obsidian_blue's reviews
3046 reviews

 Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not affect my rating or review.

Definitely not an author I will read again. I gave this 3 stars for the trigger warnings at the front and some other things I won't get into because spoilers. That said, I was dancing towards a 1 and 2 star review for a while. The hero (Jack) is not fully developed until the 60 percent mark. The heroine (Ada) is aggravating as hell throughout this story. Probably because she keeps acting as if she's new to the world and her whole won't tell her family what is going on, but will take money from a stranger thing started to get old. It didn't help she kept lusting after Jack and I was screaming to myself, red flag, every other minute about the guy. I just thought that McBreen took an easy out to "explain" Jack and I was unimpressed.

"Wedding Dashers" follows 28 year old Ada who is on her way to Ireland for her younger sister, Allison's wedding. Ada is feeling stuck because her long-time boyfriend asked for a 3 month break, and she's currently jobless after her business went under. She's back leaving at home with her mom and stepdad and she is worried that her sister is jumping into her marriage too fast. After getting bumped from a flight, and dealing with an expired hotel voucher, Ada meets a man named Jack who is also trying to get to a wedding [you see where this is going right?]. Shenanigan's abound.

So the underlying plot (get thee to a wedding) should have been fun, but it wasn't. The stupidest stuff kept happening and it wasn't cute. It was annoying and you had Ada going look at how hot Jack is every five seconds.

Ada, eh. She's not the best romance heroine I have read. I just got tired of her obsessing over her sister and demanding that Jack spill his soul to her.

Jack was gross. Seriously. There's a lot of scenes in the first 25 percent that I was just baffled at McBreen including. I wondered if she wanted readers to even like Jack. Cause I did not. His comments were sexist, gross, etc. and the whole this is why he is the way he is made me want to yell. Somewhere a NY Times journalist is working on an article about why single women need to have more sex with terrible men. I don't need to read the same scenario in a romance book. There's a reason why I don't read "alpha" AKA asshole romances.

No one else has any personality in this thing until the 80 percent mark. I thought Allison was spoiled and awful from the way that she was written, and then we get a ton of scenes in the end that "reveal" her and I was like um okay. Same with the groom to be. It just felt like there was zero development of the hero and it was laughably bad regarding anyone else.

The setting of the book moves from London, Scotland, Ireland, Seattle, Italy, and then back to Seattle. I got zero sense of the settings really until the action moved to Ireland. And only a little bit there.

The ending was just okay. I think that the multiple endings just made me go eh. I just wasn't feeling it by the time I hit 50 percent and then I wanted to just finish this book and be done with it. 

I think this wasn't great just because it shows how off the third book in the series was. The third book just kind of shows that the characters weren’t acting like themselves at all and kept doing dumb things. Short story though and we see/hear from Millie’s mother who is all kinds of awful. Didn’t really add anything to the series, but it's quick to get through.

Full review: "The Housemaid's Wedding" takes place right before Millie marries Enzo. We hear about their wedding in book #3, so McFadden decided to show readers it. Millie is the Millie of old, not putting up with crap, and helping women escape their abusive husbands or boyfriends. She and Enzo decide to marry when she becomes pregnant. They love each other, but want to make it official. Complicating things are Millie's parents are supposed to show up at the wedding and there's a man threatening to kill Millie because she helped his wife escape him.

The main reason why the set up was a non-starter from me is that if you read book #3 first (which most of us did because this came out after it) we already know how those things shake out. It's like watching Black Widow after Avengers Endgame. We know that Natasha is dead, why am I watching anything from years earlier? So that's the whole issue I have here. There's no high stakes to this.

The only goodish thing I can say is that we get Enzo's POV. I didn't care for his character in book #3 and even Millie felt like a pale mimic at that point. So if you want to see old Millie and Enzo, this book is for you. 

A very cute Christmas romance. I did like this story the best at all of the stories maybe just because reading about a man that knows what to do with his hands, you know just does it for me. I almost knocked off a star for that whole stuffing and candy cane pun cause my god what are we doing. 

Thought this was probably my favorite out of the bunch, probably because some of the other ones didn't really lean in on Christmas outside of some throways. Daria does a great job with including 12 days of Christmas in here, but with a spin on things.

We follow Evie Cruz who is still trying to get herself together after the loss of her grandmother and her uncle tossing her out. She's living in a new place that doesn't feel like home, and crushing on her upstairs neighbor, Theo. 

I liked Evie getting an ornament left on her doorknob everyday while she is trying to complete a deadline and wants to get back into the groove of things. 

Loved the ending though it did seem like things were moving too fast, but eh romance. 

I thought it was a sweet holiday romance between Everleigh and firefighter Griffin. I did think that the short story was a nice send up to a woman who is independent, but misses her friends and family who have gone in a different direction. The mishaps she gets in and the ongoing horror of her next door neighbors was hilarious. I think things lost momentum a bit towards the end of the story though.

There's just so many coincidences to the point that the whole book just becomes a hot mess. Full review to come.

Full review: Holy cow this was terrible. Nothing made sense. It was too dumb to be believed. And I gobbled this mess up on a Sunday while watching the "You" series and just baffled that Joe from that series continues to not be caught. So maybe I am saying, I read a book about some baffling/terrible people who the police can't catch and then watched "You" and said, okay maybe this can happen? I don't know. I think the issue is that McFadden relies too heavily on unreliable narrators. That's her whole thing. So, you go in reading that pretty much anyone you meet is probably a liar. I think what gets me the most in this one, unlike her "Housemaid" series, you can't cheer for anyone. The whole book has you just about over everyone you meet.

And the plot, such as it is is so damn dumb (when the reveals come) that I went, but why would [redacted] do this when they could just do this then? Or, okay so we just end on a dark note and I am supposed to what? Applaud?

I never paid for any of McFadden's books. I think if I had, I would be more upset about this. But as a follower said, someone else out there has a great thriller that we are not reading because McFadden pushes out a book every 6 months or so and it's not good, but we all read it, review it. My 2025 resolution is to try to read an author I have never read before every month. So at least 12 new authors. Anything to hide the shame of still reading this author and her books (I don't even like). 

I now get why a lot of reviewers complained about how slow this book was. Oh lord it was slow. I think all of the interludes just were unnecessary. I will post a full review later.

Full review: Well. That was a book. I don't even know what to say anymore about the Mercy Thompson series outside of saying, well it's better than the Alpha and Omega series. And I swear at times two different people are writing this series because in this one, we have Mercy being the same as always, but Alpha and Omega went south when they acted like Mercy wanted to be with Bran like a woman and man and not like a daughter. I will not rehash that whole mess. But the readers were in revolt.

In "Winter Lost" we still have Mercy dealing with the effects of the Soul Taker. She's wide open to everything and she is not herself. Those around her worry she's going to eventually lose her mind if they can't block what is being done to her. With the Pack still being the absolutely worst (yeah I said it) Mercy and Adam are thrown when Mercy's brother Gary shows up and he can't speak and tries to attack Adam. When Mercy realizes something has been done to them, here we get some more of the Norse gods/fae (yeah I don't know, I just gave up). 

I have to say that I loved the overall plot and if we had just jumped between Mercy and Adam I would have given this 5 stars. But my goodness, the interludes people. The interludes outside of some key players should have been cut. Off the top off my head, Jesse, Tad, Warren, Sherwood, etc. etc. I was like what is going on? This is not remotely interesting. Each time Briggs did that it made the book slow to a crawl. I wanted to stay with Mercy and Adam investigating and being in love. It reminded me of "River Marked" in a good way and I wish we could have stayed with that vibe throughout. Also, just realized that book was 8 book ago (sheesh). I would have saved these interludes for a short story collection because that is where they needed to be. 

The setting of this one changes to Montana and once again Norse fae/gods and original spirts of the land. I liked it and was very interested in the cast of characters we get involved with though and would love to hear about them again. It sounded very very messy. 

The ending was really good. Look I love Coyote. He's the only one so far that hasn't driven me up the wall. I also find myself bored by a whole threat via the "supreme" vampire and I am just sick of hearing about Bran. He's a terrible father/figure and him popping up in the last book was not appreciated at all. I sadly keep rooting for him to get murdered and be done. 

The book still leaves a lot of things unresolved. I just wonder how much longer this series can keep chugging along. 

The way this is written it seems maybe Gamache hangs up his detecting in the next book, but I doubt it. Honestly "The Grey Wolf" is just part one of a larger bigger conspiracy than the one that has Gamache and friends investigating. We have to wait for "The Black Wolf" to see this all resolved.

I fell in love with this series via a friend almost 7 years or so ago. And since then, it's been a bumpy ride. Maybe because I don't know if Penny knew if she wanted this to be a very good man just investigating small town mysteries or what. And the last several books has Gamache going international, getting into bigger and bigger conspiracies to the point that she's turned Gamache into a Marty Stu. I don't know if she has the guts to just retire and or end Gamache once and for all, but I hope that the next book is much stronger and more developed than this. 

"The Grey Wolf" follows Gamache ignoring a phone call. Once again we get a lot of information on someone that has never been mentioned in the series before, but has done great harm to Gamache and his family. Things take a turn though when Gamache is told that someone has been inside his home in Montreal and they want to meet. From there things jump all over the place to a bigger conspiracy than Gamache has ever investigated. He can only trust his family (some of them) and Jean-Guy and Isabelle Lacoste. 

I will say if you haven't read the other books in the series, you are going to be lost, and since most of this book calls back to an earlier book, "The Beautiful Mystery" which is Gamache book #8, you may want to re-read that one before starting this. Not for nothing, I also gave that one 2 stars. 

I honestly don't have much to say, the characters are not developed. Jean-Guy and Isabelle are split up at one point phoning and texting Gamache. That is/was not interesting to read about. Things don't unfold organically. You have Gamache getting revelations all over the place. I still can't believe we get two people who have secret pasts with Gamache in this one that I was just done with. And of course reveals about who the bad guys really are and why. 

I just didn't buy the overall plot and I just didn't find this believable. And I think if you need two books to say something, you didn't do a great job in that first book. It's not the first time Penny has done a cliffhanger, but I think it's the first time I just called it a money grab. There's nothing new here. Nothing that makes you want to read more. Instead I started to wonder if I should just cut my losses and move on. There's always going to be some readers that give her 5 stars and say it's the best thing ever. I just don't want to waste my time and money on her books anymore. 

This took me a while to finish because honestly, with everything going on in this country right now, and the recent election, I just didn't want to read something that is still an ongoing issue in the Black community.

I met the authors at an event this last year and they were lovely to talk to and had some great artifacts on hand to discuss their book.

Overall, this is a great book that recounts the history of Black enslavement in Virginia all the way up through 1968.  It's broken into separate parts of Virginian history which were: The Age of Enslavement; 1865-70 Resistance and Evolution; 1870-1901 From Hope to Jim Crow; 1902-20 Battling Health and Education Disparity; 1920s Progress through Darkness; 1930-50 A Twenty-Year Sprint; 1950-68 Change and Fear, and then finally a epilogue. 


Some great facts that I did not know that I love reading about.

-George Washington was the only founding father that manumitted his enslaved people and provide for their education. [Yeah, I didn't know this. Most of my history courses in college and grad school showed the founding fathers were all kinds of mess and trash.]

-That by 1867, approximately 12.5 million Africans had started their journey to the Americas; fewer than 11 million survived. About 5 percent arrived in the British colonies of North America, often going directly to Virginia. [Seeing stats like that over and over again in this book threw me.]

I did know most of the things the author talked about, such as the whole deport Black people back to Africa movement which yeah, history repeats itself. And how the Quakers and the Freedman's Bureau in Loudoun started erecting schools for Black students. [Another aside, why are the Quakers always on the right side of history?]

Also, it would not shock some of you to know that many of the white supremacists of the day back then didn't want Black children educated and didn't want any Black people to have access to health care. 

Honestly this was great and I really want to hug everyone who fought for a better day in Virginia for Black people. It makes me sad we are once again here. 

Cute but slow. Full RTC.

Full review: This was cute, but just so painful. The whole point of these Amazon collections are supposed to be short stories based on a central theme. This one is obviously Christmas and I assume romance. The whole story though just didn't grab me. Everyone involved was way too old to be acting like this. And I just really wanted to laugh at the notion of just traffic standing still on 395/495 in VA anywhere at that point for as long as it did. 

So slow and just a mess of a thriller. Full RTC.

Full review: Honestly nothing to root for in this one. It's slow and the character development is minimal. I just didn't really care who did what to who 20 years ago but the plot points to explain things just did my head in. I am hard passing on reading the second book in this series.