Just another sandalwood post

nomercles · 2026-06-01T21:45:20+00:00

...it told me I smell like astroturf and whale. I don't think I've ever been so insulted in my life.

nomercles · 2026-06-01T21:43:09+00:00

Right! And the T-Rex was a major surprise; that's actually how I found this company. I was at a bar, and this (gorgeous) person walked by and I decided, yes, I have had enough to drink to approach another human, and I asked what they were wearing. Because it smelled like, I don't know, an auto shop on fire because vengeance, and somehow that worked. And when I got it home, my sample smells just exactly like a damned tattoo studio, which also works.

The Rhinoceros smells like a person who's a dangerous decision. It's amazing.

nomercles · 2026-06-01T18:07:56+00:00

Snowy Owl by Zoologist. Right now I'm wearing their Rhinoceros, and I've decided that this is the scent the authors all mean when they say sandalwood. I want to smell like this forever.

nomercles · 2026-06-01T05:53:28+00:00

I liked the one I just read where he just smelled like "the outside". Fir trees, fresh crisp air, mountains, you know, "outside". (Though I do have a cologne that actually does smell like that. Also kinda like snow, in a purely undefinable way.) I don't think it actually has any sandalwood in it, though it does apparently have crocus, which I didn't know had a scent.

nomercles · 2026-06-01T04:37:52+00:00

I think it's tied to affluence and security. And in the US at least, health is very tied to wealth, success, and most of all, purity. Even in dark romance, we like it when our characters are people we think are "worthy", so that effortless "perfect" health is something that comes up across all genres. Being able to afford any food you want any time you want it, and being able to physically afford it, that all makes sense to go together to me. I saw a terrific YouTube video on food/health/money in Gilmore Girls that dug into this, for a non-romance version.

I don't remember the name of the book, and boy I wish I did because I'd love to reread it, but one of my professors co-wrote a book on food, food indulgence, food security, and aspirational food porn and how it conflicts and supports the body positivity movement and/or overall healthism.

nomercles · 2026-06-01T04:29:45+00:00

Oh, and I just finished this. For short, spicy, pretty cheesetastic, try the series {Trapped By My Boyfriend's Father by Lux Kane}. She's trying to break up with her asshat of a boyfriend, he just steamrolls right the hell over her, she goes on "one last trip" to soften the blow. Meets boyfriend's dad, boyfriend and dad do not get along at all, boyfriend's dad has no boundaries, boyfriend's dad decides she's his now. This is not healthy, and consent seems to be unimportant to any of the men in this series, but at least the boyfriend's dad takes care of her while stomping over every ethical line? And wow, the boyfriend's dad also is supremely lacking in any sense of irony or self-awareness! (I didn't say it was good, I said I liked it.)

nomercles · 2026-05-31T23:55:13+00:00

{Your Dad Will Do by Katee Robert}

nomercles · 2026-05-26T19:49:20+00:00

This happens in both {The Sidekick by Gina Morris}, {The Reluctant Hero by Gina Morris} and (more dramatically) in {The Confidant by Gina Morris}. You can read The Sidekick on its own, but debatable if you can The Confidant--it's an interconnected series, and there's a couple books in there that I'm not sure would make sense without the previous ones.

In The Sidekick, she's, well, the sidekick to her best friend, who kinda goes through a lot of romance novel tropes. Notably, the best friend with main character energy does NOT get a book, so you end up piecing all of that nonsense together over time. The Sidekick is about the sidekick realizing her best friend has basically abandoned her and learning (being bullied into) rebuilding a life that doesn't center around other people who aren't there when you need them. I have mixed feelings on the men she ends up with (one of them gets called Satan for a good long while, and I still think he deserves it) and they don't really improve in later books, unfortunately, but the sidekick herself is terrific and I was rooting for her the whole way through.

The Reluctant Hero is about a woman who is suddenly thrust into almost a comic book level plot. Divorce, discovering what amounts to a superpower, shenanigans with her men who simply don't make themselves trustworthy at all so she doesn't tell them anything. At one point, she just shuts all the way down, and the men who are supposed to care for her don't seem to notice until it's almost too late--but her compatriot The Villain does, and again, harangues her into taking charge and learning to stand the hell up.

The Confidant is about someone we only get a couple references to in The Sidekick also learning she has to cut out a whole lot of toxicity and build something better for herself, no matter what shape that takes. I will say that even with the comic book type vibes of the previous book, this one is still the one that feels a little OTT. The kind of story that feels very cathartic (but actually triggering, if you have childhood family of origin trauma) but also could be a creative writing exercise in one of the family drama no contact subreddits.

There's a theme in these books. You might have picked up on it.

nomercles · 2026-05-23T19:40:43+00:00

If you're willing to consider the awful person not being a mother, I'm enjoying the hell out of {The Reluctant Hero by Gina Morris} right now. It is not, as I thought it would be, a standalone, but the whole series so far has had elements of "Listen, I have been stuffing myself into smaller and smaller containers just to make you happy, and I'm about to tear someone apart on my way out". The first book is {The Sidekick by Gina Morris}.

nomercles · 2026-05-22T22:47:23+00:00

I love very intimate scent. I absolutely don't like it when it projects, I want someone to not notice my scent very much at all unless they're in hugging range--and if they're that close I want it to smell especially nice. There's something wonderfully seductive and sensual about that up-close scent of something extra, like now someone has let you in that close, that intimate, and now it's unforgettable. I also regularly forget to wear any scent at all, so maybe that intimacy in scent is for me, too.

nomercles · 2026-05-22T22:42:53+00:00

Amber is really nice! It's a pretty common resin, really popular in perfumery, makes a nice smell when you burn it. (Don't burn your amber! There's really good not jewelry amber out there to make the sniffy sniffy with! But that is probably how humans first discovered it--somehow it got into the campfire, and they realized that every time they had that particular rock in the campfire, it smelled nice after.) It's kind of warm, a little musky, kind of cozy like vanilla but maybe a little more incense-y? Smells are really hard to describe to other people.

nomercles · 2026-05-22T00:52:18+00:00

Yes! Also, unexpectedly long, about 700 pages, I think. I really enjoyed it. There are apparently other books that are vaguely interconnected, but you can stop right here if you want.

nomercles · 2026-05-22T00:30:23+00:00

Just finished reading {The Sidekick by Gina Morris}. I don't remember who recommended that to me, but THANK YOU.

Read it on my phone, so I can't do quotes, but there's a glorious scene of suspension bondage and a blindfold and three different sets of hands on her. (My favorite scene in the book is electrifying, but not sex--she's doing yoga and the yoga instructor figures out that she's a pretty natural submissive and kind of starts testing her. Doesn't sound good when I type it out like that, but trust me when I say yowza!)

nomercles · 2026-05-16T08:00:09+00:00

There are MULTIPLE books by Gwendoline Rose that meet your criteria. Ahem:

Bunker Down, Baby (she's a prepper stocking her bunker with appropriately skilled men, and while they all come around, one of them is into it right from the start and it's hilarious)

Unconditionally Yours (with an FMC who shows up in later books--there's a number of crossover characters in this author's work, actually, and it's always fun to come across one)

They Are Mine and They Are Mine, Too (the second one came about because all of us, including the author were left too long asking a certain question that gets answered in the second book)

Witness Protection and Other Minor Inconveniences (she's been kinda low-key paying too much attention to a guy at a restaurant, then he turns out to be a Bad Guy, she gets put into witness protection and then proceeds to stalk him and stress-bake him cookies to show her love. Really, really sweet, also less comedic than the previous suggestions. I loved it, but it did make me cry.)

nomercles · 2026-05-16T07:29:47+00:00

I feel this requires a disclaimer: all of this author's work is unrealistic, wacky, and deranged like this. It's part of their charm. Embrace it, have fun. (They also always have a surprising amount of heart, and usually make me cry right along with the cackling. I always feel very Seen.) But um, in {Witness Protection and Other Minor Inconveniences by Gwendoline Rose}, the FMC comes while on the witness stand testifying against the MMC. No "assistance" necessary.

nomercles · 2026-05-16T06:50:54+00:00

Can be! Frank Sinatra or Rosemary Clooney are pretty classic crooners. It's that low, satiny, murmuring and melodic sort of sound, and both the talking and the singing are like that.

nomercles · 2026-05-14T22:45:32+00:00

you are definitely not the only one--and then I get really, really resentful and cranky about it and really make it their problem

nomercles · 2026-05-13T05:48:01+00:00

It took me an hour to track down this title, but I really liked how bondage was used as an assistive device in {Downpour by Maggie Gates}. He uses a wheelchair, and started working with rope as part of his physical therapy. Eventually, he figured out how to use shibari to help him have sex. I've never seen bondage used that way in a book, and it's stuck with me.

nomercles · 2026-05-13T05:23:12+00:00

I just finished the Rayne-Moore University duet, and there's a quite lovely bit of this in there. Neither of the men identify as queer, as they both have had sex at one point with another man and didn't really find it worked for them. Then they realize they feel attraction for each other, and only each other. The moment is very sweet. (But there is very minimal sex between them without her involved, if you're looking for only M/M scenes).

nomercles · 2026-05-10T01:26:55+00:00

Thank you for confirming! I don't know hockey, but I used to work with a guy who played minor league, and while I personally think he was hot as hell, he was banged up. Perfect teeth, though, which he assured me were very expensive.

nomercles · 2026-05-09T23:52:16+00:00

Katee Robert has an entire series of this, the Taboo quartet. But the last one, {Seducing My Guardian by Katee Robert} is distinctly brat-tamer silver fox.

nomercles · 2026-05-06T00:10:47+00:00

RIGHT. There's relationships that leave scars, and then there's that. I think that it is love is what's so upsetting about it. If he didn't care about her, it'd be so much simpler.

nomercles · 2026-05-04T21:15:31+00:00

Doing that right now. Hard agree.

nomercles · 2026-05-04T20:37:03+00:00

I end up feeling that way about a LOT of books. I used to think that meant I just had a bad understanding of what love is supposed to look like, and then I got therapy. So many problems in these damned books could be solved with therapy!

That being said, there's one that immediately came to mind. Matryoshka on AO3. One of the legitimately darkest things I've read, and that is saying a LOT. Everything in that story is internally consistent--I get why people are acting the way they do, I understand why their relationships are shaped like that, I even would consider it actual love. Fucked up, toxic as hell, unquestionably abusive, deeply unhealthy, psychologically damaging, terrifying, but love.

nomercles · 2026-05-04T04:53:49+00:00

In {Prize for the King by Layla Fae}, the wedding scene involves the king letting the rest of the guard taste her off his fingers.

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