The Saucy Wenches Book Club

Okay. So. Interview With The Vampire just came out on AMC+. But it's one episode weekly. What do you do in the meantime to get your sexy, queer, intelligent, suave vampire fix?? Let me tell you. Oh, let me tell you!

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is a delectable tale of ambition and courage, true love, and the price of fame. The more I think about this book, the more it reveals to me its hidden gems, the more I realize how much greater it is than the sum of its parts, and the more I miss Evelyn Hugo. Writing books that are deceptively richer than they appear seems to be a real strength of this author. Along with creating characters, particularly celebrities, that you’d swear are real. And writing a story far more captivating and unforgettable than the one you expect. Now that I’ve fallen in love with another Taylor Jenkins Reid character (I wrote about others here ), I want to meet more! I’ve already got my eyes on her previous book, One True Loves . But before succumbing to its charms, I’d like to bask a bit longer in the glow of the mesmerizing Evelyn Hugo by telling you about her. Seven husbands. Which one did she love best? Which one was the real one?

OMG, I loved this book! What a perfect summer escape—the “guilty” pleasure that isn’t guilty at all, purely pleasure! Daisy Jones & the Six seems like such a simple story, about the rise and fall of the 1970s’ most famous fictional rock-and-roll band. Not particularly original—one we’ve perhaps read many times. (Spoiler: We haven’t. Not like this.) And it combines two of my favorite things: great storytelling and classic rock and roll. It’s also nostalgic, faithfully recalling those magical years when I was youthful and unencumbered and every event, great and small, played out to a rock-and-roll soundtrack. In fact, I could swear I grew up listening to this band. They were one of my favorite bands and I still have their albums, plus the replacement CDs because I wore out the albums. Right? Daisy is high and fun and carefree and a good time. If she’s having fun, you’re having fun. But if you want to rip people’s hearts out of their chests, bring Daisy back down to...

I wasn’t looking for a shrewd, sassy heroine badassing her way around the North Carolina swamps. But now that I’ve met the abandoned little girl who grows up all alone to become the storied and singular and oh-so-free-spirited voice of this novel, I’m completely smitten with living vicariously through her. Where the Crawdads Sing is a beautifully written, exquisitely crafted tribute to an extraordinary life lived without compromise. It’s a naturalist’s love letter to the incomparable richness and allure of wildness and the tidal marshlands. It’s also a bit of an unconventional romance and a riveting murder mystery. If you’re intrigued, I hope you’ll let me explain why I enjoyed this book so much. No spoilers, of course. Go as far as you can — way out yonder where the crawdads sing.

Once in a while, a book comes along that packs such an emotional punch that I can’t keep my feelings to myself and remain silent about it. To my great delight, I’ve just found another one of those books. A couple of weeks ago, I read Lisa Wingate’s novel Before We Were Yours , and ever since I’ve felt the need to recommend this gut-wrenching novel to you, my fellow Wenches. I feel the story is important enough that everyone should have a chance to read it. If you’re intrigued, let me tell you more, and I’ll try to avoid spoilers.

Source Pierce Brown’s Red Rising trilogy is a roller-coaster ride of action-packed space opera that kept me gasping and guessing right up until the last page. About what would happen next (I was usually wrong). About who would live to fight another day. About whether I’d survive the next round of heart palpitations to finish the story. These books ripped my heart to shreds and stomped all over the pieces a few times. But as a trilogy, they soared with intricate plots, flat-out amazing world building — that expanded with each book, and a hellaciously satisfying ending. The characters were diverse and often offbeat, with fascinating histories and a continuously evolving social dynamic that drove many plots. This is rollicking sci-fi epic at its best, augmented with the excellent social and political commentary and philosophical introspection I expect in dystopian drama. If that whets your appetite for literary adventure, I hope you’ll let me tell you more about each ...

The dream chooses the dreamer, not the other way around. Strange the Dreamer tells the story of Lazlo Strange, a young orphan boy in a faraway land who dreams of magic. Lazlo is obsessed with Weep, a mythical, Unseen city that has become “lost” because everyone has forgotten it. He remembers the exact moment when the city’s real name and history disappeared from the minds of everyone around him, so he knows what others no longer believe – that magic exists, because only magic could erase Weep from the world. Lazlo also knows that fairy tales are real. And his dreams are magic. What he never foresees is how much the life he dreams for himself will become a magical fairy tale.

Florida is a collection of masterfully written short stories about modern uncertainty and anxiety — the uneasy feeling that everything might fall apart with no warning at any minute. Eleven stories are narrated by female characters who don’t seem to have much in common except existential angst, which many readers can probably relate to, and a strong connection to the state of Florida. This is literary fiction that hooked me not with action-packed plots, but with deep-dish servings of the southern psyche, framed by the orchestral chorus of cicadas, stalked by repitilan menace, and fanned by the sway of Spanish moss in sprawling oaks. And because the language of Florida is in turns as lush and threatening and seductive as the ecosystem that infuses these stories, I’d like to share a few photos from one of my favorite northern Florida photographers to illustrate my review.

Escape from 2018 Source Now that 2018 is behind us (and I hope the door SMACKED it on the way out), we can finally let out a big sigh of relief and reflect on some of the finer points of the year. I don’t know about you, but I spent every single unscheduled minute with my nose buried deeply in a book, intent on escape into exotic realms or adventures. On the plus side, that means I read a lot of books that enthralled me. So I want to share four that I thought were particularly good, but never had time to review, before embarking on a new year of discoveries. These books were deviations from the usual types of urban fantasy and dystopian sci-fi I read most of the year. They were from four different genres, led by strong but quite diverse female characters: an immortal witch goddess, a socially awkward orphan, an identity-swapping avenger, and backstabbing corporate ladder climbers. I wasn’t specifically looking for books about women, but isn’t it great that there is such a ...

I recently picked up three books that had been sitting in my TBR list for about a year. (They were in the 2018 reading list that I posted in January.) They share similarities in theme, yet the stories and characters are very different. They’re all pre- or post-apocalyptic visions of a future that I think of as female dystopian horror (or horrific speculation, per Margaret Atwood). These aren’t stories written for women only, but stories focused on issues related to gender rights and roles in society. These books were really short, compared to the Throne of Glass books I’d been reading for months, and I had sufficiently recovered from the overdose of apocalyptic dystopian sci-fi I suffered back in the summer by bingeing The Handmaid’s Tale , Man in the High Castle , and Colony back to back, so I decided to read them all in one week and compare them. Though none of these got 5 stars from me, each offered a provocative glimpse into a future I’m glad I’m not living and an inter...

Aelin Kicks Ass Kingdom of Ash — the final installment in the wildly popular, roller-coaster thrill ride that is Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of Glass series — is finally out, and we’re here to sing its praises! It has been a looooong journey through vast and complex realms, borne of exotic mythologies and inhabited by wondrous and wicked creatures — and by seemingly hundreds of major characters, including at least a couple of dozen with whom we’ve developed deep, personal relationships. But in the end, we got our epic showdown between the forces of darkness and light, serially unfolding amidst an onslaught of twists, turns, shocking revelations, and nail-biting suspense. We added new names to our laminated list of favorite fictional friends. We got answers to lots of questions, including some that we didn’t know we had when we started this book. We got a definitive future for Terrasen, Erilea, and even the Southern Continent. And last but definitely not least important to ...

In this thrilling new Night Rebel series set in New York Times bestselling author Jeaniene Frost’s Night Huntress world, sexy and ruthless vampire Ian finally meets his match! The Rule Breaker Master vampire Ian is unrepentant, shameless…and every shade of wicked. He’s made one too many enemies in his two centuries of existence, including Dagon, a demon who now lays claim to his soul. Ian’s only chance to escape Dagon is to join forces with a Law Guardian, but he’s never been able to abide by the rules for long. The Law Maker Veritas’ normal role is police, judge and jury to reprobates like Ian. But she has her own ax to grind with Dagon, so if she can use Ian as bait…well, all’s fair in law and war. As they scour supernatural hotspots to perfect their trap, Veritas soon realizes Ian’s devil-may-care, roguish image hides something much more powerful. And Ian discovers that Veritas has shocking secrets of her own. As they’re drawn to each other with a passion as intense as their peril...

This will be a spoiler free review of the Chicagoland Vampires series spin-off starring Elisa Sullivan, the daughter of Merit and Ethan. New series from Chloe Neill

I've just finished devouring Magic Triumphs , the final installment in one of my favourite series. I've been anticipating this book for a long time! After the jump, I'll explain a bit about why the Kate Daniels series is so special to me and what I think about the way Kate's story ends.

Award-winning author Alyssa Cole’s Reluctant Royals series continues with a woman on a quest to be the heroine of her own story and the duke in shining armor she rescues along the way. New York City socialite and perpetual hot mess Portia Hobbs is tired of disappointing her family, friends, and—most importantly—herself. An apprenticeship with a struggling swordmaker in Scotland is a chance to use her expertise and discover what she’s capable of. Turns out she excels at aggravating her gruff silver fox boss...when she’s not having inappropriate fantasies about his sexy Scottish burr. Tavish McKenzie doesn’t need a rich, spoiled American telling him how to run his armory...even if she is infuriatingly good at it. Tav tries to rebuff his apprentice, and his attraction to her, but when Portia accidentally discovers that he’s the secret son of a duke, rough-around-the-edges Tav becomes her newest makeover project. Forging metal into weapons and armor is one thing, but when desire bu...

You know how it goes: you get in a bit of a reading rut and nothing really feels right. All the books you read are itchy, and then you can't even bring yourself to pick anything up. So you browse your TBR looking for something you shelved ages ago but never got around to, and now you're hoping there's a treasure in the pile. A few years ago I was deep into my discovery of dark romance and read a few Alessandra Torre novels, which I thoroughly enjoyed, when I shelved her then-latest, Moonshot , a baseball romance that wasn't right for me at the time. Fast forward a couple of years, I see that cover, remember wanting to read it, and check it out from my library's eBook catalog. Friends, it was exactly what I needed, an intense romance with that elusive something more, an unputdownable read that I devoured in about a day. Come with me through the jump and I'll tell you all about it. Except for the spoilery good stuff, of course. You need to read that yourself!

Ocean Light just released a couple of weeks ago — a new installment in one of my favorite series, set in one of my favorite paranormal worlds, and written by one of my favorite authors, Nalini Singh. So I somehow found time to read it, in spite of my schedule, and I wanted to let you know how I liked it. Goodreads Synopsis Security specialist Bowen Knight has come back from the dead. But there's a ticking time bomb in his head: a chip implanted to block telepathic interference that could fail at any moment — taking his brain along with it. With no time to waste, he should be back on land helping the Human Alliance. Instead, he's at the bottom of the ocean, consumed with an enigmatic changeling... Kaia Luna may have traded in science for being a chef, but she won't hide the facts of Bo's condition from him or herself. She's suffered too much loss in her life to fall prey to the dangerous charm of a human who is a dead man walking. And she carries ...

The Saucy Wenches Book of the Month for May is A Court of Frost and Starlight , book 3.1 in the wildly popular PNR series A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas. If you’ve already read ACoTaR, then you’re probably as anxious as I am to get your hot little hands on the next book. So is Wench Kathi, who got hooked after I enthused about it. If you haven’t read ACoTaR, wonder why it has so many new fans, and are waffling about whether to try it, we’re both here to pique your interest light a fire under you! You can thank us later! We just loved these books! They made us giddy with anticipation, like in our early Wench days, when we first fangirled into the wee hours over our extraordinary discoveries like Cat and Bones, Mac and Barrons, Ethan and Merit, Jamie and Claire... *dreamy sigh*  These books sparked that special kind of excitement we rarely feel when we read now, and made us realize how much we’ve missed it. “The first book is a magical fairy ta...

In the corner house of an empty street, there is a boy inside a box. In that boy, there lives a secret, one so dark, it’s sealed with locks.  Nearly ten years have passed since the night I was captured. Tricked and betrayed, I suffered the hours of brutal torment with death’s cold whisper across my skin. And when the nameless faces that haunted my nightmares took everything and everyone I loved, I feared I’d never be free of the darkness.  But that's the thing about fear. Over time, it breeds anger, and when anger fills the box, vengeance bleeds out.  It's been almost a decade since I escaped their hell, staying in the shadows, hiding my demons, and God help them now that I've tasted retribution and crave more of it.  Blood is the price for pain, and I vow to take everything and everyone they love. I’m no longer a frightened boy, but the intrepid vigilante, a ruthless executioner, who will stop at nothing to punish the depraved few that stole my life and walked free...

When I read Annihilation last fall, I was intrigued, repulsed, mystified, enchanted, horrified, compelled, absorbed, and ultimately so unable to articulate what had happened that I didn’t attempt a review. But it has never stopped growing on me, new insights twining around in my brain. It’s insidious. Then the movie happened. I. Had. To. Go. I didn’t think anyone could film the book, and I was on Cloud 9 when I saw the abundance of rave critical reviews. It got compared to Apocalypse Now and 2001: A Space Odyssey ! It got called “stunning” and the “Best Sci-Fi Film in Years” that “ranks among great philosophical sci-fi”! And though there were many differences from the book, it sounded almost as batshitcrazybrilliant as the book!! Which means there are now two equally haunting versions of this story for me to wonder WTF happened. I might not have all the answers, but I’ve certainly enjoyed replaying scenes in my mind and pondering the possibilities. And I suspect that’s...