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

In her black leather, heavy lined eyes and dark cloak, Diana, a coyote shifter, exudes confidence and primal energy but there is one human who can fluster her like no other - her ex, Laine. Laine never believed Diana’s reasons for their break up with her and is back to see if Diana is ready to admit they should still be together and put them back on track.

Silvia Moreno Garcia's The Beautiful Ones is a difficult book to categorize, blending fantasy, historical fiction, and romance into one complicated, character-driven novel. On the whole, I can't say that it made me "happy," but I did enjoy reading it. Fluff this is not.

This is a difficult book to review, because I had two completely different trains of thought going while I was reading. On one hand, it's an over-the-top romantic comedy, with a heroine doing some truly batty things that sound straight out of The CW's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. On the other hand, the book doesn't deal well with mental illness, the reality of stalking, and/or actually building the romance between the two main characters.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

This book was recommended to me by one of Harlequin's publicists when I inquired about another title, so I was skeptical. It's the third in a series about Dallas Billionaires and by an author I'd never tried, so I wasn't sure how jumping into the series with this book would go.