July was a big month. LD went deep into Kylie Scott’s back catalogue and came out the other side with a lot of opinions. CJ read a debut that made her feel things she wasn’t prepared for and a book that earned a full five stars. Between the two of them: sixteen reviews, one perfect wedding at a care home, one certificate that appeared inside a wall and then disappeared without explanation, and a bear man who is not, it turns out, the kidnapper.
Here’s everything CJ and LD read and reviewed in July, with full spoilers.
CJ’s July Reads
CJ covered six books this month — a debut that crept up on her, a five-star fantasy, a grief-filled survival sequel, and a rockstar romance with a villain who gets exactly what’s coming to her.
Standalone — Kyra Parsi
Hate Me Like You Mean It | ⭐ 4.5/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥 | 📖 Physical
An enemies-to-lovers story where the enemies part actually has bite. Ten years of buried misunderstandings and resentment, a decade-old frame job, a best friend who was never really a best friend, and two people who have been desperately, furiously, inconveniently in love with each other pretty much their whole lives. CJ laughed so hard she had to leave the bedroom so she wouldn’t wake her husband up. She has now reread it twice.
Standalone — Shiloh Briar
Hopeless Necromantic | ⭐ 4/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥 | 📖 Physical
CJ went in expecting a fun fantasy romp with a skeleton and a demon. What she got was all of that — genuinely laugh-out-loud funny — and then a grief narrative that quietly crept up and made her feel things she wasn’t prepared for. A necromancer barely functioning, his late brother-in-law kept on the living side entirely by grief and magic, and a pink-haired demon with a royal summons that kicks the whole thing into motion. A debut novel that reads like Shiloh Briar has been doing this for years.
Starlight Grove Series — Catherine Cowles
Into the Fading Twilight | ⭐ 4.5/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥 | Book 2
Four months post-rescue and Nova is not okay — and really, that’s completely understandable. This book takes the happily ever after you think you’re owed after a survival story and says: nope. Here’s the part nobody talks about. The after. The part where you’re supposed to be grateful and healed and instead you’re riding a dirt bike at reckless speeds because it’s the only thing that makes you feel like you’re still in your body. And then the investigation twists in a direction CJ genuinely did not see coming.
Standalone — Ilona Andrews
This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me | ⭐ 5/5 | Steam: 🔥 | 📖 Physical
A woman who cannot die. A war hero who’s secretly the most feared man in the kingdom. A kidnapping via dragon. CJ walked in with very high expectations and the book cleared them effortlessly. The moment Maggie wakes up naked in a ditch in her favourite fictional kingdom, robs a man, gets her throat slit, and wakes back up still clutching the money bag like a security blanket — it was five stars and she knew it. She just needed to finish it to be sure.
Standalone — Tania Joyce
Words Don’t Lie | ⭐ 4/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥 | ARC
Wolf is a drummer and secret songwriter who had his work stolen and his reputation threatened by an ex with more lawyers and a bigger name. Reba is a former pop star who’s been in hiding since her ex-manager beat her nearly to death and then spun the story against her. Two people with every reason not to trust anyone, writing an album together. The songwriting as emotional excavation is the beating heart of this book — and the villain gets exactly what’s coming to her.
Standalone — Lola Glass
Sweet Blood | ⭐ 3.75/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥 | Paranormal Romance
Vampires, werewolves, an uneasy truce, and a heroine who walks into her office one morning to find her boss drained vampire-style. When the alpha of all alphas shows up and immediately bites the vampire he’s identified as his fated mate — mid-interrogation, zero warning — the chaos is locked in. CJ loved the world, loved the VAG (said with a hard G, as the book is very clear about), and is already watching for book two.
LD’s July Reads
LD read ten books in July. She went through the Stage Dive series, the Kylie Scott back catalogue, the latest Haven’s Rock, and a Laura Dave that earned five stars. She also had one deeply frustrating Lauren Blakely and one Ali Hazelwood with a timeline structure that fought her the whole way through.
Stage Dive Series — Kylie Scott
Lick | ⭐ 4.1/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥 | 🎧 Audiobook | Stage Dive Book 1
Ev wakes up in Vegas, married, with a tattoo on her ass that says David and zero memory of the night before. That David turns out to be David Ferris, lead singer of one of the biggest rock bands in the world — and he bought her a five-carat ring, which is not what a man does if he thinks it’s a mistake. The slow stretch in the middle where they’re figuring out who the other person actually is, before either of them can admit what’s happening, is where this book earns everything.
Play | ⭐ 4.7/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥 | 🎧 Audiobook | Stage Dive Book 2
Mal moves himself into Anne’s apartment without being asked — pays her rent, replaces all the furniture her vanished roommate took, and nicknames her Pumpkin within about twenty minutes. His mom has been diagnosed with cancer and he’s falling apart the way people who are very good at pretending they’re not always do. The scene where David shows up to play drums with him in silence, no words, just showing up — that’s the best scene in the series so far. And Mal is already LD’s favourite character in the whole thing.
Haven’s Rock — Kelley Armstrong
The Boy Who Cried Bear | ⭐ 4.6/5 | Steam: 🔥 | 🎧 Audiobook | Haven’s Rock Book 3
A ten-year-old boy insists he saw a bear with human eyes. Nobody believes him. And then he goes missing. Back in the Yukon wilderness with Casey and Dalton, this time with a pregnancy nobody planned for, a suspicious man inserting himself into the investigation at every wrong turn, and a bear man who is not, it turns out, the same person as the kidnapper. LD is still not ready to leave this world.
Kylie Scott Standalones
Famous in a Small Town | ⭐ 4.9/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥 | 🎧 Audiobook
A world-famous rock star moves into the Victorian house next door in the middle of the night. His new neighbour recognizes him immediately and helps hide his identity from the whole town — a town that commits to calling him “Garry” with an enthusiasm that becomes one of the funniest running threads in the book. The way this romance builds, through small moments and real questions and quiet permission to be known, quietly got LD right in the chest. Her highest rated read of the month.
End of Story | ⭐ 4.6/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥 | 🎧 Audiobook
A water leak. A contractor who is also her ex’s best friend. A divorce certificate found inside a wall, dated ten years in the future, in both their names. No rational explanation. LD listened to it in one sitting and came back to listen again a year later. The certificate appears, changes the course of two people’s lives, and then disappears. Nobody ever figures out where it came from. The mystery doesn’t resolve. It doesn’t need to.
Beginning of the End | ⭐ 3.6/5 | Steam: 🔥 | 🎧 Audiobook | Novella
About an hour long and worth every minute — not because it reinvents anything, but because it fills in the gaps End of Story left open. The prequel novella that shows exactly how Suzie and Aaron fell apart. And the detail that Lars was there the night they met, and was the one who actually fixed her car, is its own quiet kind of commentary on the whole thing.
It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time | ⭐ 4.1/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥 | 🎧 Audiobook
A second chance romance between a woman and her dad’s business partner — fifteen years her senior, someone she’s known since she was a teenager. At eighteen, she made a move. He turned her down. Her father walked in mid-rejection, misread the situation entirely, and punched Pete hard enough to break his nose. Seven years later they’re back in the same house for a wedding and nothing has changed except that she’s twenty-five and he can’t pretend anymore. Your mileage will vary on the age gap. If you’re in, you’re in.
Always Satisfied Series — Lauren Blakely
Satisfaction Guaranteed | ⭐ 2.3/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥 | 🎧 Audiobook | Always Satisfied Book 1
The prologue hooked LD completely — slow burn, genuine chemistry, the kind of building that feels like it means something. And then he walks away because her dad is his new boss. And seven years pass. And LD spent the rest of the book chasing the feeling from those first few pages and never quite catching it.
Standalone — Laura Dave
The Night We Lost Him | ⭐ 5/5 | Steam: 🔥 | 🎧 Audiobook
A father falls from a cliff at his remote California home. The authorities call it accidental. His estranged daughter and her half-brother — two people who barely know each other — aren’t convinced. Part family drama, part murder mystery, entirely about the wreckage people leave when they die with secrets still intact. LD doesn’t give five stars often. This one earned every single one.
Standalone — Ali Hazelwood
Below Zero | ⭐ 3.2/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥 | 🎧 Audiobook
An aerospace engineer stranded alone in a hole in the Arctic with a sprained ankle, a storm closing in, and the man she’s spent months hating crackling over the radio telling her he’s coming. He’s not coming for NASA. He’s coming for her. That’s a great setup. The three-timeline structure made it harder to track than it needed to be, but LD doesn’t regret the listen.
That’s a Wrap on July
Sixteen reviews between the two of us. Two five-star reads. A certificate that defied explanation. A bear man. A wedding at a care home. And LD completing the Stage Dive series with her favourite fictional drummer firmly embedded in her heart.
Some absolute standouts — This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me, The Night We Lost Him, Famous in a Small Town, Hate Me Like You Mean It. Some that didn’t land. A novella that was exactly one hour long and exactly what it needed to be.
We’ll be back in August with more.
Browse all LD reviews on Plot Twisted → plottwisted.ca/category/reviewed-by-ld
Browse all CJ reviews on Plot Twisted → plottwisted.ca/category/reviewed-by-cj
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