I feel oddly spoiled that I have had a really good streak with books so far this year. And Tempest just continued the pattern with its beautifully strong and complicated main characters and heartfelt love story. And now, I'm suffering from a good book hangover and off to read a mystery just so that I don’t lose that good romance buzz.

This book ruined me. Even if the title was not The Earl I Ruined, I would have written that sentence, but now it’s there for posterity as some sort of dad joke. The truth is that this book hit the right chord and I couldn’t stop reading it. I whined about how I had to go to work when all I wanted to do was call in sick and finish this gorgeous story. Also, this book has one of my favorite complicated heroines too.

Possibly my favorite trope or character in historical romance is the science-y bluestocking. I will read all of these books because they totally play into my science vanity, not that any hot lords or ladies have sought me out for discussing groundwater flow or vapor intrusion models in public. This is not to say that I love every science-y heroine book, but I will read all of them. Before you think “she hated this one too?” I need you to know that I really enjoyed Lady Claire Is All That.

Appetites & Vices appeared on my phone when I needed it most. It’s hard to explain why exactly because we all want a good book, but I needed something unexpected, I think. And the romance between the difficult Ursula and the complicated Jay fit that mood almost exactly.

This was part of my endeavor to try a lot of different historical romances by folks I’ve never read before, and The Dissolute Duke was a miss.

My opinion of Six Weeks with a Lord varied greatly as I read it, and the origin of my issues: the hero.

I am afraid that this review will be in two parts. First, I need it to be known that I was both excited and nervous about The Shape of You. No matter what genre, books are more often bad when it comes to fat representation, and I hoped for an outlier. Instead, I got more of the usual. I made it to 45% before I became enraged. The first part will be about the story, the second will be about fat representation.

Full disclosure, I hate “Best of” lists because I spend 95% of the time disagreeing with them. And then I feel guilty about all the books I didn’t read. However, here is my Best of 2018 Romance (conflicts of interest removed), which is only valid for what I can remember reading as I write this and is really a list of my favorite books this year.

In a way, Between the Lines had a lot to live up to for me, which it totally did. I loved the first book in the series, Perfect Day, and because the genuine emotion behind the book was what caught me then, I knew there wasn’t a great risk this time. This is Malcolm’s strong suit: she lingers in the emotions in a genuine and heartfelt way that is also unflinching and I love it.