Mariana Zapata’s books continue to give me an experience of diminishing returns. If I had just stopped at Kulti, I would still love it, but now having read three of her books, and seen that all three of them feel like basically the same book with the covers and names swapped out, I have been enjoying them less and less (and retroactively enjoy Kulti less, too, which is sad). This book is about Jasmine Santos, a pairs skater without a partner, whose mortal enemy, Ivan […]
I am a ball of conflicting emotions.
So I actually finished this book almost a week ago but I’ve been sitting on the rating and review because I’m torn. Conflicting thoughts, hate those. Plot: Vanessa Mazur has just quit her job after two years of being a personal assistant to famous professional football player Aiden Graves. He didn’t treat her very well, and she wants to start her own graphic design business, so she’s out. But he shows up at her door after she quits, begging her to come back. I won’t […]
Everything Beth Ellen Said is Accurate, But I Still Enjoyed It
I’m having a hard time focusing on reading. It’s not that things are bad. Things are stressful in a way that uses up a lot of my mental and emotional energy. I’m working on a couple of books I received as gifts over the holidays (one from my uncle and fellow Cannonballer, degregorious), but the focus isn’t there. Beth Ellen’s review of From Lukov With Love plus the Olympic figure skating on my tv and all over my social media feeds gave me an urge to […]
When rivalries turn into smooching.
Well, I’m not quite to the level of reading all this author’s stuff (it is very aggressively male, which I can tolerate in a sports romance, but I’m not sure about elsewhere). But I am very much in for the rest of this series. I hope it’s longer than three books. This time around, we follow Simeon Boudreaux, who we met last book as one of Gavin Brawley’s best (only) friends and teammates on the Barons, a fake New York professional football team. Simeon is a […]
“There was something reassuring about the realness of outright hostility.”
I mean, this was definitely Written By A Man. This is a sports romance between a famously aggressive NFL player (Gavin, bisexual and in the closet) who is under house arrest for a brawl that was caught on camera, and the personal assistant (Noah, openly gay former social worker) he hires to help him manage his life while he can’t leave his house. There is much personality clashing, discussion of power dynamics, class issues, football, and sex. It is smart, also, and doesn’t give two […]
Thanks to the CBR romance readers hive mind for this one.
This is another one of those books I probably wouldn’t have touched were it not for the online book reviewing community. Specifically, all of you fellow romance-reading reviewers here at CBR, who read and reviewed Kulti to pieces starting late last year. I’d never even heard of Mariana Zapata until y’all started raving over this book. I’ve learned to trust our collective hive mind over the years, so I picked this up with one of my Audible credits earlier this year, and decided to save […]