100 books like Romeo's Rules

I love the war dog, Cody. He has PTSD that makes his rear leg shake, but he is otherwise brilliant with a big personality. He’s not the main character, but he steals the show. Jake (the main character) takes Cody everywhere.

What happens?

Electronic murder, regular murder, Mob wars, kidnapping, police brutality, deadly drones, terrorists, and tons of action. And then there’s the Italian mob, the Russian mob, the FBI, the U.S. Marshalls Service, the Secret Service, the CIA, and the San Francisco PD and the stories about the hero, Jake, a former CIA assassin pulled back into service. Plus, the ladies are everywhere, good girls, bad girls, and victims.

Exciting story, and you’ll never forget the dog.

The lead is a kick-ass, take no poop Italian/American young woman, Gia. She’s so Italian I could smell the garlic. A no-nonsense woman. Great character development.

There were many scenes centered around a church, great descriptions and use of the location. I’ll always remember this, just one of those scenes. The dive bar and what happens to the owner was an interesting added dimension. I could smell the “dive” in the bar. Might have been in one of these in my younger years.

I enjoyed learning about the City of the Dead in SF and a few very good twists. I loved Gia. I felt like I was in San Francisco, and I enjoyed a short trip to Italy. Read all 15 in the series.

I love the action. The main character’s first kill was more of an impulse and was very brutal and messy. Then he planned and learned as he went.

What made this story most different for me is the slow evolution the main character took to being a vigilante. It was fun being in Canada for the story and watching the characters evolve.

I loved the big twist that saves the vigilante. I enjoyed the multiple storylines that all converged. A very engaging psychological thriller. It kept me guessing until the end.

A vigilante, who happens to be a medical doctor, takes justice on the people who put others in the emergency room.

The story is great, with all the medical details. Only a real doctor could know, and the author is a real doctor. The story has a strong sense of justice, and it is a message for us all to be aware of.

If you like seeing bad guys, who beat up women, children, and LGBT, get what’s coming to them, this is the place. There is a strong romance story too. Shining a light on the injustice done to women, children, and the LGBT community makes this more than just a story. 

A great book’s superpower is a story that sticks with the reader for a long time, as the Nameless collection did with me.

Dean Koontz is a master of creating deep anguish in his characters that propel their actions. Mix this emotion with science involving the brain and selective memory and you get the main character, Nameless, who doesn’t know who he is or remember his history.

Why? He willingly participates in targeted assassinations to eradicate evil from this world. Why? The quest for answers keeps the pages turning, allowing tantalizing glimpses of Nameless’s past life. When the answers are finally bared by a devastating revelation in the final story, we understand why Nameless chose his fate—because sometimes wish we could do the same.

I have read a few of Dave’s books and the one thing that I absolutely love about his stories is the ability he has to pull me in right from the beginning. When I read his first book, it was like I could see it as if it were a movie playing out in my head. His scene-setting, descriptives, etc. are wonderful.

This was my first foray into reading Urban Fantasy, and it made me very glad I did. This is the story of Lucy, a woman transformed into a werewolf, who must navigate the task of being Alpha of her new pack as well as adjusting to the new, often violent, world she’s a part of. I love how Heather deals with Lucy embracing a job she didn’t choose for herself. The interplay between the characters makes this a fun read with some very laugh-out-loud dialogue, especially in the interactions between Lucy and her Wolf, Esme. I think the whole ‘fish out of water’ thing speaks to all of us. Who hasn’t daydreamed, what if I could do magic, or had superpowers? The real question is, how would you cope if you suddenly could and it changed your life completely?

I immediately found myself lost in this enemies-to-lovers adventure. The bewitching storyline and mystery kept me engaged from the start. I couldn’t put the book down. The writer, Kristen Ciccarrelli, was new to me when I began this series, and she made a beautiful impression by capturing my interest from page one.

Crimson Moth was the first in the Heartless Hunter series, and I look forward to reading the next one!

Wanbli Weiden pulls no punches in his vivid, often brutal mystery thriller set on South Dakota’s Rosebud Indian Reservation. His enforcer protagonist Virgil Wounded struggles with his own heritage and history while fighting to protect his nephew and Lakota community. I appreciated the stark brutality of the fight scenes. I was deeply moved by the raw emotion, depth of characters, and struggles that still exist for Indian Nations today.

This provocative work of investigatory scholarship takes a dim view of private eyes, but that’s fair enough – as a detective (definitely not a saint) who has never carried a gun myself, I share the author’s dismay at the violent anti-heroes of mythic American lore. Ruehlmann’s question in this book is also my own: why are people so interested in private eyes? Answering it, he traces the idea of an omniscient private eye back to the outlaw vigilantes of the Old West, draws a distinction between intellectual English detectives and the musclemen of American noir, and includes an overview of modern masters of detective fiction along with a history of the profession starting in 18th-century France. Who knew? None of it is flattering, which makes it even more fun to read.