Royal Kendrick is a wounded hero who has pined after Lady Ainsley Matthews and has erred in the past when trying to show his affection for her. Ainsley has been sent to Scotland as punishment for refusing a suitor, so Royal decides to visit her. What he doesn't expect is to find her days away from giving birth! Ainsley is in an untenable position, but she may just have found her hero.

When I pick up book one in a romance series, I expect it to be a clean slate. This wasn't. I didn't realise that a good chunk of the book would be focused on events that occurred in a previous novel in a different series. That really threw me. Once things got going, however, it was an enjoyable read that had me on tenterhooks, wondering when the villain would appear. I also appreciated that this novel dealt with the aftermath of sexual assault, something most historical romances avoid.

But I just couldn't get over how annoyed I was by discovering that this book was not the starting point I thought it was.

Georgiana Bridgerton's reputation is in tatters after she was kidnapped by suitor with a rather large debt. It falls to Nicholas Rokesby to rescue her - in the form of a marriage proposal, something he's rather reluctant to do. Georgie doesn't want him to pity her. But she doesn't have a choice. After years of being cordial friends, will they be able to see each other with new eyes?

I had a lot of fun reading this. Pretty much any scene that involved Cat-Head had me giggling in a most undignified fashion. And Freddie Oakes falling out of the tree - I just about cackled. I adored Georgie and Nicholas together, especially since they got to both experience intimacy for the first time - you just don't see that enough in historical romance novels. I also found the medical stuff quite interesting. And who wouldn't be delighted with those brief appearances by the young Bridgerton boys?

​Polly does casual. She doesn't do love and commitment, but she is very good at shepherding her friends in that direction. So when a steamy one-night stand turns out to be her new colleague, things are definitely NOT going to get messy...right?

Whew, the heat level in this one - Solo is a tall drink of water, that's for sure. Family can be a tricky thing and Stone navigated that quite well. I didn't enjoy this as much as the first book, maybe because I felt that Polly was a touch too nasty towards the end there (even if she does have issues). But Solo...well, I just loved him. He can ride back to Sydney whenever he wants.

One thing that rubbed me the wrong way... lately I've seen a worrying trend in contemporary romance novels where an asexual (or asexuality) is conflated with being boring/dull. An ace character in a subplot here is presented as "boring". Can we stop doing this please?

Murderbot is a SecUnit provided by the Company to a group of scientists who are about to discover that they should be worried about more than just the native wildlife. Murderbot would rather indulge in TV shows than actually do the job, but these are its humans (even if they are weird) and this is a situation that calls for a bot with murder in its past.

I had an inkling I would love this. I just didn't realise how much! There are some stories you think "oh, this really should have been a short story or a novel instead", but this one fits the novella length perfectly. Murderbot is ridiculously relatable and you can't help but love this secondhand unit, dark past and all. I could go on and on about this novella, but I think it's best if I buy the rest and go on and on about those...

I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Kole Miller spends every possible minute writing for her fan fiction blog, Spacer - aka fixing the mistakes made by the writers of her fave show The Space Game. But then, to her horror, other students in her Creative Writing class find out that she's the one behind the blog. They threaten to reveal her identity unless she does several things for them - and that includes writing a ship she doesn't love into her story.

I really thought I would love this. I am a real fiend for books about fandom and fanfic. I've read a lot of them - which is probably why I was disappointed with this one. Much of what happens in Down with this Ship has been done before and done better. It also reminded me quite strongly of the stories I've read on Wattpad - sooo many boys wanting to go to the dance with the lead, too many "and then they all clapped" moments, cardboard cutouts instead of characters (also what happened to the Journalism teacher?? She just disappeared??), and really squiffy logic.

I know I'm from an older fanfic era, but I still dabble in fandom (as a lurker only these days!). A lot of things just didn't match my experiences. And that was very jarring. Posting fanfic on a blog was a really odd choice for Kole (something like AO3 is more likely). But the one thing that really stuck out - show (and book) writers do NOT read fan fiction (for legal reasons).

Ugh. I don't know. Maybe these things don't or shouldn't matter. But they do to me. This all said, I think quite a few Wattpadders would enjoy it.

If you liked the premise of this book, here are my top 3 recs:
Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
The Loneliest Girl in the Universe by Lauren James
Geekerella by Ashley Poston