Review: A Summer of Stars - Liana Cincotti - August 2026   Luna Aldridge is a tennis superstar whose messy breakup has turned the whole world against her. Her reputation is in tatters and her career is hanging by a thread. Enter Kieran Alexander, Hollywood’s golden boy, who has a big-screen love story to lead and a dating history that might sink it. The solution? A fake relationship, with terms agreed and hearts strictly off the table. There’s just one little snag: they absolutely cannot stand each other. Oh, how I adored this setup! There’s something so comforting about an enemies-to-lovers romance, like a well-worn blanket you keep reaching for. Luna and Kieran bicker, glare and roll their eyes their way across red carpets and around the globe on the tennis circuit, and all the while the cameras are watching. Cincotti has such a gift for those moments when the pretending starts to slip and something real peeks through. I may have sighed out lou...

        Synopsis: Forever Relentless - Book #3 Fourth and Forever Series  - Eve L. Mitchell - September 2026 This is the darkest entry in the series so far, and I mean that as a warning as much as a promise. Noah Matthews is the one they call in when the Alabama Lions need control, not mercy -the enforcer, not the golden boy. He is not a soft landing. They call him the enforcer. The one the team unleashes when control matters more than mercy. I noticed him the second I set foot on campus. That one. Never that one. I should have listened. I didn't come to Wrighton to admire the golden boys. I came to drag their secrets into the light for what they did to my brother. I forged a new name, a new past and slipped inside their world. Except Noah Matthews saw through it all. He knows exactly who I am. What I'm hunting. One word from him would cost me everything. And he knows it. He should have turned me in. That he hasn't is so much worse. He just watches. Crowds ...

Review: Kissing Tolstoy - Book #1 Dear Professor - Penny Reid - May 2014 Penny Reid is one of my all-time favourite authors, especially when it comes to quirky, geeky, nerdy characters and what I like to call Geek Chic Lit. Her characters always seem to speak directly to my heart because, more often than not, I can see a little bit of myself in them. The overthinking, the awkwardness, the love of books and knowledge… yep, Penny Reid gets me! Kissing Tolstoy had actually been sitting patiently on my Kindle since its release, and I honestly cannot believe it took me this long to finally read it. LOL! But, as they say, better late than never, and I am so glad I eventually picked it up. Imagine going on a blind date with a ridiculously attractive man, only to discover months later that your super-hot mystery date is now your Russian Literature professor. What do you do? Well, if you're anything like Anna , you overthink absolutely everything, panic internally, and pray for a swift end...

Review: Red, White and Sensual - Book #1 Red and White Series - Bec Botefuhr - May 2013 Red, White and Sensual by Bec Botefuhr is one of those reads that reminded me why I sometimes love picking up books that were published over ten years ago. I don't know exactly what it is, but the writing from that era often just hits differently for me. Maybe it feels less overdone, or maybe it's because self-publishing was still finding its feet and authors were taking chances and writing the stories they truly wanted to tell. Whatever the reason, these older books often seem to find just the right spots for me. That's not to say there aren't plenty of amazing books being published today , I have read some incredible five-star books recently but there is something comforting about returning to an author I enjoyed years ago. When this book was originally published, I fell in love with Bec Botefuhr's Phoenix Rockstar series, and since then I've enjoyed several of her other ...

Review: Dark Poison - Book #1 Dark Brothers Series - Bec Botefuhr/Bella Jewel - March 2013 Scrolling through my Kindle the other night, I was in the mood for something older, something that felt like coming home. That's when I clicked on Dark Poison by Bec Botefuhr. The cover I remember is different from the one floating around now , mine was the self-published OG version, sitting on my Kindle since 2013, patiently waiting for me to fall back into it. And fall back into it I did. Reading this book was like stepping into a time machine set to 2013, back when indie authors were just beginning to find their footing and the market hadn't yet been flooded with the endless sameness we see today. This was a world where writers released books because they had a story to tell, not because they were pumping them out on a conveyor belt like James Patterson. It was also a world before Fifty Shades of Grey changed everything, before dark romance and erotica fiction became the juggernaut gen...

Review: Repeat - Book #1 Larsen Brothers - Kylie Scott - April 2019 There's something so special about reading a book that landed in your hands as a birthday gift and getting to curl up with Repeat, sent to me by one of my beautiful book birthday groups on bookstagram, made this reading experience feel even warmer and more meaningful. Books really do taste sweeter when they come wrapped in friendship. Kylie Scott has long held a special place on my shelf as one of my favourite Australian New Adult authors. It all started years ago when I fell hopelessly in love with Mal from the Stage Dive series, and ever since, her name on a cover is enough to make me clear my schedule. Repeat opens with Clementine walking into a tattoo parlour, innocently asking if the owner did her tattoo completely unaware of the storm she's about to walk into. Turns out, she used to date the tattoo artist, Ed. They broke up, she walked away, and it shattered him. But here's the gut-punch: Clem doesn...

Review: Forever Defiant - Book #2 Fourth and Forever Series - Eve L. Mitchell - July 2026 There's something wonderfully fitting about a book landing in my hands on my own birthday. Forever Defiant published on the 7th of July, and reading it felt like unwrapping a gift made just for me  the kind of serendipity that makes this whole reviewing hobby of mine feel a little bit magical. From the first chapter, I was hooked, but it wasn't Dustin Slater's wicked smile that pulled me in hardest , it was Hadley. I don't think I've resonated with a heroine quite this much in a long time. Watching her chase the truth, notebook in hand, utterly unwilling to back down even when powerful men wanted her silenced, stirred something very personal in me. Journalism has always been my own quiet dream one I chased extramurally through years of study, and one I've kept alive for two decades now, writing for online magazines and review sites in whatever spare hours I could find.  ...

VBT# Review - Forever Reckless -Book #1 Fourth and Forever Series -  Eve L. Mitchell - June 2026 Right, pull up a chair and let me tell you about my latest read, because this one has been living in my head rent-free since I turned the final page. Forever Reckless by Eve L. Mitchell came my way through Zooloos Book Tours, and I'll be the first to admit  it's a little different from my usual picks. But honestly? Sometimes different is exactly what you need. You know the type of book I mean, don't you? That delicious new adult sports college romance where the golden boy on campus turns out to be far more complicated than his billboard smile suggests. Eve L. Mitchell has taken everything we love about the genre,  the tension, the forbidden pull, the slow unravelling of carefully built walls  and wrapped it around a story with real bite to it. Our hero, Dante Spence, is the kind of man who looks like he has it all. Quarterback. National champion. Star of ...

Review: The Striker - Book #1 Gods of the Game Series - Ana Huang - October 2024 I'll be honest with you Ana Huang and I have had quite the complicated relationship. Her books have been a bit of a mixed bag for me over the years, landing anywhere from absolute favourites to DNFs (did-not-finishes, for those not deep in the bookish rabbit hole). So when I packed my bags for our Readers Retreat in Taupō last week, I finally decided it was time to give The Striker a proper chance. It had been sitting on my shelf since release, quietly judging me every time I walked past. You know that feeling. We've all been there. And oh my goodness  how did it take me this long? I'm so glad I finally cracked the spine on this one, because The Striker completely won me over. At its heart, it's a football romance and when I say football, I do mean soccer, just so we're all on the same page! Our hero, Asher Donovan, is an absolute dreamboat of a soccer champion who has just switched ...

      Review: After We Fell -  Book #3 After Series - Anna Todd - July 2014 You know that feeling when you pull a book off the shelf that's been sitting there so long it's practically become part of the furniture? That was me with After We Fell by Anna Todd. It had been gathering dust since 2015 ,yes, 2015  and it finally got its moment in the sun last weekend when I packed it for my reader's retreat, determined to tackle one of my chunkiest reads. Reader, I devoured all 848 pages across a Friday afternoon and Saturday. No shame, only pride. Opening this book was like stepping into a time machine. Within a few pages I was right back in Hardin and Tessa's world, and it genuinely felt like no time had passed since I finished the second book all those years ago. There's something wonderfully nostalgic about returning to a series you loved in an earlier chapter of your life, but what made this reread particularly fascinating was how much I had changed in the decad...