Wulf's Book Reviews

My rating: 1 of 5 stars “The Way We Play” is a miserable reading experience, not because its tropes are inherently objectionable, but because they replace characterisation, logic, and genuine chemistry. The premise has workable ingredients: a cautious thirty-year-old caring for her younger brother, and an injured former kicker with a repairman’s trade. Yet the novel turns every element into a contrivance designed to prove that Rachel and Zane are destined for each other. The book practically announces this problem itself: » Zane Bradford appeared at the perfect time. « That is not foreshadowing. It is the author waving a large sign labelled “plot convenience”. Nothing feels credible. Rachel’s responsibilities exist mainly to make Zane indispensable, while Zane alternates between wounded alpha hero, miraculous rescuer, and muscular plot device. Their supposed conflict never develops into convincing friction. They announce attraction, trauma, and eternal devotion at one another, and the ...

Something Wilder by Christina Lauren My rating: 2 of 5 stars “Something Wilder” wants to be a second-chance romance, a treasure-hunt caper, and a desert survival thriller. Lily Wilder stages fake treasure hunts through Utah using the hand-drawn map she has from her father. Leo, her first love, returns with friends, and Lily’s map pulls them towards a real treasure hunt. The route back to the ranch and to each other soon becomes a violent scramble involving guns, knives, death, greed, and a suspiciously reusable set of villains. Attractive premise, poor execution. » An explosion detonated in his blood. « That sentence appears twice, in Chapters Thirteen and Fifteen; Chapter Twenty-One repeats the same blood-and-fire image twice more. The pattern feels less like a developing motif than a shortcut: whenever desire peaks, the prose reaches for combustion instead of letting the characters carry the scene. Romantic-adventure capers need momentum, danger, and protagonists whose choices becom...

The Ex Vows by Jessica Joyce My rating: 3 of 5 stars I did not hate "The Ex Vows", but I found Georgia and Eli so persistently irritating that the novel never became more than a frustrating, middling read. Jessica Joyce still knows how to write atmosphere, banter, and emotional history, and the wedding-disaster setup gives the book enough momentum to stay readable. But the romance itself kept getting in its own way, and after a while I was less invested than exasperated. Georgia is frustrating in a very specific manner. She is so afraid of her own feelings, and so terrified that another attempt at this relationship might fail, that her caution gradually hardens into monotony. I understood where that fear came from, but understanding it did not make it any less irritating to watch her retreat from feeling over and over again. The novel clearly wants that fear to read as emotionally rich, yet for me it mostly read as repetitive. Eli annoyed me even more, because the book insis...

The Fiancée Farce by Alexandria Bellefleur My rating: 4 of 5 stars After the disaster that the latest “Bruno” turned out to be, “The Fiancée Farce” was exactly the palate cleanser I needed: warm, funny, queer, and far more wholehearted than its knowingly ridiculous premise might suggest. On paper, a marriage of convenience is one of the oldest romance contraptions in the book. In practice, Alexandria Bellefleur makes it feel fresh because the romance is built not on trope, but on trust. What charmed me most was not simply that Gemma and Tansy want each other. It was that they begin, almost instinctively, to tell each other the truth. » these days, she was nothing if not brutally honest with herself « That matters. A lot of contemporary romances, including very good ones, still run on people withholding the one thing that would make the relationship real. “The Fiancée Farce” takes the more generous route. Tansy begins from a lie, yes, but the emotional shape of the novel comes from t...

Bred and Butter by Heather Lauren My rating: 1 of 5 stars Bred and Butter is a (thankfully!) short, kinky romance that I wanted to enjoy on its own terms: tight focus, brisk heat, and a sense that the author knows exactly which emotional buttons to press. Instead, I spent most of my time wincing at sentences that seem not merely unpolished, but unproofread, and the story itself never gives me enough character, wit, or tension to compensate. » Who’s laugh makes me smile « That is the problem in miniature: basic grammar slips, and the voice does not feel intentional enough to turn roughness into style. Even the erotic imagery strains for intensity in ways that land oddly chosen rather than charged. » The sight of her painted body withering beneath me is stunning. « Yes, withering. Under him. As if desire were a draught, and her body was a sad little plant being left to crisp at the windowsill. That single word does not heighten anything, it suffocates it. It turns sex into horticultural...

The Co-op by Tarah DeWitt My rating: 3 of 5 stars Tarah DeWitt’s "The Co-op" was a strange reading experience for me. On paper, it should have been effortless: a contentious teenage fling, a decade of distance, then shared ownership of a dilapidated Santa Cruz building that forces LaRynn Lavigne and Deacon Leeds into proximity and co-operation. In practice, it kept oscillating between "this has real spark" and "why is this not doing more with what it has?". I felt compelled to keep going because the book does have moments that are tender, funny, and quietly recognisable. It had its moments, but the gaps were glaring. At its best, it sketches LaRynn with a sharp self-dislike that rings true, and it lets Deacon’s antagonism come edged with understanding. » Even at eighteen, half a step into adulthood, she was permanently on the verge of a fight, nothing and no one around her ever good enough. « The bigger structural issue is how often the story chooses sum...

This Book Made Me Think of You by Libby Page My rating: 3 of 5 stars "This Book Made Me Think of You" has a premise that all but guarantees a soft landing: a grieving woman, a stack of handpicked books, and letters from a husband who knew he would not be there to shepherd her through the first year without him. For the opening stretch, it works. The grief is immediate, the numbness feels recognisable, and the bookshop setting offers a believable kind of shelter. » Crying like that had emptied her out completely. « That is the novel at its best: plainspoken, emotionally attentive, and willing to sit in the messy quiet after a loss. Tilly’s tentative return to reading is also a lovely idea, because it promises something literature can genuinely do - give you language, shape, and temporary room to breathe. The trouble is that the “journey” takes far too long, and not in a luxuriant, character-driven way. It is long as in dilated: set pieces that should have sharpened into tran...

To Sir Phillip, With Love by Julia Quinn My rating: 1 of 5 stars When the “Happily Ever After” Feels Like a Moral Hangover This one was supposed to clear the air. Well, it succeeded in making it smell worse. Every single character, and every major aspect of this novel, left me with an uneasy feeling. Eloise Bridgerton is confused, snobby, garrulous, and somehow deeply ambiguous. She runs away from what exactly? Nobody forces her into marriage but herself. After a year of merely exchanging letters, she decides to marry a stranger and be a good, obedient wife. And yet, she also strains toward what might, at the time, have passed for an “independent spinster”. Phillip, meanwhile, basks in his self-sacrificing suffering-husband and widower roles while being emotionally estranged from his two eight-year-old children. The children are neglected, abused, and basically thoroughly traumatised, which Eloise unconvincingly tries to “love away”. Their mother, Phillip’s late wife, looms over the ...

Deep End by Ali Hazelwood My rating: 4 of 5 stars Ali Hazelwood's " Deep End " had me hooked early: a Stanford platform diver, Scarlett, fighting her way back from an injury, and an Olympic-level swim captain, Lukas, whose devotion to discipline borders on devotional. When an unguarded secret pushes them into an arrangement, Hazelwood lets competence, vulnerability, and desire braid together until the romance feels truly earned. One of the novel’s most important threads is how it treats desire as something to name and negotiate. Lukas’ dominant impulses and Scarlett’s submissive curiosity are explored through explicit communication, boundaries, check-ins, and consent that stays present on the page. Their sexual exploration becomes its own kind of intimacy, a way of learning each other, and of choosing each other. I also greatly enjoyed the tenderness around recovery. Scarlett’s trauma is not a hurdle to clear so the plot can sprint on, it’s something the book sits with...

Two Can Play by Ali Hazelwood My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is a quick, spicy, unapologetically nerdy enemies-to-lovers novella, and it works because it keeps the conflict personal, specific, and relentlessly in the same room. » I am as certain of their love as I am of the binary code. « Two rival game studios get pushed into a forced collaboration, and then into a December “team retreat” at a cabin that feels like corporate captivity with snow outside and tension indoors. The heroine is a designer who cares about characters and story; the hero is all action-adventure polish, and she keeps trying to pretend their history is just professional rivalry, when it plainly isn’t. The best part is the slow re-framing of him: the silence that reads as disdain at first, then as restraint, then as something like carefulness. The chemistry is sharp, the humour doesn’t overstay its welcome, and when the emotional turn happens, it feels earned rather than dumped in at the end. My one actual “note t...

In Her Own League by Liz Tomforde My rating: 2 of 5 stars She’s the new sole owner of a privately financed sports team. He’s the “field manager” of the team, and for reasons that never feel proportionate, they’re antagonistic until they aren’t. After that we get a lot of workplace-propriety handwringing, plus extremely efficient lust. He: She’s my employer. This cannot be! (But she has “ thick ” legs. I’m drooling!) She: He’s my employee. This cannot be! (But I want him in my fortress of solitude. And elsewhere!) Evil advisory board: This cannot be! She’s, gasp, a woman! This is nepotism, and this job needs a man. (And even the one supposed-to-be good guy on the board literally doesn’t lift a finger to help until it’s safe, and even rewarding, to do so.) The advisory board, which the book itself undercuts early on: “ I don’t technically have to run a single decision by anyone else first. ” Yet we are still expected to treat these men as a meaningful obstacle, even when the broader cu...

Not Safe for Work by Nisha J. Tuli My rating: 4 of 5 stars I've been working as an IT consultant/engineer/leader for about 30 years now. During that time I've professionally met hundreds of men - and a handful of women. The men could (and sadly can) get away with almost anything, or receive a mere slap on the wrist. I've also interviewed men and women for jobs: Overwhelmingly, HR ultimately decided to hire a man over a (usually more competent) woman. The one woman I was actually allowed to hire and mentor went on to perform spectacularly in her job and is still thriving. In my field, women, just like Trishara in this novel, have to work more, work harder, and swallow a lot of abuse while doing so. I have yet to meet a woman of colour in such a position. (The one I tried to get hired was rejected by HR, of course…) This is pretty much Trishara’s starting point: Despite being a skilled engineer, she's been passed over for promotions for years and now she is to be the to...

We Do What We Do in the Dark by Michelle Hart My rating: 3 of 5 stars I’m really torn over this one: I liked Mallory, the queer protagonist of this story, and most other characters were also interesting. For me, the major let-down is the story itself: the first part tells us about Mallory’s affair with a professor, only ever referred to melodramatically as “the woman”, from her college and the affair’s circumstances. I found that mostly… boring. As problematic as this affair is due to power differences, conflict of interest, fairness to others, in the end it’s a “normal” affair - one partner (Mallory) silently hoping “the woman” will leave her husband (which she tells Mallory she won’t), the other hoping for non-disclosure and enjoying the hero worship by a younger person. We then shift to Mallory’s childhood and youth during which she discovers she’s queer. This part is relatable but, again, just not all that interesting. Finally, the story moves a few years forward and Mallory and ...

It's Always Been You by Samantha Brinn My rating: 4 of 5 stars Love, Loss, and a bit of a Letdown: Molly’s Story I don’t even remember what put Samantha Brinn on my reading radar. She’s a new-ish romance author who definitely deserves to be much better known. I fell in love with Brinn’s stories, world and, most of all, her fantastic quartet of female protagonists with the second instalment of her “ Laws of You ” series, “ When I'm with You ”, and the third one, “ Anything for You ”, absolutely sealed the deal for me. Thus, I was immensely looking forward to this final instalment, “ It's Always Been You ”, about the fourth major character, Molly “Rory” Jenkins. Molly has been a delight and spectacularly fun to read about in the previous novels so what could be better than an entire book about her? » Molly Jenkins contains multitudes. It’s my favorite part about myself. « Well, turns out that Brinn took a step back into more “traditional” romance: Her long-lost love Gabe i...

Anything for You by Samantha Brinn My rating: 5 of 5 stars Anything for You: A Feminist Utopia Wrapped in Warmth and Wit. I just wish it wasn’t fiction. “ Anything for You ” by Samantha Brinn is the third instalment of the “ Laws of You ” series and continues the story of Hallie, Julie, Molly, and, in this novel, Emma. These four female protagonists are best friends (or “found family” as they regard each other) and share a law practice. They’re all strong, capable, empathetic women in their late twenties or early thirties with distinct personalities and well-established backgrounds. They basically read a little too well to be true but that’s part of my enjoyment of these novels, and we’ll get to that in a moment. Beyond that, they’re part of a group of friends and partners most of whom appear in every novel. While I usually much prefer small cameo appearances, this different approach works brilliantly here: While Brinn’s focus is clearly on the respective protagonists, she effortles...

Before I Let Go by Kennedy Ryan My rating: 3 of 5 stars I wish I could have enjoyed “ Before I Let Go ” by Kennedy Ryan more than I did because there is a lot to like in it: Yasmen and Josiah Wade are divorced after suffering devastating losses and finding out they’re incompatible in their respective grieving. Nevertheless, they run a successful restaurant together and do their best at co-parenting. So far, so good. Told in dual points of view, from both Yasmen’s and Josiah’s perspectives, the novel—very obviously a second chance romance—tells the story of how both grow and, ultimately, find their way back together. In terms of writing, I have absolutely no complaints: Ryan's prose is confident and elegant. Depending on the perspective and context, she succeeds in striking the right tone: sometimes clear and straightforward, sometimes light and playful, sometimes metaphorical and powerful. » That kind of depression is blunter than sadness. Sharper than misery. It is the impenetr...

The Bunk Up by Andie M. Long My rating: 0 of 5 stars Regressive, Reckless, and Ridiculous: Meet the Worst Book I've Ever Read In all honesty, this is the worst book I’ve ever read. It’s so backwards-leaning, demented, idiotic, and irresponsible, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Long and Sidebottom are actually Trump and Musk respectively. Daisy is our female protagonist who has just been cheated on by her boyfriend, been fired from her job, and, encouraged by friends, now wants to take a holiday. To give you a first idea of what Daisy is like, let’s examine her thoughts about that: » My pout returns when I remember she’s right. I have no job to try and take holidays from. I have no boyfriend to seek permission from. « The male protagonist, Frazer, is by no means better. » From what I know, Nigel is a prize ass, anyway, and I’m sure no mother could be proud of a son who wears brown corduroys and a feather fucking earring while he sticks toenail clippings to bits of cardboard ...

Failure to Match by Kyra Parsi My rating: 3 of 5 stars After the police procedural version of a “grimdark” novel , I needed “light” - and quickly! “ Failure to Match ” by Kyra Parsi got the job done. Of course, everything was highly predictable and, yet, I enjoyed reading how Jamie fell in love with Jackson. In the beginning, I was highly sceptical considering character descriptions like these: » Minerva Sinclair was a tall, willowy woman with stark white hair and cutting features, and her signature “look” consisted of cherry-red pantsuits, vintage cat-eye sunglasses, and knife-sharp stilettos. Per our client paperwork, she had her personal tarot reader (Imogen) on speed dial and kept her wrinkly sphynx cat (Harry) cradled against her bony chest everywhere she went, as per the guidance of her spiritual advisor (Velma). « Or eye-roll inducing humour like this: » Also, she’d literally named her hairless cat Harry, and I didn’t think she’d intended the pun. « (Since it’s so bad: It...

Window Shopping by Tessa Bailey My rating: 2 of 5 stars I decided to put in another festive romance reading “sprint” and, regrettably, I settled on Tessa Bailey's “ Window Shopping ”. It endeavours to offer a festive romance wrapped in themes of redemption and self-discovery but, for me, falls short of expectations. While I anticipated a heartwarming holiday tale filled with charm, I instead found a collection of hurried resolutions, clichéd characterisations, and strained dynamics. Stella’s characterisation was one of the main frustrations. She veers wildly between crippling insecurity and unconvincing strength, making her emotional journey feel inconsistent and unrelatable. Her conflict with her parents, which could have provided a rich emotional arc, is resolved almost instantly and without any meaningful dialogue or exploration. This lack of depth extended to Aiden as well. While he’s positioned as the quintessential romantic hero, his internal monologues hint at self-...

In a Holidaze by Christina Lauren My rating: 3 of 5 stars On a mere whim, on 24 December, I decided I wanted to read a holiday romance during the holiday it depicts. Consulting my library, I quickly settled upon “ In a Holidaze ” by Christina Lauren which turned out to be a mixed bag but still effectively did the job. Between holiday chores (when my wife asked me to do something “steamy”, I didn’t expect it to involve the steam cleaner!). Late at night today, I finished it (the novel, not the cleaner). Mission accomplished. “Holidaze” started exactly as I hoped it would: Two families coming together in a cabin to celebrate Christmas, lots of holiday cheer, endearing characters—it was fun! The “Groundhog Day” style time loop device was, thankfully, used sparingly, but this still was the first minor gripe of mine: » I believe now that the universe delivers random acts of kindness, and it’s on us to decide what to do with them. « Attributing intention, kindness, or actually anyth...