To Be Read Pile: An Unnatural Vice - K J Charles

Blurb

In the sordid streets of Victorian London, unwanted desire flares between two bitter enemies brought together by a deadly secret.

Crusading journalist Nathaniel Roy is determined to expose spiritualists who exploit the grief of bereaved and vulnerable people. First on his list is the so-called Seer of London, Justin Lazarus. Nathaniel expects him to be a cheap, heartless fraud. He doesn’t expect to meet a man with a sinful smile and the eyes of a fallen angel—or that a shameless swindler will spark his desires for the first time in years.

Justin feels no remorse for the lies he spins during his séances. His gullible clients simply bore him. Hostile, disbelieving, utterly irresistible Nathaniel is a fascinating challenge. And as their battle of wills and wits heats up, Justin finds he can’t stop thinking about the man who’s determined to ruin him.

But Justin and Nathaniel are linked by more than their fast-growing obsession with one another. They are both caught up in an aristocratic family’s secrets, and Justin holds information that could be lethal. As killers, fanatics, and fog close in, Nathaniel is the only man Justin can trust—and, perhaps, the only man he could love.

Best Line:  Justin patted her thin fingers soothingly. There, there. You saved for two years to look for your lost children, and you’re spending the money on a spiritualist instead of a private detective. You hopeless, soggy mopstick. There, there

Okay, so, confession time. I love con men stories. Always have. A story about a fraudster pretending to be a seer set against the backdrop of a Victorian romp was always going to tick every single box I have. This was a rollicking, breathless adventure I read in a day and still can't stop bothering people about.

Nathanial is a bit of a prat who needs to get his righteous rage on to feel good about himself. Justin is a morally corrupt scallywag and between the two of them the sass is at critical levels. Some of the dialogue in this is just superb.

This is the second book but I had no troubles getting into it. The series follows different couples whose stories overlap and, to be honest, I think that if I hadn't started with this I wouldn'tve continued. The first book takes a little while to get going before it becomes good while this launches straight into sizzling tension and tight pacing.

Also, big cheers to the amount of inclusivity on show in this series. Far from the standard 'Everyone in Victorian England was made of bland mayonnaise', Charles' world includes POC, disabled people, autistic people, some gender fluidity and a gay club run by a trans woman. It's refreshing and a HEAP of fun.

If you like your queer romance with cracking dialogue, tight plotting and witty conmen, this is the book for you.

Get it here https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M0HH1IH

To Be Read Pile: Blue Line - Bo Driscoll & Dawne Walters

Blurb
Patrick ‘Neiler’ McNeil, defenseman for the Atlanta Spartans hockey team is well on his way to the ‘Big Show.’ He has it all…looks, personality, talent, supportive family and the best teammates a guy could ask for.

What he doesn’t have? A woman to his life with. After a steady stream of bad dates, Patrick is ready to swear off women. That is until he sees her across the room…

Jane Sanderson is getting over a betrayed heart. Her ex left her with no money and no car. Abandoned. The last person she wants to get involved with is a hockey player. Yet, where better to run into one than the place she works, BLADES Sports Bar, where she sees him....

When the very charming and seductive Patrick sets his mind to something, he wins. Jane finds herself falling for him more and more each day with the things that he does for her.

At the peak of their happiness…her ex comes back to town hell bent on destroying her happiness.

Where there is pain, there is healing. Where there is ice, there is hockey…and that’s where it all began.

Worst Line:  I slide my hands up to his hips and feel the indentation, the cut of his abdomen. What I call cum gutters. I know better, but that's what I call them.

I want you to go back and read that line again. Really read it. Absorb it into your soul. And the next time you read something that clunks or hear a line of dialogue that doesn't work, I want you to think to yourself 'At least it wasn't cum gutters'.

This book was bad, but it did have one redeeming feature: the hockey sequences are pretty ace. I've done a lot of research about hockey books in the last few months and in an environment that is mostly filled with players going to their lockers to get 'the things they need to get' all of the hockey sequences in it feel real and varied and like they might have been written by someone who not only enjoys the game but has played before.

The plot is meandering and without any real drive until it commits the cardinal sin of having a major conflict that could be resolved with a text message. The sex scenes included the phrase 'cum gutters' but did involve a faintly hilarious sexcapade that involved spreading a blanket on centre ice and no frozen genitals.

If you want to read a few good sports scenes surrounded by poorly written, barely proof-read prose that weaves between boring and mildly offensive, this is the book for you.

Get it here https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B01HT6KJJE

To Be Read Pile: All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr

Blurb

Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

Best Line:  So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?

This book was gorgeous, start to finish. I normally can't stand books that hang purely on descriptive prose but all the chapters are short, dreamy vignettes that I blasted through like a cookie jar.

I love books where it feels like I'm getting a different perspective and learning new things and this delivered in scads. First there was Marie-Laurie a young blind girl in occupied France who flees from her home in Paris with her father and between simply trying to survive and understand what happened to her home, becomes embroiled in the resistance. It was a fresh perspective on a story that has been told (and told and told)

Then There is Werner. Dear, gorgeous Werner who loves radios and gets a harsh introduction into the Hitler Youth. I think, what I liked about Werner is that he wasn't the lone resister in a crowd of monsters. He has an interest and the Hitler Youth nurtures it. And, when asked to do something horrible, he bows to the peer pressure around him. Not because he's an inherently bad person, but because that was how people behaved. He feels bad and guilty and he's confused because he's told he's doing the right thing. It's nuanced and his actions are explored and dissected and ruminated on throughout the book. Plus, I got to learn some interesting things about early radios and bird watching.

If you're looking for a book that is achingly beautiful and so understated and subtle that you won't start crying until a full half hour after you put it down, this is the book for you.

Get it here https://www.amazon.com/dp/1501173219