August was a strange reading month, read some old favourites and then a new book that is related to that series. I then made the mistake of reading a new book by an author I used to enjoy but hadn’t read in many years and then a book of old (I read it 26 years ago) and it didn’t go very well. It all made me very slumpy actually!

Rock Chick Reawakening (Rock Chick #0.5) – 5⭐, Rock Chick Redemption (Rock Chick #3) – 5⭐, Rock Chick Renegade (Rock Chick #4) – 5⭐, Rock Chick Revenge (Rock Chick #5) – 4⭐, Rock Chick Reckoning (Rock Chick #6) – 5⭐ Rock Chick Regret (Rock Chick #7) – 5⭐, Rock Chick Revolution (Rock Chick #8) – 4⭐ & Rock Chick Reborn (Rock Chick #9) – 4⭐by Kristen Ashley

Needed a little reread, read book one and two in July, really hadn’t planned on rereading the entire series in all it’s glory but the spirit moved me. 🙂

Avenging Angel (Avenging Angels #1) – 4⭐by Kristen Ashley

So I was a huge Rock Chick fan and when I tell you I screamed when I realised who Cap was!!

I really enjoyed Avenging Angel, it feels really old school KA in a brand new and vibrant setting. We get lots of old faces, I think all of them at one stage (which I do sometimes feel can be a bit OTT, I like a few of them but not every single one BUT maybe that’s just a treat for book one in this series) and a host of new and potentially very exciting characters.

The storyline is very silly but so did more or less all the Rock Chick books so I was jut here for the madness. Raye was adorable and her story made me so emotional. I honestly thought that her sister would be turn up alive. 😦

Cap was perfect, absolutely no notes!

Give me all the books in this series right now!

Eric next up, he was an FBI agent in the Rock Chick series and looks like it’s going to be a pretty significant age gap which I’m interested to read!

A False Start (Gold Rush Ranch #4) – 3⭐ by Elsie Silver

Least favourite of the 4, I just couldn’t get on with Nadia at all.

What I did like was that she didn’t give up everything for Griffin and he was forced to go work on himself. I do like the way sex isn’t the magic pill in this series.

As I said though, this was my least favourite, still worth the read though.

Consort of Fire (Bound to Fire and Steel #1) – 3⭐ by Kit Rocha

I don’t know, I mean I’m invested and I want to know what happens next but everyone kind of annoyed me! I’m all for a miscommunication trope (to a certain degree) but these three were THE WORST at communicating, especially Sachi and Zanya with Ash! They really took too long to tell him what was going on. Not that it seemed he could do anything but who knows, him knowing earlier could have saved a lot of heartache!!

Watermelon (Walsh Family #1) by Marian Keyes

I’m not going to rate this. Let me tell you for why…

I first read this in 1998. I remember loving it. I remember loving all the Walsh family books. Rachel’s Holiday was one of my absolute favourite books from that time of my life (16 by the way) and my plan was to reread the series and read the new Rachel book, Again, Rachel, but this turned out to be a very bad idea.

I really disliked Watermelon and almost everyone in it. Making an exception for Kate and Daddy Walsh!

The biggest problem for me was the outrageous gaslighting and Claire’s general doormat energy but look, this book is almost 30 years old, romance is one of those genres that doesn’t always age terribly well and this book is one of those for me.

Also…

I read and listened to this and noticed something VERY annoying while switching over between both. The audiobook has been ‘Americanised’ and this made me unreasonably angry, and just to say that some of the stuff removed was funny as fuck. I laughed more reading than listening that’s for sure! Just don’t do this to books. If Americans don’t get it let them Google for fuck sake!

But also, props to Marian Keyes and her abortion and bodily autonomy rant in Ireland 1995. For context, abortion was only made legal here (and at that it’s super restricted) in 2018 after a referendum. #AbortionIsHealthcare

So, this didn’t age well, I didn’t enjoy it at the age of 41 (almost 42) but this was a well loved book/series/author back in the day and entertained me heartily back then so a 5 star read at 16 and maybe a 2 star read at 41 (almost 42) so can’t rate it!

Outgrowing favourite books is inevitable so I really should let this be a lesson to me, even though I really want to reread After You’d Gone which I often still list as one of my all time favourite books but I haven’t read it since I was 18! 😀