Sunday Soup - September 27

In The Soup This Week... Roselynn Cannes, Josie Kerr, Barbara Bretton and Jeffe Kennedy.

Soup Dish:  on my mind
✽So I need to apologize for the lack of Reading Until Dawn features over the past couple of weeks.  It turns out that authors sometimes have deadlines that are more important than mine, if you can imagine that.  With the con less than 2 weeks away (!!) I'll be wrapping up the features pretty soon, and we should see the conclusion of the two amazing stories in progress.  Stay tuned!

✽September is always a busy month around here.  It's back to school, and two of our family of four have birthdays, and we have end-of-summer projects to get completed.  Seattle has had a record-breaking warm and dry summer, and I've been very glad to see the return of cooler, damper weather.  It's great for reading.

✽I've been a little off social media lately -- what's the buzz?

What I'm reading
✽Fallen, by Roselynn Cannes, was a really good read. Set in a Greco-Roman alt-history world, I loved this militant heroine and the man who is a match for her.  I will caution that the author does not class this a romance, and it doesn't not have an HEA. There is a pretty compelling set-up for another book, and we may eventually get there. In the meantime, I'd just call it alt-history fiction, without anything magical or supernatural to put it into fantasy territory. Perhaps similar to some of Guy Gavriel Kay's less mystical novels. Because I didn't know exactly which genre to peg it into, I did wonder where it was going at times.  I tried to just be open, but it turns out I rely a lot on knowing what category something is in-- which is more a commentary on me and my ways than the book.

✽A Bad Bit Nice, by Josie Kerr. Full disclosure, I've been "internet friends" with this author for a ridiculous number of years, so I was REALLY excited when she published this, her first romance.  The heroine is a 40-something, tattooed IT professional with a foul mouth and a soft heart (I relate), and the hero... oh my, the hero.  He's everything you'd want in a hero.  Tender, gorgeous, creative, protective, understanding; he's the still-waters-run-deep type.  If you like Penny Watson, I think you might like this. If I have a criticism, I'd say there's a lot going on in this story, and maybe didn't need quite as many of those extrinsic plot points.  But I liked the characters and the romance quite a lot.

✽Shore Lights, by Barbara Bretton. An angsty contemporary with a TON of women's-fiction type family drama.  Not bad at all.  There is an HEA, but there is also a second book that starts with wedding planning.  I read the first chapter or so and kind of didn't want to know the rest. Perhaps a theme with me, I think I just didn't like the break in my comfy familiar pattern.

✽I have finally, FINALLY started reading Mark of the Tala, by Jeffe Kennedy and I seriously want to call in sick tomorrow so I can hide somewhere in a cushy chair and read it all the way to the end and then download the next book and read that one too.  I have read an enjoyed Kennedy's erotica for quite a while now but hadn't nabbed this one. I'm enjoying it all the more for the wait.