Backlist Banger: Reading Note 102

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SuperWendy’s August’s TBR topic is the Backlist Banger – a book by a favourite author that has been sitting on your TBR for a long time. I have always adored Anne McAllister’s books. She has been an auto-read author for me for nearly 3 decades, and I have reviewed her books several times on my blog (sexy baklava book FTW). The book I read was first published in 2014, but first read by me this year.

Anne McAllister’s Last Year’s Bride

Book Cover. Author's name is bigger than the book title. A bride and groom sitting on the ground (there goes her dress, in front of a ye olde wooden wagon. The groom has cowboy boots and a cowboy hat on to flag that this is a cowboy romance.

It’s for the ranch. It’s your duty. A man does his duty, always. His father Sam’s words were carved into Cole McCullough’s brain. His responsibilities lay with Rafter M Arrow, which had been in their family for over a hundred years. Even though they were fighting a losing battle to keep the place going.

The ranch always came first, over personal comfort, sometimes reason and definitely women. Sam had seen both his wives walk away, dismissing them as hot-house city girls who couldn’t survive the wilds of rural Montana. So how had Cole ended up making a spur-of-the-moment marriage last year in Reno to TV director Nell, who was as city as they came? Nell was prepared to give it all up to be with Cole. But he knew how it would as it had always ended before. It was time to stop living a pipe dream and sue for divorce.

But then Nell came back to Marietta with The Compatibility Game, a reality program, in which couples discovered what they were willing to do for love by living and working at Rafter M, and Cole found himself taking part too…

Keeping your marriage a secret from your families is not a favourite trope for me. Not that it doesn’t happen, it’s just that if it does happen, there are usually other family dynamics at play which forces this situation. Often there are scary control issues occurring for at least one person in the couple to necessitate keeping a marriage secret so it is hard to be on board with the romanticising and fictionalising and genrefying of this oft terrifying situation. In this book, it is not as terrible, however our hero Cole McCullough’s impossible family responsibilities keep him from laying his love out to be seen by his family so he keeps his whirlwind romance and marriage to city-girl (lol but of course) Nell Corbett who he meets in a cowboy (him) documentary she films.

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Freedom: Reading Note 101

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Another day, another TBR Challenge catch up post, this one has the theme of Freedom for the month of July. This one bothered me because it was a five-star love-it read yet I only had a handful of notes from when I read it. I had to borrow it again just to write this review. The usual warnings that there are many spoilers ahead.

book cover for Ava Wilder's Some Kind of Famous. Greek grass, a blue ute/pick-up truck, a male/female couple embracing, white peaked mountains in the background and a pink clear sky

Ava Wilder’s Some Kind of Famous

Blurb: It’s been a decade since Merritt Valentine’s peak as a celebrated singer-songwriter… and her subsequent career-ending mental breakdown. Since then, she’s abandoned the glitz of Los Angeles to move in with her sister, Olivia, in the sleepy Colorado ski town of Crested Peak, hoping to heal her lingering emotional wounds of the spotlight.

Life in Crested Peak would be uncomplicated if not for Merritt’s inconvenient crush on the local contractor and handyman, Nikolaos Petrakis. Niko is disarmingly handsome and too kind-hearted to ever be right for the complex and prickly Merritt. Though tempting, a fling with Niko would only bring the kind of drama Merritt has vowed to leave behind.

After his last heartbreak, Niko is done dating his fellow townies. Still, he can’t shake his fascination with the brilliant Merritt, even as he heeds their mutual friends’ warnings to steer clear of her chaos. But when Merritt needs help fixing up a house of her own, Niko is glad to be the only man for the job.

As the two spend more time together, their mutual attraction sparking a deeper connection than either one expects, they’re forced to confront the idea that they may have underestimated each other– and themselves.

This book opens to a scene where hot mess, super famous musician Merritt Valentine who has been sheltering with her twin sister in a mountain town for the last two years, trying to valiantly recover from a trail of destructive behaviour, self-sabotages when her sister hints at her moving out to Merritt’s own home in the coming year (for good baby reasons). Merritt needs to find a contractor to take on her home higher up in the mountains. Queue local jack-of-all-trades Nikolaos Petrakis who “was so beautiful he was almost boring, rescued only by a handful of jolie laid imperfections”. Through a series of house consultations, trips to trade shops, and dinners at their local bar, Merritt and Niko talk, laugh, belt out ABBA songs (also adoring the movie Mamma Mia!), indulge in rhythmless dancing (a delightful scene) and develop a rapport while trying very hard to keep from hooking up. But this is a romance, and of course they cross that line. Sex between the two of the brings about an even deeper understanding of how they are in their local community together, especially as this relationship has a deadline with Niko planning on permanently moving away to another part of the country. But their connection is too strong, their approaches to life problems so similar, and their tolerance for differences bring them close together.

This was not an easy coming together. Merritt had many mental health issues. And through a lot of therapy and help, she had come to a stage of coping with life. Merritt seems to think that she isn’t worthy of a good life and good relationships due to her past responses:

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Pride: Reading Note 100

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Though my 100th note seems like a huge achievement, I want to point out that I only started the note series in 2019, 10 years after I started my blog. I still want to give it some attention, and as SuperLibrarian Wendy’s TBR Challenge theme for June is Pride, I am going to discuss one of Rachel Reid’s lesser known books The Shots You Take released in 2025. Once again, I reveal all, there are spoilers galore. If you want no surprises, do not keep reading.

Rachel Reid’s The Shots You Take

A sweet and sexy hockey romance about two ex-teammates and former best friends with benefits who are about to discover whether you can ever really have a second chance. From the New York Times bestselling author of the Heated Rivalry, Rachel Reid.

After moving back to his hometown ten years ago, Riley Tuck thought he had left his major league hockey career—and his broken heart—far behind. But when an unexpected tragedy strikes, it brings ex-teammate and former best friend with benefits Adam Sheppard back into his life.

Coming to the small town of Avery River, Nova Scotia, might have been a mistake. Adam’s not sure he’ll ever win back Riley’s trust after the way they left things—and the attention he’s getting as a huge hockey star isn’t exactly helping. Yet the chemistry that crackles between them is undeniable, even now.

As Adam helps Riley navigate his grief, long-buried feelings start to resurface. But they’ll have to square off with their complicated past if they’re going to have a real shot at a new beginning.

After waiting 3 months on my library holds queue, this book came through for me on Monday and I accidently read it in the one day.

I have no notes.

No notes at all.

I was so far lost reading through the this page-turner novel, a second-chance at love romance for former best-friends and superstar hockey players Riley and Adam. The novel starts at the funeral of Riley’s beloved father who has just died suddenly and unexpectedly. Riley is wracked with grief in the church where he sees Adam turn up to attend the funeral service. As the story unfolds, we find out that Riley and Adam were drafted together as young (and dumb and poorly equipped to deal with life) adults who lived in a shared apartment together while they played hockey in Toronto. In their third(?)/fourth(?) year of playing, Adam gets drunk enough to start having sex with (gay) Riley who has been deeply in love with him for a long time. None of these are spoilers as they are revealed early in the story, as is the unsurprising denial of love from Adam who continues to claim to be straight, who gets married and has children with (his now ex-wife) Maggie. Newly divorced and out Adam is finally ready to court Riley, but Riley had left playing professional hockey 12 years earlier, devastated by Adam’s rejection, devastated by their actions after a cup win, devastated enough to move to another team, and so devastated that he spiralled into harmful and damaging mental health behaviour. Riley left hockey and returned home to recover, and Adam’s reappearance unwillingly brings all the memories and emotions to the fore.

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New Beginnings: Reading Note 99

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I am on a blogging roll, playing catch up over my 3 days of no teaching and no marking, before assessments come in at the end of the week. I feel astounded at the free time. But also astounded that I am writing rather than reading. Let’s relish the moment and here is the May TBR Challenge topic of New Beginnings – here’s an international student love story.

Elle Kennedy’s Girl Abroad

When nineteen-year-old Abbey Bly gets the opportunity to study abroad for a year in London, it’s the perfect chance to finally slip out from under the thumb of her beloved but overbearing retired rock star father. She’s ready to be free, to discover herself – but first off, to meet the girls she’s rooming with. That is, until she arrives at her gorgeous new flat to discover those roommates are actually all boys. Charming, funny, insufferably attractive boys. And off-limits, with a rule against fraternizing between housemates after unwanted drama with the previous girl.

Abbey has never considered herself a rulebreaker. But soon, she’s lying to her father about her living situation and falling for not one, but two men she can’t have: her rugby-player roommate and a broody musician with a girlfriend. Not to mention, her research for school has gotten her tangled in a deeply hidden scandal of a high nobility family, surrounding her in secrets on all sides.

If there’s any hope of Abbey finding love, answers, or a future in London, she’ll have to decide which rules – and hearts – might be worth breaking . . .

I think if I was anywhere near being a teen/young adult, I would have enjoyed this study abroad, coming of age, love triangle, finding yourself away from your parents story. However, I am in my fifties and I just got increasingly annoyed as I read this book. I was especially agitated with the stereotyped characters – the American ingenue, Abbey and her accidentally rooming with 3 men in a share house in Notting Hill :: rolls eyes:: – the Black, gay Brit, the Hugh Grant Brit, the jacked laconic Australian.

Then you have the protective retired rockstar dad who is struggling with separation anxiety and not being close to his teenage daughter and seriously, I don’t blame the man. Abbey was way too young to be organising this trip into the foreign unknown on her own. Then add all her lies and manipulations so her father doesn’t realise that she wasn’t in a women’s dorm but with unknown men. This could have gone scarily wrong had it been a different genre, and it was all just too much for old-parent-me. I did giggle when Abbey considers buying her father an “emotional support rabbit” to get him through her year abroad.

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TBR Challenge – Fool’s Errand: Reading Note 98

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Wendy the SuperLibrarian provides a short description for April’s TBR challenge theme of Fool’s Errand. She writes that it is “some sort of harebrained/desperate/Hail Mary kind of motivation for one of the main characters, fake relationship/engagement etc. And I have to say that you can’t get more fake a relationship when you are convinced that your romantic fate is coupling with a plane. You read that correctly.

As always, I remind you that I have spoilers throughout my review. The ending is revealed, the crazy is revealed. Though is it a spoiler if it is mentioned in the blurb? Now hold onto your smelling salts, this review is hell-a sweary!

Kate Folk’s Sky Daddy.

The blurb is taken from GoodReads as the publisher blurb was much shorter.

Linda is doing her best to lead a life that would appear normal to the casual observer. Weekdays, she earns $20 an hour moderating comments for a video-sharing platform, then rides the bus home to the windowless garage she rents on the outskirts of San Francisco. But on the last Friday of each month, she indulges in her true passion: taking BART to SFO for a round-trip flight to a regional hub. The destination is irrelevant because each trip means a new date with a handsome stranger—a stranger whose intelligent windscreens, sleek fuselages, and powerful engines make Linda feel a way that no human ever could.

Linda knows that she can’t tell anyone she’s sexually obsessed with planes—nor can she reveal her belief her destiny is to “marry” one of her suitors by dying in a plane crash, thereby uniting her with her soulmate plane for eternity. But when an opportunity arises to hasten her dream of eternal partnership, and the carefully balanced elements of her life begin to spin out of control, she must choose between maintaining the trappings of normalcy and launching herself headlong toward the love she’s always dreamed of.

So there are no surprises when I say that Kate Folk’s Sky Daddy is a fucking wild ride (read?). It is everything that the blurb promised and yet it totally blindsided me. And I am further blindsided by the fact that this book is traditionally published by a Big 5 (Big 4?) company. I am not used to trad pubs going all out with wild stories and I wish there were a lot more easily available.

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Tropetastic: Reading Note 97

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I have been lost to my blogging world since March when I had the good fortune to watch and then read Heated Rivalry. My first post for this topic was a review on Heated Rivalry which then turned into a partial academic paper where I am now sitting on 800 words and a 20 slide presentation with nowhere to present it1. So instead, I am going to write about the road trip romance trope for Wendy SuperLibrarian’s TBR Challenge for March in October. Don’t mind me and my lateness. Also a reminder that I always have spoilers. Look away if you don’t want to know what happens at the end.

Cat Sebastian’s Peter Cabot Gets Lost.

The Blurb and Content notes taken straight from the author’s website:

Summer 1960:

After years of scraping by, Caleb Murphy has graduated from college and is finally getting to start a new life. Except he suddenly has no way to get from Boston to Los Angeles. Then, to add to his misery, there’s perfect, privileged Peter Cabot offering to drive him. Caleb can’t refuse, even though the idea of spending a week in the car with a man whose luggage probably costs more than everything Caleb owns makes him want to scream.

Peter Cabot would do pretty much anything to skip out on his father’s presidential campaign, including driving across the country with a classmate who can’t stand him. After all, he’s had plenty of practice with people not liking him much—his own family, for example. The farther Peter gets from his family’s expectations, the more he starts to think about what he really wants, and the more certain he becomes that what he wants is more time with prickly, grumpy Caleb Murphy. As they put more miles between themselves and their pasts, they both start to imagine a future where they can have things they never thought possible. Content notes available2.

The road trip is a romance in its own right, with the changeable settings, navigating the landscape. Then add to the road trip love and the coming together of two people who find themselves in forced proximity with all the joys and tensions that come from being in a car. The romance road trip is the modern day Odyssey, a heroes’ journey both to a destination and to finding their sense of self and sense of connection while fighting off the Cyclops and the Laistrygenians. Unlike the wine-dark sea—antiquity’s water superhighway—in the modern day version, the romance is grounded, it is earth based, trees, deserts, lakes, mountains, terra firma, soil beneath their feet, tar for the tyre treads. The modern roadtrip, just like in the Odyssey, culminating with the love proposition, the conviction and reliability of the marriage bed, a journey worthy of courtship3. Cat Sebastian affirms the role of the roadtrip as a narrative choice in this book, writing that “travelling across the country to be with a lover is a venerable tradition”, and for Peter and Caleb, this is story is centred on their own queer journey together.

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TBR Challenge – Vintage: Reading Note 96

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It has been a sweltering, wet, gluggy February, and I am not enjoying the humidity. Breathing thick muggy air is not conducive to good sleep. The consequence of less sleep is more reading and I have had a stellar reading start to this year, already clocking 16 books to-date. So far, I have only had one five-star fiction read and it is my TBR book for February with this month’s TBR challenge theme being Vintage. Though my book of choice is relatively recent (a 2025 publication), I spent 3 months on the library holds list, sadly missing the festive holiday reading period that the book pitches itself towards, before receiving it late in January. But first…the blurb.

Reading Note 96: Vintage

Grace and Henry’s Holiday Movie Marathon by Matthew Norman

Blurb: The new year had barely begun when Grace White and Henry Adler both lost their spouses. Now, nearly a year later, the first holiday season since their “Great and Terrible Sadnesses” approaches. Although their mothers’ scheme to matchmake the two surviving spouses, it’s clear that neither is ready to date again. Yet no one understands what they are going through better than each other, and a delicate friendship is born. When Henry sees an ad for a Christmas movie marathon-once an annual tradition for him and his wife-Grace offers to watch some films with him, despite her aversion to a few of his picks. Her two young kids, Ian and Bella, also join in whenever possible bedtimes permitting, of course. With each movie, Grace and Henry’s shared grief eases as they start to see a life beyond the sadness. But as they draw closer, other romantic possibilities leave them uncertain about their future together. Is their bond merely the result of loneliness and shared circumstances, or have they found something that’s worth taking a shot at . . . again?

The book’s two protagonists Grace and Henry were both widowed earlier in the year. Their concerned mums (who are in the same bookclub) orchestrate their widowed adult children to meet-up, much to the horror of both Grace and Henry who are just not ready to start moving on from their grief (I had to control my “WHAT!? It hasn’t been a year yet? Are these mothers OK???). Though Grace and Henry completely rule out a romantic connection, they do admit that perhaps they could try towards a friendship of kind. One where they connect while viewing vintage holiday films over the holiday season, occasionally including Grace’s two young children, and other people to also watch.

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TBR Challenge – Still here: Reading note 95 and Observation Note 119

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I am still here but in my own rushed interpretation of the SuperWendy’s TBR challenge, I am posting super-late (so late that it is February). I have also decided to change up my book review template this year, including a discussion of each book’s metadata, so it may get a bit technical in my tiny corner of the internet. And just a tad ranty and sweary.

Book cover: has a pink sky and a green gabled house with a green fence. A blond man on one side of the fence and a woman with a fox at her feet reading a book on the other side of the fence.

Sangu Mandanna’s A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping

Blurb: “Sera Swan used to be one of the most powerful witches in Britain. Then she resurrected her great-aunt Jasmine from the (very recently) dead, lost most of her magic, befriended a semi-villainous talking fox, and was exiled from her Guild. Now she (slightly reluctantly and just a bit grumpily) helps her great-aunt run an enchanted inn in Lancashire, where she deals with her quirky guests’ shenanigans, tries to keep said talking fox in check, and longs for the future that seems lost to her. But then she finds out about an old spell that could hold the key to restoring her power…. Enter Luke Larsen, a handsome and icy magical historian, who arrives on a dark winter evening and might just know how to unlock the spell’s secrets. Luke has absolutely no interest in getting involved in the madcap goings-on of the inn and is definitely not about to let a certain bewitching innkeeper past his walls, so no one is more surprised than he is when he agrees to help Sera with her spell. Worse, he might actually be thawing. Running an inn, reclaiming lost magic, and staying one step ahead of the watchful Guild is a lot for anyone, but Sera Swan is about to discover that she doesn’t have to do it alone…and that the weird, wonderful family she’s made might be the best magic of all”.

I felt like I waited forever for my library hold to come through to me. I placed it in July 2025 just to receive it in January 2026. I really enjoy magic (and witch) books set in the real world. I have no patience for trying to read through other worlds being built while also trying to understand a plot. Set in very pretty Lancashire in the UK, the titular inn is quaint with splendid gardens in abundance.

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My 2025 Year of Reading

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Happy New Year, everyone! I want to start out by thanking all of you who read my blog. I know that I only have a small(ish) group of subscribers, and I also have regular commenters and I want to convey to you how important you all are to me. I have tried to do some private writing (in my offline space) but it is only when I start thinking of my now 17 year old blog and its readers that I can find flow for my thoughts. 2025 seems to have flown but it isn’t until I take stock of my reading that I realise that it has been a long and eventful year both personally, as well as in world events. I started with the Nikos Papastergiadis’s memorable John Berger and Me and finished with Maisey Yates’s Cowboy It’s Cold Outside with its delightful cover but forgetable story.

53 books

Fiction: 29 – Romance fiction: 25

Audiobooks: 0

Picture Books and Junior fiction: 0

Non-Fiction: 24 (note: 22 but I reread two books)

Graphic Novel memoir:  4

Australian authors – 9

YA – 0

DNFd but counted: 3

Of the 53, I only bought 6 books (and 3 of those were given as gifts after I loved them). All the rest were library eloans. No library fines were accrued this year.

18 book covers A complete list of my 2026 reading is available here: https://www.goodreads.com/readingchallenges/gr/annual/2025
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