![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Susanna Kearsley, Contemporary Romance, & Morfe
Jun. 30th, 2025 03:30 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
smartbitches_feedA Letter to the Luminous Deep
RECOMMENDED: A Letter to the Luminous Deep by Sylvia Cathrall is $2.99! Elyse read this one and gave it an A:
If you are looking for a cozy fantasy read with excellent romance and worldbuilding, I highly recommend Letters to the Luminous Deep.
A charming fantasy set in an underwater world with magical academia and a heartwarming penpal romance, perfect for fans of A Marvellous Light, Emily Wilde’s Encylopaedia of Faeries and The House in the Cerulean Sea.
“An underwater treasure-chest to be slowly unpacked, full of things I adore: nosy and loving families, epistolary romance, gorgeous worldbuilding, and anxious scholars doing their best to meet the world with kindness and curiosity.” —Freya Marske, author of A Marvellous Light
A beautiful discovery outside the window of her underwater home prompts the reclusive E. to begin a correspondence with renowned scholar Henerey Clel. The letters they share are filled with passion, at first for their mutual interests, and then, inevitably, for each other.
Together, they uncover a mystery from the unknown depths, destined to transform the underwater world they both equally fear and love. But by no mere coincidence, a seaquake destroys E.’s home, and she and Henerey vanish.
A year later, E.’s sister Sophy, and Henerey’s brother Vyerin, are left to solve the mystery, piecing together the letters, sketches and field notes left behind—and learn what their siblings’ disappearance might mean for life as they know it.
Inspired, immersive, and full of heart, this charming epistolary tale is an adventure into the depths of a magical sea and the limits of the imagination from a marvelous debut voice.
The Build Up
The Build Up by Tati Richardson is $1.99! This is a contemporary workplace romance. It’s also a standalone. Have you read this one?
“Plenty of sexy chemistry and sensual sizzle in a story line that celebrates family, friends, and food.” Booklist, starred review
A truly unfortunate first day of work leads to unexpected love in this sparkling debut from Romance in Colour podcast cohost Tati Richardson .
Rumpled and ragged was not how architect Ari James envisioned kicking off her first day at a new firm. And few things can top the horror of her new—and extremely hot—colleague walking in on her at the worst moment ever. Learning that she’ll be working with him on the project that’s supposed to get her career back on top makes it harder than ever to focus on her big comeback.
With a partnership at his firm on the line, nothing is going to stand in the way of Porter Harrison absolutely killing it on his new not his obnoxious rival, not his unpredictable brother and definitely not his new coworker whose gorgeous curves he accidentally saw and now can’t get out of his head.
Though neither of them is looking for love, once their creative juices get flowing, Ari and Porter’s connection is obvious. But when their shared goal has always been winning at work, building a solid foundation for a relationship might end up costing them everything…
The Last Heir to Blackwood Library
The Last Heir to the Blackwood Library by Hester Fox is $2.99! Fox does a good blend of historical settings, Gothic elements, and sometimes dual timelines. Do you have a favorite of her books?
In post–World War I England, a young woman inherits a mysterious library and must untangle its powerful secrets…
With the stroke of a pen, twenty-three-year-old Ivy Radcliffe becomes Lady Hayworth, owner of a sprawling estate on the Yorkshire moors. Ivy has never heard of Blackwood Abbey, or of the ancient bloodline from which she’s descended. With nothing to keep her in London since losing her brother in the Great War, she warily makes her way to her new home.
The abbey is foreboding, the servants reserved and suspicious. But there is a treasure waiting behind locked doors: a magnificent library. Despite cryptic warnings from the staff, Ivy feels irresistibly drawn to its dusty shelves, where familiar works mingle with strange, esoteric texts. And she senses something else in the library too, a presence that seems to have a will of its own.
Rumors swirl in the village about the abbey’s previous owners, about ghosts and curses, and an enigmatic manuscript at the center of it all. And as events grow more sinister, it will be up to Ivy to uncover the library’s mysteries in order to reclaim her own story—before it vanishes forever.
Mariana
Mariana by Susanna Kearsley is $1.99! Kearsley’s books tend to be a mix of genres – contemporary, historical, fantasy, time travel, paranormal. Mariana was originally published in 1995 and some readers have named this a favorite of Kearsley’s backlist.
From the winner of the Catherine Cookson Fiction Prize, this mesmerizing, suspenseful, and richly atmospheric tale of time travel draws us into the heart of a heroine we won’t soon forget…
The first time Julia Beckett saw Greywethers she was only five, but she knew that it was her house. And now that she’s at last become its owner, she suspects that she was drawn there for a reason.
As if Greywethers were a portal between worlds, she finds herself transported into seventeenth-century England, becoming Mariana, a young woman struggling against danger and treachery, and battling a forbidden love.
Each time Julia travels back, she becomes more enthralled with the past…until she realizes Mariana’s life is threatening to eclipse her own, and she must find a way to lay the past to rest or lose the chance for happiness in her own time.
Happy Saturday! Here’s how we’re wrapping up June:
This is a delightfully unhinged issue. We’ve got a plethora of old-skool covers, weird language about China and Taiwan, Poconos hot tubs, and Elizabeth Lowell is thrown under the bus – twice?
Let’s revisit December 2o23 for a moment, when I first experienced
