Sunday Soup - November 8

In The Soup This Week... Julie Wetzel, Thea Harrison, Vivi Andrews, and Alyssa Cole

Soup Dish:  on my mind
✽I have really tuned out of online RomLand lately, by which I mean Twitter. I have a vague notion that the #NotChilled thing heated up again, and it seemed like there was a bit of an uproar over a tweet from Bobbi Dumas that sort of went all over the place.  Other than that, I've been unplugged and mostly just reading like crazy. Am I missing anything good?

What I'm reading
✽I picked up Radio Silence by Alyssa Cole this week based on Sarah MacLean's recommendation for a later book in the series and my growing obsession with post-apocalyptic fiction. It was OK, with plausible world-building and good characters. Sort of a twist on the classic "cabin romance," with three siblings plus the heroine cooped up in a well-stocked remote house while they wonder what is happening in the outside world.  I didn't love it, mostly due to the voicing which just sounded a bit juvenile to me. This is an example of a perfectly fine book that just didn't suit my personal taste.

✽On the Accidental Wings of Dragons, by Julie Wetzel. This was a BookBub freebie, which turned out to be much better than the awkward title. Imaginative and fun; combines the beautiful-princess fairy tale tradition with a modern military special-ops hero. I found the internal narration, again, a little juvenile, but the plot carried it more so than the Alyssa Cole for me. Maybe I'm just having a Get Off My Lawn week.

✽Or maybe it's a week for dragons, because I couldn't resist the novella from Thea Harrison, Dragos Goes To Washington. Really more of a mystery than a romance, but featuring a favorite romantic couple. I can't say their HEA was ever in question in this story, but their ongoing passion for each other forms the context for the political whodunit. Loved it, but then I always love Thea Harrison. I do sometimes get behind on the novellas, so I was happy to see that the last three (before this one) are on offer as a bundle: A Dragon Family Album, for a nice discount.

✽The big surprise this week was an RT thumbdrive offering from Vivi Andrews, titled "Spinning Gold."  I correctly assumed this would be a Rumplestiltskin-based re-told fairy tale, and incorrectly assumed that it would be terrible. I totally loved it. Andrews' story of the lost Golden Fae, with Midas-like abilities, turns the old tale on its head and delivers a hot paranormal romance with all the elements that a modern fan of the genre could ask for: a sensible, beautiful heroine with agency; creepy magical villains, complex magic, and a white-hot hero who helps the heroine save the day. I'm definitely going to check out Andrews' extensive backlist.