Week of November 10, 2025

I actually had a 1⭐️ book this week. That doesn’t happen often at all. And this was from an author that I typically like a lot! I won’t get into it too much here because I talk about it below, but the awful rating wasn’t about plot holes or errors or anything like that. It was because I absolutely couldn’t stand the MMC in the book. He was an absolutely awful, irredeemable character, and the author still had him get the girl in the end. I’m not a die-hard feminist by any stretch of the imagination, but the amount of red flags this guy was waving could have been seen from space, and no woman alive should have fallen for his crap. It made me irrationally angry as a reader - and here I am, days later, still ranting about it!

But I also had a 5⭐️ book this week. And that got me thinking about something Tori said on our podcast recently about how generous I am with my high ratings. I do sprinkle my stars there out pretty liberally. I looked back through my notes, and though I’m nearly 300 books into this year, 44 of them have been 5⭐️ reads for me. Is that a lot? I suppose it could be seen as a lot. And I have a variety of ideas of what might make a book a “best book” in my mind. It could be a book that hit me emotionally and was memorable. Or maybe the writing was beyond excellent. Or maybe the topic resonated with me in such a way that it sat with me perfectly and clicked perfectly. So maybe a typical starred rating system doesn’t always apply anyway, and that’s fine. But I love when I finish a book and think to myself, wow, that was really well done. And I suppose that’s why I give out stars like candy - they do something that I can’t, and I’m happy to share the joy.

Thanks for joining me this week! Let’s dive in!

1. Save the Game, by J.J. Mulder ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

   This is my first read by this author and I liked it a lot. I heard about this book on TikTok from a creator I follow @declanmccallion1 and he had good things to say about it. And he was right. This book isn’t light, as the main character, college hockey player Max, is roofied and SA’d at a party. (This isn’t a spoiler - that’s literally chapter 1 of the book.) His life is a downward spiral after that until golden retriever Luke pops into his life. Luke is such a heartwarming character and his light leaps off the page. You can feel Max’s darkness and stress but Luke starts to break open the barriers that he’s built up and it’s so hopeful to read. One can only dream, as you read this, that happy endings like this exist in the real world. This entire book was written with respect and I thought it was handled well. And the slow blooming romance between Max and Luke was so sweet.

2. Sweet Spot, by Susan Mallery. ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

   This was book 2 of the Bakery Sisters series that I started last week. Knowing that there are 3 sisters and each of them has their own book, I had to forge ahead and see what’s going to happen with each of them. I liked this one a little better than the first, as I felt this finally gave a little bit of a better perspective to Nicole. She was painted as quite a villain in the first book and this one was her story and allowed her to be a strong character but also find happiness. Hawk and Raoul were great male characters in the story and Brittany I could have punted across the room if she was sitting next to me. I couldn’t stand her from the moment she was introduced. The fact that she was Hawk’s spoiled rotten daughter made my like Hawk a little bit less, honestly, but meh. It was ok.

3. Sweet Trouble, by Susan Mallery ⭐️

   This is the final book in the Bakery Sisters series and jeez, poor Jesse. She was just harped on and beaten up the entire series. She absolutely deserved her redemption but Nicole was back to her typical bitchy self in this book. And don’t get me started on Matt. He was a walking red flag from the moment he was introduced in book 2. I didn’t like him one bit and I really hate that somehow Jesse and Matt ended up together. He was awful. Let’s look at his ‘highlights’: He abandoned his own mother, he threw Jesse’s past in her face after he told her none of that mattered to him, he slut shamed her, he told her he never wanted to see her again when she was pregnant with his child then he got mad at her for not “trying harder” to convince him that the baby she was carrying was actually his, told her she was only back in his life now for his money, and finally, he served her with papers to sue her for full custody as a power play to make her feel guilty for keeping his son away for 4 years. And after all of that, she took him back?! No. No. No! This was a huge misogynistic miss for me. 100% no.

4. Clueless Puckboy, by Saxon James & Eden Finley ⭐️⭐️⭐️

   I was listening to this on audio for the last couple of weeks while I was driving and while I was on the treadmill. This was one of the many books in the Puckboys MM romance series, and it was fine. There was no real angst in this one, it was just clueless hockey player Ari and team trainer Vance. This was just fluff, and it was fine. I think I might have liked it more if I were reading it instead of listening to it - the voices didn’t work for me personally.

5. Mile High Coach, by Mia Mara ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

   This one I liked. This was an age gap MF romance with the coach of a hockey team being a silver fox type of guy and a younger consultant hired to analyze the performance of the the team to help them improve on the ice. The dynamics between Harrison, the coach, and Lovey, the consultant, were believable and real, and this one didn’t give me any icks. I had never read this author before and perhaps the mature MMC made this story work better for me, but it came together decently.

6. Darling, by Scarlett Drake ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

   OOh, I knew I was going to like this one as soon as I saw it pop up on my suggested page on KU. This is a MM romance, and this follows a character from her book Limerance, which I also enjoyed a lot. Christian Darling, a British politician who had been involved with Felix in Limerance, now finds himself stationed in Washington DC as Ambassador after Felix’s father basically had him thrown out of his high level political post in the UK after discovering his affair with his son. So now Christian is licking his wounds and trying to create a new life for himself in the US and trying to make better decisions. And then he meets Asher. Christian is immediately besotted with this young man, and his life is completely upended. And finding out that Asher is an adult content creator who is 18 years his junior? Scandal worthy. Does that stop him? Not in the least.

   Plot aside, the writing is phenomenal. Once again, Drake is able to capture the essence of these two polar opposite characters so eloquently and make them each so warm and genuine, it’s stunning. They couldn’t have had more different backgrounds, and yet these two men only seek connection and intimacy and their honesty with each other is so beautifully written. As the reader you just sink into these words and get lost - Drake’s works are so immersive, it’s hard to ever find a way to put her books down. Writing both a 40+ year old British character and a 25 year old American character and being able to “hear” their authentic voices through the writing alone is just amazing to me. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next, but this was stunning. Loved it!

That’s it for this week! As always, you can keep up with all of my reading on my Goodreads if you want to. https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/12921106-karen

Love, Karen