Daddy Crush by A. Anders
Contemporary
November 27, 2020
Self-published
Kindle Unlimited

Daddy Crush begins with an excellent hook – a woman being pressured by her date to let him in, big “scary” next door neighbor comes over and scares off lesser man, kisses ensue. And I am here for it.

But overall, did I feel that Daddy Crush was lacking something? Yes. In my opinion, so much page time was spent on Karl’s feelings for Jerusha, plus the fact that her personality shone through so much – full of light and hope and innocence, that by contrast, I’m not really sure why Jerusha liked Karl as much as she did. I also don’t feel like we ever got enough of Karl’s backstory to understand why he kept pushing Jerusha away. The whole conflict was predicated on him not feeling good enough for her, but why?

This is a personal preference, but I also thought that the kink/sex aspects were a little all over the place. Like, was this a daddy dom book? Not really. Did Jerusha call Karl daddy a few times? Yes. Personally, I feel like the teaching aspect could have been played up, and the same with Jerusha’s apparently submissive tendencies (her friends talk about it at a coffee shop, but it never seems to come up with Karl). Mostly, I was a little disappointed because whenever I felt Daddy Crush was going in a certain direction with the sex, it never quite followed through.

Age gap romances can be hard to pull off because sometimes people find them unrealistic. I personally didn’t think that to be the case here. One thing I really liked about the dynamic was that Daddy Crush didn’t rely on any power imbalance between the two, as Jerusha was established early on as an artist successful enough to be able to buy her own house at 25. It’s also possible I enjoyed their relationship because 17 years is the age gap between me and my husband. ;) Daddy Crush was not quite what I was expecting based on the title and description, so this was mostly a case of me, not the book. Still enjoyable, just not what I had in mind when I picked it up.

Grade: B

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His Beauty by Jack Harbon
Fantasy Romance
November 17, 2020
Self-published
Kindle Unlimited

What a surprise, Kate read another Beauty and the Beast retelling!

I almost have no words for His Beauty. The premise of this is that the Beast stays a beast at the end. Like any Beauty and the Beast retelling, I think the strong theme here was about how appearances aren’t everything, and just because somebody is an actual beast doesn’t mean the humans are any less beastly.

Isla’s (Beauty’s) character growth in His Beauty is easily the best part of this story. It’s hard to really go into depth about how much I like it without spoilers, but I loved her sense of independence and her willingness to make sacrifices when it came to saving/protecting her family but not compromising when it came to herself.

My biggest complaint about His Beauty is that it is very short. I think that Harbon is relying on popular culture to fill in where there are gaps in the story – the naming of Mrs. Potter and Charlie kind of cemented that in my mind. This story definitely followed the Disney Beauty and the Beast plotline (to a certain point), including the wolves in the forest scene and all.

All in all, this was a quick, enjoyable read that had a pretty creative take on the Beauty character development, plus some hot sex, and I would definitely recommend it, especially if you have Kindle Unlimited.

Note: there’s a lot of content warnings that are on the page before the page my Kindle opened to. So definitely check those out. In my opinion the most important was the warning for violence.

Grade: B

Amazon * Goodreads