Happy February! It's that time of year, so the virtual panels are everywhere and it's a glorious thing. Avoid the thinkpieces, embrace the presentations!

I want to specifically call attention to the virtual panel Milwaukee Public Library is holding on February 22:

"Celebrate the release of Black Love Matters - an incisive, intersectional essay anthology that celebrates and examines romance and romantic media through the lens of Black readers, writers, and cultural commentators - with special guests editor and librarian Jessica Pryde, best-selling author Beverly Jenkins, and host of Romance Ever After Allie Parker. Exploring the multifaceted ways love is seen-and the ways it isn't-this diverse array of Black voices collectively shines a light on the power of crafting happy endings for Black lovers. "

This is going to be so great and if you're able to attend, definitely sign up!

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It's 2022 and we're still in a pandemic. I'm tired and grumpy and I'm sure you are, too. But hey, we've got books!

Before we get to the list, I want to let you know I'm making a couple of changes to these posts. For one, I won't be compiling monthly lists over at Bookshop anymore. Folks aren't using them and it seems a misuse of my time. Second, I started making lists over at Amazon. Let me know what you'd like in the future!

I'm wishing you a year full of moments of joy and wonder, and the ability to hold onto those moments amidst the chaos.

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More mini-reviews!  Within These Wicked Walls, Dirty Plays, If This Gets Out, Smash & Grab, The Belle and the Beard and Uncommonly Verdant. That's a YA f/m fantasy, two f/m contemporaries, a YA m/m contemporary, an m/m paranormal contemp, and whatever you want to call an f/m tree romance.

Rating refresher! Categories are based on whether or not I recommend them to fellow readers -  DNF (Did Not Finish), Pass, YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary), Read it Eventually, Read it Soon.

Payback's a Witch is the book I was hoping for or at least expecting when the crop of witchy contemporary rom-coms was announced. (I reviewed The Ex Hex and Witch Please previously.) It's fun and witchy, with more world-building and more use of magic and a bit of danger. The sapphic romance at the heart of the book is also more compelling than the romances in the other two, so that's a big plus.

One last TBR post as we send off 2021!

The whole list is collected over at Amazon and Bookshop for your convenience.

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This post contains affiliate links.

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This post contains affiliate links.

I'm glad a couple of my reviewer friends read Julie Tieu's The Donut Trap before I did, because I went into this novel with the expectation that it's more a coming-of-age story than a romance. The romance between Jasmine and Alex is definitely a big part of the plot, but the novel is told from Jasmine's point of view and Alex is missing from chunks of the book. Instead, the relationship between Jasmine and her parents and Jasmine's overall post-college funk is the focus of the story and if you read it with the right expectations, it's a really solid debut.

The Ex Hex is the book I needed during the Spooky Season. I read a couple horror novels and considering the amount of horror in the real world, I was struggling to pick up just about anything. The Ex Hex to the rescue! This book has some flaws, but I ended up liking it quite a bit and look forward to more from Erin Sterling/Rachel Hawkins.

I've read a pretty random assortment of books recently that made me wonder "how much does my mother really need to know about my reading preferences?" Eventually, I decided that 1) my family's pretty open about things and 2) people don't have to read my blog if they don't want to know things. And then I danced around my barren field of f*cks and wrote this post.

Lakesedge is everything I hoped it would be: a romantic dark gothic fantasy novel with an intriguing magic system. 'Tis the Spooky Season and this is a great pick for those of us who want something horror-lite. Lakesedge pairs an anguished boy who feeds his blood to a cursed lake once a month and a girl who's haunted by the lord of death and desperate to save her brother from said anguished boy. If that's the right level of spooky for you? Read on.