Jane's January Book Binge

For some reason, this is a thing I do. I often go for months without reading because I can barely manage to get in my 1,000 words a day of my own writing. And then something seems to happen after the holidays. All I want to do is read, and usually it’s passionate m/m romance I’m after.

So far this month, I’ve read ten novels (two were rereads) and five novellas, and this lust for other people’s words doesn’t show signs of stopping any time soon.

Part of it, I think, is that I finished writing my last manuscript at Christmastime, and I’ve been in a huge postpartum funk. As a writer, I carry these characters around with me all day and all night the entire time I’m writing their story. I go to sleep “writing” in my head. They’re my constant companions. And then I get to the last page and they aren’t with me anymore. It’s like having your closest friends and lovers abandon you after spending every waking (and non-waking) moment with you for months—and right after the best moment you’ve spent with them—that climax, that, yes, often lives up to its euphemism.

So in solace, I dive into other people’s stories, but they only last a day, or at most two. (I find it almost impossible to put a book down at night unfinished, so at this point, I’m obviously short on sleep.) The books are my drug, and I need another fix, and another to maintain that high.

So what have I been reading this January to keep me company in bed? KJ Charles’s A Charm of Magpies series tops the list. Hot, domineering, former Shanghai smuggler returned to Victorian England after years of exile to take his place as a reluctant earl, paired with a powerful but unassuming magical practitioner who’s submissive in the sheets? Complete with magical tattoos? Yes, please.

I also finished up Joanna Chambers Enlightenment series, a Regency Era romance set in Edinburgh. A secret romance between a lowborn lawyer and a world-weary earl, also hot and domineering. Okay, I’m in.

I read a few books by JL Merrow, whose contemporary m/m romance tends more toward the sweet than the hot (not that there’s anything wrong that!), and especially enjoyed the short novella Trick of Time because I can’t get enough of Victorian rentboys. Plus time travel? Please and thank you.

And then I stumbled on Ava March’s delightfully dirty Brook Street Regencies. More Victorian rentboys and thieves! Woohoo! And lots and lots of no-holds-barred m/m sex that is not kidding around. I think my favorite of the lot were the Rogues, a pair of notorious rakehells who haven’t quite figured out that they’re made for each other. Hot, angry sex between two dominant lords. What’s not to like?

Ahem. So…what have you been up to? Read anything good lately?