinariness. The hurt and pain and rejection and doubt that both Fen and Alfie go through feel real, normal, something that can happen to anyone.

I loved Fen, admired his strength to be himself, understood (I think) his sense of loss of identity and direction after his mother's death. But Alfie, oh Alfie was everything to me. His inner struggles to accept, or rather to discover who he really was, what he liked and wanted in life was heart-breaking. Not everyone figures out themselves and their dreams as a teenager. Being older and confused about yourself seems even harder because everybody expects the stage of confusion and figuring things out to be over.

One of the things I liked the most in the story was how conceptions about gender identity and sexuality were explored and myths about them were debunked. Ideas of masculinity and queerness were put to the test - liking musicals and flowers does not take away one's masculinity, wanting a long-term relationship and kids does not make one less/more straight or queer.

On that note I found some of the conversations between Fen and Alfie about labels and heteronormativity a bit awkward, as Alfie himself said ("I can't tell if it's hot or annoying that you talk like you're on the internet."). I really don't know if people have this type of conversations but it felt odd and too scripted to me.

The relationship with family, one's upbringing, especially in a small nowhere town was also a central element in the story. Seeing the people who love you actually hurting you the most by not being able/willing to understand/accept you was really painful to read. Even Fen's father who was Ok with Fen's queerness ended causing him so much pain. This particular plot development towards the end was my least favourite thing in the story. I felt there was no need for it here.

Pansies is beautifully told but also really painful to read at times. It offers yet another in-depth exploration of the complexities of human nature and relationships, just like the rest of the Spires series. If you are a fan of the author or just enjoy heartfelt contemporary romantic stories, I'd encourage you to give this one a try. 

PS: And now I just want Kitty's and Greg's stories too :)

Purchase links: Amazon / B&N / Kobo / Publisher

Author: Cara McKenna
Genre: Erotic romance
Release Date: 21 June 2016

Author's links:
Website / Twitter / Tumblr / Goodreads

My rating: 5 Stars
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