#tbrchallenge

4.5 stars

*This is a #TBRChallenge review, there will be spoilers, I don't spoil everything but enough, because I treat these reviews as a bookclub discussion.

“Who is he?” I asked Zhou Dan as we moved to where he’d left the carriage. “No one you should associate with,” he replied abruptly. I took one final glance back over my shoulder at Gao. He stood still and tall in the middle of the street, watching me. It wasn’t long before his tall figure faded into the darkness.

This month's TBRChallenge theme was “Previously, in romance” and I knew immediately this was my chance to return to The Pingkang Li Mysteries series. Remember when I lost my mind reading The Lotus Palace in 2022 for a TBRChallenge theme? I've been itching for the chance to read the rich girl and the boy from the wrong side of the tracks next in the series romance. I'm also a very, very behind book blogger and only remembered the third Wednesday of the month was today around 9pm last night, so while I knew I couldn't finish The Hidden Moon, I knew I could the novella prequel to it, The Liar's Dice.

I shouldn’t have wanted for anything, yet I wanted. I stared down at my hands and how soft and empty they were. I didn’t even know what I wanted.

If you haven't read the previous two books in the series, Wei-wei is the rich sheltered sister of Huang (book 1) and Gao is the street kid who kind of works with/for Huang but also stabbed him once. When I found out these two were going to be paired up, I lost my mind, lol. This prequel would work to jump into the series here, as you get to know Wei-wei and Gao, previously secondary characters we got glimpses of. This novella delivered a mini murder mystery and a tantalizing look at the beginning of their romance.

“Your brother pays me whenever he needs things done, Lady Bai. We are not friends.”

Wei-wei is twenty-five and realizes she's a sheltered rich girl and is starting to itch against some of her restraints, while also realizing that she doesn't want to move out of her parent's home. She's created a niche where she helped her older brother Huang and now her younger brother study for the Imperial exams. This takes place in the Tang Dynasty China, so there was a wealth of new historical elements that will have you wanting to go down rabbit holes on. She has purpose but is starting to realize it feels for other people and not herself but she also has some freedom, she can get one of their servants, Zhou Dan, to keep secrets for her and her parents kind of let her do her thing.

“You want me to stay away,” I said. “I want you to stay away.”

Wei-wei doesn't want to marry and lose what she has at her home but her favorite tale, The Butterfly Lovers about Zhu and Liang, has her wondering if she could also dress like a male and experience life outside her home walls. She tests these limits one night by getting Zhou Dan to take her to Mingyu's (book 2) tea house and while she enjoys the conversation she gets to overhear, if not yet participate in, she also gets lost when trying to find Zhou Dan. In the alleyways she meets Gao and comes upon a murder victim. From here, we get a murder mystery that twists and weaves, involving Huang and gives Wei-wei opportunity to be in Gao's presence.

I reached out to him, just my hand against his chest for no reason other than that I wanted to. Just so he’d know, and so I’d know, but this time it was Gao who moved away.

This was all told from Wei-wei's pov but we get enough from her observations of Gao to know his feelings and how hard he's trying to repress them. Y'all, from the first time they meet and he puts his hand on the small of her back (screeching!) I was losing it for this couple. It's obvious Gao likes her, finds her actions and thoughts interesting and frustrating when they put her in danger and some of that she's the sun warming him and Wei-wei finds him intriguing in that he's supposed to be dangerous but why do I feel safe with him and why does he bring out a side of myself that I try to quiet. In case you didn't know, I'm goo for this kind of dynamic. They have a kiss but Wei-wei is too thrown by it to really react and Gao's insecurity has him thinking Wei-wei is probably doing a version of slumming.

When I was around him, I could be fearless too.

The murder mystery has Wei-wei land in danger and Huang and Gao have to come in to rescue. We do get a wrap-up to the who and why of the mystery, which was honestly pretty strong for a novella, but the romance is left drifted off for it to continue in the next book. Wei-wei and Gao both had a quiet intensity to them but also a sweet playfulness that I'm dying to read in their full story. If anyone wants to buddy read The Hidden Moon in March, let me know! This was a perfect appetizer novella and great if you wanted to jump into the series here (but don't, the first two books are so good!)

A simple message, one without words that held all the promise in the world. It had been folded into the shape of a butterfly (Gao knows Wei-wei's favorite tale is the Butterfly Lovers!!! He's sending her a message he hasn't forgotten about her, at the end of this.)

3.5 stars

*This is a #TBRChallenge review, there will be spoilers, I don't spoil everything but enough, because I treat these reviews as a bookclub discussion.

“Do you want me to put my hat back on?” He was joking, but she didn’t care. “Yes.” He chuckled a bit, then grabbed his cowboy hat off the hook near his bedroom door. He slipped it on his head, then climbed in the bed.

Starting the year off with a late #TBRChallenge, how sooo unlike me. January's theme was New Year, Who Dis?, which I took to mean a new to me author. I've had this author on my tbr for a couple years now and when I was going through my books on my Kindle, well, the cover caught my eye you could say.

This is an amnesia story, which on paper, I'm burnt out on but there was an interesting angle that drew me in as I got into the story (and no, it wasn't All due to the cowboy hat, lol). We start off with our female main character at an event where we learn Evie is a chef who won some reality tv competitions and is now co-hosting her own show, she's essentially made it. We get some clues that she's a bit tired, over worked, and is actually playing the game to save enough money to open her own restaurant. Things come to a crashing halt when someone she beat out on a competition show, ends up pushing her down a flight a stairs. Evie survives but has amnesia, she can't remember anything about herself.

With some secondary character bestfriends and inner circle, Evie's emergency contact is called, a Jesse Pleasant, a rancher from Southern California. Readers have a little knowledge that Evie grew-up on this ranch with the Pleasant brothers when her grandmother had to take her when her parents died when she was a kid. Jesse is the oldest, Sam the youngest, and the one who keeps appearing in her spotty dreams, Zach. With povs from mainly Evie and Zach, but also some of the secondary characters, we get a well rounded look at how Evie had a crush on Zach and they fooled around as teenagers only to have a crushing break-up ten years ago and the two haven't talked since.

With Evie's celebrity but memory loss, everyone thinks it's best to kind of hide Evie until she can recover, there's also some side worrying about how she ended up at the bottom of the stairs. Evie ends up leaving New York and going to stay at the Pleasant's ranch in SoCal. The interesting angle I talked about is how Evie and Zach are still essentially in a fight but Evie has no clue about it, so this leads to a different take on how they're going to work it out. Zach is pretty honest up front and tells her about it, he gives an apology and with Evie's memory loss, she's able to hear it, if not fully internalize it, because she's missing the blocking wall of pain and anger. Their forced proximity at the ranch has them spending time together with Evie physically attracted to Zach and having the lingering residue of emotionally having once been attached to him, some of her dreams work as mini flashbacks to moments they had growing up.

Zach's family is very cautious about him and Evie being together but Zach see's this as his second chance and Evie is growing to like him, so they get together, with the looming, is Evie going to get her memory back and then be mad all over again. It takes until around the 80% mark for her to eventually remember all but by then, she and Zach have bonded again, so most of the work has been done, with a brief moment of Evie having to work through that past anger but equipped with Zach's apology. Zach does apologize again, when it's more meaningful for Evie and readers get more of how they were early twenties and Evie's grandmother was in Zach's ear about not holding her back career wise. It's all easy and understandable why they disconnected but also why it's now easy for them to fall into this second chance.

I liked how the amnesia angle worked to deliver a different spin on a second chance forgiveness, I liked all the secondary characters who delivered (Miss Leona novella or supplement or something, give me more about this woman's life!) and have me anticipating their own books, I loved the cowboy hats, I did want more of the ranch but I have a feeling older brother Jesse may deliver that for me, I wanted a little more time spent together and developing Evie and Zach's new romance, I loved all the doggies running around, and I greatly enjoyed the friends and family relationship dynamics.

*This is a #TBRChallenge review, there will be spoilers, I don't spoil everything but enough, because I treat these reviews as a bookclub discussion.

WANTED—A HUSBAND. Need Healthy man of any age willing to work spread and share the place. See E. Dinsmore, top of Rock Creek Road

April's TBRChallenge theme was No Place Like Home, so I chose Morning Glory, a book on my tbr for decades. A drifter who's never had a home but works hard to make one with a widow, sounded like a perfect fit to the theme. The first half of this, I raced through. There's a prologue of a young mother bringing her baby home and her parents locking her up in the house because they're ashamed of her “sin”, it's 1917 and unwed mother's are not looked upon kindly. The story then quickly jumps to 1941 and to a drifter named Will about to be fired from a sawmill because it's found out that he served five years in prison for murdering a woman. I had to pause to imagine one of those graphics with arrows pointing at the book listing tropes, “Murderer!” “Shut-in recluse!”.

Will Parker's eyes were drawn to her stomach as she rested a hand on it. He thought about how maybe there was more than one kind of prison.

Will starving and having no money, decides that he will check out the widower at the edge town “Crazy Elly” and her newspaper ad asking for a husband. When I tell you, the pain of these two, gah. Will's constantly thinking, please let me stay, knowing he looks like a half-starved vagabond, who Elly knows, because he told her, that he served jail time for killing a woman but drawn to something warm in Elly's aura. The house and property are run down but Elly and her two small boys seem happy and for someone who was abandoned as a baby and on his own his whole life, Will can't help but want to be welcomed into that magic, even if Elly is pregnant with a third child. Elly for her part knows she needs help and is constantly thinking, please stay, even though she knows she's not pretty, has children and pregnant, run down farm, and is called “Crazy Elly” because of her past. They're both yearning for what the other can give and I honestly felt like a voyeur reading their relationship this first half as they slowly grew to trust one another.

She was a good mother, a fine woman who'd been locked in a house and called crazy, and if he didn't tell her she wasn't, who would?

The first half also gives a pov from a woman in town called Lula, who is said to run “hot” and wants Will but he rebuffs her because he knows those kind of women can lead to trouble because of his past. Readers do learn about the murder he went to jail for and it's, probably of course, nothing that makes him nonredeemable. Lula is that classic “other woman” villain that makes you uncomfortable reading because she's backed by a whole lot of slut-shaming, but it's, pretty obvious, why she's included and while she disappears for the majority of the middle of the story, her set-up comes into play for the last half. There's also a Miss Beasley, librarian, that was a great character (Mentally, I've given her a novella HEA with the lawyer) but, geez, yeah for women with facial hair being talked about but did the hair on her upper lip have to be mentioned, SO MANY times? Like, damn, give the gal a break. Anyway, by midpoint, Will and Elly have decided to marry and they have grown to the I love yous. I can say, even if it didn't feel over-the-top passionate (which can be considered better by some romance readers) I did believe they loved each other. Elly growing up locked up in her home, constantly being told she's a sin, until the law forced her grandparents (side question: I thought it was going to be directly said but am I the only one who thought her grandfather raped her mother and that was what was with the “drawn shades” business?) to let her go to school, but she was considered “crazy” because of her lack of socialization, and only getting befriended by her first husband (he died a'la Bridgerton, bee stings) had never really had a man care for her the way Will did, or turn her on. Will was never cared for either and had no one to care for, so when they meet, it's a pretty simple scenario of two people deserving love and finding the person that connects with them to give it. It felt real their feelings and why I said it gave a voyeuristic feeling for me.

She smiled into the bluebird's painted eye, her own shining with delight. "A bluebird...imagine that." She pressed it to her heart and beamed at Will. "How did you know I like birds?" He knew. He knew.

The second half is where things really slowed down for me. Pearl Harbor gets bombed and Will gets drafted. There's a couple chapters of letter writing between Will, Elly, and Miss Beasley and then a really great scene where Elly has to rush to see Will before he gets shipped to the Pacific. She's had the baby by now (the birth scene was something else with Will playing doctor) and while they managed to have sex once before he left for boot camp, these two are ramped up. I love how the author described their attraction, from how Will was sitting in the chair and Elly eyeing him up and Elly breastfeeding with Will seeing her exposed boob, could definitely feel the tension in the air. Will gets injured and he's eventually sent home after being medically discharged because of shrapnel in his leg. The townspeople view him differently and he gets the respect he's craved but he's also suffering from PTSD and that delivers some strain between him and Elly until he eventually opens up to her. We're at around 80% when Lula comes back into the picture and Will's suddenly arrested for her murder. The ending was the court case and Elly trying to help prove him innocent until the last 5% gives us the HEA.

He wanted to take her close, cradle her head and rub her shoulder and say. "Tell me...tell me what it is that hurts so bad, then we'll work at getting you over it."

The first half, a slower moving but pulling you in with these two and their hurts and pains, learning to come together but the second half was a slower moving left me kind of disinterested ending. I read this in almost one shot and kind of glad I did, because even though slower moving usually calls for savoring, pacing out, I feel like this would be one that would be hard to pick up again, so my two cents of advice. These two will linger with me because of how real they felt but I'm not sure I could recommended, maybe just the first half and that meet-up in Augusta. Hope springs eternal for a Donald Wade, Thomas, and Lizzy P. spin-off series! (Elly's kids) Guess what I'm watching tonight? (Hint: check out what's on Tubi)