Their final assignment after reading the book is to write a persuasive essay about which character is just the worst.
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They have a lot of romance in them, sure. Strong female character falling in love with strong male character. Who would have guessed and it would have never worked if she was falling in love with a quiet librarian 
But like @RogerBW said, they are well done urban fantasy. The world is interesting, the characters are fun, the stories are fast to read, packed with action and just entertaining. The romance is a small part, it is way more an action fantasy novel than a romance one.
About the worldbuilding: There happened a magic cataclysm since when the world as we know it ended. Now there is a magical ebb and tide, so there are phases in which machines work and others in which only magic work. Suddenly you find vampires, werewolves and every other fantasy creature you can imagine in your cities. And the main character is a kind of detective working to keep the peace and to solve the problems of everyone.
If you want an easy and enjoyable read and you like urban fantasy (which is more than just vampires hidden in our world) then this is a good recommendation.
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I just devoured the Innkeeper Chronicles and I must agree that this was very much fun to read. I love the ideas and worlds they build.
I also finished Relentless Moon – the third installment in the Lady Astronaut trilogy/series and I was initially put off because the main character switched from Elma to Nicole Wargin but she won me over quickly and I am very impressed.
I started Bridgerton because I am curious how the books relate to the Netflix show and at the moment I suspect that for the show they did the same thing they did with Expanse pulling plot threads and characters from later books forward… because the differences are pretty big. I do not know if I will read that whole series.
I am definitely going to have a look at the Rivers of London series @Chewy77 recommended in the Chat thread 
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Finished The Trouble with Peace. Very much in the line of Joe Abercrombie, where in every novel in his cycles of three, the middle one is my favourite of each cycle. Had it before with Before they are hanged, The Heroes (although it is the middle title in a group of three separate novels), Half a World from his Shattered Sea series, and now the second volume of his last trilogy, The Age of Madness.
Utter brilliance in every episode. Dialogue that is often like a fencing bout, characters that you love to hate, you hate to love and very resourceful tools of writing (like narrating the same event from several perspectives, or chaining different characters views to narrate a chaotic sequence of events) I enjoyed every last word of it. Probably my favourite book from all of his titles, and very likely my favourite book of the year, and of the decade so far (definitely from the last ten years).
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Currently all of our books are in boxes, waiting to be unpacked and shelved, which will start once all the nonbook stuff is unpacked.
I did keep one book out, Ernest Cline’s Ready Player Two. It’s been nominated for a Best Novel Award from the Libertarian Futurist Society, and as one of the jurors I need to read it before I vote on finalists; I thought this would be a good opportunity to fit it into my schedule. Unfortunately it’s very slow going for me; I keeping having to stop at the end of each chapter and recover from reading it before I can convince myself to go on.
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Just finished up House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds. I’d only ever read his novella Slow Bullets which I’d really liked, so I’d been looking forward to House of Suns as my first time reading a full, self-contained novel of his. I thoroughly enjoyed it, epic timelines, big ideas and some snappy dialogue. Looking forward to starting the Revelation Space trilogy in a few weeks time.
Currently reading and listening to The Priory of the Orange Tree, which I’d seen on Quinn’s shelf video, and then it came up in a 2 for 1 deal on audible a while back. I’ve picked up the ebook too and I’m now switching between formats, depending on what I’m doing. Enjoying it so far.
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Absolutely loved Priory of the Orange Tree, it was one of the big surprises of that year. Will buy anything the author does next.
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I finished The Flock of Ba-Hui, four short Cthulhu Mythos stories translated from Chinese, with a framing device added. It was good - these four were all in a quite traditional vein (why yes, the protagonists are solitary male scholars puzzling things out), but the Chinese settings feel distinct from the typical New England fare. It’s drawing on Chinese culture and history, of course, and uses them to put a new spin on some old ideas. Trying to read the originals is a challenge I’m psyching myself up for.
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Just finished Joe Country by Mick Herron; the sixth in the Slough House/ Jackson Lamb series.
We watched a conversation with the author last week as part of the launch of the latest book (Slough House) and realised that neither of us had read the previous book.
These are spy stories, set in London. However, far from glorifying the world of espionage the characters in this book are all screw ups in their own way.
I have a few books to catch up on, but I went for the more abstract one, Mythos, from Stephen Fry. Greek mythology has always been a great love of mine, since my childhood, and I had been sitting on the edge about buying it. In the end I got it for my birthday, so I started it yesterday, and so far, so good.
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Its great. I have it on Audiobook as well. Fry’s reading is, as always, magnificent.
I’ve got Heroes to start soon too!
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My eldest has read it, absolutely loved it as well as Heroes
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Now that we’re mostly settled in, and nearly all our books have been shelved, I’ve submitted a request to the University of Kansas library system for four books I want to read: Greek Buddha (a study of the influence of Buddhism on Pyrrho, the founder of skepticism as a philosophy); Life along the Silk Road (a collection of vignettes about people on the Silk Road in medieval times); The Welfare Trait (a study of personality changes in people who are supported by welfare in the UK); and Wood Magic (a fantasy novel written a generation or so before The Wind in the Willows). I’ve also asked for a history of impressionist art that C wants to read.
At the same time, I have three nominees for the Prometheus Award for best novel to finish, and five more to read in their entirety, over the next month. So it’s going to be a busy few weeks . . .
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Finally pulled my finger out and read Piranesi. It’s a very brief book, which is doubly infuriating when the first fifth of the book is incredibly slow and the font and spacing is large. But once it gets going, man I just LOVED it. Forgot how much I love Suzanna Clarke’s writing. The story is very good it doesn’t in my opinion offer any massive twists or turns but just reveals itself at a comfortable pace (to say more on some of the themes would in my opinion take some of the shine off the book).
Also the Watersons exclusive chapter is interesting but adds little to the overall narrative. Although having finished the book I was glad of having at least another 10 pages to spend in her world.
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I hope you enjoy the Jefferies, which I think I have been urging you to read for a couple of years now. It has a funny sort of sequel, Bevis, set in the same place and no more than a couple of years later, but from which the fantasy elements are entirely absent. Bevis is clearly about the imaginative play of a young boy, thus increasing the ambiguity of Wood Magic, which looks as though it ought to be but on the other hand can’t be.
Jefferies also wrote one of the ur-examples of post-apocalyptic fiction: After London. I must get hold of a copy, because I really like his prose style and imagination.
At present, the only non-work related stuff I am reading is here:
NB: My current favorites are SCP-610, SCP-093, SCP-1678, SCP-1730, and SCP-1936
Addendum: I need to add this to my favorites. It’s basically an SCP Mad Lib:
I’ve finished all of Bridgerton and went back to Kate Daniels… just because… in any case I am gearing up for some more serious reading now that my brain is used to reading again and I finally managed to sort ALL my ebooks from various sources into one calibre library (which has been backed up). It just took me the whole week-end to do so.
Now I face the next obstacle. Reading at my laptop is not what I want to do. So what is the best way to sync my calibre library to other devices? I have a kindle, an android phone and an ipad. Definitely need the ipad to read the digital comics but other than that any device is fine for the basic ebooks. I am asking because I have already seen that there are a bunch of apps on the app stores but nothing stands out immediately and I feel like I am overlooking something obvious here.
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I prefer Kindle because of how little it strains your eyesight, so that would be my first choice. The trick was to keep it updated with my android phone, as sometimes I used to read from it on my lunch break at work. But these days I have no chance of that, so I stay with my Kindle.
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Caution: this works for me but I am weird.
I just use a file store, Calibre to convert format if needed, then load the right format file onto the relevant device. (Which usually means epub onto the Kobo.)
I mean the idea of an auto syncing library is lovely but my etext library is medium huge…
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I just finished Peter F. Hamilton’s Salvation and I’m straight into Salvation Lost.
I’d put off starting these books since I’m yet to read the second book in the The Chronicle of the Fallers and didn’t want to have two of his series on the go at the same time. It however has been so long since I read The Abyss Beyond Dreams that I’ll probably have to read it again anyway.
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