So the plus to insomnia is that it gives me time to read?  Since this month was full of not-sleeping mixed with inability-to-think-clearly due to not-sleeping, I read a surprising quantity of books.
 
Mostly Romantic Suspense.  They've become my popcorn books now that I'm writing SF & F.  I just can't get the same mindless joy out of fantasy novels now, because I'm always analyzing them. 
 
But that's okay.  Romantic suspense is an awesome genre and since it's an offshoot of romance, it's full of crazily prolific writers. 
 
So what I read: 
SFF:
THE HUM & THE SHIVER by Alex Bledsoe.  Awesome book.  I bought it on kindle, but I'll be keeping an eye out for a lendable paper copy.  My favorite book of the month. 

CITY OF RUIN by Mark Charan Newton.  Book 2 in a high fantasy series.  I liked the first book well enough--despite some qualms--and read on.  This one I liked a little less.  It's maybe too shiny for me.  Too much is going on, all pretty much equally interesting, and as a result, I didn't care about any of it deeply.

LIGHTBORN by Alison Sinclair.  Book 2 of her fantasy series about a very odd world with very odd people.  I stumble on the world building sometimes, but the characters are wonderful and always carry me through.  Magic and politics and love tangles.  Have the third book on order. 

GUN WITH OCCASIONAL MUSIC by Jonathan Lethem.  I've never read anything of his before--I know, it's a failing on my part.  This book wasn't quite my taste.  It just pointed out the fact that noir stylings and I do not get along.  I'm cynical, but also an optimist.  Noir grates on me, no matter how clever it is.  Still, I'm glad I read this, and will probably try something else of his. 

GRAVEMINDER by Melissa Marr.  Kind of a mixed reaction.  I'm pretty sure I would have liked this book more if I hadn't read The Hum & the Shiver first.  I liked the world and the screwy tangles of small town relationships, but I wasn't wild about the heroine.  This is Marr's first "adult" fiction and I'm not quite sure she hit it right.  I'm not clear on the difference between YA and adult exactly; it doesn't seem like it's a matter of content but of depth.  Nothing felt quite explored enough here. 

BROOKLYN KNIGHT by CJ Hendersen.  A DNF.  I like pulp but this just felt forced.  More SYFY Saturday than a fun romp. 

WITCH EYES - Scott Tracey.  A strange book.  I read it as part of the floating LGBT YA book club, and I picked it because it looked like fun.  The familiar plot of special teen goes to small town and uncovers family secrets and enemies and falls in love with The Wrong Person.  It was fun.  It was also (as expected) familiar in its plot, though it was interesting seeing the small changes that having a gay protag caused.  The romance was the least of it.  A sixteen year old boy running across country on his own is a different creature than a sixteen year old girl.  A sixteen year old boy wandering the streets late at night alone is different than a sixteen year old girl.  There's just more freedom.  So that was interesting.*  Ultimately Witch Eyes was a sweet read and I enjoyed it. 
 
SUSPENSE:
Karen Rose.  Pretty much everything I could find.  She's like crack.  Her books are completely over the top, but they have a complete internal consistency so that you don't realize they're totally insane until you put them down and think, wait, what did I just read?  Most of them have overlapping characters, but the books don't feel like sequel bait.  I enjoyed the hell out of them.  I read: DIE FOR ME.  SILENT SCREAM.  KILL FOR ME.  SCREAM FOR ME.  I CAN SEE YOU.  YOU BELONG TO ME.  NOTHING TO FEAR.  COUNT TO TEN.  And DON'T TELL which was a DNF purely because I'd already heard all the cool stuff in that book from the others, and had a weaker plot.  Crack, I tell you.  Crack.  I read most of them in a fevered three sleepless days/nights.
 
Brenda Novak.  I read four of her books, picked up all at the same time from the workplace book stash.  STOP ME.  WATCH ME.  TRUST ME.  DEAD RIGHT.  I would have liked her books better but they suffered from two things that make me crazy: the evil ex-wives, and basically being books where there could only be one cool woman at a time in them.  Stop me, etc., has a group of three women working together but … as each woman marries, they move away from the business.  When I compare that to the close knit society of women in the Karen Rose books?  Just much less appealing. 
 
Allison Brennan.  LOVE ME TO DEATH and CUTTING EDGE.  These tip more toward romance than the Karen Rose books, but were solid enough.  I liked the heroines far more than the heroes. 
 
Tess Gerritsen THE KEEPSAKE.  Entertaining enough.  Easy to follow even though I hadn't read the books prior to this one in the series. 
 
Joshua Corin WHILE GALILEO PREYS.  Hated the title.  The book was interesting though, gave me a heroine who was torn between a happy homemaker life and consulting for the FBI--she missed the excitement, but not the fear.  I thought the portrayal of the husband, who was upset that she was rocking their status quo, was pretty good and nuanced.  He was unsympathetic, not out of any meanness, just thoughtlessness. 
 
Heather Graham THE DEATH DEALER.  Another DNF.  Didn't like the portrayal of the heroine, and the ghosts annoyed me. 
 
 
 
* I will actually bend your ears forever on the differences gender can make.  Back when there was the kerfuffle about an editor asking for a gender change on an anthology short story (and getting righteously smacked down!), I sat down and considered how the romance novel I'd written would be different if it were about a het couple.  It was amazing how the change would ripple outward, change the book entirely--from their jobs to their friends to their behavior. 
 
Currently reading: HAVE YOU SEEN HER by Karen Rose.  It's a sickness, I tell you.  I can't stop!