Rating: 4.5/5

Book Blurb:

Death abounding, a curse ensnaring, two souls roped together with the past.

I will never love again. Left alone to run my family’s ranch in Black Lake, Texas, I have become a man out to sea, drifting in a current of grief and ghosts.

A year later, my father’s last words still haunt me when I find a dead woman on my land, making me wonder if they’re true because I’m accused of killing her.

Knocked around by the storm, I find refuge when I pull Eliana Greer from a ditch, my anchor.

Equally outcasts, we make a deal to help each other. But our agreement becomes more than an extra set of hands and involves what we’re both trying to avoid—our hearts.

In my desperation to protect her and solve a crime I didn’t commit, we sink deeper under the black water, dragged down by a collective grief, a mysterious curse, a stalker after Eliana, and a murderer with strange motives.

As time runs out, the past comes to light, its roots are deep and out of our control, weaved together by the choices of others.

Love is a terrifying burden that can only end in death.

But in our search for answers, it must be put to the ultimate test before our final breath.

What you can expect in A Curse On Black Lake: - Cowboy Romance - Small Town Romance - Gothic Romance - Slow Burn - A man who yearns - Mystery/Suspense - VERY protective MMC - Touch her and die - HEAWelcome to Black Lake, TX where the lake is black, the sun doesn’t quite shine right and things go bump in the night. Get your copy today!

Review:

I AM HOOKED!! This was such a amazing gothic cowboy romance with a slow burn romance put in it! I had so much fun reading about the small town and the curse on it. I love a mystery and a romance and with a cowboy thrown in? It's just perfect! I just was hooked from the first chapter and I can't wait for the next book! It's just so good and I had a great time with it.

Release Date: October 10, 2025

Publication/Blog: Ash and Books (ash-and-books.tumblr.com)

TL;DR: Probably one of the best books I’ve read by this author. Source: NetGalley – Thank you to the publisher!! Plot: Hercules gets roped into a deal with Meg and Hades Characters: I really enjoyed these three. They had sharp edges but fit well together. Setting: Definitely not the focus but it had some good shape around the characters. Fantasy/Romance: The fantasy in this was very thin on the…

Rating: 3/5

Book Blurb: An American teen stranded in London is forced to team up with the British crown prince if she wants to make it back home before the end of the world in this delightfully rompy high-stakes rom-com. Wren Wheeler has flown five thousand miles across the ocean to discover she’s the worst kind of traveler: the kind who just wants to go home. Her senior-year trip to London was supposed to be life-changing, but by the last day, Wren’s perfectly-planned itinerary is in tatters. There's only one item left to check off: breakfast at The World’s End restaurant. The one thing she can still get right. The restaurant is closed for renovations—of course—but there's a boy there, too. A very cute boy with a posh British accent who looks remarkably like the errant Prince Theo, on the run from the palace and his controlling mother. When Wren helps him escape a pack of tourists, the Prince scribbles down his number and offers her one favor in return. She doesn’t plan to take him up on it—until she gets to the airport and sees cancelled flights and chaos. A comet is approaching Earth, and the world is ending in eight days. Suddenly, that favor could be her only chance to get home to her family before the end of the world. Wren strikes a bargain with the runaway prince: if she’ll be his bodyguard from London to his family’s compound in Santorini, he can charter her a private jet home in time to say goodbye. Traveling through Europe by boat, train, and accidentally stolen automobile, Wren finds herself drawn to the dryly sarcastic, surprisingly vulnerable Theo. But the Prince has his own agenda, one that could derail both their plans. When life as they know it will be over in days, is it possible to find a happy ending?

Review:

An American teen is stranded in London and with the world ending in a few days due to a comet... her only chance of getting back home is the the hands of a runaway British crown prince. Wren Wheeler has been looking forward to her amazing supposed to be life-changing trip to London, but it all goes terribly and now she just wants to go home.... except on her last day in London she helps out a cute British boy who turns out to be the Prince running away from his bodyguards. She ends up missing her flight, only to then learn that the world is ending in a few days and now she is desperate to find a way home. After helping Prince Theo, he offered her a favor, and the only favor she wants is a way back home but getting there wont be easy since Theo is on the run from his family and they have people going all around London looking for him. A quick hair dye job, some helpful friends, and an adventure all around Europe in hopes of making it home in time before the world ends.... easy peasy right? But Theo has his own agenda and secrets and Wren has to figure out if she can rely on him to get her back home. The end days are coming but can they make a few happy memories before then? This one was an interesting one, it started off fun but it kind of fell off at the end for me, it really felt like a rush ending that just abruptly ended and had me wishing there was more to the epilogue or something to explain what is in store for Wren and Theo and if they actually do get back together or reconcile. Honestly, it was a fun read until the end which kind of had me disappointed. However, if you are looking for a adventure with a splash of romance for two teens at the end of the world, give it a go!

Rating: 3/5

Book Blurb: One woman’s trash is another woman’s treasure. High standards never hurt anybody... Marina Spicer has no time to waste when it comes to dating, hence her (rather long) list of dealbreakers. Must love dogs, no smokers need apply, etc. Still, Marina is stuck. Frustrated by the online dating world, she creates Dealbreakers, an anonymous dating review app, to whittle down the depressingly large dating pool man by man and help other women along the way. But after a disagreement at work gets her paired up as the marketer on a project with uppity Irish content writer Lucas Kennedy, she realizes he’s the most reviewed walking red flag on the entire app. The charming ne’er-do-well is the last person she wants to spend time with, but they have to test out date ideas together, the writer of the best pitch walking away with the promotion Marina feels she’s already earned. As Marina and Lucas butt heads mixing cocktails, salsa dancing, and throwing axes, Marina finds herself sharper and wittier in his presence despite Lucas checking every box on Marina’s dealbreakers list. If the Dealbreakers say he’s Mr. Wrong, he can’t possibly be Mr. Right . . . can he?

Review:

She has a checklist for her perfect partner and he’s the exact opposite of what she could want, but can two work enemies actually be perfect for each other? Marina Spicer has a checklist of what she is looking for in a perfect partner and her list of dealbreakers, yet every guy she’s gone out with has been a miss. She creates an app called Dealbreakers where people can anonymously write reviews for their dates for other women to read. When a disagreement at work gets her paired up with her work enemy, Lucas Kennedy, a supremely charming, smoking, and tattooed content writer. They enter into a competition in where they test out date ideas together and the winner with the best pitch gets the new promotion. Marina feels like she has earned this promotion and is going to take Lucas down.. or that was the plan until Lucas charms his way into her heart. From cocktail mixing dates, salsa dancing, and ace throwing, Marina and Lucas find themselves opening up to each other more and Marina begins to realize that maybe despite the fact that Lucas checks off every single one of her dealbreakers.... he is the perfect guy for her. This was a short and interesting read about two people who are opposites but find a way to completely fit one another. 

Rating: 3/5

Book Blurb: Love isn’t blind, it’s just a little blurry. Sadie Montgomery never saw what was coming . . . Literally! One minute she’s celebrating the biggest achievement of her life—placing as a finalist in the North American Portrait Society competition—the next she’s lying in a hospital bed diagnosed with a “probably temporary” condition known as face blindness. She can see, but every face she looks at is now a jumbled puzzle of disconnected features. Imagine trying to read a book upside down and in another language. This is Sadie’s new reality. But, as she struggles to cope, hang on to her artistic dream, work through major family issues, and take care of her beloved dog, Peanut, she falls in love—not with one man but two. The timing couldn’t be worse. Making judgment calls on anything right now is a nightmare. If only her life were a little more in focus, Sadie might be able to have it all.

Review:

When a portrait artist gets brain surgery that leaves her with face blindness she’s going to figure out how to live her life with not only a big art competition coming up but with deciding who between the two potential guys is right for her. Sadie Montgomery’s life hasn’t been going great, she’s not made it as a successful artist, she’s got a very very complicated relationship with her father and step mother as well as a wicked step sister, she’s just found out that she needs brain surgery or else she might die the sane way her mom did... it’s a lot. Sadie just found out she made it into the finalist of artists for a competition that could be her big break, but now that she has to have her brain surgery... she’s found out that a “probably temporary” side effect is that she has face blindness... which isn’t ideal for a portrait artist.  Throw into the mix a cute veterinarian and neighbor she might have had the wrong first impression with and now Sadie has two potential dates but with her face blindness Sadie is just relying on her assumptions to figure out who people are. She now has to figure out how she can ask for help from others when she hates asking for help and relying on people. Sadie has a lot of past difficulties and pains that make it hard for her to ask for help and to rely on other people and with her new condition, trying to adjust will be even harder. From making wild jumps and assumptions, Sadie is going to find that she’s going to need to re-evaluate how she lives her life with her new condition because it’s going to impact not only her but everyone around her. Sadie was a difficult protagonist because on one hand you understand where she’s from and why she acts the way she does but on the other, you want to tell her: STOP PLEASE. The romantic interest in her life: Dr. Oliver and her neighbor “Joe”  and the twist with that was predictable. Overall, it was a unique romance story about an artist who has face blindness who finds love but it just didn’t connect with me as much as the author’s previous book did. I will be reading the author’s future work though but despite this one not being to my taste, I do really enjoy the author’s work.

Rating: 5/5

Book Blurb: Two high school enemies must reunite for a road trip inspired by their grandparents’ broken engagement in this electric debut romance.

Noelle Shepherd is unemployed, living with her parents, and grieving the loss of her beloved grandmother when she discovers decades-old photos of Gram and a smitten man, tucked alongside a love letter. She creates a TikTok to search for the mystery man, which goes viral, and she’s shocked when his grandson responds—a man who happens to be her high school nemesis, Theo Spencer.

Noelle refuses to let Theo’s annoying accomplishments in adulthood—or his sexy smirk—stand in the way of meeting his grandfather and unlocking the secrets he knew about her gram as a young woman. When she learns that their plans to elope were thwarted, Noelle decides to take the honeymoon road trip they planned but never got to carry out. There’s a catch, though: Paul, Theo's grandfather, asks to come with her, and he insists that Theo join them.

It’ll be a miracle if they make it through the trip without Noelle throwing Theo out of the moving car—or the bed they end up sharing. As the miles tick by, the tension simmers hotter between them...until she discovers that Theo’s hiding a secret that could cause their tenuous relationship to end before it can restart.

Review:

Two high school enemies reunite on a road trip inspired by their grandparents’ broken engagement only to find that all that tension between them definitely is something more. Noelle Shepherd is currently unemployed, living with her parents, and grieving the loss of her beloved grandmother when she suddenly discovers decades old photos of her grandmother with a handsome man who looks smitten with her, alongside a love letter. Noelle creates a TikTok to search for the mystery man and then it suddenly goes viral and she receives a message from the man’s grandson.... who just happens to be her high school nemesis, Theo Spencer. Noelle definitely has not (she definitely has) been keeping tabs on Theo’s accomplishments over the years, from being handsome, rich, and successful... and still outdoing her. Yet she’s not going to let him get in the way of her meeting his grandfather and finding out his secret past and relationship with her grandmother. When she finds out that they had planned to elope but those plans were thwarted... she decides to go on the honeymoon road trip they had planned to go on but never goat the chance... the only catch? Paul ( Theo’s grandfather) wants to come... and he’s insisting that Theo join them. Noelle wants to go on the trip with Paul but she doubts she can stand to be around Theo and his sexy smirk and the way he gets under her skin. Noelle is stuck between wanting to throw Theo out the car and sharing a bed with him. The more time they are forced to spend together on this romantic trip... the more they discover things about one another and the tension between them only gets stronger... yet can their possible relationship survive the trip or will their own secrets ruin it? This was a very touching and sweet romance read, it definitely gave me Letters to Juliet (movie with Amanda Seyfried) vibes. The romance between Noelle and Theo was cute, yes they get under each other’s skin and yes Theo can be a bit of a grump, but they balance each other out, they’re supportive and caring, and honestly the way this book stresses being open to understanding the way someone else is processing their happiness and their emotions was such a beautiful and sweet message. I had a blast reading this one and would definitely recommend it!

Rating: 2/5

Book Blurb: Lahey Johnson is notorious for helping her friends and classmates find love, though she’s never had a boyfriend herself. She just hasn’t had a reason to focus on her own love life! But now, with her detested cousin Summer’s sweet sixteen coming up, she’s got the ultimate reason: revenge.Lahey will do anything to prove that she can get a date to Summer’s party—anything, including juggle six prospective suitors in seven days.The only issue? Her older sister’s irritating friend Adler has decided to take a front-row seat to the spectacle that is Lahey’s life. He can bother her all he wants—nothing will distract Lahey from her goal of one-upping Summer.But as the party creeps closer, the panic sets in. Can a matchmaker ever really meet her own match?Last Chance Books author Kelsey Rodkey delivers another perfect summer read for fans of those who love their romance with a side of repartee.

Review:

She’s great at matchmaking other people but when it comes to finding a match for herself she’s out of luck, so when she makes a bet with her cousin to find a date she’s got 6 dates but the one that’s perfect for her is one she never saw coming. Lahey Johnson is known for her great ability to matchmake! Yet she has a horrible relationship with her cousin and when she gets into a fight with her she bets that she can find a date for her cousin’s sweet sixteen to get revenge against her. Yet Lahey herself has never found love so now she has six potential candidates to be her possible date and seven days to narrow it down. it doesn’t help that her older sister’s best friend Adler seems to constantly be around to speculate and bother her. Adler is handsome, he gets under her skin, and he kind of makes her heart flutter but she definitely can’t date him right? Throw in a ton of date shenanigans, girl fighting for 80% of the story, and teen romance for 20% and thats what you get. This book started off kind of cute but fell for me because Lahey herself despite being potentially generous and friendly, spent the majority of the book being vindictive, petty, and not really having a great personality. Honestly she just didn’t come off likable to me and Adler was really a cute love interest but I just didn’t really get them together because we get so little of them. Overall, this one just didn’t live up to what I was expecting and it just fell flat for me, however if you are interested in a young adult romance featuring multiple dates then give this one a try.