The Saucy Wenches Book Club

Barrons, well, it goes without saying but I'll say it: he's the best of the best. The strong, silent, dangerously attractive type that harbors a private, vast, brilliant inner landscape of knowledge, wisdom, and experience, and watches, always watches, learns, adapts, evolves. A woman takes one look at the dark, carnal complexity that is Barrons and thinks: Damn, if the man chose me, took me into his inner circle, I'd never stray, never betray him. Beastly and brutal? Sure. Merciful when the situation demands it? Absolutely. Demanding? None more so. Exciting? Holy shit, yes. Respectful of my needs to make my own decisions? Most of the time. Burned ~~Karen Marie Moning

“A writer should never have the audacity to write about themselves unless they’re willing to separate every layer of protection between the author’s soul and their book. The words should come directly from the center of the gut, tearing through flesh and bone as they break free. Ugly and honest and bloody and a little bit terrifying, but completely exposed.” Verity , Colleen Hoover

“Everything is a game, Em. Whether you know it or not. Which means that sometimes a lie is more than just a lie. Sometimes it’s the only way to win.” The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager

Slick with sweat, I defile her with reverence. Or revere her with defilement. Burned ~~Karen Marie Moning

“I am no longer afraid of getting old. Indeed I can't believe I ever said anything so stupid. So childish. So offensive and arrogant. But mainly, so very, very stupid. I desperately want to grow old.” Code Name Verity , Elizabeth Wein

Amezrou. Once upon a time, a little boy in a frost-rimed orchard had roared it out like thunder, like an avalanche, like the war cry of the seraphim who had cleansed the world of demons, only to have it stolen from his mind between one slash of his apple bough sword and the next. Now it was back, and it felt, as it ever had, like calligraphy, if calligraphy were written in honey. ~ Laini Taylor, Muse of Nightmares

“Over-consumption is a universal human trait,” Orlu pointed out. “And so is ignorance.” Akata Warrior by Nnedi Okorafor

The fact that my reading plate was full last year — proudly flaunting Marie Kondo’s 30-book rule without even taking my several bookcases into consideration — didn’t keep me from lurking about in various online book groups in hopes of adding more to the pile. I stalked a lot of fantasy groups, especially a Karen Moning fans spinoff group that focuses on fae fantasy. A year ago, they inspired me to finally read all the Sarah J. Maas books that Wench Merit had been telling me to read. Since that was such a delightful experience for me, I’ve been taking notes about the other series that have inspired them to rave for weeks on end, and eagerly awaiting the opportunity to dive into a few of them. So here’s the list of recommendations I’ve compiled from my lurking notes. Plus a few books I didn’t get to last year. These should work nicely for the categories Wench Angela has provided in the latest Saucy Wenches reading group challenge on Goodreads.

Maybe I should get a cat.  The thought invades my head fully formed and utterly obvious. A cat. Another little sociopath to curl up beside me at night and keep me warm. Jane Doe ~~Victoria Helen Stone

“We were twelve years old, but we walked along the hot streets of the neighborhood, amid the dust and flies that the occasional old trucks stirred up as they passed, like two old ladies taking the measure of lives of disappointment, clinging tightly to each other. No one understood us, only we two—I thought—understood one another.”  My Brilliant Friend , Elena Ferrante

In a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me. ~ Madeline Miller, Circe,

“Datable basically means you wear your bra when they’re around, and you don’t talk about bodily functions or pimples. Not datable or gay: anything goes.” Dating You Hating You , Christina Loren

People are forever thinking that the unthinkable can’t happen. If it doesn’t exist in thought, then it can’t exist in life. And then, in the blink of an eye, in a moment of danger, a figure who takes power from our weak desires and failures emerges like a rib from sand. ... Some strange combination of a military dictator and a spiritual charlatan. A war-hungry mountebank. How stupidly we believe in our petty evolutions. Yet another case of something shiny that entertained us and then devoured us. We consume and become exactly what we create. In all times. ~ Lidia Yuknavitch, The Book of Joan

"Well then..." she said, snapping back into pissed off mode. "Goodbye, Carter James...and FUCK YOU AGAIN...With something rough and sand-papery!" Sincerely, Carter ~~Whitney G

“The greatest achievement of the human race was not conquering death. It was ending government.” Scythe by Neal Shusterman

Jamie stood beside Brianna with that utter stillness that so frightened me—straight and still as a stick of dynamite, with a lit match laid a hairsbreadth from the fuse. The flame of Brianna’s head moved slightly, looking from one to the other, and I saw what she saw; the echo of Jamie’s dangerous stillness in Roger. It was both unexpected and shocking; I had never seen any resemblance between them at all—and yet at the moment they might have been day and dark, images of fire and night, each mirroring the other. MacKenzie , I thought suddenly. Viking beasts, bloody-minded and big. And saw the third echo of that flaming heritage blaze up in Brianna’s eyes, the only thing alive in her face. ~ Diana Gabaldon, Drums of Autumn ( Outlander #4)

“Sorrow is food swallowed too quickly, caught in the throat, making it nearly impossible to breathe.” ~ Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn Ward

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'm not bossy. I'm decisive. Wild Hunger ~~Chloe Neill

For what was a person but the sum of all the scraps of their memory and experience: a finite set of components with an infinite array of expressions. ~ Laini Taylor, Strange the Dreamer