A Sleuth of Bears

As I mentioned in my last book post, I finished Perfect Strangers on August 1st so I just included it with my July reads. When I finished that I jumped right into my next J.R. Ward book, Claimed, which is the first book in a new spin off series called Lair of the Wolven. I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this one since it’s a new series. I enjoyed it mostly. It fell a little flat for me around the mid-point and then the story just kind of seemed to drag a bit from there. Ironically, I kept picturing Daniel (the male main character) as one of my ex-boyfriends. Not sure why, but that’s who popped into my head.

I finished Claimed on the sixth of the month and then took a detour into a series that came highly recommended by the friend I’ve been reading the J.R. Ward books with. The series is called Guardians of the Fae Realms and is by J.L. Madore. She said that they are reverse harem and definitely spicy, but also that she loved the characters and wanted to spend as much time with them as possible. So I picked up the first book in the series, Rise of the Phoenix and was immediately sucked in. I found myself picking it up to read any time I had a free moment. Needless to say, it only took me a couple of days to blow through the first book.

I swear I was just going to read one and then switch back to my Black Dagger Brotherhood books, but I couldn’t stop myself from just reading a couple paragraphs of the next book, Wolf’s Soul, just to see what happens next and then I was hooked back in. I tore through this one in a couple days as well. So, so good.

. . . and right into the next one. I enjoyed this one as well and raced through it in a day. Learned that a group of bears is called a Sleuth, which is a fun little fact. There are two more books in this series after these three and I will definitely be reading them asap, but I decided I needed to get back to my plan. But, if you like spice and reverse harem, highly recommend these.

So, next up in my read-along was The Wolf, the second book in the Black Dagger Brotherhood Prison Camp spinoff series. I started this one on the 13th of the month and felt like I was driving with two flat tires after racing through those Guardians books. This book bored the shit out of me and the last hundred pages were a huge slog. It did finally get relatively good about the last forty pages, but that forty pages wasn’t enough to make up for the other 350. Ugh. This took entirely too long to read and I finally finished it on the 25th.

I have to admit that things were going so slow with The Wolf that I may have started something else before I finished. I took another little detour and picked up The Pearl by Tiffany Reisz. The Pearl is the third book in her Godwicks series. I’ve previously read The Red and The Rose and enjoyed both of them. This series was also recommended by a friend. I read a little bit in The Pearl and then decided I’d better get back to The Wolf and finish it before getting too swept up in this one. But, after finishing The Wolf, I was right back at it.

After coming back to it, I read this one in about five days. This one, similar to The Red, had a lot of art references in it, which I really enjoyed. In fact, this one was probably my second favorite of the trilogy, right after The Rose. Highly recommend this series if you’re looking for some erotic romance that also delves into art and history and myths.

On the last day of the month, I picked up the very last of the Black Dagger Brotherhood books, Lover Arisen. And I’ll be honest, I didn’t even really want to read this one. The last few of these have been disappointing and a challenge to get through. I’m ready to read other things (as evidenced by all the side reads this month). I just have to get through this one.

There are a couple new books being released in the series, Darius just came out in audiobook format only and Lassiter comes out in April. Also, The Viper, the next in the Prison Camp series comes out next month. I think I’m going to need a long break before I pick any of those up and with Darius, I’ll probably wait for the book format to be released.

So, that’s what I read in August. I can’t wait to start jumping into some fall reading and of course, I’ll report back on how Lover Arisen was in my next book post. I can hardly believe I’m finally at the end of these.

Until next time!

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