Better Than the Movies by Lynn Painter
I was a year late to reading this book but it was one of my favourites of 2022. It’s still a go to recommendation when someone wants a clean romance book. Liz and Wes quickly became one of my favourite romance book couples – he used to sit on her porch so he could listen to her playing piano. My love for Wes is alive to this day, Liz not so much. I loved her in book one but she became very cold in book two, which I really didn’t enjoy.
Anyway, this post is about book one and how much of a great debut it is. You have your classic “She isn’t you” line, which let’s be honest, hits every time. There’s also a little bit of fake dating and Wes is a guy you can’t help but love. Speaking of love, he’s hopelessly in love with Liz (which makes book two hurt even more) “She’s pretty, but her face doesn’t transform into sunlight when she talks about music.” He did that clench thing with his jaw and said, “She’s funny, but not spit-out-your-drink-in-astonishment funny.” It felt like my heart was going to explode as his eyes moved down to my lips under the glow of the buzzing streetlight. He moved his face a little closer to mine, looked into my eyes, and rumbled, “And when I see her, I don’t feel like I have to talk to her or mess up her hair or do something—anything—to get her to swing that gaze on me.”
Better Than the Movies is so good that it was one of my last reads of 2022 and it made it into my top books of the year. If I didn’t have so many books on my to be read right now, this would for definite be one I’d want to pick up again.
Synopsis: Perpetual daydreamer Liz Buxbaum gave her heart to Michael a long time ago. But her cool, aloof forever crush never really saw her before he moved away. Now that he’s back in town, Liz will do whatever it takes to get on his radar – and maybe snag him as a prom date – even befriend Wes Bennet.
The annoyingly attractive next-door neighbor might seem like a prime candidate for romantic-comedy fantasies, but Wes has only been a pain in Liz’s butt since they were kids. Pranks involving frogs and decapitated lawn gnomes do not a potential boyfriend make. Yet, somehow, Wes and Michael are hitting it off, which means Wes is Liz’s in.
But as Liz and Wes scheme to get Liz noticed by Michael so she can have her magical prom moment, she’s shocked to discover that she likes being around Wes. And as they continue to grow closer, she must reexamine everything she thought she knew about love – and rethink her own ideas of what happily ever after should look like.
An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson
This is one of those books that I put off reading for the longest time and by the end I was questioning why. This is an excellent debut novel, not blow-your-mind amazing, but it’s an entertaining read that has great worldbuilding.
If there’s one thing Margaret Rogerson is great at, it’s writing a man that yearns, “Isobel, I love you wholly. I love you eternally. I love you so dearly it frightens me. I fear I could not live without you. I could see your face every morning upon waking for a thousand years and still look forward to the next as though it were the first.”. I don’t like Rook as much as Nathaniel (Sorcery of Thorns) but there are some really lovely moments. It’s very insta-lovey though, so if that’s not your thing, I’d probably give this a miss.
However, if you like ruthless fae, this is definitely for you. This book has such a unique concept of the fae – they can’t perform tasks like cooking or painting as it will cause them to wither and die. Giving An Enchantment of Ravens an interesting spin on your classic fae tales as they are instead in awe of humans.
Synopsis: Every enchantment has a price.
With a flick of her paintbrush, Isobel creates stunning portraits for a dangerous set of clients: the fair folk. These immortal creatures cannot bake bread or put a pen to paper without crumbling to dust. They crave human Craft with a terrible thirst, and they trade valuable enchantments for Isobel’s paintings. But when she receives her first royal patron—Rook, the autumn prince—Isobel makes a deadly mistake. She paints mortal sorrow in his eyes, a weakness that could cost him his throne, and even his life.
Furious, Rook spirits Isobel away to his kingdom to stand trial for her crime. But something is seriously amiss in his world, and they are attacked from every side. With Isobel and Rook depending upon each other for survival, their alliance blossoms into trust, perhaps even love . . . a forbidden emotion that would violate the fair folks’ ruthless laws, rendering both their lives forfeit. What force could Isobel’s paintings conjure that is powerful enough to defy the ancient malice of the fairy courts?
Isobel and Rook journey along a knife-edge in a lush world where beauty masks corruption and the cost of survival might be more frightening than death itself.
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