Bringing Down the Duke is a brilliant debut historical romance. Set in Victorian England when suffragettes are fighting for rights, this is an enemies-to-lovers romance with a stodgy (divorced!) Duke hero who simply cannot have another scandal to his name and a penniless heroine studying at Oxford on a stipend from a women's rights organization.

In case you haven't been paying super close attention to my personal Twitter feed, you may not know that I've been reviewing for the Shelf Awareness for Readers newsletter for about three months. It's a lot of fun and I get exposed to a much broader selection of books than I might otherwise. For example, I've covered a book about a female butcher in London and a comic about adorable monsters who destroy whole ecosystems.

What if you lived above your queer tattoo shop and your new next door neighbor right across the hall was a pastor? And what if he was super hot? And what if you were raised by Evangelicals, are now an atheist disowned by your family and have a really complicated relationship with organized religion? Well, you'd be Seth in Covet Thy Neighbor.

Love from A to Z is an unconventionally structured romance, narrated in dual POV but also through the lens of a third party who is (with permission from the characters) telling their story in large part by connecting the dots between their journal entries. For the most part, it reads like a typical dual-perspective romance, but there are a few breaks where the author breaks the fourth wall and talks about how two people can see the same event in totally different ways. It fits the story, especially because the two main characters meet while traveling, come from different backgrounds, and there's a distance between them the entirety of the book. They're bound by certain things, such as Islam and their Marvels and Oddities journals, but most of the book consists of them figure out how to bridge the gaps between their many differences.

Catalina has always had to hold back her power, ever conscious that one slip could steal the will of those around her and make her vulnerable to their obsessive love. Now, with the future of House Baylor and Baylor Investigations squarely on her shoulders, she has to shake out her wings and do what needs to be done to find answers for herself and her clients. The last person she expects to derail her investigation however is Alessandro Sagredo, international playboy and the only man who has ever been able to even attempt to resist her. His skill at killing and disappearing are yet another mystery for Catalina to detangle.

Getting Schooled is a college-set enemies-to-lovers romance between two non-traditional students. Reese is a 26 year old grad student working under her mother, a professor of Black lit. Jason is a 28 year old Army vet who was honorably discharged after a helicopter crash (maybe a plane crash, apologies) took the bottom half of one of his legs. He's back home to get a mechanical engineering degree and is working with his father and brothers at the family car dealership.

Brazen and the Beast was one of those rare (for me) books that I inhaled in one day. While I loved Wicked and the Wallflower, this second Bareknuckle Bastards novel was even better. One of the most difficult things to accomplish when writing in a genre with established beats and a guaranteed Happily Ever After is consistent tension throughout the book. Brazen and the Beast had me guessing until the end just how this couple would work things out. Maclean gives workshops on writing conflict, and it's clear that she knows what she's about when you read a novel like this.

First, this book was fine. I have no massive complaints or warnings. It’s a perfectly fine book that took me 35% to get into, and then there was no strong emotional arc to keep me engaged. Second, this is my biggest quibble, the book acts like it takes place in a small town, but Yakima is not a small town. So, you have to ignore that Yakima is a real place and a city of more than 90,000 people, and embrace the small town-ness.

Reading Red, White and Royal Blue (RWARB) was a roller-coaster of first love, risky choices, and history in the making. Reading it as a bisexual person was validating. Reading it as a person living in a country characterized by both a spirit of hope and a history (and present) of horrors was something, too.

Some books feel like they were written for you, as if an author is eavesdropping on what you want in a book and what you like in books, and part of me wants to accuse Ruby Lang of bugging my house. Playing House is charming and almost breezily free of plot. It’s two messy people going through big changes in their lives and finding each other at the right time.