My rating: 4 of 5 stars Stop hoping for the best and work at it. It’s wild that a satire written over 260 years ago can still be so readable and funny. It veered a bit too far into gnostic waters for my taste, but that was understandable considering what it’s satirizing (Leibnizian optimism). I can see why Voltaire was/is so lauded and loathed. ༻❁༺ One of my favorite parts was a scene in Chapter 22 that poked fun at critics. I decided to give it a rewrite for this review: Lindsey happened to be seated near some fashionable readers. This did not prevent her laughter at the well-written scenes. One of these Goodreads critics at her side said to her between chapters: “Your laughter is misplaced; that is a terrible book; the writer who wrote it is yet worse; and those who praise his writing are still worse than him. The author never once went to El Dorado, yet there was a scene set in El Dorado. Moreover, he is a man who does not believe in innate ideas; and I will private message you tw...

My rating: 3 of 5 stars This was my first Kenyon reread since high school when I originally read the DH series. I struggled to decide between two or three stars but ultimately decided on three because the comedy somewhat redeemed the over-the-top cheesy smuttiness. But I struggled to unglue my eyes from the back of my skull at some moments, and it wasn’t easy to get through. I feel like this only exists as a prequel to Night Pleasures because Kenyon or her publishing team was trying to attract an initial audience to the Dark-Hunter novels from trashy romance addicts. I think there is a reason the DH series gets noticeably less smutty and more plot-driven as it progresses. This story was okay—when there actually was a story and not just endlessly redundant sexual tension, eye-rolling foreplay, and explicit lewdness. I get that enjoying books like this is dependent on being able to turn your brain off for a while, but I think I would need electroshock therapy to help make myself as co...

My rating: 5 of 5 stars If a book seamlessly takes me through the full spectrum of emotions—makes me laugh out loud and break down crying—it gets all the stars from me. This is one of the most honest depictions of the traditional South I have ever read. My paternal grandparents lived in an unincorporated community called Cypress Inn (a similarly unusual settlement name). Cold Sassy reminds me so much of what I observed there growing up. Some of the character names in this book made me giggle because they are common occurrences on my father’s side of the family. I have an “Uncle Leroy” and a “Pa Hoyt,” and I had never seen or heard bumpkinish names like that anywhere other than family tombstones and our genealogy book. Although the class and race problems of the South are not the main focus of this novel and exist mainly as a backdrop, I liked that the story did not completely skirt over the issues or present a false, almost propagandistic narrative (à la Gone with the Wind ). I espe...