Week #24 | June 5th- 12th

hi everyone my name is jen and welcome to the book refuge and um today we're having my weekly reading wrap-up go up just a little bit later um i had a birthday party yesterday that kind of took up my whole day because there was travel and so i didn't get to film it but that was actually good because i was able to finish up some books that i really wanted to talk about this week and not wait till next week to do so i'm pretty happy that i waited um first off we're going to get started talking about um one book that i that was part of my mafia read it read-a-thon uh read um this one was the last boss's daughter by sam mariano so this book was okay it's not what i'm used to seeing from san mariano neither with how her hero is or just kind of what the plot was there's this girl who's kind of been forced into um a marriage she's been raised in the mafia life her whole life and is just kind of miserable with all of it and so she's living with this guy that she's supposedly married to but she didn't agree to this marriage she didn't sign a certificate they've just basically said this is your husband um and then there is this um hitman who's kind of keeping an eye on her because there's some trouble that she's getting into and then eventually you know this is a retelling of snow white if you kind of get that five from the cover and he ends up um taking her to keep her safe and like keeping her in a cabin in the woods and i don't know this book i can't remember exactly when this one came out but i think this was a bit of an older one for her it didn't have her mafia vibes or her other dark romance fives and so i wasn't totally feeling it but i thought it was it was pretty unique story so i gave it a four is it completely a four maybe not but i was feeling a little generous because i also did skim some of it so i don't know we're giving it a four but there definitely is better fare by sam mariano for you to check then i read barbarians mate by ruby dixon this is book seven or eight and yes i was already you know you guys know this i've already been reading ice plain barbarians i think it's hilarious that it's getting the um attention that it is from tick tock right now which is just great i mean i'm glad it's getting its second win but it's funny to see conversations that like we've been having on booktube and bookstagram for years like pop up on tick tock it just it kind of makes me laugh um and i hope that it leads people down a whole wonderful rabbit hole of awesomeness like i have a friend who's really not in the book community anymore she used to be and she'll but she's really like watched tick-tock a lot and so these books that come up to her i'll just laugh and i'll be like girl that happened so long ago like that was so long ago but for her it's fresh and i love that that's happening for ruby dixon so i'm definitely not going to nay say it but anyway sidetrack i'm still making my way through the series just i already have been you guys know but i kind of take them one at a time i read them as like fluff books in between other things and i say that with respect but they're not usually going to like a deeper level that some of the dark romances i read do and that is okay we need those books that just buoy our spirit and make us laugh and smile and that's something that barbarians made like barbari the ice paper bearings do for me however barbarians made i really struggled with i really did because our heroine is josie and the hero is hayden and they have a serious hate relationship but see for the for the ipv when they resonate with someone like that's the most important thing they found their mate and josie she's been wanting a mate this whole time and finally her iud falls out which you only um you only resonate with someone when you are able to have children um so she isn't fertile before her iud falls out in the eyes of her quee or whatever and so when she resonates with hayden she wants to reject it and so for me i feel like her reasons for wanting to reject him just were pretty feeble and it was very frustrating to see her make herself so sick and to cause him pain when she's like we don't even know each other and i was like josie you haven't tried to get to know him you've hidden the whole time and it was getting really frustrating it did have a good turnaround for me at the end but there was these are pretty short books and there was a long portion of this where i was just really frustrated with josie and like i don't want to be frustrated with our characters for that long like i don't want to be upset with a fictional character like it's draining okay i don't got time for it uh but i did still end up getting it four stars because it pulled it around in the end and again i have different expectations for these books than i have for some others that's just how it is i don't have to explain myself if you're reading ipb you're gonna keep reading ipv right and if you have read one or two and you don't think it's for you then you're not going to get there but i will continue to read one or two of these a month and just make my way through them then i got to read a arc of perfect sinner by maggie cole maggie cole continues to spoil me and be one of the sweetest people ever and she sent me an arc of i believe this is the seventh one in the series um this is one of the o'malley books um and this one is about nolan and i forgot her name i'm sorry there's a lot of books but this is the sister of the heroine from the last book so it's haley's sister and it's tough to talk about these this book isn't coming out until let's see i think this one comes out in like october so i don't want to say too much but i'm loving the o'malley's um this one there's a bit of a like it's not a captor captive because of the danger she's in when he says she's going to be staying with him so he can keep an eye on her she's here for it she's like nope i want to be staying with this strong irishman who's going to keep me safe from what's going on there's some things about her and her sister's past that came out in the previous book and we're dealing with those right there so this is forced proximity this is the enemies to lovers um and that's all that i can really say as i continue my journey with the maggie cool books the next one to come out comes out july 1st and that's gonna be adrian and skyler and i think you're really gonna like that i mean if you're following the series there we'll just do that whatever hair do what you want do what you want um if you're following this series you're gonna keep following the series and they're amazing but i gave this one four and a half stars um again a a couple my little quibbles are the same kind of from book to book that happen when you're binging a series the way that i get have been blessed to be able to do um and so there's just a few things of like certain things being kept secret that were frustrating and then our heroine she's so honest about so many things and there was certain things she was keeping hidden and i'm like why just like tell everyone this one does have trigger warnings for attempted suicide um and then like stalking and it's not by the hero that is happening this time so there's that but i continue to love this series then i read forbidden promises by katie roberts so you know i don't get away from the mafia no matter no matter what i do but this was actually on my tbr for june uh because katie robert is writing the second generation of the o'malley's and i'm not done with the o'malley's so i was like girl i need to get up on it and so this is book four and this is about sloane o'malley who in one of the previous books her brother helped her run away sorry the light's really bad so i'll just show this i'll try to hold it still and so she's run away to this seaside town to try to start a new life she becomes a waitress she's staying in the house of a family friend well it turns out that that family friend who is an older woman she has a target on her back and so our hero jude mcnamara is actually supposed to take out this person so he's been eyeing up this house for a long for a while now he's been staying this town keeping to himself which is hard to do in a small town and he's pretending to be a writer and then this young woman moves in next door this is also an age gap i believe she's 23 and he's like 35 or something like that i think this one is i mean that's not really like the purpose of it but he knows that he shouldn't mess with her and once he finds out who she is and how she intertwines with his target he really shouldn't get involved but he's just really really drawn into her so yeah really enjoyed this book i love katie roberts i gave this four stars um i just i really enjoy reading you know both her um indie stuff and the things that she did with a publisher um and i love that she's gonna be doing the second generation of the kids so i have two more books to read in this series and i mean i think the o'malley one's not coming out until um i think she's putting out in like august or september so i have some time then i finished the iron duke by mel jean brooks so if you don't know mel jean brooks is um well millivane is a pen name for mel jane brooks i believe is how it works so she wrote some of my favorite fantasies ever now i'll be honest i don't have a ton to say about the iron duke because i was very confused for most of it it's not in my wheelhouse this is steampunk and so that's like that victorian but it's like fantasy too like sci-fi and there are people that are partially made of metal and there's scary creatures there's zombies like this series had so much happening and like my brain just couldn't handle it but this was on um i actually think i owned this one because i got it when it was on sale like the book was free and so then the audio upgrade was only seven dollars and so i did that um and it took me a while to listen to um so i gave this three and a half stars most so take that with a grain of salt because again this was not within my wheelhouse however i did finish it because our hero whose name was reese i read uh you'll see i've read a couple books with a hero named reese this week um he was obsessive about the heroine and he was trying to coerce her to be with him in any way possible beg borrow steal coerce and it was kind of delightful i had a good time with it so you know i'd be lying if i didn't say that that part was great it was the fact that it was hard to know what was happening in all other aspects and part of that's on me right part of that's on me because this isn't my normal world to be reading about but it was good like the romance was good and there was definitely set up for some other couples but i know this iron c series has like so many books there's tons of novellas and short stories and then there's like three or four books in there in the main series so there's a whole bunch to go with this i don't know if i'll continue the series because it was just not my comfort zone but i'm glad i tried a steampunk novel i do have also kristin callahan steampunk series that i want to try so i definitely will try more and maybe by reading more of them it's just like any sub-genre of romance the more of them you try the more um you know the more that you find ones that work for you so yeah then i read real by kennedy ryan if you saw my stories which i tried to keep spoiler free you will know that this wrecked me this was six stars it's not even a question it's my i'm not sure yet if i like it more than still but it's at least tied with still for my favorite kennedy ryan and this will totally be on my favorites of the year no question and i was just so moved i was so moved i basically read this book um all day at work which i wasn't gonna do but i pre-ordered both the audiobook and the book and so the audiobook came out day and date i highly recommend the audiobook it has jacoby as the narrator for canon and there is also parts of this book that are a um script and they're read by a different narrator and then there's singing that happens in it and it was such an experience it was so beautiful like it was so beautiful so what is this book about because that's what's kind of vague um i'll try to keep spoilers out of this one but i will put up spoilers when i tell you what the trigger warnings are okay so that's how i'm gonna do this i'll tell you what it's about so we have our hero neva who is an actress on broadway and when we first meet her she's finally getting her chance to perform because she's been an understudy for a while and the main actress is on a vacation and so it's her chance to perform then we have our hero cannon who is a director and he's recently just finished a documentary and he likes to kind of switch it up between fictional and non-fiction you know that he does you know he does documentaries and other things and not too far in his past the last fictional story that he was telling the last movie he was making he was involved with one of his actresses and it was the first time he was ever involved with an actress and he realized that she was kind of a nasty person and when he broke it off with her she got him kicked off the movie and so he's like you know what this is why i don't sleep with actresses this is not a thing so we have that already set up he happens to go with his friend to see this performance because his friend had worked with neva um in a singing in a musical engagement before and he's like she's performing tonight and we're in town let's go and canon sees her and he realizes that neva will be the perfect embodiment of the next like it's he's doing like a movie based on a true story type thing about a performer named desi blue who is all but forgotten like he only found out about her because he was driving through this small town and he saw a sign that said the home of desi blue and he was like who's that and then he found out and so he's been wanting to make this movie for a long time but he hasn't he has the funding now but he hasn't found the actress to play desi because he needs the perfect woman and then he sees neva and he's like that's it so neva's never been in a movie she's only done you know like stage work and things on the side and they have this amazing connection but canon is very clear where he wants her to fit you know he wants her to be in his movie so he has to shut down all these feelings um and neva she understands that two degree but she's also like wow this guy just hates me so that's how she feels but she's like he's giving me this opportunity i would be a fool not to take it um and then precedes this slow burn of them well specifically of cannon trying to keep himself apart from her but they just have so many interests aligned and there's some people conspiring to put them near to each other um and they just can't fight it like it's just magnets being sucked in while magnets were whatever they whatever pulls people in steel to a magnet and it's absolutely beautiful guys like the writing and just the feeling and the way that it builds between them like this is a slow burn but once the spark starts the fire just is going and it's so gorgeous i mean my dear friend crystal did a full vlog for this where it's a non-spoiler reading vlog i'll link it in the card above but the emotions that she expresses about the writing she's much more articulate than i can be because you know me like i would want to go into full spoilers for this but the steam in this the adoration this hero he's a different kind of alpha than you've read before for kennedy ryan um he's less outwardly expressive in a lot of cases and i feel like um you know i think of maxum and i think of grip and i think of how they're always ready to jump to defense and they're ready to go and i mean that's cannon two but he's more of this like solid rock he's a slow moving train until it's going and then you're swept up in it and nothing is going to tear it down um a couple like little things to say before i do the trigger warnings this book to me personally had the least angst of any of kennedy's books however the perceived angst that i had while reading it and i've heard this from my friends who are reading it as well because you've read other kennedys you were expecting certain pain you are expecting certain doom to come and that really like it didn't tint my enjoyment my enjoyment was there the whole time but it did like had my anxiety running very high and i was very anxious and i'm not gonna be able to change your mind about that like you are gonna you are gonna see the potential roadblocks and the potential upsets and you are gonna be in that like you just you will but i will say trust kennedy ryan trust the hea and trust that i'm telling you me personally if you follow me you know me and you've seen my anxiety for kennedy books in the past like i'm not afraid to rate her books lower because they drive me bonkers this was a six star read for me i cried tears of happiness there was a few of pain but it was mostly all the tears you saw in my insta story were all from the beauty of this book it was so beautiful it just had me aching of like this is what true love looks like and feels like and there's also reconnection of a family and there's sisterly bonds and there is you know just growth of character and it was also freaking five stars of just beautiful steaminess because kennedy ryan don't pull her punches with that either so now i'm going to do a spoiler i'm going to tell you what the trigger warnings are for this because they i mean it's kenny ryan so there's still some of them most of the trigger warnings in this book deal with um loss of a parent due to terminal illness and um terminal illness uh in general and sickness of course racism and yeah i think those i think those are the ones so some typical of kenny ryan and others not so this was beautiful it's absolutely beautiful okay moving on then i got to read an arc of witches get stitches by julia cross this is available on netgalley and i believe that it's an auto approved so if you love this day a spell series and you have a netgalley account you could try for this one i don't know if that will always stay open like that um that can be changed based on like what they do but i'm pretty sure that this is an auto approve because you know julia wants to get the word out so full disclosure if you don't know i'm a big fan of julia cross i'm a friend of juliette cross and justin her niece who i love y'all um so like just know that like it's colored that i love these books and i love the person writing them um this book is about nico a werewolf and uh violet one of the savois sisters violet is a seer um and has some other minor powers um nico is a werewolf who used to be part of kind of a gang type thing and we've seen him in some previous books um and we know that he has kind of changed his ways in regards to some of that um and this is about nico knowing that violet is meant for him and violet due to something she has seen or divined believes that it will be to the destruction of both of them if they were to be together so she's under this pretense false or not that there's a certain doom around whether her and nico would be together and so we start this book with a flashback to them um when their first meeting and then we are in present time where if you read don't hexane drive you know that violet is opening a tattoo shop called empress inc and nico is going to be her business partner so nico has injected himself into her life in as many ways as possible and he's waiting until he can get her to crack and realize that they're supposed to be together so this is a friends to lovers this is a pining romance and it has all the wonderful hijinks of a stay spell book by juliette it's wonderful i gave this one four and a half stars there are a few things with the plot that i feel like could have been explored a little more fully but i feel like you'll be very happy with the romance aspects of this and i feel like that's the part most people are excited for so you won't be disappointed in that aspect there's just some things and maybe it's just to my own expectations and things that i was expecting to see happen in the story um that weren't exactly what i was hoping for but nico brings the heat violet brings the sass and it is a good time for everyone so i'm very excited this book comes out in july and i cannot wait for y'all to get your hands on it because number one it's beautiful and number two i just i love this woman so much and i'm happy to support her books and to talk about them and we will actually be talking more about stay spell in a moment then i read the high women's folly by daria vernon guys i am so excited to talk about this i've already talked about it in two videos that i filmed um that one of them went up the other day and this other one will be going up soon um this is a book that i literally think i saw from an amazon ad and i maybe saw someone post about it on booktube on bookstagram um but i did not know number one the author is a bookstagramer so check her out and this is her first book guys and it's [ __ ] amazing i gave this book five stars um this was in my i i think it was one that got pulled out of my tbr tin i can't remember what the prompt was for this one um but then i actually did a buddy read with my friend joe um she used to have a channel a long time ago but she doesn't anymore and we haven't done a buddy read in a long time and so i was like hey watch my tbr tell me what you want to read with me i would love to read one of these with you so this doesn't have an audiobook so i had to read it physically but of course it's on kindle you can read it there um and this book was awesome it was so good um i gave it five stars and it's about this girl named beth who is 30 years old her aunt has died and just left her some money and she gets kidnapped by um one of i can't remember like i always messed this part up but he had a connection to her aunt somehow and he's going to like force her to elope with him like he's going to ruin her reputation and force her to marry him well on his way to do that the carriage that they're in gets attacked by highwaymen who are robbing people and this coach is too nice for them to pass up and so now she's and they and she's tied up in this carriage and so they realize she has been tied up and they're like wow what are they trying to do with this girl maybe she's worth some money for us so now she's went from being kidnapped by this sleazy guy connected with her aunt to being kidnapped by these high women but one of these highwaymen is rhys booker who he has some past in um that's a bit dubious that has forced him um to be a high women to actually try to make amends which sounds weird but he's basically trying to earn money to make amends for something wrong that he did in the past and when he comes face to face with beth he is immediately protective of her and he immediately realizes that she's more than he ever imagined she is fierce she's a fighter she isn't going to go down with a fight and that causes her to become injured so they take her back to their lair which is called the folly so that's where the highwayman's folly comes from is it is this highwayman's secret hideout and while they're there they have this kind of magical night even though it's like she's a captive he's seen to her injuries and they just talk like they talk and there's this spark between them and the things that rhys is thinking about her in his head it's i i was in awe of of just how much he could see her and realize like how amazing this woman was so pretty quickly reese is like i don't want to use her for money i want to protect her i want to take care of her so that happens in the past actually and they have this amazing connection it's an adventure it's amazing actually and then this book has a time jump and i'm telling you because it's one of my pet peeves we've i've like talked about this recently it's one of my pet peeves but but the way that this story is set up and the way that things are happening there's no way that there could have been an hea just in the current timeline like there needs to be a time jump for some certain things to happen and for reese to make something of himself um and so there's this time jump for a certain amount of time and when we all come when we all come back into uh the present time and we meet they meet again it becomes clear that rhys has been upped some things in the past years and i don't want to spoil those but those plans and those things he's been up to blew my mind this book was so romantic it's written so richly like that's the thing with me lately is like i don't always notice how a book is written like that's not where my enjoyment of a book always comes from if it's written poorly i notice of course but in general the words on the page you know are a vehicle for me to imagine what's happening but when the writing of a story is so elegant and beautiful that i do notice i can't help but be and it's not that it's like overly flowery but it's almost written in this cadence that's kind of poetic and i just loved it and reese he is a cinnamon roll he is a squishy lovable man who becomes so gone for this woman that he's willing to change so much about himself and things that need to change like it's not just like oh you're changing everything for a woman whatever there's things that need to change he's a highwayman on the wrong side of the law there's some things that need to change if he can have this woman but the things he's willing to do and the changes that he does make so that he can be worthy of her and so that he can present his best possible case to her in hopes that she will accept him are amazing also something i want to comment on because recently you know i've read some historicals that are trying to show feminism in a certain light you know the things that beth goes through and the way that she's being scrutinized for things that aren't under her control and then the way that she reacts to them and the way that she presents herself with dignity and um doesn't think less of herself because of things that weren't her fault to me it was this quiet kind of feminism that i don't think many authors have the skill to present in the same way that daria vernon has done i'm very impressed there is another book so apparently my friend said there's a peek at the next book in her kindle version um i didn't have that at the end of mine it just tells me that the next book is the rogue's last letter um because this series is called the rewards of ruin i don't know when a set date is for it or what but i do know that i want it i know the couple that it is about and i want it so this was five stars i absolutely loved it then i read a little quickie ruthless gentleman by louise bay i'd actually already read the second book in this series before but i hadn't read this one i really enjoy louise bay she's kind of in a quick little escape that i will listen to one of the audiobooks um a lot of them were on um the audible plus program but this is one that i it was only 750 so i like bought it for cheap right so this one is about luxury yachts again um the second one the other one was about that too um and we have this businessman i think his name is hayden i can't remember i could be mixing that with another story but he has been being foiled in his business dealings for the last few things and it's causing him to maybe gonna lose his business and so he hires this luxury yacht for eight weeks and he is planning to not let anyone else on board except certain crew that have been vetted and try to get this business deal done from seclusion and find out who has been the spy in his organization so that he can stop that from happening and so then our heroine is the head hostess for this luxury yacht and she does this work because she has a brother and a dad who need the money and so she has worked a long season and then she gets asked to do this on the off season so she's not gonna have a break but it's gonna make her a lot of money so she agrees to do it so this is a you know forbidden kind of romance because it's like employer and employee um this is narrated by shane east and um i can't remember who the nair the female narrator is but shanice does all of louise bay's books and so you know there's that so i gave this four stars it was a great read and i had a good time then i got to listen to the audiobook for don't hex and drive i got to read an arc of this or listen to an arc of this um this day of spell books are being done by podium audio and so it is the same narrators as wolfgang wild so it is aiden snow who he does wonderful deep growly voices for these males it's wonderful and the heroine is uh julia fairview or yeah julia fairview i think um yeah so i freaking love this again of course the audio was amazing i feel like the female narrator did a good job with devraj's accent it wasn't too overdone or cheesy in any way um if you don't know what this one is about this is you know another in the stay a spell series um this is about uh isadora savoir who is very like connected with nature i mean most of the witches in this are but she has a greenhouse and she takes care of pets and she's actually a conduit so she can like feed her energy in to living things which is amazing and then we have devraj kumar who is an ex-bollywood actor and a vampire and he is also what is called a um steigorn um so he's a vampire warrior who can like take down like criminals within the paranormal world and he's brought to town because there are these young women who are going missing um and they're being used in an illegal blood trade and so um devraj gets asked to come to town and he ends up buying the house next to the saboas after he meets isadora the first night he's in town he hits her bike with his lamborghini and so that doesn't start them off on the best foot but this book is spicy and the audiobook was amazing it was five out of five i had a great time returning to this book and again i can't wait for witches get stitches to be an audio and i'm so excited for just the rest of this series oh they're so good i love it um then um and these books are all ones that i finished yesterday i read indigo by beverly jenkins this is the rake appreciation society pick for june our live show is going to be this coming thursday on crystal's bookish life um this is i believe this is crystal's favorite historical romance i believe that's what she's told me um and when i said let's do a beverly jenkins in june i was like you can pick we can do one you've read before or we can do one that we both read together and she was like i'd really love us to do my favorite and i was like okay i'm in um i have been hesitant to start beverly jenkins i've heard it's not that i've heard mixed things but i've heard intense things and i've just been nervous you know like i'm not gonna hide about it i've been afraid that either i wouldn't like it as much as everyone else does or i would like it and then my opinion wouldn't matter like there are varying feelings you feel when you are someone in the public eye reading a book that's very beloved by people i'm just i'm not i was nervous about it but i shouldn't have worried i started with the audiobook because i got the audiobook when audible had a five dollar sale and then as i said i had a lot of travel yesterday for a birthday party and so my sister was driving and i actually read the second half of this physically um and just wow wow i don't know what i was expecting i've heard that she's not always like really steamy or whatever um and not that that needs to be the main purpose but like this is still a romance and like it blew my socks off this was a five-star read it was so beautiful um if you don't know this is about hester wyatt who escaped slavery and now she lives in michigan and she is a stop on she's a conductor for the underground railroad and at the beginning of this book um our hero is injured and beaten and his name is gal gallon but he's his code name is the black daniel and he's actually this really wealthy um mixed race uh like business like he oh he's very wealthy but he helps slaves get to freedom on his downtime like he does it for a certain part of every year he will help people escape to the north and he they've been betrayed and so he's beaten and injured he barely escaped with his life and so he gets brought to hester to stay in her storeroom where she keeps uh the runaway slaves um or people that they're freeing um and she helps healing back to life and they have this very antagonistic relationship in the beginning um and it's just amazing to watch them both kind of soften to each other you know um gallon is really in awe by this young woman who has who puts herself in danger all the time um and is so smart and kind and calm and beautiful and he's just really in awe with her so he stays with her for a certain amount of time in the beginning of this book and then he has to leave and she's like well i'm never going to see him again well gallon buys the big house next to where she lives that borders up against her land and he re-interjects himself into the life of this town and into hester's life and hester just sees him as so far above her and gallon does everything possible to show that not only is it not a matter of like i'm above you it's a matter of i love you and i will be devoted to you for the rest of my life it is so romantic um hester doesn't believe that marrying for love is a good idea so at the beginning of this book she actually has a fiance don't worry there's well i guess there could be because she definitely does kiss gallon before we find out about what's going on with this fiance but i promise you won't feel like there's cheating like i promise you won't it's not that kind of story but hester's father was a free man and he actually sold himself into slavery so that he could marry hester's mother but then when that master who had you know let let him sell himself i don't know how to say that how the words work um died the sun sold them off and actually sold hester as a baby off and she wasn't freed until later in her life and she's never seen her parents but she's always been like if love would make you do something so foolish as to give up your freedom then i want no part of it but gallon is going to show her differently guys this book was so romantic i can't even i can't even it was so romantic and beautiful and just delightful and i am definitely excited to read more beverly jenkins after this i cannot wait to gush about it on thursday i hope you will come um yeah this was wonderful gallon is going on my book boyfriend's list like i just did an updated book boyfriend's list and i'm adding i'm adding him as well as the last book that i read well okay quick i dnf'd a book called the chimera affair by kiera andrews it just wasn't working for me this one was on my tbr this is a male male spy romance and it's just not working for me boom let's move that out of the way because the last book that i read which i finished last night is lessons in sin by pam godwin i didn't think i was getting an arc for this book i did apply for it of course of course i applied for it when she had the ark sign ups available but i was seeing other people reading it already and i didn't get it so i was like okay well maybe i didn't get it well i did i got it friday and i was like oh my god i just want to read this and i did read the first 20 of it at work and then on friday night when i got to my sister's house i read a bunch more of it and then i stopped because i was like i don't want to finish this right now i need to think about it so i finished it last night okay couple things this book isn't out yet it comes out june 29th so i don't want to say too much something that i do want to say and something that you could do leading up to that i believe someone told me about this someone told me about this but i wasn't paying attention or i didn't really understand what they meant but dangerous press the um indie publisher who is going to be releasing lessons in sin they have what is called the midnight dynasty and that is books by certain authors under their press are all connected they're the winston and the morelli family and i actually own a bunch of these and they are by see they're by dangerous press and they are about different winston siblings okay and i'll tell you why i'm telling you this in a minute so there is heartless and soulless which is about elaine constantine and um it doesn't say the hero's name but i believe he's a morelli um here there is wicked idol by becker gray which this was actually given to me as a gift so i like own it right now and this is about iris and i think it's keaton constantine which is one of the brothers and then the cinderella series stroke of midnight prince charming and then i'm currently reading the glass slipper is about winston constantine who's the oldest brother and now lessons in sin is about tinsley constantine who's the youngest and is 18 and is sent to a catholic boarding school in maine so that her mother can keep her pure and prepared for an arranged marriage that is going to happen when she graduates high school so she is being forcibly put under the care of magnus falk who is the priest and headmaster and teacher at this school he is known for his strictness and for having ship-shaped up this boarding school for young women and when tinsley's mother had like her the bodyguard had found her um fooling around with a boy her mom is like we're not [ __ ] around we have plans for you and you're not going to ruin them by [ __ ] around as a teenager and tinsley has a genius level iq she's not going to be allowed to use it she's not going to go to college she is supposed to finish high school and then get married and do this and magnus is gonna make that happen at least that's what he thinks this book okay so i'm not going to spoil anything um i'm debating whether i want to do a full spoiler review to come out when the book comes out i don't know how many the things that i don't know how many people would like want that because not everyone on my channel is like reading pam god when not everyone's gonna run and read this but the reasons why i'm gonna say this normally i would tell you the trigger warning so you can know there aren't really any trigger warnings for this book i know i'm surprised as well but when i was talking through this book with some of my friends last night i was like guys there there aren't really any trigger warnings neither of our characters have a traumatic past i mean our hero so there's this is obviously an age gap taboo because just given the setting tinsley's 18 magnus is 40. he's a priest he's her teacher um an authority figure you know it has all those taboo elements coming into it but neither of them really have a traumatic past at all there aren't anything super traumatic that happens during the book so i really am struggling to like tell you if there's anything to watch out for i mean obviously if you are catholic or you're sensitive to sacrilege against the catholic religion like maybe don't read it this does have some aspects that are could that are defiling to the church so like know that but our hero it's not the same as like priest by sierra simone that's the point like it's not that same level of angst there's angst because situational and it's taboo because of the literally the setup i've told you the taboos by telling you the setup of the book but really i was just in awe of this story and watching these two people and like the games they're playing with each other because tinsley's goal is to go home she does not want to be at this school she's being forced into all these things and so the only way out is to get expelled and the only way they get expelled that he that will work is if she seduces magnus so that's kind of our setup is he refuses to be seduced she's not even his type he likes older women he likes to you know be physic like physically um i don't want to say abuse but like his kink is like degradation and humiliation and all that stuff that can come with that so he's not interested in young women you know that's part of the reason why he's in this role that he is is he's not tempted by these young women throwing themselves at him because they do because he's hot they throw themselves at him but they are two people with exact opposite goals who are going at it like the way it was brilliant i won't say anymore but like i said as i did like for real you know i put up a spoiler card i'm like these are the there isn't really anything besides the religious elements that you need to decide if you're willing to try this there is a trigger warning for perceived harm to an animal and i hesitated to say that because it's listen to the words perceived harm to an animal okay i don't want to spoil anything but like i'll tell you that because there's a certain part of the book where you think something has happened okay okay all right oh in case you didn't know i gave this book six stars i loved it i loved it and it okay see everyone's my favorite paint goggle but this was amazing like the way that this one's written the feelings that it made me feel and then the finale of this book when our hero just oh it was so good so you'll have to let me know i don't know if i would film a whole video separate for it but if enough people wanted me to i could do a spoiler review for lessons in sin to come out when it comes out so let me know because honestly as soon as i finished this book i wanted to read it again so i'm going to content myself with finishing the books in these series that i haven't read because i haven't read the third book in this series i started the third book in this series last night as soon as i finished it and i haven't read wicked idol and then there's one other one which i can't remember right now that is about the villain of this series so it's about the morellis that i definitely want to check out so there you go i talked too long as usual but i had a lot of wonderful books this week um i'm just thrilled some of these were fantastic um make sure you join us for the indigo live show if you want to chat and hear more about that and yeah thank you so much to my channel members for your support thank you guys for um still always coming around week after week it's amazing so thank you so much for watching if you'd like to see some more videos you can do that right now bye [Music] you

Channel: The Book Refuge

Views: 2,089

Rating: 4.952096 out of 5

Keywords: new releases, peacelovebooksxo, moretomary, dark romance, pam godwin, ice planet barbarians, tiktok, booktube, book reviews

Id: 4A6Sh-eYeuk

Length: 50min 10sec (3010 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 13 2021