01 | August | 2026 | Paroxysm of Giggles / Critical Mass

Carried Over from Last Month’s TBR

I want to bring over the two new releases from last month:

In Stormy Weather was introduced in the July TBR, so I won’t rehash the premise, but I did want to talk a little bit about why I’m excited to read this book. I do love a good rivals-to-lovers story, because usually they are familiar enough with each other to have a lively banter. Not only was this a women in STEM romance, but it takes place in Florida (and Quincy lives near Orlando, which is where I was based for my Nuke A school). Donald and I both have ties to Florida, and – as he will attest – I am the girl who is cheering on the hurricane. Not that I want there to be people hurt or property damaged, but I do love a good storm.

Resist Me is the sequel to Ruin Me and I enjoyed the nostalgia for an underground gambling ring romance, if that’s a thing. A little bit of danger spices things up every once in a while. In Ruin Me, we saw a little bit of the start of Ford’s infatuation with June, and I’m ready to see where it goes. I’ll be honest, I keep getting flooded with Kelsie Rae’s ads on social media and they are what made me pick up the first book.

New Releases

This month, there were only two new releases that I pre-ordered:

Adversary to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer

However, I’m not going to be reading either of these in August.

Adversary to the Villain is the fourth book in the Assistant to the Villain series, and while I have the other books in the series, I have not read books 2 or 3 yet. I’m trying not to read the blurb on the back of this book, so I don’t accidentally spoil myself for those books.

Chasing the Rush I am saving for September, since that’s when the NFL football season officially begins and this is a football sports romance. I like to stay on-theme when I can. This is also a second chance romance because Luca and Chelsea met previously when she was a Mathlete going to an event. Something happened and they didn’t actually get into a relationship at that time. Now, she runs into him again when she starts doing statistics for her father’s new team. He’s a player who needs babysitting and Chelsea is saddled with the job.

Book Club Picks

For my brother’s Moon Lit Bookclub selection for August, we will be reading The Tempest Blade by Danielle L. Jensen. This is the sixth book in The Bridge Kingdom series and I can’t believe the book club is completing an entire series! In this finale, Ahnna is on the run because everyone believes that she killed Good King Eddie. Since it is the final book, we have chapters with POVs from all six of the main characters from the series.

For my brother’s Welcome to the Apocalypse book club, we will be reading Carl’s Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman, which is the sequel to last month’s Dungeon Crawler Carl selection. It picks up where Book 1 left off, with Carl and Donut entering the third floor.

Amazon First Reads and Book of the Month Selections

Generally, I make my Amazon First Reads and Book of the Month selections on the first of the month or close to it. Since I don’t really pay for the Amazon reads, I set them as “Bonus” books on a list I maintain of books I acquire each year. My goal every year is to read all of the books I buy (or at least a decent percentage of them), but I allow myself to skip ones that are free or gifts or books that I buy for Donald.

I totally forgot about making these selections, and by the time I went to BOTM, the window for making August selections had ended. So nothing new to see here for August.

Final List

My final initial TBR for August consists of 2 books:

In Stormy Weather by Chelsea Curto
Resist Me by Kelsie Rae
The Tempest Blade by Danielle L. Jensen
Carl’s Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman

In July, I was fully invested in conquering the 22 Silent Book Club locations for the Metro Detroit Summer Passport event. Donald quickly found that if he attended with me, we would generally end up eating at a new-to-us restaurant, so he had NomNom Motivation to attend, and we treated it like a bonus Date Night.

TBR Reads

My official July TBR consisted of 4 books. Of those, I have read all 4:

Rocket's Red Glare by James Patterson and Matt Eversmann

The Endless War was okay. It was mostly Zarrah being in prison with some really questionable people and then a whole political mess. I felt that it dragged in places and I just wasn’t feeling the chemistry between Zarrah and Keris (granted their relationship was in a rocky place for much of the book).

Rocket’s Red Glare was a fun read. You follow an ex-Special Forces guy who invites his team to his place on Nantucket for a little R&R after a tour. He has a difficult time getting to his house because a presidential candidate decided to set up his campaign office next door. When the candidate is captured, everyone is a suspect and no one on the island is safe. I had to exercise a fair amount of “suspension of disbelief” for this story, but it was entertaining.

The Twisted Throne is Book 5 in the Bridge Kingdom series and once again we switch protagonists to show Ahnna, King Aren’s twin sister, and James, the brother to Ahnna’s fiancé, William. She is sent to Harendell to fulfill her part of the 15 Year Treaty and hopefully, to get Harendell to provide favorable trade agreements to help the Ithicanian people. There are a lot of court politics and intrigue, and a lot more of Ahnna falling for the “wrong” brother. Surely, that’s not going to cause any problems, right? This was another case where I didn’t particularly want to pick up the book to read it, but once I did, I didn’t put it down for hours.

Dungeon Crawler Carl was a surprise. It was funny and witty and I really liked it! Aliens come to Earth and flatten all of the buildings, squishing most of the people who were not fortunate enough to be outside at the time. For those who are left, they can either become a dungeon crawler and try to be the last person standing who can then reclaim the planet, or die. It’s an absolute comedy of ridiculousness from beginning to end. I really hope that Clint’s book club will continue reading in this series.

I read 0 of the 2 bonus TBR books.

Final Result was that I read 4/4 (100%) of my planned books and 0% of my bonus books. I’m really happy that I could keep up with my brother’s book clubs this month!

Random Reads

My non-planned reads include:

I don’t know why it has taken me so long to read Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood. It has women in STEM, and this one involves thermodynamics! Of course, I’m going to love it! Elsie is a brilliant physicist, but is currently is struggling as an adjunct professor spread across three separate campuses. She wins an interview for a position she desperately wants – doing what she loves, a real salary, and health insurance. Unfortunately, one of the people on the hiring committee is the nemesis of the theoretical physics academic world and single-handedly responsible for a huge blow to her mentor’s career and credibility. It was really cute and well done.

Mate is Ali Hazelwood’s sequel to Bride. We are returned to a world where there are vampires and werewolves living in a tense peace. This time, we are following Misery’s best friend, Serena, who recently found out she’s one of the only human-werewolf hybrids. She has a bit of PTSD from the events in Bride and seeks refuge from the world in the Pacific Northwest among Koen’s pack. Her being Koen’s mate doesn’t endear her to his pack. In fact, they see her as a threat to their way of life. It took me a bit to pick up this book, despite having had it on my bookshelf for almost a year. It surprised me in a few ways and there was more to unpack in the story than I had anticipated. Bride seemed to be a bit more fast-paced, and Mate seemed to be more introspective and questioning of characters’ motives.

Lauren Blakely is an author who writes hefty romance novels, and I generally find them pretty entertaining. She tends to write on the spicier side, so buyer beware. It Seemed Like a Good Idea is a cute story about a bodyguard and the girl he is protecting. Although – plot twist! – she’s not the famous person, but her twin sister is. Her sister, Haven, brings her movie crew to the small town where she grew up and filming will be taking place on the lavender farm that Ripley now runs. Banks and his partner are relatively new to the security business, and he really needs this job to go well. Falling in love with his principle is not something that is recommended. This was a good read and I like how it took some common troupes and flipped them just a bit.

Okay…. for this next bit, I’m going to do a bit of consolidating. What happened was I found the Amazon series, Off-Campus, and decided that I wanted to read the book (Hahaha, little did I know there were so many in this universe) before watching it. So, I proceeded to absolutely decimate Elle Kennedy’s series: Off-Campus, Briar U, and Campus Diaries. That took the whole rest of the month, with a brief interlude where I finished The Twisted Throne and Dungeon Crawler Carl. At first look, they seem a bit fluffy, but as I read through them, there was a lot of character development and layers to the issues that came up in the plot that kept me engaged. Also, I love a good family dynasty moment, and the fact that these books came with a family tree and there was a lot of former main character cameos in subsequent books made it so much more enjoyable. I will leave links below to individual reviews for each of the books in case you want to read my thoughts about them, but just a quick warning that if you are reading this post close to the publication date, I may not have completed this part yet.