Books

Still making slow progress on the Stormlight Archive. It's awesome, but long as hell, and I have limited time to do ebooks compared to audiobooks. _Edit: just got to the end of Words of Radiance part two and had the first genuine shock. There are a lot of things where you're not sure where players will ultimately swing, but you can mostly see potential paths build out. _

On audiobook, Beneath Dark Waters by Karen Rose releases tomorrow. It's "romantic suspense", and the series are mystery/thrillers viewed through the lens of a romance between the two primary characters. Each book is a new duo, though you do see a lot of familiar faces throughout the series. It's mostly broken up into arcs of 3-5-ish books that have friend/"the family you make" groups facing some conspiracy or other. I can't really speak to the romance element, because that's not really my thing, but the shared secrets as the relationships develop really build out the characters and their motivations.

There are dark villains. CONTENT WARNING: throughout the series there are multiple characters with histories as victims sexual violence, including some as young children. Unlike the consensual scenes between the main characters, which are explicitly depicted, there is almost none of that on screen, but I just can't in good conscience not mention it. If if's something you can't handle there's no shame in that and I don't want to surprise anyone with it.

Karen Rose is hands down my favorite author. I'll put any book of hers (with the possible exception of Cold Blooded Liar, purely because it's a slightly different format that pays off over multiple books and I haven't seen how it develops yet) against anything else in the mystery space, and I go start to finish on all of them a couple times a year. I just love the way she builds stories. I would start with Quarter to Midnight before reading this one, though. You don't have to read from the first book or the first sub-series within her universe, but each individual (mostly city arc) builds from start to finish. The current is New Orleans. The most recent complete arc is the Sacramento trilogy, starting with Say You're Sorry.

I guess I'll update if it's her first book I'm not in love with, but I'm expecting another great story. I've been waiting for this since the day I finished Quarter to Midnight, or about 2 days after it released.