Words in Deep Blue by Cath Crowley / ★★★ 1/2
Genre: Young Adult/Contemporary/Romance
Summary: Rachel moved away three years ago after confessing her feelings to her best friend, Henry, and never speaking to him again. Since then, her brother has died, and when she moves back and gets a job at Henry’s bookshop, things with Henry, and her life, begin to grow back together.
A Fugitive in Grass Valley by I.M. Flippy / ★★★★☆
Summary: Lev lives a vaguely content life in Grass Valley, working as a barista and part-time art teacher and getting over a bad break up. Ernie shows up with a shady military past and a memory full of tragedies.
He pointed at the angry gray and red stuff. “So…emotional state during an average day. That’s most of the time.” Then he point at the upper left: the brighter colors, the sense of calm in the dabs of light blues, cut by bursts of happier yellows. It looked sort of like a peaceful rain with sun shining though it.
“That’s when I’m…”
“When you’re what?” I was a bit on the edge of my seat.
“That’s when I’m near you.”
Zenn Diagram by Wendy Brant / ★★★ 1/2
Summary: Eva Walker is a math tutor with a strange gift. When she touches someone, or something, she can read that person’s feelings, their secrets, their insecurities. When she tutors Zenn Bennett and accidentally touches his coat, she nearly passes out from how dark her reading of him is. But when she touches his skin- nothing.
Fractals usually creep up slowly, like a migraine, and then spread like when your hand had fallen asleep and starts to regain feeling one tingly bit as a time. But this one, it does not creep. It does not tingle. It hits me like a cement truck of inky-black lighting bolts, a crimson hurricane, and I am on my knees on the linoleum floor before I even realize what caused it.
The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee / ★★★★☆
Summary: Monty, a hopelessly roguish and vivacious young gentleman, leaves on his Grand Tour of Europe with his best friend, Percy, who he just so happens to be hopelessly in love with. When one of his reckless decisions leads to more trouble than he expects, he, Percy, and his sister Felicity find themselves pursued on a manhunt across Europe that could get them all killed.
“Oh no.”
Percy looks sideways at me. “Oh no what?”I swallow. “I’d first like it to be noted that I am most certainly not a smuggler.”
“Monty…” he says, my name sopping with dread.
“And,” I continue overtop him, “I’d like you to both remember just how much you adore me and how dull and gloomy your lives would be without me in them.”
“What did you do?”
When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon /★★★☆☆
Summary: Dimple Shah’s dream is to break out of her parents’ mold, go to Stanford and become a web developer. Rishi Patel is a romantic who values tradition and seeks to honor his parents. When an arranged marriage and a competition brings them together, things don’t go as expected for either of them.
“What are you asking? Why would I want to go out with you if it doesn’t involve marriage as the end result?”
Dimple was grateful for the misty darkness. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “I thought that was the whole point for you. Marriage, following your parents’ wishes, all of that. And if it is, then I’m definitely not the right girl for you.”
Okay, obligatory romance Valentine’s Day post time.
The thing is, I really like reading romance. The other thing is, it takes a lot to make me invested in a romance. I was thinking about why this was, and while there are many specific qualities I like in a romance, the one that encompasses all of them is that I need the characters to earn it. Like, I need them to go through some trials to develop and discover their feelings. No insta-love here.
So, to name a few books and series that have romances I’ve really enjoyed:
The Raven CycleI know I’ve raved about this series a million times, but truly, The Raven Cycle has the epitome of my kind of romance. Like, if one of the characters kisses her true love, he’ll die. What could get better than that? I believe Maggie Stiefvater said, “Nobody kisses anybody, which is weird because everybody loves everybody.” There’s lots of tension and pining and fighting each other and fighting together. This series seriously makes you earn the romance, and I LOVE it.
Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater (Wolves of Mercy Falls #1) / My rating: ★★☆☆☆
One sentence summary: Grace is in love with a wolf boy, Sam, whom she finds human and wounded on her doorstep, and romance ensues as they try to find a way to keep him from turning back into a wolf.
It tore my heart out, because I heard his voice. The wolves sang slowly behind him, bittersweet harmony, but all I heard was Sam.
Jeffrey is a poor laborer on the Eiffel Tower, he works to feed his little sister, and the girl who sells flowers on the corner is pretty.
It was winter of 1889 and the Eiffel Tower was to be complete by spring.
Jeffrey hung in the air, dangling a distance from the ground that had long ceased to frighten him. He’d lied, of course, to get the job, by telling them he wasn’t afraid of heights, but he’d needed the money more than anything and a fear could be beaten out of anyone, he’d learned.
He glanced out at the Paris that lay sprawled out before him, a magnificent sea of buildings and monuments and church towers that didn’t come close to the height he hung from. He stared out above them all. Before coming to work on the tower, he’d never dreamed a view like this existed, a million shades of sprawling landscape.
Jeffrey turned his eyes away. Of course, he wasn’t being paid to enjoy the view. He had a job to finish. For Paris.
Lost: Purple Quill 