Sam's Fireside - Cosy Book Reviews & Recommendations

  " The sky is a velvet blanket littered with stars that wink at me for the first time in a week." To Bleed a Crystal Bloom was the March read for #thatbonkersbookclub and… I was disappointed. 😕 It’s a Rapunzel retelling, which I honestly found a little strange and quite dark. 🕯️ Our protagonist has been locked in a tower since she was two, but now has this odd fascination with the man who put her there, as well as a weird creature living in the sea. 🌊 I just found the story boring.  😴 Nothing grabbed me, nothing made me want to keep reading—but I did, because I kept hoping it would get better. It didn’t… at least not for me. 🤷‍♀️ When we discussed it, the majority of us felt the same way, and at least two of us got the ick from the relationships, 😖 never mind the nauseating references to other things I never want to think about ever again. 🤢 A lot of it felt random and unexplained, and maybe that comes in the next book—but I won’t be sticking around to find out. 🚫 So...

“Memories take hold in the silence. Pain dulls with time, but can still linger, waiting to be polished so it can shine once more.” Encouraged by finally writing my reviews for the first two books in this trilogy, I grabbed an audiobook copy of Scythe and Sparrow from Libby and listened to it over the weekend. For me, this was by far the best of the three. I liked Fionn, I adored Rose and the circus was just a cutesy added extra for me. I've loved reading circus stories since I was younger, so throw one into the mix and I know I'll jump straight in there! Scythe and Sparrow isn't as gory as the other two but the s*x is hotter and steamier for sure. Both Lachlan and Lark and Rowan and Sloane make various reappearances throughout this one, and it's great to see how they are and what's going on in their lives.  If you haven't read these, and you're a dark romance lover, then what are you waiting for? Grab these as soon as you can and dive right in! About the Boo...

“A snow globe,” I say slowly, waiting for her to look up, which she doesn’t do. “You made a severed finger into a feckin’ snow globe.” “It was almost Christmas,” she says with a shrug. “It felt … festive.” A listened to this one, straight after Butcher and Blackbird, another combination of gruesomeness, murder and some hot and spicy! It was good, maybe not quite as good as the first one, but it came pretty close. I adore both of these narrators and Samantha Brentmoor especially, is fast becoming a favourite - and she has a great name too! For me, the story is a little slower than the first book, it's a lot more laid-back - if you can call a dark romance laid-back. I did want to chuck them both in the trunk of the car at one point and tell them to just sort themselves out. 😂 There was definitely humour, and both narrators capture it perfectly. Lark especially has an incredibly dry sense of humour and I loved this, she made the book a lot of fun.  Having finally found the time to wr...