Saturday Smalls (Rafe, Dine with Me, The (Alien) Nanny for Christmas, Let’s Be Weird Together)

This week’s mini review round-up includes three romance books & a nonfiction/humor comic book!

 

Sigh. Don’t get me wrong. 3.5 stars is not a bad rating. It’s just that this book was one of my most anticipated reads and I was so convinced that I would adore everything about it, and instead, it fell short in so many ways.

the good:

• Rafe is super sweet, gentle, and 100% anti-toxic masculinity
• Sloan is a brilliant, hilarious, badass surgeon & mother
• the kids are cute AF
• Xeni & Monica are 10/10

the bad:

• too much pointless dialogue, not enough happening
• a lot of really awkward phrasing that doesn’t make sense (I’m not referring to word choices and slang, I’m referring to words missing from sentences, etc.)
• a tremendously rushed ending
• forced tension between Sloan & Rafe (there’s one scene where they act like they’ve had some sort of fight, but it was really just… nothing?? there’s literally no tension present on-page WHATSOEVER, but they make a big deal out of it and it feels so forced)
• lots of minor annoying, unrealistic incidents
• most of the side characters are incredibly flat and one-dimensional

?‍♀️ I wanted to adore this, but sadly, I couldn’t. I’ll probably give the author another chance, but I won’t be rushing to do so. I’m disappointed to say that I feel “meh” enough about this that, even though I loved Xeni, I… don’t even really care about reading her book in this series? 🙁

Buddy read with Ellyn! ?

brief violence, mentions of racism, mentions of cheating, mentions of a previous controlling and mentally/emotionally abusive spouse, mentions of deceased parents

Sloan is black, Sloan’s best friend Xeni is black and fat, Rafe’s step-mother Monica is black, Rafe’s half-siblings are biracial, Sloan’s ex-husband is biracial

DNF @ 32%

I’m not rating this because a) I didn’t get far enough in to justify it, and b) it may just be a total preference thing, because frankly, I could see a lot of people loving this book! That said, despite how excited for it I was and how convinced I was that I’d enjoy it, this did not work for me at all. It was an absolute chore to even reach the 32% mark because I was so miserably bored.

These characters feel tremendously one-dimensional, I’m having the worst time trying to actually believe anything about this entire situation (and normally I’m pretty good at suspending disbelief!), I don’t sense any genuine chemistry between the characters besides “wow, he’s so hot!”, and most of all… y’all, I love food, I can spend entire days lost in cooking shows and competitions, I adore cooking, the whole works… but clearly I don’t like the right kind of food for this book, because I seriously had to force myself not to start skipping entire paragraphs every time Miller and Clancy sat down for a meal. It just felt so forced and like it was trying so hard to make up for the total lack of depth in the characters and their actual romance.

Sigh. I feel horrible writing this review. I wanted so badly to love this book and I know there’s a better audience out there for it than me, but I just really couldn’t find anything redeeming here.

Thank you so much to the publisher for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

cancer, depictions of illness (incl. scenes of vomiting, etc.)

Miller and Clancy are both gay (though it is implied that Miller was bi or pan until recently).

I don’t even have words for how freaking cute this novella was. I honestly felt super skeptical because I didn’t think I’d be into alien romance as a subgenre (this was my first… unless you count weird fanfics I read as a kid), and yeah, I mean, the description of Mitteeku with his scales and spikes and all — well, I wasn’t swooning over the visual, but that really doesn’t matter because he is so precious and an absolute treasure!

I seriously don’t remember the last book that made me laugh out loud this much. Whether it’s Mitteeku’s struggles with translations and adapting to human life, or his bewilderment at the toddler’s “bloodthirst” RE: stuffed animals, or the fact that THE BABY STARTS TO MIMIC HIS GROWLS?? I’m giggling just thinking back on it.

So, if you’re open to alien romance, and looking for a hilarious and sweet Christmas novella, I highly recommend this one. I had such a fun time reading it and I can 100% see myself picking up more of Amanda Milo’s works in the very near future. Thank you to Sionna for recommending this one to me! ♥♥

one scene in which Mitteeku fantasizes about violence against a group of pre-teens/teens (after they bully one of the children)

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Let’s Be Weird Together is cute and a little amusing, but… well, for lack of a better way to say this, it feels very shallow and basic to me. Lots of the humor is “cute”, but nothing is outright funny; many panels are sweet, but none of it warmed my heart or made me feel much of anything. Sure, I was able to equate a lot of it to myself and my spouse, and that was nice, but I can’t see myself recommending or purchasing a finished copy of this book in the future.

Thank you so much to the publisher for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!