Male/Male romance

B+
A Marvellous Light

Freya Marske’s inventive and impressive début, A Marvellous Light, is an enchanting blend of magic, mystery and romance set in England in 1908, in which a newly-appointed civil servant finds himself suddenly part of a mysterious and fantastical world of deadly curses, spells and secrets.   It ...

A
Custody Battles

Note: This is the thirteenth full-length novel in the Hazard and Somerset series, so new readers are advised not to start here.  There are spoilers for the previous books in this review. I think, if I had to write a one-word review of Gregory Ashe’s Custody Battles, it would be OUCH.  I spent ...

C
The Wrangler and the Orphan

The Wrangler and the Orphan is book four in Jackie North’s Farthingale Ranch series; I haven’t read any of the others, but although characters from the other books appear in it, this one stands alone.  It’s a hurt/comfort age-gap romance in which the two leads bond over just how far their liv ...

B+
The Cuckoo's Call

Lily Morton’s The Cuckoo’s Call is a charming and heartfelt age-gap, opposites-attract romance that looks at what happens to a holiday romance after the holiday is over.  You generally know what you’re getting with a Morton book – steamy sexytimes, witty banter, engaging characters and a go ...

B-
House on Fire

Note: There are spoilers for previous books in this review. Jenn Burke’s Ashes & Dust  – a sequel/spin off to the Not Dead Yet series – got off to a strong start earlier this year with All Fired Up, which finds Wes, Hudson and Evan running a successful PI business in Toronto five years ...

C+
A Winter's Earl

A Winter’s Earl is a big, loud, crashing melodrama of a book.  The romance between our heroes is, to a degree, disappointingly gaslighty – and you’ll have to accept a number of things about their relationship if you want to fully indulge in this story.  A few redemptive touches keeps this aw ...

A-
Cascade Hunger

The second book in Gregory Ashe’s DuPage Parish series of paranormal-with-a-horror-vibe mysteries, Cascade Hunger catches up with Elien Martel (who has reverted to going by his real name of Eli Martins) and Dagobert LeBlanc around a year after the events of Stray Fears. In that book, Eli and Dag d ...

A-
Total Creative Control

Two of my favourite authors teaming up to write a grumpy/sunshine “angsty rom-com” ?  YES, PLEASE – sign me up!  Total Creative Control is a captivating read and I blew through it two sittings. Featuring two complex, superbly characterised protagonists, and a small but equally well-written s ...

C-
Unwritten Rules

I’m not a sports fan, but I do like a good sports romance, and having read the synopsis of début author KD Casey’s Unwritten Rules, I had high hopes of finding one within its pages.  But while the book gets off to a good start, I’m afraid those hopes were dashed before I got to the halfway p ...

B
Sol

Con Riley has become a must-read author for me over the last couple of years, and she earned high grades for her last three books, which I gave DIK reviews.  The most recent of these - Charles, book one in the Learning to Love series – was always going to be a tough act to follow due to its incre ...