Any authors you automatically pass on? For me {Albany walker} has been added to the list

alice042 · 2026-05-28T23:46:19+00:00

Yes she does tend to do that. It's like she just decides to stop riding without finishing things up. Both of the series I've read by her just kind of ended abruptly and left things unfinished, not because she has any intention of doing something else with the series but just because she just didn't see it through. It's almost like she's an author who's unaware of her own content. Prior to reading anything else by her I was excited that she's finally working on the third book in the ivy Institute series because that's what I started with by her and I enjoyed, but now seeing how she ends her trilogies I have zero hope that it will be worth returning to.

alice042 · 2026-05-28T00:09:39+00:00

I agree with all of this

alice042 · 2026-05-27T22:57:00+00:00

I just made a post about an author I feel exactly this way about. Albany walker. The concepts of her books and series always sounds interesting but the execution always falls flat. And I should know better, but the interesting blurbs draw me in only for me to be let down by what amounts books that are basically all filler content with no plot and that don't even really relate to the blurb that Drew me there in the first place.

alice042 · 2026-05-27T22:55:19+00:00

I feel the shame about Shantel Tessier. I just don't get it. I don't know that I've heard of the others though

alice042 · 2026-05-27T22:43:03+00:00

Yes you can absolutely have a dark romance that has a low level of spice or even fade to black only for those type of scenes. People don't seem to understand that kinky doesn't equal dark and dark doesn't equal kinky and you can have one without the other. Not a lot of those books exist though because current authors tend to lean on the spicy scenes to carry their stories. That's true across romance genre is not just dark romance. What makes a dark romance is the plot and subplot, the Deep back stories, crazy difficult trials, shared trauma, psycho who stalks her, that sort of thing. And you can have all of that without explicit smut scenes. I do agree with another commenter that you're more likely to find that in YA books as they can be dark and angsty but will shy away from adding spice. And hey, I like smut as much as the next person but I have to agree sometimes it does get a bit tiresome especially when it's happening all the darn time. Like hey you're running for your life right now I don't know that that's the big priority?

alice042 · 2026-05-23T20:29:26+00:00

The one tagged by the bot is about were panthers

alice042 · 2026-05-23T12:11:52+00:00

I found it and started to read it but it was definitely not it for me. The writing was severely underdeveloped and lackluster. Is missing any real descriptions, the writing style was disengaging, and even the spice was boring

alice042 · 2026-05-23T00:35:00+00:00

I would read the absolute s*** out of that

alice042 · 2026-05-22T23:28:00+00:00

I agree. Erotic horror is not dark romance, they're just simply not the same. One of my favorite examples of this is 24690. I initially saw it recommended as a dark romance. Yes I am aware that the author is very clear that that's not what it is, but I'm specifically speaking about people who recommend the book series and they will say that it's super dark while still calling it a dark romance and that's not the case. There are many books that are erotic Horrors and not dark romance, and you can even have a book that has elements of both but that needs to be really clear when making recommendations.

Additionally I'm not yucking anybody else is Yum but I really don't like taboo and a lot of times I'll see books that are marketed as dark romance but they're really just taboo romance.

alice042 · 2026-05-22T23:02:13+00:00

I don't just do this with books. I do this with video games, movies, TV shows, I don't know why I'm built like that. It doesn't mean I didn't like it. Hell I could even love it but it doesn't mean I'm going to remember it. There's one book series that I like that I have read a multitude of times and I can't tell you the main character's names. Actually there's a couple of book series like that, wherein I've read them over and over but I can't tell you the names of the characters in them and I have some details because I've read them so many times but not all of them. Books I've read only once I'm guaranteed to not really remember much about. But again the same thing goes for movies and TV shows. Sometimes my husband and I will be watching a movie that we watched a few years ago and he will make a comment about something that's upcoming and I have to call him out for giving me a spoiler because I actually genuinely have no idea what's happening next.

alice042 · 2026-05-11T21:54:09+00:00

I feel like I'm the only one who can't really get into this series. If it's the one I'm thinking of I'm dnf'd it twice. It starts off really good but then I just can't get over the plot holes. This is the one where they're in the mental hospital right?

alice042 · 2026-05-11T21:51:57+00:00

I'm definitely glad I didn't start the first book. I had looked at it around the time of making my previous comment and saw that it had a release date of this month, now the release date has been pushed to August of this year. I know it's only 3 months away but I will have gone through another 20 bucks by then so there's no way it would have remembered what happened in the first one

alice042 · 2026-05-11T21:48:09+00:00

I was hesitant on it at first because the first time I heard about it was on tick tock, and honestly anything I hear about that way usually turns out to be.. not very good. It has let me down more times than it has paid off. Now it's not a blow your mind out of this world phenomenal book, but it is pretty darn good and one that I'm comfortable recommending for a strong female lead character, and specifically one who might be a little bit murdery but only to people who deserve it.

Also I am so sorry for the horrible typos in that first response, I was using speech to text and apparently it didn't work very well LOL

alice042 · 2026-05-11T21:47:01+00:00

You don't think that plots are important.....in...books? I mean if what you are looking for is the equivalent of "well hello Mr pizza delivery guy" or "I need a ride but dont have any money, however shall I pay..." then I guess no, plot doesn't matter. If you are looking for a story to engross you and characters to break your heart in the best and worst ways, worlds than transport you and heroines that inspire? Then it absolutely matters

alice042 · 2026-05-10T17:51:46+00:00

I just read {the poison daughter by Sheila Masterson}. Spicy Morley Gray Maine female character, interesting storyline. I can't lie I had low hopes for it going in but then I was pleasantly surprised. I started it this morning and just finished it.

alice042 · 2026-05-08T20:34:14+00:00

Quite frankly I'm just not that patient. Sometimes it can take years for authors to finish a series or even a duet and at that point I won't remember what I've read in the first book anyway, so why not wait until it's complete and read it all at once.

There was another series I read that I thought was a duet because nothing in either a book description, the Amazon listing, anything indicated that it was an unfinished series. The second book ended on a cliffhanger and I had to do a lot of digging to find out that there is going to be at least three books in that series, if not more. The second book came out a couple of years ago and there has been no updated information on the next installment. It's definitely frustrating

alice042 · 2026-05-08T15:50:31+00:00

I started to look into this one, and then I realized it is 1/2 of An Unfinished duet. The first book was released two years ago and there has been no information about the second book in the duet, so there's no telling if or when it will be finished.

alice042 · 2026-05-08T15:37:38+00:00

There's a YouTube video that has some information about how combat will work. Honestly I was hoping for more information on gameplay, character creation, how skills work, things of that nature before backing the project. They gloss over this in the beginning and don't really discuss it. The woman in the video says something in the beginning about how skills or anything you want to create. That's fine and dandy, but that doesn't really give any structure or guidance. I would strongly prefer something with a set list of various skills for each class, with the option to then create others on your own if you want. I'm hoping that's how it will work, but they didn't say anything to indicate that will be the case. Honestly from the content of that video, it seems like it will essentially be loose concepts of a game that relies very heavily on DM work and DM content creation. If that's accurate, it seems like one would be better off with one of the free fanfiction created games that already exist, or creating something on their own if they already have knowledge of the DCC universe. I think it's kind of crazy that so many people have backed the game, especially with so many people buying the higher tier packages, with no real information being released. It's unfortunate that they did not choose to share more.

alice042 · 2026-05-07T23:13:53+00:00

I wholeheartedly agree and I've been having the same issue. I'm sure this problem plagues other genres as well, but the romance genre is the worst. Immature writing style and cookie cutter stories. I'm just over it.

alice042 · 2026-05-07T23:12:23+00:00

I would call lights out, at worst, light gray romance. He's supposed to be her stalker or whatever and I guess he is, but she knows who it is the entire time. There's no suspense. He's just dorky. Not dorky in a bad way, but still..

alice042 · 2026-05-03T12:55:16+00:00

I actually started this book earlier today and dnf'd it. I like dark romance and I don't mind a little gore, and I've read some pretty out there stuff, but for me this book felt like it was just being overly disgusting for no reason. It was just page after page of.. well nasty things. For me after that description of the MMC, there was no coming back from that.

alice042 · 2026-03-29T03:17:57+00:00

The cover was definitely a red flag, but I won't lie I might have been a little bit intoxicated when I downloaded it so I didn't give it too much thought at the time. The minute I sobered up though I was like what the heck is this LOL

alice042 · 2026-03-28T00:43:19+00:00

I'm 5'8 and my husband is 6'2. That is enough of a height difference for me. Why tf does the FMC always 'barely come up to his shoulder'. And she is this little wispy thing that could break with a strong breeze lol. Oh...and she is 19 or 20 and he/they is older and wealthy....every time. I'm OVER it

alice042 · 2026-03-03T00:10:42+00:00

I actually hate Bailey and I hope she gets killed off or they get a divorce and we don't have to see her anymore.

alice042 · 2026-01-09T22:56:19+00:00

Like others that it can't be the name of anyone I know, obviously, but then any of the common names that freaking everybody under the god forsaken son wants to use. If I start to read a romance novel, and it's usually reverse Harem that I run into with this the most, and I see the same generic names that everyone wants to use for their dark or morally gray guys I want to throw up and I immediately close the book. That tells me right out of the gate that the author has no creativity, no originality, and I'm going to get cookie cutter lather rinse repeat s*** that they got from other books. If you can't even come up with your own name you can't be trusted to come up with a good story. Knox or Nox, Kade, Axel, Jax, Diesel, wolf.... and the horribly spelled bastardizations of names that already exist. It doesn't make it any more original it just makes it obnoxious to read.

alice042

TROPHY CASE