The Best of 2018 – Kristen’s List
Humans learn through stories – the ones we tell ourselves, the ones we’re told, the ones we tell about others. This year, Netflix gifted us all with Hannah Gadsby’s brilliant Nanette (which you must watch if you haven’t!) that makes that point achingly well. After watching it, I spent a lot of time thinking about the stories romance tells – especially the ones I needed to hear this year. Hence, my list. The following – in no particular order – are the ten books released this year that brought me joy, immersed me in another story, celebrated love, and centered women.
I have bought approximately five copies of this book to give to friends, sent with a post-it that they must read this. Count this as my post-it to you: this is making appearances […]
Here we are, heading into the back end of the year with our regular monthly look at the books we’re most excited about reading over the coming weeks. As usual, this is just a small selection of the books released every month – we can’t include them all, so please drop by and let us know if you’re looking forward to something you think we should know about! 
A few weeks ago, I selected a book to review that admitted it was a novella, but pretended it was a stand-alone. When I opened it up, the book was fifty seven pages and was about the farthest thing from a stand-alone I could think of. Instead, I think it’s a few chapters the author cut from another book and just… embellished. There was no time to invest in the characters, and instead I was expected to believe they were obsessed enough with each other to go from dreaming of having sex with one another to marriage – in fifty seven pages.
uld read on the plane. This means nothing that was shortlisted for the Man Booker, and nothing that requires a lexicon to decipher. Plane reads, people.
A new book from Tessa Dare is obviously a big event for many romance fans, and the AAR staffers are no different, with many of us choosing The Governess Game as one of the titles we’re most looking forward to reading in August. In fact, we’re looking forward to quite a few historicals this month – Caroline Linden, Kerrigan Byrne and Virginia Heath all have new books coming out, Bec McMaster continues her Blue-Blood Conspiracy series and there’s a long-awaited new book from Susanna Kearsley, too.
