I'm going back, back to Morganville.

"Teach me how to do that stuff you do."

"What, be awesome? Can't do it."

Bitter Blood (Morganville Vampires #13) by Rachel Caine.

Rating: 4 of 5 stars.

The last Morganville Vampire book I read was number 12 and, well, I wasn't entirely on board with it. But I was committed to the series and they probably saved my grandma, so I decided I owed it to the Glass House Gang to keep going, to finish what I started. Thank goodness I didn't end it with number 12.

Bitter Blood was back to that delicious crackfic like quality I loved so much about books 1-11. Things kept happening, there were ghost hunters digging around and Captain Obvious was back and shooting people IN THE FACE and taking down vamps, but only sorta, not really, and people were back from the dead and Hannah was getting canned from her new job as mayor and WHAT THE HELL IS UP WITH AMELIE ANYWAY. Also. Hey, Monica. Still a raging bitch?

"So, pre-school, did you follow me in here to profess your gay love or what?"

Awesome.

Claire and Shane were still adorable and slightly dysfunctional and Michael and Eve are all wedded blissed out and causing major problems because EW. INTERSPECIES RELATIONSHIPS. GROSS. And then there's drama there and it's unnecessary and so effing delicious because ANGST. IT'S WHAT'S FOR DINNER.

I love it.

Also? Very little POV shifting. BONUS.

And Myrnin. Oh, Myrnin. He's still just as fabulous as ever and I still love him with all my blood pumping muscle and want to have his fabulous undead vampire babies.

Rumor has it that there will be 15 books altogether in the series and you know what? I'M GAME. Let's do this, Glass House kids. Just keep your awesome flags flying.

Smoking Cigarettes & Sex in Trucks: Why I Love Southern Romances.

There's just something about the south. Being that both of us are southern girls we understand the bonafide difference of life below the Mason Dixon line. Whether it's the Tennessee mountains, Florida swamps, Louisiana bayous or South Carolina low country, there's just a different heat to a good romance story that gets its bones and pace from this sticky humidity. It's a dirty blues riff in a smoky honky tonk. It's a glass of sweet tea sweating on a front porch. It's a fan moving too slow, while hands go a little faster.

You see what I'm saying, right?

I cut my teeth on the trashy paperback romance. Not the bodice ripper historical, but The Sandra Brown. Where take no shit women come up against fiery dudes from Texas. Where we're hunting for oil and people are getting murdered and dumped in swamps and women are letting their hair loose and the curses fly and someone's got a rifle in their truck because shit is about to go down. It's good and it always builds to one hell of a climax.

So which books make you want to turn up The Black Keys, put your boots up on the dash and fall hard for the kind of man who wears jeans the way the good lord meant him to?

Here are some of my favorite cowboys:

I fell in love with a Cajun.

Poison Princess by Kresley Cole
Rating: 4 of 5 stars.






Right now, Nina and I are reading The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, something we've talked about doing since before we even started Paper Boyfriends. In fact, The Night Circus was going to be our first collaborated review, most likely on our personal blogs and Goodreads and then Paper Boyfriends was born and now we're finally getting around to the book that sparked it all. In an effort to not get too far ahead of Nina while we read, I stopped myself halfway through and decided to start reading another book on my to-read list while I waited for her to catch up. (I'm a ridiculously fast reader who survives on little sleep. We joke that Nina is the old woman in this relationship, who goes to bed at 9pm and is up with the chickens, while I'm the frat boy, up all night partying and still awake the next morning. I digress.)

ENTER: POISON PRINCESS.

Have I ever talked about my deep and burning love for Post-Apocalyptic novels? Because it's there and it's A Thing. I love watching the world fall apart. I love when things get a little Lord of the Flies and when unlikely couples, people who would have never looked twice at each other before, end up together. I like seeing communities form and bands of people coming together to fight or to live or just to have human companionship. I love learning to navigate broken worlds and establishing new normals and I love watching characters rise up to become survivors.

I love guys like Jackson Deveaux. 

A town bursting with vamps: Morganville 1-12

Morganville Vampire Series (1-12) by Rachel Caine.
Rating: 4 of 5 stars.




Oh, Morganville, I shouldn't love you like I do.

Here's the thing, The Morganville Vampires series aren't particularly good books. I can think of at least one major continuity problem. Apparently getting shot in Morganville translates to a stab wound? Pretty major screw up. They're rollarcoasty and often end with a cliffhanger and in books 10 & 11, we get treated to alternating POV's, often a shift from third person limited to first person then back to third. Claire Danvers is a strong character, with no real physical attributes given to her. In 11 books, all I can tell you about Claire is that she's on the small side and has short hair, which is probably brown but also maybe red. Basically, she could be anybody anywhere, and maybe it's so we can slip her on like a pair of jeans. I don't know. Aside from Monica and her pack dogs, everyone mostly loves her unless it's crucial to the plot that they don't. She's insanely smart, pretty talented, and despite going on and on about how she's the biggest geek ever, she ends up with one of the hottest boys in town who is insanely in love with her. She's a little Mary Sue, is what I'm saying here. Not the Maryest Sue that ever did Sue, she's no Bella Swan, but she is on the scale. And maybe a 5.

But, God, all that said, I could not stop reading. It's like the best crackfic ever. Things are always happening in Morganville and Claire and the Glass House gang are always smack dab in the middle, getting the hell beat out of them. This we can get to Caine hands down. She has no qualms about putting her characters through the ringer. Even if their wounds change over the course of the books.