Tag Archives: Aidee’s Reads

Aidee’s List of Books Read from January to June of 2022

This list may have less romance than usual, but paradoxically more fluffy romance (think aliens and mythological creatures). It is, as ever, not in chronological order or any order denoting preference for particular books. Titles preceded by an asterisk are rereads; you may recognize some old favorites by this point. And this time, it is completely my fault this particular list is so incredibly late.

*Servant Mage by Kate Elliott
Grey Magic by Jeffe Kennedy
Love Notes by Christina C. Jones
*The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi [audiobook]
*Head On by John Scalzi [audiobook]
Sweep in Peace by Ilona Andrews [dramatized audiobook]
One Fell Sweep by Ilona Andrews [dramatized audiobook]
Clean Sweep by Ilona Andrews [dramatized audiobook]
Sweep of the Blade by Ilona Andrews [dramatized audiobook]
*Harbinger by Wen Spenser
The Dating Playbook by Farrah Rochon
Entreat Me by Grace Draven
The Brush of Black Wings by Grace Draven
The Art of Deception by Stephanie Burgis
The Light Within by Grace Draven
Wildfire Griffin by Zoe Chant
Showstopper by Regina Kyle
Boyfriend by Sarina Bowen
Lucky in Leather by Holley Trent
Penric and the Shaman by Lois McMaster Bujold
Extent by H.E. Trent
Penric’s Demon by Lois McMaster Bujold
Resurrection by Karina Bliss
Redemption by Karina Bliss
A Deal with the Elf King by Elise Kova
The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison (audiobook)
The Assassins of Thasalon by Lois McMaster Bujold (audiobook)
Kiss Hard by Nalini Singh (audiobook)
Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire
Spelunking Through Hell by Seanan McGuire
Not Your Average Hot Guy by Gwenda Bond
Knot of Shadows by Lois McMaster Bujold (audiobook)
The Physicians of Vilnoc by Lois McMaster Bujold (audiobook)
Thorn Bound by Stephanie Burgis
Good Neighbors by Stephanie Burgis
The Tyrant Alpha’s Rejected Mate by Cate C. Wells
The Heir Apparent’s Rejected Mate by Cate C. Wells

Aidee’s List of Books Read the First Half of 2021

Aidee’s January to July 2021 Reading List

These are all the books I read from January to July, not counting any ARCs I read for August through December releases. Like I always say here, the list is not in chronological order, and it is late because there has been a lot going on in my little corner of the world, on top of the general stuff going on. I’ve marked any books with an asterisk that I’ve read more than once, and also noted audiobooks. Continue reading

Aidee’s Reads from the First Half of 2020

NOPE. THAT’S NOT A TYPO. 😱 😬 😅
Hi all! Your friend Limecello here with an apology to Aidee and … the rest of you can just imagine the biggest cringe and me crawling under a rock. I … yeah that’s not a typo – this list is from 2020 and I don’t even know WTF was happening/how I dropped the ball. (I mean I know in June 2020 there was a lot of “surgery or no?” for me but… dude. Still >.< did not think I’d be tinkering with it in August 2021…
But! I still think this is important to post – “new to me” books discoveries are always good, as is finding someone who might be your book brain twin. 😀

I’d also like to note that the sale prices for the books are accurate as of the time of me writing and formatting this post – I can’t guarantee them for when the post goes live or when you see it. Thanks for understanding!

Anyway – here we go – Aidee’s January 1 – June 30, 2020 reads.

Chaos Reigning by Jessie Mihalik | B+
Nightchaser by Amanda Bouchet | B- (currently on sale for $5.68 on kindle)
Can’t Escape Love by Alyssa Cole (audiobook) | A-
Once Upon a Rose by Laura Florand | A
A Duke, the Lady, and a Baby by Vanessa Riley | B- (*currently $1.99 for kindle)
The Dare by Elle Kennedy | B *currently just $0.99 for kindle
The Chase by Elle Kennedy B- (currently a kindle freebie)
The Perfect Escape by Suzanne Park | B (reviewed here)
Mr. Hotshot CEO by Jackie Lau | B+
Shatter the Earth by Karen Chance | B
Pregnant by the Playboy by Jackie Lau | B- *currently $0.99 for kindle
King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo (audiobook) | B+ *currently on sale for $8.72 (kindle)
Alpha Night by Nalini Singh | B+
Hers to Defend by Rhenna Morgan | B-
Real Men Knit by Kwana Jackson | B
Night Shift Dragons by Rachel Aaron (audiobook) | A-
Companion Pieces by Melissa F. Olson (audiobook) | B-
Long Shot by Kennedy Ryan | A-
A Treason of Truths by Ada Harper | A-
The Last Emperox by John Scalzi (audiobook) | B+
Love Hard by Nalini Singh | A-
Wolf Rain by Nalini Singh | B+
Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire | B+
Imaginary Numbers by Seanan McGuire | B
Serpent and Dove by Shelby Mahurin | B-
Badger to the Bone by Shelly Laurenston (audiobook) | B
The Rich Boy by Kylie Scott | A-
Wicked Bite by Jeanine Frost (audiobook) | B+
Heartland by Sarina Bowen (audiobook) | B-
Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert (audiobook) | A-
Breakaway by Michelle Diener | A-
Dark Horse by Michelle Diener | B+ *currently this book is in Prime Reading/Library
Phoenix Unbound by Grace Draven | B
Dragon Blood by Eileen Wilks | B-
Dragon Spawn by Eileen Wilks | B-
Ritual Magic by Eileen Wilks | B-
Mind Magic by Eileen Wilks | B
Spellbound by Allie Therin | B-
The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison (audiobook) | B+
A Heart of Blood and Ashes by Milla Vane (audiobook) | A
The Black Wolves of Boston by Wen Spencer (audiobook)* | B
Down and Dirty by Kendall Ryan | B- *currently in KU too
Wicked Ugly Bad by Cassandra Gannon | B+
Legally Yours by Nicole French | C+ *currently a kindle freebie
A Girl Like Her: A Small Town Romance by Talia Hibbert | B+ *currently on sale for $2.99  (kindle)
Falcon by Marilyn Campbell | C+ *also currently on sale for $2.99 (kindle) 
The Golden Spider by Anne Renwick | C+
Best Knight Ever by Cassandra Gannon | B+
Knight in Leather by Holley Trent | B-
Woo Me by Karina Bliss | B+
Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev (audiobook) | A- *currently on sale for $7.99 (kindle)
Lush Money by Angelina M. Lopez | B+
Emergency Skin by N.K. Jemisin (novella) | B+ *If you’re a Prime member it’s currently in Prime Reading/Library

Aidee’s Second Half of 2020 Reading List

[This is Limecello here with the commentary … So first … *crawls into a whole* 😬 Aidee submitted this post on January 13, 2021. I was so sure I had formatted and posted this … but obviously not. My eye started twitching now at … just me. Ugh. My apologies to all.] Anyway, I want to highlight this is what Aidee read from July-December 2020. Anyway, without further mess from me… Aidee!

As per usual, this list is not in any kind of order. Books with an asterisk are books I’ve re-read. Continue reading

Aidee’s Top 10 Reads of 2020

*E.N. Aidee added this post on 1/13/21 – so all delays are the fault of one Limecello. 😬

My usual disclaimors about this list apply: the order in which these books appear is not related to how much I recommend them, and there were a lot of good books in 2020 which I recommend that aren’t on this list. The asterisk next to Emerald Blaze means I re-read it.

Emerald Blaze by Ilona Andrews (audiobook and e-book) |A- *
Emerald Blaze by Ilona Andrews Book CoverAs Prime magic users, Catalina Baylor and her sisters have extraordinary powers—powers their ruthless grandmother would love to control. Catalina can earn her family some protection working as deputy to the Warden of Texas, overseeing breaches of magic law in the state, but that has risks as well. When House Baylor is under attack and monsters haunt her every step, Catalina is forced to rely on handsome, dangerous Alessandro Sagredo, the Prime who crushed her heart.

The nightmare that Alessandro has fought since childhood has come roaring back to life, but now Catalina is under threat. Not even his lifelong quest for revenge will stop him from keeping her safe, even if every battle could be his last. Because Catalina won’t rest until she stops the use of the illicit, power-granting serum that’s tearing their world apart.

What can a Body Do by Sara Hendren | A+
What Can a Body Do? by Sara Hendren book coverFurniture and tools, kitchens and campuses and city streets—nearly everything human beings make and use is assistive technology, meant to bridge the gap between body and world. Yet unless, or until, a misfit between our own body and the world is acute enough to be understood as disability, we may never stop to consider—or reconsider—the hidden assumptions on which our everyday environment is built.

In a series of vivid stories drawn from the lived experience of disability and the ideas and innovations that have emerged from it—from cyborg arms to customizable cardboard chairs to deaf architecture—Sara Hendren invites us to rethink the things and settings we live with. What might assistance based on the body’s stunning capacity for adaptation—rather than a rigid insistence on “normalcy”—look like? Can we foster interdependent, not just independent, living? How do we creatively engineer public spaces that allow us all to navigate our common terrain? By rendering familiar objects and environments newly strange and wondrous, What Can a Body Do? helps us imagine a future that will better meet the extraordinary range of our collective needs and desires.

The Magnolia Sword by Sherry Thomas | A
CHINA, 484 A.D.
A Warrior in Disguise
All her life, Mulan has trained for one purpose: to win the duel that every generation in her family must fight. If she prevails, she can reunite a pair of priceless heirloom swords separated decades earlier, and avenge her father, who was paralyzed in his own duel.

Then a messenger from the Emperor arrives, demanding that all families send one soldier to fight the Rouran invaders in the north. Mulan’s father cannot go. Her brother is just a child. So she ties up her hair, takes up her sword, and joins the army as a man.

A War for a Dynasty
Thanks to her martial arts skills, Mulan is chosen for an elite team under the command of the princeling—the royal duke’s son, who is also the handsomest man she’s ever seen. But the princeling has secrets of his own, which explode into Mulan’s life and shake up everything she knows. As they cross the Great Wall to face the enemy beyond, Mulan and the princeling must find a way to unwind their past, unmask a traitor, and uncover the plans for the Rouran invasion . . . before it’s too late.

The Duke Who Didn’t by Courtney Milan | A+
Miss Chloe Fong has plans for her life, lists for her days, and absolutely no time for nonsense. Three years ago, she told her childhood sweetheart that he could talk to her once he planned to be serious. He disappeared that very night.

Except now he’s back. Jeremy Wentworth, the Duke of Lansing, has returned to the tiny village he once visited with the hope of wooing Chloe. In his defense, it took him years of attempting to be serious to realize that the endeavor was incompatible with his personality.

All he has to do is convince Chloe to make room for a mischievous trickster in her life, then disclose that in all the years they’ve known each other, he’s failed to mention his real name, his title… and the minor fact that he owns her entire village.

Only one thing can go wrong: Everything.

A Dead Djinn in Cairo (novella) by P. Djeli Clark | A
A Tor.com original historcal fantasy set in an alternate early twentieth century infused with the otherworldly.

Egypt, 1912. In Cairo, the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities investigate disturbances between the mortal and the (possibly) divine.

What starts off as an odd suicide case for Special Investigator Fatma el-Sha’arawi leads her through the city’s underbelly as she encounters rampaging ghouls, saucy assassins, clockwork angels, and a plot that could unravel time itself.

At the Publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Can’t Even by Ann Helen Petersen | A
Do you feel like your life is an endless to-do list? Do you find yourself mindlessly scrolling through Instagram because you’re too exhausted to pick up a book? Are you mired in debt, or feel like you work all the time, or feel pressure to take whatever gives you joy and turn it into a monetizable hustle? Welcome to burnout culture.

While burnout may seem like the default setting for the modern era, in Can’t Even, BuzzFeed culture writer and former academic Anne Helen Petersen argues that burnout is a definitional condition for the millennial generation, born out of distrust in the institutions that have failed us, the unrealistic expectations of the modern workplace, and a sharp uptick in anxiety and hopelessness exacerbated by the constant pressure to “perform” our lives online. The genesis for the book is Petersen’s viral BuzzFeed article on the topic, which has amassed over seven million reads since its publication in January 2019.

Can’t Even goes beyond the original article, as Petersen examines how millennials have arrived at this point of burnout (think: unchecked capitalism and changing labor laws) and examines the phenomenon through a variety of lenses—including how burnout affects the way we work, parent, and socialize—describing its resonance in alarming familiarity. Utilizing a combination of sociohistorical framework, original interviews, and detailed analysis, Can’t Even offers a galvanizing, intimate, and ultimately redemptive look at the lives of this much-maligned generation, and will be required reading for both millennials and the parents and employers trying to understand them.

Can’t Escape Love by Alyssa Cole (audiobook) | A-
Regina Hobbs is nerdy by nature, businesswoman by nurture. She’s finally taking her pop culture-centered media enterprise, Girls with Glasses, to the next level, but the stress is forcing her to face a familiar supervillain: insomnia. The only thing that helps her sleep when things get this bad is the deep, soothing voice of puzzle-obsessed live streamer Gustave Nguyen. The problem? His archive has been deleted.

Gus has been tasked with creating an escape room themed around a romance anime…except he knows nothing about romance or anime. Then mega-nerd and anime expert Reggie comes calling, and they make a trade: his voice for her knowledge. But when their online friendship has IRL chemistry, will they be able to escape love?

Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert (audiobook) | A-
Chloe Brown is a chronically ill computer geek with a goal, a plan, and a list. After almost—but not quite—dying, she’s come up with seven directives to help her “Get a Life”, and she’s already completed the first: finally moving out of her glamorous family’s mansion. The next items?

Enjoy a drunken night out.
Ride a motorcycle.
Go camping.
Have meaningless but thoroughly enjoyable sex.
Travel the world with nothing but hand luggage.
And… do something bad.
But it’s not easy being bad, even when you’ve written step-by-step guidelines on how to do it correctly. What Chloe needs is a teacher, and she knows just the man for the job.

Redford ‘Red’ Morgan is a handyman with tattoos, a motorcycle, and more sex appeal than ten-thousand Hollywood heartthrobs. He’s also an artist who paints at night and hides his work in the light of day, which Chloe knows because she spies on him occasionally. Just the teeniest, tiniest bit.

But when she enlists Red in her mission to rebel, she learns things about him that no spy session could teach her. Like why he clearly resents Chloe’s wealthy background. And why he never shows his art to anyone. And what really lies beneath his rough exterior…

A Heart of Blood and Ashes by Milla Vane (audiobook) | A
A generation past, the western realms were embroiled in endless war. Then the Destroyer came. From the blood and ashes he left behind, a tenuous alliance rose between the barbarian riders of Parsathe and the walled kingdoms of the south. That alliance is all that stands against the return of an ancient evil—until the barbarian king and queen are slain in an act of bloody betrayal.

Though forbidden by the alliance council to kill the corrupt king responsible for his parents’ murders, Maddek vows to avenge them, even if it costs him the Parsathean crown. But when he learns it was the king’s daughter who lured his parents to their deaths, the barbarian warrior is determined to make her pay.

Yet the woman Maddek captures is not what he expected. Though the last in a line of legendary warrior-queens, Yvenne is small and weak, and the sharpest weapons she wields are her mind and her tongue. Even more surprising is the marriage she proposes to unite them in their goals and to claim their thrones—because her desire for vengeance against her father burns even hotter than his own…

Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev (audiobook) | A-
It is a truth universally acknowledged that only in an overachieving Indian American family can a genius daughter be considered a black sheep.

Dr. Trisha Raje is San Francisco’s most acclaimed neurosurgeon. But that’s not enough for the Rajes, her influential immigrant family who’s achieved power by making its own non-negotiable rules:

· Never trust an outsider

· Never do anything to jeopardize your brother’s political aspirations

· And never, ever, defy your family

Trisha is guilty of breaking all three rules. But now she has a chance to redeem herself. So long as she doesn’t repeat old mistakes.

Up-and-coming chef DJ Caine has known people like Trisha before, people who judge him by his rough beginnings and place pedigree above character. He needs the lucrative job the Rajes offer, but he values his pride too much to indulge Trisha’s arrogance. And then he discovers that she’s the only surgeon who can save his sister’s life.

As the two clash, their assumptions crumble like the spun sugar on one of DJ’s stunning desserts. But before a future can be savored there’s a past to be reckoned with…

A family trying to build home in a new land.

A man who has never felt at home anywhere.

And a choice to be made between the two.

Aidee’s Mid-Year List of Books Read

*Oh. My. Lord. First of all, Aidee posted this list 7/12/2020. I have to acknowledge that because … it’s totally my bad. Anyway please find the list of Aidee’s books read from January 2020 – June 2020! Again, books from the first half of the year. [Yes I am the worst.] Anyway, here’s Aidee. (I believe books marked with an “*” are re-reads.)

Mid-Year List of Books Read — 2020
As per usual, this list is not in order at all. Continue reading

Aidee’s List of Reads for the Second Half of *2019*

Hi friends. So, Aidee submitted this post on January 20, 2020 but … it’s been just … a lot this year, so please forgive me for the delay. So no – that’s not a typo. That’s just life kicking my ass and me not getting to this until now. :X

Second Half of 2019 Reads:

This list is not in any particular order, and also reflects that I slowed down and re-read a lot after August. (I believe the asterisks mean a re-read) Continue reading