His Dark Magic follows Chloe, a witch from a well-connected family who is a medical student in Vermont. A terrible incident from her past has led her to pursue a career in medicine, where she hopes to combine her magical talent with her scientific work to heal otherwise unhealable conditions. The local coven, the Northern Circle, takes notice of her ability and asks her to join. At first, Chloe isn’t very interested in joining - the Northern Circle has had a rough past, and its reputation is discouraging. 

Before we get to my Top 5, a note:
As with any "Best Of" list, this is a highly subjective selection, limited by my own tastes and time. I read over 245 books this year, but not all of them came out in 2018, which limits the group further. Nevertheless, this was a hard list to compile!

With that said, here are five books that had significant meaning or impact for me this year. I've also tossed in a few runners up and non-romance picks at the end, because I read a lot of good stuff this year. A lot.

Elizabeth Hoyt's latest historical romance is reminiscent of the best of her Maiden Lane series, but with a feminist bent. Hoyt's heroines have always been the intellectual equal of her heroes, but in this, the hero takes a backseat as the Freya works to solve a mystery and save women on both an individual basis and on a political basis.

I was equal parts excited and daunted to put together a “Best of 2018” list for my scifi romance reads. I’m a voracious reader, so there are many titles on my kindle to choose from, not to mention that I write a “Best Bets” column here every month with at least three titles each time. How could I ever winnow the huge number of possibilities down into one snappy list of ten and not leave out too many of my favorite 2018 reads? Because to me “best of” translates into the stories which stayed with me the most vividly, despite how many books I read over the year.

Is there a better time of year for novellas and short stories? This round of mini-reviews is a exercise in clear-the-TBR, with a forced proximity (snowed-in!) collection, a dirty m/m novelette, a m/f Little Mermaid retelling and a sweet f/f mermaid story.

I’ve been a collection development librarian long enough to tell you that publishing in December is traditionally a dead zone.  You’d think that would have changed somewhat with the mainstreaming of self-publishing, but not really. Things still seem to bunch up around the fall and spring months of the calendar.  But I can always count on my old friend Harlequin Historical and there’s two westerns this month that are prodding me to take a closer look.

I don't mention it in every description, but all of these are queer. There is literally one hetero romance in here and I am not sorry. So if you're like me and you're like "Oh that book sounds great, you know what would make it greater? If it was queer!" --now you already know that it is. :) 

Since most of the Christmas romance I read is on the "fluffy" side, I decided to ramp up the angst and try out one of Harlequin's DARE line. While it wasn't overtly Christmassy, it does start shortly before Christmas one year and extend through the next Christmas. Christmas is sort of in the background, which is totally fine, but if that's not what you're looking for, perhaps not the choice for you.

So, what is the book about, if not Christmas? Well, it's about a sexy rich man who can't sleep, and the therapist who's supposed to fix him. Now, before you get squicked out, it's important to note that she never actually becomes his therapist. That's a professional line they both realize won't work once their physical attraction takes hold. So after two unofficial meetings, they start sleeping together and the idea of a therapist-patient relationship is never actualized. This would have been a dealbreaker for me, and I'm SO GLAD it was handled well.

I'm going to pause here for a content warning:
Domestic violence is discussed in this book as it's an integral part of the heroine's backstory. I mention it the review that follows.

The story is set in London, but the hero, Noah, is Australian. He grew up in the foster system, but abuse isn't part of his backstory, just a lack of unconditional love. Holly is a single mom who left a long-term abusive relationship after her ex tried to kill her while she was pregnant. He's in prison for a very long time now, so that's not an issue in this story. The ex's mother has a very good relationship with Holly's daughter, and watches her overnight on weekends.

As the story unfolds, Holly and Noah's physical relationship, which is full of enthusiastic and repeated consent, turns into something emotional. Holly eventually realizes that she can't go any further with Noah unless he addresses the issues he's trying to ignore. She asks him to see a therapist she recommends, and they agree to an unofficial "therapy" session in which she'll try to get him to realize what's really bothering him. This leads to the Big Bad Moment, as you might expect.

What comes next, however, is what saved the book for me. Noah doesn't just "grovel." Holly doesn't magically fix him. Noah puts in the work for nearly a year and they slowly reconnect, without the sex they were using as a distraction. It's quite lovely, honestly. I really appreciated that Connelly took that sort of care with mental health in this book.

All in all, it's a steamy story that doesn't fall for the traps that a lot of "edgy" romances dealing with abuse and mental health do. I'll definitely be reading more from Connelly in the future.

Despite my feelings and worries about current events that have so often bled into my reading this year, making me crave a certain kind of book or hyper-aware of problematic conventions and tropes in old faves, this was a fabulous reading year. I read lots of books by new-to-me authors that I can’t wait to read more from including Austin Chant, Holley Trent, Talia Hibbert, EE Ottoman, and Ada Harper. As always, there are even more books and authors whose books I didn’t get time to read, which makes writing a Best Of list so fraught.

These are the books that came out this year, that I would press into the hands of another reader without hesitation because I loved them so much.

Editor's Note: You can find the rest of Ana's Best Of lists at her website, and be sure to check out the #ReadRChat awards later this month!

The post title pretty much says it all, but yeah! We're on Patreon!