Geek, Chef, Writer

🏒 Hockey Romance | 🤝 Fake Relationship | ⚔️ Enemies-to-Lovers Okay, I’ve gotten on the Hockey Romance bandwagon. I tried to stay strong, but I’ve finally caved after watching Off Campus on Amazon Prime I did not start with Elle Kennedy’s Off Campus series, Icebreaker, nor Heated Rivalry. I started with Offside by Avery Keelan – mostly because it was available on Kindle Unlimited. It has a…

If you are looking for your next cozy fantasy obsession, look no further than Love’s a Witch. This charming novel is the perfect blend of small-town atmosphere, magical mystery, and simmering romance. The plot follows the MacGregor sisters as they return to their hometown of Briarhaven, Scotland. After their grandmother has a vision that their centuries-long family curse could finally be lifted,…

If you’re looking for your next obsession, This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me is a must-read. This Portal/Isekai Fantasy is perfect for readers who love high stakes, political intrigue, and a realistic protagonist who actually learns from her mistakes. The story follows Maggie, a 20-something woman who wakes up in her favorite book series. Unlike lighthearted fantasy romances, this world carries…

Platform Decay is book 8 of Martha Wells’ Murderbot series. It picks up with SecUnit (aka Murderbot) attempting to rescue Dr. Mensa’s family after they were kidnapped by Barish-Estranza Corporation. Since it’s part of a series, you definitely should be reading the first 7 books, which follow SecUnit/Murderbot as he attempts to get by without being caught as a SecUnit who hacked its governor…

Behind Five Willows is a Joseon-era Korean retelling of Pride and Prejudice by June Hur. It takes place during the time of the Marriage Edict and Munchebanjeong. The Marriage Edict required all spinsters to marry by a certain deadline, and Munchebanjeong was a policy that destroyed novels and other ideas that weren’t from Joseon, such as Catholicism or Anti-Confucianism. I went into this not…

Ali Hazelwood is quickly becoming one of those authors that I can just pick up and read and immediately get sucked in. I wouldn’t say the books are groundbreaking, but they are just enjoyable RomComs. They are books you can easily imagine being a hit RomCom movie starring the latest and greatest actors, and have all the standard RomCom tropes.  The Love Hypothesis is about Olive, a grad student…

One Dark Spark is a dual POV Paranormal Romance/Romantasy. It follows Paige, an intern at a supernatural library, and Aries, a dragon shifter Prince that Paige accidentally releases from a book.  This is a he-falls-first, love-at-first-sight, fated-mate romance. It was an interesting concept overall, in which the library keepers must defend the library against monsters that sometimes escape from…

Cinnamon, a spice trader determined to avoid “Chosen One” status and Quests, celebrates her non-selection by getting very drunk. On the wobbly walk home (courtesy of her cheesemonger best friend, Brie), she casually recognizes and takes down a mugger with an apple. After fleeing into the woods, she rescues a handsome stranger pinned under some rocks—who promptly reveals he’s a demon and tries to…

The story follows Jessica, a late-presenting omega fleeing an abusive ex. She returns to her hometown to find four Alphas from her past ready to claim her. While the concept was intriguing, the execution felt like an unedited draft. Inconsistent Timelines: The timeline is a mess. References to how long characters have known each other shift constantly, and internal logic, like multiple people…

Elodie was living destitute with her three matches (aka mates) when she was abruptly pulled into an alternate universe where the Alt-Universe Elodie was murdered, and her Aunt wants to find out who did it. Elodie only wants to get back to her matches, but the Aunt she never met in her universe was unable to send her back at that time. So Elosie begrudgingly agrees to look into Other Elodie’s…

Ruin the Friendship by Elle Rivers is a first-person POV about Maisie’s love life. She finds out only days before her wedding that her fiancé, Rob, is a bit of a piece of shit after her best friend Nate films Rob at his bachelor party saying some unkind things about Maisie that are hurtful enough she calls off the wedding.  Maisie is devastated that her ten-year relationship has ended, and Nate…

Carl and Princess Donut have reached level 6, which is the next big story level – The Hunting Grounds. On level 3, they experienced small towns and circuses, and on level 6, the stories continue in the dinosaur-filled jungles. The big catch is that outside hunters have now been unleashed against the crawlers, and their only goal is to get as much gear as possible for the faction war on level…

Carl and Princess Donut have made it to the 9th level of the Dungeon, where Faction Wars take place. Normally, the Faction Wars are a giant play-war between all the major powers of the universe, but this time it’s different. This year, the crawlers have their own faction led by Carl and Princess Donut, which is paid for by the Princess Posse. In previous dungeons, the crawlers were merely fodder,…

In the Eye of the Bedlam Bride, for once, Carl isn’t the one to break a dungeon level. Prepotente, the goat turned crawler, is the one who breaks dungeon level 7 for all the crawlers, essentially making everyone skip over an entire level. Carl just happened to be in the starting bubble with Prepotente at the time because they were grouped. This causes extra chaos for the dungeon show runners, as…

In Gate of the Feral Gods, Carl and Princess Donut find themselves trapped in a bubble with the simple task of destroying 4 strongholds on 4 different levels of their island for dungeon level 5. However, none of their normal friends and comrades are in the same bubble as them, so they have to find new allies in the few crawlers that share their bubble.  This was another crazy dungeon level with…

Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook is book 3 of the Dungeon Crawl Carl series, where Carl and Princess Donut make it to the 4th level, and they finally find out who’s in the top 10. This is definitely one of the more complicated levels because they have to traverse one of the most complicated subway/train systems created in the universe, all while trying to stay alive with bounties on their heads and…

Carl’s Doomsday Scenario is book 2 in the Dungeon Crawler Carl Series. It follows Carl and Princess Donut as they get down to the 3rd level of the dungeon, where they get sucked into extra quests and story lines within the Dungeon that require them to solve mysteries in order to survive.  At this point, they are some of the highest watched Crawlers, much to Princess Donut’s delight, and they…